Chapter 44

"Even so, the flowers still bloom."

The abandoned garden of the Bertholdt estate had a certain glow to it in the mild weather.

Buds were coming in on the trees, and a few spring flowers had opened without a gardener's hand. Compared to the desolate winter, the whole thing looked far more alive. You could tell no one had been tending it, but even that had a charm of its own.

"The watch is still on patrol. After all the fuss, I doubt anyone's going to try approaching so recklessly... but why don't you at least send the valuables somewhere for safekeeping, senior?"

"I don't know..."

"Mattheus said he was moving a few important things to the bank. But there's still a lot of valuable things being left behind in an empty house."

"Hmm..."

"Set the paintings and sculptures aside — what about Cecilia's things?"

"My brother already took care of those."

Harold gave the flat answer as he pushed open the front door. It let out a nasty screech from the hinges.

When Albrecht Bertholdt had been alive, the place had been immaculate — not a speck of dust anywhere. And after only a month or two empty, it had become a house with no master.

He had no intention of coming back to the Bertholdt estate any time soon, but he couldn't leave it empty forever either. Looking over the inside — still winter-cold despite the change of season — Harold's brow drew tight.

On top of that, Edgar and Edwin wanted to come to the estate. Before he brought the boys, he needed to have things straightened up. He'd been meaning to put it off at least until Adrien Renard was caught...

"...Senior?"

The displeasure must have shown on Harold's face, because Anne was watching him warily.

He had no intention of taking it out on Anne, who was blameless in any of it. Harold shook his head roughly.

"I can't keep imposing on you, so I was thinking it was about time to get the house in order."

"Well... it's fine. It hasn't been much trouble. It's watch business anyway."

Anne grinned. Smiling like that, she looked no different from the little girl who used to trail around after Harold in their childhood.

Everything else had changed, of course.

"At least a bit of cleaning... the kitchen and bedrooms need doing. Upstairs too."

Whatever else, the room where the boys had been locked in he meant to gut entirely.

Anne seemed to read what he wasn't saying out loud and nodded.

"If you need people right away, use mine. It's better than trying to hire someone in a hurry."

"...Thanks."

Some of the staff at the Archibald estate would be Grisha's rather than Anne's... but Harold didn't say so, and only thanked her.

He felt bad for her. But that was tangled business in its own right. And as an outsider — at least for now — Harold couldn't step in.

"The kids have been saying they wanted to come home once anyway..."

Aside from the watch, there was no sign anyone had broken into the house. Coming to the estate at all was mostly cover.

An excuse to speak with the watch captain without drawing anyone's suspicion.

"I thought I'd packed enough clothes and things, but something keeps turning up that we're short on."

"That's how it always goes. How are the boys? Doing all right?"

"Yeah."

Unable to make himself say yes outright, Harold only smiled awkwardly.

Fortunately Anne seemed to take it as a yes, and hummed to herself with a relieved look as she nodded.

It wasn't a lie, not exactly. Edgar and Edwin were doing all right. Edwin followed Edgar around all day, giggling as if he'd never asked about his father's death, and Edgar, though he wore an uneasy expression from time to time, would relax into a small smile whenever their eyes met.

...They really were all right, weren't they?

Harold tried to keep the unease off his face. He had no intention of leaving the boys' side. Even if they weren't fine, he could stay by them until they were. Not a hard thing.

"By the way, Anne."

Harold changed the subject.

He'd called Anne here for this in the first place. The business with Grisha and Intelligence was there too, but this was a separate matter. Not completely unrelated, but something Harold could still look into.

"How did the Dustin Glenn business go? You said he'd come to, didn't you?"

"I was going to bring it up, actually."

Anne's eyes went dark.

An expression that was rare on Anne. Had the investigation not gone well? He'd braced for the worst, but fortunately that wasn't what Anne said.

"He admitted to the murder of Günter Bleiss."

There was something subtle in her tone.

Harold's brow twitched.

"And the rest?"

Looking at Anne's face, he didn't need to hear the answer.

"Denied it flatly. The evidence is clear enough that he'll be transferred as soon as the treatment is done."

The reason Harold hadn't been charged for using excessive force was that the killer had kidnapped a child. The order of things had been a little off, but it had gone through all the same.

And Dustin Glenn hadn't only killed Günter Bleiss. Albrecht and Doak had flagged the man as a suspect in several other murders. That report couldn't be made public, but with Anne as the officer in charge, there'd be a way.

"About that..."

He knew Anne too well to just tell her to do whatever she liked with it.

"I'm sure you'll handle it well."

"Thank you, senior."

Anne's smile was faint. Not the confident smile he was used to. It bothered him a little, but the next moment, when Anne brought up Adrien Renard's name, it slipped from his mind.

"Adrien Renard."

"...You caught him?"

"No."

Anne denied it flatly. Harold didn't hide his disappointment.

