Chapter 46
#46
I dismissed the hospital director from his office, telling him not to worry about me and to go about his business, even though he must be busy.
In the quiet hospital director's office, I faced the Visitor Log, which contained Meggy's room number.
I slowly turned the pages, checking Meggy's admission date. No, there was nothing to check, really.
Previously, various names had been lined up, but from a certain point on, only one name was listed, as if self-replicating.
Maria Bellona.
Did Maria want to use the same last name as her when visiting Meggy?
Maria had left Bellona, not Wensbury, as her last name.
Because of this, the hospital director probably had no idea that Meggy was related to the Wensbury family.
He might have just thought she was a nanny of some unknown noble family named Bellona.
It was almost every day. There was only one day she missed, and I found out when that was.
It was Maria's Debutante day.
Otherwise, Maria visited Meggy every day, sometimes even twice a day.
If Meggy hadn't died, Maria would probably have come here today as well.
She would have spent time in the sunny hospital room with her mother, who had an even sunnier smile.
"Hoo..."
Suddenly, the weight of Meggy's death felt so heavy that I sighed.
And, unbelievably, I understood Maria's feelings.
If someone killed my father, my mother, and I knew who it was, I would go after them to the ends of the earth.
And I would definitely cut off their breath.
It was a separate issue from whether or not I could kill someone.
Losing someone I loved.
"Ah!"
Turning the page, I saw recent dates and blank spaces.
And something other than the words 'Maria Bellona' caught my eye.
The first thing I saw was a black ink blot. The visiting time and the visitor's name were all blacked out.
Just in case, I turned the page forward to see if anything showed through, but the back page only showed black and nothing else.
This must be the record of my visit.
And then, on the day Meggy died, there was one more visitor besides me.
"Wensbury..."
Finally, a name other than Maria's appeared.
And that was all there was. Only the last name remained; there was no first name.
The time was late in the evening.
After dinner, of course, but at a time when the other person wouldn't be in bed yet, so it wouldn't be impolite or cause suspicion.
I called the hospital director, whom I had dismissed, back in.
"Who visited here?"
I pointed to the last name, Wensbury, and asked the hospital director.
"Well? Since your daughter is the Wensbury heiress, wasn't it your daughter who visited?"
"Maria does not use the name Wensbury when visiting here. She leaves her name as Maria Bellona, her name before she was adopted."
I turned the pages back to show the hospital director Maria's names, as if to confirm with his own eyes.
"Oh... then..."
The hospital director blinked. He seemed to have thought it was Maria all along.
Or maybe he just hadn't thought about it at all.
"Who writes this? Is there someone who writes it separately?"
"Yes. The receptionist at the entrance asks visitors for their name and purpose and records it along with the visiting time."
"They didn't ask me?"
"Perhaps they asked the maid who came with you. If they didn't get a chance to ask for the name, they would write 'John Smith', but they try to ask as much as possible. This is a hospital, so you never know."
"Okay. Then let's meet the receptionist who wrote this. Can we meet them now?"
"Yes, yes. Of course."
The hospital director, who had completely turned to Crawford, no longer argued with me.
If he had been like this from the beginning, he could have continued to be called the director.
A little later, a young woman with a terrified expression entered the director's office with the director.
"Y-you were looking for m-me."
Her voice, like her expression, was terrified, trembling like a lamb.
"I have something to ask you."
I looked at her with the softest voice and the softest eyes I could muster, trying to be considerate.
"Hic... I-I don't know anything."
But the moment she met my eyes, she burst into tears. Just like the maids in my house used to do.
So I decided to treat her the way I treated the maids in my house.
"I'm only going to ask you what you know. If you don't know, just say you don't know."
I just said what I had to say. Then the maids would usually choose one of two options.
Answer while crying, or cry while answering.
Asking a crying woman why she was crying was unlikely to get a straight answer, and scolding her would only make her cry more.
So my conclusion was that it would be better for her to finish the business as quickly as possible. That way, the scary me would disappear.
"Here, did you write this?"
"Hic, yes."
As expected, the receptionist nodded while crying.
"Who was it?"
"I don't really know."
"Why?"
"Th-that's... I'm sorry, hic."
She suddenly started crying even more.
The signs weren't good.
"You wrote it, so why don't you know?"
"A servant asked me for Meggy's room number, and when I said I needed to know who was visiting, they only told me this."
