Chapter 94: Castle Cry (XXI)

{cw: discussion of miscarriage and infanticide}

Just when Qi Leren was caught in a personal tangle, Dr. Lu and Su He had already discussed Miao Bo’s body, and concluded that he probably hadn’t died in an accident but was instead killed by Luo Xueyi, but they couldn’t be 100% sure because there were no witnesses.

“It’s time to meet Miss Nina here,” Su He said, looking at the hidden door.

Qi Leren stepped up and stood outside the door again, knocking on the door and asking, “Nina, are you in there?”

There was a silence behind the door, and a trembling voice sounded: “I am.. I feel that my mistress’s strength has begun to weaken, but there is a more terrible force still hovering here. Have you killed her?”

“Yes, I have been to the basement, and she is dead now,” Qi Leren said.

“No! She’s not dead! She’s still here! ” Nina’s voice suddenly became sharp and full of fear. “I can feel it.. Her crazy resentment is still here.. Even more terrible than ever!”

“What do you know? For example, about her transaction with the devil,” Qi Leren asked again.

Behind the door, Nina replied weakly: “I don’t know.. I don’t know anything..”

Qi Leren looked back at Su He, unsure what to do. Su He mouthed “open the door”.

“Nina, I want to open the door. Let’s talk face to face,” Qi Leren said, clutching the dagger with one hand and reaching for the lock.

“No, no, no! Don’t open the door! I beg you, don’t.. Don’t open the door!” Nina cried and cried out, but this time Qi Leren hardened his heart, undid the lock and pushed the broken door open.

Moonlight covered the room in this world, and Nina stood under the mounted goat head, tightly burying her face in hands and sobbing.

Qi Leren walked into the room step by step: “We already know what happened in those days, and we also know that you died at the hands of the crazy lady. Even so, you still hope that we can save her. You’re a very kind girl.”

Nina’s crying stopped, and her hands, covering her face, slowly came down, revealing a bloody death mask. She shook her head and said hoarsely, “No, I am sorry for my mistress.. I owe her.. If I had obeyed, my mistress wouldn’t have become pregnant or gone crazy. It’s my fault. Everything is my fault.”

“Then tell us everything, and then we can let her rest in peace properly,” Qi Leren said to her.

“Alright.. You must also promise me that you must save her soul from the Devil’s hand and let her rest in peace,” Nina sobbed.

“I will try my best.” Qi Leren solemnly nodded his head.

Nina smiled. Her dead soul looked so terrifying, but it was very gentle.

“Things began many years ago.. The Mrs.’s family has a hereditary mental illness, and almost always have gone crazy after giving birth. The Master didn’t want children, so he asked the doctor for advice, and the doctor gave him a medicine. The Master asked me to put a certain amount of it into his wife’s food every day, and I had always done so. Until one day.. I discovered it was mercury powder.

"I heard that it was a poisonous thing, and I was afraid. I thought the Master didn’t know what it was, so I told him, but he insisted that as long as the dosage was small, it wouldn’t harm his wife’s health. I doubt it, because my mistress often complained to me that she had a headache, and whenever she combed her hair some would always fall out. I didn’t dare to disobey my Master’s order, and I was afraid of endangering my mistress’s health, so I took the initiative and reduced the dose.. Soon after, my mistress became pregnant.

"I confessed this matter to my Master, who beat me, locked me in this room, and ordered someone to install a lock. He no longer trusted me, and instead let another maid continue to put mercury powder into his wife’s diet. Soon after, Dr. Flajser came, and I overheard him talking with the Master. He said that the Mrs. was pregnant, and taking the mercury powder would not cause miscarriage, but that the fetus would be deformed. The Master said it didn’t matter. The newborn baby would be so fragile that it would be easy to kill. At that time, I realized that he was not worried that his wife would go crazy. He just didn’t want an heir who would go crazy.

"Later, I learned that the Master has always had an illegitimate child, but his wife never knew it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want children, he just didn’t want a defective child,” Nina said sadly.

With Nina’s narrative, the originally scattered clues were gradually connected in series. Qi Leren heard Dr. Lu say to himself: “It turns out that the contraceptive agent is a heavy metal.. No wonder..”

