Judith was on her way back after finishing work.
“Oh, Madam! Are you on your way home?”
“Sir Henry, are you heading to the Count’s residence as well?”
“Yes, I was supposed to meet Erne.”
Henry took Judith’s basket from her and spoke to her in a friendly manner. So far, everything seemed normal.
“You must feel a bit empty once Erne leaves.”
However, when Henry suddenly stopped in the middle of the road and started talking excessively about trivial matters, Judith tilted her head in confusion.
“Can’t we talk while walking?”
“Oh, we can, of course. But, Madam, I bought a hat yesterday. Would you like to see it? This style is the latest trend in the capital…”
Even as he claimed they could walk, Henry remained firmly in place, as if his feet were glued to the ground.
Strange. Very strange.
Just as Judith’s suspicions began to rise, Erne appeared from the direction of the mansion.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was on my way to your house.”
“That’s perfect. I was just heading home too.”
Henry and Erne exchanged glances.
“Weren’t you just coming from the mansion, Sir?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
But it seemed like he was.
Judith couldn’t shake off the odd feeling she got from their awkward behavior. Something was strange, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly it was.
Nevertheless, once Erne joined them, Henry no longer tried to keep Judith in place. A subtle, unspoken tension lingered between Erne, Henry, and Judith.
As they approached the mansion, Judith furrowed her eyebrows upon seeing the wide-open front gate.
“Why is the door open?”
Ever since Leon came and caused a mess last time, she had been extra careful about locking up.
“Maybe you forgot to close it when you left earlier?”
“There’s no way I would have left it wide open like that.”
Even if she had forgotten to lock the door, she wouldn’t have left it fully open. It looked as if someone had rushed out in a hurry…
“Could it be a burglar?”
A bad feeling washed over Judith, and she quickly ran inside the mansion.
The saying ‘bad feelings always come true’ proved correct—her bedroom door was wide open like the front gate, and the inside was a complete mess.
Staring blankly at the ransacked room for a moment, Judith snapped back to reality and frantically searched through her belongings.
“My money!”
The pouch containing one gold coin and fifty silver coins, which she had saved to pay the interest, was gone.
“My… my bug!”
Judith’s pet bug had also disappeared along with the money.
Meanwhile, at that very moment, Leon was casually walking away from the Rainland mansion, struggling to suppress a smirk.
“What a lucky day.”
They say timing is everything, and it seemed like his time had finally come.
When he arrived at the Rainland mansion, the handsome man conveniently left on his own, and Judith was away from her room.
Not only did he find the gold coins, but he also discovered a pouch filled with gold bars.
“Wow, just look at this shine.”
Definitely pure gold.
Snickering, Leon carefully tucked the silk pouch into the inside pocket of his jacket and cheerfully headed to the gambling hall.
That day, he hit the biggest jackpot of his life.
Meanwhile, back at the Rainland mansion, after hearing the whole story, Judith, unable to contain her frustration, reached for Erne’s bottle of alcohol.
“I never expected Sir Henry to be in on it too.”
Now it all made sense—Henry had deliberately stalled her while Leon freely robbed the house.
And Erne had even kept watch for Leon while he was stealing. Though Leon probably had no idea.
Judith took a big gulp of alcohol.
“It was all for you, Miss Judith Harrington.”
Erne snatched the bottle from her hands.
“You should be thanking me for saving you, not getting drunk and throwing a fit.”
Erne openly clicked his tongue at Judith. He had expected this reaction.
After all, it was Judith who initially came up with the plan to dump the bug onto Leon.
But since she kept delaying it over and over, Erne had simply taken matters into his own hands.
“I was going to handle it myself when the time was right.”
“When? Right before you dropped dead? Money is useless when you’re dead.”
“I’m taking all of it with me when I go.”
Judith pouted.
“I wanted to gather as much as possible to pay off my debt before letting it go.”
With the bug around, she could at least make a dent in her debts. But now that it was gone… what was she supposed to do?
On top of that, she felt a little betrayed that the bug had just run off with Leon without any hesitation.
“If that’s the case, don’t worry.”
“You have a plan?”
