A baby in its mother’s arms being the culprit of a theft.
‘No matter how I look at it, this feels more like a mishap than a case.’
I didn’t intend to be overly nosy, but since I had time to spare anyway, it didn’t seem harmful to offer a word of advice on such an obvious matter.
‘Besides, it’s interesting. I’ve never seen a shadow this small before.’
I kept my eyes on the tiny, squirming shadow as I asked.
“How old is the… um, baby here?”
I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, so I wasn’t sure what to call it.
“He just turned two.”
“He’s at an age full of curiosity. It’s the time when they want to touch everything within reach.”
The woman pulled the squirming black shadow closer to her.
“Just because an item is missing doesn’t necessarily mean it was a theft. Isn’t it possible that the jewelry ring your ladyship lost was dropped somewhere while the baby was playing with it?”
“I wondered what you were going to say, but this is preposterous!”
The woman snapped her head toward me, looking incredulous.
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that? But no matter how much I searched the house, the ring didn’t turn up! If the baby had touched it, it would have been in the house!”
“Is that so? How long did you look?”
“I looked for over an hour!”
Isn’t it common for things you couldn’t find after searching that long to turn up later?
“A baby’s range of activity is wider than a guardian might think. Since they’re smaller and have a lower field of vision, they might put things in places an adult wouldn’t imagine. Perhaps the ring will be found in a place you never expected. Before you hastily accuse someone else, it would be better to search the house a bit more and then come to the police station—.”
It was then.
“You, there! That’s not funny at all.”
The officer in charge of the case glared at me with a fierce expression.
“What is a lowly Detective trying to pull in a police station? If you don’t have customers, go hand out flyers. Why are you trying to do business in the middle of a police station?”
Ah, do I look like a peddler right now? Come to think of it, the areas of responsibility for a Detective and the police tended to overlap.
“It’s a misunderstanding. This wasn’t for business purposes.”
I spoke as kindly as possible to clear up the misunderstanding.
“I was just waiting for an appointment with Detective Beren and added a few words because it seemed this lady was mistaken. I had no intention of interfering with your work, Officer. I apologize if I caused any offense.”
I thought that was a sufficient apology for my meddling.
“You came to see Detective Beren? That washed-up old man?”
The officer muttered and snorted.
‘Do he and Detective Beren have a bad relationship?’
It felt a bit unpleasant, but I decided to endure it for now.
‘Well… it’s true I overstepped first.’
I wasn’t close enough to Detective Beren to get angry on his behalf for being insulted.
But that was as far as my patience went.
“It seems your intuition is just as dull as Detective Beren’s. To think you’d try to let an obvious culprit go. Can you even call yourself a Detective like that?”
What? My intuition is dull? I can tolerate insults toward Detective Beren, but I won’t tolerate insults toward myself!
“Oh, is that so? So the culprit is obvious to you?”
I mimicked his words sarcastically.
‘Well, they’re visible to me. They’re being held right in front of you.’
“Indeed. Isn’t it a common case? I’ve solved dozens of cases similar to this.”
He shook his head and spoke.
“That peddler woman had no intention of selling goods from the start. Using that as an excuse, she frequented wealthy homes to see if there was anything worth stealing. She didn’t miss the chance when she saw the lady’s jewelry ring.”
“N-No! I really just intended to sell accessories—.”
“The woman even has a criminal record.”
As if those words were true, the suspect flinched.
The baby’s mother spoke triumphantly.
“Now you see why I suspect that woman, don’t you? It’s not like I’m accusing an innocent person for no reason.”
“I-I’m really not the culprit!”
The suspect appealed with a desperate voice.
“I’m living a truly honest life now. I’ve never even dreamed of stealing someone else’s property! More than anything, I never even entered her ladyship’s house!”
What was this now?
“Didn’t you visit to sell goods?”
“I did, but her ladyship wouldn’t let me in. I only talked for about five minutes outside the door and then left. How could I have stolen jewelry from inside the house? Even if I have a record, I was just a petty thief, not a phantom thief!”
