"What are you writing?"
"Just some reminders..."
Victoria walked over to Hesta's side and saw that one of the pages had a simple map drawn on it, with several locations marked where the victims were more heavily concentrated.
Turning the page, there were some tear-jerking memorial messages.
Hesta only looked at a few lines before immediately looking away: "...I'm a bit hungry."
"I'm boiling water," Victoria said. "I'll cook some noodles in a bit."
"...Don't bother cooking mine, I brought something to eat."
Victoria watched as Hesta walked up to her own backpack and took out two tinfoil-wrapped beef rolls. Victoria remembered that Hesta hadn't ordered anything at the downtown café this afternoon either, but had instead eaten a few of these beef rolls.
"Aren't you going to heat them up?"
"My mistake," Hesta glanced at Victoria. "Tinfoil can't go in the microwave, can it?"
"There's a pot over there."
"I don't want to use outside cookware," Hesta said softly.
"Why?"
Hesta was already chewing on the beef rolls that had long since gone cold, some of the broth and oil having soaked through the outer layer of dough. She pulled out two tissues and wiped her hands repeatedly. After swallowing her first bite, Hesta began to tell Victoria the story she had heard from Kovishik last night, about how that poisoned old duke had met such a bizarre and sudden death.
Victoria stood by the stove and listened to the whole story, her expression subtle—in her view, these kinds of mystical-looking cases were actually the easiest to solve. Precisely because the facts seemed labyrinthine and confusing, one could almost entirely rely on common sense: who was the murderer? The murderer was the person who knew the location of the poisoned wine and served it to the old duke's table.