Rewinding time to a little while ago.
“Still, the corsets I wear aren’t that suffocating. They aren’t meant to make the waist look thin, but rather to set the lines so the skirt can puff out naturally. They don’t have that much whalebone to constrict the body, either.”
Hearing Christine’s words, I thought to myself.
‘Whalebone… isn’t that extremely thin?’
Even for a whale, a beard was ultimately hair. Since a beard would still be a beard no matter how thick it was, it had to be very thin.
‘But if it’s used to tighten the body, it must be hard as well.’
Something thin and hard.
Was it because I was thinking about locking the doors before going out? A scene from a famous manga flashed through my mind. It was a scene where a character stuck a piece of mechanical pencil lead into a door hinge before leaving, then checked for intruders upon returning. The intruder had wiped away all their traces perfectly, but they couldn’t stop the pencil lead stuck in the hinge from breaking.
‘There’s no mechanical pencil lead in this town, but couldn’t thin, hard whalebone take its place?’
When I explained my idea to Lure and Christine, both of them seemed quite interested.
“I never even imagined wedging a thin, breakable object into the hinges.”
“As expected, Mr. Hayes is an amazing detective. However, that corset from earlier wouldn’t work.”
“Pardon? Why is that?”
“Whalebone is very elastic. Enough to even make springs out of it.”
No way. Was I just dreaming of the impossible?
‘Then it wasn’t worth talking about corsets even at the risk of being treated like a pervert.’
While I was wallowing in frustration, Christine chuckled and spoke a moment later.
“I said that corset wouldn’t work, but I didn’t say it was impossible.”
“Pardon?”
“You see, if you don’t maintain a corset properly, the moisture inside the whalebone evaporates, and it loses its elasticity. Such whalebone will snap even with the slightest impact.”
“…! Does that mean?”
“It just so happens that I have an old, broken corset.”
Christine went into a small room and rustled around for a while before appearing with a handful of whalebone strips that looked like they had been stripped from a corset. Upon checking them, they were not only thin enough to fit between the hinges but also snapped and crumbled with just a little pressure.
‘This… this might be even better than pencil lead.’
If mechanical pencil lead snapped and the remains fell to the floor, a culprit might notice. However, when this whalebone snapped, it crumbled away like ash, making it difficult for an intruder to notice.
‘Even if Janus possessed divine observation skills and noticed the dried whalebone snapped, where would he get a replacement? It’s perfect.’
And so, we subtly wedged the whalebone into the front door hinges and placed a thin piece of cloth in the gap of the door frame before heading out. Even if he noticed we had done something to the front door, he would be misled into thinking we were only trying to detect an intruder with the piece of cloth.
And thus, back to the present.
‘…I knew it.’
The thin piece of cloth we had wedged in fluttered to the floor. It looked exactly as it had when we first placed it. However, the front door hinge opened smoothly without the sensation of anything snapping. On the floor below the hinge, white powder had already crumbled and fallen before we even opened the door.
After exchanging glances, we entered the house, pretending to be nonchalant.
***
Janus was indeed a professional.
When Wilhelm’s subordinates had searched the house in the past, the furniture’s arrangement had changed every time they returned, but this time, there was no such sign. If it hadn’t been for the devices we installed in advance, we wouldn’t have even known there had been an intruder.
‘We were only away from the house for about 20 minutes; he wouldn’t have been able to find the photo in that time.’
Christine, who had been looking around the house while staying apart from Lure and me, soon signaled that the photo was safe.
I could have just relaxed and moved on, but I felt a sense of unease.
‘It’s strange. Why did he break into the house so rashly?’
Wasn’t he a detective who was said to be quite clever? Judging by how he disappeared without leaving a trace, he must have known we would return early. He wouldn’t have been unaware that he only had about 20 minutes to search the house.
No, if you considered the time needed to enter without leaving a trace and leave just as inconspicuously, the time available to search the house would be even shorter. Considering he had to leave a sufficient time gap to avoid bumping into us coming or going, no matter how talented that detective was, he would only have about 5 minutes.
Only 5 minutes.
What was the point of breaking into this house for a mere 5 minutes? Was he confident he could find the photo in just 5 minutes? If he were caught, it would only raise our guard.
‘No matter how I think about it, there must have been some other purpose.’
It felt like Janus had done something to this house. Trusting my intuition, I searched the house thoroughly. So thoroughly that one might have called it obsessive.
And finally.
“…Hic.”
I managed to find a small shadow hiding, crumpled, in the gap of a discarded wardrobe in the small room. If it was a shadow of that size…
“…A child?”
“I-I’m sorry!”
It was a child. It was the young, immature voice characteristic of a child.
“I’m really sorry. This house looked like it had a lot of money, so I broke in to try and do a little shoplifting!”
What a joke. If he were a mere petty thief, he wouldn’t have bothered to put the piece of cloth back in place. Above all, if he were a real thief, he wouldn’t have made the excuse that he only came in to steal.
“Stop lying. You came in here to steal Ms. Christine’s photo, didn’t you?”
“Eek! How did you!”
The shadow was peeled away with disappointing ease. What was revealed was, surprisingly, a familiar face. It was the urchin kid who had stolen my wallet and run away this afternoon. The kid with one missing finger was right here.
