The scene shifted again. The priest lay in the middle of the church with his hands on his stomach. The forensic team confirmed there were no drag marks, so the killer didn't place the victim there; the victim chose that spot as his final resting place.
However, this slightly contradicted one of Arthur's previous guesses.
Arthur had thought that if the priest knew he was about to die, he would have chosen the bed in his room as his final resting place, not this sacred place. After all, he was a person who was deeply devoted to what he worshiped.
But based on the crime scene, the priest didn't move very much, which was likely due to his old age and the poison seeping into his body. But given his devotion, couldn't he have asked the killer to help him to his room?
The priest had even accepted that the killer would take his life, so Arthur didn't think the priest's faith wouldn't prompt him to take one more action.
Yet, from the looks of the crime scene, nothing happened.
Did he not make that request, or was that request not granted by the killer?
Arthur was more inclined to believe the latter. The killer had clearly planned the murder very carefully. Too much physical contact with the victim would increase the risk of leaving behind unwanted traces, revealing more clues to the police.
But then, he suddenly thought of another hypothesis.
What if the reason the priest couldn't fulfill his final request to die in his own room wasn't because the killer refused, but because the priest never asked in the first place?
So, why wouldn't he have asked?
Arthur began to trace the cause.
The "active" decision not to make a necessary request to someone, in a case where there was no conflict between the two parties, had very few possible explanations.
Hypothesis one: The person making the request knows that the other party would be disadvantaged if the request was granted. In this case, the priest might have thought that too much physical contact would cause the killer to leave behind evidence for the police, and he didn't want the crime to be exposed, as per previous analysis. Therefore, the request to move the body was not made.
This was very logical when considering the priest's motive and character. He was a man of faith and a kind person. If he had decided to cover for and forgive the killer, he might have been willing to see it through to the very end.
However, Arthur then began to lower the probability of this hypothesis.
Because he also considered the conditions at the time.
The priest was poisoned; this could not be ignored.
Based on forensic and chemical analysis, the type of poison the priest was subjected to had a relatively strong effect in a short period, causing pain and paralysis.
The strong effect of this poison was what prevented the priest from crawling very far. He could only reach the middle of the room and wait to die. And with such a powerful poison, the pain inflicted on the victim's "external mind" must have been horrible.
The external mind constantly receives countless pieces of information from the senses, but most of this information is filtered out and sinks into the forgotten parts of memory. For example, a normal person's eyes always take in a panoramic image, but when they recall it, they can only clearly remember the most appealing part of the image, while other parts become blurred or even disappear because the brain has filtered out all the information it has defined as "unimportant."
Or another example, more related to physical effects, is how the sense of touch receives information. Just like sight, touch is constantly receiving information. From the friction of clothing on the skin, an itch, the temperature of the surrounding environment, the flow of air hitting the skin… touch receives it all. But most of this information is also discarded.
Except for one thing: pain.
Pain doesn't contain more information than other factors, but pain… cannot be filtered or ignored.
When the priest had to endure the constant pain caused by the poison, his mind's information-filtering mechanism would not be able to work to protect him from this. He would have to continuously receive this onslaught of pain information, placing a huge burden on his mind.
This is why people are often not clear-headed when in pain. It's not necessarily because their ability to think has decreased, but essentially, they are being forced to be overloaded.
Meanwhile, the thought, "I shouldn't let the killer touch me because it could increase the chances of leaving evidence that points to the killer," is not simple at all.
Arthur, as an investigator looking at a murder case, could of course think of this. The killer, the one who planned the murder, could of course also think of this. But the victim, the old priest, who had no idea he was about to be killed just a minute ago, now had his mind clouded by the information overload from the poison. In such a state, could the priest think of something so profound?
Arthur wouldn't say it was impossible, but the probability was not high, truly not high.
However, if contrasted with the first question—whether the priest made the request and was refused, or whether the priest didn't make the request in the first place—Arthur's above reasoning only solved "half of the reason" why the possibility of "the priest not making the request in the first place" was logically sound.
To find the other half of the reason, Arthur had to analyze the priest's mental state even deeper.
Or, more accurately… more shallowly?
If we assume that the priest's reason for not making his final request wasn't because he was worried it would affect the killer, then what was the reason for this decision?