Chapter 91

When Grisha arrived at the hotel wearing his glasses, Harold guessed the situation at once. Grisha's face was pinched, and Gauss behind him wore an unusually cheerful smile — it was obvious.

It wasn't as if Harold hadn't known Grisha for years. Becoming director of Intelligence didn't change the fundamentals of who a person was.

"Finally! There, isn't it nicer with glasses on? You can see the stairs properly now, can't you?"

"...Yes, Mother."

Claudia looked delighted, as if she couldn't even see how sullen her son looked. Harold barely held back a laugh.

Knowing Claudia was at the hotel, Grisha had put the glasses on purely to avoid the nagging.

"Well, you two have your talk. I'll keep Edgar and Edwin with me."

"I'd appreciate it."

"Such well-behaved children, they're hardly any trouble at all. It'd be nice if they got up to a little more mischief."

Half worried, half enjoying herself, Claudia gave a small hum and withdrew. Grisha watched her go with a shudder and closed the door.

"When did you decide to head down to the Reichnek domain?"

That was the first thing out of his mouth.

Harold snorted.

"You want to get your mother out of here that badly?"

"I understand she's worried, but she's overdoing it."

The moment Claudia's supervision was gone, Grisha took off the glasses and dropped onto the couch. Harold shook his head.

"With what happened, of course she is."

"I know. I know, but..."

"I told you to wear them."

"Please don't you start too."

"What are you talking about?"

Harold clicked his tongue.

"I've been saying it all along. Anyone who could recognize your face is going to recognize it anyway."

"..."

"Even my nephew, of all people, seems to have picked up on it."

"What? Why?"

"Why do you think? You've got a portrait at that lodge of yours. He must have come across it by accident. And he'd been introduced to you at least once..."

Harold waved a hand. Grisha's face soured.

"I should have torn all of those up years ago..."

"His Majesty would cry. There aren't many left."

"What's that got to do with me? You said you'd help me with it once, didn't you?"

"I'll help you now, if you ask."

Harold said it with a shrug.

"But if you do that, His Majesty will just sit you down and have you sit for new portraits."

"..."

Grisha stopped short. Apparently unable to declare the possibility outright impossible, he pinched hard at the bridge of his nose.

Harold watched him with a look bordering on pity. Sensing Harold's expression, Grisha pulled himself together.

Either way, he'd come today because there was work to do.

"The Barbosa family? Anything from them?"

"No."

Harold shook his head.

The moment they'd learned Adrien Renard had worked for the Barbosa family, he'd gone straight to Intelligence to confront Gauss.

After his talk with Grisha, all he'd learned about Adrien Renard was that after being hired by Albrecht Bertholdt, he had built up gambling debts. Cecilia Barbosa's cousin, Antonio, had also confirmed that what he'd written in his letter contained no falsehoods.

Adrien Renard hadn't caused any major trouble in Leibran either, the last city he'd worked in.

Leibran was more than two weeks by train from Alharn. With Albrecht dead, a new director in place, and Intelligence itself churning through its own reorganization... they had no capacity to spare on sending someone to a distant city that was geographically far off and had no history of friction with Alharn.

More to the point, they'd traced Adrien Renard's movements and had been on the verge of arresting him.

Well, in a lot of ways, that had gone sideways.

"I've written to say he ran into trouble over gambling debts. Given the distance, even with the fastest reply, we won't hear back for at least another week."

He'd asked, but Grisha hadn't been counting on much; he nodded at Harold's answer.

Having only heard that the Barbosa name had turned up in Rosemarie Doak's diary, Harold put the question back.

"Do you think my brother was investigating the Barbosa family?"

"He seems to have had suspicions."

"...About the Barbosas?"

"About Adrien Renard."

Grisha's eyes narrowed slightly as he said it.

"Whether the Barbosa family was hiding something or genuinely didn't know, there'd have been something suspicious about him regardless."

Grisha pulled a stiff sheet of paper from his bag and handed it to Harold. It was thick, with a slightly pebbled texture.

Harold looked over the palm-sized paper. Not one sheet. Train tickets. All of them.

Easy enough to read. They all connected. Capital to the west. West to the neighboring country. Change trains, cross the border... the latest-dated ticket ended in Leibran.

The dates on the tickets were all past dates. All after the winter carriage accident, too. Rosemarie Doak had never made that journey.

"On paper, she was covering an academic conference at Leibran University."

"...My sister-in-law went there once."

"Do you think Albrecht was going to send Rosemarie Doak because of his wife's disappearance?"

"Not out of the question. My brother had been looking into it all along."

"..."

Grisha didn't agree with Harold outright, but he didn't dismiss it either.

After a moment's thought, Grisha slowly nodded.

"I did wonder if that was part of it... but Rosemarie Doak wasn't a formal Intelligence employee. That would have made it easier for Albrecht to ask her to look into personal matters."

"And she could check on Adrien Renard while she was at it."

"Very Albrecht, that."

Grisha smoothed the tickets Harold had handed back. Unpunched, they looked new.

"This might be indelicate to say about Doak, but."

