#The Antique Store Detective and The May Day Murder | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years ago

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Witches, Chapter 11: I split another giant chapter in half. In this portion, I set up a filler case that exists purely to set the scene and allow me to make up two very bad AA-style pun names; shit hasn’t quite gotten real but it sure is about to; and Athena makes some new friends.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

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The Wright Anything Agency isn’t lucky.

Apollo should just expect that from the start. He didn’t, this time, because he trusted Phoenix - that being a loaded statement - to know what he was talking about and assumed - bad idea - that if he bothered to say Tenma Taro would be weaker at midsummer, then there was some chance of waiting. That it would lay low to wait out the fervor of the trial and the attention turned toward the Vale. That it wouldn’t wreak havoc immediately.

But they’re just a few days into May when the office phone rings with a call from a young woman who lives in Tenma Town and has been charged with robbing her prior place of employment. “Jinxie Tenma gave me your number,” she says, in between sobs, “and said you would believe me th - that - that I think Tenma Taro did it.”

“Of course we believe you,” Apollo assures her. Athena stands on her chair, propping herself on her desk, leaning forward to listen. With her ears, she can probably hear the other end of the line just fine. She might also be able to hear Apollo’s - not doubt, exactly, or disbelief, but the uncertainty he keeps feeling over Tenma Taro. None of them have seen it. They have Filch’s word, and they all know he wasn’t lying, but could he have been mistaken? Could Phoenix’s fae ‘friends’ have been mistaken in what they thought Phoenix was asking them about?

(He doubts it, but he still doesn’t think he knows well enough what they’re getting into.)

Athena searched all of LA’s used car lots for one that was yellow - “I’m like the cab driver for all of you at the agency, and also I just love yellow” - and with a new-old car they take the well-worn path back up to Nine-Tails Vale. Tenma Town is perched a little higher up the valley but has a similar old-fashioned cobblestone vibe, though some more modern office buildings dot the streets here and there. The town square is centered on a large fountain and a statue that Apollo doesn’t think is Tenma Taro, but it’s birdlike enough that it evokes that image.

Their client, Isabella Pyrria - picked up overnight, released on bail in the morning, returned home, and called them as soon as she made it back - is still teary-eyed when they meet her at a bench by the fountain. She explains that she likes to go on walks in the evenings and her favorite route goes past the antiques store she was fired from at the beginning of April, and she hadn’t bothered to change her route because a lot of cool moths congregate under the awning at the cafe next door. She pulls out her phone to show them pictures. Athena nods at each photo, solemnly and knowingly. “I’m more of a marine mammals person myself,” she says, “but I like the fuzzy ones and their…” She holds her hands to her forehead, two fingers raised on each, and wiggles them. “Antenna. What’re your favorite animals, Apollo?”

“Can we get back to the case, please?” he asks.

Isabella swears to them that when she passed by the store sometime around 10 pm, there was nothing wrong. She didn’t stop long to investigate this spring’s batch of caterpillars, because she was trying to get to the corner store before it closed, because she hadn’t had anything for dinner. She made it there, stayed until closing chatting with the owner and petting the bodega cat, and when she came back out she heard the sirens and saw the police cruiser lights.

The antique store’s security camera, mounted outside above the door, broke two months ago and was never fixed, but only employees knew this. Security tapes from cameras outside other buildings further down the street in both directions showed she was the only person who had passed by either. Anyone walking to the antiques store would be spotted by either of those.

“But Tenma Taro doesn’t have to walk,” Isabella says. “It could just fly straight down and land in front and not be seen.”

“Why would a yokai rob an antiques store?” Athena asks. “Why would a yokai rob anywhere?”

“To cause chaos?” Apollo suggests. What do yokai even do - they’re all so very individual? He did some cursory internet research but couldn’t find anything on Tenma Taro; it might as well have just come out of nowhere here in California. The scroll Jinxie said was the only image of it really is only one of two, the Forbidden Chamber scroll showing the gold ore being the other.

“I don’t know why anyone would rob that antiques store,” Isabella says, toying with the hair tie around her wrist. “It’s got pretty stuff but it’s all cheap. There’s nothing worth taking there.”

Her fingers, plucking at the hair tie and smacking it against her wrist, are illuminated red. “Ms Pyrria,” Apollo says. “Are you being fully honest with us? There really isn’t anything that you or anyone would want to take?”

She lowers her eyes to her hands. “We did have, um, a coupon deal with a really good pizza place over in the Vale. Supposed to give one out with every purchase but I kinda just, um, took a whole bunch once I got fired. But that was it.”

That looks true. Apollo glances to Athena, who nods with a secondary confirmation. Okay. They’ve got this much figured out. Now to the scene of the crime.

The antique shop’s windows are shattered, everything that was displayed in them cracked and shattered across the floor inside and the sidewalk outside. Athena leans into the window to examine a typewriter. “You don’t think there could’ve been some kind of magic artifact in here that it wanted to get?” Apollo asks. “Something languishing as just a normal family heirloom that someone dumped off here?”

“Ooh, maybe,” Athena says. “I guess they’d probably have to take inventory to really find out if stuff’s missing, and this is uh - big mess.” She points with her thumb at the police tape across the doorway. “Can we just head in?”

“Er—” They should probably introduce themselves to a detective first, lower the chances of being yelled at once they’re inside. Apollo glances in through the doorway, hoping to catch sight of anyone in there investigating. Maybe most of the investigating already happened? “I guess…?”

Before he’s really finished saying it, Athena ducks under the tape and heads inside. Apollo lifts it up to follow her. If he’s honest with himself he’s not sure what he hopes they can find. Feathers again, maybe? The interior of the shop is densely packed with tables and shelving upturned and overturned, and what would have once been a clear path or two through are cluttered. Apollo steps over a tall wicker flower stand, lying on its side, and a pillow that was probably hand-embroidered. Athena has stopped with her neck craned to the side, reading the titles of the few books still left on a shelf.

Oh, this is going to be rough, to stay focused, when this isn’t a murder and there’s not a particular area, the place where a body was, the place where the killing happened, to hone in on. He’s defended a smattering of other cases between the large nightmarish ones that weren’t murders, but neither did they have very complicated scenes. And no co-counsel distracted by knick-knacks, either.

“Athena,” he says. She jumps, already having become engrossed. “We should probably give the whole place a once-over, see if anything jumps out, find a detective to talk to, and then we can try and look for anything else that—”

“Hey!” A woman’s voice cuts through the stillness, a loud, indignant squawk. “Who’s in here? This is a - oh! Yo! Apolly!”

Athena’s eyebrows rise and disappear beneath her bangs. “D-Detective Faraday?” Apollo asks, turning around and unable to look for her due to making sure he doesn’t place his feet on anything breakable.

“Long time no see!” Kay chirps, with an air of familiarity that far surpasses the scant two times they’ve actually met. From New Years he’s pretty sure that she gives Y-suffix nicknames to everyone she can, but that doesn’t make it any better when Athena is snickering at him. “I mean, I expected to see you soon, what with Tenma Taro, but not quite this soon. And who’s this?” She extends a hand to Athena. “Hi, I’m Detective Kay Faraday!”

“Defense attorney Athena Cykes!” The two seem to be competing to see who can more enthusiastically shake the other’s hand. “Nice to meet you! What can you tell us about the case so far?”

Laughing brightly, Kay shakes her head, her black hair flying everywhere. “I’m not Emmy,” she says. “I’m not just gonna purposely give up the prosecution’s whole case right here. Besides.” She props her hands on her hips. “Tonight we’re going hunting for Tenma Taro anyway, and I’m sure you’ll get enough accidental stuff from us on how we totally believe yeah, it’s that big ol’ turkey causing trouble.”

Athena asks who “Emmy” is, and as Kay explains Ema and her general lack of concern for prosecutorial secrecy, Apollo picks his way through the mess to a door left ajar in the back, into a smaller, even more cluttered room, where none of the objects still left on the shelving have price tags. Prosecutor Debeste stands wedged between a rocking chair and a dresser with a shattered mirror, his upper body twisted awkwardly to give him room to move his arms and jot something down in a little notebook. “Where’s the line between antiques and junk?” Apollo asks, deciding that there is no good way any further into this room, and since he can see most of it, he should probably just stay planted here in the doorway.

“How much it sells for, maybe?” Sebastian offers up weakly. “Is this a trick question?”

“I guess it is, since I don’t have an answer.” Apollo has difficulty trying to survey the room; there’s too much going on, too much clutter that keeps drawing his eye one way and then another, and it takes longer than he thinks it should for him to notice the deep scratches in the wall. Three rivets straight down, tearing apart the wallpaper and wood, about two inches in between them, spaced like claw marks. “Do you have an explanation for that?” he asks, pointing to it.

Sebastian shakes his head and his glasses slide down his nose. “Not really a plausible one besides ‘giant bird monster’. The defendant could persum - presumably have made them with something she found laying around here, there’s some old farm tools kinds of things, but then the question is—”

“Why bother?”

Sebastian nods sharply. “Exactly. It’s not a message or any code or something that the shop owner recognizes, and it would be a waste of time with more chance to be caught. And with—” He points down, in front of Apollo, and Apollo examines the floor to see more gashes in the wood, of the same spacing as those on the wall, like a giant bird-monster walking about on its talons. “That, too.”

And maybe someone’s trying to frame a yokai for the crime, again, play on those fears, but it seems like even more effort to go to. “Is there anything noticeably missing?” Apollo asks. Plenty could be not-so-noticeably missing, all kinds of little knick-knacks, but that can’t be the purpose - no one is going to rob a store for 25-cent porcelain cat figurines. “Cash register, or any large or valuable stuff?”

“The register hadn’t been touched,” Sebastian says. “No fingerprints, nothing missing. The only thing the owner noticed so far and told me is that back here she had - she said it was a weird-looking stone she’d never figured out a price for because she didn’t know what it was or was made of. She said it was roughly” - he holds up his hands, less then a foot apart, and cupped toward each other. “And shaped like a six.”

Apollo’s stomach sinks, which has become a very familiar sensation in this kind of context. “A magatama?” he asks, pressing a hand to his forehead. He knew this wouldn’t be a normal case. It’s still going terribly. “A large magatama? That would be reason enough for Tenma Taro to break into a random human establishment, more than just scaring the townspeople.”

“If I were trying to scare the town, I’d hit up more than one place,” Athena says. She leans against the doorframe and peers in, as Kay attempts to squeeze in around her and past Apollo. “Just make it a random selection, no pattern, and not attack everywhere. Leave some dread that I’ll come back and get some of the people I spared before.”

“Dread’s a key part,” Kay agrees. “Especially drop some warning in advance, not enough for anyone to be able to stop you, but just enough to make them all anxious and freaked out waiting for the worst.”

“Okay, so you’re both evil,” Apollo says. Athena chortles and Kay breaks into full cackling. “That’s probably a good thing for me to know ahead of time, before we get any further on this.”

“Before we venture into the woods in the dark with them, you mean,” Sebastian says.

“In the dark?” Apollo repeats. “In the—”

“We’ve got, uh, ‘sources’,” Kay says, making the quotation marks with one hand, while in the other she holds and examines a teacup that had managed to survive the initial catastrophe. “Informants who’ve been keeping an eye out to make sure things don’t go belly-up without us knowing.”

“Like other detectives or officers or something?” Athena asks, with a few wide-eyed blinks of confusion.

“Something,” Sebastian agrees. Apollo makes a note to himself to look out for crows. “But we know Tenma Taro doesn’t emerge during the day. You’ll have time to investigate in town; Ms Teak, the shop owner, went out for lunch but she told us she would be coming back, uh…” Sebastian checks his watch, pushing apart his sleeve and his glove to get to its face. “Soon? She lives above the shop, which is how she knew about the crime so quickly.”

“We should definitely talk to her, then,” Athena says. “And then at sunset we’ve got a whole new investigation to start!”

Ms Teak is a short, white-haired old lady who invites Apollo and Athena up to her living quarters above the shop, offers them tea, and insists that they call her “Auntie” even after they tell her they are Isabella’s lawyers. “That girl,” she says with a sad shake of her head, nearly spilling the tea that she pours for Athena, and Athena almost jostles the pot out of her hands eagerly trying to reach over and steady it. “She’s a sweet girl, but her head’s so far up in the clouds at the best of times. I just couldn’t keep rebalancing the register because she got her math all wrong. Or I’d tell her where to go clean and find an hour later she hadn’t done anything because she’d started with dusting the bookshelf and started thumbing through the first book to catch her eye. Cookies, dears?”

“Er, no thanks,” Apollo says at the same time Athena says, “Sure! Thank you very much!”

Depending on what sorts of witnesses she takes this offer from, she might end up in big trouble; but Apollo showed the blackmail letter to L’Belle and he stole it and destroyed it, so maybe he’s not that much better at proper witness protocol. Other subjects that should probably be taught in law school.

“I hate to think that such a sweet girl would be capable of this,” Ms Teak continues, returning to the small round table and setting down a little plate of tea biscuits. All of the decor of the house is mismatched, like it’s all come out of the antiques store at some point or another: a wicker chair next to a polished brown wood one next to a bar stool of almost equal height to the table, a white-and-gold teapot on a blue porcelain saucer, a cutting board shaped like a pig hanging on the kitchen wall visible from where they now sit in the tiny cramped dining area. “I had to let her go, you understand. It simply wasn’t working out. But I’ve got no ill-will toward the dear girl, and I’d hoped she had none toward me. Oh, dear, dear.” She pulls the wicker chair away from the table, that Apollo now can see the green flowered seat cushion and the pillow with an embroidered - opossum? Is that a possum? - resting against the back.

“How did she react when you told her that you were firing her?” Apollo asks. He watches Athena reach slowly for another cookie, like if she moves slow enough she won’t be noticed, and when she returns it to her mouth she nibbles at it like a squirrel, if a squirrel were nibbling because it realized it isn’t professional or polite to just scarf it down.

“Oh, the poor thing cried, of course. So embarrassed and ashamed of all the mistakes she’d made. Hated to think she’d failed at anything though I tried so hard to assure her that just because she wasn’t good at some things didn’t mean she wouldn’t find a passion that she could get her head locked into.”

“Yeah, I got a big sense of shame and sadness when she mentioned being fired, too,” Athena says quietly, tapping at the side of Widget. “Definitely not anything vindictive.”

“I do hope you’re right,” Ms Teak says. “I do hope you and that other nice young pair - how old are you? I swear all of you professional-types get younger and younger these days - can make sure she didn’t do it and find who did.” She sighs. “And I’ve got to clean up that mess they made, and I’d just gotten done all my spring reorganizing of the shop done, too.”

“The stone that was stolen from the back room,” Apollo says. “The prosecutor mentioned that. Do you remember where that came from originally?”

“Oh, I had that old thing for years,” Ms Teak replies. “Maybe a decade or more, now. I don’t quite remember when but my memory is sharp that it was Ms Tenma, rest her soul - the mayor’s wife, I mean, dear little Jinxie’s mother - who brought it in, asked me if I’d ever seen anything like it and told me she didn’t want it back, that I was free to sell it or get rid of it however I like. She said she didn’t know what it was either, but it made her so uneasy she wanted it out. Didn’t ask where she got it from, didn’t feel that was my business. Strange things happen in this town, you know.”

Apollo knows. Apollo knows well that this one of, but not the only, the towns where strange things happen. Ms Teak glares at them over her teacup. “Best not to ask, sometimes.” She says it like advice, a warning. “And I kept telling myself I should get rid of it, but I’ve been so darned curious that I could never make myself ask for a few dollars for it, or just throw it in a river, you understand?” She shakes her head, sending her white curls bouncing. “Maybe whatever it belongs to wanted it back now, and poor Isabella’s lucky she wasn’t walking past at the time it arrived. Though maybe sharp young lawyers like you two don’t believe in that sort of thing?” She raises an eyebrow as she takes another sip of her tea.

“We’re the lawyers who defended Mayor Tenma when he was charged with murder last month,” Apollo says, hoping that the mayor’s popularity has continued to climb, hoping that he was never so hated here in Tenma Town, and that his saying this won’t be a black mark. “We’re, um, familiar with the goings-on around here.”

“That was you?” she asks, surprised, setting down her teacup and saucer. “My goodness. All of those big cases you must get, if the mayor chose you as his lawyers, and here you are up this way for little Isabella.”

“We don’t really—” Apollo begins, because really, it was a lucky fluke that they got to represent the mayor, and luckier that they didn’t entirely blow it, but Athena kicks him in the shin before he can correct Ms Teak on their office’s humble and confusing existence.

“Thank you darlings oh so much for helping out our little town, once again.”

“It’s our pleasure!” Athena replies, taking another cookie.

“She’s the most pleasant witness we’ve ever had!” Athena says brightly, once they’ve left behind the shop to compile their information back in the sunlight of the street. “What a great chance of pace!”

“You’ve had exactly one case before this,” Apollo says. “You can’t say that like—”

“Like Filch and L’Belle weren’t both terrible?” Athena interrupts. She’s unequivocally correct, of course, even without her knowing that Apollo, after his first case, would have had the same reaction to a cooperative, forthcoming, honest, friendly client; after dealing with Olga Orly, Phoenix, and Kristoph. Apollo would have had this same response, but didn’t, because all of the witnesses in his second case were also terrible.

She grins at his silence, knowing what it means, and from her skirt pocket produces yet another cookie.

The alderman’s manor and garden are closed to the public of Nine-Tails Vale - and indeed, anywhere else - for the foreseeable future, but Jinxie still has possession of the master key and has been in to clean up and keep dust from gathering. “The alderman’s wife is still in the hospital,” she explains, “but Papa and I went to see her and she told us that she trusted the town was in good hands with us.” She squares her shoulders, a stack of charms still arrayed in her hand, ready to strike, but instead of slapping one onto Apollo’s head she just offers one to him and Athena. “So we can’t let her down!”

Kay sits on the carpet in the foyer with three boxes of pizza and one of breadsticks. “Ms Teak let me and Sebby take some coupons!” she chirps. “I thought it’s important that we all get some food in us before we head out! Sebby’s on his way over, but I flew out here ahead of time to get us food. You’re welcome!” She waves a breadstick at them and Athena enthusiastically flings herself to the floor, Jinxie sinking down with a bit more grace.

