Chapter 1899

The moist morning mist rose around the Nihilite Manor, and everything was a pale lead gray and cold blue.

Batman, standing in front of the bedroom window, saw Shiler in the garden. He remembered a conversation the two had after he went to Shiler's bedroom before going to sleep last night.

It was late at night, and when Batman, whose coldness had not yet dissipated, arrived at the door of Shiler's bedroom, he found that Shiler, who opened the door, had already changed into pajamas, which meant he hadn't gone out just now.

Batman took off his coat, followed Shiler into the bedroom, and came to the sofa area. Shiler brought a cup of coffee heated by the fireplace, and Batman asked: "Did you know I would come?"

"Of course, and not only will you come, do you want to talk about the murderer?"

"Mr. Nihilite cannot shirk the responsibility." Batman's tone was as low as ever, and he was by no means shooting without a target. After picking up the coffee and taking a sip, he explained: "He has too many suspicious points."

"First of all, as the owner of a noble manor, even if he has conflicts with his wife, he must maintain the proper decency on the surface. Husband and wife are one body. At least in the noble class, no matter how big the conflicts are in private, they still have to maintain mutual respect when appearing in public."

"But compared to Lady Nihilite, Mr. Nihilite seems to prefer to stay with his cousin Hancock. If it were just that the two had a good relationship in private, that would be fine, but in front of so many people, Mr. Nihilite abandoned his wife to be inseparable from his brother. This is obviously quite rude."

Batman gently rested one hand on the armrest of the sofa and said: "They are obviously the kind of family that values rules more than anything else, receiving the most rigid noble education from childhood, and every word and action must consider the family reputation. Such rude behavior is contradictory to their family style."

"And the most important point." Batman frowned slightly and said: "The reason he left the manor to live outside is that business is busy, but I chatted with him a few times in the banquet hall before and found that he is not proficient in business."

"It's not the Victorian era now. Which real businessman doesn't understand some stocks and investments? But every time I brought up the recent stock market trends and industry information, he would talk about other things or simply change the subject. This is very suspicious."

"So what did you do?"

"The best way to investigate a manor owner is to investigate his butler." Batman rested his elbows on the armrests and gently stroked his chin, saying: "In this kind of noble manor, no one knows more secrets than the butler."

"After the banquet ended, I chatted with the old butler for a few words. From his mouth, I learned that the relationship between Mr. Nihilite and Lady Nihilite was originally okay. Although it was still an arranged marriage, there were no major conflicts between the two."

"But ever since Mr. Nihilite's cousin Hancock came to rely on them, their relationship has had many crises. Originally, Lady Nihilite was a very strong-willed woman. She made a big scene several times, but in recent years she has become quiet."

"And the most suspicious point is that Lady Nihilite's maiden family, the Plosi family, was originally very prominent, but one day overnight, they collectively set themselves on fire, and even the Plosi family manor was burned clean. Since then, Lady Nihilite has had no backing, only Mr. Plosi, who went out to sketch, survived, and is now living under someone else's roof."

Shiler sat opposite Batman, listening quietly to his narration. When he turned his head, he saw the claw-like dry tree branches in the garden, which really looked like raging flames.

"Lady Nihilite mentioned this to me." The person opposite Shiler had changed to Be-Bat. He also had a cup of hot coffee in front of him, but there was one last cup left in front of the fireplace.

"Her expression when mentioning that big fire was not sad, only deep fear. But when I asked for details, she refused to talk about it, and I think she wasn't because she was too sad to mention it, but the occasion wasn't right."

"So I went to find her alone after the banquet. When she saw me, she looked shocked and panicked, but when I told her my whereabouts and avoided everyone, she looked as if she had suddenly seen some hope."

"What did she tell you?" Shiler leaned back in his chair and asked.

"Some hidden old events. She said that the big fire was not set by the members of the Plosi family, and they didn't want to commit collective suicide either, but the police didn't find the murderer after the investigation, so the matter was left unsettled."

"Mr. Plosi, who is living in the manor, suspects that it might have been the Nihilite family who did it, so he has been lingering here and won't leave. He wants to catch the murderer himself and avenge his relatives."

Be-Bat looked away and sighed lightly, saying: "Lady Nihilite is being controlled by something. She feels deep fear for things that don't exist in our conversation scene. It's like a string pulling her."

"But what we have to consider is who the real murderer who will take action is. I think Lady Nihilite's suspicion is not small. Even if she is being manipulated to kill, as the mistress of the manor, she can do a lot, so the threat is great."

"Do you think she is innocent?"

Be-Bat shook his head and said: "I don't think she is the kind of person who can stick to her bottom line, so it's absolutely impossible for her to be completely innocent."

"The difficulty of this game is harder than we imagined because there may only be one real murderer, but he has many accomplices, or the murderer is just the person who really takes action, and there is a manipulator behind him. If we judge wrongly, we are very likely to fall into a trap."

Be-Bat's movements paused, and then he said: "There is another important clue. Lady Nihilite said that she once found a mysterious pentagram pattern at the scene where the Plosi family was killed, but she couldn't be sure if it was a coincidence of the scorch marks, or if she had seen it wrong."

