“Are you saying I killed Allen?”
“You were the only one capable of refining coniine,” I said.
“The inspector said he asked you to clear the patches of hemlock,” Squong added with a hardened expression.
“Refining coniine wouldn’t have been difficult for you. You only had to concentrate the hemlock you were handed.”
A brief silence followed. And then…
“Yes, I suppose I could have.”
The dark figure nodded readily.
“…!”
The culprit, Edward Burr, spoke in a voice thick with emotion.
“I’m sorry, Mister Squong. It’s all my fault. I can’t bear the guilt.”
“Are you admitting to the crime now?!”
“Yes, Detective. I admit my guilt. I believe I helped the culprit.”
“What? Helped the culprit?”
‘Is this a “the left hand helped the right hand” kind of thing?’
The culprit continued, feigning as if he were wiping away tears.
“I must have been too late in clearing the poisonous weeds. Because of that, I gave the killer an easy opportunity to manufacture poison. To think my laziness led to such a result!”
“Ha…”
“Moreover, to think the notebook was the decisive clue. Didn’t I interfere with the investigation by bringing the notebook from the crime scene without knowing anything? Oh, Allen. I’m so sorry. Because of me, the time to resolve your grievance has been delayed!”
He was a regular opera actor.
“How… how can you say such a thing!”
Unlike me, who had expected nothing from the culprit from the start, the inspector seemed appalled by the man’s brazen attitude.
“That day, while clearing weeds with you, I—yes, I—told you how dangerous hemlock is and how easily it can turn into a lethal poison! You were the only one I told that to! No one else could have known!”
A brief silence. The culprit scratched the back of his hand once and spoke.
“I wonder. Is that really true?”
“Wh-what?”
“Couldn’t there have been many other ways to acquire that knowledge? To call me the culprit just because I nodded a few times at a boring lecture—you’re talking nonsense.”
“…!”
The humble attitude he had maintained flipped like a palm.
“Even if you call yourself an inspector, you’re not even a real teacher, are you? Aren’t you just a security guard with a fancy title? Isn’t it a bit strange that none of the elite students at this academy knew something that even someone like you knows?”
“What…”
At the insult from the student he had trusted, the inspector stood with his mouth agape, unable to continue.
‘Right. This is your true face.’
I stepped forward on behalf of the shocked inspector.
“All right, Mister Burr. Let’s assume, as you say, that the use of hemlock was common knowledge anyone could have known. But execution is a different matter.”
This was a school for training officers, not poison experts.
“Coniine is a poison. Even if it’s relatively easy to extract, it’s not so simple that an amateur could refine it without leaving a single trace on their body. A person who manufactures poison is bound to have traces left on them.”
If there was one person with a noticeable trace, only one name came to mind.
As I stared at him intently, Burr flared up.
“This is why ignorant people are a problem! Is the culprit some witch from a fairy tale? Stirring a cauldron with bare hands to manufacture poison! They would have worn protective gear, obviously!”
“No. Even then, it’s the same.”
Let’s say a novice managed to manufacture the poison safely without getting hurt. How could the culprit be certain that the handmade poison was properly completed?
‘If it were me, I wouldn’t attempt something as dangerous as poisoning without testing the toxicity first.’
If the poison wasn’t potent enough, they would end up in prison for attempted murder; there’s no way they would take that risk. If an amateur committed a planned murder using handmade poison, they would have certainly gone through a process of testing its toxicity before the attempt.
“However, was there any other way for the culprit to test the poison in here?”
This was not a civilian society, but a school of rigid discipline for raising future officers.
It would have been difficult to bring in experimental animals from the outside, and the interior of this school, as clean as a hotel, looked as if not even a single mouse was allowed to roam.
“The risk of being caught by others during the testing process cannot be ignored either.”
In extreme situations, the only thing a human can trust is themselves.
“A poison that is fatal to the respiratory system when ingested but only causes a rash on the skin. Testing the poison on the back of one’s own hand would have been the safest method.”
The culprit tested the poison on his own body.
“Among the suspects, only you and Mister Squong have a rash.”
“Ha! You lay out your delusions quite well. Even if we assume your delusion is correct, isn’t there a much more likely suspect sitting right there?”
Edward Burr scratched the back of his hand irritably.
“I’m saying it would be much more plausible to see the inspector as the culprit!”
“Wh-what…?”
The culprit screamed desperately.
“That’s right. Mister Squong knew how to manufacture the poison well. Well enough to explain it confidently to others! He must be the person most proficient in such knowledge in this school.”
‘Even though he just asked how the elite students wouldn’t know what the inspector knew.’
The way he flipped his words was laughable, but there was a madness embedded in the culprit’s struggle.
“It was strange from the moment he set out to remove the poisonous weeds out of nowhere! It’s not even his job, and no one told him to, so why would he volunteer for that? Why, exactly?”
“I… I just worried for the students—”
“Ha! You’re just a pathetic, lonely old man, yet you worry about students with bright futures? Don’t make me laugh! You must have felt inferior!”
Edward Burr shouted as if it were an obvious truth.
“You were probably especially jealous of Allen. Despite having an origin not much different from yours, he was trying to climb higher than even the children of nobility, so you must have hated the sight of it! That’s why you killed him! You killed my precious friend, Allen!”
It was so disgusting I didn’t want to listen anymore.
“No. Mister Squong cannot be the culprit.”
I held up the notebook containing the victim’s final traces.
“The ink used here was oil-based ink for quill pens.”
Lure stepped in to elaborate.
“I checked it using a very scientific method, so it’s certain!”
“Um… anyway. This was written with quill pen ink. Since not many people use quill pens, shops that sell quill pen ink are also rare. There was only one general store near this school where such a thing could be obtained.”
I didn’t even need to go and get the purchase records for that general store.