Out the window, the sun is no longer visible, its last vestiges of light barely illuminating the horizon, but the sky is still the light blue of early dusk, nothing that Apollo would yet be worried about roaming around in. Sebastian arrives, with Phoenix and Trucy trailing him, in the blue-black, when several stars are visible along with the moon. “Papa’s up in the Fox Chamber,” Jinxie tells Phoenix. “Trying to get the Forbidden Chamber back in order, make sure it’s all set up.” She offers all three of them warding charms, as she had before. “And he’s talking to the woman who showed up earlier.”

“What woman?” Phoenix asks through a mouthful of pizza.

Jinxie shrugs. “I slapped her with a warding charm when she came in - not one of the protective charms I’ve given you, but one to keep a demon in and stop it from using its powers. And she didn’t mind that so I guessed she can’t be that evil, and Papa has the Nine-Tails to protect him. She’s very pretty - um, she has black hair and was wearing a kimono.”

Oh. That is very unfortunately familiar, too. Phoenix presses a hand over his face and sighs. “Did I do something wrong?” Jinxie asks. “Do you know her?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Phoenix assures her, and after the initial moment has passed, he looks more concerned with whether he wants to finish his slice of pizza. “I know both of the likely options, and there are - there could be worse things. Or people.”

“Mr Wright, do you know how to say things that aren’t cryptic and ominous?” Kay asks. Apollo’s glad he’s not the only one left wondering that question, and that Kay is secure enough to say it out loud, too. Maybe sooner or later Phoenix will get the point, will get tired of hearing it and adapt. Or maybe sooner than that they’ll all be eaten by a yokai.

Jinxie springs to her feet and races up the stairs, calling for her father. She returns two minutes later with Mayor Tenma and a woman who Apollo recognizes, her straight black hair as glassy as ice and her dark, sad eyes. Jinxie was right to take a precaution against her - stuck right in the center of her forehead is a paper charm. “Well, this is a surprise,” Phoenix says lightly, but his posture shifts the moment he sees her, contracting, tightening up from the loose ease he held himself with. When he finishes speaking his mouth has a plastic quality to it, the corner frozen in a lopsided and failed smile. “What are you doing here, Iris?”

He looks so much less comfortable with her here than he did in the office last year, but there’s more people here, more than just Apollo and Trucy to wonder what it is about them, between them. Iris appears no more confident, bowing to Phoenix and never quite straightening up, her hands folded in front of herself, her shoulders turning slightly inward with them. “Since you consulted the Mystic on this matter of Tenma Taro, she was concerned about what may happen to you attempting to reimprison it yourself. Or even with assistance.”

“And I assured Miss… Iris,” Mayor Tenma says, his pronunciation of her name slow and doubtful, like he knows what she is, knows this name is not entirely true to her, “that with the power of the Nine-Tailed Fox, there is little to fear.”

“As I understand.” Iris inclines her head up and to the side, and when her hair swings down and catches the light, as Apollo remembers, it has an auburn sheen. “Understand me, Mayor, that I am not here to tread on your authority, nor to doubt the power of your village’s guardian. When I say that the Fox is weaker than it was when Tenma Taro was first imprisoned, I do not mean that it and you are weak - simply weaker. And there is a ritual to prepare in the Chamber to bind the demon again, and a vast swath of forest to search through. Are we to wait for you to be finished with the Chamber to begin? The Mystic requested of me to keep our friends safe, and that is what I intend to do.”

“I’m surprised Maya didn’t come down here herself,” Phoenix says. “I think I’m overdue for her yelling at me.” He says it tonelessly, with a roll of his eyes, though the implication is obvious, that Maya is one of the fae, and Apollo would never be so casual about having one of the fae angry with him.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Iris smiles with lips pressed tight together. “She will not forget that she has criticisms of your handling of the past eight years. But we all agreed for this situation that both she and my sweet little sister bear a worrying lack of subtlety that could have unfortunate repercussions.”

“Right,” Phoenix agrees. “Pearls would slap a yokai straight through a house. Take care of that situation but level half the town in the process.”

“Indeed. And I was already in the area, over at Hazakurain, and it was not too far to come over. Sister Bikini’s back has been bothering her more lately and I had thought to offer some assistance to the temple.” Iris’ smile gets a little wider, a little less forced. “She still asks after your well-being, and that of a certain handsome prosecutor as well.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Phoenix’s mouth quirks into an equally small smile, and then he claps his hands together and brings them up in front of his mouth. “All right,” he says. “What’s our plan? Iris? Mr Tenma?”

“I have spent these past two weeks, with the assistance of the Nine-Tails, seeking out Tenma Taro, but he has avoided me,” the mayor explains. “It is my hope that you would be able to assist in flushing him out and driving him to a place that I would be able to finish dragging him back into the Forbidden Chamber.”

“So we are gonna be bait!” Athena says.

“No,” Phoenix says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sort of. Tenma Taro’s weak after being locked up for so long - not weak enough to not be a threat, but enough that it’s going to stay the hell away from its old enemy.” A wave of his hand in the direction of Mayor Tenma. “It’s not going to be so cautious when you kids go tromping into the woods. You’d just smell and seem like - people. Traces of magic, yeah, sure, but none of you are foxes.”

“So it’ll just think we’re tasty snacks and not expect us to kick its butt?” Athena asks.

“Tasty,” Trucy repeats. “Magically delicious, you mean.”

Iris giggles. Phoenix sighs and says, “Sebastian, you’re in charge.”

Sebastian freezes, eyes wide and shoulders hunched, his hands twisting around each other. He wears different gloves now than he did earlier; these have the fingers missing, for whatever reason. “Mr Wright, are you sure?”

A witch against a yokai. Apollo doesn’t really know what witches can do, in the abstract, and he certainly doesn’t know what powers Sebastian has - or the when, why, how, of him becoming a witch - but Phoenix must. Enough to have an expectation. “I’m not asking - or suggesting - that you try and fight it singlehandedly, but I think you’d be a big help in keeping it distracted.”

Neither Sebastian’s face nor his posture suggests that he agrees with this assessment. “And, Iris?” Phoenix asks. She doesn’t look surprised, turns her eyes on Phoenix slowly and blinks, waiting. “I’m sure whatever Maya told you was about me, but I’m pretty sure I’d be a liability if I was trying to keep up with everyone else through the woods, and—”

“Your back pain is and always has been because you sit like a gargoyle,” Iris says. “But you would like me to keep your children from being killed.”

“Well.” Phoenix runs his hand through his hair all the way down to rub the back of his neck. “I wasn’t going to phrase it exactly like that. Those two” - he gestures at Kay and Sebastian - “are Edgeworth’s, not mine.”

“What?” Kay asks. “Mr Edgeworth’s my other dad, but you’re my other other dad! Are you disowning me? Have I been disowned? Why can’t you both be my dads?” She grins. Apollo remembers the conversation he had with Klavier about a particular betting pool.

“I do believe it’s been decided on your behalf,” Iris says to Phoenix. “But, yes, I will make sure none of them come to harm. If—” She frowns, her eyes narrowing, and she rolls them up toward the center of her forehead, as though trying to see Jinxie’s charm still left there. She raises a hand to it and falters, her fingers an inch from the paper.

“Right,” Phoenix says, and he reaches over and peels the charm off of her head.

“You can’t take it off yourself?” Trucy asks.

“There would hardly be a point to such a charm if any monster can just remove the bindings from herself,” Iris says. “Perhaps we use that charm ourselves, slap it upon Tenma Taro when we find him.”

“Ooh! I volunteer for that!” Kay bounces up and down and snatches the charm from Phoenix’s hand when he holds it out to her. “I’ll sneak up on him and whack him with it! And then, Seb, you chase it out into the open where the Amazing Nine-Tails can wrestle it back to prison!”

“You should all take some more charms,” Jinxie says, grabbing Trucy’s hands and dealing the paper slips into her palm like a card dealer setting up a game. “Make sure as soon as you see something strange, hit it!”

“That’s sound advice,” Athena says, nodding sagely.

“That could get you arrested,” Sebastian says.

Athena raises her eyebrows and grins at Apollo. He has to suppress a groan. Somehow, in the madness of everything after, he’d almost forgotten about Athena flinging a police officer through the air. Between that, manipulating information from Fulbright, and Sebastian and Kay being plenty friendly (no matter how Kay tried to pretend she wasn’t giving out information), she’s going to get a very strange idea of what she can get away with.

Iris eyes the pizza crusts that someone left behind in the box, but seeing Apollo watching her, she quickly turns her head away, lifting her chin to feign regal posture.

Tenma Taro is going to kill them all, no question.

#if you want the key to the bad pun names it's in the end notes on ao3 #roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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almostarchaeology · 6 years ago

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Hogwarts Needs Archaeologists, Part 1: Fantastic Antiquities and Where to Find Them

By Adrián Maldonado

The Harry Potterverse is crawling with ancient artefacts and old magic. That doesn’t make it a story about archaeology as such – there is very little effort from the protagonists to do more than treasure-hunt (and in at least one case, tomb-raid) to collect and then destroy these artefacts. In one sense, the Harry Potter cycle is a parable of Fantastic Antiquities and How to Break Them.

Tom Riddle, Tomb Raider (source)

Which is why I haven’t felt the need to do an ‘archaeology of Harry Potter’ post on this blog. But then I went back to the books again. Well, sort of. I am lucky enough to share a timeline with the Binge Mode podcast by the superheroic duo Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion. Their breakdown of the books and films, chapter by chapter and scene by scene, with added detail culled from the wider (so wide) Potter canon, has reawakened my appreciation for the depth of JK’s creation. And, this should surprise absolutely no one by now, it makes me think there’s lessons for archaeologists in the Potterverse.

This will take more than one blog post to tease out. To begin with, we can start by looking at the vast array of antiquities which feature in the books’ own timeline. From there, we can explore how archaeology might work in the wizarding world, and then bring it back to reflections on Rowling’s uses of the past more generally. Speaking of the past, if you don’t want books from 20 years ago spoiled, well, tough look, my guy.

Medieval archaeology

Getting medieval in Diagon Alley (source)

To begin in the most obvious place, there is a lot in the wizarding world which owes its origins to the Middle Ages. According to Rowling’s Pottermore website, Diagon Alley and its major landmarks such as the Leaky Cauldron and Gringotts go back to c. 1500, retaining a ramshackle medieval aesthetic. The prison of Azkaban originated as the fortress of the fifteenth-century sorcerer Ezkidris. Even things which don’t appear obviously medieval are revealed to be medieval on Pottermore: the Quidditch World Cup has been played since 1473, and Floo powder, the magical form of transport, was invented in the thirteenth century by Ignatia Wildsmith (which, if I have another daughter, I will definitely adopt as a name).

The structural medievalism of the Potterverse includes Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself, a ponderous castle-university suffused with old magic. Oddly for Britain’s premier (only?) centre of magical learning, we do not seem to know exactly how old it is, but its founders all seem to have lived in the tenth century according to Pottermore. This would make it earlier than the first Muggle universities, themselves a product of the twelfth century and later. It is interesting to think that the robe-wearing denizens of Oxbridge and St Andrews are merely replicating earlier Hogwarts traditions.

Echoes of Hogwarts (source)

What is less immediately obvious is that Hogwarts’ medieval origins are communicated largely through material culture. The Sorting Hat belonged to founder Godric Gryffindor, and so is at least a thousand years old. The Mirror of Erised is also said to be ancient, though we are vague on dates. Does age confer magical properties, or have these objects survived due to the power of their magic? It can’t be the latter, as we are continually reminded of the precarious state of antiquities in the Potterverse. The Hogwarts houses retain stories about early medieval artefacts associated with the lives of their founders, including Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem, Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, and Gryffindor’s Sword; Slytherin House has no equivalent relic-mascot although it does boast its own Chamber of Secrets (not a euphemism). Each of these objects is lost, stolen, or defiled in the course of these stories.

Ravenclaw’s diadem was lost almost as soon as it was made, and Slytherin’s Locket was never kept in Hogwarts, showing the somewhat less than reverential treatment of these artefacts, even among those who should best appreciate their value. More on Slytherin’s personal effects later, but it may be worth noting here that his Chamber was until lately populated with a living balrog, I mean Basilisk, which was at least as ancient as Slytherin before its murder by a student dangerously swinging another medieval artefact in 1998. Guys. Lock down your antiquities.

Days without an accident on site: 0 (source)

Of these artefacts, only the Sword of Gryffindor was curated to any extent, even if only as a wall-hanging which, let me repeat, students were allowed to handle. Hufflepuff’s cup was kept in the common room of its founder’s house, allowing it to be stolen and inhabited with cursed fragments of soul which almost led to the demise of the rules-based wizarding world order. In the end, Helga’s cup was found in a damn bank vault instead of a climate-controlled museum store. Listen, a secure, alarmed case may not have stopped Voldemort, but we could have at least saved these precious witnesses of wizarding origins from being callously destroyed in the war. Who will be the wizarding Mortimer Wheeler next time?

Excavating Hogwarts

Reading through Pottermore, it transpires that paying no heed to the medieval material world our protagonists live in is actively causing them harm. Two of Voldemort’s horcruxes, Slytherin’s Locket and Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring, date back to the early medieval period, but were kept as personal possessions passed down the Gaunt family line, allowing them to be easily stolen or sold, and, again, be haunted by evil curses. Guys. Where do I send my CV to develop a course in Material Culture Studies at Hogwarts? Better yet, let’s make it a MOOC, train members of the public, and then maybe next time someone tries to pawn an ancient relic our world isn’t threatened by cursed archaeology.

Please don’t drink from the archaeology (source)

My favourite revelation is that the Hogwarts pensieve, the expositional device in Dumbledore’s office which allows Harry to experience flashback sequences along with the reader, is a noted antiquity itself. It is said to be a stone basin inscribed with Saxon runes, and to have been found buried on the spot where Hogwarts would be built.

I can’t just pass this by. Why would a pensieve be buried? We know that wizards are buried with their wands, as recounted to plot-driving effect in Dumbledore’s case. It also transpires that, like wands, pensieves are very personal items, and are customarily buried with their owners along with any memories they have stored. What an incredible boon this would be for a wizarding archaeologist! And how well would this explain all the now-empty vessels we have found used as grave goods since prehistory, usually explained by us dull-minded archaeologists as ‘food-offerings’. Along with the spell priori incantatem, which allows one to see the last few spells a wand was used for, an archaeowitch encountering a burial furnished with wand and pensieve would have an unparalleled insight into the lives and deaths of the wizarding dead.

Back to the Hogwarts pensieve, then, we have a massive stone basin inscribed in Saxon runes, which would be rather out of place in the early medieval Scottish highlands, where Hogwarts is based. Is this a disturbed wizard’s tomb or a ritualised offering in a wetland setting? Once upon a time, this find would be taken as evidence for Anglo-Saxon invasion, but now we recognize that objects could be transported for a variety of reasons, and indeed are themselves more likely to be used in votive deposits due to the value they have accrued in the journey. It would certainly merit further investigation whether the Hogwarts loch was chosen by its founders not for its now-isolated and depopulated landscape, itself a product of fairly recent historical processes, but because it had an existing heritage as a site of ritual deposition. We can only hope, for the sake of its students, that the founders undertook some due-diligence magical remote sensing to detect any complicating factors from buried magic, dark or light, before undertaking a major construction project. But beyond health and safety concerns, I feel that we have lost something else by not recording what has presumably been a cult place.

A medieval inheritance

Pottermore also traces the origins of several major wizarding families to the Middle Ages, most notably the Malfoys. Their lineage can be traced back to Armand Malfoy, who helped William the Bastard become Conqueror of England in the real-world timeline: “Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.” In gratitude for their help with the Norman Conquest, he was granted a manor, which has passed down the family for 1000 years to Draco Malfoy. The mansion itself is said to be filled with ancient magical and muggle artefacts and priceless artwork, as so many stately homes were by the nineteenth century. Many of Britain’s museums were founded through bequests of such private collections, and these would make an interesting, if dangerous, Dark Magic wing of a Wizarding Museum. Given the spectacular fall from grace of the Malfoy family in the second wizarding war, I do worry about the status of the Malfoy collection, and whether it is at risk of being hived off in auction. The Draco Malfoy essay does reveal that he still lives in the manor with its artefacts after the war, so we still live in hope that this heritage resource has not been lost.

Even dark artefacts need curators (source)

In light of their family history, it would be easy to laugh off the Malfoys’ malevolence as the entitlement that comes from old money, but it should be noted that Harry Potter is a noted trust-fund baby himself. For all his remarkable magical prowess, Harry Potter’s destiny is also down to some serious inherited privilege. His medieval progenitor Linfred of Stinchcombe, who also lived in the Norman era, built up the family’s wealth through his famous inventions, including potions like Skele-gro. Their marriage into a wealthy family in Godric’s Hollow is also auspicious – as home to the Peverils and the Dumbledores, whose stories are so indelibly entwined in the history of wizarding Britain, this little village in England’s west country seems to have been the epicentre of magical achievement for a millennium. Something in the water, perhaps? Or a self-segregating community of elite families? It is through these connections that the Potter family came into possession of one of the Deathly Hallows, the invisibility cloak, in another form of inheritance which increasingly looks like the secret of Harry’s success.

Godric’s Hollow - in dire need of graveyard survey (source)

The Hallows themselves are the key to Dumbledore and Harry’s success, and Voldemort’s undoing, Unbeknownst to many, the Resurrection Stone, invisibility cloak and Elder Wand all seem to be inventions of the Peveril brothers in the thirteenth century. We know this partly because Harry and Hermione stumble on Ignotus Peveril’s medieval gravestone in the churchyard of Godric’s Hollow, clearly marked with the sign of the Deathly Hallows, at which point things begin to come together. Basically, Voldemort is able to be defeated because he only trafficked in antiquities, without researching their archaeological context – but in fairness, neither did Dumbledore and Harry until very late in the game. A simple bit of churchyard recording may have brought this to the attention of local history buffs much sooner, and we may all have been safer for it. Basically, folks, local heritage is all of our heritage, and is not just for tourists obsessively chasing only their own family history.