"Cult?"

"Perhaps."

After late at night, the wind was colder. A few lonely graves were dotted on a piece of open land, and the cross looked like a lonely ghost under the moonlight.

A slightly hunched figure waved the hoe high, and sand and soil were constantly thrown up. Sweat dripped onto the soil and soon disappeared in the cracks of the sand and stones.

Opposite him, two half-grown children were holding a quilt roll together, and a mass of pitch-black things hung at the very back of the quilt roll. Looking closely, it was actually human hair.

"Come on, children, throw it in." The figure digging the hole turned around and finally revealed his face under the moonlight. It was none other than the old priest who had appeared in the Nihilite Manor before.

The two children threw the quilt roll containing the corpse into the pit the old priest had dug with some effort, but the children who were doing such a terrifying thing as corpse disposal had no fear on their faces.

The older boy looked at the old priest and asked with some worry: "Are you okay? What on earth did you see in the Nihilite family?"

The old priest threw down the hoe, looked up under the moonlight, closed his eyes in pain, and his mind was full of Shiler's cold eyes when he said that sentence to him, but what he saw was not Shiler's hatred, but his own.

"Devil, child, I saw the devil in my heart."

The younger child tilted his head, seemingly unable to understand what the priest was saying. The priest lowered his head again, made a sign of the cross, touched his head, and said: "Remember, there will eventually be one person in this world who is your mirror. When you see yourself in his eyes, you will understand that you have met the devil, but that is not him, but you."

He bent down again, picked up the hoe, and while starting to fill the sand and soil back into the pit, he whispered to himself: "Don't be afraid, children, don't be afraid anymore. Your dean is already lying with you. He will never have a chance to hurt you again."

The two children ran back and forth to help the priest finish filling the grave. The priest threw the hoe to the side, sighed lightly, and said: "I may have to leave for a while. You take good care of the other children. If the police come, you just say you don't know anything."

"Where are you going?" The two children immediately surrounded him with worry and said: "We won't say anything. We were sleeping well in the attic tonight and have never seen anyone."

"You are very smart." The priest squatted down, hugged them both into his arms, touched their heads, and said: "But you are still young. When you grow up, you will understand that there are still many devils like your dean. I have to deal with one of them now."

After speaking, he stood up, turned to look at the bell tower of the church in the distance, and walked away from the cemetery without hesitation.

When Seeing Natasha knocked on Shiler's door, Shiler had just boiled three cups of coffee and placed them near the fireplace to keep warm. He opened the door and welcomed Seeing Natasha, who was also wearing pajamas, inside.

"It seems you have made great progress." Shiler said with a smile.

"What surprises me is that you didn't do anything." Seeing Natasha swung her arms, walked to the side of the single sofa, sat down, took the coffee Shiler handed over, looked at the two cups by the fireplace, smiled, and said: "Don't misunderstand, I'm joking. A three-year-old child wouldn't believe you didn't do anything."

"Who do you think is the murderer? Madam."

"Hancock is the most suspicious." Seeing Natasha bit her fingernail gently, thinking, and said: "I chatted with him after the banquet. You know, he is that kind of very typical hypocrite."

"You look at him like a stiff moralist, right? He is also deliberately dressing himself in this direction, but I dare say he is absolutely a veteran in love, and what is that term? Psychopath?"

Seeing Natasha held up two fingers against her cheek and said: "I am an agent and a killer myself, so of course I have no position to say others are evil, but standing from a woman's perspective, this Hancock is the worst kind of man."

Seeing Natasha recalled slightly and rolled her eyes, saying: "He clearly coveted my beauty more than anyone else, but he acted as if he were indifferent. But his goal was not to resist temptation, but to hope that I would take the initiative to find him."

"It's not hard to see that he has encountered many weak women." Seeing Natasha sneered and said: "Thinking he is a good man worth entrusting for life, so they took the initiative to stick to him, but they didn't know that all this was the result of some manipulation and suggestion."

Seeing Natasha looked at Shiler and said: "But what I said was his most unbearable point is that he didn't do this for any truly meaningful goal. He played with other people's feelings just to satisfy his physical desires and his psychopathic instinct for abuse."

"You saw so many things after just chatting for a few sentences?"

Seeing Natasha sighed and said: "I have seen many such people, and the reason why I still fell for your trick is that the biggest difference between you and them is that I don't see any desire in you."

"You aroused my curiosity and tried to manipulate me, neither for physical desire nor to satisfy mental needs."

"All your emotions are very natural, not disguised for a certain purpose. If that is just a human skin you drew, it is simply a natural work of art."

"Simply put, whether chatting with me about art or telling me your story, the purpose is really just what it looks like on the surface, while the vast majority of men I have seen are not."

"When they covet a woman's beauty, their every move and every word is to attract the attention of the opposite sex. This can be said to be the natural instinct of males. When they don't hide it or act very clumsily, there is a kind of childish cuteness."

"But Hancock..." Seeing Natasha revealed a chilling smile and said: "He used the concealment he thought was clever to make them infatuated with him, but there is no art under that human skin, only the dirty smell of desire."