Chapter 274: The Great Philanthropist

Richard opened the stack of papers inside the oil-paper wrapping. They had been hand-copied by Old Biggs.

The handwriting was tiny, crammed end-to-end on a single small sheet of official letterhead.

It contained an excerpt from the unidentified corpse registry and a hand-drawn map of Briston's North District.

The canal and the small river known as the Black Trench were drawn in meticulous detail.

Thirteen red dots marked the course of the waterways, each accompanied by a date and a number.

There was also an intake and output ledger for the Mutual Aid Funeral Society.

It listed where the deceased were collected, where they were buried, the names of the handlers, and the fees charged—most of which were marked "waived."

The final page was an analytical report written by Old Biggs himself. Its title read: "Selection Patterns."

Richard turned the pages one by one.

[Erudition] had already logged every page into his mind, down to the exact punctuation.

Mrs. MacNeil stood motionless at the other end of the table, gripping a scalpel.

"You knew what he was doing," Richard said.

"I knew he was looking into the unidentified corpses in the North District." Mrs. MacNeil set the scalpel back into the enamel tray.

"He mentioned it to me two years ago—that the number of registered corpses in the North District was rising. I didn't take it seriously back then."

"And then?"

"Then came that night at the Unresponsive Pit in the Western Suburbs, when you and I saw the Chief Responder's corpse down there."

She wiped a drop of water from the rim of the enamel tray.

"From that night on, I knew what Bigelow was investigating wasn't simple."

Richard clenched the Copper Penny tightly in his palm.

"Teacher performed a divination for Bigelow a long time ago."

Mrs. MacNeil let out a faint sigh.

"[The Hermit - Upright]. Tearing the lantern from one's own chest to place it elsewhere."

"[The Hanged Man - Upright]. Slipping one's own foot into the noose to willingly hang upside down."

"[Judgement - Upright]. The dead speaking for themselves. He wanted to make himself speak, to turn himself into evidence."

"He studied under Teacher for over a decade. He failed his Spirit Vision exams, his divination accuracy was subpar, and he could only identify seals, not set them."

"Teacher arranged for him to work as a coroner at the Branch Office, just to give him a way to feed himself."

"For fifteen years, he was the most inconspicuous of her students. If he went out and declared, 'I am Madam Marie's student,' people wouldn't even laugh, because hardly anyone knew who he was."

"But over those fifteen years..." She paused.

"He counted corpses."

"Every single unidentified body carried in from the North District passed through his hands."

"Which year saw an increase and by how many, which month the spike happened, which street they died on... the big shots in the Imperial Capital couldn't see these things. Professor Mortimer sweeps his gaze from the top down, looking at the structure of the entire web. Wentworth stabs from the outside in, targeting the anchor points that have already surfaced."

"But what about the ones that haven't surfaced? The unidentified corpses who died quietly by the drainage ditches, in rented rooms, in the corners of factories?"

"What Bigelow faced every day were the dead to whom the entire system was blind."

"Professor Mortimer looked down from a high vantage point; he cleared away a few dozen threads and then left. The skeleton of that web, those anchors and nodes hidden beneath the city... viewed from above, mixed into the daily death statistics of hundreds of thousands of people, they were nothing but noise."

Richard closed his eyes.

"A diviner is a detective."

When he uttered those words, his voice was completely hoarse.

"The final piece of evidence a detective hands over in this life... is his own death."

Richard laid the materials from the oil-paper wrapping out one by one on the iron table next to the autopsy slab.

Mrs. MacNeil lit a lamp on the other side.

First was the excerpt from the registry.

The data from the first three years showed little fluctuation.

A few transients freezing to death in the winter, a few unclaimed temporary workers dying in summer mine accidents—the normal baseline for an industrial city.

The numbers had started rising in the fourth year, and the increase wasn't uniform.

Old Biggs had drawn circles on his excerpt with a red pen.

The circled corpses shared a common trait: their locations of death were all within three hundred yards of the canal or the Black Trench.

Richard unfolded the map.

The thirteen red dots Old Biggs had drawn were lined up along the canal and the Black Trench.

Richard superimposed it over another map stored in his mind.

The thirteen locations Mrs. MacNeil had drawn by channeling the spirit of the Chief Responder's corpse.

They overlapped perfectly, not a single point out of place.

Two separate clues pointing to the exact same web.

Richard turned to the final piece of paper: "Selection Patterns."

"The chosen targets share six commonalities:

1. Poor;

2. Living alone or semi-alone (no regular visits from immediate family);

3. Suffering from chronic illness (lungs, heart, joints, regardless of the specific disease);

4. Distant relationships with neighbors (extremely high probability of remaining undiscovered for more than three days after death);

5. Not registered with any parish mutual aid organizations;

6. Location of death within three hundred yards of the canal or the Black Trench."

"Those who met all six criteria were, without exception, taken in by the Mutual Aid Funeral Society after death."

"There is one discrepancy with industry standards in the encoffining process for the deceased handled by the Mutual Aid Funeral Society. In the society's encoffining records, the column for consecration was entirely filled with 'Reverend Hawkins of St. Andrew's Parish'. Reverend Hawkins is a real person, but he told me himself that he hasn't been to a single encoffining site for the funeral society in the past three years."

"Every consecration performed on the corpses they handled was faked."

