Whispering Verse

On snowy days, the smell of horse manure becomes even more pungent. In a neighborhood like Knoll Street where middle- and lower-class civilians live, the security and sanitation conditions are on the same level. When Shade turned into this neighborhood, the winter street scene he saw near Regent's Park immediately disappeared, and his eyes seemed to be a quagmire in a stinking ditch in winter, but this was the current situation of ordinary people's lives in the city.

The houses on Knoll Street are lined up closely together, and the pipes on the peeling walls are tangled like long snakes. The density of residents here is extremely high. During the day on Wednesday, even though most of the men went out to work, the children running around, or the women carrying the youngest son on their back, holding the second son in hand, and walking with the eldest son, still made this place full of life. breath.

Generally speaking, the best way to inquire about something is to go to a nearby tavern. But Shade still considered the possibility that this was an MI6 trap, so he did not inquire directly. Instead, he circled around Knoll Street and figured out the nearby terrain and the direction of the alley intersections.

At 10:20 in the morning, Shade was walking on the street when his wallet suddenly fell into the snow on the ground. He immediately picked up the wallet and twisted a few coins scattered on the snow and put them back into the wallet. Then he continued walking forward and turned into an unnamed garbage alley not far away.

After Shade entered the alley, two young men squatting on the street, wearing gray flat hats and looking like they had not washed their faces for several days, looked at each other and followed the alley with a smile.

Even though heavy snow has covered the dirt in the alley, the fermenting garbage still makes the smell here particularly unpleasant. The steam pipes close to the edge of the low wall were spitting out white steam, blowing against the wanted poster that was only half-remained on the wall. The combination of the warm and humid vapor and the stench in the alley made even the exposed skin feel uncomfortable.

The two young men walked dozens of steps in the alley, but did not see Shade who had just walked in. They looked at each other and were about to move forward when Shade, holding a revolver, walked out from behind the garbage pile not far ahead.

The alley was filled with sunlight. The sunlight was not enough to melt the snow, but at least it allowed the two of them to clearly see the gun in Shade's hand:

"I just wanted to ask a few questions."

Shade said, then added:

"I will kill anyone who dares to leave."

In fact, he definitely won't shoot.

The two young men raised their hands subconsciously:

"Sir, please ask."

Idle young people are not uncommon in this era. If such people do not enter factories and use their own flesh and blood to create wealth for factory owners, then there is a high probability that they will join local dynamic social groups.

They are all Shad needs:

"You live around here?"

"Yes."

The slightly taller young man said, desperately trying to lean behind his companion:

"We've lived around here since we were kids."

"You don't have to be afraid of me. I'm actually a private detective. Yes, the one with a gun license. I'm looking for a woman."

Shade looked at the two young men he pointed at one by one. Their body expressions and expressions were not disguised. They were indeed people living nearby:

"About thirty years old, about the same height as you."

He pointed to the short man:

"Flaxen hair, curly hair, no glasses, probably moved here between 1851 and 1853."

The reason why the time is set within two years is because Shade does not believe that the other party has returned to Tobesk for many years, and MI6 has not discovered it:

"She has an appearance that is not particularly typical of the Kasenlik people. The woman lived in Kasenlik for a period of time, but she is also fluent in the Tobesk language."

The royal family of Kasenlik would not hire a maid who looked obviously northern.

"She had worn a brown buttoned lady's coat, which didn't look particularly old."

This is what Princess Margaret was wearing when she saw the figure who looked like a maid.

The tall young man and the short young man looked at each other, and finally the tall young man spoke:

"You are talking about Mrs. Lageson, Miss Brown, Mrs. Wood, and Ms. Lena."

He rattled off four names, then hesitantly offered two more names.

After all, there are too many residents here. Even though the neighborhood relations in this era are closer than those of outsiders, Shade cannot expect to get answers at once from two idle social youths.

But the six names and information he got were also clues. These six ladies all lived on this street. Shade planned to check them one by one before lunch. If he found nothing, he would go to Miss Carina's manor for lunch. .

The first person he found was Mrs. Lageson. Although she was only thirty years old this year, she was already the mother of five children.

Mr. Ragson was a miner in the west mine of the city and was away from home all year round. When Shade saw Mrs. Ragson, she was helping people wash clothes. She thought that Shade also came to ask for laundry, and while rocking the baby's cradle next to the basin, she enthusiastically asked Shade if he was a neighbor who lived nearby.

The woman was not Shade's target.

The second person Shade found was Ms. Laina. This woman had a rather unhappy marriage and lived nearby with her female friends after the divorce. The two opened an accounting firm on this street together, specializing in helping poor people living nearby calculate taxes, or help small shop owners handle annual accounts.

Of course, this woman is not Shade's target.

The third person Shade planned to find was Miss Bella Brown, who rented at No. 15 Knoll Street, above Brown's Bookstore. The owner of the bookstore is her uncle, Mr. Brown, and although the lady is not married, she is engaged and may soon move away from this street.

