Episode 145
The military police captain took a rolled document from his breast and began to read.
“Captain Pinscher of the Army’s 4th Infantry Regiment unlawfully entered the Yulich Administrative Wing three days ago and illegally obtained a wartime operations report. This constitutes theft of military secrets, a grave crime equivalent to treason.”
Sasha could not react at all. She merely looked up at the man with a rigid, frozen face.
“We believe he may have intended to use the documents he stole to determine the royal security system and take part in an assassination plot. Therefore, it is all the more imperative that we find him as quickly as……”
“Assassination? Who on earth?”
But listening any longer was so absurd that, before she knew it, she had raised her voice, cut him off, and asked back.
Beneath the dark military cap, a pair of razor-sharp eyes swept coldly over her. Instead of kindly answering Sasha’s question, the military police captain rolled his eyes for a moment and looked somewhere, and as Sasha followed his gaze, her complexion stiffened.
The palace.
The queen.
……Were they truly insane?
“Madam, do you know your husband’s whereabouts?”
The military police captain looked down at Sasha overbearingly and asked again. By now, it had openly gone beyond questioning and turned into a threat.
“If you conceal your husband’s whereabouts, madam, that constitutes aiding and abetting.”
Another military policeman beside him interjected and added. Mr. Benson, who was standing in front of Sasha with his face gone white, muttered as though he could not believe it.
“Now, that kind of threatening……”
“This is not a threat, but a warning, Counselor.”
The military police captain took a calling card from his breast and held it out to Sasha. Yes. He held it out smoothly, as if to say she had no choice but to take it.
“If you come into contact with your husband, inform us at once. If he turns himself in, his punishment will be lighter. However……”
He swept another meaningful look over Sasha and said,
“Since you are also undergoing trial, madam, if your husband’s matter is added on top of that, it will become highly unfavorable for you.”
The horse snorted roughly, and Mr. Benson was forced to step back with both arms spread as if to defend her. The military policemen turned their horses’ heads and began to leave across the square.
“Mrs. Pinscher. Are you all right?”
“I’m all right, Mr. Benson. Thank you. I……”
Sasha watched until the military police had completely disappeared, then barely managed to open her mouth and answer. But only for a moment. As if bewitched, she turned around with blank eyes and looked back toward the courthouse.
No small number of people were coming out of the entrance. Among them were reporters frantic to speak to Sasha, and nameless people who, like Sasha, had heard the news about Isaac and were whispering among themselves in astonishment while glancing her way.
“……Madam!”
Mr. Benson called out in surprise. But without even the time to ask his understanding, Sasha had turned and was retracing the path she had come.
As though everyone was aware of her, whenever she drew near, their eyes shifted and they all looked at her. Pushing through that cluster of revolting gazes, Sasha walked blindly toward the entrance.
The summer air, with early August just around the corner, pressed hot and damp into her nose and mouth. Beads of sweat had even formed on her forehead, but the faster she walked, the more they cooled in the meantime, instead sending a chill over her.
At last, Sasha spotted the duchess and her party leaving the courthouse and walking away.
“Good heavens!”
A gentleman she bumped into along the way frowned and glared at Sasha. Whether he did or not, Sasha gave the gentleman a curt apology and plunged back into the crowd.
It was an unusually clear day, and the sunlight was so glaringly bright that the party walking away was all too easy to see. Sasha emerged from among the people and hurried after them.
The woman at the very back of the party, a woman in a fluttering summer dress carrying a parasol, heard those urgent footsteps and looked back this way.
It was a familiar face. It was Miss Rütten.
“Move.”
The moment Miss Rütten saw Sasha, she stepped forward and blocked her path without the slightest sign of surprise. Beneath her glossy blond hair, brown eyes looked down at Sasha indifferently.
“It’s already too late.”
She was smiling. It was an openly mocking smile.
She said it with a look of satisfaction, as though she had already given Sasha more than enough chances, and the duchess was already climbing into the carriage.
Thinking she would simply shove her aside if necessary, Sasha reached out to seize Miss Rütten’s arm, but the coachman who had been about to close the carriage door turned to look toward them. Then he called Miss Rütten.
“She says there is no need to stop her, Miss Rütten.”
Before Sasha even had to grab her, Miss Rütten’s slender arm, which had been blocking the way, dropped at once. Without so much as looking at her, Sasha walked toward the carriage.
The nauseatingly familiar crest of the ducal house, the side profile of an eagle looking to the side, was intricately engraved in yellow on the carriage wall.
The door was still open, not yet closed. As she drew closer, she saw the duchess, who had just settled into her seat. Whether Sasha glared at her or not, the woman raised a hand with an exceedingly composed expression and fluttered it as if beckoning her over.
Even in this situation, the déjà vu was the same as last time. That indifferent expression, that hand gesture—just like when she had been caught smoking and had brazenly called her over, saying, Come here.