"Legal Representative of the Mutual Aid Funeral Society: John Reeve. Registered in 1901; registered address at 14 Canal Road, North District."

"Neighbors unanimously evaluate him as: A good person. Ever since he fell severely ill over a decade ago, he became even kinder, though his temperament grew a bit detached."

The final paragraph contained only a single sentence.

"The harvesting point is the funeral society. Poor families deliver their dead, and the funeral society 'helps'... What kind of help they offer, and how they help, I no longer have the ability to investigate. What I can find ends here."

Richard set the report down.

...

The corner of Canal Road in the North District: Mutual Aid Funeral Society.

The storefront was small, sandwiched between a grocery store and a cobbler's shop.

A sprig of holly hung beneath the signboard; it had dried out but hadn't yet been taken down.

Mrs. MacNeil stood at the doorway.

Richard stood half a step behind her.

The interior wasn't large, furnished with two old tables and a few folding chairs.

Mr. Reeve walked out from behind a curtain.

He was of average height and slightly hunched.

He wore a gray cloth shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the lines of his face were extremely amiable.

There were calluses on his hands—not thick, but the kind worn in by years of hauling coffin boards.

"Are you two here to arrange a funeral?" he asked, his voice mild and unhurried.

Mrs. MacNeil gave a noncommittal nod.

"We're here to ask a few questions."

"Mr. Burns from Slag Alley—did you handle his arrangements?"

"Mr. Burns. Yes, I remember him."

Mr. Reeve took a registry from a drawer and flipped through a few pages.

"The old gentleman passed quietly. The neighbors said he just slipped away while sitting by the stove. He didn't have much family left. We helped out with the coffin, the shroud, hiring the pastor, and digging the grave. We barely charged anything for the whole set."

He set the registry back and pulled an enamel mug from a cabinet.

"Have a seat. I'll brew some tea."

Richard sat on a folding chair.

The tea was the cheapest kind of broken black tea leaves, instantly releasing color the moment boiling water was poured over it.

Mr. Reeve poured a cup each for him and Mrs. MacNeil, then cupped one for himself and sat down opposite them.

"Are you relatives of Mr. Burns?"

"Neighbors," Richard said. "I live on the east end of Slag Alley."

"Oh?" Mr. Reeve's eyebrows twitched.

Richard didn't drink the tea. [Silent Observation] had been active the entire time.

His Inspiration spread out over the layer of still water beneath his feet, without a single ripple.

The aura around Mr. Reeve was clean—so clean it was chilling.

An ordinary person would carry, more or less, a bit of residual ambient ether on them.

Walking through places with high ether concentrations would leave a trace on the soles of their shoes;

touching old objects would brush a wisp of it against their fingertips.

On Mr. Reeve, there was absolutely nothing.

Like a mirror, he reflected any gaze cast upon him while revealing nothing of himself.

Mrs. MacNeil didn't drink the tea either.

"Mr. Reeve, how many years have you been in the funeral business?" she asked.

"Twelve years now," Mr. Reeve said, rubbing the calluses on his palms.

"I used to be a workshop director at a factory. Then I fell gravely ill and almost didn't make it. After I recovered, I found I couldn't muster the energy for much of anything, so I figured I'd do something to help people."

"When poor families arrange funerals, money is their biggest worry. The absolute cheapest coffin costs two shillings. Hiring a pastor is another expense, digging the grave is another. Some people save their entire lives, and in the end, they can't even scrape together enough for coffin boards."

"I just thought I would help whoever I could, one person at a time."

When he said this, his tone was flat, devoid of any passion or sentimentality.

Richard looked at his face.

The kindness on his face was very cold.

Kindness itself wasn't cold. It carried body heat, the smell of sweat, and the exhausted frustration of being overwhelmed and powerless.

For a genuinely good person doing good deeds, their kindness should be rough around the edges, bearing the scent of the mundane world.

Mr. Reeve's kindness was like an exquisitely tailored overcoat.

Every stitch was precise; every hem was clean.

Worn on his body, it fit perfectly.

It fit so perfectly it didn't look worn—it looked like it had grown right out of his skin.

Richard set the teacup back on the table.

"Mr. Reeve, I heard quite a few elderly folks in the North District passed away this year?"

"Indeed they have." Mr. Reeve sighed.

"This winter has been exceptionally hard. The mines laid people off, and so did the factories. The elderly relying on their pensions were already strapped for cash. Once they fell ill, they were gone."

"Our funeral society handled almost fifty percent more bodies this year compared to previous years."

He pulled a stack of receipts from beneath the counter.

"Look, all from around Slag Alley, Canal Road, and the edges of the Black Trench."

He spread the receipts across the table, pointing them out to Richard one by one.

"This is Mrs. Perkins, the widow of a coal miner. She passed last winter. This is Old McGary, retired from the docks. Bad heart. And this one..."

His finger stopped on one of the receipts.

"This one is named Lizzie."

Richard's breathing slowed by a half-beat.

"Fished out of the Black Trench." Mr. Reeve's tone remained unchanged.

"No one claimed her, and she had no identification on her. She had a smiley face drawn on her left wrist. We helped bury her."

"Drawn what?"

"A smiley face." Mr. Reeve gestured briefly. "Drawn with charcoal, like the kind a child would draw."