Was it because of Marie’s striped prisoner uniform? Suddenly, a zebra documentary I had seen once came to mind.
[A zebra’s survival weapon is not strength, but an optical illusion.]
The way a herd of zebras on the savannah protects their lives from lions.
[The zebra’s patterns confuse the lion’s vision.]
A lion attempting to pounce on a zebra herd eventually loses focus and falls into a state of confusion.
[It is impossible to tell where the shadows end and the bodies begin within the herd.]
Now, in the lion’s eyes, individual zebras are no longer visible. A massive, undulating wave of stripes overwhelms the lion. The lion flees in terror, having failed to catch a single prey.
‘I never thought I’d experience a lion’s feelings firsthand.’
A faint, hollow laugh escaped me at the surreal sight.
Shadows overlapped shadows until they no longer even looked human. I couldn’t tell how many there were, who was who, or where they were standing.
A massive, pitch-black mass simply surged around me.
I must have swayed on my feet without realizing it.
“Hays, are you all right?”
One of the shadows asked in a concerned tone.
“I’m fine,” I replied reflexively.
‘I must not let on that I’ve noticed.’
This was a remote mountainside. There were at least five enemies. I had two people to protect.
If a fight broke out, we would be at a disadvantage.
If possible, I had to maintain this situation where they were pretending to be our allies for as long as I could.
“I was so relieved that… I think I just let my guard down for a moment.”
I consciously relaxed my body and spoke toward the shadows.
“Just now, an unidentified outsider attacked Lady Marie. It seems he fled when he saw you all approaching.”
“Good heavens, how could that be!”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“We’re a bit shaken, but everyone is safe. I will stay here and calm the ladies, so could you all search the area to see if that outsider is still hiding nearby?”
After finishing my sentence, I swallowed hard.
‘I wonder how they’ll respond.’
I deliberately called the attacker an outsider, pretending to know nothing.
Would they follow my seemingly reasonable suggestion and continue this play? Or would they give up the pathetic acting and reveal their true colors?
A short but heavy silence followed.
Just as I was wondering if I should throw my lamp and start swinging my fists…
“Ah, of course we should!”
“That outsider scoundrel! I, Jefferson, won’t let him get away with this!”
The shadows uttered words of consent and scattered. They all left to find an intruder who didn’t exist.
Now, I was the only one left in front of the carriage.
Only then did I notice that the light had returned, as if the sun had come out.
‘Phew…’
I climbed into the carriage, feeling as though all my energy had been drained.
Lure looked at me with worried eyes.
“Teacher? What’s wrong? Are you hurt somewhere?”
“No, it’s not that…”
As I spoke, a good idea suddenly occurred to me.
“Actually, I think I injured my eyes a little during the scuffle earlier.”
“What?! That’s terrible!”
“It’s nothing major. It’ll probably heal soon, but my vision has been blurry ever since. Lure, could you help me out for a bit?”
“Of course! I am your assistant, after all.”
Good. From now on, I would use Lure’s help to compensate for my lack of vision.
“Then, Lure. Did you see who was outside the carriage earlier?”
I had a rough idea of the answer, but I asked just in case.
“Well… Wasn’t our entire group there? Mr. Jefferson was there, and Mr. Clinette, Mr. Lehman, and…”
I squeezed my eyes shut as I listened to the endless list of names.
‘As expected, I can’t trust anyone except those inside this carriage.’
Seven drivers and three leaders.
All ten people from the North were our enemies.
The difference in strength was despairing.
The only hopeful fact was that their goal didn’t seem to be total annihilation.
‘If they intended to kill us all, they wouldn’t need to keep up this charade.’
They had some other purpose. But what could it be? What were they after?
I tried to recall the events of last night in detail.
Yesterday, Lehman tried to keep me inside the baggage wagon. Someone extinguished the campfire and ran toward the carriage holding Marie and Lure, while another person scuffled with Lure outside.
‘This isn’t enough information…’
“Lure, do you remember what happened last night?”
“Hmm, well… I’m not really sure. It all happened so fast.”
“Can you tell me roughly what you remember?”
“I was sleeping, but I woke up startled because someone suddenly lifted me up. I struggled because I was scared, but it was no use. I was dragged out of the carriage, and I screamed for help. That’s all.”
“So, that person didn’t try to cause you any direct harm?”
“No, he just tried to force me out.”
The probability that their goal wasn’t murder increased.
“What about you, Lady Marie? What did you experience last night?”
“Please, just speak comfortably. You did so last night.”
“At that time, the situation was urgent, so I spoke without thinking…”
As I made excuses, I realized that the current situation was still quite pressing.
‘Indeed. It’s inefficient to worry about social status at a time like this.’
It wasn’t as if I had lived in a class-based society my whole life; there was no need to wave my hands and say a humble servant wouldn’t dare. I might as well drop the formalities.
“All right. I’ll speak comfortably. So, Marie, did you see anything?”
“It wasn’t much different for me than it was for Sister Lure. I woke up to the sound of someone’s presence, and I was so shocked that there was an intruder that I swung the first thing I could grab.”
“And that happened to be the brandy bottle?”
When I asked for confirmation, Marie nodded.
“I felt a definite impact. I was so scared because I thought I might have killed someone.”