Romance bar free reading

It is not unusual for a bookstore to exist in a neighborhood like Knoll Street where middle- and lower-class poor people live. This used bookstore is marked on Detective Sparrow's map. Using a special password, illegally assembled firearms can be purchased from Mr. Brown, the owner of the used bookstore.

The map left by Detective Sparrow only marked the black market for firearms. After all, it was normal for private detectives to know this kind of place. But when he stepped into the bookstore, Shade guessed that maybe there was more than just firearms being sold here.

The second-hand bookstore is packed with shelves, and the counter is right at the door, ensuring that no one will steal any book. It was quite warm inside the store, but probably because of the lack of ventilation in winter, there was a smell of rotten paper spreading between the bookshelves.

Miss Bella Brown was not in the bookstore at this time. It was the gray-haired Mr. Brown himself who was looking after the store. But just now Shade inquired when he was buying a scarf at the coat shop next door. Miss Brown was just going out to pick up books borrowed by others and would be back in twenty minutes at most, so he planned to wait in the second-hand bookstore.

Just as he bought a nice-looking scarf, he thought he might be able to fill his bookshelf with some books from a used bookstore.

When Shade came in, Mr. Brown took a look at his outfit, then didn't ask any questions and just let him wander around the bookstore. Shade shuttled between the rows of bookshelves, scanning the bookshelf with his eyes, and occasionally took out a book to check.

He soon fell in love with a copy of "Tobesk's Secret," an illegally printed book about Tobesk's urban legend. When I pulled it out and opened it, I found that the content inside was indeed illegally printed, but it had nothing to do with the book cover. It was an illegal color book.

This made Shade once think that this place had other commercial functions besides selling firearms. Fortunately, after pulling out several other books, the contents inside were all normal. It seemed that he had just been unlucky and picked up the wrong book.

In addition to Shade, there are several other customers in the used bookstore. Shade continued walking along the passage between the bookshelves, thinking about preparing year-end gifts for his friends again.

Turning the corner of the bookshelf, he looked up and saw a familiar person. For a moment, Shade couldn't believe that he had met Sir Lakins Plischar here.

This middle-aged nobleman from the South still wore a hat and leather gloves on his hands even when he was indoors. He was flipping through an old book with yellowed pages between the bookshelves.

He heard footsteps and looked up to see Shade:

"Mr. Hamilton?"

The two had established a good relationship at the reading salon and when Princess Margaret visited the college. At this time, they met unexpectedly in the city and exchanged greetings.

Of course, Shade came here for the detective mission, and Sir Prisha claimed that he liked buying books in this kind of second-hand bookstore.

The Miss Bella Brown that Shade is looking for has definitely never been seen by Sir Prisha. After all, she is only a distant relative of the royal family, so Shade is not worried that the purpose of her coming here is the same as his own. But today's unexpected encounter made him interested in talking to Jazz:

"Sir, you like books?"

"Of course, at my home in Willendale, I even opened up the wall between the guest room and the study and built myself a very large library."

Sir Prisha introduced with a smile, and then looked at the old books around him:

"Knowledge is really fascinating. Even if it is a boring book, as long as you take it in your hands and turn the first page, you will definitely find fun."

"Yes, I also like reading. Although reading can't let me know how to make money, it can at least remind me how to avoid being defrauded of my savings."

Compared to Jazz's "nobleness", the content of what Shade talked about was relatively vulgar, but Jazz still smiled and nodded:

"This is indeed the case, so I always recommend people to read more books. Knowledge is power and wisdom is wealth. Only by reading more books can you change your destiny."

He said with emotion:

"Knight, I heard what you said at the banquet at Lakeview Manor. I also agree with the views of popularizing education to improve the quality of the population. I really hope more people can know this truth. After all, our greatest advantage as human beings is , isn’t that what it is?”

He nodded his head, then said goodbye to Shade with the book in his hand, and left the used bookstore.

"It looks like he's a nice guy."

Shade groaned in his heart, but he did not forget what the devil once said about Jazz's unknown past.

"At least not someone like Darkness...Library search."

Using "the book that Kings Prisha just read" as the search object, three books flew into Shad's hands. One was on the bookshelf next to me, and the other two flew in from a little further away.

The titles of the three books are the collection of essays "Tobesk's Moon", an astronomy notebook left by an unknown person with terminology that Shade did not understand, and the "Tobesk Collection Catalog" which looks like an auction house brochure.

"He is also looking for the yellow moon that the bard wants?"

Shade muttered, flipping through three books, and then found that some pages had been torn out in all three books.

It is normal for books in used bookstores to have missing pages, but after checking, Shade found that the tear marks of missing pages were quite new. It could even be said that they happened within a few minutes:

"Isn't this...not good?"

Shade frowned and looked in the direction Sir Prisha left:

"Although everyone has some quirks, but..."

He put the three books back and tried to give a new image to Lakins Prisha:

"We still need to continue investigating. Human beings are still too complicated after all."

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