Chapter 110

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 110
Chapter Title: A Case of Mistaken Identity
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“Ugh, how the hell are we supposed to find a red-haired woman here!”

A middle-aged man, who had been circling the Rambouillet Almshouse for two hours, kicked a loose stone in the alley, frustrated by his fruitless search.

“Women are all inside at this hour. Who'd still be wandering around outside?!”

The vagrants had arrived in the alley in the afternoon, but with the short winter day, dusk was already falling before it was even five. Indeed, it was a time when any decent young lady should be at home.

“Our lives are a mess, but the bastards who gave us this job are just as hopeless!”

“Stop grumbling and be quiet! People are staring!”

This alley was an area where the poor lived crowded together. Children, full of curiosity about the outsiders, peeked their heads out from their homes. A dozen pairs of glossy, pebble-like eyes stared intently at the wandering vagrants.

“Should we just hand this off to some local and head back? Let's go get a drink with the advance we got. How are we supposed to know when that wench will crawl out…”

The grumbling middle-aged man scowled at his companion's dirty hand clamping over his mouth.

“Shh! Look, over there!!”

Urged by his companion, the middle-aged man looked ahead. A young, red-haired woman was coming out of the back door of the Rambouillet Almshouse. She was walking briskly, wearing a cloak and boots, and holding a wicker basket in her arms.

“Red hair!”

The woman's attire was certainly not that of a noble, but she looked well-off for a commoner. The two vagrants exchanged a meaningful glance and nodded.

‘That must be her!’

Looking around, they saw that everyone else had gone inside, leaving the street empty. It was the perfect place to carry out their deed. The middle-aged man concealed a dagger in his sleeve and approached the red-haired woman.

“Excuse me, miss.”

“Yes?”

The innocent, blue-eyed maiden turned to look at the middle-aged man who had called her. - *Thud!* The man's dagger pierced the red-haired woman's stomach. Without even a gasp, she lost her balance and collapsed forward.

“Got her!”

The middle-aged man hoisted the fallen woman over his shoulder. He planned to drag her to a secluded spot and secure proof of the murder, just as the client had ordered. But then his companion urgently tapped his shoulder.

“Ugh, what now.”

“Look, over there!”

The middle-aged man looked up, annoyed.

“...!”

There stood another red-haired woman, her face filled with terror. If the dead woman's hair was the red of autumn leaves, the living one's was a fiery orange.

‘The order was to kill a 'plump woman' with red hair and fine clothes…’

The middle-aged man gauged the weight of the dead woman on his shoulder. The corpse he carried was of average build, even being generous. No, to be honest, she was on the thin side.

“That's her! Get her!”

The middle-aged man shouted to his companion in a hushed whisper. The two vagrants exchanged a look and immediately chased after the newly appeared woman.

“Aah!”

The 'plump' woman with fiery orange hair, Maletta, was terrified when the two menacing men started chasing her. She turned to run back into the Rambouillet Almshouse. She ran with all her might, but the men, used to physical labor, were overwhelmingly faster.

“Got you!”

“Ah!”

“Shut her up!”

The middle-aged man grabbed Maletta. His companion, instead of covering her mouth as ordered, stabbed her with his dagger.

“Ugh!”

Maletta let out a final scream and went limp. She was dead. It was the end for the greedy Maletta. The vagrants stood in the middle of the alley and exchanged troubled glances.

“What do we do? I think we killed an extra one.”

“It's fine as long as we don't get caught. Let's get out of here, quick.”

“He said to cut off the head, right?”

“Which one?”

“The second one, don't you think?”

“What if it was the first one? We won't get paid if we bring the wrong head, right?”

“Then let's just cut off both.”

“Alright.”

Each taking a corpse, the vagrants hoisted them onto their shoulders and hastily left the back alley of the Rambouillet Almshouse. At a glance, the alley seemed deserted. But in a district where the poor lived packed together, there were always eyes watching from somewhere. From within the shantytown of crudely patched-together wooden boards, several pairs of eyes that had witnessed the incident glittered.

***

“I'm home.”

Mr. Scampa, the manager of the Rambouillet Almshouse, returned home a little later than usual today.

“Mother, have you had dinner?”

Despite his gruff appearance, he was the head of a household supporting his elderly mother, who had difficulty moving, and a daughter of marriageable age. The family of three lived in Castel Rabico, a middle-class district about a thirty-minute walk from the Rambouillet Almshouse.

“I haven't. Paola isn't back yet, so there was no one to prepare it for me.”

“What? Paola isn't home yet? She definitely left before I did, saying she would prepare your dinner.”

His mother grew irritable.

“Are you saying I'm lying!”

“No, no. Of course not.”

A sudden fear gripped Mr. Scampa.

“Paola isn't the type to wander off on her way home…”

His only daughter, Paola, was his pride and reason for living. Despite their tight budget, he provided her with the best clothes, food, and necessities he could afford. Recently, Scampa had been looking for a husband for Paola. He had even saved up a dowry so his daughter wouldn't lose face when she married. Feeling sorry about using her father's savings for her marriage, Paola would help with odd jobs at the Rambouillet Almshouse for daily wages whenever they needed an extra hand. Today was one of those days. His daughter had helped sow turnips in the almshouse's vegetable garden during the day and had left early to go home and prepare her grandmother's dinner. Paola should have been home. She was not a girl who would be out this late.

