Shade asked curiously. There are no physical tickets for buying tickets here, and the scenery on the stage is not very directional.
"I am not sure as well."
The priest said that he had investigated Mr. Vincent Taylor in advance and knew his appearance, so he was looking around to find someone.
"Priest, you are too inefficient. Come with me and I will take you to find it."
With that said, he pulled the priest through the small door on the side of the courtyard and prepared to go backstage.
"Detective, do you know the people here?"
"Of course I know him, but I'm not particularly familiar with him."
A few minutes later.
"Oh, look who this is? Detective Hamilton, why do you have time to come to our place? Little Hank at the door won't let you buy a ticket again, right?"
Outsiders should not be allowed to enter the backstage of the troupe at will, but the man at the door saw Shade last time and after letting Shade and Priest August in, he immediately called for Mrs. Marianne, the director of the troupe.
The woman wearing a red dress but with an apron on the outside welcomed Shade very warmly. Shade shook his head and said that the ticket was nothing. Then he introduced Priest August as his friend, and then talked about his purpose:
"I'm investigating a difficult case."
Mrs. Marian nodded knowingly and invited Shade and Priest August to go upstairs to talk. The wooden wall divided the courtyard into two parts. There was a low two-story building in the courtyard as the backstage. At this moment, a
The actors on the floor were taking the time to put on their makeup. The story they were about to perform seemed to be a story about a hunter, a princess, and a dwarf. Shade saw a sad-looking man trying to paint a red apple to turn it black.
To show that this is poisonous.
Mrs. Marian led Shade and Priest August through the crowd, and after arriving on the second floor, she found that it was quite quiet. Although there were people handling stage props here, you could still find a corner by the window to avoid other people.
place.
From the window here, you can directly see the auditorium downstairs. Priest Augustus reached out to close the window, and then Shade said:
"Is there a Mr. Vincent Taylor in the Jasmine Opera Company?"
Mrs. Marianne nodded in surprise:
"Yes, are you looking for him? He is a tall, thin young man who works odd jobs here. Has he committed a crime? I knew that such a foreigner would definitely cause trouble when he came to Tobesk.
And I see something strange about him on weekdays. Last time the troupe lost two broken chairs, maybe he stole them. Foreigners like petty thefts."
Then she got to the point:
"Tyler has been particularly uncomfortable recently. Our troupe has stopped performing Kasemrik's plays since this spring. As a result, he said that I have long hair and short knowledge. He said that because I am a woman, I am too cautious, which hinders the culture of the two countries.
Communication, it is people like me who make the conflicts between the two countries irreconcilable."
Priest August asked:
"You didn't fire him?"
"I just thought he had drank a few too many glasses of horse urine and was not as knowledgeable as him. But later I also asked the troupe to rehearse a few scenes of Carson Rick, and the results were okay, so I didn't pursue him. It's not that I couldn't listen.
What others say.”
Mrs. Marian also said this proudly, and Shade felt that she might have been deeply affected by "prejudice":
"How does he behave on weekdays?"
"On weekdays? Oh, Detective Hamilton~ You are a famous detective in Tobesk, and you are favored by a big shot like Duke Carina. Since you think he has a problem, he must have a problem. I think he can always do it on weekdays.
You may say some great truths, but no one knows what you are thinking in your heart.”
Not only is it "prejudice" to think bad about someone, but it is also "prejudice" to have good thoughts about a specific person because of factors such as personal experience and social background. These are all one-sided and arbitrary views, just like now.
Shade had no choice but to interrupt her description and asked more carefully:
"I would like to ask, does Mr. Taylor talk about things like foreigners, outsiders, and conflicts between men and women when he works here on weekdays? And he makes comments with very extreme ideas."
Lady Marianne nodded immediately:
"Yes, especially in recent weeks, as long as someone is willing to talk to him, he is always willing to express his opinions. At first, everyone was annoyed, but he will express his opinions endlessly. If anyone doesn't
If you ignore him, he will proudly say that that person is too guilty to argue with him. But..."
She frowned and thought for a moment, probably recalling the whole thing:
"But, in fact, some of the things he said were reasonable, at least more reasonable than the critics in the newspaper. So although everyone was a little tired of him, no one said they wanted to drive him away."
"Excuse me, what reasonable words did he say?"
Priest August asked again, and Shade guessed that the priest was still evaluating whether this person was hopeless.