Potter’s pedigree

And so we come to genealogy, which is the secret engine of this cycle of stories, just as it seems to be in so many of our favourite fantasy worlds. The objects, people and places profiled here all seem to be the remnants of stories which seem to begin no earlier than the tenth century or so. But it is clear that the wizarding world existed before then, and the limits of our vision can be explained by the fact that the first university was established at that time, and presumably the recording of historical events as well. In short, the narrow focus on a small pool of influential families and their feuds are the unresolved business of the formation of medieval kingdoms of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as indeed is so much of our own contemporary politics. What if our consciousness extended to the messier early medieval kingdoms, or (whisper it) prehistory? Just how problematic would a wizarding archaeology be? And could it free us from the Great Men and Their Battles vision of the human journey? Let’s pick up our trowel-wands and find out.

***

Forward to Part 2: Excavating Magic

#harry potter #hogwarts #magic #museum #fantasy

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artistic-writer · 7 years ago

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Between Now and Nether :: Ch 8 :: A CS AU

Title: Between Now and Nether by @artistic-writer [full res fanart]

Summary: On their way to a Nolan Charity Gala, tragedy befalls Emma and Killian who is given just seven days to set things right. Can he make Emma believe and escape the Nether before he is lost forever?

Rating: T+

AO3 Chapters: [1] - [2] - [3] - [4] - [5] - [6] - [7] Fanart Full Resolution: [1] - [2] - [3] - [4] - [5] - [6] - [7] - [8]

A/N: Now. This chapter may shock you. Twice. Just when you are getting over the revelation i am about to drop on you, i hit you again, with another shocker. I seriously thought @kmomof4 was going to have a heart attack when she beta’d this chapter lol So i hope you like it as much.

Thos looking for it on AO3 will not find it until i am home. Sorry guys, but i wanted to queue this post for you so you could at least read it whilst I was busy working my ass off! XD

Enjoy your second helping!

Future updates will be Sundays AND Thursdays! (providing I can get the art made in time)

Huge thanks to @hollyethecurious @kmomof4 @winterbaby89 @rouhn and @wordsmith-storyweaver for your advice and suggestions. This fic would just be so much worse without you guys! <3

Taglist: @mariakov81 @rouhn @resident-of-storybrooke @hookedonapirate @kmomof4 @galadriel26 @yellow-bugs-and-pirate-ships @the-captains-ayebrows @yayimallamaagain @i-nvr-wrote-it @takhisismb @officerrogerss @kiwistreetswan @distant-rose @aye-captn @wellhellotragic @depechemode75

If you would like to be added please let me know for ch 9!

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There were very few things as satisfying as hearing confirmation of a deed well done. For far too long, the name ‘Jones’ had given him a deep-seated hatred for all things cop. Well, being the head of an international crime syndicate was more than enough reason to hate cops, but luckily for him, a deal had been brokered and it was done.

When Jones had relocated to the states and become a cop, he had been on him almost instantly. It started out small, tit for tat, arresting a few of his men here and there and making his presence known. Gold knew he was watching him, Jones had even gone as far as to tell him face to face in a very public restaurant, and at first, Gold had found it endearing. He knew he was untouchable. He hadn’t built a crime empire because he had been put off by one cop.

Over the years, Jones became a problem. More than a few of his good men were now in prison, and for their silence and discretion, Gold paid them by taking care of their families on the outside. It was becoming increasingly more costly to take care of old employees and hire new ones. And good guys didn’t come cheap, their skills tailoring to one specialty that meant he would have to hire multiple men for a single job. Gold missed the days gangsters and thieves had their fingers in many, many pies.

And then there were the dirty cops he kept on the books, just as expensive as the next drug runner or hitman. They helped him out of many predicaments, simply sweeping his deeds under the carpet where they were lost in cold cases. For years, Gold managed to grow, expanding his reach across America, selling drugs, weapons, people, whatever he could to make a profit. Mr. Gold was his real name and he lived up to his wealth every single day, appearing only dressed in fine, fitted suits, always cleanly shaven and never without his cane. It was expensive, one of a kind and custom made, and despite the fact he had zero need for it, Gold always liked to use it to give the impression of weakness.

If your enemy underestimated your strength, it made it easier to overthrow them.

But then, the young rookie with a hero complex named Jones appeared in his life and Gold began to notice a change. His men began to shy away from his orders, questioning his motives because they were seemingly afraid of this Jones character. It irritated Gold, so naturally, he had tried to buy the cop off. Jones declined his offer and with some choice words, the pair began their conflict.

It continued for years and he watched the rookie grow into a detective, given more power with his new job title and more access to dig into Gold’s life. Jones made it his personal mission to bring Gold down, using every single free moment he had to find ways to mess with him.

Jones had once said something about killing his parents, believing Gold responsible for the night they were gunned down in an alleyway and stripped of their valuables. Gold didn’t remember everyone he had murdered when he was starting his empire, especially two nobodies who were probably just a means to an end, so with a sideways smirk and a dead-eye stare, Gold had told him he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger and had Jones escorted from his office.

Finally, Gold had endured enough and wanted Jones gone. The man couldn’t be bought. He was a very large thorn in Gold’s side and on top of all of his agitation, Gold had to spend even more money to take him out.

Killing a cop didn’t come cheap.

The office Gold frequented was always dark and cold. Dust covered every surface and the lights were dimmed all along the hallway. Gold had no heavies guarding him, his office at the very back of the shop Gold kept as a money laundering front. It was inconspicuous, a simple antique store from the outside, selling many high priced items that covered part of his underhanded business earnings, and Gold had settled here to be alone. People always called him The Dark One and it was starting to become clear as to why.

The door loomed at the end of the hall, one single light hanging over the door frame and shining a spot of subdued orange onto the floor. It was a mark, the last circle of light in the darkness. And it was petrifying.

The door opened and Gold stood with a steady grin spread across his face.

“Detective,” he greeted, motioning into the blackened room behind him.

“Gold.” With a nod, the detective squeezed past Gold, entering the darkened room that instantly felt even colder than the hall.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Gold pushed the door closed behind them, unable to stop the sly smile on his face. He took a step into the room, leaning on his cane resting in front of him.

“It’s done,” the detective said quickly, looking at his feet and scratching at the scruff on his chin before pushing his hands into his pockets.

“Straight to the point, detective. I like it,” Gold grinned, enjoying the way he could hear the detective’s heartbeat pounding in his chest.

“I don’t want to be here any longer than I need to be. It’s done.”

“Is it now?” Gold licked his lips, his sinister voice hanging thick in the air.

“I saw the body myself.”

“That was part of the deal,” Gold smirked, watching the detective squirm under his gaze.

“You bastard! He was my colleague, a fellow detective,” the raised tone of his voice cracked under his emotion.

In a flash, Gold was at his side, cane digging into the top of his foot through his boot and a strangled cry tumbling from his mouth. “You should have thought of that before you joined him in his crusade,” Gold spat.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

“Uh Uh Uh,” Gold chimed, removing his cane from the detective's foot and grabbing the man by the face, his nail digging into his chubby cheeks. Gold didn’t have to say anything else. The detective was silenced immediately and Gold loosened his grip, giving him a playful slap on the face.

“Jones was a good man, a good detective…”

“Jones was hell-bent on ruining me,” Gold growled, banging his cane on the floor with an echo. “Nobody will know it was you,” Gold assured the sweating detective. “You’ll get a new partner and everything will blow over when this turns into a cold case.”

“Why me? I have a family,” he implored.

“We all have our price,” Gold grinned, turning away. “Yours just happens to be a lot lower than I had expected.”

“So our deal is done now? Is my debt cleared?”

Gold laughed, a sadistic rumble in the back of his throat and he shook his head. “I want one more thing,” Gold smiled wickedly, pressing a long, bony finger to his lips and stepping towards the shorter man once more. When he gave him a questioning look, Gold bared his teeth. “Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say it. Out loud. I want to revel in the joy of the words as they fall from your mouth,” Gold twirled his hand in the air beside his head and spun on his heels, his dramatics bordering on joyously evil.

“I…”

“Yes, that’s it, go on,” Gold whispered darkly.

“I...I killed Liam Jones.”

An impish giggle escaped Gold’s lips and he slapped the detective on the shoulder proudly, licked his lips and looked over at the shaking detective. God, he loved breaking people. “There, there, Leroy,” he said in a sickly sweet tone that made Leroy’s skin crawl. “Now we are even.”

It was not long after the older Jones had met his demise when the younger Jones began snooping around, digging into his brother’s case files, connecting the dots. Gold had a muscle in his jaw that he hadn’t flexed since the day Liam Jones had been gunned down by an ‘unknown assailant’. He had learned to relax it, keep his anger at bay and focus on the more intricate sides of his business. Until now.

Killian Jones was more tenacious, a little smarter and not as hot-headed as the older Jones. It made him a more dangerous adversary, one that Gold could not give an inch. Where Liam was a bull, rushing in and aggressively threatening Gold with what little power he actually did have, Killian was a fox, picking off Gold’s men one by one like chickens in a hen house.

If he didn’t stop the younger Jones soon, he could become a real credible threat to the Gold empire.

“They attend the Nolan Charity Gala every year,” his henchman grunted, handing Gold a photo of Killian Jones exiting his home in a fine tuxedo suit and his pretty girlfriend on his arm. “They have to attend,” he tapped the picture when Gold rested it on the desk. “This is Emma Swan.”

“The wife?” Gold looked up at him.

“She wishes,” he scoffed. “Her brother is David Nolan.”

“Interesting,” Gold looked back to the photo. “And you can make this look like an accident?”

The man, Hyde, nodded confidently. “Absolutely. I have the perfect guy. He owes me.”

Gold’s face lit up at the prospect of a deal. “You have a negotiation?”

“We will have,” Hyde shrugged. “Jefferson has a very low price.”

The impish giggle that Gold was so known for escaped through his gleaming grin. “The Gala is Friday night,” Gold said seriously, losing his smile and sliding the photo back across the table. “Make sure he does not make it.”

“Of course, Mr. Gold. Consider Killian Jones a dead man.”

#between now and nether #cs ff #cs ff au #cs fanfic au #cs fanfic #angst #ch8 #CS Halloweek

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renna-translations · 7 years ago

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The Schoolgirl Detective and Eccentric Author (Pt.3, Ch.3)

Happy Friday the 13th! (What do you mean that was yesterday?) I finally finished the conclusion to this thrilling haunted mansion murder, and with it, the novel! It only took me whole three years!! Thanks for sticking through with me!

Teniwoha’s novel for his Schoolgirl Detective Series, “The Schoolgirl Detective and Eccentric Author – Night Before The Murder Case at the Mansion of Antiquarian Books,” acts as a prequel to the first song in the series, “Murder Case at the Mansion of Antiquarian Books,” and follows the events between the schoolgirl detective who loves mystery novels, Hanamoto Hibari, and the extremely sadistic mystery novel writer, Kudou Renma.

The third part in this three-part novel is called: Murder Case at the Ryougoku Haunted Mansion.

“Hibari and Kudo head to Ryougoku on an errand for Kareshima, who runs an antique book store. Coincidentally, it’s also the Sumida River Fireworks Festival. To Hibari, it almost feels as if they’re on a date, but when they reach their destination, they discover the corpse of a shooting incident….”

This part is further divided into three chapters, so here’s the third one! Masterpost with links to all the translated chapters can be found here.

←Pt.3, Ch.2　|　Afterword→

＊If you can, I highly encourage supporting the creators by buying the book for yourself at CDJapan or Amazon.jp!

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Chapter 3: With Those Small, October Maple Leaf Hands

It felt like a small firework had gone off above my head.

In order to start to explain everything again while that flair was still visible, I spread out the map on the tea table in the tatami mat room.

“What is it? Now what’s going on?”

Detective Innami came over when he noticed what I was doing. After him followed the Nagao family, and they each looked down at the map. It was like everyone was looking down into a dried-up well, waiting to see if even a single drop of water would come forth.

“The Nagao’s house is here. And behind it, the house on the other side of the street is where the Sanadas live. From what I saw, it was a big house with two stories. While I don’t know much about the actual family, earlier this evening, I spoke a bit with the old man who lives there.”

“Oh, you mean Old Man Sanada. Whenever I run into him on my way in and out of the house, he always tries to make a pass at me by commenting on how young I look that day. It’s such a bother.”

Despite what she said, the wife didn’t appear bothered in the slightest. And also, rather than a making a pass, he could just be trying to be polite.

However, all of that aside—

“He seemed rather hearty for his age.”

“That geezer’s just downright unfriendly towards me, though,”

Tetsuta-san said with disinterest.

“Enough dawdling. Just spit it out already,”

Detective Innami said while rolling a match in between his fingers. It looked like he had been trying to smoke, but the match must have gotten damp, because he was unable to get even a spark.

After waiting for him to give up on smoking, I said,

“I’ve figured out where the culprit lives.”

And as soon as I did, everyone that was looking down at the map each raised their voices in surprise.

“Just so there aren’t any misunderstandings, I would first like to say that the Sanada household is unrelated to this case.”

“The culprit lives in this neighborhood?!”

“I wasn’t thinking outside of the box. I was too set on there being an intruder. Because of the fact that all the necessary elements were already lined up in this house when the incident occurred, I had assumed that the truth was also hidden somewhere within this house.”

“All the necessary elements?”

Detective Innami was scratching his head with blatant bewilderment.

“Both the body and the weapon were found in this house. Furthermore, the circumstances wouldn’t lead you to see it as a homicide at all. That was why the detectives first assumed it was a suicide.”

“Ah, I get it now….”

“Everything was lined up too perfectly. However, the culprit was the only thing missing. The culprit was actually outside of the Nagao’s house all along.”

“But we already verified this at the very beginning, didn’t we? There were no footsteps belonging to any outsiders around this vicinity, and even if they had taken some extra measures to avoid leaving behind any footprints, we established that it would have been impossible to do so without drawing too much attention. There couldn’t have been an intru—”

“That’s correct. There was no intruder.”

I paused then to look around at everyone in the room. I wished I had some time to collect my thoughts.

“Culprit and intruder. Naturally, these two words have completely different meanings. However, in this case, we somehow started to assume they meant the same thing. There must have been an intruder, we thought, and the intruder would have to be the culprit. A culprit must exist, and in that case, there would be traces of their intrusion. However, the culprit never took a single step into this house to begin with. They were outside the entire time, and they murdered the professor without ever setting foot into the Nagao’s house.”

“How did they do it?”

Detective Innami asked while slamming his hands down on the tea table. His voice was low, as if he was trying to stifle it.

“He was shot. With that Type 99 Rifle.”

“We already knew that! But Professor Nagao was the one holding that gun. Even if the gun had been thrown into the house after he was shot, it wouldn’t have been in that position. And besides, doing that would have immediately drawn the suspicion of people passing by. Even with a disguise, they would have needed to enter the house either way!”

“But what if Professor Nagao hadn’t been murdered with the gun he was holding?”

“....What did you just say?”

I heard the sound of someone gasping.

“Someone could have shot Professor Nagao from somewhere else with another gun. If that’s the case, it would explain why there aren’t any traces of an intruder.”

“So you’re saying the culprit went out of his way to prepare the same gun? While it’s true that it would take longer to identify the ballistic markings of the bullet if it came from the exact same gun model…. Didn’t they consider the fact that they’d eventually be tracked down through how they acquired the gun?”

“It’s actually the opposite. I believe that the culprit came up with this crime specifically because they knew that Professor Nagao owned the same gun as them. First, they decided on the murder weapon, and from there, they came up with an elaborate scheme and carried it out.”

They had specifically waited until the day of the fireworks show, and carefully created a setup to shoot him with that gun. A culprit that meticulous wasn’t likely to risk something as dangerous as personally acquiring a gun to use as the murder weapon.

“So….? Where exactly did the culprit shoot from?”

“That’s what I’m going to explain next.”

I stood up, headed for the rear garden, and putting on the sandals again, I went to stand next to the hedges. Everyone followed me to watch from the veranda.

After waiting for everyone to gather, I pointed out the single branch that was in poor condition.

“This house is surrounded by these camellia hedges. However, this section here stands out with how low the branches are.”

“Now that you mention, I’ve noticed that for a while, as well. About how that part’s been growing so poorly, I mean. If I remember, Chikage, aren’t you the one who’s always watering the plants in the garden?”

Without thinking much of it, the wife casually turned the topic to Chikage-san. However, Chikage-san looked down without answering.

“Chikage? What’s the matter?”

“Chikage-san, during this summer—no, perhaps starting even further back—you haven’t been giving much water at all to this one plant, have you?”

“Th-that’s….”

“Chikage…. But haven’t you always taken such good care of them?”

“Girly, what’s the meaning of this….?”

Both the wife and Tetsuta-san were looking increasingly concerned about Chikage’s behavior.

“Why would she do something like this? The answer to that is as you can see here.”

I pointed beyond the wilted branch.

“It was to make the hedges low enough to see what was on the other side. That was her objective.”

As Chikage-san was addressed again, she nodded in resignation.

“But why would my daughter do such a thing….?”

After the wife asked this, the fireworks stopped for a time, making a strange stillness linger in the air. Chikage-san clenched her left sleeve with her right hand without answering. She wore a sorrowful expression on her face, as if desperately waiting for something terrifying to leave.

“It was to see the face of the person precious to her.”

I was only able to hear Sensei’s voice as he said this from within the house. I couldn’t see him from where I was standing. Sensei’s words rang out through the serene garden like a verse from a poem. And at the same time, they served as the ruthless words to force those who hesitated to move, to go forward towards the next stage.

“She calculated it so that particular branch wouldn’t grow during the summer. For what reason other than a love affair would a young woman go to such lengths?”

Sensei asserted. He made it sound as if she had done so deliberately.

I continued where Sensei left off in a very natural manner.

“Chikage-san would always secretly wait, at this very spot in the rear garden, for her lover to pass by on the other side of the hedges. At times, their meetings would be by coincidence, and at others, they would be arranged. And so, during these brief moments, they would be able to see and exchange some words with one another, without anyone in her family finding out.”

“Without anyone finding out….? But she’s formally engaged to Kuromine-san, and both families warmly support their relationship. There’s no need to be meeting behind everyone’s backs like that….”

“Ma’m, your daughter hasn’t been meeting with Kuromine-san, or whatever that man’s name may be.”

“What?! Sensei, what did you just say?!”

The wife turned around to look at Sensei with an expression that indicated that this was the most shocking bit of news she’d heard all day.

