Is This Why They Say the Wicked Are Punished and the Good Are Blessed?
Is this why they say the wicked are punished and the good are blessed?
Curtis Shan Berk found himself entertaining a thought he would ordinarily have dismissed as idiotic, then immediately shuddered.
But it was true.
The present situation could, without exaggeration, be called the harvest of all the goodwill Chloe Le David Berk had accumulated in such a short span of time.
How so?
Camille Basilure, as if she had never stepped forward with such courage, had shriveled up completely in the interrogation room and mumbled in a frightened voice.
“I’m sorry. Our shop will compensate you for the necklace.”
“What are you talking about?”
Curtis smiled in excellent spirits.
“I won’t hold you responsible. And tell Lady Basilure that I will remember Basilure as a shop that keeps faith with its customers, and that I look forward to even finer jewels.”
Camille nodded happily, then once again confirmed that Chloe was utterly ignorant when it came to luxury goods. At the same time, she pointed out that Laura le Gautier’s claim was absurd.
“It’s true that some Tawaiye craftsmen are in Ivanneres, but that level of craftsmanship is absolutely impossible in such a short period.”
But Laura le Gautier fought that statement with desperate insistence.
“But I truly did receive thirty-eight marvelous dishes within a week!”
Naturally, it was a lie.
A lie she had improvised on the spot to curry favor before the king.
In fact, it was confirmed that the Gauthier viscount household had never ordered any such dishes.
Theodora verified that as well.
True to the infamous reputation of the 8th Regiment, she had gone straight to the Gauthier Estate, frightened Viscount Gauthier by certain means, and confirmed his statement that “there are no such dishes in the house.”
Of course, the evidence-gathering that followed his statement was conducted in the 8th Regiment’s distinctive fashion: overturning and smashing everything in sight.
“After searching the entirety of the Gauthier Estate, we confirmed that no such dishes exist.”
“And the method of confirmation?”
“Every dish in the house, including the porcelain ones, was smashed so we could check whether there was even the slightest bit of glass inside.”
“I see. Viscountess Gauthier. Berk will remember Gauthier.”
In other words, remember what happens when you touch the name of Berk.
How terrified Laura le Gautier looked as she left was sketched, scrape by scrape, by the press illustrators who had waited all night in front of the Royal Guard Building.
“The maid?”
“Her lover, an attendant, confirmed that she was Alicia, formerly employed in the Glintland Royal Palace Laundry. The large birthmark on her arm matches.”
“We’ll have to send compensation to Glintland.”
As Grand Duke Berk answered, he glanced at Theodora.
Theodora merely twitched one corner of her mouth.
Seeing that subtle expression, Curtis offered not praise, but a promise.
“I’ll visit the Tornier family soon. What does your mother like?”
“Forgive me, but once will not be enough.”
“Since when did the 8th Regiment negotiate with a superior officer?”
“With all due respect, Your Grace is no longer commander of the 8th Regiment. Furthermore, during Your Grace’s service in the 8th Regiment, you often said, ‘If an opportunity comes, seize as much of it as possible.’”
Would you look at that. Getting cheeky now.
Of course, Theodora was not wrong. Curtis smiled faintly.
“I’ll visit once and invite you once. Dismissed.”
By the time it came to Agathe Montpis, the entire situation felt almost like a single melodrama.
“…I wasn’t trying to take Her Highness the Grand Duchess’s side, hic. I only fulfilled, sob, my duty as a member of the Royal Guard.”
Curtis decided to give Agathe Montpis what she wanted.
He took on the role of the “wicked, heartless man” in her melodrama and performed it faithfully.
“Thank you, Sergeant Montpis. You were a great help. I regret that I cannot grant your wish, but I love my wife.”
“Hng…”
Agathe Montpis hiccuped with a tear-streaked face and finally collapsed over the desk, forcing Curtis to send Noel Montpis home early in the middle of an unprecedented case in which a foreign diplomatic envoy had been booked as a key reference witness.
“Noel, take your sister home.”
If they left Agathe Montpis there any longer, the Royal Guard Building would flood with tears.
In any case, compared to her initial stance of treating Chloe Le David Berk as “that woman,” Curtis found her attitude of going so far as to call her “Her Highness the Grand Duchess” remarkably progressive.
As for the Marquise of Flandre…
“I knew from the beginning that woman would do something like this.”
She cooperated very actively.
The Marquise of Flandre revealed that Isabelle la Glintland had personally visited her under the king’s orders.
It had been only one day before the wedding.
In other words, this matter had been plotted even before the ceremony.
“She said, ‘I have come to seek aid from the Marquise of Flandre, the respected elder of Ivanes society.’”
“That was what she said. Respected elder. I was speechless.”
“Then she said, ‘His Majesty told me to come to you, my lady. I apologize.’”
