"Ah, one more thing about the Duke of Lancaster’s invitation—the event spans three days. Make sure you pack enough formalwear."

  Yvette nodded dutifully. She knew the drill for high-society gatherings: never repeat outfits, or risk becoming the laughingstock.

  "...Also, there’s a masquerade on the second night. Greek mythology theme. You catch my drift?"

  "Understood, I’ll prepare—wait, what?!"

  She’d answered automatically, but Ulysses’s smirk made her freeze.

  Masquerades—those scandalous Italian imports—paired perfectly with Greek myths. The catch? The costumes: flimsy silks clinging to every curve, more suggestive than outright nudity.

  Impossible for someone like her, trussed up daily in a corset.

  "Can I... rescind my RSVP?" Forget salvaging the man’s reputation—his notoriety as a sycophantic foreigner was beyond repair anyway.

  "Denied," Ulysses said, eyes gleaming with mischief.

  "...Why must you torture me?"

  Apparently satisfied, he relented. "Fine. Go as King Midas—hood included. No one questions a man hiding donkey ears."

  Brilliant!

  In the myth, Midas’s foolish musical judgment earned him ass’s ears. Forced into perpetual hoods, his secret was eventually spilled by a talkative barber.

  Perfect cover to lurk in corners.

  "Off to the tailor, then!" Relieved, Yvette stabbed her fork into a soufflé—a Versailles invention designed to let gluttonous nobles feast without fullness.

  Ulysses narrowed his eyes. "Since when do we serve soufflés?"

  "Winslow spares you the sin of gluttony, given your idleness."

  "To be slighted in my own home! Perhaps I’ll dismiss this thieving butler—"

  Winslow entered with another soufflé. "Master Yves, should you wish, I’m happy to seek employment at Covent Garden."

  "...You’re reinstated," Ulysses muttered, seizing the dessert.

  Days later, the Labyrinth Society stood in dead banker Robert Ansorp’s study, studying the chalk outline.

  "Henry found him shot at 9 p.m.," sobbed widow Maggie. "I’d been out shopping, napped till evening—"

  "No servants noticed?"

  "Robert banned unsupervised access after a rival bribed a maid."

  The police report confirmed:

  Three visitors that day. Two subordinates left cleanly. Nephew Henry departed by 3 p.m.—verified by a neighbor who’d seen Robert alive at 4:30 p.m.

  Time of death: ~7 p.m., via Colt revolver (a merchant’s choice, not a noble’s). No witnesses.

  "Likely suicide," droned the sergeant. "Bankers have been jumping lately."

  Henry interrupted: "Or murder. My uncle’s ‘widow’"—he sneered—"was spotted canoodling with her lawyer on King’s Road when she claimed to be at a charity event. The Golden Rose Theatre fire? She supposedly attended—yet returned without a singed glove."

  Maggie flushed. "Coincidences! My friend can verify—"

  "Save it for the unborn child’s paternity test." Henry summoned his lawyer. "Seal the art and jewels before they... disappear."

  "A Locked-Room Murder."

  "A flawless alibi!"

  "Both had motive."

  The members of the Labyrinth Society whispered among themselves, their debate growing increasingly heated.

  "This reeks of a mechanical murder—the kind I despise," declared Dianthus, the detective novelist, his sharp eyes gleaming with conviction. "Both suspects knew the victim’s habits well enough to predict he’d be in his study at this hour. They could’ve rigged a delayed trigger—say, a rubber band frozen in ice that released when melted, or a thread tied to the door to fire the gun remotely. The proof? This photograph."

  He pointed to a close-up of the bullet wound in the victim’s temple, his tone dripping with certainty.

  "Left temple, hm? Already noted," sneered Oleander. "Inkwell on the desk’s right, writer’s callus on his right hand—he was right-handed. Why shoot himself with his left?"

  "No powder burns either," added Strychnine, tapping his meerschaum pipe. "A contact shot would’ve scorched the skin. This wasn’t suicide."

  The police officer gaped at them. "Gentlemen, which firm do you work for? How have such brilliant minds escaped my notice?"

  "We’re preoccupied with actual deduction," Dianthus snapped. "Spare us the pleasantries."

