"His good luck seems even stronger than Reynolds's," Angel said in surprise.
"There's no need to compare them. I haven't finished my story." Perhaps the Inspector had gone a long time without a normal conversation. Now that he had found someone to talk to, he could not stop.
"At this point, doesn't it sound like a perfect rags-to-riches story?"
Angel nodded. Going from penniless to fabulously wealthy certainly counted as a reversal of fortune.
"But the story isn't actually perfect."
"Oh?"
"Only Childe's family had a perfect story. Childe himself was its one flaw."
The Inspector continued, laying more of the truth before Angel.
As the Inspector had said, the good luck was real. But it did not extend to Childe. Far from being lucky, Childe had suffered misfortune since the day he was born.
While he was still an infant, his parents' carelessness sent him tumbling off the bed or landing bottom-first in scalding water.
That was little more than mild bad luck. But as Childe grew, worse misfortunes befell him.
His eldest sister, who had married and moved away, was a vicious woman. Whenever Childe's parents were working in the fields, she often came to steal his food. To keep him from telling them, she forced him to drink the juice of a poisonous herb that numbed his tongue and left him unable to speak. When their parents returned, they thought Childe had eaten and gave him nothing more. Over the years, his tongue was damaged until he could no longer speak clearly, and hunger reduced him to skin and bones.
When his second sister discovered what the eldest was doing, she did not help Childe. She joined in. Once he had wasted away to skin and bones, the two sisters accused him of being cursed by the