“N-No! I don’t know anything about a photo! When I opened the mister’s wallet earlier, it was full of money. I thought that if someone could give away that much money without a second thought, they must be really rich, so I snuck in!”
It wasn’t a bad excuse, but it was already too late.
“Even though you just said ‘Eek! How did you!’ when I asked if you came to steal the photo?”
Perhaps because he was a child, he was quite clumsy.
“Who sent you here?”
“……”
“Speak up. You wouldn’t have tried to steal that photo because you needed it yourself, right?”
Eventually, the child opened his mouth reluctantly.
“A pretty lady.”
“What?”
“A very pretty and kind lady told me to do it.”
A pretty and kind lady? This was an unexpected turn of events.
‘Was Janus a woman?’
No, but that coachman was definitely Janus. Could he have cross-dressed as a man that convincingly? Or did he cross-dress as a woman in front of the child?
‘What am I thinking? If I think about it logically, it’s natural for him to have an accomplice.’
I was momentarily confused and couldn’t think straight. But if he was a successful detective, it was only natural for him to have at least one assistant. Could Janus’s assistant be the ‘pretty and kind lady’ the child mentioned?
“I was wrong, so please don’t call the police.”
The child pleaded, tears streaming down his face.
“I didn’t mean to do anything that bad. Really! I heard that she just wanted to get back a photo she took with an old friend she had a falling out with. If she had told me to steal jewelry, I would have refused, but it was just stealing a single photo. That’s not such a bad thing, right? Please, believe me. Really, I didn’t have the slightest intention of touching anything else!”
The urchin didn’t seem to have any idea that this one photo was more valuable than everything else in the house combined.
“Sigh…”
I let out a long sigh and waved my hand.
“Fine, go. The back door is locked, so leave through the front.”
“Are… are you really just letting me go?”
“Yes.”
There was nothing to gain by holding on to this urchin. Besides, since we were supposed to stay in this house for 10 days, it would be awkward to go to the police station with a child in tow.
“Go before I change my mind. And don’t do this kind of thing again.”
“T-Thank you! Thank you so much! I won’t forget this kindness!”
The urchin bowed several times and quickly scrambled out of the house. Lure and Christine, who learned of the situation late, reacted with surprise.
“I never would have imagined. To think an intruder had hidden in the house.”
“I’ve only heard rumors about Janus of the East and didn’t know his specific tendencies, but it seems he uses a wide variety of people. He’s quite theatrical, too.”
“You can say that again.”
First, it was a drunken coachman. Then, an old priest who appeared to break up a fight between thugs. And now, he had even sent a street urchin.
“At this rate, isn’t your senior going to show up next? He did say he received an assistant offer from Janus.”
“Oh, come on. No way.”
Lure burst out laughing. He must have thought I was joking. I wasn’t.
***
Contrary to our worries, Janus’s offensive stopped there. We didn’t leave Christine’s house for 5 days. During that time, nothing like Janus sending a secret intruder in the middle of the night happened.
“It seems he’s decided to wait, doesn’t it?” Lure asked me.
“In any case, we’ll have to leave the house at least once to board the ship.”
“Yes. It’s certain that we’ll be coming out with the photo then.”
If I were Janus, I would have targeted that moment as well. Thanks to that, it was peaceful, but Lure began to squirm, saying he was bored.
“Ah… by now, a mountain of letters must have piled up at the detective agency. Dust must have piled up too because I wasn’t there to clean it. What should I do?”
“Those letters can be read all at once later, and as for the cleaning, we can just do one big spring cleaning together. More importantly, are you okay with school?”
“Pardon? School?”
“Yes. The trip to the Northern Region last time was during break, but it can’t still be break now.”
The academic system in this town was different from what I knew, so it was confusing. My common sense was that students enrolled in March and the school year ended in late December, but here, the semester began in September. Even so, I didn’t think the break would be this long.
“Ah, I was actually going to ask you a favor. Could you write me a Certificate of Employment? I think I’ll need to say I unavoidably missed class to solve a case as your assistant so I don’t get penalized in my grades.”
“I don’t know much about it, but don’t you usually have to submit those in advance?”
“That’s true, but if I mention your name, the school will probably cut me some slack. You know how everyone at our university has been obsessed with your name even since before you became famous.”
Christine, who had been listening quietly, blinked and asked, “Is Mr. Hayes related to a university?”
“Of course! Are you curious about what cases he’s solved? It’s normally a secret, but if you promise to keep it, I’ll let you in on it.”
“Of course! I’m leaving this country soon anyway.”
“Great! The story begins like this. One day, I, Lure Poiren, a top student of the Department of Criminology, went to school as usual and realized the atmosphere was strange. Then I asked, ‘What’s going on?’…”
The story began before I could even stop him. Lure lowered his voice as if he were glad for the entertainment and began his recitation, while Christine’s eyes sparkled with focus.
Just as I was thinking it was a somewhat awkward yet peaceful sight —
— Crash!!!
The window shattered with a loud noise. Something pink rolled into the house. Simultaneously, a loud shouting could be heard from outside.
“Fire!!!”
White smoke began to billow up.