Chapter 73: Maid of the fairy tales

The maid clutched her throat, staring at Caroline in terror. After locking eyes with her furious gaze, she let out another sob, turned her head away, and said shakily, “The blood… the blood… I brought it… from—”

Suddenly, she pressed her hands tightly against her throat, as though struggling to breathe. Her face turned pale and her eyes bulged slightly.

Jing Qizhen’s expression shifted immediately. “Something’s wrong with her!”

Lu Lingxi and Gu Leshan reacted faster than anyone else.

Lu Lingxi tossed aside the notebook he had been holding and quickly propped the maid into a semi-seated position to help her breathe more easily.

Gu Leshan located the right spot and patted her back firmly. After a bout of instinctive, violent coughing, the maid finally caught her breath.

Only then did Lu Lingxi and Gu Leshan let out sighs of relief.

Old Xiao, frowning as he nervously observed the maid, remarked, “Those symptoms… they resembled sudden respiratory failure.”

Angelina added, “When someone is extremely tense or panicked, their emotions can cause abnormal physical reactions. It’s not unheard of and there are even cases of people dying from anger!”

But Jing Qizhen firmly denied, “That’s not it.”

He had noticed that the maid’s behavior had been odd from the start.

Honestly, Professor Jones, Caroline, and McCain all had difficult personalities and the housemaid had been stuck in the villa with them for seven days. With three deaths already, if she were going to break down emotionally, she would’ve done so long ago.

Moreover, regardless of where all that blood came from, the maid had been able to prepare the props Angelina needed to stage her disappearance right after being asked. That level of mental fortitude wasn’t something an ordinary person would have.

In contrast, Caroline, McCain, and the others, who were trapped in the villa and faced with the bizarre, relentless deaths of their companions, exhibited anxiety, irritability, and impulsive behavior. Their reactions were normal under the circumstances.

But the maid? She remained in a constant state of fear and unease from the beginning.

Her reaction wasn’t inherently wrong but as those around her grew more restless and aggressive, the maid’s persistent fear seemed less like a natural response and more like terror stemming from knowledge of something terrifying.

It was as if she knew something she wasn’t supposed to.

Jing Qizhen stared at the maid and suddenly asked, “Do you know something?”

The housemaid instinctively lifted her head to look at him. Her face, still pale and pained from her earlier struggle to breathe, carried a lifeless, ashen hue.

Caroline let out a short laugh, crossed her arms, and looked down at the maid. Speaking to Jing Qizhen, she said, “Isn’t it obvious?”

Jing Qizhen ignored Caroline’s provocation and instead asked the maid, “But you can’t say it, can you?”

The maid’s eyes widened in shock as she stared at Jing Qizhen in disbelief.

Professor Jones froze for a moment, then couldn’t help but ask, “What do you mean by that?”

Jing Qizhen responded calmly, “Exactly what I said.”

Lu Lingxi suddenly had a realization, letting out an ‘Ah’ and saying, “That explains it! Her earlier symptoms of being unable to breathe didn’t seem like a medical condition. It was more like someone was choking her.”

When people experience difficulty breathing, they instinctively try to tug at their collar, even if there’s nothing actually restricting their neck.

The Earth’s voice in Jing Qizhen’s mind suddenly chimed in, “Wait, what’s going on? I don’t get it.”

Jing Qizhen replied, “What part don’t you get?”

The Earth: “The maid! I just stepped out for a bit and caught Tang Song reviewing the profiles of those nine missing people. Lucky me!”

Jing Qizhen: “Oh?”

The Earth: “The other Ivy League students and professor are all wealthy, no surprise there. But as for the housemaid, her family background seems ordinary. However, she’s been in the housekeeping industry for many years and has excellent customer reviews.”

Jing Qizhen nodded. “Yes, although I’ve only interacted with her briefly, she does seem pretty reliable.”

It was evident from how she helped Angelina stage the bloody disappearance scene. Despite knowing all the details, the housemaid hadn’t leaked a word.

While the source of the blood remained a mystery, Angelina hadn’t ended up sabotaging herself during her performance. If the maid were the culprit, she could’ve easily used the situation to frame Angelina disastrously.

From that perspective, Jing Qizhen leaned toward believing the housemaid was relatively harmless.

As for the inconsistencies in her behavior, there could be other explanations. After all, in an erosion area, anything could happen.

The Earth circled back to the topic. “So, what’s up with the maid? I was starting to think she might be possessed or something! And we still don’t know where the blood came from.”

Jing Qizhen patiently explained, “You need to think about this with fairy tale logic, not reality. To me, the maid seems more like someone who knows everything but is unable to speak about it.”

At that point, Joyce had stopped looking at the stack of A4-printed documents and his gaze shifted between the maid, his cousin, and Jing Qizhen.

He wasn’t the only one observing, though. Joyce also noticed that among everyone present, only Yun Shuanghua remained completely unbothered, sitting on the sofa next to Jing Qizhen’s seat. He continued to read through his document line by line with utmost focus.

This guy’s composure is unreal!

Joyce couldn’t help but feel a sense of admiration.

