When it snows, the smell of horse manure becomes even more pungent. In a neighborhood like Knoll Street where middle and lower-class civilians live, the security and sanitation conditions are at the same level. When Xia De turned into this block, the winter street scene seen near Regent's Park disappeared immediately, and it seemed to be a quagmire in a winter stinky ditch, but this is the status quo of the lives of ordinary civilians in the city.
The houses on Knoll Street are row upon row, close together, and the pipes on the peeled-off walls are also entangled like long snakes. The density of residents here is extremely high. During the daytime on Wednesday, even though most of the men go out to work, the children running around, or the women carrying the youngest son on their backs, holding the second son, and walking with the eldest son, still make this place full of life. breath.
Generally speaking, it is best to go to a nearby tavern to inquire about something. But Xia De still considered the possibility that this was a MI6 trap, so he didn't directly investigate. Instead, he walked around Knoll Street to get a clear idea of the nearby terrain and the direction of the alley fork.
At 10:20 in the morning, Xia De was walking on the street when his wallet suddenly fell into the snowdrift on the ground. He immediately picked up the wallet, twisted up a few coins scattered on the snow and put them back into the wallet, then continued walking, and turned into the unnamed garbage alley not far away.
After Xia De entered the alley, two young men squatting on the side of the street, wearing gray flat hats and looking like they hadn't washed their faces for several days, looked at each other and followed the alley with a smile.
Even with the snow covering the dirt in the alley, the fermenting garbage made the smell especially bad. The steam pipe close to the edge of the low wall was bubbling white steam, blowing the wanted notice that was only half left on the wall. The combination of the warm and humid water vapor and the stench in the alley made even the bare skin feel uncomfortable.
The two young men walked dozens of steps in the alley, but they didn't see Xia De who just walked in. They looked at each other and were about to move forward when Shade, holding a revolver, came out from behind the garbage pile not far ahead.
The alley was full of sunlight, which was not enough to melt the snow, but at least it allowed the two of them to see clearly the gun in Shade's hand:
"I just wanted to ask a few questions."
Shad said, then added:
"I will kill anyone who dares to leave."
In fact, he certainly wouldn't shoot.
The two young men raised their hands subconsciously:
"Sir, may I ask you?"
Idle young people are not uncommon in this era. If this kind of person does not enter the factory and use his own flesh and blood to create wealth for the factory owner, then there is a high probability that he will join the local dynamic social group.
What Shad needs is them:
"You live near here?"
"Yes."
The slightly taller young man said, desperately wanting to lean behind his companion:
"We grew up living near here."
"You don't have to be afraid of me. I'm actually a private investigator, yes, the one with a gun license. I'm looking for a woman."
Xia De looked at the two young men pointed at by him one by one. Their physical expressions and expressions were not faked. They were indeed people living nearby:
"It's about thirty years old, and it's about the same size as you."
He pointed to the short man:
"Flaxen hair, curly hair, no glasses, probably moved there between 1851 and 1853."
The reason why the time is set within two years is because Shade does not believe that the other party has returned to Tobesk for many years, and MI6 has not found out:
"She has a not particularly typical Kasenlik appearance. That woman lived in Kasenlik for a while, but she is also fluent in Tobesk."
The Carson Rik royal family would not employ a maid who was clearly Northern looking.
"She wore a brown button-up lady's coat, which didn't look particularly old."
This is what Princess Margaret wore when she saw the figure of the suspected maid.
The tall young man and the short young man looked at each other, and finally the tall young man spoke:
"You mean Mrs. Ragson, Miss Brown, Mrs. Wood, Ms. Laina."
He said four names in one breath, and then hesitated to provide two more names.
After all, there are too many residents here. Even though the neighborhood relationship in this era is closer than that of foreigners, Xia De cannot expect to get answers from two idle youths.
But the six names and information he got are also clues. These six ladies all live on this street. Shade plans to check them one by one before lunch. If he doesn't find anything, he will go to Miss Galina's manor for lunch. .
The first thing he found was Mrs. Ragson, who was already a mother of five, though she was only thirty years old.
Mr. Lagson is a miner in the mine in the west of the city, and he is not at home all year round. When Shade saw Mrs. Lagson, she was helping people wash clothes. She thought that Xia De also came to ask for laundry, and while rocking the cradle of the youngest son next to the basin, she enthusiastically asked Xia De if he was a neighbor who lived nearby.
This woman was not Shad's target.
The second person Xia De found was Ms. Laina, who had a rather unhappy marriage and lived in the neighborhood with her female friends after divorce. Together, the two opened an accounting firm on this street, specializing in helping the poor living nearby to calculate taxes, or helping those small shop owners handle their annual accounts.
Of course, this lady was not Shade's target either.
Romance novels to read for free
It is not surprising that there are bookstores in a neighborhood like Knoll Street where the middle and lower classes live. Detective Sparrow had marked this used bookstore on his map, and with a special password, he could buy illegally assembled firearms from the owner of the used bookstore, Mr. Brown.
