S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 20

Witness of the Three Murderers 20 – Locked Attic

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Luo Tian and Qin Ou brought Ma Xin and Xiatian to the gate of a certain villa in the garden district of S City.

There was an aunt in her forties holding a set of keys standing at the gate, waiting for them.

That aunt was the maid of Wu Qian's family and gave the keys to Luo Tian and the others, telling them that the villa hadn't been altered since the accident and had been kept in its original state.

Ma Xin asked that aunt, "Auntie, have you always helped the Qiao family?"

Auntie nodded, "Mhmm, I've been taking care of the wife for almost fifteen years."

Luo Tian and Qin Ou looked at each other, and Qin Ou asked, "How much do you know about Qiao Xi?"

The aunt frowned, then sighed and said, "Young Master is a bit special, he's rather reticent. He was in a worse situation, and after seeing a doctor, he obviously got better, but then that incident happened."

"Seeing a doctor?" Ma Xin was curious, "What kind of illness does he have?"

The aunt helplessly pointed to her head, "There's a bit of a problem here, I don't know if it's a mental illness or a psychiatric illness, in any case, Master invited a very famous expert to see him."

"Has he been sick since he was a child?" Xiatian asked.

"I'm not sure about this." That aunt said, "I was hired by Master to specially take care of his wife."

"Then, the ex-wife, have you met her?" Ma Xin asked.

The aunt shook her head, seeming to be somewhat distraught, "When I arrived at the Qiao house, that madam had already passed away, and in his house, she was a forbidden topic, absolutely not to be mentioned."

"Why?" Xiatian felt that the Qiao family was a bit mysterious.

The aunt hesitated and lowered her voice, "I heard that the young master's illness was inherited from that original wife, on the top floor of this villa." The aunt reached out and pointed to the villa behind her.

The crowd looked back. It was a very luxurious large four-storey villa, the top floor was a spire with a skylight, which was covered with iron fences.

"I heard that Madam jumped from that roof." The aunt said, "The top floor of the villa has a locked iron door, I've never been up there, and it seems that the door to the entire fourth floor hasn't been opened since Madam's death."

"You mean that the previous wife was locked on the fourth floor?" Ma Xin frowned, "Isn't that imprisonment?"

The aunt shook her head, "I'm not very clear on the specifics, but aren't some seriously ill patients in mental hospitals locked up? Master had specially hired psychiatrists, maybe he didn't want to put his wife in the hospital, so he locked her up at home. I've heard from people who used to work here that the old master loved his wife very much."

"What's your family's master like?" Luo Tian then asked, "I heard that he was very superstitious?"

"Er..." that aunt frowned, "Master was very nice! Although he was big boss, he was very kind and had no attitude. Although it's said that he was superstitious, I've been in his family for so many years, but I never really felt it. I haven't studied much, but think about it! If Master was really that superstitious, then why did he hire a doctor to cure Madam and Young Master's illnesses instead of hiring an immortal or something like that? Right?"

Everyone smiled and nodded. Without a doubt, this aunt's words were quite sensible.

"Then have you seen that Heavenly Master Hou?" Ma Xin asked.

The aunt shook her head, "He's unconscionable! He's definitely a liar! But after the kidnapping, Master sent Madam to another place so as not to hinder the police investigation. I accompanied Madam there, so we only heard about what happened at home."

"Then at that time, was there anyone else in the house besides Qiao Yuanxin and Heavenly Master Hou?" Qin Ou asked.

"Well... I heard that there were quite a few servants in the house originally, all of whom took care of the former madam. But after Madam died, those people all left and gave rise to me and Uncle Yang. After Master died, Uncle Yang went back to his hometown and I heard that he had passed away last year."

Luo Tian and Qin Ou nodded. From the initial understanding of the Qiao family's situation from the nanny aunt, it seems that the relationships of this Qiao family were quite complicated.

Qin Ou used the key to open the already rusty iron gate. A thick layer of dust had accumulated on the gate, it seemed that no one had been here for many years.

As Luo Tian walked inside, he took out his phone and called Jiang Ping, asking him to check on Qiao Yuanxin's ex-wife and her psychiatric history to see which doctors had treated her.

The courtyard of the villa was overgrown with weeds, and the mailbox at the entrance was stuffed beyond capacity. Xiatian opened the mailbox, took the evidence bag and collected all the letters.

