I Accidentally Resurrected My Dead Husband - Chapter 78

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 78
“If we could only find the root cause, we might discover a cure. But you say there’s no cosmetic left to examine.”
Beitch looked equally at a loss.
“It’s merely conjecture, but it resembles poisoning or addiction symptoms.”
“Poisoning symptoms? Then Henry painted poison on it?”
“Not that kind of poisoning, exactly. It’s more like the reaction from eating spoiled food. So I suspect the cosmetic ingredients may have gone bad, or perhaps mold contaminated the mixture.”
In any case, it meant they needed to examine the Nutritional Cream directly. Ern sighed and dragged a hand across his face. Though he was known as a man so cold-blooded that pricking him would yield not a drop of blood, he was not ungrateful.
If not for Henry, Ern would have become an experimental subject in his non-decaying corpse state. They would have performed an autopsy on him too. It was only because Henry mobilized his connections to smuggle Ern’s body away and summoned a Medium to revive him that Ern stood here at all. Without that, his life might have ended then and there.
“I simply can’t leave Henry to suffer like this.”
Udith was the one who truly owed Henry a debt. He had never refused a single request for help from her. He’d even taken over managing her shop.
“Ern, should we start by visiting the shop where Henry bought the cosmetic?”
Even if they wanted to help Henry, clues were scarce. In situations like this, one’s first instinct was to examine the scene of the crime. Ern and Udith set out for Bakeville.
And there, they encountered someone entirely unexpected.
* * *
“Smythe?”
Smythe, an unscrupulous loan shark.
He was there. Judging by Smythe’s intact face, it didn’t appear he’d bought the cosmetic himself. After a moment’s thought, Udith asked.
“What brings you here, Smythe? Surely you didn’t lend money to whoever was selling that Nutritional Cream?”
“No, I didn’t.”
He suppressed his displeasure visibly before answering. Then he turned his head to look at someone. The Ruman Brothers bowed their heads low at Smythe’s gaze.
Gulp.
At the sight of the Ruman Brothers’ faces, Udith barely stifled a gasp. It would be terribly rude to scream before someone whose skin had been turned inside out.
“They used the cosmetic too, it seems?”
Ern was also taken aback. Given the Ruman Brothers’ line of work and their general appearance, they didn’t strike him as the type to apply cosmetics and maintain their skin.
“The last time we heard, they were getting married, so they started managing their appearance. Looks like they used this shop’s Nutritional Cream.”
“Ha ha, we figured we’d better put ourselves together proper-like if we were gonna get hitched.”
Their skin had indeed looked rather radiant that day.
“These madmen tried to buff themselves up with cosmetics just to get married, and this is what happened.”
Smythe clicked his tongue sharply. The Ruman Brothers hung their heads in shame. Yet Udith felt a pang of sympathy for them—after all, they’d only been trying to coordinate their efforts once.
“Is it a crime to groom oneself because you want to get married? The real villains are the ones who sold defective cosmetics to take advantage of such sincere intentions.”
At Udith’s words, the Ruman Brothers looked at her with moved, grateful eyes. Yet they continued scratching their entire bodies relentlessly. At least Henry had only applied it to his face, so only his face had been affected. The Ruman Brothers had applied it to their bodies too, so their symptoms were far more severe. Their shirts were stained with serum and blood from all the scratching.
“It appears the Countess did not use this cosmetic herself. Did an acquaintance suffer its effects?”
“Yes.”
Udith answered briefly while surveying the empty shop. After Smythe had torn through it, the place was an absolute mess.
“Did you find anything useful?”
“Just one thing worth keeping.”
Smythe held a torn fabric fragment between his fingers and waved it. Udith asked if she could have a look, extending her hand. Smythe handed her the Torn Fabric Fragment readily.
It didn’t appear to be cloth for clothing. It looked like a scrap of ordinary handkerchief, or perhaps a piece of the kind of rag used for wiping merchandise.
“But there’s nothing on it at all?”
She’d expected to find some marking or pattern on the fabric, but there was nothing.
“The scent.”
“The scent?”
“It carries the smell of Nicar.”
Nicar was a chemical used to remove the stench of blood from clothing, furniture, and the like. In legitimate circles, butchers and hunters who sold animal hides made frequent use of it. In the Underworld, however, it was commonly employed to remove evidence of human blood.
“If the scent of Nicar is strong enough to seep into the fabric, it suggests whoever was operating from that location was dealing with blood regularly. I’m rather familiar with such places.”
In the Underworld—the Backstreet, as some called it—Smythe wielded considerable influence. Especially in the Underworld near the Capital, few dared to oppose him directly.
“But these fools didn’t think twice about targeting my subordinates. Do you understand what that implies?”
The Ruman Brothers were the most notorious of Smythe’s men—anyone worth knowing knew their names. The fact that they’d been swindled meant,
“That whoever did this doesn’t know who I am.”