The map left by Detective Sparrow only marked the black market for firearms. After all, private detectives know that such places are normal. But Xia De guessed when he stepped into the bookstore that perhaps not only guns were being sold here.
The second-hand bookstore is full of shelves, and the counter is right at the door, ensuring that no one will steal any book. The inside of the store is quite warm, but probably due to the lack of ventilation in winter, there is a smell of rotting paper between the bookshelves.
The Miss Bella Brown was not in the bookstore at this time, but the grizzled Mr. Brown was looking after the store himself. But just now, Xia De inquired when he was buying a scarf in the cloakroom next door. Miss Brown was only going out to pick up a borrowed book, and she would be back in twenty minutes at most, so he planned to wait in the second-hand bookstore.
Just as he bought a scarf that looked good, he figured he might be able to fill his bookshelf with some books from a used bookstore.
When Xia De entered the door, Mr. Brown looked at his attire, but he didn't ask any questions, and let him wander in the bookstore. Xia De shuttled between the rows of bookshelves, scanning the spine of the books, and took out a book from time to time to check.
He quickly fell in love with a copy of Tobesk's Mystery, an illegally printed book of Tobesk's urban legend. As a result, I took it out and opened it, and it was indeed illegally printed, but it had nothing to do with the book cover, it was an illegal color book.
This made Xia De think that besides selling firearms, there were other commercial functions here. Fortunately, after taking out a few other books, the contents inside were all normal. It seems that he was just unlucky and picked up the wrong book.
In addition to Shad, there are several other customers in the second-hand bookstore. Xia De continued to walk in along the aisle between the bookshelves, thinking about preparing gifts for the end of the year for his friends again.
Turning around the corner of the bookshelf, when he looked up, he saw a familiar person. For a moment, Xia De couldn't believe that he had met Sir Kings Priscia here.
This middle-aged aristocrat from the southern country still wore a hat and leather gloves even when he was indoors, flipping through an old book with yellowed pages between the bookshelves.
He heard footsteps, and when he looked up, he saw Xia De:
"Mr. Hamilton?"
The two established a good relationship when they were in the reading salon and Princess Margaret visited the college. At this time, they met unexpectedly in the city and exchanged pleasantries.
Shard, of course, came for a detective mission, and Sir Priscia claimed that he liked to buy books in this kind of second-hand bookstore.
Sir Priscia must have never met the Miss Bella Brown that Shad was looking for. After all, he is only a distant relative of the royal family, so Shad is not worried that the purpose of the other party coming here is the same as his own. But today's unexpected encounter made him interested in talking to Jazz:
"Sir, are you fond of books?"
"Of course, in Willendale's house, I even opened the walls of the guest room and the study room, and built myself a very large library."
Sir Priscia introduced with a smile, and then looked at the old books around him:
"Knowledge is really fascinating. No matter how boring a book is, as long as you hold it in your hand and open the first page, you will definitely find fun."
"Yes, I also like reading. Although reading can't teach me how to make money, it can at least remind me how to avoid being cheated out of my savings."
Compared with Jazz's "sublime", what Shade talked about was relatively vulgar, but Jazz still nodded with a smile:
"It is true, so I have always advocated that people read more books. Knowledge is power, and wisdom is wealth. Only by reading more books can you change your destiny."
He said quite emotionally:
"Knight, I have heard what you said at the banquet at the Lakeview Manor. I also agree with the views on popularizing education to improve the quality of the population. I really hope that more people can know this truth. After all, as human beings, our greatest advantage is , isn't it this?"
He nodded his head, then bid farewell to Xia De with the book in his hand, and left the second-hand bookstore.
"Looks like he's a nice guy."
Xia De murmured in his heart, but he didn't forget what the devil said~www.mtlnovel.com~ Sir those unknown past events.
"At least not like Darkness... Library Search."
Taking "the book Lykins Priscia just looked at" as the search object, three books flew into Shad's hands. One was on the shelf next to her, and the other two flew in from a little further away.
The titles of the three books are the collection of essays "Moon of Tobesque", the astronomy notebook with Shade's unfamiliar terminology left behind by someone unknown, and the "Tobesque Collection Catalog" which looks like an auction house booklet.
"He's also looking for the yellow moon that the bard wants?"
Xia De muttered, flipped through the three books casually, and found that some of the pages in the three books had been torn off.
It is normal for books in this kind of second-hand bookstore to have missing pages, but after Shade checked, he found that the tear marks of the missing page numbers were quite new, and it could even be said that it happened within a few minutes:
"This...isn't that good?"
Shad frowned and looked in the direction Sir Priscia left:
"Although everyone has some quirks, but..."
He put those three books back, trying to give Kings Priscia a new image in his mind:
"We still need to continue to investigate, human beings, after all, it is still too complicated."