Did you come to run an errand for ice?
The Marquise of Flandre had barely managed not to ask that, and instead opened the letter Isabelle handed her.
She also said that after reading the letter, she had wanted to strike her older brother.
As if she understood the marquise’s feelings perfectly well, Isabelle la Glintland had then produced the Green Beryl Vase with an exceedingly abashed expression.
“She said, ‘My maid discovered that vase while sightseeing in the capital of Ivanes and rushed back to report it.’”
“That maid must be dead.”
“As it happens, I asked who the maid was. She said she could not tell me. I imagine she was the dead maid in question.”
The Marquise of Flandre said this with an uneasy expression as she looked at the Green Beryl Vase placed in the center of the interrogation room.
The vase displayed as evidence was still quite lovely.
“You didn’t believe her, I take it.”
“A woman may dislike a gift sent by an envoy from another nation, but unless you had gone mad, would you keep beside you a woman so lacking in common sense that she would openly sell it off like this?”
It was an accurate assessment.
Curtis bared his teeth in a grin.
“From what stage do you believe my brother was involved?”
At that, the Marquise of Flandre pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed.
Isabelle had explained to the marquise that after hastily retrieving the vase, she went to the king.
The king had supposedly flown into a rage, saying, “Surely that bastard Curtis didn’t have the insolence to sell off the vase,” but Isabelle had earnestly persuaded him.
“She said, ‘I was being cautious out of fear that I might inadvertently cause a serious diplomatic incident, and after much thought, His Majesty introduced me to the Marquise of Flandre. He said you were very wise, a model to all, and one of the royal family’s elder figures, so you would surely suggest a good course of action.’”
And then, according to the marquise, Isabelle la Glintland had smiled sweetly.
Recalling that beautiful, harmless smile, the Marquise of Flandre slammed her fist down on the interrogation-room table.
“If it had not been for my brother, I would have thrown cold water in that face!”
“But you could not.”
“…Curtis.”
The Marquise of Flandre looked at him with troubled eyes.
“I suffer terribly in the heat. Did you know that?”
“…I did not.”
“For more than twenty years now, my brother has been controlling me with scraps of ice.”
Curtis began to say, “Ah,” then closed his mouth.
Something had occurred to him.
As though she had looked straight into his thoughts, the Marquise of Flandre smiled bitterly.
“If not for your wife, I would have suffered all last week. But thanks to her, I was a little more comfortable. That is why I am telling you even this much.”
“….”
All of a sudden, he missed the cigarettes he had smoked on the battlefield.
What the marquise meant was that she would tell him the king had been deeply involved in this matter, but that he must not drag it to the surface.
Seeing her draw the line there, saying that the price of the ice cream and ice went only this far, left him with complicated feelings.
“I thought something like this might happen when a lowborn wench suddenly became a duchess and started showing off. It is deeply embarrassing.”
When it came to Sir Oslo, the Glintland foreign ambassador, Curtis nearly laughed.
Sir Oslo was from a distant branch of the Oslo family and had been assigned from his homeland of Glintland to Ivanes. Curtis had always assumed he was simply a man living in idle comfort in Ivanes.
But as it turned out, he seemed to be nothing more than a failed opportunist who had prematurely given up on satisfying his lust for power.
“How could she come here representing Glintland and then dare commit such a brazen act!”
The man said that ever since Isabelle la Glintland had come to Ivanes, she had not once respected him or asked for his help. Because he found her “insolent,” he had attached a spy to her.
By winning over one person included in the Glintland delegation, he had caught wind of the circumstances surrounding the cutting away of one maid.
Sir Oslo had agonized deeply over whom he should tell, and the moment the grand banquet began, he ran straight to Curtis Shan Berk and blurted it out.
That was why Curtis had left the banquet during the proceedings.
It was testimony from the Glintland ambassador himself that the Duchess of Glintland had used one maid and discarded her on the Ivanneres riverbank.
Of course, Curtis had already known this through Theodora, but the fact that it allowed for cross-verification made the testimony meaningful.
“In any case, please put in a good word for me with His Majesty the King of Ivanes. And with Glintland as well.”
Watching Sir Oslo grovel and gauge his reaction as he said this, Curtis suddenly had a malicious idea.
“How do you think Isabelle la Glintland should be dealt with? I would like to hear your esteemed opinion, Sir Oslo.”
“Burn her at the stake!”
What was this, a witch trial?
Of course, in matters like this, the opinion of the injured party was most important.
Curtis called for Chloe Le David Berk.
When she actually entered the interrogation room, her opinion differed somewhat from Sir Oslo’s.
“How about we hear what she has to say?”
Was his Grand Duchess, who had just experienced the proverb that good deeds bring blessings firsthand, now deciding to live like a pushover?
For Curtis, it was a point he could not help but suspect.