Henry Thompson took a careful look at the young woman, noticing a flash of panic in her eyes, but aside from that, there seemed to be a hint of relief as well.

Next to her, Emily Moore's behavior was also quite strange; she was frowning slightly, her gaze tinged with suspicion and surprise.

"Well done!" Grace Johnson didn't wait for the sous-chef to finish speaking before giving Henry Thompson a heavy pat on the shoulder, her expression now even more invigorated. "Arrest all the cooks and this Miss Hanyan, and keep them under separate guard. I need a few more people to come with me to search Miss Emily Moore's room. Henry Thompson, you—"

Henry Thompson immediately cupped his fists. "I'll go check the crime scene. Captain, you can have Sir Sutton and these two constables here accompany me. If I find anything at the scene, I'm worried the chief constable will accuse me of planting evidence."

...

Henry Thompson said he was going to look for the crime scene, but instead made his way straight to the storage room on the fifth floor of the Moonview Pavilion.

As he pushed open the door, Edward Sutton spoke in a sarcastic tone, "Young Master Thompson, you seem quite familiar with the place."

Henry Thompson replied calmly, "Chief Sutton, you've read those statements too. I don't believe you haven't noticed. All the riverside rooms in the Moonview Pavilion are occupied, except for this storage room. If there's anywhere most suitable for a murder, it's here."

He was already scanning the room, and soon, as expected, raised his eyebrows. "It really is here."

Edward Sutton's eyes also changed slightly, but he simply stood there with his arms crossed, saying nothing, looking on with an air of detachment.

Henry Thompson ignored him and began a methodical inspection from the outside in.

Chapter Six: My Hatred Unending

This storage room was about thirty square meters, most of it empty, with the miscellaneous items piled up in the southeast corner, taking up about ten square meters. In the open space, there was a table and a wooden bed.

Clearly, when rooms were in short supply at the Moonview Pavilion, this place could also be put to use.

The first thing Henry Thompson noticed was two copper basins among the clutter. One was large, about the size of a wagon wheel, the other small, only as thick as an adult man's thigh.

"There are tools here for making ice with saltpeter—probably kept here as spares by the Moonview Pavilion," Henry Thompson then bent down to examine the floor. "The floorboards have been washed, very clean, but there are still traces of blood in the cracks."

Unfortunately, this was ancient times, without modern forensic tools. Otherwise, no matter how much the floor was cleaned, it would be useless. He could even identify the murderer directly by fingerprints.

However, the spirit coroners of this world did have more than three spells for identifying traces, but the original Henry Thompson was unlearned and hadn't mastered any of them.

Henry Thompson was cramming to catch up, but with limited time and insufficient cultivation, he hadn't made much progress yet.

"There are a lot of blood spots under the table, probably from the victim's blood spraying here during the attack."

As he spoke, Henry Thompson took a dagger from his sleeve and carved a human shape on the floor. "Judging by the traces, the victim was probably lying face down here before death."

Edward Sutton appeared expressionless, watching coldly from the side, but in his eyes flashed a hint of surprise that no one else could detect.

"These items have been disturbed—the dust is off, and there are handprints in some places. We can deduce that after the murderer and the victim entered the storage room, there was some shoving, maybe even a struggle, causing some of the items to collapse. The murderer tidied up before leaving, probably in a hurry, leaving some traces behind. Hm?"

At this moment, Henry Thompson's expression shifted slightly as he looked toward a certain spot. There were several stacked wooden stools, and beneath them, in the cracks of the floorboards, were two things that didn't belong there.

Henry Thompson took a closer look, then smiled as he pulled out a handkerchief and picked up the items from under the stools.

"Chief Sutton, looks like I won't have to suffer this false accusation after all."

"A woman's fingernail?"

Edward Sutton had been watching Henry Thompson's every move and also saw the two items under the stools. They were pieces of a woman's fingernail, the broken front halves, the break jagged and irregular, with pink polish on them. On one of the nail fragments, there was a dark brown spot—that must have been a bloodstain from the victim's wound.

Edward Sutton couldn't help but give Henry Thompson a complicated look. "You really are lucky."

Henry Thompson didn't think it was luck. In fact, if he had just brought Grace Johnson's three-tailed spirit fox to sniff around today, the case would have been solved easily.

...

When Henry Thompson returned to the main hall downstairs with Edward Sutton and the others, Grace Johnson greeted them with a bright smile. "Henry Thompson, you're just in time. The case is already solved. We found traces of saltpeter in Emily Moore's room."

She then pointed to the two women kneeling in front. "Hanyan has already identified this woman surnamed Meng as the one who ordered her to drug the food in the kitchen and steal the saltpeter. In her statement just now, she said that last night Emily Moore slept with her in the side room, but in fact, this woman left alone at the second watch and didn't return for more than half an hour."