The Secret Code of Monsters.

Chapter 94 Ch.93 Edward Snow

Edward Snow lived in a small hotel in the East End, near Cross Street.

Roland visited the house before noon the next day based on the address.

There was no telling how many residents were crammed into this four-story building. Clotheslines stretched out from the balconies like a spider web, intertwining with each other, with drenched clothes and trousers hanging from them, checkered skirts that looked like tattered rags, and stain-resistant striped shirts that had been washed to a pale color. There were also some socks and a few new-looking clothes - usually without collars.

People who live here don't deserve collars either.

Refined and stately gentlemen passed through the junction in their carriages, or accompanied a lady on her way side by side, looking across the sea from the primitive people on this side of the road.

I walked through the dripping clothes on my head and the whole hotel was filled with the smell of shit and urine.

In addition to the crying of children, through the thin doors, one could clearly hear women's insults and curses - mostly curses on the children's fathers, and occasionally on the children. There were also a few households that were silent, but their wooden doors were open.

There was snoring inside.

Roland went to the third floor and spent a long time choosing among dozens of narrow doors, but he did not find the "number seven" that Edward Snow mentioned.

If you want to sort, you must first have a beginning.

This house was built in such a way that it was impossible to find the way out.

He listened in the corridor for a while, found a door that sounded the least offensive, and tapped it lightly with his fingernails.

The room was silent.

"Who's out there?"

"Hello." Roland stood up and faced the door: "Which side is Room 7 on?"

Someone is walking in the room.

After a while, the door opened a crack.

Half of his face was alert.

Of course, after she saw Roland's face and what he was wearing, her expression and tone became surprisingly gentle: "...Hello, sir."

She was steaming all over, and she even had time to comb her wet hair.

Thin cloth cannot hide the most competent part of a mother.

Seeing that Roland had no reaction, the woman in the room laughed even more unscrupulously, with her smile as loose as the collar of her nightgown.

"This place is not worthy of your status..." She glanced into the room secretly and whispered: "If you want to talk about something else with a woman, the whole building must know... I have the quietest voice here..."

"I haven't had lunch yet, ma'am."

Roland interrupted with a smile, rejecting the competent mother's suggestion.

"It's the same if you eat in the room." She grinned and opened the door a little wider: "It doesn't matter what you eat..."

"Number seven—"

The mother was not very happy, and she was even less willing to show Roland the way. She muttered and grumbled, "...I have three daughters. Don't you want to be watched by those pure, beautiful eyes--"

As he was speaking, the side door opened.

A man with no hair on his head and slightly bushy hair on both sides was pushing the door with a wooden basin in his hand.

I happened to meet Roland.

He wore a pair of round gold-rimmed glasses, had a hump nose, and a long, thin head.

Roland didn't know him, but he seemed to know Roland.

"…Mr. Collins?"

He called out tentatively.

Roland tilted his head to look for the source of the voice: "Snow? Doctor Edward Snow?"

After just two sentences of conversation, Roland's actions made the woman in the room discover something.

She quickly shrank back, spitting at the door with a loud spit, and muttered "May the benefactor protect you" and "You are actually a blind man", then slammed the door.

Edward Snow looked at the door, then at Roland, and the corners of his straight mouth trembled slightly for a moment.

“…You are a little late, Mr. Collins.”

Edward Snow was wearing a loose gray cloth overalls and a pair of loose flannel trousers.

He poured the filth in the basin out of the window at the end of the corridor, ignored the curses downstairs, opened the door and invited Roland in. "You're really too late."

He sighed.

The room contained only a 'bed' made of a few pieces of wood and irregular boards, a leather-covered suitcase, two folded clothes, candles and a long table.

The walls were uneven, and it looked more like a man-made cave than a room.

"I just came back last night and saw your letter. Mr. Snow, Mrs. Chloe..."

The man put down the basin and turned around, as calm as a face in a portrait.

"She is dead, Mr. Collins."

He said.

He scooped two spoonfuls of water from the basin into the bowls, asked Roland to sit down, and pushed one of the bowls to him.

Roland didn't touch the water in the bowl, crossed his fingers, and lowered his eyes to the table.

"You mean, she's sick..."

The turbid water could only vaguely reflect a distorted face.

"I mean, she died."

Edward Snow seemed oblivious to this, and lightly skipped over the matter of death, continuing his story:

"To be honest, I have never agreed with this kind of brutal and physically destructive 'treatment' for 'hysteria'..."

"If that can be considered therapy."

He seemed to have no emotional impact on Cherry-Chloe's experience. There was only a strange hint of sarcasm on his calm and cold face, as if he had watched the women wearing crowns in the crowds of people at night.

Snow picked up the bowl and took a sip to moisten his lips.

"…They encourage women to release their desires. Yes, I don't disagree with Hippocrates, but you know that times are changing. Sometimes we have to force ourselves to look at things from the perspective of another gender."

He said.

"But that's all. I have to say something disrespectful about Mr. Isaac's... 'little invention' - it's a complete evil trick that tramples on human dignity."

"What else can you do with chloroform, scissors, and a soldering iron?"

Edward Snow shook his head, pinched the thin legs of his glasses between his index finger and thumb, and lifted them onto the hump of his nose.

"I have seen a woman who underwent a silver flute removal surgery. Although it was exactly as Mr. Isaac wrote in his report: she gained weight, looked happy, behaved elegantly, and became different from before..."

"The nerves in that area are no longer inflamed. This means she has given up on provoking that thing all the time..."

Edward Snow's straight lips finally moved, "...but she was gone anyway, wasn't she?"

Roland listened to him quietly. After he finished talking about those terms that he didn't understand at all, he spoke softly:
"Where is she, Mr. Snow."

Edward Snow was stunned for a moment, then he realized that Roland was asking about Cherry Chloe's grave.

"…She was taken away by her brother."

"Since you are friends with her, you should know that since the death of Mrs. Chloe's father, there has been no one else in the Wilson family."

"I don't know what he and the Lord discussed, but to be honest, I have strongly suggested that Mrs. Chloe's body be preserved to facilitate my subsequent-"

Roland suddenly interrupted him rudely:
"You mean to say that her body is missing, right?"

Edward Snow frowned and nodded reluctantly.

"Yes, Mr. Collins."

He saw it.

The "perfect body" gentleman in front of him did not have a soul that was inquiring for knowledge, so he simply stopped talking about the knowledge that only those with truly noble and inquiring souls would be willing to listen to.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose hard a few times.

"The last I saw of her was in the hall of Chloe's, where she was being held by the servants—well, she said, she left something for you, in her brother's memory... But I don't know what that means, Mr. Collins."

Roland lowered his eyes and said nothing.

he knows.

(End of this chapter)