“The detective had already obtained the purchase records from the general store yesterday. Isn’t that right?”
“That is so.”
The detective nodded with a grim face.
“I remember it clearly. The inspector purchased enough water-based ink for the number of students, and he did not buy a single bottle of quill pen ink. The person who bought that was someone else.”
The detective’s piercing gaze turned toward the culprit.
“Edward Burr. Where did you put the bottle of quill pen ink you bought then?”
“That is…”
Burr could not answer.
‘It’s obvious. It must have fallen into the grass, shattered to pieces.’
Lure picked up fragments of an empty glass bottle from the grass outside the victim’s room. A bottle that certainly hadn’t been there until before the curfew the previous day.
It is said that ink components and the components of a weed common in this area were detected on those glass fragments.
‘That weed must have been hemlock.’
There was poison inside the ink bottle, and the victim used that ink.
That is the cause of the victim’s death.
“Tell me! Where is that bottle!”
The culprit said nothing.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
After scratching the back of his hand irritably for a long time.
“I used it all and… threw it out the window.”
“Coniine components were detected in that bottle!”
“That sort of thing just rubbed off from the surrounding weeds!”
‘The coroners probably thought so too.’
Even if the components are confirmed through forensic analysis, it’s difficult to confirm the concentration. So the culprit’s excuse might have been enough to pass… but there was a variable.
“The lawn area where the glass fragments fell is a zone the inspector pays special attention to because many students walk around there.”
“…?”
“Mister Squong confirmed that he pulled out every single stalk of hemlock in that area.”
“Don’t make me laugh!”
“It is the truth.”
“No! That can’t be! Do you know how persistent the reproductive power of hemlock is? It’s hard to distinguish from other grass at a glance, and its vitality is enormous! That’s why it hasn’t gone extinct despite being a poisonous weed! But you pulled it all out? Without leaving a single plant?”
“Yes.”
The inspector asserted firmly.
“I combed through the grass every morning and evening; not a single plant was left.”
He said, looking back and forth between me and the detective.
“If you want, send the police to investigate. You won’t be able to find even a single fine root of hemlock even if you wash your eyes and look.”
“What… how…”
The culprit could no longer continue.
“Ed.”
The inspector said in a calm voice.
“The reason I taught you about the poisonous weed was because I wanted to teach you its dangers. Because I hoped that no student would be hurt by it.”
“……”
“…It seems I failed to achieve what I hoped for.”
“……”
“This is pathetic. Are you going to keep insisting?”
I declared.
“Mister Edward Burr. You are the culprit who murdered the victim, Allen Hesington.”
“That… that kind of thing is…”
“…?”
He spoke so softly it was hard to catch his words.
“What did you just say…”
“That kind of thing is all just circumstantial evidence!”
Oh, boy. I thought my eardrums were going to burst.
Regrettably, it seemed the culprit had chosen to struggle hideously instead of quietly admitting his crime.
The culprit bellowed.
“You can’t frame me as the culprit with just that kind of evidence!”
“No. I can. Very much so.”
The detective replied with a menacing look.
“I was planning to arrest you with even less evidence than this. There’s nothing more to look into.”
“Ha… ha! Right! The police are always like that! But!”
The culprit shouted toward me.
“Shouldn’t a detective be different?”
“…?”
“You. Do you even know how the culprit killed the person? There are too many holes. By what means did I give that ink to Allen? Isn’t it strange that a person died just because poison that must be ingested was put in ink? What did the fake dying message mean? Why did I use such a complicated murder method? You don’t know anything!”
“Right. I don’t know.”
“Right, the case hasn’t been solved at all! This case—”
“But, does that matter?”
I looked down at the culprit with cold eyes.
“I’m not here to play riddle games with a criminal.”
I am here to catch the culprit.
“…You, are you even a detective?!”
I wonder. I’m not exactly the type of detective who’s obsessed with solving riddles. If I were that kind of detective, I wouldn’t have even thought about fabricating evidence in the first place, right?
“Who cares. You’re the culprit and I proved it. That’s all.”
“Ha, hahahaha! This is ridiculous!”
The culprit tore off something black that looked like his own flesh and threw it. Only after the object hit the floor did I realize it was the leather glove the culprit had been wearing.
After throwing the glove, the man shouted while scratching his hand frantically.
“You haven’t even properly read a fraction of my meticulous plan. How dare you frame me as the culprit with such crude evidence when you know nothing? You man who knows no aesthetics! Someone like you, who can’t even imagine the truth beyond the incident, is not a detective!”
The insult didn’t even bother me. Rather…
“Are you admitting that you killed him?”
“That I killed him? Ha! Absolutely not! That fellow brought death upon himself. I didn’t kill him. That fellow died because he didn’t know his place! Ah, yes!”
The culprit shouted.
“Allen Hesington committed suicide! I merely assisted in the process!”
That pathetic nonsense was a confession so clear that everyone gathered in the room knew it.
Sssss—
As the dark shadow lifted, the culprit’s face was revealed. Blond hair and blue eyes. A face that would have originally been quite handsome. But such things didn’t even properly register in my eyes.
“Your… your hand…”
The back of the culprit’s hand was a hideous sight, hard to bear looking at. The bright red, swollen skin was peeling off in places as if it had been burned, and sticky fluid oozed out from beneath it. Large and small blisters had broken out disgustingly, and some had already burst, revealing hideous holes.
“Ha, haha! Listen!”
Nevertheless, as if he couldn’t feel any of this, he dug his fingernails in and scratched the back of his hand until it bled.
The fluid leaking from the burst blisters and the blood tangled together, and a nauseating, fishy stench stung the nose.
“Listen! Tell me if you can still call me the culprit after this!”
With a look as hideous as the sins committed by those hands, the culprit screamed.