Zhan Zhao had instructed them earlier that there were a few things to bring back, one was all the mail and the other was all the CDs, documents, books and computers in Qiao Xi's study.

Ma Xin held the camera and started to take pictures of the appearance of this villa. When the camera was raised to the barred window on the fourth floor, Ma Xin couldn't help but sigh, ''It's almost like living in a prison.

Xiatian put the evidence bag into his backpack, and when he heard Ma Xin's words, he said, "Don't you think it's very scary? A mentally ill patient was locked up on the top floor and the whole family lived in one building, how depressing would that be!"

"It's no wonder that Qiao Xi hasn't quite been normal since he was a child." Qin Ou and Luo Tian were both eternally filial dads. Thinking about Qiao Xi's living environment as a child, they felt that it was unfortunate.

After the yard was surveyed, the four of them arrived at the entrance of the villa.

Opening the wooden door of the villa, they found that the interior was very open and bright. This villa had good lighting.

Ma Xin tilted her face to look at the tall windows, "It's better than expected, it's not gloomy."

The others nodded.

On the ground floor was the entrance hall, which was luxuriously decorated. At the back there was a kitchen and workers' rooms, nothing special, and at the very back was a backyard. Through the French glass door, Luo Tian visually inspected the backyard. There was a swimming pool and a greenhouse, which might have been a garden. They would go and look at it in a while.

The layout of the villa was quite simple. Because of the spire design, the floor area was reduced floor by floor. The first floor was used by Qiao Xinyuan, there was a bedroom and a study. The study was very large, it seemed to be for office use.

Ma Xin spun around and said, "Hmm... Qiao Yuanxin shouldn't have had any other women before his ex-wife died."

Everyone looked at her, "Where do you judge that from?"

"Have you guys seen Brother Bai's study?" Ma Xin blinked.

Everyone rubbed their chins.

"It's filled with my lord's things, like skull paperweights, skull crystal cups, heart-shaped ashtrays and whatnot, as well as forensic science magazines and whatnot left behind by my lord when he was reading in his study and a whole bunch of horror films." Ma Xin narrowed her eyes and pointed around, "The only thing here besides papers and his office supplies are books on mental illness!"

Qin Ou also noticed that almost an entire bookshelf was filled with books on psychiatry and psychology.

"Take a photo of all of them, and show them to Dr. Zhan." Luo Tian said.

As Ma Xin took the camera and shot, Xiatian opened Qiao Yuanxin's desk and looked at the materials inside, looking for the things that Zhan Zhao had asked him to look for as he did so – a phone book and a business card holder, as well as an agenda book and the like.

"Huh?"

At this moment, Ma Xin seemed to have seen something, putting down the camera and running over to the bookshelf, pulling out a thin, colourfully printed book.

Luo Tian walked over and saw that it was something like a museum almanack, and the green tree-shaped logo stood out.

"It seems like it's the almanack that came from that museum that Captain and the others went to." Qin Ou also took a look at it.

Xiatian came over with an evidence bag and put the almanack inside for Zhan Zhao to see as well.

After the crowd wandered around the study, it was time to go to the third floor.

The third floor was Qiao Xi's room. Apart from the bathroom, there was only one big room, the weirdly arranged study that the crowd had seen pictures of before.

Xiatian opened the door and found that, unlike the spaciousness of the other rooms, this room was rather dim.

Luo Tian walked in and opened the curtains... The room instantly lit up.

The sense of the impact of facing this room directly was different from looking at a photo.

"What a scary room!" Xiatian shook his head.

Qin Ou and Luo Tian, the two dads, both felt that it was simply unbelievable. Would anyone let their son live in a room like this? If Luo Yang or Xiao Yi ever made their rooms look like this, they would definitely have to find Doctor Zhan to take a good look at them!

Ma Xin took the camera and started shooting this room as a whole according to Zhan Zhao's request, while Luo Tian took the set of keys given by the nanny and asked, "The fourth floor is locked, isn't there a key?"

"There doesn't seem to be a match." Qin Ou and Luo Tian left that room first and looked at the staircase that led to the fourth floor not far away.

To be exact, the fourth floor was an attic. A very narrow staircase led up to it, and halfway up the staircase, there was a black iron door with a lock on it.

Qin Ou looked at the lock, "It's just an ordinary door lock."

Saying this, he asked Ma Xin for a hairpin, ready to pick it...

