Chapter 2

It had been dark all day. Black clouds covered the sky which threatened to pour heavy rain at any moment. A slow and cold breeze hit Otto's face as he stood in front of his father's grave and looked over it with an almost blank expression. Hearing footsteps behind himself, Otto looked back and saw Inspector Jeffrey.

"How are you kid?" asked the inspector as he came and stood beside Otto overlooking the grave of his old friend. "You seem to have been here for a while."

"Not that long that long," replied Otto.

"The weather has been weird for quite a long time don't you think?"

"Yes, it has."

The inspector gazed at the grave which had grass growing on it for a minute and reached into the breast pocket of his long coat and pulled out his cigarette case. Winter made the metallic case feel as cold as ice. He opened the case, took three cigarettes from inside it, lit one of them and put it on the gravestone.

The other two cigarettes were for himself and Otto. "Would have lit a cigar for him but I currently don't have any, so we'll have to make do with cigarettes."

"Both cigar and cigarette destroy your lungs equally so it doesn't matter and the dead won't care about it," Otto stated monotonously.

"Well that's true as well and don't tell Lloyd that I gave you a cigarette or he'll eat me alive." said the inspector with a slight chuckle.

"You won't be the only one who will be eaten by him. So I'll take this little secret to the grave," said Otto while laughing. "Oh and what became of the abductions case? Did you discover anything new?" asked Otto out of sheer curiosity.

The inspector's face became sunken as he spoke. "No, nothing, we couldn't find anything regarding this case. Not even a single clue as to where abducted victims disappeared."

"Did you search his house thoroughly? And by thoroughly I mean very thoroughly."

"Yes, but we couldn't find anything of value. That is why I had everything in his house in the same place as it was before the checking of it so someone with better observational skills might find a clue or anything. And that is where you come into the picture. If you're still interested in the case, why don't you try and check the house yourself? Maybe you'll find something critical for the case." explained Inspector Jeffrey as he smoked his cigarette.

Otto puffed his cigarette, which was almost finished, and spoke. "That is extremely interesting Mr. Jeffrey, and yes I think I will have to search the house myself to try and find something of value to the case."

"I thank you for helping with this case Otto, James would have been proud of you for helping to find the abducted people for their families regardless of whether the victims are still alive or not," said Jeffrey who was genuinely thankful to Otto.

As the men were standing there, the inspector received a message. "Well look at this, we got an update but this is no proper place to talk about such things."

"Let's go to my house and continue talking there." Remarked Otto.

He then reached into the side pocket of his coat and took out his phone, scrolled through the contacts for a few seconds and called his butler to come pick them up.

As they were waiting for Lloyd to come and get them, Otto told the inspector to put out the cigarette because Lloyd was coming to get them. Both men quickly put out their cigarettes and got rid of the buds. Afterwards, both of them started looking around the graveyard. The last time either of them came to James's grave was a few months ago when winter was about to end and summer was coming. Now summer had arrived. All the leaves of the trees in the graveyard had grown back.

After a minute or two of waiting for Lloyd, the dark clouds started to pour heavy rain on everyone in the graveyard but as soon as it started to rain the butler arrived with umbrellas and escorted them to the car. Otto and Inspector Jeffrey got into the car, and Lloyd drove them to the mansion.

Even though cars existed, you wouldn't see even one of them on the road because people preferred to walk more. Very few people drove cars.

About 15 minutes later they arrived at the mansion and went into the study room to talk things over.

Walking into the study room you would notice that it was very spacious and had two stories.

On the first floor, there were bookshelves on the right and left wall and the third wall was a window that extended to the roof of the second floor. In front of the glass window was a large wooden desk and a chair. The chair had a curvy shape that looked very elegant in contrast to the room. The floor was made of white marble and had a big red circular carpet in the middle of the room. On top of the carpet, there were two long sofas made of dark blue velvet in European design and a black wooden table with a transparent glass top between them.

