“Calm down! You mustn’t act so rashly!”
“But if things stay like this, Adriel will —”
“Neither of you is the culprit!”
Claire’s green eyes wavered.
Yes. Those clear, trembling eyes and her face, pale as a sheet without a single hint of shadow, proved my client’s innocence.
“You’re not the culprit.”
I spoke again with firm conviction, emphasizing each word.
“You are not the criminal. So do not throw away the opportunity you’ve been given with a foolish action.”
Claire looked at me with a face that seemed ready to burst into tears.
“But, Mr. Hayes…”
She was about to say something when —
“Hmph! What a touching performance!”
Inspector Serret snorted as he spoke.
“It’s never a good idea to blindly trust a suspect. How on earth can you be so sure that Mrs. Washers isn’t the culprit?”
“I suppose that’s exactly why I’m the detective.”
“Then you’ll have to prove it.”
Inspector Serret said, curling his lips into a sneer.
“I intend to close this case today. Do you understand? When I leave for the day, I plan to have someone’s wrists in these handcuffs.”
As he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and twirled them around, he looked more like a blackmailer than a police officer.
It was quite unpleasant. No, it was infuriating.
“What a coincidence. I didn’t intend to let this case drag on for another day either.”
I declared in a cold tone.
“I will find the real culprit by this evening and secure my clients’ innocence.”
Inspector Serret chuckled and patted my shoulder.
“Then give it your best shot. My dear, brilliant detective.”
And then, he brushed past me and left the room.
‘What exactly is wrong with that inspector?’
Wasn’t this behavior beyond the scope of a typical corrupt cop?
He couldn’t have been bribed by someone regarding this case, so why was he being so actively uncooperative and hostile?
I couldn’t understand him at all.
Of course, I didn’t have any time to waste trying to understand someone like Inspector Serret.
“You heard what I just said, right?”
I looked back at the anxious Claire and reassured her.
“I plan to solve this case by tonight.”
In truth, it was like a student making a plan to finish all their studying the day before an exam.
It was a plan based more on desperation than logic, but I didn’t voice that.
I am a detective.
I had to maintain a confident demeanor for my client.
“So don’t think of doing anything foolish and just give me until this evening. I will catch the real culprit within that time, no matter what.”
Claire nodded with a determined expression.
Fortunately, it seemed she had decided to set aside her plan to give a false confession for now.
‘Now I have to take responsibility for what I said…’
It was almost laughable to act so bold in front of her when I felt so lost.
Objectively speaking, my abilities were below the standard, and the reliable power that always allowed me to act as a detective was currently malfunctioning.
The only person I could rely on now was Walter.
‘When on earth is Walter coming?’
I looked out the window with an anxious heart.
Just then, I spotted a person with a familiar appearance standing at the front door.
‘He’s finally here!’
I excused myself from Claire and immediately left the room.
I quickly ran down the stairs to the first floor, and as I arrived, the sound of someone knocking on the front door, which I hadn’t heard before, became clear.
When I opened the door, a kid stuck his face in.
“Ugh! I thought I was going to freeze to death. Why did you take so long to open the door? If the rain hadn’t stopped earlier, I really would have died of hypothermia!”
“Sorry, Toby. I was on the second floor and didn’t hear the knocking. But…”
I looked around Toby.
No matter how much I looked, Toby was the only one standing there.
“Where’s Walter?”
“He said he’s not taking the case.”
“What? No, why not!”
“The pretty lady said that Mr. Walter failed his last job. So, the high-ranking person who gave him the assignment must be very upset. He decided to stay away from the Capital while that person is in town.”
I could only move my lips, unable to find the words to respond.
Now that I heard it, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it until now.
‘That’s right. Walter’s previous client was Archduchess Catherine.’
Tomorrow, the Archduchess and her son would be arriving in the Capital. There was no way Walter wouldn’t know the news that even I knew.
Since he failed the Archduchess’s request because of me, he naturally would have gone into hiding!
“Ha…”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t anticipated that.
A hollow sigh escaped me at my own foolishness.
