Chapter 42 Seventh full stop

In July, the most capricious month in Liberty City, my detective agency finally opened as scheduled. At the small gathering held that evening, Handik and Orlu both expressed extreme displeasure with my undemocratic selection of the location of the detective agency: "It's a pity that we are far away from the bureau - if you are busy, we will have fewer chances to meet?" When toasting, Handik accused me rather tactfully. "It seems that you don't take our old friends seriously?" Olu directly gave the sharpest criticism. But before, Olu told me in private: "Since it's so close, I will definitely go to your place for a cup of coffee every now and then?"

Of course I know it all too well—this is just Oulu’s clumsy excuse, and what he really cares about is solving the weekend food problem that has plagued him for many years by "dropping in" on the detective agency. Yes, my detective agency is on the fifth floor of 13 Little Jim Street, Howzer, a rather deserted and numerically inauspicious place. Peterfield just asked me: "Wenzel, did you choose this street to open a detective agency to commemorate old Jim?" I smiled, noncommittal. In any case, although there are various accusations, criticisms and doubts as mentioned above, my lovely old colleagues have given me the most blessings in my new career without exception.

The party went on until three-thirty in the morning.After everyone left one after another, I found that I couldn't sleep at all-so I lit a Marlboro and started writing a summary for my first commission since I started my detective career. Well, after more than two months of busy work, I can finally calm down and present everything about this closed case in front of us. Probably after the grave-sweeping encounter, Raymond had an unexpected encounter with an old friend named Reclam who moved to Milliehausen in the early years, who was one of the organizers of the masquerade party one. When old friends meet again, they will naturally talk about the past.In his memory, Rekram inadvertently mentioned that the masquerade party eight years ago was actually funded and organized by Rhodes, the housekeeper of the villa.

Of course Raymond would be very concerned about this.Under questioning, Rekram said that the time and location of the masquerade party were determined by Mr. Rhodes in advance, and he and several other organizers were only responsible for finding participants—however, Rhodes once specifically mentioned that they would Invite Raymond and ask him to bring his girlfriend. Rekram and several other organizers had indeed invited Raymond, and they all asked him to bring his girlfriend - Raymond remembered these things clearly, but he never knew that this actually The above are instructions from Steward Rhodes.

After the meeting with Rekram, Raymond naturally suspected that there were still some unknown inside stories between the Rhodes and Eliza cases.Therefore, he sent Eko to his aunt's house and began to spy on Rhode's whereabouts. After Mr. Rügenmann's suicide, Rhodes began to frequently contact several lawyers who specialize in property disputes and inheritance lawsuits - Raymond didn't explain this in detail, anyway, during several very difficult wiretapping operations Afterwards, Raymond learned a very unexpected news: Rod Schmitz turned out to be a descendant of the Hofer family!

Combined with the known facts, Raymond made a perfectly reasonable assumption in motivation: In order to seize the ownership of the Hofer Consortium, Rhodes hired someone to kill Eliza eight years ago, and recently managed to kill Mr. Rügenmann. Let's think about it - Rhodes already knew the location where Raymond and Eliza sneaked out of the villa every time, and this location happened to be used by Carolina and her lovers: Rhodes took advantage of this coincidence .On the one hand, he suggested that Mr. Rügenmann meet Karolina there; on the other hand, he planned a masquerade ball that Eliza would inevitably attend with Raymond.He calculated in advance the time it would take for the two to go to the prom scene, and roughly estimated that the two planned to be in the "old place"

The timing of the meeting—the timing that he suggested to Herr Rügenmann as "the least likely to arouse suspicion" Based on the time of swinging the knife. Then, he took the initiative to propose to Mr. Rügenmann: he would be responsible for holding back young gardeners who might pose a threat to the plan within the scheduled time-Mr. Rügenmann naturally had no reason to refuse this proposal. Therefore, under the proper and careful arrangement of our shrewd housekeeper, Eliza "unexpectedly" dedicated herself to the knife of her own father; Mr. Rügenmann's behavior of abandoning the knife also created a A serial killer who caused panic in the city-and this, of course, was out of Mr. Rhodes' plan.

Our Mr. Gardener did not take into account the details mentioned above at all - he noticed that Rhodes repeatedly showed the lawyers an ebony knife holder, and he immediately realized that this would be an important evidence, It is also a decisive factor in whether Rhodes can finally obtain the right to inherit the property of the Hofer family. Perhaps because of the long-term accumulated pressure and the sudden outburst of resentment, Raymond actually broke into the knife room and stole the knife holder that he considered "very important".He hid in that basement, and planned to reach a compromise with Mr. Rhodes during negotiations.