  Meanwhile, in the kitchen...

  Eddie, Yvette’s werewolf assistant, grunted as he hefted half a roast pig onto the table—a comical display, given his strength. Mr. Fisher (or rather, Miss Fisher, though he’d been told to keep up the charade) had insisted he "play human."

  Yvette loaded bullets into a revolver. "You’re sure Henry’s scent is on this gun?"

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "Positive," Eddie nodded. "He handled it often."

  Interesting.

  Henry had claimed he’d been too shocked to touch anything after finding his uncle’s body. Yet the gun bore his smell—a discrepancy, albeit not courtroom-proof.

  But Yvette had a better lead.

  She fired into the pig. Bang! A clean, slightly singed hole. Then, muffling the gun with cloth: pop! The muted sound resembled a champagne cork—and left no burns.

  Just like the victim’s wound.

  Carving open the pig, she examined the bullet. Sunlight revealed rifling marks—unique striations from the barrel’s grooves.

  Aha.

  The "evidence" gun was pristine; the fatal bullet’s rough grooves matched a neglected firearm. Two different guns.

  Upstairs, chaos reigned.

  "It has to be here!" Oleander wailed, upturning furniture.

  The officer sighed. "I’ve indulged this farce long enough—"

  "What’d I miss?" Yvette strolled in.

  "Mandala!" they cried in relief. "Find the murder device!"

  "What device?"

  "The one that proves it wasn’t a contact shot!"

  Yvette smirked. "There isn’t one."

  “How can there be nothing?! Did an invisible demon kill him?!” Oleander wore the bewildered look of a child who’d just been told Santa Claus wasn’t real.

  Maggie Ansorp didn’t bother hiding her disappointment anymore. She felt like a fool for expecting novelists to be of any practical help. They spun tales—they didn’t solve real-life mysteries.

  A policeman cleared his throat, choosing his words carefully to avoid offending the gentlemen present. "Gentlemen, reality rarely matches fiction. Perhaps Providence played a cruel joke—coincidences often defy logic. But at least we’ve confirmed Mr. Ansorp’s death as suicide, putting certain rumors to rest."

  Now that he mentioned it, the eccentric theories had seemed plausible at first. But upon closer inspection, they fell apart. The victim always carried his pistol—so how could someone have taken it, built a makeshift murder device in front of him, and escaped his notice without a normal man raising suspicion?

  It was like the old jest:

  How do you fit an elephant into a drawer?

  Open the drawer.

  Put the elephant in.

  Close the drawer.

  Simple in theory—utter nonsense in practice.

  “Then explain the lack of powder burns on his temple! And why shoot himself with his left hand?!” Arrow Poison Wood protested weakly, though even he seemed unsure of his own argument now.

  "Mere coincidence. The bullet may have had insufficient powder, dulling its heat. As for the left hand—perhaps he strained his right. Muscle pain, tendinitis... Who knows?"

  "Those explanations only hold if this pistol was the murder weapon," Yvette remarked at last, having spent the last while silently inspecting the revolver.

  The officer turned to the slender youth who’d just reappeared—now regarded with reverence by the room’s eccentrics.

  "Proof?" he asked. "We found no other weapon, and the bullet matches this gun’s caliber."

  "It begins with this gun’s origin." Yvette spun the cylinder, its mechanisms grating compared to her own finely-tuned weapon. "Notice its simpler, sturdier frame—this is a Federal design. Ours are master-crafted, but theirs are mass-produced, built for utility."

  The French adored duels—their pistols, their protocol. And before she'd ever stepped into London’s ballrooms, she’d learned firearms inside and out.

  "Federal manufacturers don’t craft guns—they manufacture them. Every part interchangeable. If a barrel fails, you simply slot in another. A revolutionary concept for a lawless land where reliability matters more than artistry."

  "In 1819, an engineer at Harper’s Ferry Armory designed breechloaders with standardized parts—identical guns, identical mechanisms. Then Colt followed. They made a thousand ‘Walker’ revolvers for the military—then a hundred civilian models, numbered 1000 to 1100. This one is 1045."

  Her voice carried none of a scholar’s pomp—just quiet certainty, unshakable as bedrock.

