I Reincarnated as the Villainess's Brother, and my Family may Fall to Ruin

Chapter 10: Curiosity

As I roamed the halls that have been vacated, so Kairos could investigate without anybody interfering or eavesdropping(... what?), I approached one of the rooms in the hallway, to find where Kairos is currently at.

I suddenly jump back as he comes out of a room, just as I was about to enter. Although I'm using shadow magic and he can't really interact with me, I was taken aback, so I actually got jump scared...

It seems he's just finished interrogating the maid, pretty fast, but maybe that's just my imagination. Either way, I follow him into the next room, where the duchess is.

The duchess was sitting neatly on one of the chairs in the room. She had a worried look on her face, but she tried to maintain composure when she saw him enter the room.

The situation was kind of awkward in my opinion at first, but Kairos soon began the questioning in an orderly fashion and left no room for small talk.

He's someone that seems really efficient, so I guess he was really the best option to lead the investigation.

The questions were fairly simple, they asked the basics of where she was at during the incident and when she last saw Arethusa. The duchess answered accordingly.

The problem is that the duchess's answers were highly suspicious, as she was going to look for Arethusa when said pushing happened, because the latter left the room in anger after they had an argument.

I know she didn't do it, yet even I was seeing how suspicious that was, considering the fact that they even had a fight before one of them fell down the stairs. Not to mention the testimony from the maid, it seemed like a simple case from the outside.

The only thing I can think of to help the duchess at this point is to find some type of evidence to incriminate another person or something to relieve the duchess of suspicion. So, I decided to go the the room next over to check on the maid, as her testimony is really the only actual evidence against the duchess.

As I slowly crept to the next room, I could see that the maid was clearly nervous and fidgety. This could be seen as a feeling of guilt, but it could also be from the shock of seeing someone being pushed, so I can't really say anything definitively.

As I observed her, sitting on the long chair in the room, she slowly hunched over, seemingly to be hugging something between her hands. As I crept closer, I looked at what she was clenching so tightly, it seemed to be a handkerchief? The embroidery on the handkerchief had a familiar emblem on them, there's no way I could forget it, as it was the emblem of the family I'm currently staying with.

The question is why does this maid have a handkerchief with the emblem of the Eleuthera household on it, and why does she treasure it so much. My suspicions become more muddled as the frightened girl from before suddenly had a face of a maiden in love, as she clenched her treasure in her hand.

???

Hey, lady. do you not understand your situation?!

Realizing I can't really see much from this girl anymore, I decided to look around the mansion a bit more.

As I swept through the halls in the shadows, I caught a glimpse of a small dirt mound outside the window, but didn't pay it any mind as I had bigger problems to deal with, rather than a gardener doing a bad job.

Looking around, I ended up once again in Kairo's study. The walls were lined with bookshelves, with a desk facing away from the big window at the end of the room. A table was in the middle of the room, with 2 long chairs parallel to each other at either side of the table. Everything had an ornate design, and the smell of books and ink wafted through the room.

I'm not sure what I can find here, but it's better to check than miss something.

As I roamed around, looking at everything, I came upon the desk that stood at the end of the room. It was hard to manipulate anything around me since I'm merely just a shadow traveling around, but I was able to seep into the cracks and crevices of the drawers to see what could be hiding inside. I kept checking each of them, but nothing stood out.

Suddenly, as I was checking the last drawer, which was the most bottom right drawer, something didn't feel right. The drawer felt too small compared to the other drawers, and they were all seemingly the same size. Feeling slightly unsure, I didn't want to leave with this uncertainty. As I looked around, what I suspected was true. There was a secret compartment in this drawer!

Only people who have secrets to hide would have one installed, so that means whatever is in here is important.

...

What? Don't look at me like that! I'm totally doing this to help the duchess, maybe there's something that could help me out. I swear I'm not doing this cause I'm curious or anything.

Either way, I looked inside the compartment, and it was lucky that I was able to just slip through the small crevices, since there seemed to be a really complex type of contraption at work here. Whoever made this really didn't want anybody to see what was inside here.

My curiosity rising higher than ever, I was able to get inside the compartment which was even smaller than the one before.

However, all that was inside was a single piece of paper. hm...

Despite kind of sounding a little downhearted, I tried to cheer myself up, cause maybe it's some really important document or something? As I continued to try to lie to myself, I really hope that was the case, as it should really be something climatic after all this build up.

Looking over the paper, I couldn't really see much as it was extremely dark and I'm not at the level where I can just use nightvision or something like that. However, from what I can make out, it seemed like an inheritance will.

...

I let out a sigh of disappointment.

After all of that... it's just some inheritance document? I mean, we already know who's the heir, Kairos, so I didn't really need to read this to know.

As I was about to leave the compartment... something just hit me.

Why is he hiding this so secretly?

I mean, it could be for safe-keeping, but it usually just stays in a drawer, rather than be so complicatedly hidden like this. This isn't just a compartment for safe-keeping. These types of things could even be filed away, so why had he clearly hidden it like so? Also, why would he even have it in the first place? Doesn't it usually belong to the Count? This usually wouldn't be shown until after the Count had died!

As more and more questions filled my brain, answers also started to flood in.

My brain latched onto one thought, that seemed so unlikely at first...

but I think I might've figured out what happened to both Arethusa and the Count.

The problem is convincing the key to this puzzle, and also the only person that can incriminate the culprit.

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I'm so sorry for not updating recently! I've been so busy with school work(I have so many late work rippp) so I haven't been able to get any motivation to write anything ;; Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter! This arc will be ending soon I swear! Hopefully the ml will show his face soon too XD haha... I really hope he does, or this bl tag is gonna go to waste...