“So, what are you going to do now, Mr. Hayes?”
The little brat watched me with a curious gaze, oblivious to my internal turmoil.
“Weren’t you planning on handing the case over to him? You said you didn’t have much time, Mr. Hayes.”
“…I did.”
I only had about half a day left.
The case was complex and full of secrets.
My only ability was to see the culprit, but I couldn’t even find a trace of the criminal in this case.
That was why I had intended to hand it over to Walter.
“Then, since you can’t hand it over, are you going to give up on the case?”
“…No. That’s not happening.”
Regardless of how things had gotten tangled, this was my case.
I had clients who trusted me and left the case in my hands, and I had guaranteed that I would solve it.
Even if I wasn’t that smart, I wasn’t such a coward that I would run away just because the situation became unfavorable.
‘They say fools are brave.’
Ah, was that not the right phrase for this situation?
Anyway!
“Even if Mr. Walter can’t help, I’m not giving up on the case. I’m going to solve it. No matter what it takes.”
Even if time was running out.
‘How much time is left?’
Half a day… no, it must be less than that.
*Click.*
I opened my pocket watch to check the time.
[3:30 PM]
‘Dammit. Why is time moving so fast?’
I sighed and was about to close the watch lid.
‘…Huh?’
Suddenly, a shadow caught my eye.
The shadow of the clock hands.
A long, clear shadow was cast over the hands of the pocket watch.
“…That’s strange. Why is there a shadow?”
Toby questioned my mumbling.
“What’s wrong with the shadow?”
“No. There were definitely no shadows when I looked earlier.”
The shadow of the hands on the wall clock had never been this clear.
I had thought it was because the clock face was too close to the hands.
But why was the shadow in the pocket watch, where the hands and the face were even closer, so distinct?
Furthermore, it wasn’t like this from the beginning.
“When I checked the time in front of here around 1:00 PM, there was no shadow in this watch either…”
My memory was clear.
Ever since I heard Chairman Peterson’s story, I had been paying attention to the shadows of clock hands.
If a shadow had been cast even on the hands of my pocket watch, I definitely would have noticed it.
“Are you an idiot, mister?”
“What?”
I turned back, offended, only to find Toby looking at me as if I were pathetic.
“It was raining and cloudy earlier.”
“And?”
“How can there be shadows when the sun is barely visible?”
That’s… true.
“Besides, at 1:00 PM, the sun is right overhead, so shadows are really short. You get long shadows when the sun starts to tilt like it is now.”
It was a perfectly natural explanation.
Shadows are created by light, and when the position of the light source changes, the position of the shadow naturally changes as well.
‘…Lighting! I didn’t think about the lighting!’
“Thanks, Toby!”
“Huh? For what?”
“Thanks to you, I think I’m starting to understand!”
I was about to run back into the house —
“Hey! Where are you going? You have to pay me for the errand!”
— but then I stopped.
It wasn’t just to pay him.
‘Come to think of it, they might be about the same…’
I asked while gauging Toby’s physical build.
“Toby, how old are you?”
“Me? I’m 12 years old.”
“Really? You’re a bit short for a 12-year-old.”
“Hey! I know that, okay?! It’s because I haven’t been eating well! It’s not like I wanted to have a tiny body like a 9-year-old brat!”
As I thought, that size was the standard for a nine-year-old.
I nodded and made a proposal to Toby.
“Toby. Do you want to do one more job? I’ll pay you double the errand fee.”
“…What kind of job?”
“Hmm… if I had to describe it, a looking job.”
“What?”
“Let me borrow your eyes for a bit.”
In this particular case, Toby’s eyes, seeing from the same perspective as Adriel, might be more useful than mine, which only saw the culprit.
***
“Mr. Hayes? Where have you been?”
“I’ve brought along a temporary assistant.”
“A temporary assistant? …Oh my.”
Claire’s expression softened.
“What a cute child. He looks to be about the same age as Adriel.”
“Ah, hello…”
Toby seemed shy as he hid behind me and gave an awkward bow.