“I’ll collect compensation from Cliff. The damages he never paid back.”
Oh, there was a way! Judith’s face brightened.
“You had a plan all along, didn’t you, Honey?”
“If you keep calling me that, I’ll only give you half.”
“How could I doubt you, Sir Erne?”
With that, everything at the Rainland mansion seemed to be resolved.
All the problems were finally falling into place.
***
“This can’t be happening.”
Orders had suddenly stopped. Sales had plummeted.
“They look exactly like the ones I made!”
A large store was selling colored candles identical to the ones Judith had been making.
Worse, they were cheaper and packaged more neatly.
With competition like that, how could Judith’s candles, which she carried around in a basket, ever sell?
Since the process only required mixing dye, she had expected someone to copy it eventually. But not this quickly…
She had anticipated counterfeit products, but she hadn’t expected the impact to be this severe.
Since she knew it would happen eventually, she had already planned her next move—creating scented candles.
However, obtaining and handling fragrance oils was much more difficult than dyes.
She was still in the experimental phase, and it was too early to start selling them. At this rate, she would start falling behind on her loan interest as soon as next month.
“Smith won’t let that slide.”
Now, her only hope was the compensation Erne was supposed to retrieve.
“He’ll get it, right?”
She had a bad feeling about this.
Just when Erne was about to leave to meet Cliff, they received a message from Cliff himself.
He said he was on his way back to the capital and suggested meeting there instead.
He claimed he would tell the full truth but added that if they didn’t trust him, they could bring a truth potion.
The fact that he specifically mentioned bringing a truth potion only made his intentions seem more suspicious. Erne felt the same way.
***
A few days later – Cliff’s mansion.
Inside the reception room of Cliff’s mansion, Erne was surprised by Cliff’s drastically changed appearance.
“You should be laughing. The guy who tried to kill you is in this state now—it must feel good.”
Cliff’s cheekbones protruded from his gaunt face, and his eyes were sunken and dark. But the real shock was that he could barely move.
He relied on both his butler and a cane just to take a few steps.
“This all happened because of a truth potion?”
“I guess my chronic illness and the potion didn’t mix well.”
Between Erne and Cliff sat a bottle of alcohol and two glasses. Cliff’s bony hand picked up the bottle and filled the glasses.
“Drink up. No poison, I promise.”
Drinking in broad daylight?
The Cliff that Erne knew was someone who strictly maintained self-discipline.
Yet here he was, drinking strong liquor in the middle of the day—not even wine.
Instead of reaching for his glass, Erne pulled a vial of truth potion from his coat and tossed it onto the table.
“You’re in this state, and you still dare to take the potion again?”
“If I don’t, how will you believe me? I don’t want to end up dragged to the authorities in this condition.”
Cliff swallowed the truth potion, then immediately downed more alcohol.
He then admitted that he intended to fulfill the promise he had made to Judith at the salon—so long as they ensured he wouldn’t be thrown in prison.
“You’ll tell me everything?”
“Yes. What do you want to know? No, never mind—I’ll start from the beginning.”
He began with the story of Cedric, the last surviving member of the Rainland family, and his death.
“When I visited you for his funeral, you were in prison.”
By then, one by one, Erne’s comrades had been executed on the guillotine. By the time he was released and cleared of charges, almost everyone who had been close to him was gone.
Erne had drowned himself in alcohol, only interacting with the innkeeper and tavern owner.
“I thought I could kill you and take the title for myself.”
“So you poisoned my drink?”
“Yes. I was the one who poisoned your drink. I was the last person you met that day.”
Cliff gulped down another drink like it was water.
“I was afraid. I thought you were just biding your time before coming to kill me. So I sent assassins after you first.”
“The innkeeper who supposedly died in a carriage accident… that was your doing too?”
“He saw me poisoning your drink. So I had to deal with him.”
His explanation was logical and left no room for argument.
Wanting a noble title badly enough to poison someone’s drink—that was understandable.
Wanting to kill someone—that too, Erne could understand.
But now it was Erne’s turn to ask a question.
“This time, let me ask you. What did you do to my corpse?”
