68. Mr. Fulano Mengano
The rain stopped and judgment day dawned.
At dawn, when Boris and the knights who came to pick up the Grand Duke and Duchess saw the broken bridge and reported it, rescue teams arrived.
Nikolai filed a complaint with the magistrate to investigate the murder from last night and Viscountess Borodin’s crimes, and the magistrate sent investigators to the hotel.
Though Judith was arrested like Viscountess Borodin, Nikolai promised to send her a capable lawyer from the capital.
While he talked with investigators pretending to be an ordinary citizen, Katya tapped the shoulder of Manager Mengano who stood there blankly.
[What is it?]
“Come with me for a moment.”
She took Mengano to a corner of the front desk and pulled out a first aid kit.
She had noted its location earlier when he gave her cold medicine.
Mengano’s hands were cut and bruised in several places.
Last night, when he charged at Judith’s room door pushing the trolley, he got injured from hitting the door.
No one else had noticed, but only Katya recognized it.
[Ah, this is fine. You don’t need to worry—.]
But Katya refused to listen further and forcefully grabbed his hand to start disinfecting.
It would have been the same even if she understood Arsetian.
In the end, Mengano had no choice but to let her do as she pleased.
Though he broke into a cold sweat as it was his first time having his hand held by a woman.
“You worked so hard yesterday. I’m also sorry for suspecting you given the situation. You tried your best until the end to give guests the best experience as a hotelier all by yourself.”
[…..]
“Ah, what was ‘experience’ in Arsetian?”
Katya, who spoke fluently in her native tongue, got stuck when trying to use Arsetian which she was particularly weak at.
[Good experience. Thank you.]
When she spoke with a satisfied face after barely thinking of the words, Mengano, who was receiving treatment, smiled while wrinkling his hooked nose.
After looking down at the bandage wrapped clumsily but carefully for a moment, he took off his foggy glasses and wiped them with a soft cloth.
It was because he couldn’t see her face well.
When he put the clean glasses back on, he could see her sitting across from him clearly.
“I’d like to come back to whatever hotel Mr. Mengano works at someday, what’s your full name? In case you change workplaces, I want to follow you there.”
Actually, experiencing such an incident on his first day of work, it wouldn’t be unreasonable if he changed hotels due to trauma.
Katya sincerely wanted to know his full name.
He was a brave and diligent manager.
[Name. Full one!]
Mengano, who had been staring intently into her eyes, opened his mouth with a faint smile.
For some reason, he wanted to answer her.
[It’s Fulano Mengano.]
I’m only telling you. He swallowed those words.
“Tia! Where are you?”
Katya jumped up at her husband’s voice calling for her.
“Stay here and rest for a bit, okay?”
She earnestly requested the patient before turning around and going beyond the front desk.
Mengano briefly took in the sight of Katya’s retreating figure.
It seemed he wouldn’t be able to keep her last request.
“Were you looking for me?”
“Where were you?”
Finally finding his wife, Nikolai gently took her hand and asked in a worried tone.
“Just at the front desk over there.”
At those words, he cast his gaze over Katya’s shoulder.
“Were you alone?”
“No? I was with Mr. Mengano—”
When Katya turned around, Mengano had already disappeared.
“Huh? Where did he go?”
While she was puzzled, investigators approached the couple.
“We’d like to speak with the manager who was with you regarding the incident. Where is he now?”
“Well, he was just with my wife but I don’t see him now—he must have stepped away briefly.”
“Then we’ll get the manager’s statement later. What is the manager’s full name?”
The investigator who had been taking notes in a notepad while Nikolai gave his statement asked.
“It’s Mr. Mengano.”
“You don’t know his first name?”
“No, that’s all I know…”
“It’s Fulano! I just asked him earlier.”
Katya interjected during the conversation.
Though that wasn’t why she had asked, it proved useful.
“Ah, thank you. Fulano– Mengano.”
The investigator wrote it down while drawing out the end of the name.
Just then, something flashed like lightning in Nikolai’s mind as he listened quietly beside them.
“Wait, Tia. Did the manager really say that?”
“Yes! Why?”
“In Arsetian, ‘Fulano Mengano’ is an expression used to refer to a man of unknown identity. It means ‘so-and-so.'”
Since it had long been used negatively in newspaper articles for unknown criminals or unidentified bodies, if he were really Arsetian, there’s no way he would have such a name.
The man had made it up for Katya who didn’t know Arsetian well.
After hearing Nikolai’s explanation, the investigators who sensed something suspicious began thoroughly searching the hotel.
However, Fulano Mengano had already vanished.
They found something else during the search.
They discovered several men and women collapsed in the basement wine cellar.
