"Happy ending..."
Princess Margaret nodded slightly and looked at Shade in front of her:
"How can I thank you? Shade, you probably can't understand how much this means to me."
Shade wanted to bring up the idea of meeting Sir Prisha right away, but after thinking about it, he decided to finish this little matter first:
"Tell me first how to deal with Miss Brown. She is probably anxiously waiting for news. Let me make it clear that I will not kill anyone. Although she is a spy to you, to me, she is an excellent agent of my country... a defected agent."
Thinking about it this way, whether as an active ace agent of MI6 or as the gray-gloved ace spy "Grey Eagle", Shad had reasons to kill Miss Brown.
"What are you talking about? Who asked you to kill him?"
The princess shook her head slightly:
"If I had known about this a few years ago, I would have taught her a lesson. But now... she has defected from MI6, so she is no longer Carsonrick's enemy. Although she probably knows some things about MI6..."
"You don't want to punish her."
Xia De used an affirmative sentence, and the princess with long blond hair glanced at him:
"That's what you said, not me."
"So, for the next letter, do you want me to write it, or do you want me to write it yourself?"
For a moment, Shade felt that he really saw the princess smiling at him, but when he looked closely, it seemed to be an illusion:
"I'll write it myself, and I'll trouble you to deliver the letter to her."
She extended her hand to Shad, who held out his hand, allowing the princess to place her hand in his and stand up from the sofa.
Margaret of Anjou looked out at the silvery-white manor courtyard:
"Anyway, the guilt I've felt for the past eight years is finally gone..."
She asked Xiang Xiade softly:
"If I use bad language like a lady, will you tell others?"
Xia De looked at her suspiciously and scratched his ears:
"I'm sorry, what did you say? I didn't hear you."
The princess smiled and said through gritted teeth:
"Joa Niklaus, you bitch. You already have a fiancé, right? He will betray you sooner or later, just like you were disloyal to my family."
After she finished speaking, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The princess's "dirty words" were much more civilized than the slang that Shade had imagined.
She opened her eyes and looked at Shade:
"Knight, would you like to have lunch together?"
"Here?"
Although Shad had visited Canary Manor more than once, having lunch here with an exotic princess was no small matter.
"Yes, you've helped me so much, wouldn't it be too harsh if I kicked you out during lunch?"
As she spoke, she walked towards the door to inform the maid to prepare extra lunch, but there was a faint blush on her cheeks.
Coincidentally, Shad had been wondering whether he would see Miss Sylvia at the lunch table at Canary Manor, but the witch did not return until Princess Margaret and Shad had finished lunch together.
During the time, Xia De also inquired about Miss Sylvia's whereabouts today, and then unexpectedly learned from the princess who was tasting the dessert, which was a small cake decorated with strawberries, that Miss Sylvia had her own things to do.
"My math teacher also has his own life."
She poked the top of the strawberry with a fork:
"She has been receiving invitations from Duchess Carina quite often recently."
The princess of Carsenrick spoke Draerion, and the members of the royal families of both countries were fluent in both languages. When Carina Cavendish was mentioned, and the relationship between the detective and the Duchess was thought of, the witch princess felt a little uncomfortable:
"I'm going to tell you a secret, but don't tell anyone else."
She pretended to look around the restaurant cautiously, but in fact there were only two of her most trusted personal maids here, one of whom was a first-ring sorcerer:
"Miss Sylvia, I actually like pretty girls."
She was satisfied to see the conflicted expression on Xia De's face:
"Oh, detective, so you shouldn't get too involved with Miss Sylvia. My teacher's personality is... somewhat unique."
She actually wanted to protect Shade and prevent him from getting too close to the witch, but somehow the next sentence came out of her mouth:
"So you must keep an eye on your Duchess and don't let her be deceived by my teacher."
After lunch, Princess Margaret had other plans, and Shad went to deliver a letter. The two agreed to meet at Canary Manor in the evening.
So Xia De still set off in a carriage. He thought he would not encounter any trouble in delivering the reply letter this time. However, when he arrived at the door of the second-hand bookstore, he found that the neighbors were standing at the door and looking inside:
"What happened?"
He also mixed into the crowd and learned the truth from the discussion. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, a gunshot suddenly came from inside the second-hand bookstore, followed by a very dense burst of gunfire.
