The coagulated blood covered the ground, and a pale white corpse stood out conspicuously.
Even in the dim light, one could tell that the deceased lady possessed intoxicatingly fair skin, untainted blonde hair, slender limbs, a full bosom, and a delicate face that would put the prostitutes of the Lower District to shame.
However, this beautiful body had been completely split open from the chest down. The enormous gash extended to the lower abdomen, the flesh splayed open, revealing an empty, bloody cavity within. Her limbs were also covered in horrifying, massive lacerations.
Sherlock simply stood there and observed.
He neither approached for a closer look nor uttered a single word.
A full twenty seconds passed.
Executor Balthur's high brow furrowed slightly. The security officer nearby even wondered if the sight of the blood had simply scared the man witless.
Just then, Sherlock finally moved. With no manners whatsoever, he flicked the spent cigarette butt into the gap in the knee joint of the nearby steam armor.
"Where are the clothes?" he asked abruptly.
"Wha… what?"
"The victim's clothes." Sherlock looked around again. "I don't see the victim's clothing."
"This…" The security officer hesitated briefly.
"The crime scene has not been touched by anyone. There were no clothes here initially; the killer must have taken them." Katherine approached, answering while meeting Sherlock's gaze with a blank expression.
"These security officers are only tasked with securing the scene and are not familiar with the details of the murder. If you need to know anything, you can ask me."
Sherlock, for a rare moment, displayed a touch of gentlemanly courtesy: "Thank you, beautiful lady."
"Don't thank me. I don't like you. I simply wish you would find the murderer quickly." She made no attempt to hide the coldness in her tone. "I only hope your abilities are not as poor as your character."
Perhaps due to the immense gap in class, Katherine made no effort to conceal her distaste for the detective before her. But also because the class difference was so vast, she did not bother to make things difficult for him.
This commoner was beneath the level of being intentionally harassed by a Judgment Nun.
So, she simply showed her contempt but, nonetheless, seriously relayed every piece of information she had.
As for Sherlock, he showed no sign of resentment. He wasn't stupid; he wouldn't hold out hope for some kind of cross-class interaction, unlike the security officer behind him.
He knew what he needed to do and why he was here. Honestly, he just wanted to see if a case involving the Church could offer him something novel.
Of course, since the Church had chosen him, he had to come whether he wanted to or not.
In short, he listened calmly to the clues offered by Katherine.
One spoke, one listened.
In this way, the man and woman, vastly separated by social status, demonstrated a strange sort of understanding.
A few minutes later, Sherlock finally frowned in slight awkwardness: "You… basically didn't find anything, did you?"
Katherine remained expressionless: "As I told you before, the fewer people who know about this, the better. If we wanted to involve the people from the Judgment Tribunal, why would we bother finding a private detective like you to handle it?"
"Fair point." Sherlock didn't look frustrated at all; instead, he flashed a bright smile. He then walked into the alley alone.
Katherine and Executor Balthur exchanged a look and slowly followed.
As for the small old Priest, he had remained motionless since getting out of the carriage, like a statue. If one approached, they could even hear faint snoring.
In the alley, the figures of the group broke the gaslight into fractured patches.
Sherlock stepped over the muddy bloodstains. He leaned down and picked up a piece of cut flesh, examining it in the dim light:
"A piece of liver that's been sliced. For tissue this soft to be cut so cleanly, the killer has decent craftsmanship."
He wasn't speaking to anyone, but simply talking to himself out of habit.
"A piece of the manubrium, still attached to two ribs, the cut is equally clean," he said, picking up a piece of bone. "This kind of dissection and dismemberment shouldn't be completed in a short time.
Judging by the coagulation of the blood, the time of death was around 5:00 AM this morning… By the way, why did the killer suddenly become so obsessed with the number four?"
"Four?" Katherine asked, slightly confused.
"Yes, the killer cut almost everything he could into four pieces." As he spoke, he picked up a few more pieces of shredded flesh, skillfully piecing them together to form an entire lung lobe, which he then placed into the victim's opened chest cavity.
"What are you… doing?" Executor Balthur, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke. His voice was low, and he didn't sound disgusted, but the scarlet proclamation on his robe oddly exuded immense pressure.
Most Executors of the Judgment Division were Contractors, often having reached the Second Stage. After all, only those with great power could handle such brutal and dangerous tasks.
Sherlock, however, was not flustered by this pressure, and his hands never stopped moving:
"My apologies, Mr. Balthur. I know this is disrespectful to your wife, but the killer appears to have left us a clue… Look here."
He spoke rapidly, pointing to a section of intestine he had just arranged: "A very shallow wound, running from top to bottom…
After the killer sliced open her chest and abdomen, he didn't rush to chop up the contents, but used his knife to leave some marks on the internal organs."
In the time it took to say those few sentences, Sherlock had mostly pieced together the shredded organs scattered across the ground.
The security officer stood at the alley entrance, watching from afar, attempting to speak several times but failing.
A very uncomfortable thought crossed his mind: a normal person, even a doctor, couldn't possibly reassemble shredded organs so skillfully.
Did this commoner detective from the Lower District perhaps chop up internal organs often ?
"There."
Two minutes later, Sherlock had arranged all the remaining pieces.
And within the scattered, fragmented organs, lines of knife marks were indeed vaguely visible.
"YES?"
Executor Balthur's vision was clearly superior to the average person's. Even in the dim light, he quickly discerned the markings between the pieced-together organs.
A bloody word carved into the viscera with a sharp blade—YES.
——————
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