“W-what? You’re saying Mr. Squong was the one who sent the gifts?”
“The old man was the one leaving the gifts?”
Both Jafford and Detective Baron looked visibly shocked. To think that the grumpy old man, who did nothing but grumble, was the one leaving gifts in front of the students’ rooms.
“It is not what you think. Those gifts were truly nothing special.”
After saying that, the Proctor hesitated to speak for a long time. The Detective threatened him.
“You’d better speak up, old man. Depending on how we judge this, you could become a suspect.”
I couldn’t stay silent either.
“Sir. If you are trying to cover for a student’s crime, please don’t. This is a very serious matter.”
“It’s not like that! That boy Ed did absolutely nothing wrong!”
“Then please tell us in detail. What exactly happened?”
Only then did the Proctor begin to confess reluctantly.
“I… I just wanted to get a little closer to the students.”
“Were you not on good terms with the students?”
“Aside from Ed, there wasn’t a single student I was close with! Everyone was too busy badmouthing the Proctor, calling me strict or saying I was no better than a prison guard. That fellow Jafford over there, even when it was his own fault for being late for roll call, he’d grumble that nothing goes right because of the ‘Skunk’!”
“Hiek! You heard that?”
“Of course! I hear everything, you brat! I have ears, how could I not hear that?”
So he wanted to improve his relationship with the students.
“But if that was your goal, wouldn’t it have been right to give the gifts to the students directly? Why did you send them anonymously?”
“If I had given them the gifts to their faces, would the students have even been grateful? They would have spouted nonsense like it’s a brainwashing device to turn people into study machines, or that I’m using them to cast a hypnosis spell to get rid of student complaints! Because everyone only sees me in a bad light!”
The Proctor seemed to have many grievances built up.
“So I planned to send the gifts first, and then, once everyone was happy, I would subtly reveal it was me. I just wanted to try and improve our relationship that way!”
“Hmm, but how were you able to give the gifts while avoiding the students’ eyes?”
The Detective raised a question.
“That’s simple. I walk back and forth in the hallway all evening, and the children hide in fright whenever they see me. I just had to wait for a moment and drop them off.”
“Then what about when the gifts stopped?”
I asked, as if pressing him. I couldn’t believe the gifts were unrelated to the case.
“Why was the night the victim was murdered the only time you didn’t send a gift?”
“That is…”
At that moment, I clearly saw it. The Proctor glancing tentatively at the culprit.
“…Because I realized too late that there was a problem with the gift I had prepared.”
“This is an important matter, so you’ll have to explain in more detail. What do you mean there was a problem with the gift?”
“The gift I prepared the day before was a quill, just as Jafford mentioned earlier. For the next day’s gift, I had prepared ink. It was a very elegant ink with a deep navy blue base and pearls embedded like stars.”
Just hearing about it, it sounded like an expensive ink.
‘Just how much did he want to get close to the students?’
“But upon reflection, that ink was for fountain pens, not quills.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Of course there is. What goes into a fountain pen is water-based ink. On the other hand, what’s used for quills is oil-based ink. If you confuse them, you’re likely to ruin the pen.”
The Detective expressed admiration.
“Well, you certainly know your stuff. I’ve never used a quill in my life, so I had no idea.”
“Humph, humph. Well… I learned a bit while preparing the kids’ gifts. At any rate, if I gave them a quill the day before and then gave them ink the next day, wouldn’t they naturally want to try that ink with the quill? But if they did that, the quill would be ruined. I realized that too late.”
“So that’s why you didn’t send the gift?”
“That’s right. If I left a note saying it was ink for fountain pens, I felt the children would deduce my identity through my handwriting, and I didn’t have any other suitable replacement gift. So I planned to skip just one day.”
The Proctor straightened his back and spoke confidently.
“If you have any suspicions, go ahead and check my room. The ink bottles I prepared for each student are still there. Neither that boy Ed nor I have committed any wrongdoing. The mystery gifts have nothing to do with the case.”
“Hmm… from the sounds of it, that seems to be the case.”
The Detective nodded his head. However, I could not concede like this.
‘The culprit was Edward Burr.’
Furthermore, unlike the Proctor or Jafford, Burr couldn’t have entered the victim’s room at the time of the murder.
In order for him to plot a locked-room murder, he needed some special method, and among the clues presented so far, the mystery gift seemed the most plausible.
‘Moreover, the Proctor seemed strangely conscious of Burr the whole time he was speaking.’
