As a family that believed in the Goddess of the Night, Seth's household had moonflowers blooming in the back garden. The scent was familiar to him, but despite searching every corner of the hut, he found no trace of the flowers.
Annabelle noticed something else.
"Look here," she said, pointing to a round wooden table, one of its legs teetering precariously.
Two cups sat on the table, and beside them, a small plate with three muffins. One of the muffins, with only a bite left, was carelessly on the edge of the plate.
Seth narrowed his eyes slightly. "Two cups—that means someone visited. The muffins are unfinished and not cleared away, which suggests that Arya's mother left in a hurry with the guest."
"I've checked the house. There are no signs of a struggle, and the windows are intact. Given the current situation, it's clear Arya's mother wasn't taken by force but left voluntarily with someone."
"The question now is, who was the guest?"
Annabelle gathered her hair and tucked it under her peaked cap. The girl then walked toward the wall and said,
"The neighbors should know."
They stepped through the blurry blue door and entered the corridor. Always quick to act, Annabelle knocked on the neighbor's door almost immediately.
A woman with a sallow complexion opened the door, her hands wet and the edges of her skirt damp—she had been doing laundry.
Annabelle cleared her throat and asked, "Hello, do you know Mrs. Guinness?"
"Guinness" was Arya's mother.
The woman with the sallow complexion responded coldly, "I don't know her."
Then, she slammed the door shut.
Annabelle huffed, "What's her problem?!"
Seth smiled and said, "Let me handle this. Communication requires a bit of finesse."
He removed his wallet, extracted a £1 note, and knocked on the door again.
The woman opened the door with a scowl. "I'm busy. Please don't bother me, or I'll call the police!"
Seth slipped the banknote into her hand and adjusted his top hat.
"It'll only take a moment of your time, ma'am."
Staring at the money, the woman was momentarily taken aback, then said, "What do you want to know?"
Before Seth could reply, Annabelle nudged him aside. The girl pointed to the adjacent house and asked, "Did anyone visit Mrs. Guinness recently?"
The woman poked her head out to glance at the house in question.
"Guinness hardly has any friends. She's usually alone, except when her daughter visits once or twice a month."
"However, someone did visit her a while ago—an old woman. I don't know her name, but she often gives speeches at Memorial Square."
An old lady giving speeches in Memorial Square? The image of Mrs. Paris's gloomy face suddenly flashed in Seth's mind. Was that woman visiting Arya's mother?
"Come on, let's go to Memorial Square."
At Memorial Square, they spotted the old woman named Paris again. She was giving another speech, surrounded by a crowd, primarily workers and homeless people.
Seth couldn't hear what Paris was saying, but the crowd occasionally joined in, bursting into applause, drawing curious glances from passersby.
Seth removed his top hat and coat, handing them and his cane to Annabelle. Blending in with the workers would make him less conspicuous.
"You wait here."
He entered the crowd alone, keeping his head down as he squeezed through until he was standing behind Paris.
Seth sniffed the air—there it was again, the scent of moonflowers, stronger now and emanating from Paris. This old lady was suspicious.
Seeing Paris not finish her speech soon, Seth led his sister to a corner of the square and shared what he had discovered.
"I think we should check her house," Seth suggested.
Annabelle nodded in agreement. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."
Seth coughed awkwardly. "But I don't know where she lives."
The girl was taken aback for a moment but quickly recovered.
"We can ask Old Cook. He knows everything about this town!"
When the time on Seth's pocket watch reached 11:23, the two siblings stood before a house surrounded by a low gravel wall, with moonflowers growing all around.
The house where Mrs. Paris lived alone was just beyond the flowers. It was a dilapidated, gloomy structure with a tall oak tree towering behind it, its canopy casting a shadow over the house.
Seth closed his pocket watch and said, "If we move fast, we should be back in town for lunch."
Annabelle rolled her eyes. "I can go in by myself."
"I'm not leaving you here alone."
Seth felt a sense of responsibility, as did her older brother. He walked along the fence toward the back of the house.
She spread her hands and asked, "Shouldn't we just go in?"
"No one sneaks into someone else's house from the front, my dear sister," Seth replied as he continued walking.
"Strange, didn't Old Cook say that Paris kept many cats and dogs? Where are they?"
"Maybe they're sleeping," Annabelle suggested as she followed behind.
They stood in the shade of the enormous oak tree when they reached the house. Seth took a few steps, quickly vaulted over the wall, and helped his sister.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and suddenly, something fell from the tree, landing with a snap at the siblings' feet.
She instinctively covered her mouth, stifling a scream.
Seth also gasped—it was a corpse, a cat's body. The cat's corpse was grotesquely swollen, with dark brown branches protruding from its stomach and anus.
Seth moved to the other side of the cat's body and found a branch sticking out of its mouth as if the cat had been impaled.
"Are the branches... still growing in the corpse?"
"Seth, look up," Annabelle whispered, her face pale.
Seth looked up into the tree's canopy and saw thick branches growing haphazardly. Corpses of cats and dogs were strung along those branches. His sharp eyes noticed young branches and leaves sprouting from the bodies.
When the wind blew, the branches swayed, gently swaying the dead bodies of the cats and dogs like the dreadful "fruits" of the oak.
Now he knew where Paris' cats and dogs had gone.
"How can she live in a place like this? There's something wrong with her, something very wrong!" Annabelle whispered.
Seth's smile faded. He turned to her and said thoughtfully, "Belle, stay here. Leave me and return to town for help if anything goes wrong."
She nodded slightly; she knew exactly what she should and shouldn't do.
Seth drew the snake-scale pistol from the holster under his arm, pointing the muzzle toward the ground to avoid accidental discharge. He walked cautiously under the canopy of the eerie oak tree and approached the back of Paris' house.
He waited to enter. Instead, he listened intently with his heightened senses and sniffed the air. Finding nothing unusual, Seth gently opened a window and slipped inside.