“I should go look for her.”

As Mr. Scampa was putting his coat back on, his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Pampinola, came to the front door.

“Oh, Mr. Scampa. The streets are in an uproar. Have you heard?”

“No? What's going on?”

“In the alley behind the almshouse… they found two dead women…”

“What?!”

“And both of them are missing their heads.”

***

Lucrezia sent Loretta to the fish shop at number 8 Campo de Spezia once a day.

“Has a shipment arrived?”

“Has a shipment arrived” was the code Lucrezia had arranged with the fish shop. Lucrezia had asked the shop to deliver a box labeled 'Entrusted to the Lady' to her servant without opening it. The shop owner, who had enjoyed a significant increase in sales thanks to Lucrezia until their dealings recently ceased, had agreed out of respect for her. If the box had arrived, he was to hand it over; if not, he was to say, "No, there are no shipments today." However, the owner of the fish shop at number 8 Campo de Spezia just stared at Loretta with a very troubled expression.

“No shipment?”

Loretta asked again. Just then, a group of people who had been waiting in the back room of the shop rushed out and surrounded her.

“We got her!”

“Whose maid is she!”

“What kind of grand noble house would do something so horrible?!”

At the forefront of the crowd surrounding Loretta stood Mr. Scampa, his eyes bloodshot with grief and rage, making not only his hair but his very eyeballs seem red.

“You killed my daughter!!!”

“What did you say?!”

The previous night, upon hearing the news that a headless female corpse had been found, Mr. Scampa had rushed to the scene. The body was discovered about halfway between the Rambouillet Almshouse and Mr. Scampa's home, somewhere between Castel Rabico and the Commune Nuova. Since the body couldn't be left in an abandoned shed, it had been moved to the Castel Rabico residents' cooperative building.

“My daughter, is my daughter here by any chance?!”

When Mr. Scampa rushed in, the representative of Castel Rabico looked relieved. The cooperative's representative was also in charge of local security. He quickly showed him the two bodies.

“We were just looking for the next of kin. Judging by their clothes, they seem to be local residents…”

“Paola!”

Mr. Scampa's heart-wrenching cry echoed through the cooperative building.

“My daughter!”

His only daughter, whom he had raised like a precious jewel, had returned as a headless corpse.

“Who did this!”

Mr. Scampa wailed.

“Who did such a thing!”

“We'll have to find out…”

“Is the representative of Castel Rabico here?”

Another man pushed open the door of the cooperative and entered. It was the representative of the Commune Nuova's local cooperative. Since the Rambouillet Almshouse was located in the Commune Nuova, Mr. Scampa was acquainted with him.

“Some of our children saw suspicious men wandering around the Rambouillet Almshouse.”

“What?”

“That's not all. No one has come forward claiming to have seen the murder itself, but there are people who saw two men carrying the women, one each, and leaving the alley. Not just one or two, but several people saw them.”

Mr. Scampa shot to his feet.

“This is no time to stand around! Let's go catch them!”

After that, things moved quickly. When they gathered the children's eyewitness accounts from the Commune Nuova, a clear description of the vagrants emerged. The vagrants hadn't gone far. As it happened, they were at a nearby tavern, celebrating their success with a hearty drink. This was partly because they had taken their employer's word—that the woman was a nobody with no home or family, so they needn't worry about the consequences—too literally, and partly because their alcoholic lifestyle meant they never thought about the future.

“You bastards!”

“Got them!”

“Eek!!!”

It was certain that the vagrants were the ones who had murdered Paola Scampa and the unidentified red-haired woman. They had the two heads packed neatly in a box, buried in sawdust.

“Why on earth did you kill them and cut off their heads!”

“A job… we were hired…”

“Hired by whom!”

“We don't know! We were just told to take the box to the fish shop at number 8 Campo de Spezia and say, 'We're dropping off the shipment requested by the lady,' and we'd get the rest of our pay!”

So Mr. Scampa and the vigilantes in charge of security for the two districts had lain in wait at the fish shop in Campo de Spezia, waiting for someone to come for the box. And now, Loretta had walked right into their trap.

“Whose maid are you!”

For some reason, Loretta felt she shouldn't speak, so she desperately kept her mouth shut and just shook her head.

“Search her belongings!”

Several stout men rushed forward, snatched Loretta's handbag, and rummaged through its contents. Inside was nothing but a few florin silver coins and a tube of lip rouge. Frustrated at their inability to identify her, one of the men noticed her attire and suddenly shouted.

“I recognize that maid's uniform!”

“Hm? Whose uniform is it?”

“That's… the uniform from Cardinal de Mare's mansion! A maid who buys vegetables around here was wearing clothes just like that!”

At the mention that she was part of a clergyman's household, not a noble's, the crowd gasped in unison.