Though my intuition was the only evidence, I was certain that Burr was connected to the mystery gifts.
“Proctor, no, Mr. Squong. Speak plainly.”
I spoke in a low, growling tone.
“What is the real reason you didn’t send the mystery gift on the day the victim was murdered?”
“Didn’t I just explain everything! If I sent fountain pen ink after sending a quill the day before-“
I cut him off.
“Are you saying the reason you didn’t send the gift truly has nothing to do with Mr. Burr?”
“…Of course it has nothing to do with him! Why are you bringing Ed into this?”
The Proctor shouted. His tightly set mouth showed his stubbornness.
After agonizing over it for a long time, I slowly opened my mouth.
“…Mr. Squong, as I see it, you are a good teacher.”
I had listened to his testimony until now, and I had come to know him. Of course, it wasn’t that I knew his background in detail like a proper detective, nor had I seen through the truth or falsehood of his testimony.
What I had gained through the conversation was simply that he was a fairly decent person.
“You made an effort to get close to the students.”
Anonymous gifts. At his age, it must have been an embarrassing thing to do. It would have been much easier to call out the students badmouthing him and scold them, yet he made his own kind of effort.
“You grasped all the information, such as the students’ quarrels and their friendships, and you also cared about the health and grades of the students studying late into the night.”
How could it be an easy task to stand there all night watching the lights in the students’ rooms?
Since he was on night duty alone anyway, no one would have known if he had dozed off or slacked off. Yet he faithfully guarded that dark and empty hallway.
To the point where he could proudly testify that he had never taken his eyes off the hallway for a single moment.
His ears might be a bit thin, and to the students, he might just be an annoying adult.
But as I saw it, Squong was a good teacher.
“Since you are such a person, you must have wanted to prevent an innocent student from being suspected. Is that not so?”
“…”
“But at this rate, Jafford will be arrested. Your other student.”
The Proctor looked confused.
“That fellow… Jafford killed Allen. So-“
“Are you certain?”
The Proctor’s eyes wavered.
“In all the time you’ve watched Jafford, was he that kind of student?”
The Proctor fell silent.
“Perhaps, based on your testimony, we might be able to deduce another culprit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a trivial story. Please speak honestly. I might be able to find something.”
“…”
“Teacher.”
Finally, the Proctor’s mouth opened.
“The gifts I sent… were all items recommended to me by Ed.”
“…!”
“How was I to know what kids that age like? Since Ed gets along well with various students, I thought he would know about such things, so I asked the boy.”
“If that’s the case, then Mr. Burr must have known from the beginning that you were the one sending the gifts.”
“Don’t go blaming Ed! I was the one who told him not to tell the police!”
The Proctor gave a stern warning.
“On the day of the incident, Ed mentioned that ink problem I talked about earlier and said it would be better not to send a gift today. I agreed. That’s all! We are both innocent, and it was just me telling him to keep quiet because I was afraid of drawing unnecessary suspicion.”
“Did Mr. Burr ever touch the gifts? Like setting up some kind of device without you knowing…”
“Ha! What nonsense!”
The Proctor was furious.
“There’s no way Ed would do such a thing! He couldn’t have either! That boy Ed only recommended the gifts. I was the one who bought the gifts at the store, I was the one who stored them, and I was the one who placed them in front of the kids’ rooms. From beginning to end, they only passed through my hands; Ed never even touched the gifts! If there’s something wrong with the gifts, then that is my crime, not that boy Ed’s fault!”
That couldn’t be true.
‘The culprit definitely did something using those gifts.’
Something to kill the victim.
But I couldn’t draw out any more of the story.
“I shouldn’t have trusted you! You were planning to deceive me and frame Ed as the culprit!”
The Proctor’s heart, which had been slightly open, completely closed due to the hasty question I had just thrown out.
He flew into a rage and denounced me.
He was no longer in a state to have a conversation.
“Now, now, old man. Calm down. I believe your words. There’s no way Mr. Burr is the culprit.”
After much soothing, the Detective calmed the Proctor down and sent all the witnesses out. In the room where only the two of them remained, the Detective let out a deep sigh.
“What was the reason for pointlessly provoking the witness? And with a groundless speculation at that.”
“It’s not speculation.”
Suspicion became certainty. Clearly, some secret was hidden within the mystery gifts. This was the only clue that seemed capable of leading to the culprit.