The wall opposite the windowed wall had the door to enter the room and on either side of the door, there were two blue soft-boards which were empty at the moment.

The second storey of the study room had a 2-foot wide walk space with bookshelves covering the walls.

Otto and Inspector Jeffrey walked into the study room and sat on the sofas opposite each other.

"Now that we're here, tell me what that message, that you received, was about. Did they find anything of importance? Tell me in detail" asked Otto.

"As you saw when you were there, the abductor's dead body was taken by the ambulance and he was sent for a post-mortem examination. What I received was the report and it turns out he killed himself with some poison which is extremely hard to detect. They only checked for poison due to me forcing them to do it, which happened because you told me it was poison that killed him. So how on God's good Earth did you know it was poison that killed him?" the inspector inquired.

"Well, it was quite easy to figure out. All I had to do was think of different probabilities as to how he could have died and made a theory for each of the probabilities after which I applied the theories to the state of things we had at that time. After that everything was easy, I started to eliminate the improbabilities and in the end, I was left with only one option which was poison. Just like how Sherlock Holmes said 'When all other contingencies have failed. Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' I used this simple chain of reasoning to deduce that he poisoned himself." Otto explains to the inspector.

"I see, but the fact that you figured it out in very little time is very impressive."

"Nothing too difficult for me to do. Once you practice it enough, it gets easy."

"Anyways I'll continue, after you left and his body was taken I had the house thoroughly searched. I made sure to look out for any hidden doors or vaults. Keeping in mind how you said that the scale of this crime might be bigger than we think, I searched for documents that might give us a clue to solve this case but found nothing of importance."

"What about his electronic devices?"

"I was getting to that, I checked them myself and I found something interesting but I think you should look at it yourself. Oh, and I also found this in John White's pocket. Here take a look." The inspector hands Otto a queer-looking coin.

The coin was just a little bit bigger than a pound coin. On the obverse of the coin, there were two men out of which one was throwing a rock at the other's head. On the reverse side, it depicted a stone. The coin itself seemed to be made of iron and gold. The device of the coin was made of gold while the rest was iron. There was no mint on it nor any text.

"You mentioned before last night that two other people died from poisoning like john white. Did they have this coin too?" asked Otto.

"Yes, they also had a coin this but it wasn't the same minting. Also in the morning many more criminals and crooks died from the same poison as John White but unlike him, they took the poison from a polythene bag before we could cuff their hands and they didn't have this coin." answered the inspector.

"Then most likely they were just low-level lackeys and John White had high authority. That is assuming that the ones who died recently are even related to this case."

"Why do you think so?"

"I think the coin symbolises high status or authority and the fact that John had a fake tooth with poison in it. This might point to him having high authority. Can I keep this coin to check it later?"

"Yeah sure, the higher-ups say it's irrelevant to the case. They say this coin is probably just something he had custom made so you might as well keep it. Maybe you'll find something we couldn't."

"Well, I think this is a big clue. Tell me something Mr. Jeffrey, was John White religious?" said Otto with a sly smile.

"Yes, he was but why do you ask?" asked the inspector in confusion.

"And what about all the others that have died?"

"I do not know, do you want me to check it for you?" told the inspector.

"Yes, please check it and be sure to tell me."

"Does this help the case in any way?"

"Well, that depends on the information I have asked you to check."

"I see..." said the inspector as he deadpanned.

"Let's go and see what you found in his devices!" said Otto enthusiastically at which the inspector chucked.

Both of them got out of the study room and went for the exit where they encountered Lloyd.

"Do you need me to drive you to where you want to go master?" asked Lloyd.

"Thanks but Mr. Jeffrey and I will just walk down to the police station and the rain stopped a while ago. If I need you I'll call you," told Otto to his butler.

"Very well master, have a good evening."

Both Otto and Inspector Jeffrey got out of the house and started to head to the police station to see what Inspector Jeffrey had found.