Chapter 300

Chapter 273 The Patron

“These fellows approached Maria under the guise of being her patron, intending to use her as a medium to target me. Hmph… They’ve been planning this for a long time.”

Listening to Ed’s words, Adele nodded in agreement, contemplating deeply. After hearing Adele’s words, Dorothy continued to prompt Ed.

“Then Miss Adele, do you know anything about Maria’s patron?”

“They, as patrons… I’ve never really asked about it. You can find Ruff at the theater; he’s my direct subordinate and also an extraordinary being. He handles complex correspondence and communications within the theater, one of his duties is to help send and receive letters for others.”

“The dance troupe often stays at the theater. If there’s mail sent to the theater, it goes directly to Ruff, who then distributes it to others. They all have correspondence with their respective patrons. You could ask him if he’s ever delivered many letters to Maria, and if so, whether he’s seen who sent them.”

Adele suggested to Ed, and after listening, Dorothy didn’t waste any more time and immediately controlled Ed to stand up.

“Thank you for your suggestion, Miss Adele. With the urgency of the situation, I will continue my investigation.”

“Alright~ I look forward to your good news, Mr. Detective.”

After bidding farewell to Adele, Ed left the room and went to find Ruff at the theater. He had the police help him locate Ruff, and soon enough, the police brought the target to him. It was a middle-aged man dressed in servant attire.

“Hello, Mr. Ruff, I heard that you work at the theater, and one of your tasks is to help others collect and distribute letters?”

Ed tipped his hat and spoke to the man in front of him, who respectfully replied.

“Yes, sir. If there’s anything I can assist with, I will do my best.”

“Thank you. Right now, I just want to ask you… Has anyone frequently sent letters to Maria?” Ed continued to ask Ruff, and after some thought, Ruff responded.

“Maria… poor child… Yes, people do send her letters, and it seems to be more than one person. She appears to correspond with many people.”

Ruff answered, and upon hearing this, Dorothy perked up and continued to control Ed.

“So do you know where Maria usually keeps her letters?”

“Well… I think she would keep them in her room. Maria moved from a rural area to the city to make a living. She has only been here for two years and hasn’t rented or bought a place yet, so she lives in the theater. Her letters should be hidden in her room.”

Ruff continued, and with this crucial clue, Dorothy immediately had Ed say,

“Thank you for your information, Mr. Ruff. This helps a lot.”

After bidding farewell to Ruff, Ed found the theater manager and obtained the key to Maria’s room. Under Ed’s request, the theater manager had a staff member guide him to Maria’s room.

In the staff living area behind the theater, guided by a staff member, Ed stopped in front of a wooden door in a dim corridor.

“Thank you. I can manage from here.”

Ed said to the staff member guiding him, who promptly left after a brief response. Then, Dorothy had Ed use the key from the manager to open the door and entered a small single-bedroom.

This was a narrow bedroom with only a table, a bed, and a wardrobe. Simple and clean, apart from a few small trinkets on the table, there were no other decorations.

Upon entering Maria’s room, Dorothy did not blindly search for the letters but instead closed the door and walked to the center of the room. She placed her cane in the center and silently recited,

“The location of the letters Maria has hidden.”

After reciting, Ed released the cane, allowing it to naturally fall. As the top decoration’s gold coin rapidly dimmed, the entire cane tilted in one direction, pointing towards the space under the bed.

Seeing this, Dorothy immediately had Ed put away the cane and crawl under the bed. After a thorough search, he finally found a small wooden box.

Dorothy took out the wooden box and placed it on the table, opened it, and found a thick stack of letters inside, at least thirty or forty, which surprised Dorothy.

‘So many?! Maria sure knows how to write.’

Afterward, Dorothy took out all the letters and used the abilities of a scholar to quickly review the handwriting of the senders. In just a few moments, she had sorted through all the letters and identified the four most frequent handwriting samples, meaning the four individuals who communicated most frequently with Maria. Each of these four individuals had sent multiple letters to Maria.

‘Now, we just need to see among these four who is Maria’s patron.’

Thinking this, Dorothy had Ed start picking one letter from each of the four individuals to open and examine, hoping to determine who was Maria’s patron from the content. However, after quickly scanning all four letters, Dorothy was taken aback.

‘d*mn… Maria is quite the social butterfly…’

Yes, based on the content of the letters, all four senders were actually Maria’s patrons. She had four patrons! She danced with four people, and she had ambiguous relationships with all four!

‘Wow… So promiscuous? Having four ambiguous relationships with patrons, and from what I can tell, one of them is female. She’s quite the catch.’

Dorothy thought, somewhat surprised. Although Adele had mentioned that dancers might have multiple patrons, Dorothy hadn’t expected Maria to have four. This added significant difficulty to her investigation.

Among these four letter senders, who is the extraordinary being responsible for Maria’s d*ath and turning her into a zombie puppet?

Looking at the four letters laid out before Ed, Dorothy fell into deep thought, pondering how to quickly identify the true culprit.

After much deliberation, Dorothy’s final solution was still… divination!

Yes, Dorothy wanted to use divination to identify the culprit among these four candidates. Even if they had counter-divination, Dorothy could use their counter-divination to pinpoint which of the four senders was involved.

Now, Dorothy just needed to perform divination on each of the four letters, setting the question as “Is the writer of this letter an extraordinary being who wants to harm Maria?”

This question directly involved the killer protected by counter-divination. Therefore, if Dorothy used minimal resources, she wouldn’t get a result, and the lack of a result would be the biggest result.

By divining each of the four letters, if a result was obtained, it would prove that the writer of that letter was not the killer. If no result was obtained, it meant that the divination on that letter was interfered with by counter-divination, proving that the writer had something to hide.

Using this method, Dorothy would divine each letter one by one, and the one that caused interference and resulted in no outcome would be the culprit’s letter.

Dorothy had devised this plan but hesitated to implement it immediately because although it was feasible, it might consume a lot of “Lamp.”

‘I can’t afford it… If I’m unlucky and have to divinate four times to finally find the problematic letter, it would cost me four points of ‘Lamp’. I’ve already spent two points, and now another four… That’s too much.’

Dorothy thought. This method, while effective, was inefficient, like pulling characters from a gacha pool in a mobile game, where luck determines the outcome. If lucky, you get it in one go; if unlucky, you have to pull four times, ending up with a guaranteed character.

Dorothy wasn’t one to rely on luck, so she didn’t want to use this divination method.

‘I can’t waste Spirituality. There must be a better divination method that allows me to conserve Spirituality and get straight to the point.’