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Chapter : 25
When no answer came, Cedric narrowed his eyes and began deciphering the tangled lines.
“Kidnapping… Loren… Count Collins…”
He muttered a few words he could recognize. He couldn’t read a full sentence, but it wasn’t difficult to guess what the note was about.
Cedric crumpled the note and put it in his pocket.
“Kidnapping, huh. Maybe sticking delusions on the wall is useful after all.”
He said this with a faintly pleasant smile, quietly staring at Noah.
It was a silent pressure to agree with him. The poor detective’s face grew paler and paler.
Noah was terrified. He might not know the full details of the marriage, but he could sense that he had played a major role in annoying Count Collins.
“Cedric, stop joking around,” Loren warned, but Cedric wasn’t the type to obediently listen.
“Well… does it look like a joke to you?”
A large sheet of paper with a vividly drawn “two-headed spider” hung in the center of the wall. Cedric’s wandering gaze fell upon the spider.
He whistled lightly, still smiling, and tore the drawing off the wall. The paper’s corner ripped in his impatient grip.
“I admit it, Loren. You chose a very capable detective. Quite… impressive. This looks like it will be an enjoyable dinner.”
Cedric pulled up a stool in front of Noah and held the spider drawing he had just torn out right in front of his eyes.
“I think some explanation is in order. How did you even find out about this?”
“W-Well, Your Excellency… it’s just that…”
While Noah fumbled for words, Loren quickly scanned the paper.
The spider drawing was extremely crooked, as if Noah had drawn it himself. But what it depicted was clear.
A two-headed spider. The emblem drawn on letters her father had exchanged.
The spider appeared on the key Cedric possessed, and on the dagger wielded by the thug at the gambling house.
She touched the faintly scarred area on the back of her neck—the part she had drawn herself when threatening Cedric.
That spider was the thread connecting the curse to the scars. It was also “them,” the ones who were after Cedric’s life.
“Then…”
Loren reached out and touched Cedric’s shoulder. He instinctively twisted his body at the sudden contact.
“What is it?”
“I don’t think this is the time for this.”
She snatched the paper from Cedric’s hand, examined the spider closely, and then folded the drawing into a small card-size piece, which fit neatly in her palm.
“Noah really is a ‘capable’ detective. He must have done a lot of investigation.”
Loren glanced once at Noah sitting on the sofa, then at the wall covered with countless notes and papers. She imagined how much effort it must have taken to gather that much information. No doubt he had searched high and low.
She tossed the folded paper to Cedric. She hadn’t intended him to catch it, but Cedric skillfully snatched it.
“In that case, ‘they’ may also be aware of Noah. The people who use this symbol.”
Unlike Noah, who looked completely puzzled, Cedric’s face turned serious.
Loren’s words were correct. That detective had already unwittingly gotten himself involved in something dangerous. Cedric pressed his brows together.
“…You’re right, Loren. I don’t think having dinner here is a good idea.”
“I… I already prepared everything…”
Noah mumbled timidly. On the table—more of a clean desk than a dining table—were soup, bread, and roast chicken with Brussels sprouts. Loren ignored the table and extended her hand toward him.
“Noah, you should move quickly. We’ll talk everything through at the mansion.”
Still hesitant, Noah lingered, hand hovering. Loren nudged him once more, and Cedric watched the two silently.
“Looks like a lovers’ escape.”
Not something a fiancé should say with such a blank expression.
Startled, Noah shook his head vigorously, and Loren glared at Cedric. That was supposed to be a joke? Cedric avoided her gaze and stood.
“First, we need to take care of this. You explain the situation to the detective.”
“All of it?”
“No. I trust you can distinguish what’s important and what’s not.”
She nodded—he must be referring to excluding the part about the scars connecting.
While Cedric removed newspapers and notes from the wall one by one, Loren squatted in front of the sofa, looking up at Noah.
“So… you wrote in your letter that you might know my father’s whereabouts, right?”
“…Yes, that’s correct…”
“Then you also know that my father was kidnapped by some very dangerous people. I… the spider.”
This was all Loren could explain. Cedric had told her nothing, so she could only piece together what she knew.
But the more Loren spoke, the stranger Noah’s expression became.
“The situation has worsened. The ones who attacked Noah and me when we went to check the mansion were ‘them,’ apparently.”
“What? Wait… why exactly is ‘Idmon’ kidnapping people?”
Noah asked, puzzled. At the mention of “Idmon,” Cedric turned around, holding a neatly stacked bundle of papers in his hands.
“I was about to tell you that it seems Viscount Bailey has fallen into a cult…”
Cedric and Loren’s eyes met. Loren wanted to ask what he meant, but his expression suggested it was the first time he had heard it too.
Spider, curse, father, and… cult.
A headache settled in.
During the ride to the mansion, the three of them did not speak a single word.
Noah was practically dragged into the carriage, hesitant but with no choice. The only thing Loren could do was repeat that it would be alright.
Her own mind was just as cluttered. Cult? She had never imagined “Viscount Bailey” and “cult” appearing in the same sentence.
Father… why?
Her father was hardly a man prone to blind faith. He might sneer at something, but he certainly wouldn’t go missing over a cult.
Frequenting gambling houses, and now suddenly a cult? Something was very wrong.
Although the meeting had started as a dinner, the table held nothing by the time they arrived.
Cedric had sent away the servants. It was already too late for dinner.
Noah looked around the empty dining room anxiously. The absence of anyone gave the place an eerie feeling.
Lanterns lit here and there cast long, overlapping shadows across the table and walls.
“…This is something even you don’t know, right?”
While Noah busied himself examining the room, Loren whispered the question into Cedric’s ear. Cedric frowned lightly and leaned away from her.
“You’re tickling me, Loren.”
“Cedric, aren’t you going to answer?”
“…You know.”
It contained no information, yet it was the most honest answer.
The fleeting guess she had made when their eyes met had become certain.
Cedric Collins didn’t know about the cult. The one holding the key to the case was, after all, the detective awkwardly sitting in the chair and observing everything.
Cedric began reviewing the papers he had torn from the detective office wall. They were in random order and orientation. Noah peeked at them.
“Uh, Count… I should explain a bit…”
Noah reached out slightly, and Cedric handed him the papers.
Noah spread them out on the table and began organizing them chronologically.
He gathered the unnecessary materials in a pile at the corner. The brown table quickly became covered in papers.
“It started here.”
He pointed to the note at the very end: “Spider? Letter? Gambling house”—written in Noah’s handwriting.
When Loren first commissioned him, this was what he had told Noah. She silently waited for the explanation to continue.
