"How do you see it?"
Seeing that Arthur had stopped observing, Sarah, who had been quiet all this time, finally spoke.
Arthur brought his hand to his chin, pondered for a moment, then said:
"Serious, orderly, devout, doctrinaire."
"That's what I read from the priest, through this room."
The room.
That was Arthur's way of referring to a person's psyche.
Everyone, he believed, carried within their mind a room that stored all aspects of who they were. And that mental room would always project itself outward into the real, physical room they lived in.
It was through this that Arthur built his foundation to sketch out "the room", or rather, the psychological portrait of another person.
From the simplest signs anyone could notice, such as the priest keeping his bed and books neat and carefully arranged. To subtler signs, like the way he organized his books by height, how the book left open on the desk bore no creases or bends from page-turning, or the fact that he lit only enough candles for a single night.
All of this streamed into Arthur's mind, materializing into an imagined room.
Before his inner eye, the figure of the priest seemed to appear vividly.
He sat at his desk, carefully turning the pages of his book so as to leave no mark upon them, reading and reflecting on every word beneath the flickering candlelight.
Suddenly, a knock echoed from the door outside. The priest lifted his eyes from the page, stood, and moved toward the only direction leading out—the door. As he rose and leaned forward, his leg brushed against the chair, shifting its head slightly to the right.
Then the priest left the room, and never returned again.
"This was no natural death," Arthur said in a low voice.
"He was a meticulous man, with clear habits. He would never have left the front door unlatched."
"What if he simply forgot?" Sarah asked. Arthur shook his head.
"Unlikely. He had already locked the back door. Normally, when people secure their home, they act according to a scale of priority and safety. Sarah, when you lock up for the night, what's your order?"
"I lock the front first, then the back door leading to the yard."
"Exactly. That's how it is. In our perception, there's always a hierarchy of priority. What seems like random action is, in fact, shaped by this scale."
"Just like you, Sarah, this priest would have locked the front first, then the back. If he forgot, it could only have been the back door, like most people. Or he might have forgotten both. But he could not have forgotten the front and yet remembered the back."
Sarah now grasped Arthur's point, and continued:
"So he must have opened the door himself to let the killer in. Then the killer murdered him and left, with the door unlatched?"
"That would be one way to put it." Arthur nodded.
"But what about natural death? Why dismiss it outright? I've heard that some elderly people can sense when their end is near. Suppose this priest felt his own death coming, but since it was already late at night, he lay down in the middle of the church, leaving the door open so the baker would discover him in the morning."
Sarah posed her theory. Truth be told, Arthur had little desire to answer—it would only take the coroner's report to determine whether this death was natural or a homicide. But after a moment's thought, he spoke anyway.
"If you mean he placed himself in the nave as a form of self-burial, then no, that position is wrong, the posture is wrong."
"Besides, if this were truly a natural death, I believe he would have lain down on this bed, rather than out there, leaving the church stained with death."
Arthur's eyes lingered on the empty bed, a flicker of loss passing through them.
The priest was clearly a devoted man, a genuine believer, not some charlatan abusing religion for personal indulgence.
And yet, such a man was now gone.
To say Arthur felt no grief would be false, but whatever emotion stirred in him was buried deep beneath his gaze.
In the end, only a sigh remained.
...
The priest's body was transferred to the police morgue for autopsy, while Arthur and Sarah set out to question the nearby residents.
The footprints had already been examined, but this was a church, many came and went daily. Countless prints overlapped, making them nearly impossible to distinguish. Arthur could only wait for the filtered analysis to see if any recent tracks yielded clues.
Now, Arthur and Sarah had arrived at the house closest to the church.
It was an ordinary two-story home with an attic. When Sarah stepped forward to knock, a slightly plump woman cheerfully opened the door.
"Can I help you two?"
Seeing Arthur and Sarah, her brows rose in surprise. Clearly, strangers were not common in this neighborhood.
Sarah, without much ceremony, took out her badge.
"We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind?"
"Oh, no, not at all. Please, officers, come in."
Though a little uneasy, the woman kept her hospitality.
"Would you like some tea, or perhaps..."
"Thank you for your kindness, but we only need to ask a few things," Sarah said firmly. The woman instinctively nodded.
She introduced herself as Brenda. Divorced, now raising her 13-year-old son alone.
When Sarah asked when she had last seen the priest, Brenda's expression faltered, as if realizing something was wrong. Alarm spread across her face.
"Officer… he…"
"We're still investigating."
At that, Brenda had no choice but to answer honestly.
The last time she saw the priest was yesterday evening. When Sarah pressed further, asking if the priest had any enemies, Brenda seemed to catch on at once.
Her mood sank visibly, her eyes welling with tears.
"I… I don't know who could hate him. I can't imagine anyone bearing a grudge against him. He was so kind, always helping us…"
Her voice choked. At that moment, Arthur, who had sat in silence until now, spoke in a steady tone:
"Mrs. Brenda, we'll do everything we can."
Though firm, his words carried a sense of resolve that was neither cold nor mechanical like Sarah's. His voice alone seemed to put Brenda at ease.
"I just don't know how I'll tell my boy…" she murmured.
The boy, surely her 13-year-old son.