“D-d-do you mean to say that…. my daughter has been having an illicit affair with another man��.?!”

As the wife pressed him for an answer with great disappointment, Sensei replied quite nonchalantly.

“Speaking of which, that man named Kuromine, he isn’t from around here. Also, he’s the same age as Chikage-san. Isn’t that right?”

“How do you know….?”

“You were the one who told us so. Today, you said they were going to see the fireworks together while Chikage-san showed him around these parts. You also said that since they’re both young, they could always see the fireworks again next year.”

Right, if he also lived in this area, he wouldn’t be needing a tour.

“In comparison, the culprit—the man that Chikage-san loves—lives here in this neighborhood, and is likely in his mid-thirties or older.”

Chikage-san’s shoulders trembled slightly.

The man that she loves. That’s right, he had come up during the conversation we’d had at the front entrance when we had first visited this house. And that was when Chikage-san had said so herself, that she was going to see the fireworks with a man that was about the same age as Sensei.

“In the first place, Chikage-san hadn’t brought this up herself. It was Sensei who had guessed correctly after some deduction. Although it was only about his age, I’m certain that Chikage must have been both shocked and panicked that he had so quickly found out about the lover that she’d been keeping a secret from even her family. I think that afterwards, she really regretted confirming that fact so unwittingly.”

That said, I doubt she would have even imagined that bit of information would become the key to unveiling the truth of this case.

Chikage-san, with her pale lips quivering, somehow managed to remain standing by holding onto the sunburnt sliding door. Sensei approached her in this state, and asked her a question.

“Shinokawa Momoya. That’s the name of the man you truly love. Isn’t that right?”

“H-how do you even know his name….?!”

Chikage-san looked up at Sensei with a pained expression. Sensei, completely unfazed, remained smiling as always.

“Where does he live? To tell the truth, I found out the answer to that through a certain deduction. So while I was visiting Michiyo-chan’s house, I took a bit of a detour to take a look at the nameplate. I asked around with the neighbors, as well. Shinokawa Momoya. He turns thirty-five this year. No parents. He moved into a vacant house in the neighborhood this year. This information matches up perfectly with what Miss Detective Hibari gathered through her findings.”

I was curious as to why he said that I was the one to figure this all out, but I decided not to say anything for the time being.

“Shinokawa? You mean, that man….!”

After hearing this, the wife raised her voice as if remembering something.

“Ma’m, does that name ring a bell?”

“Ah, no, well….”

At Detective Innami’s question, Otoe-san averted her eyes slightly as she answered.

“Shinokawa Momoya. Several years ago…. I suppose it’s already been ten years since then…. He used to be Chikage’s home tutor. But after a while, his father, Momosuke-san, wasn’t doing so well with his business, and I had thought he had moved to another region with his family.”

“Correct. However, at the beginning of this year, he returned here, alone. He did it, of course, for Chikage-san’s sake.”

“Right…. Yes, that’s right! I had heard about someone new moving into the neighborhood. I don’t mingle with the neighbors much, and I’m so busy with work, so I didn’t pay much attention to that…. If I recall, it was the house behind….”

“The house behind Sanada-san’s.”

In other words, the houses belonging to Shinokawa, Sanada, and Nagao were all directly adjacent to one another.

“And the one who shot Professor Nagao in his home from the Shinokawa’s residence, which lies on the other side of the Sanada’s residence, is none other than Shinokawa Momoya-san himself.”

Although, to be more specific, he was the only one that could have shot the professor during that time frame.

“The culprit is Momoya-san.”

“That’s a lie!”

That was when Chikage-san cried out in a voice close to a scream. She was trembling, with her nails dug deeply into the pillar on the veranda. Her black hair falling from her brow to her cheeks made her look almost like a beautiful ghost picture.

“Chikage! Pull yourself together!”

The wife frantically held her by the shoulders.

“You’re saying that he was shot from two houses away? Don’t be ridiculous. The Nagao’s residence is a one-story house, while the Sanada’s house, which stands in between them, is two-stories tall. No matter how he tried to fire, it would have been impossible with a building in the way!”

While Detective Innami argued this point, I faced the neighboring house beyond the hedges and waved my hand in a wide gesture.

“....Hey, wait a minute! Are you listening to me?!”

It was dark out, but thanks to to the moonlight and the light of the fireworks, I was able to see the response to my gesture.

“What is she even doing? This girl’s really been acting strange for a while, now. I think she really must be possessed by a ghost or something….”

Tetsuta-san said, fear finally seeming to have settled over him. However, I continued waving nonetheless. After I finished doing so, I quietly took a deep breath and turned back around to face everyone.

“It would seem that Shinokawa-san is still in his house.”

“What?!”

“I received the signal just now from his garden.”

“Wait…. Just hold on a minute! I demand a proper explanation! We’ve been left in the dark this whole time without the faintest clue as to what’s going on! A signal? From who?!”

Detective Innami stepped forward and yelled, seemingly unable to take the suspense any longer. I spoke clearly so that everyone present could hear.

“Kaburagi-san was the one who gave me the signal.”

“Kaburagi….? Ah, now that you mention him, I was wondering where he’d gone!”

“In any case, if you take a look from where I’m standing, I believe that everything will make sense.”

“Look beyond the hedges….? Not lying, are you? Because if you are, I’ll be dragging you down to the station instead!”

Detective Innami quickly put on his shoes at the entrance and stepped out into the rear garden.

“So? What exactly can you see from there?”

“Shinokawa-san’s house.”

I stepped aside so that Detective Innami could stand in my place.

“Huh? From here, you can only see the roadside and the fence of the Sanada’s house that’s behind this one, right….? Well, either way, I’ll know for sure once I see with my own two eyes.”

And so, he reluctantly looked to see what was beyond the hedges.

“As I thought, all I see is a wooden fence and the Sanada’s house…. Hmm? ….AHH!”

Detective Innami started to grumble some complaint that he must have prepared beforehand, but eventually, he stopped mid-sentence and cried out in shock before turning around to face me.

“I-I can see. I see it! I can see everything!”

He exclaimed, and went back to looking intently beyond the hedges.

“That idiot Kaburagi is waving at me! What’s he so worked-up for, anyway!”

“Why, you’re just like a child looking through the binoculars from the roof of a department store.”

“Shaddup!”

Even as he cursed at Sensei for ridiculing him, his eyes remained glued to that spot.

“What is the meaning of this?”

The wife had been silently watching the exchange between Detective Innami and I as if she were a spectator watching a play, but it seemed that at long last, she couldn’t help but speak up.

“Just what on earth can you see from there?!”

“As Innami-san said, first you will see the fence of the Sanada’s house. Only an old fence blocks your vision. Normally, that’s all you would see. However, today, it’s different.”

“The fence is broken….”

Detective Innami mumbled as if talking to himself.

“Last night, there was a minor incident in which the fence in the rear garden, that it to say, the side facing the north, was broken. Due to this, the Sanada’s house is now visible.”

“The fence was broken?!”

Tetsuta-san said with his mouth wide open. It seemed like this was completely news to him.

Right now, Detective Innami should have been able to see the veranda of the Sanada’s house on the other side of the broken fence. When I had taken a look just a moment ago, Old Man Sanada had been enjoying an evening drink along with the fireworks and some pickled vegetables.

And even further beyond that was—

“I tried remembering my conversation with Old Man Sanada when I spoke with him earlier. He said that the front entrance of the house wasn’t blocked by anything. Which means that the house isn’t so strictly enclosed on all sides. That seems to say something about the old man’s personality, or perhaps he isn’t too worried about being seen by his neighbors.”

“And so what if he isn’t?”

Tetsuta-san still didn’t seem to understand, and pressed me to get to the point.

“The person that broke the fence had to have been the culprit. Furthermore, he carefully calculated where to break the fence to make it convenient for him to aim and shoot at the professor. Of course, had it been any other hour or day, the door to the veranda, as well as other screen doors, might have been closed and gotten in the way. However, today, that was not the case. The culprit knew that today was the only day that every door in every house would not be closed. In reality, everyone had, in fact, left all their doors wide open, be they shutters, sliding doors, or sliding panels, and were all looking up at the sky.”

Another large, lively firework went off up in the sky. It echoed throughout the town like the sound of falling raindrops.

“It was so they could all enjoy the fireworks together with the summer breeze.”

The Sanada’s house had all of their doors open, making it like a tunnel, such that a wind entering from the south could pass straight through to the north.

It had become a path that directly connected the Shinokawa’s house to the Nagao’s house.

That also applied for the bullet fired by the culprit that passed through the Sanada’s house without being obstructed by any doors or panels, through the gap in the broken fence in the rear garden, through gap in the wilted hedges outside of the Nagao’s house, before finally lodging itself into the head of Professor Nagao, who had been in his room.

”You're not telling me he actually made that shot? That would be like firing through a hole made by a needle….”

“It was hardly that small. Just by eyeballing it, both the gap in the broken fence, as well as the space between the hedges, is about fifty centimeters wide. At a glance, it might seem like quite the difficult feat, with things like the fence and the hedge in between, but from the culprit’s point of view, he already knew that there would be nothing to get in the way between him and his target. The moment he fired, every member of the Sanada household was sitting still somewhere to watch the fireworks, and although there were many bystanders, he assumed they would all stop moving to look up at the sky.”

In fact, I had also stopped on the side of the road to look up the sky during that moment.

“Furthermore, the distance to reach Professor Nagao was less than around fifty meters. A mere fifty meters. Again, I’m not very knowledgeable about guns, but isn’t the firing range for the Type 99 Rifle well over a couple hundred meters?”

After I asked him this, Detective Innami found himself at a loss for words. I took that to mean to a “yes” in regards to my question.

“A gun that’s able to hit a target from so far away, and a culprit that has the knowledge and skill to handle such a weapon. Under such conditions, shooting a target sitting in a room two houses away should not have been such a difficult job. “

“Makes sense. It probably wouldn’t have been that hard, then. That is, only if the culprit did possess that kind of knowledge and skill. Girly, what reason do you have to make that assertion?”

“It was Shinokawa-san’s age that made me think of this.”

“His age? If I remember right, you said he was thirty-five. ….Ah, I get it now! The military!”

“It wouldn’t be odd for a man that age to have had experience handling a gun before.”

“He was in the military during the war, wasn’t he?! So he must be experienced with firing guns….”

Up until about fifteen years ago, Japan had fought in the Greater East Asia War against the allied nations. During that time, many young people were drafted into the military.

Any healthy, young man from that time would most likely have experienced that.

“Seeing as how his family had once been so poor that they were driven out of their home, and the fact that he’s living in that small house all by himself even now, I doubt that Shinokawa-san started a personal gun collection. I think that he secretly kept the gun that he used to fight during the war. Perhaps he had a specific goal in mind, or perhaps he kept it simply to protect himself during those chaotic times. That is something I do not know.”

I glanced down to see a tree frog waddling along on the muddy ground. Although the evening shower had drawn him out, he seemed to have lost sense of where to go. While I spoke, I lifted the frog up on my finger and brought him near the camellias. The frog hesitantly jumped up onto the leaf.

“Shinokawa-san must have been waiting for this day to come. Since he used to live in this neighborhood, he was very familiar with when the Ryougoku River-Opening fireworks would start, and what they would sound like. He also knew about how the nearby houses opened up their verandas to enjoy the fireworks, and that the professor always took down the gun in his room at a set time. That’s why he used that to his advantage. He used the fireworks to cover up the noise when he pulled the trigger, and almost as if weaving the bullet through the gaps in the houses and hedges, he shot the professor. While everyone was busy looking up at the fireworks, he had just accomplished a terrifying crime down below. Of course, this is all based only on circumstantial evidence. It would be best to confirm all this in-person with Shinokawa-san afterwards, along with what his motive was.”

“Wait!”

Detective Innami raised his voice as if to interrupt me.

“There’s still one thing that doesn’t add up. The room that the professor died in should have been completely closed off!”

“The answer to that is simple. His accomplice closed all of the doors after he was killed.”

“Accomplice?”

I was hesitant to say the person’s name aloud, but in the end, I ended up saying it anyway.

“It was Chikage-san.”

Upon hearing this, both the wife and Tetsuta-san cried out. They both looked like they had just been splashed with cold water.

“B-but she has an alibi—“

The wife stammered, but that was all she managed to say.

“Since she was only altering the crime scene after the fact, there’s no need for her to have been there at the time of the murder. Therefore, Chikage-san’s alibi becomes meaningless. Also, there are still some things that we’ve left out.”

I faced my entire body in Chikage-san’s direction, so that the wife, Detective Innami, and the others would understand. As I looked at her, Chikage-san stared back intently at me without running away.

“You mean how her yukata doesn’t have any blood on it….?”

“Since she had an alibi, that fact was overlooked before, but in the end, it’s difficult to explain why her yukata is so unnaturally clean. But, as I just proposed, if she had already known about her father’s death, it makes sense.”

It was likely that after Chikage-san had gone back inside the house, she had first confirmed that her father had been shot in the head, before immediately going around the room to close all the doors. And after a short while, Sensei and I came in after her.

“Then how you do explain the suicide note?!”

Detective Innami exclaimed angrily once more. The tone of his voice indicated that he was no longer holding anything back.

He must have become fed-up with listening to a foul-mouthed writer and a little girl explain things away. He had a menacing look on his face, as if he was the one being suspected.

“Detective, that’s enough,”

At that moment, Chikage-san, who had been looking down the entire time, quietly spoke up.

That’s enough, she repeated a second time, and smiled.

“Cute Little Detective, we lose. You did a very good job seeing through our plan.”

She looked like someone who had just accepted defeat.

“Chikage…. Did you really….?!”

The wife shook her daughter by the shoulders with all the strength she could muster.

“It’s true that I closed to doors in my father’s room, in order to make it look like a suicide. That’s right. I share the same crime. I am a criminal that has murdered her own father.”

Chikage-san calmly freed herself from her mother’s hands, and stepped forward to say this. Meanwhile, the wife collapsed on the spot.

“I have someone who I love. For a very, very long time, I have loved them. Ever since I was a little girl. A man named Shinokawa Momoya.”

She spoke in a sad voice, as if telling a fairy tale that she had never told before.

“Momoya-san was my home tutor, and I was still just his young student. That person not only helped me with my studies, but he also taught me things like clever ways to play with books, the ways of the world…. and what it meant to love someone. At first, it was just one-sided feelings on my part. Back that, I was such a little tomboy, he wouldn’t take me seriously at all. But, even if he only saw me as a child, I was wholeheartedly in love with him. Without anything to be ashamed of, I was earnest about it, in my own way. But at the same time, I kept my feelings a secret.

There were times when that person would get a dark look in his eyes. At first, I didn’t understand why. But one day, I learned that it was the harsh experiences he’d had on the battlefield that gave him those eyes. After that, my feelings for him only grew stronger. I began to think, from the bottom of my heart, about how I wanted to protect him.

But when I was fifteen, he moved away, and I cried terribly. I cried so many tears, I thought they might even be enough to make the Sumida River overflow. But neither my family nor anyone else thought much of the tears of a little girl. They tried comforting me, saying I must be feeling sad to have to say goodbye to the older brother figure that I’d grown attached to. They even told me, ‘I’ll buy you a new set of clothes if you stop crying.’ Meanwhile, I felt as if I were standing at the edge of the end of the world. I felt like I would fall into the pits of Hell at the slightest gust of wind. Just when I thought to myself that after a couple more years, that person would finally start to see me as a woman. Just when I thought that we would finally be able to walk alongside the river as equals.

But after a few years had passed, I reunited with that person during the spring one year. On the bank of that river.”

She glanced vaguely in the direction of a certain spot along the Sumida River. And then, she stepped down into the garden, barefoot, but no one stopped her from doing so.

“I had just entered university, and he had just started teaching at a nearby middle school. We would find times to meet inconspicuously when we were outside. When I told that person, ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ he told me, ‘As for you, you’ve changed a lot.’ I realized that he finally saw me as an adult, and I could barely contain my happiness. From now on, I could stay with this person forever, without any consequences! Forever and ever!

But that didn’t happen. The following spring, Father found out about our relationship. And this is what he told me. ‘I won’t give up my daughter to a man who’s fourteen years older than her. To begin with, it’d already been decided who you will marry.’

Everything before me become enveloped in darkness. I had heard nothing about how Father had decided my marriage without even consulting me about it. It was very difficult for me to remain calm. I tried persistently to convince Father otherwise. I dug my nails into the tatami mats and pleaded with all my might. But it was no use. ‘I’ll keep this matter to myself, therefore, never meet with that man again,’ He said to me clearly, and slammed the sliding screen shut.

After that, it became difficult to meet with that person. Whenever I tried to go out, Father would give me a warning, because I had to be careful of the neighbors seeing us. As the days where I couldn’t see that person continued, my heart shriveled up like a flower without water. I was so lonely, and frustrated, and even started to harbor a hatred towards Father. Because of that, I couldn’t put any effort in helping out around the house, or watering the plants in the garden. I would often find myself in a daze, staring in the direction of that person’s house beyond the hedges. Before I realized, the hedges that I had been neglecting were almost close to wilting. When I saw that, I thought to myself, no matter how depressed I am, it won’t do to just let the hedges wilt like this. After all, I had taken care of them for so long. At the time, I genuinely thought that. But I soon thought otherwise.”

Chikage-san reached out for the wilting camellia in front of her, and pulled off one of the faded leaves. She made it look like such a cruel act.

“If I don’t water just this one plant, and just let it wilt, perhaps then I would be able to see what was on the other side of the hedges. And then, I would be able to see that person’s face when they walked past. It was a childish idea that wouldn’t actually solve anything, but if that was all it took to allow me to see that person’s face, I didn’t mind—That’s what I thought to myself,”

She said, toying with the dried-out leaf between her fingertips. Although that leaf had finally been given some water after today’s rain shower, it must have already been too late, as the leaf looked completely void of moisture.

“Before sunrise or in the middle of the night, I met and talked countless times with that person on the other side of the hedges. We even shared the most passionate kisses,”

She added, staring at her mother and younger brother as if to challenge them. I found myself stealing a glance at Sensei, before immediately looking down.

“He was always quick to leave, before anyone else could come, but those short moments were my salvation, more than anything.