Angelina carefully recalled her interactions with the housemaid and suddenly remembered something. She blurted out, “I remember the night before Williams died, he was acting very anxious and uneasy. He kept trying to avoid all of us. At the time, I wanted to talk to him but when I reached the staircase, you happened to block my way.”

By now, the maid had caught her breath but without Lu Lingxi and Gu Leshan’s help, she had slumped weakly back onto the ground, facing the scrutinizing gazes of everyone around her.

Hearing this, Caroline suddenly asked, “What time was that?”

Angelina replied, “The night before Williams’ accident.”

Caroline’s sharp gaze once again focused on the maid. “When David is at home, he usually enjoys peace and quiet in the evenings. Unless there’s a party, of course. Normally, after clearing the dinner dishes, shouldn’t you have gone back to your room to quietly enjoy the calm?”

Unlike those like Angelina, Professor Jones, Joyce, McCain, or even the now-deceased Sophia, Sean, and Williams, who were guests at David’s party and only somewhat familiar with him, Caroline was different. She was close friends with David and was familiar enough to have helped plan the party menu and to know both his daily habits and the maid’s work routine in his household.

Even during the seven days they were trapped in the villa, despite the dire circumstances, Caroline still treated the maid’s services as a given. The maid, aware of Caroline’s temper, seemed to gravitate toward her for safety, not just because they were both women, but also due to her prior familiarity with Caroline.

Caroline might be temperamental, a bit spoiled, and prone to grabbing collars and shouting in emotional outbursts but at least she wasn’t the type to suddenly pull out a gun and start shooting.

Caroline continued, “During these seven days, especially in the later part when we all stayed together for safety, you seemed to be wandering around the villa during the earlier days when everyone else was in their rooms.”

Joyce exclaimed, “I thought she was cleaning the house! That’s her job, isn’t it?”

Caroline firmly retorted, “With David’s routine, her work usually ends after dinner.”

It was all thanks to Jing Qizhen’s presence. His domineering and irrefutable attitude had drawn much of the group’s hostility toward him, forcing the once-disparate factions involving Caroline and the others, to form a reluctant alliance and communicate more peacefully.

Caroline, Angelina, and the others had good memories. Once everyone calmed down and pieced their recollections together, they managed to reconstruct the maid’s movements over the past few days.

Angelina’s staged disappearance had caused some unease but since she vanished, no more murders had occurred. From that perspective, her actions that were motivated by self-preservation had brought a sense of tentative relief.

McCain suddenly said, “The night before Williams’ accident, the maid mentioned that the pipes seemed clogged.”

Manman rested her chin on her hand. “Was that her way of hinting for you upstairs not to use the water?”

Jing Qizhen added, “Williams died in the bathtub.”

Angelina looked at the maid. After sorting through the events of the past few days, she was stunned. Running her fingers through her hair, she said in disbelief, “So, you actually knew something was going to happen to each victim beforehand!? That’s why you were so anxious and uneasy, and even tried to warn them?”

Caroline couldn’t help but wave her arms in frustration. “This is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous! My God!”

Manman glanced at Jing Qizhen, deliberately softening her tone to tease, “So she really know but can’t say anything. What do you think about this?”

Jing Qizhen pondered for a moment before responding bluntly, “She’s like the Little Mermaid who turned into a human but couldn’t speak. When I was a kid, I never understood. If she couldn’t talk, couldn’t she write? Even if they didn’t share a common language, couldn’t she point toward the sea and mimic someone being pulled into the water?”

Caroline, annoyed, interjected, “Because, in the version of the fairy tale I read, the prince had to marry the princess, not a mermaid!”

Wilcox muttered under his breath, “This reminds me of ‘Turandot,’ forcing a happy ending between the princess and prince was just absurd…” |1.1|

Jing Qizhen blinked. “But the Little Mermaid is also a princess!”

Caroline glared at him. “Have you even read the story properly? The prince liked the princess from the start. The Little Mermaid only looked similar to the princess, so the prince treated her as a stand-in. A stand-in, do you understand?”

At the mention of the word ‘stand-in,’ Yun Shuanghua, who had been engrossed in reading printed documents, paused momentarily.

Jing Qizhen raised his chin slightly and met Caroline’s gaze, answering earnestly, “…Sorry. 0.0 The version I read was simplified.”

Caroline snorted, “Ha! So what are you trying to say?”

Jing Qizhen replied, “I’m just saying that in many fairy tales, although queens, princes, and princesses seem willing to do a lot themselves, they probably had servants, right? Servants who might know all the secrets but couldn’t speak of them.”

Everyone: “…”

The next moment, all eyes turned once again to the maid, who was still slumped on the ground.

Manman’s face lit up with realization. “The maid is playing the Maid’s role in the script?”

In many fairy tales, while maids weren’t explicitly mentioned, their existence was implied by the setting. If several fairy tales had been merged together, the presence of a maid was natural. If the maid had followed specific instructions and had knowledge of the stories, she might have been able to predict everyone’s circumstances.

Angelina tugged at her hair and suddenly said, “On the first day, before Sophia was poisoned, you weren’t particularly anxious because in ‘Snow White’, eating a poisoned apple only leads to a coma! But later, when Sophia actually died, that’s when you started becoming extremely worried about Sean and Williams!”

Bonus chapter!😋