Lady Marianne thought again:
"He said that the house prices in Tobesk are rising year by year, which is the result of poor outsiders coming to the city. Therefore, heavy taxes should be imposed on outsiders, their children should be restricted from studying locally, and they should not be allowed to buy locally.
house."
But Mr. Taylor himself is a foreigner.
"He also said that the ambition of the Kasenlik people to destroy us Tobesk people will never go away. So every Kasenlik person is bad, and we should strike first. Arrest all foreigners
It's a bit exaggerated, but we can start by establishing a file for each local foreigner and investigate and monitor their residence at any time."
He probably doesn't know how free the city hall must be to spare so many people.
"He also said that today's nobles are making money on ordinary citizens, and all nobles deserve to die."
Mrs. Marian also realized that this sentence should not be said nonsense, and immediately shut up and changed the subject:
"He also mentioned you, Detective Hamilton. Of course, I know that when he mentioned you, what he said were lies made up by him because he was jealous of your talent."
"What did he say?"
Shade asked with great interest.
"He said that Shade Hamilton became famous only after he fell in love with the Duchess. He said that you actually have no real ability at all. Those stories of yours were all paid to be written by others. The cases you reported in the newspaper were also all about Jialin.
Duke Na specially arranged it for you. He said that it is not difficult for nobles to kill a few people and arrange a few so-called cases. "
After saying this quickly, Mrs. Marianne shook her head violently:
"That's why I said that everyone doesn't like him. Although many of what he said are reasonable, these words are too mean. Miss Louisa is our main sponsor. She is a truly noble lady. How could it be possible?
How about getting paid to write stories for you?”
It seems that her "prejudice" against Dorothy defeated Mr. Taylor's "prejudice" against Shade.
"Thank you for giving me this information. I roughly understand it."
Shade nodded, exchanged glances with Priest August, and confirmed that the old priest had nothing else to ask, and then said:
"So is Mr. Taylor here now? Or where can we find him?"
Lady Marianne then smiled and said:
"It's a coincidence that you are here. He is here. If you said you were looking for him just now, I would have taken you there directly. He is acting as an extra in the theater troupe, and he should have put on makeup by now and is ready to go on stage."
"Then Mr. Taylor's role is."
"The hunter's entourage. In the story, the kind-hearted hunter wanted to let the princess go, but the entourage found the princess's traces and wanted to continue tracking, but was still blocked. Look, he is there."
Mrs. Marian suddenly raised her hand and pointed out the window. Both Shade and Priest Augustus looked over. From their angles, they could just see a man carrying a bow, wearing a deerstalker hat, and wearing an emerald green hunting suit.
A young man wearing a costume came to the stage. Of course, real hunters would not wear such brightly colored costumes.
People in the audience thought that the play was finally about to begin. They stopped talking and laughing and sat down in their seats, ready to watch the performance. However, the August priest upstairs asked doubtfully:
"I have seen this play when I was a child. When was it adapted? The hunter's entourage became the first actor to appear? I remember, shouldn't the pregnant queen appear first? Even if the beginning is omitted, it should be the current queen.
Will you be the first one to appear?"
Mrs. Marian also saw something was wrong, but she couldn't jump out of the window to stop her from upstairs. So Shade reached out and pushed open the window, so that the three of them could hear the sound coming from the stage. Wearing a hunter's assistant costume,
Mr. Taylor cleared his throat and then said loudly:
“Dear citizens and friends,
We are standing at the crossroads of the times, facing the grim reality that the Civil War is about to break out. To this day, what we have seen are scenes of the ugly and dirty truth about the Kasenlik people, which makes us have to
It is not prejudice to face the painful reality that the world is splitting into two irreconcilable camps, one of which - obviously not us - is filled with the kind of undemocratic and inequalities that are daunting.
In our homeland, the Kingdom of Dralyon, our loyal people proudly defend it.”
"Oh, my God! What is he going to do?"
Lady Marianne groaned and held on to the wall, then almost leaned out of the window and shouted loudly:
"Stop him, stop talking! Tyler, what are you going to do? Do you want to keep us from eating? Oh, for God's sake, someone is going to pull him down and stop talking.
!”
No matter how powerful the persuasive power brought by "prejudice" is, Mrs. Marianne, who is responsible for the entire opera company, cannot let him make such a dangerous speech here.
PS: I wish you all to bid farewell to 2023, look forward to 2024, and live a better life in the new year than the previous year.