At the same time, Harold barely managed to remember the link between Adrien Renard and Dustin Glenn. It had been pushed down the list of priorities by Günter's death and the boys' kidnapping.

"If I remember... correctly..."

Harold spoke haltingly.

"Dustin Glenn's mistress — the mistress rented the inn room where Adrien Renard was hiding under her own name. Is that right?"

"That's right, senior."

Anne sighed and explained further.

"She admits she told him to rent it, but she says someone else actually used the place and she doesn't know him."

"...You don't believe that, do you?"

"Of course not."

Anne gave a small snort.

"I can't figure out what she's trying to gain by admitting to the murder and playing dumb about Adrien Renard."

"Did he say why he killed Günter?"

"He said the man got on his nerves."

"..."

Harold said nothing and walked slowly down the hallway. At the far end of the second-floor corridor was still the door with the marks of a board nailed on and a lock fitted to it. The brass lock Harold had smashed had been taken by the watch as evidence, but the marks where it had been fitted couldn't be scrubbed out. Nor the damage inside the room.

The watch had clearly been through it, but the room looked much as Harold remembered it from that day.

A pile of blankets in front of the fireplace. A few pieces of firewood rolling across the floor.

The toy chest the boys had hidden behind.

"You haven't lost track of Adrien Renard, have you?"

"Do you think I'm that incompetent?"

"No. That's why I'm asking. You've found him?"

Anne twisted her mouth.

"Yes. Dustin Glenn stuck to his story that he didn't know, but the mistress... that woman said she did know Adrien Renard. She thinks she got locked up because of him, so she was spilling everything."

"He's in the capital?"

"Amazingly enough, yes."

Listening to her, Harold was scanning the room when something caught his eye.

"Thanks to her, we cracked several illegal gambling dens."

"Gambling dens?"

"He's got a pretty wide reach. Knows a lot of people."

Harold moved toward the toy chest. On the floor behind it — behind the toy chest the boys had crouched behind — was a white teddy bear.

The color aside, it was a shape Harold knew well. Edgar carried around a brown one exactly like it.

Edwin's?

"You know where he is, and you're leaving him?"

"I was hoping someone suspicious might come sniffing around him."

The white bear was thick with dust. Unlike Edgar's, which was worn from constant handling, this one had a nearly new look about it.

Harold thought about taking the bear along, then changed his mind. If Edwin had wanted the bear, he'd have said so. Harold didn't want to go handing him something from inside this room and make him relive it.

"So? Any results?"

Anne shook her head.

"No. I'm going to go ahead and grab him before he slips again. Want to come along, senior?"

"..."

Harold thought it over for a moment.

"You're all right if he ends up like Dustin Glenn?"

"I'd rather you held back if you could, but... just in case, having you along would put me at ease. He had the nerve to approach the King's Woods; there's no telling what he might try."

He hadn't shown the violent streak Dustin Glenn had, but he was brazen in his own right.

Anne's caution was fair. If a risk could be avoided, wasn't it better to avoid it?

"Anything else? Anything you can tell me?"

Anne glanced at the teddy bear Harold had set on top of the toy chest and spoke.

"I've been digging into Adrien Renard, and it turns out he's got a record of working abroad."

"..."

"You know Mattheus said the Countess recommended him? Do you know anything from that side, senior?"

Gauss's words had given him some idea, but clearly the watch wasn't feeling Grisha's influence. Or at least, Anne wasn't.

He hadn't said anything to Anne separately either. She'd met Grisha through Harold a few times, but they weren't close enough for that kind of warning. In fact, there weren't many people close enough to Grisha for it.

Given how close he and Harold were, Grisha had warned him rather bluntly, through Gauss.

Anne hadn't got a full picture of who Adrien Renard was. And it wasn't the kind of information that warranted burying this deeply. Gauss himself had said as much outright. Adrien Renard was nothing to write home about.

Which meant either Intelligence was controlling what got through to the watch, or...

"...Senior?"

As the silence stretched, Anne looked at him, puzzled.

If it wasn't Intelligence, then it came back to whoever had hired Adrien Renard.

"Oh. Don't tell me."

Anne's face crumpled.

A rare look from a good-humored junior of his. Harold sensed he'd slipped up and looked away.

"What did Viscount Manfred say?"

"Ahem."

"Am I not supposed to know? Is Adrien Renard that big a deal?"

"...No."

Could he tell Anne?

But Anne would work it out even if Harold didn't say a word. And she'd almost certainly been warned herself.

The watch always wanted to stay neutral.

"It's not about you, it's about the watch."

Just as he'd thought. Anne caught his meaning at once.

Anne's eyes filled with frustration. Unable to unload on Harold outright, Anne clenched her fist as though she were about to hit something, then let it go.

"His Majesty is still in good health, isn't he?"

Anne let out a long groan.