Naturally, all during that time, I would bring him up with Father at every opportunity. I thought I could convince him somehow, and make him understand. However, I couldn’t make any progress at all. I couldn’t understand why Father hated him so much. But I couldn’t help but wonder, so I tried asking Mother and people from the neighborhood. Perhaps something had happened between them in the past, I thought.”

I stole a glance at Otoe-san. Even just looking at her from the side like this, it was very easy to see that she was growing upset by her daughter’s words.

“And then, just as I had thought, I learned that an issue had come up in the past. Between Momoya-san’s father, Momosuke-san, and my own mother…..”

“Stop it!”

It was Otoe-san who screamed. As I watched her with stolen glances, I could see her face growing paler and paler before my very eyes.

“Wait, are you telling us…. that Mom…. slept with the husband from the Shinokawa family….?”

Tetsuta-san looked back and forth between his mother and the direction of the Shinokawa’s house with a dumbfounded look on his face.

“That’s…. No, I would never….”

For a while, the wife, Otoe, could only let out choppy words that were neither ones of denial nor excuse, but at last, she drooped over and admitted this:

“It was…. A one-time mistake….”

Because her voice was so small, had she not said it in between the exploding fireworks, it sounded like it might disappear altogether. Seeing her mother like this, Chitose-san stared at her with bleary eyes.

“It’s fine, Mother. You don’t have to blame yourself for that anymore.”

The look she gave her wasn’t one from a daughter to her mother, but from one woman to another.

“And that was when I realized. Ah, Father must not be able to forgive any man from the Shinokawa family. Since then, I had half-given up on persuading him any further.

‘I’ll go and convince him myself.’ Even after learning of the circumstances, that person told me this, but I could see things turning ugly, so I kept on consoling him. He tried to get me to elope with him more than a few times, but I could never say yes. No matter where we went, Father would find me and bring me back. As his daughter, I knew this would be the case. That’s just the kind of person Father was. It’s the same with the ghost paintings. I’m sure he just wanted to keep me somewhere close to him, like a decoration.”

Or perhaps, from her point of view, it was as if she had been haunted by her father.

“But then—Yes, I believe it was around the middle of last month. That person had an unusually dark look in his eyes, and he said to me, ‘I’ve finally made up my mind. You don’t have to worry anymore.’ The entire time, I couldn’t let go of the bad feeling I had. I had never seen that person with those eyes before.

And then, today, after I came back home once the fireworks had started, I found Father dead in his room.

However, the idea of suicide didn’t cross my mind. I then remembered how that person knew how to use a gun, and I figured it out immediately.

This wasn’t a suicide. That person had shot him!

Even I don’t know whether or not he secretly owns a gun. But when I saw the broken fence on the other side of the hedges, I knew for certain. He must have come up with the idea of shooting Father from afar when he saw the gap in the hedges. That was why he broke the fence in the middle of the night, in order to create ‘a direct path for the bullet to pass’ from his house to Father’s room, and why waited for this very day to shoot between the gaps in the fence and the hedges.

The moment I thought of this, I closed all the doors around the room, as if by reflex. I didn’t do it with any significant motive in mind. All I could think of was how I had to hide the terrifying thing that person had just done. But after doing so, I suddenly remembered. About that thing that Father had written before for fun.”

She slowly shifted her gaze to the back of the room. It almost looked like her eyes were following something that the rest of us couldn’t see, and just watching her made a chill run up my spine.

Her eyes stopped to rest on Professor Nagao’s suicide note, which had been left on top of the tea table.

“It was the suicide note that Father had written.”

The wife, who had collapsed on the ground, stared vacantly up at her daughter. It looked like she was staring at a woman she didn’t even know. It must have been because her daughter was making a face that she had never seen her make before.

“I accidently found it while I was cleaning a long time ago. However, it wasn’t written like a real suicide note. The note I saw back then, and the note that was found today are completely different ones, and the wording is different as well, but they were both written as jokes, full of twists and word play. He must have written them from time to time for fun, like how one recites haiku for leisure.”

Now that I thought about it, the wording had been a bit too humorous for a suicide note. He hadn’t mentioned a word about his inheritance, and I found the line, “I will return to see the camellias in the garden again next year” to be particularly strange.

Spirits were supposed to return home during Obon season, which made it unfitting to return when the camellias bloomed in winter. Would a professor devoted to the research of ghosts write such an inarticulate suicide note?

Perhaps he had purposely written it inaccurately to show that it wasn’t a serious note, in case his family ever stumbled upon it.

“Father was an eccentric, and whether he was asleep or awake, all he could go on about was ghost, ghosts, ghosts. He hung ghost paintings all throughout the mansion, and collected any and all books that had to do with ghosts. He must have wanted to do all he could to get closer to the ‘afterlife.’ Perhaps he even wanted to experience what it was like to die, even if it was just the feeling. In any case, the moment I saw that Father was dead, I remembered the suicide note I had found before. If the room were to be searched, they would naturally find the note. With that in mind, I decided to make Father’s death seem like a suicide. I assumed that the police would also come to that conclusion—”

Perhaps because she had talked so much, Chikage-san’s voice had gone rather hoarse.

“However, I greatly miscalculated. I never would have expected that today of all days, detectives such as yourselves would come to visit us.”

“Chikage-san…. I….”

Unable to say anything more, I bit down on my bottom lip. Her feet, dirty with mud, looked like they hurt.

“That person killed Father. But rather than hate, I felt a deep love for him. My heart pounded at the thought of our future together. It was from that moment on that I’m certain I stopped being a human. I became a ghost, bound to this world by passion.”

She was saying that she had become a vengeful spirit.

“Do you think me mad for killing my father just so I could be with my first love for the rest of my life? Do you see me as a delusional young woman caught up in a delusion? But is there any kind of love that isn’t delusional?”

I had nothing to say in reply to those words. Compared to Chikage-san, I was far from being even a young woman. I was just a child that didn’t know the first thing about love.

At last, Chikage-san stood in front of Detective Innami and held out both of her hands.

“That is the end of my story. Now then, Detective, please arrest me.”

Seemingly taken aback by the suddenness of it, the detective spoke uncertainly as he scratched at his stubble.

“Well, if everything you said is the truth, you’ll be charged with the offense of withholding evidence, along with being a suspect as an accomplice to murder…. But, since you don’t seem to any intention of running, first, we’ll hear Shinokawa’s confession, and we’ll deal with the complicated stuff after that. If possible, we’d like you to come with us to Shinokawa Momoya’s residence and get him to come out peacefully.”

He must have been considering the possibility that Shinokawa-san had a gun on him. The detective carefully chose his words as he spoke.

“....I understand.”

“That’d be appreciated. By the way, there’s one thing that I’ve been wondering. Why didn’t Shinokawa escape after shooting the professor? He would’ve had more than enough time to run away to another city. Instead, he’s still sitting in his home. I just don’t get it. Did he think he wouldn’t get caught, trusting that you would definitely make it look like a suicide?”

“That’s….”

“Ah, well. We can hear all about it later.”

The detective then let out a heavy sigh, and glared at Sensei and I in turn.

“Listen, you two stay here. Don’t you go sticking your noses where they don’t belong any further.”

After being told this, I finally relaxed the tension in my shoulders. The hedges, the fence, and the person that Chikage-san truly loved. It would seem that I was had managed to make the correct deductions about those things.

And with that, the case was solved—

“Um, Detective.”

Just as that thought passed through my head, Chikage-san asked Detective Innami this:

“Will I be charged with the same crimes as that person for what I’ve done?”

“No, from what I’ve heard so far, the real perp here is Shinokawa. He was the one who planned the murder, after all. If all goes accordingly, he’ll likely spend several years in prison. But you don’t have to worry. Compared to him, your crimes are much less serious.”

The detective answered her question in a casual and tactless manner. He must have assumed she asked because she was concerned about what was going to happen to them from now on.

However, upon hearing this, Chikage’s expression changed into one which I’m unable to describe with any words I’m familiar with. She looked as if was watching the ship she’d been waiting on for ten years leave without ever stopping at the harbor where she stood, or perhaps as if she had just witnessed that ship sink before her very eyes. If it was Kudou-sensei, that might be how he would describe it.

“....That person is the only one who is going to spend years locked behind bars?”

“Right. No matter what his motive was, Shinokawa killed another man. Atoning for his crimes in jail is the best....”

“So that means, we’re going to be separated again.”

It didn’t seem that she was listening to what the detective was saying anymore. What had gotten into her? The moment I thought this, she suddenly turned in my direction and reached out for me.

“AHH!”

I backed away by reflex, but I wasn’t fast enough. She grabbed me by the arm with strength unusual for a woman, and before I realized, she had me restrained from behind.

“Oi, what do you think you’re doing?!”

Detective Innami looked in our direction, leaning forward as if ready to spring into action. The wife also let out something close to a scream, and was shouting something along with the others, but I wasn’t in any position to try and make sense of it.

“You were hiding something like that?!”

There was a sharp fruit knife being pressed up against the back of my neck. The moment I realized this, my entire body felt very hot, and then immediately broke out in cold sweat. She must have hidden that knife in her sleeve from the kitchen after using it to peel the peaches.

“Chikage-san…. Why are you doing this….?”

“Be quiet. Don’t try and change my mind! I’ve decided. I’ve already decided that I’m going to do this. Hibari-san, I’m sorry that it has to be you, but….”

As she whispered in my ear, I could hear a touch of madness in her voice.

“Detective…. Tell me, Detective! How can I increase the severity of my crimes? If I cut this girl’s face up so badly it would never heal in a lifetime, would that make it the same as that person? Or should I brutally stab this pretty throat of hers? Tell me! Let me hear it! What do I need to do in order to shoulder the same number of crimes as that person, to receive the same judgement as that person?! Just tell me, what do I need to do?!”

She screamed. It was if she was was desperately shouting for the ship to return as it sailed away.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the wife faint from the sight of Chikage-san’s uncontrollable, violent eyes. Tetsuta-san rushed to try and hold her up.

“Oi! Don’t do anything rash! Listen, calmly hand the knife over to me. There’s no reason to be committing another crime like this.”

Although Detective Innami tried to persuade her cautiously, not a word of it reached her ears.

“It doesn’t make sense for that person to go to prison while I’m left out here. I thought that we could finally be together, after being in love with him for ten years…. I refuse to have to wait for years just to see him again—!”

Chikage-san’s tear-filled eyes reflected in the surface of the knife that was as cold and sharp as a crescent moon in winter. Those were the tears of someone trying to get the attention of someone important to them.

It had become like a stalemate. As if watching for fireworks the moment before they were ignited, all everyone could do was intently watch for Chikage-san to act.

However, right before my eyes—

“That’s far enough.”

Sensei was standing close enough for me to touch him. With an unusually stern look on his face, he was focused on the woman trembling behind me.

“If you murder that girl, I will kill you right in front of that man called Shinokawa.”

I gulped.

It was my first time seeing Sensei with that kind of face.

Although Sensei would often joke about such things, and was the type to tell lies while acting sincere, right now, in this very moment, all I could feel in those words was pure aggression, like that of a ferocious wolf.

Sensei. Sensei. Please stop making that scary face.

“Oi, Writer! Don’t try and provoke her like this is some kind of joke!”

“Old dogs should keep quiet. What’s the point in trying to talk sense or morals into someone who stands shouting from the depths of abnormality? What’s the point in preaching now to someone who has already been hurt by those same morals and sense?”

Sensei took another couple steps towards us.

“Stay back!”

Unnerved by the pressure of Sensei advancing in our direction, Chikage-san pointed the knife she had been holding to my neck at him. However, Sensei didn’t let that moment escape. No, he had been waiting for this very moment to come.

As swiftly as if he were about to catch a grasshopper, and without hesitation, Sensei stretched out his right hand and grabbed the blade of the knife.

Blood immediately started forming from his hand, and fell in droplets before me.

“Sensei!”

I couldn’t help but shout.

“I think I should like to have her back now.”

The two of them competed with their arm strength. More blood spilled forth.

Chikage-san’s distress seemed to show in how her hand was trembling. For her, handing over that knife would mean the same thing as handing over her resolve and passion. I couldn’t imagine how painful of a decision that could be. Just how painful—

However, as if seeing through that distress and maneuvering around it, Sensei said to her,

“I don’t need the knife. This is what I want returned to me.”

Sensei gave my hand a firm pull. And before I could react, Sensei was holding me against his chest.

Chikage-san appeared to have been caught completely off guard, and remained standing there while still holding the blood-stained knife in her right hand.

“Chikage-san, all of that passion, madness, and love are yours to keep. I have no intention of taking them away. I will not rob you of any of that. All I’m doing is taking Hibari-kun back from you. You should wait for your lover while keeping those feelings of passion in your heart, whether you should become a ghost or a vengeful spirit,”

Sensei spoke to her slowly, pausing carefully between each word. For some reason, it sounded to me like Sensei was trying to comfort her using the words he was capable of.

“Besides, I already have a fruit knife in my own home, so I have no need for it. Although, it is always Hibari-kun’s job to use that knife to peel the skin off of peaches, while it is my job to eat them.”

Before I knew it, Sensei’s voice had returned to its usual disrespectful tone.

At that moment, a series of smaller fireworks all started to go off in the night sky once more. The fireworks illuminated the clouds drifting in the sky, lighting them up in the colors of summer.

While still holding the knife, Chikage-san started crying. A refreshing yukata adorned with lily of the valley flowers, and bare feet covered in mud. In her hand was a knife slick with blood—

And yet, she cried like a child.

Even the finale of fireworks going off wasn’t enough to drown out her sobs.

Detective Innami walked over to stand quietly beside her, and gently removed the knife from her hand.

“About having you accompany us to Shinokawa’s residence…. We can put that off for later,”

He said hesitantly, while looking off in the direction of the mansion’s rain gutter. It would seem that he was weak against women crying. Chikage-san continued to shed tears for a while, but at last, she started to wipe her eyes with her sleeve.

“No,”

She shook her head.

“No, I’ll go with you. Right now, I want to see that person more than I ever have before.”

Deep passion still burned in her eyes like the dying embers of a flame, but her cheeks were dyed a pale pink color.

Was it from the light of the fireworks? I thought, and looked up at the sky.

However, the fireworks that had dyed the night sky in such colors had already ended.

I will now briefly explain what happened after that.

Chikage-san turned to both of us and apologized, and after bowing her head deeply, she was taken away by Detective Innami to go to Shinokawa-san’s house.

“I’ll wait again. For that person to return. So that’s why—”

You should try your best as well. That was what Chikage-san said to me before she left.

Her words made my heart skip a beat, and my face turn bright red, but I didn’t look away from her.

I felt like I understood it. The feelings that made a grown woman brandish a knife to make her own crimes more severe. The feelings that made her want to increase the weight of her crimes to be the same as those of her lover, in order to try and balance the scales.

I had a feeling that I understood.

In the end, Sensei and I never saw the face of the real perpetrator, Shinokawa Momoya.

The fact that Detective Innami strictly turned us away, saying that this was the job of the police from here on—that was part of the reason why, but because I was busy treating Sensei’s wound, going to see the culprit was far from my mind. That said, the wounded man himself seemed discontent about sitting still to receive treatment, and bad-mouthed me from start to finish.

Even if we had been allowed to tag along, I think I still would have refused. Somehow, I felt hesitant about disturbing the scene of Chikage-san and Shinokawa-san’s reunion.

The wife, Otoe, watched dumbfounded like an inanimate doll as her daughter was taken away. What would she do now, after having lost her husband and having her past adultery exposed? Would she choose to devote herself to her work as a career woman, or try once more to face Chikage-san as her mother?

Tetsukata-san tried to act strong, but he seemed greatly perplexed after witnessing the intense passion of his older sister that he had been completely oblivious to. Perhaps he had been made painfully aware of his own immaturity. From now on, would be quit acting like a ruffian, and not engage in the nightlife as much? Perhaps being able to change yourself or not after an incident like this was a test of the human character.

After the rain, the ground hardened more than it had before. Could the same also be said about this family? No, that wasn’t up to me to think about.

That wasn’t something for a detective to do.

“By the way, Sensei—”

As I treated Sensei’s wound on the veranda of the Nagao’s house, I asked him about something that had been on my mind for a while now.

“If Professor Nagao had never fired his gun, why was there gunpowder residue found on his body?”

Had that also been set up by Chikage-san?

“Ah, what if she placed the gun in the professor’s hand, and then made him pull the trigger while facing it in the other direction? That way, the bullet that was fired would be nowhere to be found, and there wouldn’t be any fingerprints left behind, either.”

For something that I’d come up with on the spot, I thought it was a very clever idea.

“The bullet fired from the professor’s gun disappeared somewhere through the open door. That part is most likely correct. However, I’m not so sure about Chikage-san orchestrating it. If she had done so, there would have been a higher risk of blood getting onto her yukata, and during all the time I was close to her, I couldn’t detect the scent of gunpowder on her. Instead, I have a different theory.”

“A different one?”

“Professor Nagao was suddenly shot when he was in the middle of cleaning his gun. The impact of being shot caused his body to stiffen, and accidentally pull the trigger.”

“So that would cause gunpowder residue to be left on his body? But that would be strange. Having the gun loaded with a bullet while he was cleaning it would be—”

No matter how much of an eccentric he was, would he really do something so dangerous?

“Yes, it would be extremely dangerous. Why would the professor have a bullet ready? Was he trying to shoot something, no, someone? On today of all days, when the gunshot would be covered up by all the fireworks?”

On today of all days, to hide the sound of the gunshot.

“Perhaps he had known about the hedges. The hedges that his daughter was using to have secret affairs, and when he looked beyond it, the backside of the fence was also broken today. Oh? He could see the house of the man who had seduced his precious daughter. Come to think of it, how fortunate it was that the fireworks were about to start. Now then, how about using this gun to give him a scare? Or perhaps—”

How about I actually shoot him dead—?

“However, Shinkawa was the one to pull the trigger first.”

“Th-that can’t be….”

As I listened carefully until the end, that was the one response I could muster.

“Of course, it’s only a theory.”

As I finished treating Sensei’s wound, and placed a wet towel on the fainted wife’s forehead, Detective Kaburagi returned excitedly.

“Shinokawa just confessed to it in person. It was all just as you had deducted, Hibari-san!”

He stepped into the tatami room from the veranda, and cheerfully taking a hold of my hand to shake it up and down.