Fortunately, they were all still breathing and appeared uninjured.
The investigators who brought a doctor from town were relieved to hear they were just in a deep sleep.
“Hey, wake up!”
As the investigators grabbed and woke them one by one, they awoke with drowsy eyes.
“Huh, why are we here?”
“Were you staying at this hotel?”
They all shook their heads at that question.
It turned out the people who had been in a drugged sleep were the real Arsetian manager and hotel staff.
The mystery of why Mengano had been struggling alone without staff was solved.
They testified that they had no memory after eating cookies gifted by a guest.
Based on the description from Katya and Nikolai—glasses, hooked nose, mustache etc.—the investigators created a composite sketch and showed it to them.
“That’s right! It was that guest!”
Mengano had put the original staff to sleep and posed as the manager for just yesterday.
This had happened even before Judith, Baron Lantskoĭ, and Viscountess Borodin arrived.
“But why did he do such a thing?”
Katya turned to Nikolai and asked.
“Did he have some grudge?”
“That’s possible, or he might have come with a different purpose and gotten unintentionally caught up in this incident.”
The money at the front desk and all valuable decorations in the hotel remained untouched.
He wasn’t a thief targeting valuables.
“Looking at how he put the staff to sleep but still posed as manager in front of guests instead of closing the hotel which would have made things easier, he probably had business with one of those three.”
Around when they were struggling with this unsolved mystery, this mysterious man arrived in downtown Vasnetsov.
The man who dismounted from his horse no longer looked like the Mengano they remembered.
The hooked nose, mustache, and hair that seemed about to fall off—Fulano Mengano’s appearance had completely vanished without a trace, replaced by a well-built handsome man.
The effect of the transformation potion he used for disguise had worn off after 24 hours.
The man took off the glasses he had used for his disguise.
He recalled how just earlier, wanting to see Katya’s face properly, he had unconsciously taken off his foggy glasses.
He had almost forgotten to act like he had poor eyesight and nearly looked at her with bare eyes.
Though Katya hadn’t noticed, his hands had trembled as he lowered his head and wiped his glasses, showing quick wit in that moment.
He felt like that trembling from then still remained.
The trembling hadn’t come from fear of his identity being exposed, but because she had held his hand.
“It really was a long day.”
Actually, Katya’s deduction was correct.
He had been trailing Baron Lantskoĭ who was an important person of interest in an investigation.
When he learned that the Baron had made reservations at this hotel, he took it as an opportunity to meet him separately.
He had planned to approach and extract information after lowering the Baron’s guard by posing as the hotel manager, but the Baron ended up dying at Judith’s hands.
After Baron Lantskoĭ’s body was discovered, he pretended to clean up the murder scene while searching his room and obtained what he needed for the investigation.
“I didn’t expect to run into His Highness the Grand Duke either.”
He had actually recognized Nikolai.
Though he was also a noble, he had left his family before Nikolai became Grand Duke so he rarely had chances to see him.
He had met him up close just once, but being the type not interested in others, even that memory was faint.
Besides, with his hair dyed, it was even more confusing.
So he hadn’t noticed from the start, only recalling the Grand Duke after seeing how calmly he handled the Baron Lantskoĭ murder scene.
Still uncertain, he made a clever move to observe more closely.
[What brings you at this hour?]
[I came to check if the doors are secured since outside intruders might be wandering around.]
He had lingered in the hallway making excuses about serving tea in the middle of the night.
“What if he put something in it?”
“But he made the effort to bring it here—how can we just turn him away? We can just accept it without drinking.”
“You won’t drink the black tea your husband gives you but you trust what a strange man brings?”
He realized the man before him was truly the Grand Duke at the mention of black tea.
Unlike the infamous rumors surrounding his nickname ‘Bloody Grand Duke’, he was in love.
Nikolai carefully tended to his wife from time to time, and especially in the hallway, where he pulled Katya into his arms and rested his chin on top of her head.
Like he’s trying to keep her from touching other men.
Not just that, but he even referred to himself as her husband.
There was no need to falsely claim to be her husband while speaking Hersen in front of an Arsetian.
‘Did they marry without informing the capital?’
The man took off his hat and bowed toward the hotel.
“It was an honor to meet you.”
Your Highness the Grand Duke, and… Your Highness the Grand Duchess.
His name was Pavel Petrovsky.
The older brother of Ivan who had cut ties early with the Petrovsky family and left, and the one who had made Katya’s heart flutter by winning the final round of the recent jousting tournament…
Perhaps Katya’s first love.
Nikolai would surely jump if he found out.
After finishing his greeting, Pavel turned his steps toward his next destination.