“At that time, I was at a loss. I don’t know if I should tell my mistress all this. She loved her husband so much and looked forward to the birth of her child. If she gave birth to a deformed baby and the baby died, she would go crazy. I feel like I must have been persuaded by the Devil. I even thought that this child must not be born. He would not become the hope of my mistress, but he would instead drive her crazy. So.. I did something unforgivable.”

Qi Leren remembered the last time he came here, Dr. Lu asked Nina how Mrs. Sarah miscarried. Nina was silent for a long time and told them that she had fallen down the stairs. Now he knew how she fell down..

“I moved a little on the stairs. When my mistress was going up the stairs, she fell. She fell down the stairs and shed a lot of blood.. When she woke up, her child was gone. I cleaned up the traces, so no one knew that this was not an accident, and even my mistress did not doubt me.. After that, she gradually became wrong, and she was suspicious of everything. She felt that she was being haunted by a ghost. She began to go crazy and became unreasonable.”

Nina looked at them sadly and murmured, “I am a murderer. I have committed a crime. If I didn’t reduce the dose, my mistress wouldn’t have become pregnant. If I didn’t do that, my mistress wouldn’t have gone crazy. Everything is my fault. It’s my fault..”

“That’s why you volunteered to be her sacrifice,” Qi Leren said.

Nina showed a tearful smile: “I owed her, and I wanted to make it up to her. I secretly released her from the cellar that day. She was as happy as a child even without an eye and blood in her eyes. I hadn’t seen her smile so happily for a long time, just like before she was crazy. She happily went to find her husband, and I wanted to stop her, because once she found him, she would be sent back to the cellar, and I would be beaten by him. I advised her to leave here and go back to Germany, but she wouldn’t listen. She sneaked over to the Master’s study to give him a surprise.. Then she saw that the Master was looking sorrowfully at Adeline’s picture. I thought she would rush in and scream bloody murder at her husband, just like before, but she didn’t.

"She turned to me and took me to this room. Her expression was so cold and indifferent, and there was blood in her eye socket, but she didn’t seem to feel it. Clearly she was so angry, but she was so calm, I suddenly felt that she really was crazy at this time..”

“Who was Adeline? Did you know her?” Qi Leren asked again.

Nina nodded her head and whispered, “She was the lady’s personal maid. She grew up with my mistress since childhood, but she died many years ago.. because she ate the bread that the kitchen had made for my mistress, which contained peanut butter. She was allergic to this. When she was found, she had been dead in her room for more than half a day. I don’t sympathize with her at all. I found something wrong with the Master a long time ago. At that time, my mistress probably didn’t know it. When she died, my mistress was very sad and went to sweep her grave every year.. Before she went crazy, she was really a very gentle and kind person, but her maid betrayed her.”

Had she? Qi Leren didn’t refute her words, but according to the information revealed by the crazy lady’s phantom, Adeline died from the crazy lady’s deadly trap.

“The questions are almost clear. Do you have anything else to ask?” Qi Leren asked Dr. Lu and Su He.

When Dr. Lu turned his eyes, he remembered something and asked, “How much do you know about Dr. Flajser?”

“Dr. Flajser? He was a family doctor of my mistress’s family.. Later, he came to China and saved lives everywhere. He was a very knowledgeable doctor.” Nina spoke highly of Dr. Flajser. Although the tragedy of Mad Lady was related to the medicine prescribed by Dr. Flajser, she took all her mistakes on herself and didn’t think there was anything wrong with the doctor’s behavior.

“I’ve finished asking, too,” Dr. Lu said.

After thinking about it, Su He asked, “How many times did Dr. Flajser come to the castle after Mrs. Sarah’s miscarriage?”

“There should have been several times, but I can’t remember exactly..” Nina recalled.

“Did Mrs. Sarah take any medicine after that?” Su He asked again.

“I don’t know. Since I confessed to my Master, he gave it to another maid..”

“Lastly, how did the castle burn down?” Su He asked.

Nina shook her head and looked ahead with empty eyes: “I don’t know. At that time, I was dead.. My soul stayed here, watching my mistress draw the Devil’s totems in the room, watching her walk out of this door.. After that, there was a big fire here, and then it went out, and the traces of burning disappeared. Everything seemed to go back to the past, but no one ever opened this door until you arrived..”

Two lines of bloody tears flowed down from Nina’s eyes, and she cried, “I have committed an unforgivable crime. I would like to atone in purgatory, but what about my poor lady? Please let her unfortunate and lost soul rest in the arms of the Lord.”