SGB Chapter 348

## Chapter 348: Poland? Russia?

Arthur, upon hearing this, pulled out the pocket watch the murderer had been carrying from his pocket.

He stared at the woman’s portrait etched on the inside of the watch for a while, before finally discerning a resemblance between her features and those of the woman in the portrait.

“The artistry of this painting is truly terrible. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have recognized that the subject of this portrait, Madame Agneska, is the Polish language tutor, Delfina, hired by Mr. Harrison.”

Arthur closed the watch cover and suddenly asked, “But if Miss Delfina is Agneska, then… Fiona, shouldn’t you explain to me why she has two names? Were you deceived by her, or was I deceived by you?”

Fiona opened the document in her hand and said, “This isn’t a case of anyone deceiving anyone. Having an alias is normal in this line of work. Not everyone can handle the idea of engaging in this kind of business under their real name. Many of the girls here are hoping to earn some money while they’re young, then return to their real identities and lead normal lives. I respect their choices and generally don’t pry into their pasts, which is why the girls are willing to work for me.”

Arthur leaned back in his chair, holding his wine glass: “Fiona, I have no intention of probing into your business secrets. But out of curiosity, I still want to ask, while their intentions are good, how many of them actually succeed in the end?”

“You actually asked me that? I thought you’d know better than me. In Scotland Yard’s statistical data, is the number of streetwalkers in London increasing or decreasing?”

Arthur took a sip of wine, gazing at the clear liquid and said, “Perhaps you should change careers and become a journalist. Or, if Scotland Yard is willing to hire women, I might consider hiring you as a press spokesperson. Answering a question with a question is a pretty good language habit.”

Fiona rolled her eyes: “Yeah! At least I’m more honest than you guys. I even think I could go to the Foreign Office. If I were to become Foreign Secretary, I’d tell the Poles straight up to stop dreaming, Britain won’t offer them any help. Instead of secretly sending diplomats to the Russian embassy to communicate, and after the commissioner’s assassination, pretending to be sympathetic by sending someone to comfort our Hastings Inspector.”

“Hmm?” Arthur’s gaze suddenly locked onto Fiona’s eyes: “How do you know the Foreign Office sent someone to Liverpool?”

Fiona retorted angrily: “I’m not blind, the guy who just left the hotel, I saw him when I was a maid at the Russian embassy. It’s just that he obviously forgot me, he’d have a hard time associating a beautiful lady with a lowly maid.”

“He went to the Russian embassy?” Arthur thought for a moment: “When?”

Fiona said with a huff: “It seems your interest in diplomats is indeed higher than that of beautiful ladies.”

Arthur said, “Fiona, while I have no intention of offending you, I still have to say that I get along better with diplomats because we communicate in similar languages. So, it’s not as troublesome to deal with them.”

“Oh?” Fiona was filled with anger: “Am I not speaking English? Or are you looking down on my Russian bloodline?”

“No, no, no, Fiona, don’t misunderstand. Russian girls are very beautiful, at least more beautiful than German girls. But the girls’ language is indeed different from the diplomats’ language.”

Fiona asked angrily: “Would you rather deal with a lying diplomat than communicate with the girls?”

Arthur asked, “Why do you think diplomats are untrustworthy?”

“It’s simple, I observed it while I was a maid at the embassy.”

Fiona said, “When a diplomat says ‘yes,’ it means ‘maybe.’ When they say ‘maybe,’ it means ‘no.’ If they say ‘no’ directly, then they aren’t a diplomat.”

Arthur nodded in relief: “Fiona, I knew sending you to work at the embassy would be a good idea, not all girls can be as insightful as you. You’re absolutely right, but you obviously haven’t noticed that the girls’ language habits are almost the opposite of diplomats. When girls say ‘no,’ it means ‘maybe.’ When they say ‘maybe,’ it means ‘yes.’ If they really say ‘yes,’ then they’re not women. While I know this is difficult, I hope that at least in work, you can communicate with me using diplomatic language.”

“No way!”

“Why?”

“Because you’re also completely right.” Fiona glared at Arthur: “If I really said that, then I wouldn’t be a woman.”

“Alright then.” Arthur picked up the bottle and refilled her glass: “It seems I can’t get you to compromise, so let me compromise as much as I can. After all, I’m quite interested in many of your secrets, and in terms of important information, it’s almost always a seller’s market.”

After a few exchanges, Fiona felt like her emotions had calmed down.

When her mind returned to a state of calmness, she finally started her logical process again.

Whether in practical terms or in terms of future plans, her interests were highly intertwined with Arthur’s. Miss Fiona wouldn’t stand idly by and watch this potential mountain, which could grow into the Alps, be flattened with dynamite.

She said, “That diplomat didn’t visit the Russian embassy often, but it wasn’t infrequent either. Before I resigned from the embassy in December, I saw him once.”

Arthur frowned at this: “Wait… you resigned from the embassy? Who’s working there now?”

Fiona just said with a sigh: “You might not believe it, but it’s such a coincidence, I sent three girls to the embassy before I resigned, one of them was Agneska, or rather, Delfina.”

“You sent her to the Russian embassy?” Arthur felt his scalp tingling: “Don’t tell me, she’s gone missing now.”

Fiona defensively argued: “Darling, you know girls who speak Russian aren’t that easy to find, and even fewer work for me. And Delfina is a Polish girl, Scotland Yard even provided legal aid for her case with Harrison, I thought she would definitely be a reliable informant.”

Arthur took a deep breath: “Why didn’t you ask me before doing this?”

Fiona cried out in protest: “Of course I asked you, but when I went to find you, the only one at your place was that new laundry maid, and she told me you went to Liverpool early in the morning.”