Suddenly, a question arose.
“By the way, where did that brandy come from?”
I had been in that carriage too. I was certain there hadn’t been any brandy inside.
“Oh, Mr. Clinette gave it to us. He said we seemed too tense and that it would be better for Sister Lure and me to share some brandy and get a good night’s sleep.”
That sounded like a familiar pattern.
‘That bastard Lehman, he had another motive for offering me brandy.’
Something must have been slipped into that alcohol.
“I was thinking about drinking it, but then I remembered Sir Hays saying that trying to overcome anxiety with alcohol is not a good idea. You also suggested I should try deep breathing instead.”
It was worth the effort of being disgusted and stopping her every time she tried to drink to keep Marie from becoming an alcoholic.
“Since he was being sincere, I pretended to drink it and then forgot about it. I never expected to use it this way.”
“You did well. You used it for something much more meaningful than its original purpose.”
Rather than being drunk and forgotten, the bottle would have found it much more fulfilling to crack the skull of an unidentified assailant and protect a lady.
Today, it wasn’t me but that broken bottle that deserved to be called “Sir.” Sir Brandy. Sounds nice.
‘But the shape of Sir Brandy’s broken shards is a bit strange…’
I tilted my head as I looked at the glass fragments scattered on the carriage floor.
Why were thin glass shards and thick glass shards mixed together? Did the bottle randomly get thinner and thicker?
“Wait a moment. Doesn’t the story seem a bit strange?”
Lure suddenly interjected.
“So, Marie swung the bottle and broke it over the intruder, and then I was forcibly dragged out of the carriage by the intruder’s hands, right?”
“Well, that’s probably how it went. Why?”
“Then Marie would have been left alone in the carriage, wouldn’t she? So why did we hear Marie’s scream several minutes later?”
Now that she mentioned it, she was right. I had heard Marie’s scream immediately after rescuing Lure, who was scuffling with the intruder. The timing didn’t match.
“Was there another intruder inside the carriage?”
“No, that’s not it. I forgot to mention this.”
Marie spoke, her face flushing.
“The carriage suddenly went quiet, and I was trembling alone in fear, not knowing what was happening. But then, a fishy smell suddenly wafted in. When I felt around, there was a warm, moist liquid flowing. I thought it was blood from the person I hit with the bottle.”
“So that’s why you screamed.”
“I thought there was a corpse lying on the floor. I was so terrified.”
But when we arrived, Marie was alone in the carriage. Also, while I smelled strong alcohol, I didn’t catch any fishy scent.
“A warm, fishy-smelling liquid… Could it be…?”
I didn’t have a clue, but Lure seemed to have deduced something.
“Could it be this, Teacher?”
Lure pointed to the oil lamp I had been holding until a moment ago.
“The lamp?”
“Specifically, the oil that goes inside the lamp.”
“What? Sister, how does oil smell fishy?”
“Marie might not know, but poor people often put cheap kerosene in their oil lamps. It’s very volatile and has an unpleasant, fishy smell.”
That hypothesis explained why the glass shards on the floor were inconsistent.
‘The brandy bottle Marie threw broke the oil lamp the culprit was holding.’
Part of the lamp broke, causing glass shards to fall, and oil spilled onto the floor. The reason the lamp’s body wasn’t in the carriage was likely because the culprit took it with him.
One puzzling thing was that I hadn’t seen any lamp light the previous night.
‘It was so dark, and the only light source was the campfire. If someone was walking around with another light, there’s no way I wouldn’t have noticed.’
That meant the culprit had intentionally entered the carriage stealthily with an extinguished lamp.
‘The oil Marie touched was warm.’
In other words, the culprit had lit the lamp for a brief moment inside the carriage. Marie immediately threw the bottle, damaging the lamp, and given that neither Lure nor Marie remembered a lamp light, the lamp must have been extinguished completely then. Or the light had become extremely faint.
Afterward, the culprit took the broken lamp and dragged Lure out of the carriage.
‘Wait…’
At a sudden thought, I went and stood near the carriage entrance where the glass shards were scattered.
“You two, which way were you lying last night?”
“Hmm, I was lying with my head against the wall opposite the door.”
“Me too. I used this soft cushion as a pillow, lay on the seat, and buried myself under the blankets.”
In that position, when the culprit lit the lamp, their faces wouldn’t have been immediately visible. Only their clothes would have been seen.
One humble striped pajama set and one flamboyant pink frilly dress pajama set.
If the lantern was extinguished immediately after, which one would the culprit have thought was the prospective Grand Duchess?
‘Then, their goal is to kidnap the prospective Grand Duchess?’
Just as various speculations were swirling in my head —
“Mr. Hays! Come here for a moment!”
An urgent voice calling for me came from outside.
“Did you find the outsider?”
I doubted it. As both you and I know, there was no outsider who intruded last night.
“It’s not the outsider, but we found a trace of him! Two horses are missing!”
Aha, were they planning to hide the horses and claim the outsider had escaped?
Until then, I had been listening to the situation unfolding with a relaxed mind, but my complexion couldn’t help but change at the words that followed.
“And we found Mr. Bernard collapsed! He’s lying on the ground and won’t wake up! He might be d — dead!”
What? Bernard?