“I think we should dismantle that plaster sculpture right away. I’ll help as much as I can.”
Fortunately, no one objected.
We poured water over the plaster and carefully chipped away at it with chisels to excavate the statue buried inside.
Lure and Sophie helped by carrying buckets of water, but Arthur Sterling was the only one who remained completely idle.
“Why isn’t Sir Arthur helping?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t like getting wet.”
Was that really something he could say with a straight face?
I was dumbfounded, but I decided not to press the matter.
His rank was Thug, after all. What could I expect?
Still, we managed to remove the plaster without much difficulty.
“The inside is hollow. It seems the intention was always to remove the plaster mold someday.”
At last, the entire sculpture was revealed.
Until now, we’d only seen fragments of the shattered statue or a tiny portion of the one buried inside the plaster. Now, we could finally see the complete form of the masterpiece known as The Last Piece.
‘It’s exactly as Mustafa described.’
A woman lay collapsed helplessly, a knife plunged into her back.
Her body was slumped as though all her strength had drained away, yet her head remained raised.
She was clearly looking directly at us, the audience.
And the expression on her face in her final moments was…
“There’s nothing there?”
I didn’t mean that she had no expression.
I meant it literally.
She had no face.
‘Is this modern art? Some kind of faceless appeal to the audience?’
The others seemed to have very different thoughts.
“No face? Doesn’t that mean it’s incomplete?”
Everyone began whispering that the statue was unfinished.
“If it has no face, doesn’t that mean it’s incomplete?”
“Good grief! Of course it does, Teacher!”
Lure shook her head as though she pitied me.
“I’m not exactly an expert on art either, but you’re being serious, aren’t you, Teacher? Even a child would understand that!”
“No…”
I felt unfairly accused.
But then…
“Interesting.”
Arthur Sterling picked up a piece of marble.
It was the face of a woman screaming in agony.
He placed the broken piece against the faceless statue and said, “This piece has a face sculpted onto it, doesn’t it?”
The face fit the incomplete statue perfectly, as though it had been made specifically for that purpose.
And just like that, the question arose once again.
The incomplete version versus the complete one.
Which was the authentic Last Piece?
“Obviously, the completed one, right?”
Lure offered her opinion.
“One version is already complete, and the other was made by copying it. So the completed work must be the original!”
“Or perhaps someone copied an unfinished sculpture and imagined what the face should look like before sculpting it.”
It was difficult to determine which explanation was correct.
Mustafa, who had been examining the statue closely, spoke up.
“The finish is much better on the one we found buried in the plaster.”
Sophie nodded in agreement.
“The texture of the clothing and the delicate details of the skin are all better on the hidden statue. The broken one has lost all those fine details.”
“Ah, that is probably because of where we found the broken piece.”
Arthur explained.
‘Come to think of it, where exactly did he find it?’
“Sir Albrecht’s mansion is close to the forest. Beyond the forest, there’s a rocky mountain and a quarry.”
Anton nodded at Arthur’s explanation.
“Master built his mansion here partly because there was a source of marble nearby…”
“It’s common for sculptors to live in places like that. But what does that have to do with where the statue was found?”
Mustafa asked impatiently.
Arthur continued as though telling him to wait until he had finished explaining.
“A valley begins at the rocky mountain and runs through the forest. One of its branches passes through the grounds of this mansion. The fragments of the statue had been dumped downstream in that valley.”
“…! Downstream?”
“They were probably washed down from upstream. The current in the valley was quite strong. If the fragments had been left there much longer, they would eventually have lost their original shapes entirely.”
What?
If that had happened, identifying the fragments and solving the Case would have become impossible.
In other words, the Case had a time limit I hadn’t even known about.
I felt relieved that we’d found the statue in time, but another question soon arose.
“How on earth did you find a marble sculpture abandoned in a place like that?”
We’d only parted ways a short while ago. How had he even thought to search there?
I hadn’t seen him at the crime scene, Sir Albrecht’s mansion, so how could he have known to look there first?
“My assistant is quite capable, you see.”
I was sure I’d heard him say something similar before.
‘So his assistant really is capable.’
But where was this supposedly capable assistant now?
He’d said he was going to fetch them, so why had he returned alone?
I was puzzled, but asking about it seemed difficult.
Ever since Arthur mentioned his capable assistant, Lure’s gaze had been growing increasingly sharp.
‘Is she feeling competitive?’
There was no need for that.
Where else could he find someone as indispensable as Lure?
“By the way, where did you get that handcart?”
I decided to ask about something else that had been bothering me.
“It was sitting abandoned near the valley beside the mansion, where the statue fragments had been dumped. I assumed it originally belonged to this mansion.”
“Oh! That handcart!”
Mustafa seemed to recognize it.
“Until yesterday afternoon, it was parked near the garden. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Then the statue must have been smashed and transported sometime between yesterday evening and this morning.”
That matched the time when the statue had suddenly disappeared.
“Ah, I remember something, too.”
Sophie spoke up.
“The plaster sculpture I broke… I think it had already been here for several days before I was expelled from the Workshop.”
“That means the statue was hidden inside the plaster long before the incident occurred.”
The situation was gradually becoming clearer.