“Please, you don’t have to call me that.”

It made me feel uncomfortable to be called ‘Hibari-san’ by someone older than me, and not to mention a detective from the police department. But ultimately, my request went unheard. I wished he would have properly written it down in that notebook of his.

In any case, it seemed that case had safely come to a close.

“I’m so moved! I thought that Great Detectives only existed in novels! But they’re real, aren’t they? The Schoolgirl Detective! Incredible!”

When he said this to me, I could only give a sigh in response, like a paper balloon deflating.

And on top of that, there were several newspaper reporters peeking in from the beyond the hedges, having caught wind of the case. One of them, a young reporter of small stature, called out to us while clutching a camera in one hand.

“We’ve heard everything! About how that it was that young miss there that gallantly appeared to solve the case that occurred here! This would make for a great scoop! ‘The Murder Case at the Ryougoku Haunted Mansion, Brilliantly Solved by the Schoolgirl Detective’!”

The reporters begged me to tell them about it in detail while they snapped away with their camera shutters.

Just when I was thinking about how troublesome this had all become, I heard the usual laugh of “Ahaha” from behind me. Even without seeing his face, I knew. Sensei was enjoying this. Right now, he was slapping his knee in amusement as he watched me fall into this troublesome situation.

“Hey! You can’t just go taking pictures without permission!”

Detective Kaburagi came to intervene, but it almost looked like even the detective was enjoying this whole situation.

“Oh? Would that happen to be the mystery novelist, Kudou Renma-sensei? Why, how unusual…. Ah, no, what a brilliant combination! Sensei, will a beautiful, female detective be appearing in your next work?”

Sensei ignored the question the reporter had directed at him, and suddenly came up and carried me sideways under his arm.

“Now then, I think we’ve had enough fun. Time to go home.”

“H-hold on a minute, Sensei—!”

It was like I was a child being carried off by their parent after having done something bad. But I had worked so hard to solve the case! I was a detective!

And that was how I wound up exiting the scene in the most disgraceful manner.

We walked alongside the Sumida River, which was now scarce of people. Sensei walked a bit ahead of me, while I kept up from behind.

There were still paper lanterns that remained lit nearby, like relics to remember the deceased. I had been hesitating for a while now over whether or not to call out to him. I kept on looking up and down between my shoes and Sensei’s back.

“Um…. Sensei,”

I finally prepared myself enough to say something.

“Thank you, for saving me. But, your hand….”

He needed to write for his work, and yet—

His right hand was wrapped up in bandages. I was the one who had wrapped it up. Looking at it now, I saw how sloppily it was done and couldn’t help feeling embarrassed.

Would it leave behind a scar? Would it better if he went to hospital to have it properly looked at? Nothing but unpleasant thoughts started to circle around in my head.

At this rate, I might even start to imagine some tragic scenario that I normally wouldn’t think of.

Before I could think any further, I stopped and shouted,

“I-If you’re never able to write again because of that wound, Sensei, I’ll be your hands! I’ll write the manuscripts of the stories you come up with in your place!”

Passerbys turned around to see what the commotion about. I heard someone wonder aloud if it was a lover’s quarrel.

But Sensei was the only one who didn’t turn around. All he did was stand there. With the moonlight shining on his back, it looked like a sturdy door that would never open to me. It looked a door that was bolted shut to everyone.

How could I have blurted out such a stupid thing? I really was just a child. This wouldn’t solve anything. All I’d done was force my childish whims on him to make myself feel better.

I was feeling a bit strange right now. I’m sure it’s because I had listened to Chikage-san’s love story. The person she loved was someone she knew since she was a little girl, someone who was much older than her. After hearing about a story like that—

At last, I just felt so pathetic and squeezed my eyes shut.

The only sound that reached my ears was the murmuring of the river. As I listened it, I wished for this moment to pass as fast as possible.

But suddenly, I heard Sensei laugh, drowning out the sound of the river. When I opened my eyes, I saw Sensei bent over with laughter.

“Just when I was wondering what you wanted to say…. Be… Be my hands? You, Hikari-kun? With those small, October maple leaf hands of yours? Kukuku…. Ahaha!”

Sensei was desperately trying to fight back his laughter as if it were nothing. He must have found it unbearable funny that I had gone and made a big deal of it all in my head, and blurted out something so outrageous.

His entire body immediately turned hot.

“How mean! I said so seriously out of concern for you! Uwaaah!”

Was I embarrassed, or just frustrated? Unable to tell the difference anymore, I pushed Sensei in the back with all my might. He must have let his guard down for a moment, as he lost his balance surprisingly easily, and looked like he was about to fall into the Sumida River.

“Woah! I’m falling! Into the river!”

“Ah—! Sensei is falling! Into the river!”

I hadn’t planned on seriously pushing him into the river, and quickly grabbed his hand and pulled. The hand I had grabbed onto was the one wrapped in bandages.

We rocked back and both like a seesaw for a while, but somehow or other, I managed to pull Sensei back to safety. The both of us struggled to catch out breath. What a pitiful scene that had been.

“Good grief, it always ends up like this with you…. Haven’t you ever heard of holding back?”

“I’m sorry.”

Feeling bad about what had happened, I immediately apologized. However, Sensei never held back when he picked on me. Even during the middle of my deduction today—

Just as I uttered these complaints to myself, I felt a large hand come to rest on top of my head. And then, he pet me on the head a couple times.

“I’m very tired today. Make me a cup of hot coffee once we get back,”

As he said this, Sensei’s eyes reflected the light of the sparklers that someone had lit by the river. I liked it when Sensei made this face the most.

We walked down the path where the scent of fireworks still lingered.

Through the night, we walked.

The next day, I returned the book that Kareshima-san had asked me to deliver.

“And so, in the end, this book has come back to me. It makes me feel a bit sad, somehow,”

Kareshima-san said thoughtfully as he took the book back. Apparently, he had already heard of the bad news about Professor Nagao. While I was there, I told him the gist of the case, and when I got to the part about the suicide note, Kareshima-san nodded a few times.

“I think that any researcher would agree with the desire to get closer to the thing that you were researching. For Professor Nagao, that would have been ghosts and the afterlife. With this, he’ll have finally reached the afterlife he sought after. I’m almost a little envious.”

I couldn’t help but feel a chill. Did Kareshima-san also have some kind of hidden desire?

For example, perhaps he wanted to meet a real youkai—

“I wonder what he’s up to now. Perhaps he’s wandering around his mansion right about now.”

“Please don’t. That would make it a real haunted mansion, then.”

“Sorry, sorry. But in reality, it wasn’t a ghost that was in the Ryougoku Haunted Mansion, but a young woman possessed by love.”

After hearing him say this, I became lost in thought for a moment. I wondered what had happened with those two. Would she be able to stand waiting for him once more?

“It’s sad to think about, but now that the professor has passed, the ghost paintings in that mansion, as well as all those books having to do with ghosts, will probably be put up for sale before long. Which means that the Ryougoku Haunted Mansion will no longer be haunted, I suppose.”

And so, the ghosts would come to haunt someplace else—

Kareshima-san lifted his head as if suddenly remembered something.

“By the way, did you see today’s paper? There was an article in the corner titled, ‘The Rumored Schoolgirl Detective, Sighted in the Streets’—”

“G-goodbye now!”

I suddenly had a very bad feeling, and quickly dashed out from “Kokuudou.”

“Ghosts and the afterlife and all of that, that’s very like Soutatsu to see it that way. I wouldn’t even bother thinking of such things.”

When I went to Sensei’s mansion and talked about what Kareshima-san had said, Sensei shrugged his shoulders and let out a heavy sigh.

“Do you not believe in them at all?”

“It’s not a matter of whether I believe in them or not. I’ve simply given up on determining whether or not they exist.”

In other words, he meant that he was reserving his opinion on all things supernatural.

“But you said so when we we were in that mansion, didn’t you? ‘I can see a ghost!’”

“Who ever said such a thing?”

“You did, Sensei.”

“Don’t point.”

“Ow. Don’t pull on my pigtails!”

“‘A culprit exists,’ is what I said. I meant that I could see the culprit.”

“What?! But, how could you have….”

“From where I was sitting at the time, I could see them. I saw Shinokawa Momoya watching the fireworks in his house, far beyond the hedges, as well as Nagao Chikage, who was also looking up at the fireworks after stealing a glance in his direction.”

—A culprit exists.

—Over there, and over here.

When I remembered what Sensei had said back then, I collapsed on the spot.

Sensei really had been looking at the culprit—

At that point, he had already identified the culprit and his accomplice with almost absolute certainty. And yet, he had purposely led me to make the deductions—

I didn’t even have the strength to be angry anymore.

Thinking back, I had seen him paying extremely close attention to the hedges even before we entered the mansion. He must have already noticed then that a section of them were lower than the rest.

—I wonder if we’ll see lilies of the valley come out.

It was only now that I remembered Sensei’s nonchalant remark from before. Perhaps he had seen Chikage-san moving around to close all the doors in the mansion.

“But still, why didn’t Shinokawa-san escape after committing the crime? He should have had plenty of time to do so. And yet, he didn’t run away.”

While I had asked Detective Kaburagi to go and check on Shinokawa-san’s house, I had already expected it to be deserted by then. But he was still there. And just leisurely watching the fireworks from home, at that.

“Had he let his guard down, thinking that his crime would definitely go undetected? Seeing as how Chikage-san tried to make her father’s death look like a suicide—”

I said confidently, but Sensei only sneered at me.

“You still don’t understand the subtleties between a man and a woman in love, do you?”

I sulked a bit, but I swallowed it back to ask him for an explanation.

“In the first place, why didn’t Chikage-san let her yukata get dirty, even with knowing that it might make her look suspicious otherwise? If she wanted to make her father’s death really look like a suicide, she shouldn’t have cared so much about getting blood on her kimono, and just convincingly embraced her father. If she had done so, you wouldn’t have have suspected her either, correct?”

He did have a point.

“However, she did not do so. She didn’t want to. It would be a waste to get bloodstains all over her yukata when she was about to watch the fireworks with her lover.”

It was because she wanted to show herself off in a pretty yukata to the man she loved.

“F-for such a small reason—?”

No, that wasn’t right. For Chikage-san, that was more than good enough of a reason. All she wanted was to watch the fireworks with the man she loved while wearing a pretty yukata. That was why she didn’t want to get it dirty, no matter what.

She cared more for the yukata she’d put on for her lover than her father’s death. She must have chosen to be cursed by the world as a wicked woman, crazed enough from a love affair to cruelly murder her father, while shedding neither blood nor tears herself.

But perhaps that had been her only wish at the time.

“Then, maybe it was the same for Shinokawa-san—”

Instead of running away, he had stayed in that place.

In order to watch the fireworks together with Chikage-san.

While everyone else was running around trying to figure out the truth behind the case, the two of them had been looking up at the sky in their respective houses.

—I promised to go see them together with that person.

“She…. kept her promise.”

“That’s enough talking of the past now. If you let yourself be seized by ghosts and whatnot forever, you won’t be able to write a good novel. Hurry up now, write like the wind!”

Sensei said while bringing the steaming cup of coffee to his lips. Today of all days, he seemed very enthusiastic.

At the moment, I was holding the fountain pen that Sensei always used, sitting in the chair that Sensei always sat in, and staring down at a manuscript paper.

“Ugh…. I can’t believe you’re really making me write it for you!”

The day after the case, Sensei kept using his wounded right hand as an excuse to order me to do everything. “Make me coffee!” was just a part of the usual, however. He was acting beyond arrogant, and more like just a child. He was being much more childish than I ever was!

“If you have time to be complaining, lower your head and face the manuscript! Yazume will be coming in the evening to pick it up, after all. Now then, picking up from where we left off. Chapter Three, The Great Detective’s Fashionably-Late Entrance. And the first sentence is—”

“Sniffle…”

“Quit your crying. You’ll make wrinkles in the paper.”

As I sobbed like a baby, I thought about how I would have to look after him with constant attention for the next several days.

And as I thought this, a smile naturally slipped onto my face.

Ah, how frustrating, how bitter I felt.

------

Translation Notes:

Obon season: an annual Buddhist event for paying respect to one's ancestors. It is believed that each year during obon, the ancestors' spirits return to this world in order to visit their relatives. Usually starts on August 15th, though the exact date may vary by region.

#teniwoha #The Schoolgirl Detective and Eccentric Author #schoolgirl detective series #vocaloid novel

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fridaythe13ththeseries · 8 years ago

Text

Double Exposure

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Episode Recap #21: Double Exposure

Original Airdate: May 21, 1988

Starring:

John D. LeMay as Ryan Dallion Louise Robey as Micki Foster Chris Wiggins as Jack Marshak

Guest cast:

Gary Frank as Winston Knight Catherine Disher as Cathy Steiner Tony De Santis as Detective Duncan Dennis O'Connor as Phil Benedetto Fran Gebhad as Marlene Deborah Tennant as Eleanor

Written by Durnford King Directed by Neill Fearnley

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We open at night in a townhouse apartment. Winston Knight, a newscaster, plays a video tape of one of his previous newscasts. He then takes an antique camera out of its hiding place and sets it up. After taking a picture, he heads to his darkroom to develop it. Instead of a photo, however, the picture develops into a humanoid creature. Knight is thrilled as the thing emerges. Later, we see Knight addressing the creature - now human and dressed - and giving it orders to call him later. He gives the man plastic gloves and a machete.

Ryan and his date, Cathy, are taking pictures in a photo booth, having fun. Ryan grabs the photos and runs, as Cathy playfully chases him.

At the news studio, the make-up lady is asking Knight if she thinks the killer will call him again tonight. He says he has no idea.

Ryan and Cathy are walking home and we see the man who Knight sent out following a woman down a nearly deserted street. She begins to panic and hurry, but when she runs into the man, she is relieved when she recognizes him. She goes with him, willingly.

Ryan is dropping his date off and tries to go up with her, but she has to get up early. Cathy tears the photo strip in half, keeping part and giving him the other, before kissing him good-night. Ryan leaves with a smile on his face.

The woman is walking with the man, feeling safe with him, when he pulls the machete and attacks her. She screams and Ryan hears and is nearly attacked by the man himself. The man gets away and Ryan finds the woman, dead.

Knight is doing is his newscast on the air live when the other man calls him from a phone booth. He tells Knight where to find the latest body. Knight tries to get more info, but the man hangs up. We then see the man watching Knight's newscast in front of a store full of televisions. When he turns around, we see he looks identical to Winston Knight himself.

At the station, Knight ends his newscast and his producer, Phil, expresses his glee over the ratings since the killer has been calling, saying that Knight was almost washed-up before this turn of events. Alone, Knight takes out the photo proof from the cursed camera and lights it on fire. As he does, the duplicate version of himself also burns to ash.

The cops are in Cathy's apartment, interviewing Ryan about the murder. Ryan says the man he saw was Winston Knight, but the cop says Knight was on air at the time of the killing. The cop thinks Ryan made a mistake, but Ryan sticks by what he saw. Ryan tells the cop to call Knight and ask him if the killer ever said he looked like him. The cop calls and tells Knight there is an eyewitness. Knight wants to know who it is. The cop tells him, off the record, that the man is Ryan Dallion. Knight then says he has no brother, twin or otherwise. The cop leaves, telling Ryan to call him if he thinks of anything else. Ryan gets Knight's number off the pad and apologizes for getting Cathy involved in all of this. She kisses him and tells him to call her later.

At Curious Goods, Ryan has woken Jack and Micki to tell them about the night's events. Micki says she watched the newscast and saw Knight get the call from the killer. Ryan says there has to be some explanation. Jack scoffs at the thought of a cursed item being involved, saying he would have noticed Knight's name in the Manifest. Micki says they should all get some sleep. Jack waits, pondering what Ryan said.

Ryan has a fitful sleep and gets up and turns on the television, to one of Knight's newscasts. When Knight says several witnesses have identified the killer as Ryan, he freaks out and hits the TV, but a hand breaks through the screen and grabs Ryan, trying to pull him in. Ryan then wakes up in bed, realizing it was just a nightmare.

The next day, Ryan is fixing his tie when Micki comes down. Ryan says he is going to meet Knight at his place at 5:00 to talk about the killer. Micki wishes she could go, but Ryan says Cathy is going with him.

Back in his darkroom, Knight is making yet another duplicate creature from the cursed camera. Later, he again arms the double with a machete. When Ryan and Cathy arrive, Knight hides the look-alike in the darkroom. Knight greets Ryan and Cathy and lets them inside. Cathy says she is a big fan, but Knight plays humble every-man.

Knight says him and Ryan are part of an elite club of two, the only two who have had an interaction with the killer. He thinks they should work together. Ryan has a hard time, amazed at how much Knight resembles the killer. Knight plays it off, instead telling them about the hard time he has had since the killer has been calling him, nightmares and headaches. He says that Ryan's identifying the man looking like him might mean the killer is fixated on Knight maybe even changing his appearance to look like him. Knight then says he has a deadline and ushers Ryan and Cathy out.

As they leave, Cathy is in awe that she met the famous newscaster. Ryan offers to drive Cathy home, but she decides to walk, since she has shopping to do. They kiss before Ryan drives off. Cathy starts to leave, but realizes she left her purse in Knight's apartment. Heading back up, she looks in the window and sees Knight talking to his double. Knight spots her, but she runs off. Knight spots her purse and gives his double her keys. Before she can make a call to the police, the killer startles her. She jumps into a cab, but the double follows.

Knight is anchoring another newscast, which Micki and Ryan are watching at the store. Ryan tells Micki there was something creepy about Knight and that he evaded all Ryan's questions. Jack arrives and said he was thinking all night and searched the manifest for items that might make a copy of someone. He found a camera in the listings, but it was sold to someone named Kahn. However this is not a person, but the news station KAHN. The trio head out.

The cab drops Cathy at home and she uses the key under the mat to get inside her apartment. She calls Curious Goods, but the machine picks up. She leaves Ryan a message about what she saw in the window. She says she is scared. The television then turns on and she sees the double, with her keys. He draws his machete as she throws items at him. She hides, but he uses the weapon to break the door and then he attacks as Knight's newscast plays on the screen.