Just half a minute after a sound similar to that of a steam bomb explosion, a man covering his shoulder as if he had been shot escaped from the bookstore.
Soon after he left, a large number of police surrounded the place and took away Mr. Brown, the owner of the used bookstore, who had just returned from collecting debts and seemed unaware of what had happened. Neighbors who were familiar with the used bookstore noticed that Miss Bella Brown did not show up, and the police also set up a cordon at the door of the used bookstore and were searching inside the bookstore.
"Is there an incident of selling illegal guns here?"
Xia De first guessed this, but soon overturned his idea because he actually saw his boss, Director Anlos.
The middle-aged man did not see Shade, who was wearing a hat, in the crowd. He followed a group of policemen into the used bookstore and whispered something to his companions. It was a common defection case, so he, as the director, should not have to appear. It must be that the "grey-headed eagle" suspected to have appeared in the Princess bomb attack case not long ago made this gentleman smell something.
"Miss Bella Brown has been exposed. I just left and the MI6 people came. How could such a coincidence happen?"
It seems that the lady has not been caught yet. She had a gunfight with others in the bookstore. After forcing away the man with a shoulder injury who was suspected to be an MI6 agent, she fled in another direction.
Thinking of this, Xia De took a detour to the alley behind the bookstore, and indeed found that there were police here. But probably because there were not many clues here, the police simply blocked this place, which was not as strict as the front door.
Relying on the Red Butterfly Illusion, Shade quietly slipped into the alley and found bloody scratches on the wall behind the old bookstore. Later, he realized that it was not just a scratch, but Miss Brown was also injured in a gunfight.
While the police in the alley were not paying attention, he took out the red wine bottle, sucked the blood into the bottle to make blood wine, then used illusion to deceive the police again and left.
In a remote alley, he looked up and let the blood drip into his eyes. The magic of blood echo was activated. Because the blood was very fresh, when Shade returned to the alley where the incident happened, Miss Bella Brown's blushing figure appeared clearly in Shade's field of vision:
"She is indeed injured. Was she shot in the leg? Oh, it doesn't look like the bones are broken."
The injured former agent did not dare to enter the main road, but went into the nearby alleys and headed towards the north of Tobesk, away from Regent's Park. Shade followed the figure, passing through the alleys on this sunny winter afternoon, watching Miss Brown limping around.
She first used her key to open the door of an old apartment building in the eastern part of the city, treated her wounds in the house that seemed to be a safe house, took some daily necessities and money, changed her clothes, and then climbed out the window with difficulty to leave.
She even made a simple trigger-type steam bomb trap at the door using silk thread and gear mechanism. But Shade entered through the window, so it was not triggered at all. In order to protect his colleagues and possible thieves who might break in here, Shade was very considerate to dismantle those things.
After leaving the safe house, the injured Miss Brown walked around the area and then continued to head north until she entered the slums in the north of the city. The alleys here are so interconnected that even strangers with a good sense of direction can easily get lost.
Miss Bella Brown didn't know whether she was lost or simply wanted to confuse possible pursuers. After taking the wrong road three times, she finally entered a narrow street with a rusty metal street sign "Long Ear Lane". After opening the door of No. 7 Long Ear Lane with the key, a series of figures entered the house, but no one walked out from the surroundings:
"Hidden here?"
Long Ear Lane is an ordinary lane in the slums of northern Tobysk. Strictly speaking, it is not a slum, but a neighborhood where the poor people with a little money live. The streetscape here is well maintained, with towering houses lined up along the street. Although the snow is not swept in front of the houses, at least the streets are cleared to allow people to pass.
In order to avoid scaring Miss Brown, Shad did not knock on the door, but directly used the "door key" to open the door lock and enter the house.
Since no one lived there for many years, the house was cold and damp, and even more eerie in winter. Probably to save money, although Miss Brown rented the house, she did not pay the gas bill, so all the lights in the house were unusable. Entering the house was like entering a damp and cold coffin, and the atmosphere was extremely depressing.
Following Miss Brown's translucent red figure, Shad walked up the creaking wooden stairs all the way to the second floor. As soon as he turned into the corridor, someone pointed a gun at his forehead.
"Pointing a gun at me is not a good idea."
Shade said to the lady who looked very unwell. Although she did not recognize Shade with eye shadow at first, she recognized his calm tone.