  "Brilliant, Yves! Utterly brilliant!" Oleander crowed.

  The officer blinked. "Then another ‘Walker’ could’ve fired the shot?"

  "Why don’t we ask Mr. Henry Ansorp?" Yvette’s gaze sharpened. "I hear you own one."

  "I—what? I might’ve, years ago. Can’t recall where I put it—" Henry’s voice wavered. He didn’t know how she knew, but her detail—the numbering, the maker—went beyond his own knowledge.

  A bluff. And it worked.

  "The box you carried out that day—was that in it?!" Oleander gasped.

  The officer shook his head. "We searched it. Only photography tools inside."

  "Then the household stands accused!" Nux Vomica thundered. "Someone smuggled in a Federal gun, shot him at seven, and staged the scene!"

  "No," said Yvette. "By seven, the room was empty. He died hours earlier."

  The officer frowned. "The coroner placed death around five. Rigor mortis begins at two hours—"

  "Not always." Her voice cut through. **"Stronger men stiffen slower—sometimes seven or eight hours. Mr. Ansorp was robust.

  Albion in this era was a place where death loomed at every corner. Filthy air, polluted water, and squalid living conditions bred diseases like cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis—ailments that would baffle future generations with better hygiene. Fewer than half of all children lived to see their fifth birthday, and even youths often dropped dead without warning. Noble families weren’t spared either—while each king ennobled dozens, the peerage count hovered around five hundred, their lines extinguished as swiftly as commoners’. Despite couples bearing five children on average, London’s population grew not by birth but by sucking in villagers like a voracious beast, its streets littered with nameless casualties.

  Londoners, hardened by loss, developed a morbid fascination. Serpent motifs adorned their belongings, symbolizing the cycle of death and rebirth. They devoured tales of murders, public hangings, and grotesque anatomical displays. Lockets cradled strands of hair from the departed; post-mortem photographs preserved loved ones’ final moments in eerie stillness.

  The crowd present, mostly London-born, understood this grim culture—and thus immediately grasped Henry Ansorpe’s macabre artistry. As a photographer, he’d have used hidden metal armatures to pose his uncle’s corpse: braces to stiffen the back, clamps to lock limbs. A lifeless body could then "stand" obediently before the lens.

  "Hands where I can see them—slowly!" The constable’s revolver gleamed as he advanced on Henry.

  Henry paled. Unarmed and outnumbered—with even Toxifer and Nerium aiming their ornate pistols—he stood no chance. Unless he could outdraw a Wild West legend, any move would be suicide. And with Yvette three paces away, his gun would likely "misfire" anyway.

  Defeated, he obeyed.

  "What about the odd bullet wound?" voices clamored once he was restrained. "A long-range shot, or—?"

  "He silenced the gun with fabric," Yvette interjected, waving the murder weapon. "I tested it—muffled, it sounds no louder than a champagne pop. Right, Henry?"

  "A scarf," he rasped, confessing in broken whispers.

  At three that afternoon, he’d shot his uncle with his own "Walker" revolver—a twin to Robert’s, bought years ago from a shop boasting interchangeable parts. Bitter over his uncle’s unborn heir (and the wife’s infidelity, which Robert ignored), Henry had posed the corpse by the window, counting on the neighbor’s piano lesson for an alibi.

  He’d killed the fire, too. Years photographing corpses taught him rigormortis timelines—Robert’s study, servant-free, and his wife’s affair bought enough leeway to return later, remove the supports, and feign shock at the "fresh" death.

  "God above!" Nerium gaped. "Did an angel whisper this to you?"

  Not an angel, Yvette mused, producing two bullets. One, dug from Robert’s skull; another, test-fired from his gun.

  "See the rifling? Robert’s gun left crisp grooves—barely used. The killer’s? Ragged, degraded from frequent firing. Henry didn’t use his uncle’s pristine pistol—he used his own."

  Cries of awe erupted. "A genius!" "The Chevalier incarnate!"

  Henry wept in a heap. Maggie swooned into the constable’s arms, revived by salts. "A Frenchman!" she gasped suddenly. "You’re Faulkner’s Chevalier—the detective from the novels!"

  As the room dissolved into chaos, Yvette resisted the urge to roll her eyes.