Later, back at the store, Jack and Ryan discuss how Knight could have stolen the camera from the studio after they purchased it. Micki hits the play button on the machine and they hear Cathy's message. Ryan realizes she is in danger and him and Jack rush out.

At Cathy's apartment, they find the cops outside and Cathy's murdered body inside. The detective says he needs a statement, but Jack tells him that will have to wait. They leave, Ryan blaming himself for her murder. Jack stops Ryan from telling the cops it was Knight, telling Ryan the man has the perfect alibi and that, yet again, they are on their own.

At Curious Goods, Jack tells Ryan they need to concentrate on getting the camera back. Micki tries to console Ryan but he snaps and rushes out, saying he is going to get Knight.

At the station, Knight is outside, about to burn the photo proof when Ryan accosts him, telling him about Cathy's message. Knight calls him crazy, but Ryan grabs the photo off the ground and takes off, eluding both Knight and a security guard.

Back at the store, Ryan tells Micki and Jack he has the negative. Jack says that he believes that the duplicate has only five hours. If Knight doesn't destroy the negative before then, he dies and the duplicate lives. Ryan says he now has Knight's life in his hands.

In the street, the double is almost run over by a car as it wanders. It has begun to realize it wants to live.

Jack says they have to hold on to the negative and use it blackmail Knight into giving the camera back. Ryan says no, he is going to let Knight die, he doesn't care about the camera. Jack says if he does, then the camera will fall into someone else's hands and the killing will continue. Ryan stops, realizing the truth in Jack's words.

Jack arrives at Knight's apartment and tells him his associates will destroy the negative as soon as Jack comes back with the camera. Knight appears to be playing along, but then he knocks Jack out and takes a photo of him.

Later, we see Jack tied up as Knight gives a phony Jack duplicate a different camera. He tells him to give Micki and Ryan the fake camera, destroy the negative and then to kill them both. Knight tells the real Jack that he is about to commit two murders while tied up. He then says the Jack double will admit to being the machete killer on air. He gags Jack as he tells him how he has it all planned out for Jack's double to outlive Jack and then be killed as the murderer. Knight calls his producer and tells him to get a news crew and to meet him at Curious Goods, where they will capture the killer. The Knight double is watching, through the window. After Knight leaves, the double follows, as Jack struggles to free himself.

At the store, the Jack double arrives with the camera. Micki takes it to the vault as Jack demands the negative from Ryan. As he goes to get it, the fake Jack pulls the phone cord out.

Outside the store, Knight meets up with his producer and crew and tells him that the killer is going to come out of the store a little before 10:00 PM. Phil says they should call the cops, but Knight plays to his greed over ratings and they wait.

Inside, Ryan says they should just wait a few minutes before destroying the negative, but fake Jack insists. Ryan feigns at getting the negative as he poses a trick question to the man about not breaking the camera. The fake Jack falls for it and Ryan attacks him, realizing he isn't Jack. Micki comes in and Ryan tells her this isn't the real Jack. Just then, the Knight double arrives, as well. The two duplicates struggle.

Outside, Knight is beginning his newscast, telling the public they are minutes away from finding out who the machete killer is.

As the two doubles fight, the Knight copy slices off the Jack copy's hand. Fake Jack begins to turn to goop. Fake Knight holds Micki at knife-point, demanding the negative from Ryan. He pretends to hand it over, but instead, stabs the creature in the chest. More goop oozes out and Ryan and Micki escape.

The two rush outside to where Knight is airing his newscast. He pretends that he didn't know anyone was inside. He demands to end the broadcast, but his producer keeps the cameras rolling. His double stumbles out of the store, as well, and Knight demands the negative from him, but the fake Knight crumples it up. The real Winston Knight slowly vanishes as everyone watches. The duplicate is then shocked to see the goop turn to blood as he becomes real. He is happy to be alive, right before he keels over and dies.

Later, Jack is working with the manifest as Micki comes downstairs. She tells Jack that Ryan is really depressed. Jack says Lewis must have told Knight how the cursed camera worked. He also speculates that the duplicate of Knight would probably have begun to act just like the real Knight, over time. Ryan then comes down and said he realized it isn't the objects that are cursed, they are. Everyone involved with them dies. Micki and Jack tell him that isn't so, Knight was responsible for Cathy's death and the nine others before. Jack adds that if they didn't fight evil, the consequences would be much worse. Ryan looks at his half of the photo strip of him and Cathy and gets angry again over her senseless demise.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My thoughts:

An excellent episode! The cursed item here is a great one with a great twist. Of course, Knight doesn't use his double merely to have fun, it has to take a dark, murderous turn.

Gary Frank is great as the fame-hungry Knight and his dim-witted yet anxious to live duplicates.

Cathy is a fun love interest for Ryan, cute and spunky. Sad that Ryan loses yet another romance to one of the cursed items. You can almost track the hardening of Ryan's soul over time. Sad.

Loved how the duplicates look perfectly human but act just a little bit off. Makes them strangely creepy, in a way.

Also love how Ryan was wary of Jack when he came back. You would notice if Jack started acting weird and Ryan does and uses his brain to trick the double into revealing itself.

Have to wonder what Phil the producer, the news crew and everyone at home thought of what happened outside the store. I mean, really: the real Knight vanishes before their eyes, the fake Knight is bleeding and dies and in the store is a fake, oozing Jack! What did the cops make of all this? We never know, as it is not addressed. We have to assume Jack, Micki and Ryan came up with some sort of believable story to explain it all. Would have loved to hear that one!

Also loved how there is an nod to the executive producer of the show, Frank Mancuso, Jr. When Knight is going to his car outside the station, right before Ryan jumps him, we see the names on two parking spaces. Not sure who "J. Wartlieb" was, but "F. Mancuso, Jr." is pretty obvious. See the pic below!

Next week: "Pirate's Promise"

#season one #episode recap #gary frank #catherine disher #Durnford King #Neill Fearnley #micki foster #ryan dallion #jack marshak #camera

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greenhearts16 · 8 years ago

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Chapter Five: Richmond Park

Don't make your mother cry

Fifteen Years Earlier: The Return of Michonne

Winnie Westbrook stood in front of the large window in the downstairs tea room in Winfield house. In the months since her daughter's disappearance, her family found themselves at the epicenter of a whirlwind of press. The world wanted to know what happened to the U.S. Ambassador's daughter and conspiracies were abundant.

A dominant faction of those interested in their peculiar story, believed it was an international political affair that the family as well and the U.S. and U.K. government were aware of, but there were international secrets at stake. Some were suspicious of Winnie herself and vehemently claimed that she was the one behind it. She was painted as the strange, cold and calculating wife of a man who, along with her was involved in various shady dealings that led to their family being in shambles. Some believed Michonne was a runaway. There were frequent 'sightings' of the Ambassador's daughter.

Other's speculated that Michonne was in fact dead and this was the theory that hurt Winnie the most. They convinced themselves that there was a murder or some kind of political sacrifice she was helping to cover it up.

She wasn't one to wear her heart on her sleeve and for most people it would seem that she was completely unbothered by the nasty speculation. Her frustration was building though, and she feared that she may explode at any time. In any case, she tried to keep her head high and maintained that her sole focus was finding her daughter. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, sucking in a shaky breath. "What did I ever do to deserve any of this?"

She supposed that her luck had just run out. She started out as a young mother who managed to get herself and Michonne out of a difficult situation and change their life for the better. Now, it felt like everything was wrong again.

A small figure in the distance caught Winnie's eye, breaking her out of her reverie. She took a step to the window, trying to make out the figure in the distance. It didn't look like the landscaper. Plus, he wasn't in on Wednesday's.

Winnie's knees buckled as the figure came into view. "It can't be," she gasped. Michonne appeared to be slowly strolling up to the house with one of the gatekeepers following after her with an expression of pure shock.

"James!" she shouted, turning away from the window and all but sprinting out of the tea room.

"What is it?" the man asked, exiting his office on the other side of the hallway. She could hear the surprise and worry in his voice. They hardly spoke each other's name anymore.

"It's her," she gasped. "My baby's back! Come."

"Winnie," James began, with an apprehensive look.

"No really," she said grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the front door. "Come see. It's really her."

"Now darling I –"

She flung the front door open, sprinting out onto the front steps. "My baby," she cried, as she took in the young woman standing less than twenty feet away from her. Michonne had gotten noticeably thinner, but not to the point where she looked unhealthy. She carried a small sack-like brown bag and wore a loose fitting brown dress that fell well below her knees with a light sweater around her shoulders. "Chou-chou."

The young woman stopped walking and stared blankly back at her mother. Winnie noticed the swelling around the girl's eyes a tell-tale sign that she had been crying recently. Winnie cautiously took a step forward, approaching her daughter, like she would a wounded animal. She felt James's presence closely behind her, but he knew to keep his distance until they figured out exactly what they were dealing with. They had gone over scenarios like this with the detectives, counselors, and the intelligence agents countless of times.

"Chou-chou," she whispered, as she got closer to her daughter who now wore her hair in short dreadlocks. She reminded Winnie of the nineties singer, Lauryn Hill.

The girl remained frozen in her spot and Winnie wondered if she may have gone into shock. Winnie exchanged a look with Eugene the gatekeeper and he nodded before slowly backing away to return to his post. She took a few more steps until she stood directly in front of her daughter, who now refused to meet her eyes.

She reached forward, encircling her stiff daughter with her arms. "I'm so glad you're back." As soon as her arms were around Michonne, the girl physically loosened and burst into tears. Deep sobs escaped her as her body shook.

"You're alright baby," she cooed as tears spilled from her own eyes. "I've got you. I'm here."

Fifteen Years Ago: Before the Disappearance

Click

Michonne looked up from her sketchbook to find Rick grinning down at her, with his usual mischievous eyes as he pointed his camera at her again. "You're still at it?"

"What can I say," he shrugged. "You're an interesting subject for a first-time photographer. I'm developing my skill and style here. Stop cramping my style."

"Cramping your style?" she laughed. "Seriously?"

"Hey!" he said, holding up a hand. "No sassing the photographer. Now get back to your drawing."

"I hope you realize that you're crazy. Completely mental, as the Londoners would say."

"Admit it," he said, as he sat down on the ground across from her. "You kind of like my crazy. At least a little bit."

"When did you even get that camera?" It looked like the same one from the day they were antique store. He either got it that day after she left or he went back for it. Although she didn't understand why he would, considering that camera must have cost an arm and a leg.

He shrugged, averting his eyes. "It just looks cool. Gives me a mysterious edge too, don't you think?"

She snorted. "If you think so."

"Why are you such a hater?"

"A hater? How?" she laughed, hugging her knees along with the book, to her chest.

He put the camera up to his eye snapping another picture. "It would be funny if I go to develop these and all the pictures have my finger blocking the lens," he laughed.

"Maybe it'll give your pictures a mysterious look," she teased.

"Hater."

"You're right. I should stop." Her laughter continued. "You never know. Maybe you'll become the next Ansel Adams."

"Who?"

"Famous photographer."

"Never heard of him," he said. "And what about you? You gonna be the next Picasso or somethin'?"

She grinned at him. "Look at you."

"Call me Mr. Cultured." He wiggled his eyebrows playfully. "But seriously, is art your thing or are you going off to college in a few months to be a Brainiac scientist? I can see that one happenin'. You're one of the smartest people I know."

"I want to take a gap year, but my Mom would never go for that," she sighed, closing the book. "So I'll go to Brown and then law school. I'll probably end up studying international law in the future like my Dad, James."

Rick let out a loud exaggerated snore. "I'm sorry, did you say something? That kind of planned out lifestyle sends me straight to sleep. You almost put me in a coma."

"Shut up." She playfully kicked him with the tip of her shoe and fought the urge to laugh at his antics.

"It's okay, I don't know what I'm doing with my life and I'm completely fine. We're young. We're not supposed to know that stuff yet. At eighteen, you need to be screwin' up and havin' fun, not planning out your future down to the last fucking detail."

She looked at him incredulously. "So you have no idea where your life is headed? Well I'm graduating in a couple of months, so I need to know and I need to have a plan for my future. I'm lucky to have the opportunities I have and I'm not going to waste them. I don't have that luxury. I need to have my shit together so I'll make time to have fun while achieving my goals."

"Well I just graduated and here I am, enjoying being young before I have to work for the rest of my life. I couldn't have made better choices."

"No offense, but that's really doing nothing to alleviate my fears Rick."

"Why not?" he asked, nudging her foot with his. "I'm living the life. Once you get out in the real world, it's just work, work, work until you die. That's how it was for my Dad. The poor bastard. I'm not ready for that shit yet. What's the point of me going to college now and putting myself in debt so I could do something I will probably hate? Fuck that."

"Yeah," she sighed. "You kind of have a point."

"Well, what do you want to do Tipsy? Not what anybody else wants. What you want."

She shrugged. "No idea. I thought you just said we're not supposed to know."

He held up a finger to his temple. "Exactly."

"Are we getting chips again?"

"I'll never understand why they call something that's obviously a French Fry, chips. Why do the British do crap like that? Just to be difficult?"

Michonne shook her head fighting back a laugh. "Maybe we should start making healthier food choices. Get some fresh food instead. That way, we're healthier and you can't complain about food names."

"I get enough fresh food at the farm. This is my chance to pig out."

"Will I ever get to see this mysterious farm of yours?" she asked as she linked her arm with his. "You're always talking about that place and the nice people you live with. And what's the owner's name? Nathan? Negan?"

Rick stiffened noticeably. "I don't live with Negan," he said, as he pretended to be distracted by something in the distance. It was clear to Michonne that he was trying to change the subject. "Hershel Greene owns the farm. Negan's just a friend I met here. We're barely friends actually. More like acquaintances. I don't even know how I brought his name up. We barely talk or see each other."

"Acquaintances," she hummed, watching him carefully. In the past month she and Rick had spent a lot of time together. They would meet up at the park once or twice a week and had little food dates while trying their hands at art. They never planned it ahead of time or even spoke about their meetings. They simply showed up every Wednesday at noon. He was great company and a friendship grew. He opened up more to her and she had learned to read him quite well despite his sometimes secretive behavior. She knew when he was lying or trying to hide something.

"It's okay. I was just joking around. It sounds like a cool place is all. I understand if that was weird for you. We're practically acquaintances ourselves."

"It's not that it's weird," he said without elaborating.

They quietly strolled to their favorite fish-and-chips place at the edge of the park. As they passed a group of people on Rollerblades, he took her hand, twirling her in a circle as if they were on a dance floor. "What are you doing?" she giggled.

"Do they have dances at that Academy of yours?"

"None so far."

"All girl's school right?"

"That's right. Is there–"

Her sentence was cut short as a little black floppy eared dog dashed across in front of her, its yellow leash trailing behind as calls for "Sammy!" followed.

"My little brother really wants a dog. He'd be so jealous if he were here." She smiled as she watched a little girl cross their path chasing the black puppy, her mother hot on her heels. "My mother's not having it though. She hates animals."

Rick gasped, dramatically clutching his chest. "What kind of monster hates innocent little puppies."

"Oh be quiet," she laughed, playfully shoving his arm. "She doesn't hate puppies, she's just not very fond of them. They're messy and they tear things up and all of that. Plus, I think she might be allergic."

"I'm just playing with you Tipsy," he said, most likely afraid that he may have offended her.

"I know you are."

On days like this, they typically parted ways after eating, and she wished there was a way to extend the time. He had an easy presence. It was evident that they were quickly developing a friendship. A friendship that she knew almost certainly wouldn't last. Like her, Rick was simply temporarily in this country and after some time they would both move on to somewhere else and it was unlikely that this somewhere would be close.

Perhaps she should be used to it by now. As a child of an ambassador, she never stayed in one country for more than three years, so lasting friendships were rare. Especially with people as flighty as Rick Grimes.

"What's going on in that brilliant head of yours?" Rick asked, breaking her out of her thoughts.

"Nothing."

He carefully watched her expression. "Doesn't look like it."

"It's personal." She shot him a mischievous grin. "Why do you need to know what I'm thinking? It's not like I ever know what's going on in your head."

"Chaos."

"Just as I suspected," she tsked as they entered the small shop. "You plan out your delinquent behavior. I knew that spontaneity was all for show."

They ordered their food and sat in a familiar spot as they shared their meal. Rick started sharing stories of growing up on a farm while Michonne listened in awe as he recounted the time he tried to destroy his neighbor's car with his father's tractor. Apparently thirteen-year old Rick had a very bitter rivalry with his fifty-year-old neighbor.

Soon the food disappeared and they slipped into comfortable silence. Michonne was the first to stand, ready to bid her friend goodbye until their next meeting. "See you Rick."

"Bye Michonne."

"There you are chou-chou!" Winnie called as Michonne walked through the front door of Winfield House. She looked elegant in a blue cocktail dress paired with a pearl necklace and earrings. "I was looking for earlier for you to mind your brother. I didn't know you were out. Why didn't you say something?"

"I was at the park with a friend." She didn't bother telling her that it was Richmond Park and she rode the bus for an hour to get there. They currently had visitors at Winfield House. There were journalists doing a story on a day in the life of an American Ambassador. There was also a foreign dignitary and his family spending the weekend so it was nice to get away from the busy mansion before the dinner party they would be having the next day. "I told James I was leaving."

"Amare would have loved that instead of having lunch with me and the ladies," she mused. Amare had the tendency to get restless when he was home from boarding school on the weekends. "You should take him with you the next time you go. He doesn't like being cooped up and he will be able to run some of that extra energy off."

"Sure mom," she said as she headed towards the stairs. "Where is the little booger by the way?"

"I think he's having dessert." Winnie tilted her head to the side as she took in Michonne's appearance. "Your hair looks nice like that chou-chou. Very feminine."

"Thanks." She turned to face her mother as she touched the edge of her floral scarf that held her twist-out up in a curly up do.

"Before you head up, I wanted to talk to you about something."

Talk.

Lately, there was a noticeable distance between the inhabitants of Winfield House. They were a picture of modern perfection, but that's as far as it went. It was all appearances. Nobody spoke anymore. At least, not really. There were smiles, exaggerated laughter and political discussions, but there was an underlying coldness that wasn't quite there before. Michonne was often left wondering if her mother and James were having marital problems.

"What's up?"