“Detective. Could we examine the quill more closely? Not just the victim’s, but I’d also like to look at the quills the other students received as gifts.”
The significant mystery gift the victim used in his final moments.
The day after receiving that quill, the victim died while holding it. Could there be some secret hidden here?
“…There is no difference at all.”
However, the victim’s quill was exactly the same as the others. I compared the victim’s quill with over ten other quills, but the differences were extremely minute.
“Looking closely, there is only a small stain on the victim’s quill.”
Detective Baron shrugged his shoulders as if it were no big deal.
“Is it not natural since he died while writing with this quill? It seems everyone else’s quills are in an unused state.”
And that was it. There were no other differences. No matter how much I looked, this was just an ordinary quill.
I checked the other gifts the victim had received. They were all stored inside the drawer of the victim’s desk. But no matter what I examined, it was the same.
The gifts the victim received were not one bit different from the gifts the other students received.
‘Now that I think about it, if it were a clue that could be found by looking like this, the culprit would have cleared it away long ago.’
If it was the culprit who was the first discoverer, clearing away suspicious items would have been nothing. To only realize that after checking every single gift.
Am I an idiot?
“Hwaaa-am. Are the foolish antics all finished now?”
Detective Baron asked while yawning.
“Good grief, the sun is already setting. We’ve dragged out a case that could have been finished early for a long time.”
After grumbling for a while, the Detective said something chilling.
“I’ll arrest Jafford as planned and then head home.”
“Pardon? Arresting Jafford! Why are you reaching that conclusion?!”
“Eh? Haven’t I been saying it from the start? I told you he’s the most likely suspect.”
The Detective counted them off one by one on his fingers.
“He is the most likely person pointed to by the dying message.”
The dying message could have been manipulated. Even if it was left by the victim, it wouldn’t have been a word pointing to Jafford.
But there was no evidence.
“Coincidentally, he claims that a convenient stomach ache flared up that day.”
His stomach really could have been nauseous. He was probably telling the truth.
Though there was no evidence.
“In the first place, he was the only person who could have secretly entered the locked room and committed the crime without being heard by anyone.”
The culprit didn’t climb through the window, nor did they use the ventilation duct in the bathroom. They clearly killed the victim using some other method.
Evidence was, as always, nonexistent.
“The only new clue was the gift. But that turned out to be nothing.”
No. There is definitely something to this gift. But what on earth is it?
My speculation could not become evidence.
“It’s just time to make the arrest now. Actually, I should have arrested him long ago.”
To the Detective’s words, I couldn’t give any answer.
‘…Is this the end?’
In the end, the only evidence I had was the black shadow visible only to my eyes. The only person I could convince with this kind of evidence was myself.
‘Perhaps I have no choice but to accept it.’
I felt a sense of defeat, but what else could I do?
I am a detective who doesn’t know how to deduce, and there was no evidence clutched in my hands. Since I couldn’t pull out my own eyes and submit them as evidence, I had no choice but to submit to the result.
“Well, it looks like you’ve accepted it too.”
The Detective opened his mouth wide and yawned.
“I’ll be off to arrest Jafford now. Your Chairman will take care of the rest.”
“…Are you talking about my client?”
“That’s right. Isn’t it obvious?”
Detective Baron said in a nonchalant tone.
“The security of the holding cell is relatively weak. No doubt that Chairman will press some coins into the hands of some low-life thugs and try to get revenge on the culprit, wouldn’t he?”
“W-what?!”
My heart thumped.
“Is such a thing permitted?”
“Hmm? Of course it’s illegal. But who’s to know?”
The Detective chuckled.
“The thugs hired by the Chairman will simply testify that they got angry and roughed up their cellmate a bit, and no other evidence will come out anyway. Well, if the House of Sail exerts their influence, the story might be different, but most of those old-fashioned noble lords wouldn’t actively step forward for such a thing. Wouldn’t it only hurt their prestige to defend a son who got thrashed in a holding cell?”
No, it wasn’t like that. This Detective knows nothing.
If such a thing were truly possible, my client wouldn’t be satisfied with just that kind of minor revenge.
I witnessed the resentment that Mr. Peterson spat out as if his throat were tearing.
[I will get my revenge. I will personally avenge Allen! I’ll catch that disgusting killer, tear him limb from limb, and scatter him over Allen’s grave!]
…Mr. Peterson will end up killing the culprit.
Even if he himself has to pay the price.
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