This difficult question earned a frown from him.
"For a brief while, yes. But he made clear he had no interest in taking over the business. My son Bruno will be assuming control instead. The preparations are already complete." Achim looked uncomfortable, but he answered calmly.
"Y-you look a bit young for retirement, sir," Lilly said.
"You flatter me. I am already an old man. My memory's been spotty as of late, a disastrous thing for a merchant," he answered calmly yet again. It seemed he wanted to pass things to the next generation while he was still well enough to do so competently.
"May I ask what you were doing at the time of his death?" I asked.
"Wha-do you suspect me?!" he asked, now not so calm. A normal reaction, I supposed. Nobody enjoyed being under suspicion of murder.
"We simply wish to clear your good name, sir. Please," Claire said.
"Very well. When was he killed?" Achim asked.
"Oh? Have you already forgotten? We said he was killed three days ago," I purposefully teased.
He sneered. "And I told you, I'm a busy man. I meet a number of people and visit many places every day. Do you want me to recount everything I did three days ago?"
Clocks hadn't been invented in this world yet, so we could only tell time roughly by the hour instead of minutes. Hopefully, that would be
enough.
"Arnaud was killed three days ago, sometime in the early morning between five and six o'clock," Claire answered.
"At that time, I was out of the capital for a meeting," Achim said.
"A merchant I've been in contact with for a while. I needed their assistance for something concerning the succession." As though rewinding his memory, he looked to the upper-right.
"Might we have a name?" I asked.
"Skeptical girl, aren't you? His name was Kato. That should be enough, right? Please leave." With that, we left the firm behind.
"Yes, there were some slight complications between us."
Our second suspect, Ilsa Gröllmann, readily admitted to having had trouble with Arnaud. We were in the lounge of one of the empire's municipal offices. The furnishings were modest, with nothing that really stood out save for a thoughtfully placed vase of flowers. The four of us sat on a sofa across from Ilsa, who was tall and slender, with her long hair bundled up in a professional style.
"What was this complication?" Claire asked.
"Nothing, really," Ilsa said. "I thought there was an error on his tax payment form and inquired about it. It turned out to be a misunderstanding on my part, and I apologized, but he never forgave me for it. Such things are common in this line of work, I suppose." She sighed deeply.
"Was it really a misunderstanding?" I asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"Perhaps he was committing tax evasion and you overlooked it for a bribe?"
"Absolutely not. We municipal workers have been entrusted with this work by Her Majesty Dorothea herself. We would never commit such injustices."
YOU ARE READING
I'm In Love With The Villainess Volume 4
Narrativa StoricaSame as the volume 3 reason I'm doing this is so that people can read it offline and doesn't need internet.
