SummerSimo Travel Troubles Notes and The Purring Page

Chapter Five

The air in Speranza grew brittle as the sun dipped behind the hills, casting a long, skeletal shadow from the Cigars House across the cobblestones. My mind was anchored on the cryptic warning from Days of your Dreams: “The smoke that never burns holds the captive’s breath”.
The Investigation of the “White Fox”
Following the “path of salt” mentioned in the blue book, I returned to Mint Chocolate under the cover of twilight.

• I noticed Toe, my sleek black shadow, sitting atop a crate of unrefined cocoa beans.
• He was batting at a loose floorboard near the back entrance where the crystalline residue had been most prominent.
• Beneath the board, I found a small, pressurized canister—an atomizer similar to the one used in the “Silent Nightingale” case.
• It didn’t smell of tobacco or chocolate, but of a cold, odorless gas that made my eyes water.
  The Secret of the Silver Cigar
  I brought the silver-wrapped cigar found at the scene back to my sanctuary, La Pagina che Fa le Fusa. Ashwaganda watched with his golden “wisdom eyes” as I carefully unwrapped it.
• The “cigar” was a masterful forgery; it was not made of tobacco leaves but of a porous, synthetic material.
• Inside the hollow core was a reservoir for the neurotoxin I had suspected—the “smoke” that required no fire to be deadly.
• This confirmed my fear: the murderer was an artist of deception, someone who understood the “logic of a surgeon’s scalpel”.
  Confronting the Shadow
  The ochre clay on the assistant’s hands was the final clue. It wasn’t from the valley, but from the same rare deposits used by the forgers I had encountered before.
  Ispettore Salomone arrived just as I was showing the forged cigar to Altea, Anna, and Marisa. He looked more weary than ever, his patience “thinner than a poorly brewed Earl Grey”.
  “Signorina Hopes,” he sighed, tipping his hat. “You are suggesting the chocolatier was silenced not by a heart attack, but by a breath of cold air?”.
  “Not just air, Ispettore,” I replied, pointing to the assistant who was now trying to slip away toward the Coffee Taverna. “It was a performance of silence, designed to let a ‘new art’ take the spotlight”.
  The assistant’s motive was as bitter as raw cocoa. He hadn’t just wanted the chocolate; he wanted the secret diadem hidden within the shop’s historical displays—the “heart” of the treasure house.