“Oh…”

Agareus, from somewhere, pulled out a fan and fanned Arthur, while fanning he also said with a mischievous smile: “This little girl is really to my taste. No wonder she’s been trying to seduce you since she walked in! Arthur, if you couldn’t resist, you wouldn’t be able to blame her now, would you?”

Arthur didn’t get angry immediately, he just held his head and thought for a while.

Although he was indeed angry about Fiona’s preemptive strike, if Fiona had really consulted him about the embassy’s personnel transfer, he would have most likely approved it.

After all, judging from Delfina’s background, she was unlikely to voluntarily defect to the Russians and confess her identity.

After all, everyone knows how the Russians treat these Polish exiles.

However, if he considers the worst-case scenario, if Delfina really defected to the Russians and told them all the secrets, then Arthur and Scotland Yard would be in an incredibly dangerous situation.

If Delfina was willing to come forward and identify Scotland Yard as the mastermind behind the set-up, although Sir Peel, the leader of the Tory party, had decided to distance himself from Mr. Harrison due to the recording issue.

But publicly, to maintain party unity, the Tories would still pursue Scotland Yard in the House of Commons. Even if they didn’t take the opportunity to make things worse, Arthur, who orchestrated the set-up, would definitely be held accountable.

However, the Russian embassy didn’t send Delfina out to accuse anyone, they didn’t even release any information about it.

So, there are only three possibilities left.

Either Delfina didn’t defect to the Russians at all, the Russians don’t know about the Harrison incident, they just happened to hire Delfina’s husband to assassinate Arthur.

Or, Delfina has already defected to Russia, and the Russians know her identity, and the pocket watch left at the crime scene is proof of that. The Russians know Arthur will definitely notice this and follow the clues to the Russian embassy.

The Russians didn’t let Delfina make accusations in order to keep a backup plan, warning Arthur not to act rashly. They don’t want to target Scotland Yard, but only to give the British government sufficient reason not to intervene in the Polish issue.

Of course, there’s a third possibility, that Delfina did defect to someone. And the real mastermind left such a clear clue, just to make Arthur trace it back to the Russians, so as to frame the Russians and conceal their true purpose.

Arthur pondered for a while, then turned his gaze to the apprehensive Fiona: “Lady, where’s your confidence? Successful people don’t get scared over such a trifle. Speaking of which, although you messed up, you didn’t hide your mistakes, which prevented me from making a bigger misjudgment, that’s still quite commendable.”

Fiona lowered her head and blushed: “Is that true?”

“What are you shy about? Your skirt is still stuck to your ass. Playing innocent in front of me won’t work, what I need are your remedial measures.”

Arthur leaned back in his chair and asked, “I believe with your intelligence, you must have investigated Delfina’s background thoroughly, right?”

“Hmm…” Fiona stood beside Arthur, holding the document and asked softly: “Do you need me to read it to you?”

“You’re much more obedient now.”

Arthur glanced at her: “Keep it up, if you can maintain this high standard of service, maybe I can consider setting aside some medical care funds for the Criminal Investigation Department.”

Fiona finally breathed a sigh of relief, but the fact that her performance was exposed made her feel a bit frustrated.

She bit her lip and said unwillingly: “Actually, Delfina had already disappeared before you were attacked. It’s just that because she was a maid at the Russian embassy, I didn’t dare go to Scotland Yard to report it casually, instead, I watched to see if the embassy would report it. But after waiting for two days, the embassy still didn’t do anything, so I had the other two girls who worked at the embassy ask around.

The result is that the housekeeper told them Delfina resigned and went back to her hometown. But we all know Delfina’s hometown is in Poland. So, the housekeeper’s words are all nonsense, she must have been in trouble. So, that night, I sent my ‘locksmith’ to Delfina’s residence.

The bedroom was messy, the table and cabinets were all in disarray. The whole room looked like it belonged to a family who had received a temporary notice to flee. Except for some clothes, we found almost nothing there. But, after searching, we did find something interesting.”

Arthur asked, “What is it?”

Fiona explained in detail: “Dozens of pawn shop tickets, pawned items include gold and silver jewelry, books, and all sorts of things that can be exchanged for money. The ‘locksmith’ was worried that he would anger me if he didn’t bring anything back, so he brought all these tickets back to me.”

“Pawn shop tickets, that does match the official investigation results…”

Arthur pondered for a moment and asked: “You didn’t throw them away?”

“Darling.” Fiona chided: “I’m not that stupid, the moment you told me to investigate Delfina, I paid out of my own pocket to redeem everything from the pawnshop. But those ladies’ favorite jewelry, you probably won’t like them, I know, you like books, so I brought you the books.”

Arthur pointed to his eye corner and asked: “Can reading cure my droopy eyes?”

“Of course not, but books might uncover some clues about your droopy eyes.”

Fiona turned around and took the book with the cover titled “The Life of Napoleon” from her bag, carefully opened the title page, pointed to a passage and said, “Darling, look at this.”

Arthur looked down and saw, at Fiona’s fingertip, written in French:

To my friend, Mr. Czesław Kowalczyk.

— Alexander Colonna Walewski

This is a typical Polish name, Arthur recalled it briefly in his mind, but he didn’t have any impression of it.

He asked: “So, who is this Walewski?”

Fiona pursed her lips and leaned close to Arthur’s ear: “Darling, he’s like the male secretary beside you, a member of the Bonaparte family, the illegitimate son of Napoleon and a Polish countess. Are you sure that Louis Bonaparte officer beside you is really reliable?”

(End of Chapter)