At this time I was still in deep denial about the fact that many of Chiru’s themes had been foreshadowed since the very beginning (most obviously with regard to Yasu). My guess would be that I noticed here one of the first earnest looks at the true meaning of ‘magic’ that’s explored in more detail in Chiru (as well as EP4).
‘Magic’ is a lie, a deception, a way of painting over reality with a falsehood that can be perceived as truth as long as everyone else agrees on it. This is a powerful tool in the hands of the culprit, painting over the truth of the crimes with the lie that ‘a witch did it’. That’s basically the lens through which we view magic in the early games, through Battler’s perspective and desire to unmask the serial killer murdering his family under the guise of the witch.
But here, when the characters hole up in Kinzo’s study and start looking at his ‘madness’ from another angle, we have this here. Maybe the servants spreading the story of ‘the witch Beatrice’ and explaining the strange occurrences in the mansion with her magic is a lie, a way to protect Kinzo’s (and Yasu’s) delusions…but if it’s done out of consideration for that person, does that make it so bad?
From the ‘magic’ to fix a sad child’s broken candy pumpkin to the ‘magic’ protecting Ange from the truth about her parents. Virgilia even makes a point in EP3 about how ‘magic’ was originally supposed to bring people happiness, and we see that Maria, Ange, and Yasu all started with that positive view of magic before their traumas caused them to start seeing it more cruelly.
But right from Episode 1, Ryukishi was trying to tell us to view magic from another angle. To understand it as a coping strategy, and maybe understand somewhere down the line that it was the same for the culprit, too.
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