It took more than a minute for Bieber-Virion to react. He first glanced at the door casually, saw no one, and then glanced across.
This sweep frightened him completely.
His eyes were dull, his glasses slipped down, he stared at the person who came, his lips slightly parted, and he let out a restrained scream in the tone of a drowning person calling for help: "Aisun... Hitzfeld!?"
"You know me?" Hitzfeld was a little surprised.
She was quite famous, and it was normal for Wilhelm to have heard of her name if he had the opportunity to come into contact with upper circles. However, there was a difference between "heard of" and "knowing". She did not expect that Wilhelm would recognize her at first sight.
"Wait a minute!" The man quickly put down the newspaper and jumped to the door like an agile monkey.
He opened the door and looked around to make sure there were no policemen waiting outside. He immediately came back and locked the door, almost collapsing.
"Do you know me?" Hitzfeld didn't move, just turned slightly towards him and asked the same question again.
"I know you..." Verlaine exhaled, and said with a hint of sarcasm: "Who doesn't know you? Maybe those country bumpkins will think you are great, but we all know that being associated with you will bring misfortune."
"If there is nothing wrong with you, I can't curse anyone." Hitzfeld said seriously.
Then she asked Verlaine: "I am more curious about who is afraid of a detective."
"I'm not afraid of you!" Wilhelm snorted, "I just don't want to get into trouble... Was it that bastard who hired you?"
"If you're talking about a man who is about 180 centimeters tall, with semi-long black curly hair, pale skin, and a slightly melancholic temperament, then he did hire me."
"I knew it!" Wilhelm curled his lips, "It's that guy who's harassing Weiss... I've told him many times to mind his own business. Just name your price!"
"A price?"
Verlaine was even reaching into his wallet: "This is the price for you to ignore this matter or just do it half-heartedly..."
"What if the bastard you're talking about is called Tenet."
"Ternez?" Verlaine was stunned. "Which Tenez?"
"The first one you thought of."
The wallet fell to the ground with a thud, and Wilhelm gradually returned to his panicked, terrified, and confused state. He pinched his few strands of hair with both hands and screamed at the girl, "You are kidding me, are you?"
"Why would I come here to play this joke on you?"
"No...but--" Verlaine walked back and forth in front of her, and suddenly stopped to look at her: "But why?? Why is Tenize???"
"Since you can recognize me, you must have seen my portrait in someone's possession." Hitzfeld said calmly, "If you have any contact with those people, you must be aware of His Royal Highness's character."
It took Verlaine some time to accept the horrible fact that "that bastard was actually His Royal Highness the Prince."
He completely understood why this seemingly trivial matter attracted the attention of this famous detective.
At the same time, I began to feel scared—could it be that Vespa-Bakinsa was really missing?
"I don't know!" He immediately wanted to distance himself from the matter. "I can swear to you on my faith, under the statue of the goddess! I don't know where she went!"
"Speak slowly."
Hitzfeld took out a notebook and pen and began to take notes.
"Your Highness should have come to see you before?"
"Yes, just this morning, we had a show, and he went straight to the back of the theater, but--"
"He asked you where Ves was, what did you say?"
"Of course I said I didn't know!" Verlaine cried. "She was performing with us this morning! An opening... I had just said goodbye to her and he came to ask me, but why should I care about someone I had just seen a few minutes ago?"
"Did you give the crew a day off?"
"Yes! We have half a day off after every performance, so I can't control where she goes."
"You don't care if we go to Mingying Street."
"Weiss is not that kind of girl!" Verlaine's face darkened. "When you meet her, you will know why I say that... She is very different from ordinary girls!"
"But I was told she had been out alone with men."
"That bastard—that Prince," said Verlaine. "I scolded her for it. I always tell them to be as clean as possible. That was one of the few times she was willful."
"But I may have misjudged her," he added quickly. "A prince...she has better vision than I thought."
So your purpose of asking girls to keep themselves clean is actually to help them catch bigger fish?
Hitzfeld glanced at him and said nothing more.
She asked Verlaine a lot of questions to make sure he really didn't know where Ves-Bakinsa had gone. Then she put away her notebook and pen and said to him in a low, calm tone: "You'd better call your people now."
"If they don't know where Miss Bakinsa is, then she must be missing."
Chapter 23 Where Ves-Bakinsa Goes Part 2
Hitzfeld didn't actually take the case too seriously at first.
After all, she is - right?
After all, she had dealt with evil gods several times. She had saved the country several times and made outstanding contributions to human civilization. If it was a murder case or a case related to evil spirits, it would be easy to talk about, but helping an unruly prince find a woman, she was too ashamed to talk about it.
The disguise was simply to eliminate a certain possibility: if Miss Baginsa was lying in the bed of a powerful official at this moment, and that powerful official happened to be paying special attention to a detective named Hitzfeld because of the recent beheading spree, then if she went straight to Mermaid Avenue without dressing up, after the other party got the news, there was a certain possibility that he would kill Baginsa in order to get out of the trouble involving the prince.
She hadn't thought that Ves-Bakinsa would actually disappear.
And it was such a strange disappearance.
Two hours later, several leaders of the Lianxianghua Troupe had gathered in Verlaine's office. They were the trainer Mrs. Koning, the training class director Evans, and the troupe's dormitory head, Ms. Bailey.
Mrs. Corning was a serious old woman. Her demeanor and temperament reminded Hitzfeld of Mrs. Griet, but not as profound as Mrs. Griet.
Her job is to train the girls' singing and dancing skills. If anyone's dancing skills are not good enough, they will be whipped. She is an extremely strict person.