The condition Raymond offered was that Rhodes would voluntarily surrender to the police—and this condition was the most unacceptable to our housekeeper (this shows that our gardener is indeed in a daze).He thought of me who probably knew the truth of the whole thing, so he proposed this commission to me, and at the same time hired a professional killer, planning to get rid of both of us: "Find the ebony knife holder and bring it back with Raymond. Whether Raymond resists or not, use this tranquilizer gun to stun him—don't ask me why, it's necessary." —This is the commission given to me by my first client, Mr. Rod Schmitz: and the motives of this commission, as well as the tricks involved in it, we have now clearly understood.

In fact, the role of the ebony wood knife holder in Rod Schmitz's succession has been exaggerated for no reason by our young gardener-although we have never been able to know that the card hidden in the middle of the knife holder What was written on the parchment letterhead.But based on the names engraved on the knife holder and the biography of the Hofer family that Raymond consulted, we can also make a reasonable inference. The names on the ebony knife holder, according to my memory, seem to be in the following order: The names of Perbona, Luchel, Carrera, Karolina, and Rügenmann Hofer, except for the last two, are from Mr. Rügenmann, the rest are all from different hands— —Perbona, Luchel and Carrera: these three names without surnames, according to the biographies of the Hofer family, are "shameless women who have betrayed the Hofer family their" names.