However, Qin Ou frowned and stared at the lock for a while before calling out for Ma Xin to take a picture.

Luo Tian also looked down at that lock and saw that at the keyhole, there were a few obvious scratches.

"Has this lock been picked?" Luo Tian asked.

"It should have been!" Qin Ou said, taking the hairpin and picking the lock.

Ma Xin stood at the iron doorway and looked upstairs. She couldn't directly see the fourth floor because there was still half a staircase, and it was a spiral staircase.

It didn't take long to hear a click, and the lock was opened.

Ma Xin and Xiatian both clapped their hands. Worthy of being a bomb disposal expert, opening the lock is a piece of cake!

The lock was unlocked and the iron door was yanked open, and a creak came... The empty room suddenly resounded with a clanging and jangling sound.

This sudden noise scared Xiatian and Ma Xin.

Qin Ou tilted his face up and found that there were no mechanisms on the door, so he scouted out the stairs and saw that the top corner of the staircase was fitted with a string of iron wind chimes. The pivot of the iron door was connected up to the top and there was a wire connected to the wind chimes, so as soon as the door was opened, the wind chimes would ring.

Ma Xin frowned, "Wow! What a pervert!"

Luo Tian and Qin Ou glanced at each other. It was a state of complete imprisonment. Even if she was a psychopath, surely this was illegal?

The stairs behind the door were very narrow, allowing only one person to walk at a time. Luo Tian went up first, while Ma Xin held up the camera and followed behind him...

After going upstairs, unexpectedly, the fourth floor was very clean and tidy. The walls were padded with soft foam all around, the floor was also soft carpet. All the table legs, bedposts, chair backs and so on were wrapped with foam around the edges, probably for fear that the mistress would fall and get hurt.

"A subtle feeling!" Ma Xin tsked twice while starting to shoot in all directions.

Qin Ou walked to the window and looked out. He saw two windows, one facing the front door and the other facing the backyard, and from this angle, he could clearly see the greenhouse.

The bed was placed against one of the walls, and Xiatian looked under the bed... This is what Zhan Zhao instructed him to do, telling him to pay attention to what was under the beds, sofas, cabinets and so on, to see if there was anything.

Xiatian lay down on the ground to look under the bed but noticed that there was a scratch on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Xiatian blinked and waved at Ma Xin.

Ma Xin squatted down and took a look, "This bed seems to have moved a lot!"

Qin Ou tugged on the bed... and found that the bed wasn't heavy and that it was easy to drag away from the wall.

Luo Tian walked over, fiddled with the foam on the wall, pulled it outwards, and found that it could be yanked off... Subsequently, Luo Tian pulled it aside with force...

The foam that had originally covered the entire wall was lifted.

At the same time that the foam was lifted and the wall underneath was revealed, Ma Xin and Xiatian could be heard saying "Wow!" together.

Qin Ou and Luo Tian looked, and both frowned... They saw that on the wall under the foam, there was a mural, which looked too familiar: it was the tree-shaped genealogy pattern on the wall of the hunting family's old castle. There were butterflies nailed to the branches of the family tree, however, these black-shaded butterflies weren't specimens but were cut out of black paper.

Ma Xin pulled out the tree-shaped genealogy that was stored on her tablet, the one photographed in the ancient castle, to compare, and the result was – the structure was the same!

"In that case, if the one who has been living in the ancient castle all these years has been Qiao Xi," Qin Ou frowned, "then he made the genealogy according to this mural that his mother painted?"

......

Museum entrance.

Zhan Zhao and the others circled a few times before they found the main entrance. This museum was quite secretive, it took half a day to find the door.

There was a black glass door with a sign that said open.

Zhan Zhao touched his chin – Is this definitely a museum? It feels like a coffee shop, the kind that has no business.

Bai Yutang pushed the door in.

There was the sound of wind chimes.

Bai Yutang followed the sound and looked over, and saw that the pivot of the glass door was connected to a coupling rod, which led up to the ceiling of the room, where a wire was attached to the metal wind chimes that hung from the ceiling. As long as the door was opened, the wind chimes would ring.

Zhan Zhao slightly raised an eyebrow – Is this really a museum?

When the crowd entered, they saw that the hall on the ground floor was very small, with no one around and no reception desk. There was only one machine placed in the middle of the room, somewhat like a number picker in a bank.