"You didn't see who came in person?"
"No."
The receptionist wiped away her tears and nodded.
"Then it's possible that it wasn't a member of the Wensbury family? If the servant wrote it down on their own?"
"Th-that's probably not the case. I didn't see the person getting out, but I saw the Marquis of Wendsbury's carriage entering the hospital at that time."
"Carriage?"
"Yes. So I knew the servant's words weren't a lie, so I just wrote down the last name. I thought it would be okay because if there was a problem, I could send someone to the Marquis of Wendsbury's family."
She hurriedly added, as if to emphasize that there was nothing wrong with what she had done.
"So you're saying that you don't know who it was, but it's certain that someone from the Marquis of Wendsbury's family visited?"
"Yes. The Wensbury family crest is a pretty crest with a deer on it, which I like, so I definitely remember it."
Perhaps because she was so focused on explaining, her crying had stopped.
"Wait, can you come here for a second?"
I beckoned her to come to my side.
Instantly, her expression changed to one of terror, like the deer she said she liked.
"Y-yes? I-I told you everything I know honestly."
Her voice sounded like she was about to burst into tears again.
When I didn't say anything, she hesitantly approached me.
"Thank you for being honest."
I held out a silver coin to the receptionist who came to my side.
She, who had approached with a tearful face, widened her eyes at the unexpected silver coin.
"And it's a secret that I asked you about this today. Got it?"
"Yes, yes."
"And of course, it's also a secret that you answered my question."
"Yes, yes!"
She nodded diligently, and I dropped the silver coin into her outstretched hand.
And she clutched it tightly, as if not wanting to miss it.
She was no longer crying, no longer trembling.
She was clutching the sudden windfall tightly, smiling happily.
Panya was right.
I was a scary person to those who had done wrong, but not to those who hadn't.
And I could be a kind person to those who helped me.
Who could it be?
On the way back in the carriage, that question was all that dominated my mind.
In fact, the Wensbury family was small.
Because it was a family of warriors for generations, adult men often died in war. The same was true of the Wincaiser family.
The Marquis of Wendsbury was not the eldest son, but he inherited the title of Marquis after his two older brothers died.
And he and the Marchioness had only one son, Reintar.
The Marquis of Wendsbury seemed to be somewhat disappointed about not having many children, but it was not something he could control.
Perhaps that was why the Marquis of Wendsbury readily adopted Maria, who was an illegitimate child.
The Marquis of Wendsbury, the Marchioness of Wendsbury, Reintar, and Maria.
"Hmm..."
First of all, it wasn't Maria.
That day, Maria had visited once in the morning.
Of course, Maria sometimes came twice a day, but there was no reason for her, who had always visited alone under the name Maria Bellona, to suddenly come under the name Wensbury with a servant.
Besides, it didn't make sense that Maria, who had been so devoted to her mother even after being adopted, would suddenly kill her.
Then the remaining people were the Marquis of Wendsbury, the Marchioness of Wendsbury, and Reintar.
The most suspicious person seemed to be the Marchioness.
The sudden appearance of her husband's illegitimate child and the adoption of that illegitimate child into the family must have been a great stress for her.
Besides, the fact that Meggy's illness was getting better was also bothering me.
From the Marchioness's point of view, it would be really difficult if Meggy, her husband's mistress, was completely cured and claimed any rights, putting Maria forward.
No, it might just be annoying that Meggy was alive.
"And."
The Marquis of Wendsbury.
One thing I found strange while looking at the Visitor Log was that the Marquis had never visited the hospital.
It was possible to forget a woman you had slept with in the past.
I couldn't understand it, but anyway, it had been proven through numerous cases that it was possible, regardless of gender.
But even though he knew that she had given birth to his child and raised her, and that she was in the same capital, and even that she was sick, it was strange that the Marquis had never visited.
There might have been something fishy in their past.
"Lastly."
Reintar.
Would he have a reason to kill his half-sister's biological mother? I don't know.
But if you ask, 'Could he kill her?' I thought it was possible.
It could have been at his mother's request, or he could have thought it was a blemish on the family, or...
There could have been thousands of reasons I didn't know.
You never know what's inside a person.
Even the kind Maria changed, so there was no reason why Reintar couldn't.
"Yes. You never know what's inside a person."
I added one more person to the list of three suspects.
Maria Wensbury.
