Europa Universalis 1867: Start by inheriting an armory

Mr. Nose looked at Richard's deathly pale face and asked, "What? Is the house haunted in broad daylight?"

Richard wiped away a bead of cold sweat and pointed into the house: "Go see for yourself."

Mr. Nose walked up the steps with his hands behind his back, stepped over the kicked-open door, and Richard followed behind him. Although his body didn't want to go up, his feet still disobeyed him and stepped onto the stairs.

The puddle of vomit was still in the hallway. Mr. Nose frowned, lifted his foot, and stepped over it.

He pushed open the door to the study.

A strong stench of decay hit him, and Mr. Nose reached into his pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and covered his mouth and nose.

He stood in the doorway, looking at the body hanging from the curtain rod, and shook his head. Richard didn't know why, but his eyes revealed disappointment.

"I've seen countless corpses on the battlefield." His voice was muffled. "Some were missing limbs, some were blown in two, but the most pathetic way to die was to hang oneself, and even then, no one cared."

Richard shifted his gaze from the deceased to the other things in the room. The documents on the desk were neatly stacked, and several pens sat next to the ink bottle.

There were no signs of a struggle, only a chair lying overturned next to the desk.

Richard glanced at the bent curtain rod, then at the deceased's build. Benjamin was somewhat overweight, his clothes buttoned tightly. How could a person like that hang from a curtain rod without it breaking?

He glanced at Benjamin's dangling feet, toes pointing downwards, soles still a distance from the ground, and the chair lying on the floor...

Wait a moment.

Something flashed through Richard's mind.

"How did he get up there?" he asked.

Mr. Nose, who was checking his desk drawers, turned around upon hearing this: "What? You've never seen suicide? Of course, it's done by standing on a chair..."

"Is that so?" Richard interrupted him, suppressing the nausea rising from the depths of his throat, and walked around the corpse, lifting the chair and placing it directly beneath the deceased.

Benjamin's toes were an elbow's distance from the chair, and even if his spine had been stretched a few inches after his death, he still couldn't reach the seat.

He moved the chair closer to the deceased, stood on it, and couldn't even reach the knot above his head.

He turned around and looked at Mr. Nose.

“He couldn’t have gotten up there himself,” Richard said definitively. “If he was committing suicide, why didn’t he choose a more suitable height? Did he jump up and stick his head into the knot?”

Mr. Nose walked over to the chair, examined the distance between the deceased's feet and the cushion, then looked up at the slightly bent brass curtain rod.

"You mean, he was hung up there after he died?"

"If that's the case, then it's not suicide."

The flies in the room were still buzzing around the two of them. Mr. Nose folded his handkerchief, put it back in his pocket, walked to the window, and drew back the curtains.

The afternoon sun streamed in, illuminating the lowered half of the deceased's face as he turned his head to look at the brackets fixed to the wall at both ends of the curtain rod.

The screws on the bracket were tightened securely, without any loosening or deformation.

“He has at least thirteen or fourteen bushels,” said Mr. Nose. “Such a man hangs on a copper pole, and the pole bends, but the support doesn’t loosen.”

"This means he didn't fall suddenly," Richard said, "but was pulled up little by little, most likely after he was already dead."

Mr. Nose nodded: "You need to call the police."

"Call the police? A customs officer, murdered and staged as suicide, Scotland Yard wouldn't utter a sound." Richard looked Mr. Nose in the eye. "Besides, he was bribed."

Richard deliberately emphasized the word "benefits" to test Mr. Nose's attitude.

"It's hardly a secret." His expression remained unchanged. "Everyone knows it, but you..."

He walked up to Richard with his hands behind his back, very close to him, as if inspecting a new recruit.

"Why did you come looking for him?" Mr. Nose asked. "There are so many customs officials, why did you choose to look for him? And just as you arrived, he died. What a coincidence!"

Richard knew this question would come sooner or later, and he needed an answer, one that sounded reasonable and one that Mr. Nose could hardly verify.

"You told me last time that Fennia's weapons were smuggled in from abroad," Richard replied calmly. "I was wondering, which port did those guns come from? Who signed the papers? Who gave them permission? If you follow that trail, you'll find the source."

Mr. Nose narrowed his eyes: "You mean I didn't do my job well?"

"Of course not, I'm investigating for myself." Richard didn't avoid his gaze. "Once this batch of guns enters London, whether or not the trouble goes through, none of the factories that hired the Irish will escape; they'll all be investigated."

He paused.

"So I need to know who put those guns in there, otherwise I won't feel at ease."

Mr. Nose stared at him for a few seconds, as if weighing Richard's words repeatedly and comparing them with the information in his mind.

"What vine did you follow?" he asked.

"I can't tell you that."

Why?

"Trade secrets," Richard glanced at the corpse hanging in mid-air, "but it seems I've come to the right place. There's someone who'd rather this gossip be exposed than I am."

Mr. Nose sighed; the stench of the corpse had gradually numbed his sense of smell.

He turned and walked towards the door, stepping over the half-dried vomit in the corridor again, glancing at it with disgust.

"Go report it to the police," he said. "I'll get Scotland Yard to focus on this case. It's not a suicide, it's murder. Someone will come looking for you, and you just tell them the truth."

"Can they believe it?"

"Whether they believe it or not is their business, but once you've called the police, the case is on record. And once it's on record, someone has to sign it and take responsibility." He walked to the stairwell, stopped, took a cigarette out of his pocket, and put it in his mouth.

"I have something to do." After saying that, he walked down the stairs without looking back. "Don't stay too long, or you'll throw up all over the place again and have to go downstairs to wash your face."

Footsteps gradually descended the stairs, followed by the sound of the first-floor door being pushed open.

Richard, facing the direction where Mr. Nose had disappeared, squeezed out a strange, odd tone.

"Then you'll throw up all over the place again, and have to go downstairs to wash your face." He rolled his eyes. "You'll just be covering yourself with a handkerchief anyway, won't you?"

Richard then circled the room twice more, repeatedly searching for valuable evidence, until he had almost gotten used to the fact that there was a dead body hanging in the room, but he found nothing.

There were two newspapers under the customs declaration form on the table: The Times and Bell London Life.

"Bell's London Life" is a horse racing newspaper filled with vulgar jokes and sports news. The cover features a scantily clad woman and several betting odds of dubious authenticity.

Although this newspaper was quite separate from The Times, horse racing was a fairly common pastime at the time, which may be why he got divorced? Richard didn't know.

The room was too tidy, so tidy that it didn't seem real, but rather like a temporary stage.

Richard had no choice but to go outside and call the police, hoping that the people Mr. Nose sent would be reliable.

And the next time they meet, Richard must ask him his name.