Zhan Zhao walked over to take a look and saw the screen display – The ticket price was five yuan.

Zhan Zhao blinked, put five yuan in the bill inlet, reached out and clicked it, and the machine "swallowed" the five yuan.

After that, there was a click, and a ticket came out of the ticket slot.

Zhan Zhao reached out and took a look at the ticket, then stuffed another twenty yuan into it... Subsequently, four tickets came out in a row, one for each person.

There was a red arrow on the white wall directly in front of the ticket dispenser that said – Entrance.

The five people waited a little while longer but didn't see any staff coming to greet them, so they had to follow that arrow.

After turning a corner following the arrows, the light dimmed and a door appeared ahead. It was a very thick padded door, somewhat like the kind of doors that cinemas use for soundproofing.

Bai Yutang reached out and pushed the door open. It was even darker ahead, and a long corridor appeared in front of everyone's eyes. The top half of the walls on both sides were painted white, the bottom half was green, and the floor was yellow marble tiles. There were wooden doors at regular intervals on both sides of the corridor, and it looked and felt like the corridor of a hospital inpatient unit or a very old inpatient unit.

There were several fluorescent lights mounted above the corridor, most of which were not lit.

The crowd walked in, and when they came to the first door, they saw that the door was ajar, and on it was a piece of A4 paper with three words printed in black – Exhibition Hall One.

The crowd couldn't help but twitch the corners of their mouths – Was this okay?

Zhao Jue looked at the ticket, "No wonder the ticket only costs five yuan!"

Pushing open the ajar door, he walked into exhibition hall one, which was pitch black.

One after another, glass columns were erected inside the exhibition hall. There were blue spotlights that illuminated the glass columns, and there was water kept in the columns, which, to put it simply, were similar to the kind of glass columns displaying jellyfish in Ocean Park.

Only, what was housed in the glass columns were not light and soft jellyfish, but some deformed and twisted... corpses.

Evidently, what was in the glass columns was not water, but formalin.

"Fuck!" Zhao Hu stood in front of a column and looked at an alien-like corpse inside, "Should have brought Gongsun along."

Zhan Zhao stopped in front of a somewhat ugly, mermaid-like corpse, "Is this spliced or special effects make-up?"

When he asked, he heard an eerie voice coming from behind him, “It's real... aiya!"

Zhan Zhao turned around abruptly and saw a person behind him being yanked away by Bai Yutang and then pressed against a water column on the side with a bang.

That person was wearing a white lab coat and a pair of weird, rope-tied glasses. One hand was twisted behind his back by Bai Yutang, his face was pressed against one of the glass columns that housed the corpse of this two-headed snake, and the other hand was slapping the column, "It hurts it hurts... Aiya, handsome man, let go! I don't like being so rough!"

Bai Yutang looked at him and frowned as he let go of his hand.

The man turned back around as he rubbed his shoulder.

The first thing the crowd noticed was the glasses he was wearing.

It was a rather odd pair of insert-style glasses, usually used when trying out lenses at an optician's office, which was a round iron ring with several slots in the front of the frames, allowing more than one lens to be inserted.

The man had inserted at least two or three lenses, which looked rather funny.

“Oh..." The man surveyed the crowd in front of him and reached up to remove the glasses.

By the faint light of the blue spotlights, the crowd surveyed the man in front of them.

This person was more than forty years old, of medium height but very thin, with high cheekbones, concave cheeks, and obvious cheekbones. He had heavy dark circles under his eyes, giving the impression that he hadn't slept for a few days. His eyes were very large, and he stared at the crowd with bulging eyes. He appeared to be a bit nervous as he looked at the crowd. He was wearing a black shirt, black trousers and a medical lab coat. He had short black hair, and his hair felt like it hadn't been washed in a long time, it was hanging on both sides of his head, damp and oily.

Zhan Zhao and the others identified him and without hesitation classified him as – a suspected pervert!

"Who are you?" Bai Yutang asked him.

"Hehe." The man reached out, pulling out a business card from the top pocket of his white lab coat and handing it over, "I'm the curator here."

Bai Yutang reached out and took the business card, and saw that the name printed on it was – Kai Bin.

The man withdrew his hand and clasped his hands together, rubbing them gently. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, his voice was dry and hoarse, and his eyebrows raised as he said to the crowd, "Welcome!"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: January 18, 2024 by Angel

Edited: April 3, 2024 by Angel