‘It might have been better not to say that last part.’
As expected, the officer reacted with complete indifference.
“Thieves always say things like that.”
“But how could I have possibly stolen it?”
“It’s simple. You saw the jewelry ring inside through the gap in the door, then came back a few hours later and stole it, didn’t you?”
At that moment, I had no choice but to intervene in the conversation between the two. It was because I realized the implication of the officer’s words.
“Wait a minute! So…”
Surely… no, right?
“You’re saying the ring didn’t even disappear immediately after she spoke with that person? Then exactly when did the ring go missing?”
“It was about two hours after that woman left.”
It was absurd.
So, something went missing from the house, and the woman who spoke briefly at the front door two hours prior is the culprit? Just because she has a criminal record for theft?
‘I guess the mailman didn’t have a record?’
If they did, they would have been dragged in too!
“Aside from that, is there any other evidence that person is the culprit? For instance, was the lost jewelry ring found on her person…?”
“The ring hasn’t been found yet.”
“Any other evidence?”
The officer glared at me in silence.
“Then isn’t it wrong to treat a person as a culprit so carelessly?”
I asked because I truly didn’t understand. Even if I hadn’t seen the culprit with my own eyes, it would have been the same.
“I don’t even see a reason why she’s a suspect.”
There was no evidence, and yet she was the culprit just because she stood at the door for five minutes two hours before the item vanished. Did that even make sense?
“There’s no other suspicious culprit besides that woman. As for evidence, it’ll turn up once we arrest and interrogate her. We’ll soon find the whereabouts of the jewelry too.”
“And what if it turns out later that she wasn’t the culprit?”
By interrogation, he didn’t mean a polite conversation. He meant using all sorts of methods until she confessed. What was he going to do if her innocence was proven too late?
“Haa, what a frustrating human being.”
The officer frowned.
“You really are a carbon copy of that washed-up detective. Are you blind?”
He raised his hand and pointed to the long line of people in the back.
“Look at those people. All of them are clamoring and waiting for their cases to be solved. Even at this moment, new incidents are breaking out somewhere in this street of Crossburn, and we are severely short of police to solve them.”
Well… it did look that way.
“We’re busy as it is. When there’s a strong suspect, we have to lock them up first and move on to the next case. What do you expect us to do by dragging it out like this? If we handle cases that way, the security of this mad city will collapse in an instant.”
The officer waved his hand dismissively at me.
“Now that you understand, stop interfering and get out of here.”
“Wait. The culprit really isn’t that person; it’s the one being held over—!”
“Hey, over here! Take this woman to the interrogation room!”
The officer ignored me and shouted loudly.
Just as the burly arrest team, called by his summons, was about to drag the suspect away.
“You’re single-handedly shaming the entire police force.”
A familiar voice came from behind.
“Didn’t that Detective over there say the culprit isn’t her?”
The officer’s face contorted as if he had eaten something bitter.
“…Detective Beren.”
“Detective!”
I was relieved.
‘This one isn’t the type who’s impossible to talk to.’
Of course, Detective Beren also had a history of trying to arrest the wrong suspect, but at least he didn’t try to handle cases in such a slipshod manner.
I thought that if I explained it well, he might help.
That’s what I thought, but…
“Wait! Detective Beren!”
For some reason, shock appeared in the officer’s eyes.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Kyaah! My baby!”
‘…Huh?’
I slowly turned my head and froze where I stood.
Detective Beren had snatched the small shadow—the two-year-old baby who had been held in its mother’s arms—and was shaking it while holding its legs up in the air.
So…
He was shaking the baby upside down like a sack of flour….
“W-What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!”
“Why are you so surprised? Wasn’t this the culprit you pointed out?”
Even so, that didn’t mean he should torture a baby!
I could see the black shadow squirming.
It must have been in a great deal of pain, but….
“…?”
Wait, why wasn’t there any sound?
