Chapter 18 – Three Investigation Reports

If Chapter 15 was for bookworms, then this chapter is for researchers: it presents the everyday routine of a historian.

Instead of a rapid, sensational breakthrough, we see Archduchess Marianne laboriously hunched over her desk, wrestling with bewildering and contradictory documents, drawings, and maps. For the first time, she has a variety of materials from the Imperial archive at her disposal, allowing her to compare them, observe how they mutually confirm one another, and search for inconsistencies in order to better understand the background of the case of Princess Schwarzenberg. Three official, authentic investigation reports shedding light on the same past events — what more could a researcher or investigator wish for!

Frankly speaking, I did not initially consider that this pedantic scrutiny would be anything more than my own homework for the novel. All three reports seemed rather verbose, though quite informative once I managed to winnow out the factual points and arrange the material in chronological order. The collated lists of victims revealed several intriguing coincidences but also left behind questionable traces and loose ends.

Once again, the question of method arose: could I attribute this laborious process to Marianne, inexperienced and without formal training as she was? For the sake of a realistic narrative, I had no alternative. She must, of course, have been informed of the subject — and there was no other way forward than to have her walk the same path of research.