Satisfied with his own deduction, Smythe let out a sly chuckle. It was clearly the scene of sound reasoning, yet something about Smythe’s laughter seemed thoroughly contemptible. Was that just her imagination, or was it a function of his occupation? Udith tilted her head questioningly.
“A foreigner, then?”
When Ern asked, Smythe nodded.
“And someone who keeps moving.”
Smythe gestured toward the Ruman Brothers, who were scratching at their chins.
“Look at our boys here. Anyone can see they’re built for rough work, yes?”
“True. Honestly, they don’t look the type for legitimate employment.”
“Yet someone looked these men in the face and brazenly sold them that Nutritional Cream anyway. If the perpetrator had been staying put in one place, fear of retaliation would probably have stopped them. But these criminals sold to the Ruman Brothers regardless.”
After all, if you operate long enough in the Backstreet, you’re bound to run into people eventually. But these perpetrators did sell to the Ruman Brothers.
“They planned a quick con and a swift exit from the start!”
“Impressive deduction.”
Ern nodded, as if acknowledging the sense in Smythe’s words.
“Heh, if you’re dim-witted, you can’t even set up a proper loan scheme.”
Smythe gazed at Udith with evident amusement, his expression bright with laughter.
“Your companion has quite an eye for reading people, doesn’t she?”
“My—my companion?”
Now that she thought about it, Udith had never properly explained who Ern was to Smythe. Smythe had simply inferred it himself—anyone could see he wasn’t a servant, the way they moved through the streets together day after day. First she’d kept his face hidden, now she’d stopped bothering. The pattern was obvious enough.
And that pattern pointed to one conclusion: Ern was her lover.
When her husband had first died, she’d deliberately covered his face so people wouldn’t think she was parading a man about. Better to leave his role ambiguous. But time had passed now, and she’d stopped being so careful—they walked openly together. From what Smythe had observed, they were even paying off debts as a team. It wouldn’t be long before they merged their lives entirely.
“He’s not my lover,” Udith said.
Though she’d fielded this misunderstanding countless times before, she found herself flustered now, waving her hand dismissively.
“Why be embarrassed? Your husband’s dead. There’s no shame in keeping a man around.”
Smythe showed no interest in her denial and quickly shifted the subject, robbing Udith of any chance to correct the record. But was Ern bothered at all? She stole a glance at him, searching his face for some reaction.
Ern sat impassive, listening to Smythe and the Ruman Brothers describe the appearance of the cosmetics fraudsters. Was he simply unbothered because it was a misunderstanding? Watching him sit there so unmoved, Udith felt her lips begin to pout before she caught herself and pressed them firmly together.
Of course he was unbothered—that was only natural. The two of them had suffered this misunderstanding so many times before. They should be used to it by now. So why was she suddenly bristling? The moment Udith acknowledged her own pettishness, Smythe turned to her again.
“We’ll need you to take a more active role in catching these men.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You see, if I send my people out on a wide-scale manhunt, word will reach those fraudsters’ ears soon enough.”
He could conduct the investigation quietly and discretely, but that would cost time.
In that interim, the men might scatter far and wide—and more urgently, the Ruman Brothers’ condition was deteriorating by the day.
“Men in the same trade will keep their guard up, but you—they won’t suspect you. And you have the Constabulary at your disposal, don’t you? Unless you’re planning to simmer a stew with the Rainlandt title, you ought to put it to use.”
Smythe would drive them from the shadows while Udith cast the net in daylight with the Constabulary, and together they’d close the trap. That was Smythe’s strategy.
“There’s one more thing I’d ask of you. The nobility have also been purchasing a great deal of Nutritional Cream and Arthritis Medicine, I’m told.”
They too must be experiencing the side effects by now.
“Every competent physician in the city will attract crowds, won’t they? Once those doctors put their heads together, they’ll develop a treatment soon enough. When they do, would you see that our people get some as well?”
Getting a remedy through Udith’s connections would be far faster than Smythe’s own circuitous routes.
“Smythe, you want me to do all this for nothing?”
Catching fraudsters was something Udith would do anyway, for Henry’s sake, but securing a cure for the Ruman Brothers too was an entirely separate matter.
“If you waive one month’s interest, the moment the cure is ready…”
Smythe swept his thick index finger emphatically back and forth in front of Udith’s eyes.
“Haven’t you yourself said that someone close to you fell victim to these men? Without our information, catching them quickly will be difficult.”
“Your information is worth my deploying the Constabulary to arrest the fraudsters—I’ll do that. But Smythe, developing and securing a cure is a separate transaction entirely, isn’t it? Let’s keep the accounting clear. You’re a man in the finance trade, after all.”
“……Finance trade?”
Did loan-sharking count as finance? Ern briefly raised an eyebrow at her word choice, but Smythe was too busy calculating in his head to hear it.
“I’ll give you a Deferral Coupon. Whenever your circumstances become difficult, you can defer your interest payments with it. Three times, with no late fees attached.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————