"Hm?"

Grisha spread the tickets out on the table. Five of them, all told.

"These tickets are expensive."

"Well... they would be. The itinerary alone is two weeks."

"And on a trip that long, every leg's a sleeper. A private compartment."

"Safe to say she was traveling alone, then? For a woman traveling on her own, safety comes first."

"Rosemarie Doak wasn't affiliated with a newspaper."

Harold couldn't tell what Grisha was getting at.

"From what you and Inspector Archibald told me about the Doak household, I don't see her using family money to fund her reporting."

"...Fair."

"Getting articles into a paper doesn't make you a well-paid reporter. Could a reporter, without leaning on family money, afford these tickets? And they're not even round-trip."

Rosemarie Doak clearly hadn't been planning to stay in Leibran, so she must have intended to buy the return leg once she got there. Even though a round-trip would have been cheaper when she first booked.

...Because she couldn't predict how long she'd need to be in Leibran, presumably.

"If it had come in as a formal reporting request, there'd be a record."

"You're saying that because there isn't?"

"Right. I checked the Intelligence operating-expense records too."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Harold looked at the tickets again.

"You think my brother was funding her privately?"

"Probably. That way it's easy to keep quiet, and even if it did come out, he could always say he was investigating his wife's disappearance and slip out from under it."

"..."

That was the sort of thing his brother would do.

Harold nodded.

"That much we can check quickly. The bank will have the records."

"And, Harold."

Grisha spoke, his voice low.

"As far as I know, Albrecht didn't put any restrictions on what information his butler could access."

Right up until his brother had died — no, even after — the butler of the Bertholdt family had been Adrien Renard.

"If Albrecht was privately employing Doak, and those records were somewhere the butler could see..."

"...Adrien Renard."

"That man had debts. And not small ones. You know as well as I do — money..."

"Is the easiest motive to move a person."

Not just any debts. Gambling debts.

He might have thought he was about to lose his job and done it in a panic. As butler, he'd have had no trouble finding a chance to slip something into the food, or anywhere else.

Or someone might have offered him an enormous sum for doing it. Harold thought this was the more likely scenario. If it had simply been about needing money, Renard would have sold off the valuables at the Bertholdt estate.

"He didn't touch any other money. If he had, Mattheus would have brought charges while the man was still holding the boys."

Harold's eyes narrowed.

"I'll start with the bank — see if my brother was paying Doak."

Grisha nodded.

"From the Barbosa family..."

"I'll let you know the moment the reply comes."

Either way, Adrien Renard was out of reach for now. Word from the Barbosa family might turn into another lead.

Of course, the Barbosas themselves might yet become subjects of investigation.

"...What if the Barbosas are hiding something?"

"I'd rather they weren't. Being overseas makes things complicated."

Grisha answered right away.

"Aside from your sister-in-law, none of the Barbosas even hold Alharn citizenship, essentially."

Harold caught the note in Grisha's voice.

Given that everything in this whole business looked suspicious, Harold picked up on it right away.

"You think the Barbosas joined hands with Barun?"

"I'd say the odds are low, but... you never know with people."

The old head of the Barbosa family had been killed by a Kingdom of Barun soldier during the war. He'd been transporting relief supplies at the time.

That would have been Cecilia's grandfather, or great-uncle — Harold only remembered that it was a close relative of hers. The family had taken a heavy blow, and that kind of grudge didn't fade easily. But as Grisha had said, you never knew.

"I'd rather it wasn't them. Honestly, with Founding Day this close, Intelligence doesn't have the bandwidth."

Grisha's shoulders sagged. Harold gave a bitter smile.

"How's the First Prince doing?"

Harold had been in the palace on the day the king lost his temper.

Ryan had been endlessly gentle with Grisha, but he'd shown no mercy over what had happened in the King's Woods.

If anything, Grisha had had to talk him down. Grisha had gone into the palace already braced for something like it, and he'd handled Ryan with practiced ease. In the end, Ryan had swapped out the person in charge of the Founding Day festivities and ordered the First Prince into confinement indefinitely.

At the very least, until Founding Day was over, the First Prince wouldn't be showing his face in public.

"How do you think. Word is a fresh set of furniture's been delivered to Summerflower Palace."

"That temper of his."

"If he had any sense, he'd have left the royal guard out of it at least."

"And the investigation there?"

"The man came in carrying a bomb. He'd have been prepared. There are no leads."

Same with the hospital arsonist.

The royal guard and the city watch were both on edge, combing the city with everything they had, and still nothing. Harold let out a displeased grunt.

"...And Dustin Glenn?"

Nothing was resolving cleanly. Same with Dustin Glenn.

"That's what we were looking into in the first place."

"Right."

"Anything on him?"

Grisha pulled a bundle of papers from his bag. Harold raised an eyebrow.

"That's?"

"There's no record of Doak after she left the Summer Square paper. This is that... the incident where she picked up on his violent streak."

"The one in the report my brother left behind?"

"Yes. This is why Doak flagged Dustin Glenn as a murder suspect."