‘If it were a normal baby, wouldn’t it be screaming its head off right now?’
Come to think of it, the baby had been surprisingly quiet since earlier. At the very moment I suspected something.
“—HACK!”
The black shadow shaking in the detective’s hands let out a single groan-like sound.
Clink—!
A ring fell to the floor with a clear, ringing sound.
“M-My ring!”
The culprit who stole the ring became clear.
The shadow lifted.
“Hmm, just as I thought.”
Detective Beren hadn’t been shaking a baby upside down. He was holding up the back legs of a small brown poodle with both hands and shaking it.
“This is how you make a dog throw up something it swallowed. Remember that.”
“H-How… What happened to my baby…?”
“The ring must have been stuck in the dog’s throat. It clearly looked like it was having trouble breathing; didn’t you notice?”
The dog panted as it breathed. It looked happy that the ring stuck in its throat was out, but it still didn’t make any sound other than the sound of its breathing.
‘It’s not that it’s not making a sound, it’s that it can’t…?’
The Detective’s eyes, filled with contempt, turned toward the woman who had been holding the poodle until a moment ago.
“Since its vocal cords were removed, it wouldn’t have had any other way to express itself even with a ring stuck in its throat. If you’re going to have such a surgery done, shouldn’t you pay more attention to it?”
“Urgh…”
“Overconfidence is never good, Madam. Thanks to that, this young lady here almost suffered a great deal, and your ‘baby’ almost saw the afterlife.”
The woman bit her lip in silence for a moment, then abruptly turned her head away.
“…Let’s go, baby!”
Without a single word of apology to the suspect, the woman gathered up her poodle and left the police station, the clicking of her heels echoing as if she were running away.
“Tsk, the shawl is slipping.”
The Detective clicked his tongue, muttering something incomprehensible.
“…?”
The Detective then turned toward me and spoke sarcastically.
“Well, you certainly arrived quickly.”
I wasn’t sure. Was that a sarcastic remark like, ‘I called you ages ago, and you’re just now arriving?’ Or was it, ‘Why are you bothering me since the morning?’
Since I didn’t know, I’d just pretend I didn’t hear it!
“Yes, you arrived quickly too, Detective. I heard it would take an hour or two.”
“I! Charlie! Brought him here!”
The officer who had spoken with me earlier peeked his head out.
“Since you were heading toward Inspector Serret, I thought something might happen.”
The Inspector, whose name I finally learned, glared this way.
‘As I thought, that Inspector and Detective Beren don’t get along.’
That must be why the officer named Charlie ran off in a hurry to call the Detective.
“……”
The Detective and the Inspector glared at each other in silence. Their confrontation was broken by an unexpected person.
“Oh, thank you, Detective! Thank you so much!”
The suspect thanked Detective Beren while shedding tears of emotion.
“Thanks to you, I was able to prove my innocence.”
“…Hmph, save your thanks for that Detective over there. I only followed what that Detective said.”
Well, I never told him to grab a kid and shake them. Although I now knew that wasn’t what it was, my heart almost stopped back then.
“Thank you, thank you, Detective!”
“No. I only did what I had to do.”
I was overwhelmed by the pouring gratitude. Behind me, the Detective and the Inspector seemed to be exchanging words, but I couldn’t make them out.
In the end, only after handing over my business card and seeing the suspect off was I able to barely overhear the last one or two lines of their conversation.
“You’ve changed a lot.”
The Detective snapped.
“And you don’t seem to know how to change.”
The Inspector countered.
‘Did they used to be close?’
I wondered what had happened between the two.
“Are you mostly finished?”
The Detective asked, glancing at me.
“Ah, yes.”
“Then let’s change locations. It’s too noisy here to have a proper conversation.”
“Yes, let’s do that.”
I followed Detective Beren and glanced back. Inspector Serret was receiving a new case as if nothing had happened. However, his hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white.
Premium Chapter
Login to buy access to this Chapter.