They are therefore "unworthy of the great surname 'Hofer' which has a glorious knightly tradition". While crossing out his surname after his first name, Mr. Rügenmann also inadvertently gave us enough hints related to this. Although it is not detailed in the family biography, judging from the fact that Mr. Rügenmann engraved "Caroline", we can imagine that these three women all died under the "longship" handed down by the family. The executioners were all the masters of the Hofer family at the time. In particular, Raymond refers to the woman named "Carrera" described in the biography - which was exactly a hundred years ago (which also coincides with what I have suggested before, about the 1884 miraculously fit the associations), the head of the Hofer family in 1892 was the eminent Sir Melton Hofer.According to the biography, Carrera had an illegitimate child that she refused to admit until her death, and people were unable to find out the whereabouts of the illegitimate child in the end. Under this premise, we can naturally assume that one of Rhodes' ancestors is likely to be the so-called "illegitimate child" abandoned by the Hofer family due to some embarrassing misunderstandings. It can't be clarified, but in 1992, through the new blood identification method and the emerging DNA identification method, people can accurately determine whether there is a certain blood relationship between one person and another. However, we should be clear that more than a hundred years have passed, and this kind of identification will undoubtedly be complicated and tortuous--today's DNA identification technology can already reach a very high level in the confirmation of blood relationship between parents and grandparents. However, it is completely inadvisable to determine whether Rhodes and Mr. Rügenmann are related directly through blood DNA identification for more than four generations.The correct identification method is through the DNA identification of the remains, first confirming whether Rhodes' ancestor was born to Sir Melton Hoffer, and then confirming that Rhodes belongs to the blood successor of this family line generation by generation. Rhodes had privately obtained the above-mentioned medical certificate about the blood relationship with the Hofer family probably a long time ago—more precisely, it might even be before the case in 1984 (unfortunately , but I don’t know the application level of DNA identification technology at that time, so this can only be regarded as an untested inference): Our shrewd Mr. Housekeeper must have considered the consequences of Mr. Rügenmann’s failure to act at that time—— According to the relevant laws of this state, the owner of a consortium (according to the regulations, it should be referred to as "the holder of the absolute majority of shares") must not be a criminal who is still serving his sentence.From this point of view, regardless of whether Mr. Lugenmann was shot dead on the spot or arrested and imprisoned, Mr. Rhodes could obtain the inheritance rights of the consortium earlier. If it is purely based on such considerations, for Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Rügenmann's only daughter will also be a strong opponent in the fight for inheritance rights—especially if Rügenmann Hofer left a will. The existence of Lise Hofer is undoubtedly fatal to this branch of Rhodes.Perhaps in Rhodes' eyes, Mr. Rügenmann will die of old age sooner or later - if he has no descendants, Rhodes will probably choose to wait quietly because of his comparatively young age; Eliza also chooses to wait in front of her—he doesn’t want this wait, which has lasted for hundreds of years, to continue to Transkei or his next generation: for Rhodes, Lugenmann’s continued wandering is of course A fantastic opportunity. "Kill the unfaithful Karolina" is just a cover, and "take the opportunity to kill the orthodox heir of the Hofer Consortium" is the ultimate goal of Rhodes participating in planning this cruel plan. It is a pity that this plan finally succeeded - Transke Schmitz became the youngest president ever of the Hofer Consortium in the middle of last month.So far, this centuries-long case, which has been entangled with blood and inheritance, has finally come to an end with the overall victory of the "illegitimate child" department. According to the autopsy report of Flit, the medical examiner of the Eleventh Branch, it was confirmed that the gardener Lemond had ingested a large amount of alcohol before his death, and the owner of the villa, Rod Schmitz, was killed under anesthesia and poisoning. The fire burned alive. Our always wise Deputy Director Iser made the following conclusions based on the clues obtained from the forensic report: Because the gardener was dissatisfied with his salary, he drank his sorrows with wine, and the owner of the villa kindly went to the gardener's residence to persuade him.Due to a disagreement, the drunken gardener threw poisonous plants that he cultivated and had narcotic properties at the owner of the villa.After the owner of the villa fell down, the gardener drank a lot, accidentally overturned the floor lamp in the room, and then fell drunk to the ground.The high temperature of the floor lamp ignited the bedding—then, the wooden house was burned to ashes, and the two of them unjustly lost their lives. "It was all a sad accident!" Deputy Commissioner Iser must have said this when referring to the case, and put on a sad face at the same time. Nearly three months after the detective agency opened, it was probably a piece I bought in the "Libertarian". The small advertising space worked: the number of cases gradually increased—the attitudes of Handik and Oulu also changed from initial suspicion to gradual approval.Now, when Oulu is solving the weekend food problem at my place, he will also praise me and say: "Hey, Wenzel, you've finally found a pretty decent job for a living!" Although there are some quite interesting cases among these many cases, most of them are boring commissions such as finding missing cats and dogs or investigating extramarital affairs-I don't want to reject any commissions that come to my door, so I I plan to hire an assistant in the near future. After hearing the news, Mossman said that he very much hoped to get this position under me-of course I know, he was just joking on the phone: as long as I asked him to help me with some cases For relevant information, he always complained that the potatoes piled up around him—it seemed that the position of detective assistant was not suitable for him. The novel entrusted by old Jim to send me was only an excerpt published in the supplement—even so, many unsuspecting detective novel lovers wrote to the editorial department of the popular detective column, stating that this excerpt plagiarized the real story. The idea of ​​the "Shadow Killer" case requires severe criticism and accusations against the author.For this reason, the supplement of "Libertarian News" even published a special statement, stating that this novel was sent anonymously, and the author did not explain that this article referred to a real case.Ha, only I know - this novel is really autobiographical.I don't know how old Jim will feel after hearing the news. In order to respect the original author's decision, I did not send a letter to the editorial department requesting "return the original manuscript"-and therefore, I seem to have no chance to know The ending of that novel: However, maybe the ending set by old Jim happens to be the same as the one in reality?God knows! I didn't call Mademoiselle Leonore again, not because I wasn't interested in whether she was an accomplice in Mr. Rügenmann's plan: I lost her phone number—that's the main thing. Incidentally, regarding the bonus I got by accident, according to a special report on the events surrounding the case published in the "Free Will" some time ago, it was indeed Mr. (Mr. Rügenmann had published a relevant reward statement in the newspaper at that time, but because the case was not detected for a long time, it was rarely mentioned by the media), not Rod Schmidt. Ci made a big fabrication out of thin air in order to buy me off. Anyway, if it hadn't been for the bonus, I'd probably have gotten a similar job from the employment agency as Mr. Montcherie Froyrop by now, working on some leaky pipe right now! Well, anyway, one case changed my life - so to speak. Last Wednesday a package was forwarded by the post office - several Jules Verne novels, a and a paperback edition.This package, which was originally sent to the Eleventh Branch, was signed by a completely unfamiliar female name: However, I could guess it after seeing the book—the sender was Kanpur’s stepmother. This is probably to repay the few donuts and soda crackers, and correct my "badness" in the language-I thought so, and put the books that belonged to Kanpur on the bookshelf behind me. Every day of the week has been extremely busy (to be honest, the "busy" is mainly caused by some trivial cases-interesting cases never feel "busy"), but this last working day was very busy. Miraculously relaxed. This gave me time to check my mailbox that I hadn't touched that week. After throwing away a bunch of ads and bills, I found two interesting cards: A children's drawing is drawn on an orange card: on the right side of the picture are two rabbits, on the left side is a smiling little girl, and a tall man is holding her hand—this man Holding a small shovel in the other hand, the background of the picture is full of various flowers. On the back of the card is the author's signature: Eko Falton I smiled and looked at another card. This card was far more prosaic—a blank piece of rough business card paper signed Hans Muskarin and scrawled in cursive script: The three devils shouldn't have died like that You read my note, my friend We will see you again (End of full text)