Evans, the training class director, is the only man among the three. He is thin and a little hunchbacked. He always holds a cup in his hand and smiles at everyone. According to Verlon, his job is to integrate several departments of the training class and assist him in managing financial expenditures.
The troupe's dormitory head, Ms. Bailey, was an extremely fat woman who looked to be around 40 years old. She looked like a mountain of flesh. Hitzfeld could smell a strong, strange odor of perfume even from a few meters away.
“…That’s basically them.”
After Verlaine introduced everyone, he sat back down and said, "I can't help you, Detective. I hope you can learn something."
His voice sounded very weak, because he had asked about this on the phone two hours ago - no one, whether Mrs. Corning, Evans or Ms. Bailey, knew where the troupe's top star had gone.
"Didn't he come to ask you this morning?" Hitzfeld looked at him.
"Yes... but I thought he was here to harass Vess again." Verlaine shook his head, "Who would care about him? Sorry... I didn't know he was a prince at the time."
"You have seen mine, but you have not seen the prince's portrait. You are in interesting company, Monsieur Verlaine."
"I... this... I think I have legal freedom in who I associate with!"
"Don't get excited. I don't mean to pursue you."
Hitzfeld put Verlaine's social circle behind him for the moment and began to sort out all the information he had learned so far.
Simply put, the entire Lianxianghua Troupe didn't take Weiss's disappearance seriously until she came.
Verlaine thought she was at Ms. Bailey's.
Ms. Bailey thought she was at Mrs. Corning's.
Mrs. Cornyn said she had seen her and Mr. Evans go out the back door of the theater side by side.
But Mr. Evans said she was just walking him out, and soon she turned back to look for Ms. Bailey.
These people each had their own opinion and all thought that Weiss was with a colleague after they separated.
Teni asked almost the same questions when he came in the morning. He was obviously aware of the seriousness of the problem, but he had a major omission - he did not inform the troupe of his thoughts or guesses.
This caused the troupe to realize at this moment that their top star might have suddenly disappeared. The severity of this incident was far beyond what they could bear, and several people looked solemn and a little dazed like Verlaine.
The main thing is that I don’t understand - why?
She is a good girl. Although Lianxianghua is not a big theater troupe and they are indeed training a successor after the failed investment in her last year, she can at least still be the top star for half a year and have an unshakable core position during this half year.
She didn't even owe him the income, not to mention that she had hooked up with a prince? And their relationship had progressed to the point where... His Royal Highness would come to the troupe in person to look for her?
Isn’t this a fantastic development?
Even if she doesn't want to do it anymore, she can just spend some time with this man who is obviously rich and noble. Even if they break up in the end, she can still get a considerable compensation. Which girl would disappear at this time?
"Going back home" is not an option at this time.
"Let's go to the theater," Hitzfeld decided. "It's tiring to just talk about it. We need to rehearse what happened this morning."
The group arrived at the Mermaid Theater in a mighty procession. Because they entered through the side door, they did not alarm the guard Brian.
The theater owner was of course not there, so the girl explained the situation to the temporary person in charge and almost scared him to death.
A prince!
Even though Teni Ze has the worst reputation... he is still a prince after all. He is just a small person in charge. If something really goes wrong, the boss will undoubtedly throw him out to take the blame.
So he cooperated very well with Hitzfeld, and after calling his boss for instructions, he directly stopped the operation of the theater, giving the other theater companies and audiences the reason that it was a fire drill and that they would probably have to wait an extra 20 minutes.
“Will 20 minutes be enough?”
Verlaine had been observing Hitzfeld all the way, looking skeptical.
"That's enough." Hitzfeld ignored him and kept moving around the backstage of the theater, checking every room.
"If there is no conclusion in 20 minutes, there won't be one in another two months."
Verlaine wondered why she was so confident, but before he could voice his doubts, Hitzfeld began to direct them.
"Now, you treat me as Miss Bakinsa."
"Take you?"
"Yes, put me...just assume that I am her, starting from the stage - should I stand in this position?"
"A little to the left."
"These details don't matter... as long as you make sure she was here and could be seen by others."
"That's exactly what happened. She was singing on the stage at the time."
"Are you alone?"
"one person."
"So all eyes were on her, and she couldn't slip out during her exit?"
"You're kidding, Miss Hitzfeld."
They chatted on stage for a while, and then Hitzfeld went backstage with them.
“And then she came back here.”
"Yes, we were all watching her."
"She talked to Mr. Verlaine first, like this... What did we talk about?"
"I asked her to relax a little." Weilun was a little uncomfortable with the girl's imitation and said stiffly, "She has excellent talent. Her appearance and voice are fine, but she just... can't relax enough. This makes it difficult for her to become a real famous voice."
"How long have you been discussing this?"
"About a minute? That's a lot to say, and I'm too lazy to mention it."
"Who did she go to then?"
"It should be Mrs. Corning. She wants to help her remove her makeup."
"What did Mrs. Corning say?"
"I did help her remove her makeup," the lady said, "and I talked to her about this issue, and then I asked her...if she was in love, because when she looked in the mirror, she noticed that the corners of her mouth were always smiling."
"Do you think she's in love?"
"I've been doing this for many years, Miss Hitzfeld. I think no one knows better than me what brings a smile to a girl's face."
"How did she answer?"
"She said 'yeah, that's right' but in a joking tone."
"Is she emotionally different from usual?"
"That in itself is quite different, she's a bit more lively than usual - she's usually quite dull."
"And then you separated?"
"She went to see Evans, and he wanted to test her on how to memorize her lines."
