Huanyu Garden Love

Author: Estelle Montblanc
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-11-01
Features:
Death comes at a moment like all others: you scream your lungs out, but the neighbors don’t hear a thing
Death comes at a moment like all others: you scream your lungs out, but the neighbors don’t hear a thing
A murder case occurs in the Joy Garden, an unexpected death, distorted facial expressions, a blue tongue, elongated, protruding eyes, and a corpse drained of blood. Autopsy reveals a fatal ligature mark on the victim’s upper limbs, identical to the three ugly pale purple marks around his neck. The victim is Adrian Lempereur, a French special correspondent for the newspaper Le Monde, living in Paris. His life was mercilessly crushed by two hands, and he died in a grotesque posture on a bench.
Detective’s report on the victim’s belongings includes: several pairs of socks, a notebook, ten traveler’s checks, three keys, two blank disks, and a cursed email sent to Mark Lempierre. The confrontation among the three involved parties has just begun. Episode 1. Episode 1.
The plane landed in Boston after a rather rough journey. Logan Airport is well-known as one of the most dangerous airports in the U.S., alongside JFK in New York and San Diego with its insufficiently long runway. This three-hour flight along the U.S. coast was bumpier than usual, with passengers showing varying degrees of paleness and distrust of the Air France pilots—as the announcement at Rouen’s takeoff mentioned a female pilot named Christianne Leroi. This immediately made a chubby male passenger distrustful. Sitting next to him was a gentleman who bore a striking resemblance to a former U.S. president. To express his displeasure, Gérard Breaucq had pressed the light button several times to summon a flight attendant, constantly complaining about not being able to smoke, the fan not being powerful enough, the blanket being too rough, the specially ordered meal from the cabin crew being unsatisfactory, and the wine served being too old. The poor flight attendant had to attend to his every whim, from smiling politely to being tormented. Since there were no visible clouds outside the cabin to explain the turbulence, Gérard blamed everything on Christianne Leroi: “A female pilot! We’ll see about that.” He leaned over to the passenger next to him and repeated this softly. But his neighbor never took their eyes off the book in their hands. The book had a very peculiar title: Writings in the Dark. His purpose of the trip was to promote the wine produced by the company he and his brother jointly owned, aiming to secure a certain market share at the H?tel de Manne. At first, he thought the neighbor was reading a book about illegal labor, but he happened to glimpse a sentence that seemed to be about the 16th century. He then shifted his attention away from the neighbor’s book and scanned the surroundings with disdain.
At the other end of the corridor, a young man wearing glasses was intently annotating a book about Freud. The book’s strange cover seemed to indicate the author was someone named Edith Lecter. Gérard Breaucq had noticed a blonde woman with blue eyes in the seat in front of him during takeoff. She had been reading her History of Juliet throughout the ascent. Finally, twisting his neck, he made out the author: Michelle Sard. It seemed he had stumbled into a group of intellectuals. Gérard sighed and absentmindedly flipped through the Paris Match he had brought, which was mostly about how disappointing the British monarchy was. Then he began to seriously study international trade vocabulary.