My Husband Lives in a Painting - Chapter 32

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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My Husband Lives in a Painting Episode 32
As the conversation stretched on, I cast my gaze about the room, searching for a moment to catch my breath.
“You pretended not to know Noah Gail at the Banquet Hall, didn’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Instead of answering, I gestured with my chin toward the newspaper resting beside him.
The front page of the newspaper blazed with news of Gail’s embezzlement of deliveries.
The article, focusing on embezzlement rather than disappearance, painted a picture of him fleeing under cover of darkness in a calculated escape.
“Ah… Gail Pistachio.”
His subdued voice sounded as though he resented another man’s name being spoken in this room at all.
That irritated me further. He was already dead, after all.
“The two of you weren’t particularly close, then?”
“Well, we got along well enough. But we weren’t so intimate that he’d bare all his family secrets to me.”
“I see.”
A lie. He was the very one who’d taken Annmarie away.
But since the Illegal Adoption was a secret externally, I dangled bait with serene indifference, feigning ignorance.
“And yet I think people hold Count Pistachio to rather harsh standards, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Not everyone can live like a sage.”
“…….”
“Doesn’t everyone harbor some secret they can’t speak of to others?”
Though I was fairly confident in my performance, I lowered my gaze to my teacup, afraid my nervousness might show.
“……I never expected to hear such words from you, madam.”
Because of that, I failed to catch the flicker of intrigue that kindled in the marquis’s eyes.
“Are you disappointed that I’m not what you imagined?”
“Different, yes—but rather pleasantly so.”
When I slowly raised my head, Pagoda’s upper body had leaned forward slightly more than before.
He smiled faintly and murmured to himself.
“I think I’m beginning to understand why Belladonna chose you.”
“……What?”
Belladonna?
Why was that name emerging here?
After a long pause, the marquis abruptly skipped ahead in the thread of our conversation.
“Did you know that Count Gail actually involved himself in the Illegal Adoption business?”
At his sudden admission, my expression nearly crumbled.
Barely recovering my composure, I played innocent and asked in return.
“I didn’t know. Did he do such a thing?”
“Yes. Over two hundred children were placed through his adoptions, I’m told.”
“Adoptions, you say.”
“The word is adoption, but in truth he was buying and selling children.”
“…….”
My expression hardened by degrees.
Separate from the Imperial Investigation Squad, I too had been tracking those who’d undergone Illegal Adoption, but nowhere could I find records of the disappeared children.
……Could there have been something I’d overlooked?
Why does the marquis know of this?
“That’s rather unexpected.”
I managed, barely, to part my dry lips.
Forcing down the surging emotions deep within myself, I took care that my tension or bewilderment should not leak into the open.
And I cast about for the most appropriate question.
“I had no idea the Empire had so many people who desired Illegal Adoptions.”
“Ha ha ha!”
That was when laughter suddenly burst forth.
Head tilted back, Pagoda trembled in great heaving guffaws, as though my remark were the finest joke imaginable.
My own lips stiffened awkwardly while he alone laughed until breath came short—and the room filled with a strange, discordant current.
“Ah… How innocent you are, madam.”
“What?”
“Why would you assume that if there were two hundred children, there must therefore be two hundred customers?”
After his prolonged laughter, his next words cast a chill over the atmosphere once more.
“Half of them, I’m told, were adopted by a single person, madam.”
“……What do you mean?”
“Shall I tell you who it was?”
I’m curious.
But there was something unsettling in his eyes—like watching a murderer in the instant before drawing a blade.
“……That would be,”
My breath caught as if a leaden weight had been placed upon my chest. Before the answer could spill out, an urge rose in me to cover my ears and hear nothing.
But before I could make that choice, Pagoda released the taut string he’d been drawing.
“Only joking, madam.”
“…….”
“Rather than such tedious matters, I’d prefer to focus on our conversation here and now.”
* * *
Pagoda launched into an endless stream of trivialities—his hobbies, local landmarks, culinary delights—anything but substance.
It wasn’t so much conversation as me keeping time to his monologue, offering occasional agreement.
‘He’s expounding on things no one cares to hear with such earnest devotion.’
Time bled away while I endured this empty noise, and before long, a crimson sunset was bleeding across the windowpanes.
“Ah, I nearly forgot—you mentioned wanting to see the Mansion.”
At his words, my ears finally pricked up.
I answered as if I’d been waiting for precisely this moment.
“Yes. It’s quite beautiful. And there are rare pieces on display throughout.”
“I’m glad they met with your approval. Unlike that brute Gail, I do appreciate the arts.”
“……I see.”
“Shall we get up then?”
Led through his Mansion by Pagoda, who spoke ill of the dead without hesitation, I surveyed room after room.
Expensive crafts and masterworks lined the walls, yet the evidence I sought was nowhere to be found.
Still needing to buy time, I continued the pretense of interest in the pieces he displayed.
“Is there any particular field in which you specialize?”
“If I had to choose, music.”
“Music? That’s surprising. I didn’t see any instruments among what you showed me…….”
“Ah, I keep those in a separate room.”
Something peculiar stirred in me at those last words, breaking through the aridity of our exchange.
‘So devoted to music that he maintains a dedicated room for it?’
As if waiting for that flicker of curiosity in my eyes, Pagoda’s lips curved into a thin smile.
“Would you care to see it?”
“……Me?”
“Yes. Camille has been there before. Though it didn’t seem to suit his tastes.”
At last—at last—that name I’d been searching for spilled from his lips.
But whether it was truth or a lure, I couldn’t yet know.
“I’ve prepared a listening room for you to visit.”
“……You must truly love enjoying music.”
“Ha! Of course. It’s my only solace in life, one might say.”
The moment the door he opened swung wide, an abnormal chaos greeted me.
‘……A phonograph?’
There were no violins or pianos as one would expect—only phonographs of varying sizes, grotesquely occupying the chamber.
But there was something stranger still: the unsettled, nervous reactions of the servants who followed silently behind.
“I have a hobby of collecting beautiful sounds. And as you know, I’m quite susceptible to beautiful women as well.”
“…….”
“Tell me—can you guess what these two things have in common?”
Pagoda picked up a palm-sized sphere resting beside one of the phonographs.
It was a magic-operated recording sphere, and something within it seemed to have been recorded.
Deliberately sidestepping his question, I threw another at him instead.
“……Are there only that many spheres with direct recordings?”
“Of course not. My collection contains far more within.”
“…….”
Even as my heart hammered as if it might burst, my eyes scanned the room searching for any sign of where Annmarie might have been held. But I found nothing.
‘Damn it!’
Without finding what I came for, lingering in this repugnant room was nothing but wasted time.
I turned immediately toward the door, but the servants standing like a living wall blocked my way.
“Where are you going?”
“……!”
My body froze at the voice from directly behind me.
Then Pagoda’s massive hand came down hard upon my right shoulder.
“You must see the collection before you go.”
A chill crept over her shoulders, as though a snake were slithering across her skin.

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