“I don’t know which statue is the original, but it seems the one that disappeared this time was the shattered statue loaded onto this handcart.”
Lure summarized the situation.
“Last night, someone smashed the statue in Sir Albrecht’s Workshop, loaded the fragments onto this handcart, and transported them away.”
I examined the handcart again.
It was loaded with shattered pieces of marble, making it quite heavy.
The tracks left by its wheels on the dirt path outside the Workshop were deep and clearly visible.
As I organized my thoughts, Arthur Sterling continued.
“To transport the statue to the valley, the culprit would have had to pass in front of the mansion. Under normal circumstances, that would have been impossible. However, I heard that last night, Mrs. Swain was the only person inside the mansion. The culprit simply had to avoid her.”
The method the culprit had used to avoid Mrs. Swain…
I’d already heard about that.
“When I spoke to Mrs. Swain, she mentioned lemon pie. She began baking it at around eight last night, and white smoke rose from the mansion’s chimney throughout the baking process.”
“From eight o’clock…”
Sterling nodded.
“She said that once she puts the pie in the oven, she never leaves her station until it’s finished. Apparently, everyone in the mansion knows this.”
And?
In other words, the culprit had transported the shattered statue to the valley while Mrs. Swain was busy baking lemon pie.
“But is that even possible? How long does it take to bake a single pie?”
“Ah, my assistant certainly would think that. You don’t know Mrs. Swain’s secret recipe for her sweet-and-tangy lemon pie.”
“What? Mrs. Swain’s… What did you just say?”
The words sounded completely out of place coming from that stern-looking man.
Ignoring everyone’s reactions, Arthur continued.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you the details. That would violate my confidentiality agreement with the witness. She has expressly stated that she won’t pass her lemon pie recipe down to her child’s legal spouse, her heir, or anyone else besides me.”
“…”
“However, I can tell you that the essence of the recipe lies in patience and labor-intensive preparation, what people vaguely refer to as ‘hand taste.'”
“Uh… so what exactly are you trying to say?”
“To summarize…”
Arthur Sterling finally got to the point.
“After the smoke first appeared from the chimney, it took approximately one hour and fifty minutes for the pie to be completed.”
My mind went blank for a moment, but that was important information nonetheless.
“So the incident must have occurred sometime between eight and ten in the evening.”
“Considering the condition of the shattered statue, that seems like a reasonable time frame.”
The window during which the incident could have occurred had narrowed considerably.
‘If that’s the case, we should check the suspects’ alibis.’
“Mr. Mustafa, what were you doing at that time?”
“As I said before, I was holed up in the Common Studio all afternoon, completely absorbed in finishing my work. By the time I finished, it was already dark. When I went to Master’s Workshop, the Last Piece was gone.”
Before I could ask anything else, he continued.
“I saw Master’s carriage return from the Imperial Palace. Master said he went straight to bed at around nine.”
“I see.”
I nodded and turned toward Anton.
“I… was at the Imperial Palace Garden…”
“You went to the Imperial Palace Garden?”
“So that my exhibited work might receive favorable reviews…”
Anton lowered his head.
“Well, I thought it might help. But someone of my status… I didn’t think I’d be allowed inside.”
I was curious about that, but there was no point in pursuing it now.
“Didn’t you return with Sir Albrecht? He was there, too, wasn’t he?”
Anton shook his head.
“I intended to, but we missed each other…”
So they hadn’t met.
That meant no one could confirm his whereabouts.
“What about you, Sophie?”
“I was at the Imperial Palace Garden the entire time. I saw the detective, Master, and everyone else. I was sitting in a corner with my parents, watching the proceedings.”
Come to think of it, she’d mentioned that she was a noblewoman.
Even if they’d been seated in a corner, her family was evidently of a standing that allowed them to attend such events.
“After the trial ended, I went straight home. I didn’t go anywhere near Master’s mansion afterward.”
Even so, there was no way to verify her claim.
‘It’s the same for all the suspects.’
Not one of them had met and spoken with another in a way that could establish an alibi.
There was no testimony that could confirm anyone else’s whereabouts.
Any one of them could be the culprit.
But…
“I still don’t know the whole truth behind this Case, but I think I know who smashed the statue and dumped it downstream in the valley.”
I let out a heavy sigh as I spoke.
“So do I.”
Arthur nodded.
‘Well, I suppose you would.’
It was a clue I’d noticed, too.
There was no way he could have overlooked it.
‘I don’t know why that person did it, or what the full story is… But I can find that out after catching them.’
“The culprit is…”
Just as I was about to name the person…
“Wait!”
BANG!
Someone kicked open the Workshop door and stormed inside.
A Black Shadow stood there, breathing heavily.
I recognized him immediately.
“Sir Albrecht…”
“My disciples have done nothing wrong!”
He strode forward and blocked my path.
‘Ah, I knew this would happen.’
The suspicion I’d been harboring was now confirmed.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, then opened them and faced him.
“As I suspected, Sir Albrecht, you already know who the culprit is.”
“What?”
“Look at where you’re standing right now.”
He had probably acted on instinct.
Sir Albrecht was standing directly in front of one person, blocking them from Arthur and me.
The disciple he’d personally expelled from the Workshop.
Sophia Claudel.
“Sophia. You’re the culprit, aren’t you?”