“Why are you going this far?”
Looking at the woman sitting there so loftily, Sasha opened her mouth and asked.
Instead of snapping, I know you people are in league with that damned general.
Seeing that serene and refreshed-looking face alone made the words come out on their own.
……Yes. That woman looked somehow relieved.
“Why are you going this far?”
The woman calmly returned Sasha’s question to her.
“Why are you volunteering to become a game piece, Sasha?”
The way she addressed her had not changed.
“I still find it regrettable. If you had quietly come to me, well. Perhaps I might have even removed Jeffrey myself.”
The words made no sense.
“Apart from that regret, I would like to express a little gratitude to you, Sasha. Thanks to you, I, too, have come to realize several things anew. For instance, how much the child I treasured so dearly, as though he would not hurt even if I put him in my eye, has been looking down on me and treating me as insignificant……”
“Stop saying things that make no sense. An assassination plot? What on earth……”
“Devotion, in the end, always returns as betrayal.”
“……I told you to stop telling me your story when I never asked.”
The duchess closed her mouth at Sasha’s ominous murmur. And instead of taking offense, she smiled as if slightly provoking her.
As usual, acting as though nothing could surprise her and as if it were someone else’s affair was also that woman’s innate specialty, but right now, apart from that woman’s usually excellent social skill, Sasha somehow had the thought that this was the woman’s true heart.
The woman did not despise Sasha, nor did she take offense at her.
She merely looked at her quietly, as though it were someone else’s affair.
Once again, Sasha received the impression that the woman looked strangely relieved. At the same time, she felt as though the woman had resigned herself.
“You asked why I was going this far, Sasha.”
“…….”
“Pass those exact words on to that person.”
Before Sasha could react in any way, she sat facing forward.
Clack, the door shut.
“Pinscher! Mrs. Pinscher!”
Sasha stood rooted to the spot. The stinging midday sun was reddening the back of her neck. Regardless, she stood there as rigid as stone, then buried her face in her gloved palms.
When she lifted her face again, she looked utterly sickened in more ways than one.
The revulsion she had felt throughout the trial once again seeped through her entire body.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Benson. For a moment…… I saw someone I felt I wouldn’t be able to meet unless it was now……”
Sasha said belatedly, wiping away the sweat that trickled down the back of her neck.
＊＊＊
Mr. Turner, who had been spending his time relatively comfortably after being moved from the medical wing to a private bedroom, could not hide his bewilderment when Sasha returned from the first trial with a pale, frozen face, contrary to his expectations. Mr. Benson had returned to his office on the way, so there was no one to ask for the reason, but soon there was no need; he was horrified when he received the newspaper a servant brought him.
“A wanted order has been issued for the captain…… for the captain. Reward: ten thousand ond—an additional five thousand ond if captured alive.”
When Mr. Turner hobbled over on his crutches to deliver this news, Sasha had already changed into indoor clothes and was sitting in a chair.
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
The answer flowed frankly from Sasha. Only then did Mr. Turner realize that Sasha was even more rigid than she had been in the carriage that day. Ah, of course she would be. Her husband had become a wanted man. A criminal.
“You said he was with a man dressed in black.”
“Ah, yes.”
Mr. Turner answered as he sat across from her. Sasha stared into empty space with an expressionless face. The identity of that unidentified man was obvious. He was probably the intelligence agent Isaac had told her about before.
Sasha recalled the man in black who, when the mansion had been thrown into something of an uproar because of George Butler, had calmly mingled in with the police and tried to roam about the mansion as though it were only natural. He had been with the intelligence service then, too.
The more she looked back on it, the clearer it was that the queen had been waiting for an opening to smash the ducal house to pieces from the beginning.
“Pass those exact words on to that person.”
Whatever the case, the queen was conspiring to slaughter the ducal house by any means possible. If she did not want it called personal revenge, she needed a pretext. And Sasha happened to be a good pretext that had caught her eye. Isaac was a piece that had caught her eye, not merely useful but rather reliable.
Isaac must have known that already. Since he had devoted half his life as a soldier to blind loyalty and service to the queen, he would likely have accepted it as only natural, rather than feeling any aversion.
But Sasha could not.
“Did the captain not tell you in advance?”
“……He did.”
Mr. Turner asked, and Sasha answered, lifting her cup and taking a sip of water.
Of course she had known. She had already heard that it would be truly dangerous and had braced herself to some extent, but had this not long since strayed far from the original intent of clearing him and his comrades of their injustice?
Mr. Turner was about to add some words of comfort to Sasha, but when she said she already knew, he looked uneasy in a different way.
It was the moment Mr. Turner opened his mouth again to say something. A knock sounded from the other side.
“Forgive me for interrupting your conversation, madam.”
The tense voice of Jason, the butler, came through.
“There is a guest looking for you, madam. He says…… he has come regarding ‘Mr. M,’ and that it is an important matter.”