Half-step Purgatory

Durin stroked the black cat on the armrest of his chair, sitting on the black leather sofa. Through the glasses perched on his nose, his gaze passed over the long table in front of him and settled on the man kneeling on the carpet:
"I understand, you've made money in Naples, your business has been very successful, and you've led a happy life. You've had those secret police, friends in both the law and the underground, and even the Royal Family speaking on your behalf."
"You don't need a friend like me, I know that. You're afraid of owing me a favor, and you don't want to get involved in troubles."
"But now you come to me and say, 'I beg you, Mr. Durin of the Corleon family, please help me seek justice, so that my life and my family will not suffer and sink into despair.'
Yet, in your eyes, I was nothing more than a second-rate artist involved in movies and music. Even at the brink of death, you still show me such disrespect, not even willing to call me by my title... Keeper of Secrets."

Durin's Diary

Fischer Grigori, smoking a cigarette, watched through the doorway as the old secret police chief examined the body by the pool, a young man named Harold Nash, whose head had been stabbed with a pencil.


Upon hearing the cause of death, even Fischer was somewhat taken aback—a pencil?


A knife, an axe, a spike, or even a body with eleven bullet wounds, Fischer could have understood.


But how does someone kill with a pencil?


Then he arrived at the scene and saw the small stub of the pencil sticking out of the left side of the victim's head.


Chapter 37: Fischer Gregory I