490 The Invisible Woman
Benson Walton’s POV:
Julie used to work as a servant in this manor, but the strange thing was that I didn’t see her in any of the files. Whether it was the investigation team from more than twenty years ago or the Intelligence Department that came in to bring up the past, there was not even a trace of Julie in their reports.
All the people who used to work in the manor had been strictly interrogated, and even the guard dogs were traced back to the trainers and kennels to be investigated for suspicion. Had Julie, a living person, been forgotten by everyone?
There was a problem with the investigation of Layla’s suicide case from the beginning, or there was something wrong with Julie.
Julie wasn’t willing to leave with me, so I didn’t force her to leave. It was raining outside anyway, so she couldn’t go anywhere. I asked the old guard about Julie, but he knew nothing about it. He only said, “Before I came here, she had been here for many years.”
“You’ve been guarding the gate here for so many years. Haven’t you heard any rumors about Julie?”
“Tsk, what new information can come out of the rumors? A lunatic would only talk about how miserable her life was when she was young, how her husband abandoned her, or how her child died, and then she couldn’t take the blow and went crazy. In my opinion, it’s all just groundless accusations. It’s too easy to spread rumors about a lunatic.”
“So you don’t believe these rumors?” I handed a cigarette to the old guard. He kept glancing at the corner of the cigarette box in my pocket. One couldn’t smoke in this line of work. If someone hired you to guard a house, you might burn the entire manor with a cigarette.
The old man took the cigarette, put it under his nose, and greedily took two deep breaths. He was not in a hurry to light it up. He just held it in his mouth and gently chewed the cigarette as if he was tasting the fragrance of tobacco through cotton.
The cigarette quickly closed the distance between us. The old man no longer drooped his eyes and ignored me. I asked him a little, and he told me all the ‘gossip’ he knew.
“I heard that crazy Julie was beautiful when she was young, but her family wasn’t well-off. She met some gangsters in school and dropped out of school later. After dropping out of school, she went to a strip club and became a dancer, living a lavish life. Although her relatives avoided her like a snake, she heard that when she was young and rich, one of her cousins had pursued her! This family, heh!
“After that, for some reason, she went crazy. Many people said that she was too shocked after being dumped. However, I heard from an aunt who cared for her for a few days that she didn’t want to strip and dance anymore. She was thinking of looking for another job, but she suddenly disappeared before she could find it. When she reappeared, she was already like this, crazy.
“Not only did he go crazy, but she also went blind. Some volunteers came to check on her and take her to the rescue station, but she didn’t go and secretly returned.”
The building was dusky under the rain and fog. I looked at the broken window and asked the old man, “You’re just letting her stay here? The owner of this manor doesn’t have any objections?”
“It’s not my house, why should I care who lives here? Besides, the owner of this manor doesn’t really care about it. You can tell from this dilapidated house. I’ve told them twice, but they didn’t care, so I didn’t want to make fun of them.”
The manor owners were undoubtedly the Lycan royal couple, but the royal family had countless properties. The manager basically managed the real estate in a small place like this.
For this kind of ‘haunted house’ that the royal family might not return once in 800 years and someone had died, even the manager would not take care of it much. Maintaining the manor required money, and no one would come anyway. So, instead of giving the maintenance money to the renovation company, it was better to fatten his pockets.
I’d seen this kind of thing many times. Loyalty was worth a few stacks of cash in front of real money.
However, Julie’s behavior was so suspicious. Even if she only appeared after the suicide case was settled more than twenty years ago, how could the Intelligence Department not notice her? It couldn’t be that they came to investigate just in time to see Julie begging, right? Just asking the old man, I got quite some information.
After chatting with the old man for a while, I found no other clues, so I returned to the villa.
Julie was still curled up in a small corner of the storage room. She was covered with more tattered blankets and sheets. The tattered blankets and wet sheets obviously could not resist the water vapor and cold air invasion.
“You used to be a servant here, Julie.” I went straight to the point while observing Julie’s expression. “You may not remember, or you don’t want to mention it, so you deliberately hid it. But that doesn’t matter because I don’t care about your profession. I only care about what happened in this house.
“So I’ll ask you again, are you willing to leave with me? I can provide you with hot soup, blankets, and a stable and safe place to stay so you don’t have to hide here and there like you do now.”
At the end of her sentence, Julie finally looked at me.
That was right. I was sure that Julie must be hiding from something, and her completely transparent existence in everyone’s eyes might have some connection with Layla’s death.
