The girls' smiles were innocent.
Now, their black-and-white photographs looked like memorial portraits pinned to the wall, with dates and locations written beside them.
"Are these... a list of the victims?" Lestrade's voice trembled.
Suddenly, he was afraid to look at the wall. He feared he might find a familiar name and face among them.
Ye Yan picked up a notebook from the table and flipped through a few pages. His expression grew darker.
"It's more than a list. There are detailed records of the 'hunts,' too." He glanced at the notebook. The crooked letters spelling "Collectibles" on its cover seemed especially glaring.
The moment he opened to the first page, Ye Yan's expression turned utterly grim.
"Blue-eyed girl, Number 1: Emma, Whitechapel District Workhouse, September 12, 1858..."
The further he turned, the more horrifying the densely packed records became. There were lists of victims, methods of killing, and even missing-person notices clipped from newspapers.
Smith narrowed his eyes and entered the hidden room as well.
He quickly scanned the markings on the wall, then let out a cold laugh. "Thirty years of killings, and aside from that noble girl's disappearance twenty years ago, Scotland Yard never noticed a thing."
At that, Lestrade's body shuddered.
Daphne...
He closed his eyes. The arm pinning the culprit down bulged with veins as he tightened his grip, drawing a cry of pain from the man.
"Speak!"
Lestrade held back his fury and roared at the man, "Where did you hide all the girls' bodies? And who was behind this?"
"Ow! It hurts! Let go!"
The man's face twisted. Even though the hidden room had been discovered, he had no intention of telling the truth.
Smith smiled and walked toward him at an unhurried pace. He casually rolled up his sleeve, revealing a muscular forearm.
"Detective Lestrade, you won't get anything out of him by asking like that." He grabbed the man by the hair, clenched his fist, and landed a clean left hook to his stomach. "You have to do it like this."
The man groaned in pain, his whole body trembling. "How did you find me? I deliberately left you a decoy."
Lestrade froze for a moment, then immediately tried to stop him. "Wait, you can't torture a suspect for information. That's—"
Before he could finish, Smith rolled his wrist and punched the man hard in the stomach again.
"This isn't torture, Detective Lestrade."
The dull thud of the blow echoed through the room alongside the man's painful retching. Smith shook out his hand, then drew a uniquely shaped pair of small iron pincers from his inner pocket.
"I'm interrogating him. Surely you can see that? Leave him to me. If you police officers and detectives can find the truth by following clues, then I can pry it out of a culprit through interrogation."
Lestrade glanced at the strange tool in Smith's hand, his eyelid twitching.
"Are you sure this counts as a proper interrogation?"
At that, Smith smiled.
"Oh, Detective, this is simply a means of pursuing the truth. The process matters, of course, but I've always believed the result matters far more. Don't you agree?"
Lestrade fell silent.
Ye Yan closed the notebook and stood off to one side, expressionless. He didn't care what methods Smith used to interrogate the man.
Did a piece of human garbage like him deserve any humane consideration?
The basement of Rose Manor, home of the Butler Family.
This secluded space lay in the oldest part of the manor. Its entrance was hidden, and only the Butler Family's direct descendants knew it existed.
A middle-aged man was reclining on a sofa.
He slowly exhaled a mouthful of smoke. Grayish-white wisps curled through the air, blurring his pale, sickly features.
"What a beautiful color..."
The man's dark green eyes, like moss, narrowed slightly. His face was nearly rapturous as he admired the glass bottle in his hand.
Behind him, dozens of similar glass containers stood neatly arranged on shelves.
Each was labeled with a date and a brief note.
The unidentified liquid inside sloshed gently as he moved. On closer inspection, two smooth, rounded objects bobbed up and down within it.
The rounded objects were a strange shade of blue.
It was neither the blue of the sky nor that of a gemstone, but a hue somewhere between life and decay.
It was like an ocean forcibly torn from the sunlight and imprisoned in a tiny glass cage, slowly fading and rotting until it solidified into a lifeless, spine-chilling blue of corruption.
Suddenly, the heavy oak door was flung open.
The man's hand jerked, and he nearly dropped his prized possession. He was about to curse, but when he saw who had entered, he forced his anger back down.
"Father? What are you—"
Marquess Butler stood in the doorway, his silver-gray hair combed neatly back.
His deep green eyes swept over the collection filling the room before settling on the glass bottle in the man's hand.
"Put away those disgusting things, Cyril." The marquess's voice was low. "We have more pressing matters."
Cyril slowly returned the bottle to its display case, handling it as gently as if he were laying down a sleeping baby.
When he turned to face his father, his expression had already returned to its usual aristocratic coldness.
"What could possibly bring you all the way to my studio?"
Cyril deliberately used the word "studio." He knew his father despised his obsession with these specimens, but he believed his father simply didn't understand art.
The marquess strode into the room and said flatly, "Baron has been arrested."
The color drained from Cyril's face.
"That's impossible!" His voice was hoarse. "Baron has never been discovered all these years. He only had to get rid of the evidence—"
"But that's what happened!"
The old marquess cut him off, a flash of disgust in his eyes. "That lowborn bastard. I told you his existence would bring shame on the family, but you wouldn't listen. You insisted on keeping him to do your dirty work!"
"So what does that have to do with us?"
Cyril turned toward the display cases, his fingers nervously tracing the rows of glass bottles. "Baron won't talk. His two sons are still in our hands, after all."
The marquess suddenly stepped forward and seized Cyril's wrist, gripping it so hard that Cyril winced.
"Don't play dumb, son. Baron knows about this basement. If he breaks down in the interrogation room, even the Butler Family won't be able to protect you."
As he spoke, his gaze swept over the glass bottles filled with eyeballs. "You have to get rid of all of this!"
"No!" Cyril shook his head, his voice shrill and resolute. "I won't destroy them. Father, these are works of art. You don't understand their value!"
"Value?"
The old marquess raised his voice and stepped closer to Cyril. "I tolerated your eccentricities because you're my son, but if these things are discovered, you'll bring shame on the entire Butler Family!"
"Lestrade..." Cyril spat the name through gritted teeth. "That meddlesome detective! You don't understand, my collection is—"
A sharp slap cut Cyril off.
His head jerked to one side, and a red handprint appeared on his pale cheek.
"Enough!" the marquess roared. "Either destroy those disgusting things, or I'll cast you out of the Butler Family!"
Cyril slowly turned his head back.
After a moment of silence, he lowered his gaze. "You're right, Father. I'll dispose of them."
The marquess eyed his son suspiciously. "You promise?"
"I swear on the honor of the Butler Family."
"Good. I'll find a way to deal with Baron." The old marquess turned toward the door, then stopped. "It must be done before dawn, Cyril. Don't test my patience."
The heavy wooden door closed again, leaving Cyril alone in the dim basement. He stood there for a long while, then slowly walked toward the glass case at the very back.
Inside lay his most precious collection.
A pair of blue eyes of different shades: one as deep blue as the sea, the other as clear as an ice crystal.
They belonged to a beautiful girl named Daphne.
"Daphne..."
Cyril whispered, tracing the outline of the glass bottle with his fingers. "How could I ever let you go? Father said to destroy the evidence, but he never said I had to destroy all of it."
He murmured to himself, a strange smile curving his lips. Then he turned toward the workbench to prepare the dissolving solution.
Before you continue