“More importantly, Mrs. Claire. Do you happen to have a spare light bulb? I need something like the lamp that was in Adriel’s room.”
When I told her it was necessary to solve the case, Claire brought a light bulb from the storage room without a second thought.
We took the bulb to the first floor and opened the door to Adriel’s room, where the incident had occurred.
“Eek!”
Toby let out a small groan when he saw the bloodstains remaining in the room, but he quickly shut his mouth and stared straight ahead as if it were nothing.
‘…He’s resilient.’
I suppose he had to be, given the environment he lived in.
I felt bad for showing a child something so unpleasant, but unfortunately, I had no choice.
I was desperate for help right now.
“Toby. Why don’t you try sitting here?”
I had the boy sit on the low sofa.
“Is this where the lamp originally stood?”
“Yes. It was standing right there.”
The lamp that had been rolling among the broken glass shards.
I stood the lamp back up.
Unfortunately, because it had been broken once, it didn’t seem able to stand on its own.
“Mrs. Claire. Could you hold onto the lamp for me?”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
As soon as I replaced the incandescent bulb in the lamp, the light flickered on.
The light from the incandescent bulb illuminated the room more sharply than sunlight or fluorescent lights.
Black and white became distinct, and shadows as dark as pitch were cast everywhere like tails, matching the brightness of the light.
‘I should have investigated in this kind of environment from the start.’
I hung the wall clock back in its original position.
This time, the shadow of the clock hands was clearly visible.
At least, it was to me.
“…How about it, Toby?”
I asked in a tense voice.
“Can you see the shadow of the clock hands?”
“Hmm…”
Toby, sitting on the low sofa, tilted his head back and looked up at the clock.
Before long, Toby answered.
“Yes. I can see it well.”
But Toby’s answer didn’t end there.
“Though it looks really close.”
“What? What do you mean by close?”
What exactly did that mean?
“Looking up at it from here, the shadow is stuck right underneath the hands. So…”
Toby moved his head back and forth a few times before speaking with certainty.
“I think if I moved just a little bit further back, the shadow would be completely hidden by the hands from my view, and I wouldn’t be able to see it at all.”
“……!”
I found it. The way to make the shadow of the clock hands disappear.
Of course, it was impossible for Toby, or Adriel, to move further back.
The sofa in this room was pushed right against the wall.
However, if the problem was the distance between the child and the clock, there was another way.
For instance, not the child, but the clock —
*Crash!!*
Claire dropped the lamp she was holding.
“…! Are you okay?”
She wasn’t okay.
The incandescent bulb shattered, sending glass fragments flying.
Fortunately, Toby and I were unharmed, but blood was trickling from the back of Claire’s hand.
Nevertheless, Claire seemed completely unaware of her injury as she stood there in a daze, murmuring.
“This is impossible. Why…?”
“Mrs. Claire?”
“There’s no way that door could have opened again. That’s impossible.”
“Mrs. Claire.”
“It can’t be, it’s absolutely impossible. We even put up wallpaper, and Dolores…”
“Mrs. Claire! Adriel’s safety is at stake!”
Her eyes, which had been wandering in space, snapped back into focus.
Focus returned to her eyes as she looked at me.
“Listen closely, Mrs. Claire.”
I approached her and spoke in a serious tone.
“I’ve known from the beginning that you were hiding something.”
“……!”
“The reason I didn’t press you was that you were sincere about solving the case. I believed that if it were a secret related to the incident, you would tell me.”
Until now, she probably thought it was okay not to speak.
But would she still think that after hearing Toby’s words?
‘No way.’
If she did, she wouldn’t have been so shaken.
“If you want to save Adriel, tell me now. Mrs. Claire, what secret have you been hiding all this time?”
In the pitch-black darkness after the light bulb shattered.
Claire slowly opened her mouth.
“…Mr. Hayes is right. So, I won’t hide anything anymore and tell you everything.”
Looking down, she spoke as if gritting her teeth.
“The hideous secret hidden within this Washers mansion.”