Hearing this, Russell fell silent for a moment before offering another guess:
"Then... or perhaps he couldn't wait that long. After all, waiting for his teacher to retire would take at least another ten years or so.
"During that time, he would have to live almost entirely under his teacher's shadow. Even after retirement, people would surely use Mr. Nicholas Winter's works to belittle him.
"So, rather than letting that happen, it would be better to end the teacher's life early. It would allow the teacher to exit at his peak while paving the way for himself."
"A decent line of thought, but regrettably, that is also impossible." Mary shook her head.
"And why is that?"
"Because Mr. Nicholas Winter didn't have long to live anyway," she said lightly.
This sentence landed in Russell's ears like a thunderclap.
"Didn't have long to live?" He sat up abruptly, his sleepiness vanishing instantly. "What do you mean? Isn't he only in his fifties?"
This information had never been mentioned, neither in Charlotte's files nor in the public reports in the newspapers.
"Indeed." Mary turned her head, her azure eyes appearing exceptionally clear under the sunlight, yet bottomless.
"The specific cause isn't very clear. My family's private doctor said it was consumption. But treating it with the methods for consumption showed no effect. We could only watch his body grow weaker day by day."
She paused, then added, "Only our family, Mr. Winter himself, and his apprentice Edgar knew about this.
"Father kept this secret for him. After all, an art master on the verge of falling will always attract some ill-intentioned vultures.
"Just like that... 'human blood mantou' you mentioned earlier."
Russell was completely stunned.
If this was true, then Charlotte's starting point had been wrong from the very beginning.
What reason would someone, who already knew they would inherit everything and that their teacher's days were numbered, have to commit such a superfluous murder?
"I guess Miss Holmes doesn't know about this, right?"
Mary looked at him, a playful smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
"...."
If she knew, the case would probably have been solved already.
And he wouldn't have needed to be tortured all night.
"So, since you have so much inside information, Miss Morstan, why didn't you tell Charlotte directly?"
"Why should I tell her?" Mary blinked, her expression as innocent as an angel.
"Watching a genius distressed by a lack of key information is a rare pleasure in itself. Besides..."
Her tone shifted, and her gaze fell back onto Russell, a look that seemed capable of piercing through everything.
"I am more interested in seeing what you, as her assistant, will do."
"..."
How did this get pulled back to me?
Russell fell into silence again. A moment later, he asked:
"Is this the reason you believe Edgar is innocent?"
"No," Mary shook her head, her silver hair swaying gently with her movements.
"This is merely the basis I use to negate the motive of murder for financial gain."
"Then what is your basis for thinking he is innocent?" Russell pressed.
"Didn't I say it? His eyes." Mary smiled sweetly.
Talking to this woman is so tiring—Russell thought to himself.
It felt like he was being edged.
Seeing Russell stop responding, Mary seemed to lose interest in teasing him further.
The classroom returned to calm, with only the old professor's sleep-inducing lecture echoing.
However, just a few minutes later, Mary's voice sounded in his ear again, this time with a trace of pure, academic curiosity.
"Speaking of which, Mr. Watson."
"What now?" Russell responded weakly.
Mary seemed to be muttering to herself, yet also asking him.
"Where exactly does Miss Holmes feel something is wrong? In her perspective, the motive, evidence, and method—aren't they all complete?"
"Because she says there's a problem with the emotional chain," Russell said, stating the conclusion he had discussed with Charlotte the previous night.
"An emotion that transcends fear and anger?" Mary's eyes lit up.
"Is this her deduction? Interesting. Then what specific emotion is it?"
"Don't know," Russell threw Charlotte's frustration back exactly as it was.
"She can't figure it out either. She nearly snapped her poor violin in half because of it."
"Is that so..."
Mary fell into deep thought, her pale fingers unconsciously twirling the ends of her hair.
Under the sunlight, her serious contemplation was indeed beautiful as a painting.
But Russell knew that the paint in this picture was mixed with lethal poison.
A moment later, she seemed to suddenly understand something. A light of realization flashed in her azure eyes.
She turned her head, looking at Russell, and spoke word by word, in a tone that was ostensibly a question but carried certainty:
"Could it be... martyrdom?"
"What the hell?" Russell was stunned.
Is there really a supernatural factor?
This... is this right?
Isn't this a non-magical worldview?
Nobody told me this when I transmigrated?
"Martyrdom?"
Russell's brows knitted together. He felt his brain couldn't quite process this sudden, religiously charged vocabulary.
"Don't tell me that Mr. Edgar has gotten involved with some evil cult.
"I say, Miss Morstan, we attend Imperial College, not a theological seminary."
[Mary Morstan feels a trace of pity for your lack of imagination. Malice Points +20]
Tsk, got looked down upon.
"Of course not." Mary didn't get angry at his questioning. Instead, she explained patiently, like a teacher guiding a student.
"Faith does not necessarily require a deity, Mr. Watson.
"When a person views a certain thing as the entirety of their life, that thing is their god."
Her voice was very light, yet it felt like a pair of gentle hands slowly helping Russell dispel the chaotic mist.
"For Nicholas Winter," Mary continued, "his god was art."
Russell fell silent.
He recalled the unfinished painting he saw in Charlotte's files last night.
That burning sunset, that madness that seemed to want to burn life itself to ashes.
"So you mean..." He started tentatively.
"I am merely providing a possibility,"
Mary interrupted him, taking the lead of the conversation back into her hands.
Those beautiful blue eyes observed every minute change of expression on Russell's face with great interest.
"Suppose a master who regards art as life learns in the final stages of his life that, due to the decay of his body, he might never hold a paintbrush again.
"Unable to complete the greatest, most brilliant final work in his conception—for him, this is more terrible than death itself, isn't it?"
"...."
"Then, what would he do?"
Mary's voice dropped even lower, carrying a bewitching magic.
"He would spare no cost, even... sacrificing his own life, to paint the final, most perfect full stop for his god, for the art he pursued all his life."
The classroom only had the sound of the old professor lecturing, but Russell felt as if everything around him had gone quiet.
He seemed to be able to see that scene.
A dying old man, coughing up blood in front of an oil painting, his trembling hands no longer able to mix the most brilliant colors in his mind.
His eyes were filled with unwillingness and despair.
"But what does this have to do with poisoning?"
Russell grasped the key to the problem.
"He could have just finished painting normally, then quietly waited for death."
"No, you still don't understand."
Mary shook her head. Her gaze landed on Russell's notebook, where he had casually drawn a shapeless skull.
"The ultimate peak of art is often accompanied by madness.
"For a purist like Nicholas Winter, an ordinary painting completed under the torture of illness is imperfect.
"What he needed was a sense of ritual, a ritual that integrated death itself into the painting."
She extended a slender finger and tapped lightly on Russell's notebook.
"What he needed was a pigment that could allow him to break through the limits of life and reach a peak state amidst the interweaving of pain and ecstasy.
"And that highly toxic Prussian White was the final paintbrush he chose."
Russell's breathing stalled for a second.
A crazy and bold hypothesis gradually took shape in his mind.
It wasn't the apprentice who poisoned the teacher with pigment.
It was the teacher who bitterly begged his most trusted apprentice to assist him in completing the painting with toxic pigment.
Thereby personally painting the most perfect full stop to his artistic life.
This was the greatest sacrifice Nicholas Winter could think of to offer to the art he had pursued his entire life.
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