"I was talking to the Deanna Monroe earlier and I mentioned your birthday coming up which gave me a wonderful idea," she said. "We should have a party. Eighteen is a big one. You can invite your Marymount friends and even Michael." Winnie gave her a knowing smile. She met Michael when he came to collect her for their first date and she took an instant liking to the young man. She was even more pleased when she learned of his family connections. "I'll have to talk to your father about it, but I'm sure he'll love the idea. Why wouldn't he?"

Michonne really wasn't interested in seeing Michael or pretending to like or be interested in any of the people she knew her mother would invite. "I…I don't know Mom."

"Don't worry. You'll love it." While her voice was light and cheerful there was finality in her words. "Did you get a chance to try the dress on again? It's so beautiful."

Michonne did not usually frequent the diplomatic banquets and parties, but her mother insisted that she attend this one. Even though she was required to go, she was actually looking forward to this particular reception. They would be hosting an American culture night and some of her favorite singers and actors would be in attendance.

"Yeah and it looks great," she grinned. "I'm still mad that we didn't get Beyoncé though. She's the pinnacle of American culture."

Winnie threw her head back in laughter. "You and me both sweetheart." Something or someone across the hallway caught her eye and she lifted her hand in a dainty wave. "See you at dinner, okay chou-chou? I have to show Deanna the new additions to the gardens."

Michonne trudged up the staircase that led to the bedrooms. She almost collided with a small body as she entered her own bedroom. "Amare, what are you even doing in here?" she exclaimed. "What did I tell you about hanging out in here when I'm not here?" The boy smiled sheepishly at her. "You better not be playing in my makeup again. You spilled my eyeliner everywhere the last time. I still have stains on my favorite shirt."

"I was trying to be batman," he said, defending himself. "I needed whiskers, Michie!"

"Do bats even have whiskers?"

"Yeah they do."

"Well either way, Batman doesn't have whiskers, so stay out of my eyeliner." She playfully flicked him on his forehead as she went to plop down on the edge of her bed.

"Is mascara eyeliner?" he asked innocently.

"Amare."

He followed after her, taking a seat beside her. "Mom says the guy that plays Batman is coming here tomorrow. That's so cool."

"That is cool," she agreed.

"She won't let me dress up as Batman to meet him," he pouted crossing his arms. "She's so unfair sometimes. I don't want to wear that stupid suit."

"You'll live kid." She playfully ruffled his curly dark hair. "Why are you in here by the way? Aren't you supposed to be having dessert or something."

His brow furrowed. "That was like…" He stuck his tongue out, tilting his head to the side as he thought about it. "An hour ago. And it was gross!" He shuddered at the memory. "Chef Gordon says our family is eating healthier from now on. That's just not fair. Desserts need to be sweet."

"What did he give you to eat?"

"Wheatgrass yogurt."

"I'm sure it wasn't that bad."

"It was horrible!" he declared. "I blame that Deanna lady."

"Tell you what," she said, turning to face him. "I'll help make up it up for Gordon torturing you with wheatgrass. I want something in return though."

"How are you going to do that?"

"I'll help you become Batman for the party tomorrow. Whisker's and all."

Her easily pleased brother seemed to think about it for a moment and then a wide smile spread across his face as he nodded enthusiastically. "That'll be so cool! What do I have to do?"

"Exactly as I say."

#the ambassador's daughter #greenhearts16 #richonne #richonne fanfiction #richonne fics #richonne fic #tellyoscar #greenhearts16 fics #michonne #chapter 5 #the return of michonne #twd au #richonne au

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gyrlversion · 6 years ago

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Jill Dandos murder: 20 years on, fresh witness accounts

Presenter Jill Dando (pictured above outside her home in Fulham) was murdered in 1999

The time is a little before midday on Monday, April 26, 1999. Vida Saunders is enjoying tea at a neighbour’s home when another friend comes knocking at the door. The new visitor is in a state of some agitation.

‘I could tell at once from the expression on her face that something wasn’t right,’ Mrs Saunders recalled this week. ‘I didn’t know then just how wrong it would be.’

The friend asks Mrs Saunders to accompany her to a house in the next street, Gowan Avenue. She has just seen something –— something very disturbing — as she walked past the address on her way home from the shops. Now she wants someone else to see it, too.

Nothing ever happened in their suburban enclave in Fulham, West London. At least, nothing very bad.

But that morning would be different. What had just taken place on the front step of 29 Gowan Avenue would make headlines around the world for years to come. The shock reverberates to this day.

‘I don’t think I fully grasped what I was going to see and it seems odd now, with hindsight, but I took my mug of tea with me,’ Mrs Saunders said.

A step by step account of Jill Dando’s last moments as she embarked on a shopping trip in Hammersmith before driving home

Jill Dando (left) and her fiancé Alan Farthing (right). Mr Farthing said he had held Jill’s hand while she was still warm before confirming to doctors that it was the BBC presenter

In those days, much of the white-painted Victorian frontage of 29 Gowan Avenue was screened from the street by a privet hedge and a small tree. ‘But what I saw as soon as we stepped through the front gate hit me like a physical blow.’

What she saw was the dead body of BBC television presenter Jill Dando, 37, killed only minutes earlier outside her own front door by a single gunshot to the head.

‘Jill’s body was lying at such an odd angle,’ Mrs Saunders recalled. ‘She looked like she had collapsed on the spot. The back of her head was against the front door and her chest was facing towards the pavement.

‘She was in a pool of blood, and I noticed her lips were blue and there were some small drips of blood running from her nose. I think we knew immediately that she was critically injured.

Twenty years on from the death of Jill Dando (pictured above) witnesses have revealed new testimonies

Police forensic officers at Gowan Avenue, Fulham, where TV presenter Jill Dando was murdered. Ms Dando died from a single gunshot wound to the head

‘She was still clutching a set of keys in one hand, probably her door keys or possibly her car keys. The handles of her handbag were over the other arm and her mobile phone was inside, ringing constantly.

‘Normally, I think, if you saw someone collapsed like that, your instinct would be to reach out and touch them, to try to help them and see if they are all right. But it was clear Jill wasn’t [all right].’

Mrs Saunders paused. ‘That image of Jill lying there. . . I would have visions, snapshots of it in my dreams and even when I was doing my laps when I went swimming. I couldn’t get it out of my head.

‘It has given me many sleepless nights. Of course, time moves on and memories start to fade. But talking about it again now brings it all back so vividly. It was, it is, awful.’

A leaflet which was handed out on May 4 1999 which was given out to passers-by in an effort to jog their memories and uncover new information

Six distinctive marks were found on the cartridge case (pictured above) used by the gunman who killed Jill Dando

Mrs Saunders has not spoken before about her role in the tragedy, except to the police. One can sense in her account a disbelief that she should have been caught up in the case. Because even 20 years later, the murder of Jill Dando remains one of the most shocking crimes of our times.

That Britain’s ‘most celebrated and loved’ TV presenter, ‘the nation’s sweetheart’ and the face of BBC Crimewatch, could be the victim of an execution-style killing, in broad daylight in our capital city, was extraordinary enough.

That the murder was without any clear motive and remains unsolved, despite a huge reward for information and myriad theories, has only added to the fascination.

One man was charged with and convicted of the murder. Barry George, a local loner and fantasist who had already served a prison sentence for attempted rape, was found guilty of the killing at the Old Bailey in July 2001. But his life sentence was later quashed on appeal, and at the end of his 2008 retrial, George was found not guilty.

Police search Gowan Avenue, Fulham, south west London Monday April 26, 1999

By then the trail seemed to have run cold. Or has it?

Today the Daily Mail begins an exclusive three-part reassessment of the Crimewatch presenter’s cold-blooded murder and the hunt for her killer.

Our investigations have taken us to the Balkans and across the British Isles. We are able to draw on previously unavailable police and prosecution documents and other official reports, new witness testimonies — such as that of Mrs Saunders — and interviews with detectives and legal sources involved in the two Scotland Yard investigations into the murder — as well as suspects.

Jill (pictured on holiday in the Seychelles) first got her big break in broadcasting in 1988 when she started presenting the BBC’s hourly national bulletins

We will be able to reveal some key findings of a secret police cold-case review of the murder, carried out only five years ago. We will expose the mistakes investigators made, the red herrings that were pursued — and examine the possibility of a third Jill Dando murder trial taking place, albeit more than two decades after the event.

Our new assessment will also probe the evidence against Barry George, a serial stalker of women, and the High Court’s refusal to grant him ‘miscarriage of justice’ compensation after he was cleared of the killing.

But first let us return to the fateful day itself.

April 26, 1999, dawned cloudy with a forecast of showers. But the life of Jill Wendy Dando seemed to bask in perpetual sunshine.

Born in Weston-Super-Mare in November 1961, she had followed her father and brother into local newspaper journalism. Her on-screen potential was obvious. After stints in regional news broadcasting in the South-West, her big break came in 1988 when she began a job in London presenting the BBC’s hourly national bulletins.

Viewers loved her from the start. She was a friendly celebrity, the ‘girl next door’ who bore more than a passing resemblance to Princess Diana. But unlike the Princess, Jill had a down-to-earth private life that included amateur dramatics, voluntary work in hospitals and churchgoing.

The haunting last images of Jill which were captured on CCTV just 40 minutes before she was killed

This images shows Jill leaving a store in Hammersmith before getting in her car and driving home

A devout Baptist from childhood — she was head girl at her school — Jill would become a presenter on Songs Of Praise.

Until moving to Gowan Avenue, she had shared a house in a quiet South-West London neighbourhood with her cousin, Judith.

What you saw on screen was what you met in the flesh. There was no ‘front’ to Jill Dando. And for the British public, she would become a chronicler of their everyday life at its best and worst.

In 1993 she was chosen to host the prime-time travel programme Holiday. Two years later, she took on the same role at Crimewatch, which she would present 42 times before tragedy struck and she became the story rather than the storyteller. In 1997, viewers voted her BBC Personality of the Year.

A set of CCTV images from outside the Kings Mall show Jill walking down the street with her handbag

Another images shows her walking through the shopping centre with her raincoat and bag

She was also spotted outside on the main High Street where she had been out shopping for the day

Her private life was equally serene. In November 1997 she had been introduced by a mutual friend to a consultant gynaecologist called Alan Farthing.

Mr Farthing — who would later oversee the births of Prince William’s children — was separated from his first wife. He and Jill fell ‘very deeply’ in love almost at once.

Within a month they were holidaying together in Australia. That New Year they watched the fireworks over Sydney Harbour Bridge and vowed to be there again for the Millennium.

In January 1999, two months after Mr Farthing’s divorce was finalised, they announced their engagement. Their wedding was set for September 25, 1999.

Police pictured outside the home of Jill in 1999 after a search

The couple spent almost all their time at Mr Farthing’s home in Bedford Close, Chiswick. The Gowan Avenue house was used largely as Jill’s administrative headquarters. She had only stayed there overnight twice in the weeks before the killing.

On Saturday, April 24, she went there to collect post. She noticed her fax machine had run out of ink and decided to return on the Monday to change the cartridge.

That evening, she and Mr Farthing attended a British Legion Poppy Appeal event at the Natural History Museum, which Jill was co-presenting. On Sunday Mr Farthing played golf in Stoke Poges, west of London, with a friend and Jill later joined them for lunch.

That night the couple were at home together in Chiswick. They watched the first episode of Jill’s new show, Antiques Inspectors, for which she had spent several days of the previous week filming in Dublin. The show’s launch was promoted by Jill posing in a black leather jumpsuit next to a vintage Aston Martin on the cover of the Radio Times. It was a little more risqué than her usual image, but fun.

The couple also wrote several letters. One was to Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair, where their wedding reception was due to be held. They discussed the guest list which was written in Jill’s Filofax. The same list would be used by Mr Farthing to organise her funeral.

Alan Farthing (pictured above) at the office for the Jill Dando fund in Piccadilly, London

The next day was to be the start of a two-week period at home for Jill, after months away filming Holiday and Antiques Inspectors.

She had an appointment for the first fitting of her wedding dress and planned to visit a stationer about the invitations.

Mr Farthing had an 8am meeting. He told Jill to sleep in but, typically, his fiancée insisted on getting up and making him breakfast in bed. He then left the house at 7.25, and rain was already falling.

Before they parted, Jill told him: ‘Today I’m going to be a lady who lunches.’ She had a charity luncheon engagement at the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner, but she didn’t make it. He would not see her alive again.

Records on Jill’s mobile phone show she made a number of calls on the day of her death

The last four hours of Jill’s life can be pieced together through eyewitness accounts, CCTV footage, till receipts and phone records. Only the last moments remain a mystery.

Records for her mobile phone and the landline at her fiance’s home show she made and received a number of calls that morning. All the people she spoke to were traced by police. No one she was in contact with in her last few hours sensed that she was worried. At worst she sounded ‘preoccupied’, but then she had so much to do.

She left Mr Farthing’s home just after 10am in her dark blue BMW convertible. The top was up because of the weather. She stopped to get petrol and milk at a garage on the A4, before parking in Hammersmith, West London, to visit the Kings Mall shopping centre.

While in Hammersmith she visited Ryman the stationers and bought fax paper. She bought other fax material from Dixons and The Link stores. Finally, at 11.01am she walked through the shopping mall towards the exit.

At 11.04am she was driving her car west along King Street. The last sighting of the BMW on CCTV was at 11.10am, when she drove from Winslow Road into Manbre Road, a rat-run route to avoid congestion on the Fulham Palace Road. Extensive analysis of all the CCTV footage that morning shows no evidence that she was being followed.

Sarah Pusey, a Customs and Excise surveillance expert, was also out in her car. Now a 53-year-old mother of two, Ms Pusey told us how she became one of the last people to have a friendly interaction with the TV presenter.

‘I was in a queue of traffic going towards Hammersmith,’ she said. ‘She was in a soft-top car coming the other way. I’m quite nosy. But you know when you’re in traffic and stop next to someone, you look.

‘I remember thinking “that’s Jill Dando” and smiling across at her. She smiled back.’

Ms Pusey, who has not spoken before about the encounter except to the police, was so thrilled she phoned a friend. Mobile phone records show her call was made at 11.13am. By the time she got home, the television news was already reporting Jill’s death.

Jill had told her fiance she would cook dinner for them that evening. Between 11.20am and 11.25am she visited Copes fishmongers on Fulham Road, where she bought two fillets of Dover sole.

According to a member of staff, she seemed jolly but was in a hurry, remarking that her car was parked just around the corner (in Dancer Road).

Jill’s mobile phone records showed she made four calls during her shopping trip that morning. They were to a friend, her agent’s assistant, 192 directory inquiries and the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End. She also received two calls, including one from the theatre’s box office.

A booking clerk spoke to Jill, confirming her tickets to see the hit Abba musical, Mamma Mia!. Jill was said to have sounded ‘excited and bubbly’. She told the booking clerk the tickets were a present for her fiancé, whose birthday was approaching.

That last phone call she took was at 11.23am. From background noises heard by the caller, she was probably still inside the fishmongers. She had less than ten minutes to live.

The next phone call to her mobile was timed at 11.31am. This time she didn’t answer and the call went to voicemail. It is likely that this was the ringing Mrs Saunders heard when she saw Jill lying dead on her doorstep.

Having left Dancer Road, Jill had driven, via Munster Road, the 600 yards to her home in Gowan Avenue. After that, her final moments can only be guessed at from fragments of sound and glimpses of a mystery man, undoubtedly her killer.

Jill’s next-door neighbour, Richard Hughes, said he heard two characteristic bleeps from a BMW car alarm, then footsteps. He told police that after 30 seconds he heard a scream, as if Jill knew the person, as if she was surprised, ‘a startled scream’.

He did not hear a shot. But when he heard a gate clang, he went to the window and saw a man walking away briskly. Another neighbour saw a similar-looking man ‘running’ along the pavement.

Nigel Jenkins, a former session guitarist for Cliff Richard, was at home five doors from Jill’s house, practising chords. Mr Jenkins, who has not spoken before except to the police, told us he heard a ‘bizarre high-pitched noise’.

‘It was the sound of a woman crying out,’ he said. ‘It was like a bark or a yelp — an odd, disturbing noise and I immediately thought: “I don’t like the sound of that.” He heard no shot and did not investigate further until the air ambulance arrived.

Now we return to the testimony of Vida Saunders. It confirms the blunder which, we can reveal, seriously undermined the police investigation before it had even begun.

Mrs Saunders’s friend, who first saw Jill’s body, was a neighbour called Helen Doble.

‘There used to be a GPs’ surgery a few doors up (from Jill’s home) and I ran there while Helen called 999 on her mobile,’ Mrs Saunders recalled. ‘I ran back with the receptionist, who took one look and said she thought Jill was dead and we shouldn’t touch anything.

‘I just stood there staring at my cup of tea, which I had put down on top of the garden wall, and everything went into slow motion. There was suddenly so much activity around us as the first emergency services arrived.’ This was around 11.50am.

‘Shortly after, we were escorted into her neighbours’ house, where we were interviewed for what seemed like hours. I recall an air ambulance landing in the local primary school playground.

‘While we were in the house I would intermittently look out of the window to see what was going on next door. The paramedics seemed to be working hard to try to resuscitate Jill.

‘When I saw them carry her body away on a stretcher, her face seemed pink again and I remember feeling relieved because I thought that they had managed to save her.

‘Later, I realised the change in her face from blue to normal again was because they had pumped oxygen around her body in what turned out to be a futile attempt to save her.’

Jill Dando was probably dead before she hit the ground. Mrs Saunders’s recollection confirms that everyone who saw her before the emergency services arrived realised she was dead. Yet extensive efforts to revive her were made at the scene by paramedics and members of the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service.

As a result, Jill did not reach Charing Cross Hospital — only three minutes away by road — until 12.30pm. The attempted resuscitation continued there for another half an hour before she was declared dead at 1.05pm.

The Mail can reveal that an official police report blames the resuscitation efforts for creating a major, perhaps insurmountable, obstacle to future detective work.

Jill’s clothes were ripped off to perform cardiac massage and the ground about was ‘trampled’ by those trying to save her. The body was not left in situ. Vital clues were bound to have been lost.

The unusual lack of forensic evidence at the crime scene would become a hallmark of the Dando case. And it was not absent because of the cunning of the killer, as we shall see in Part 2.

If the victim had not been ‘the nation’s sweetheart’, would so much effort have been made to rescue someone who was obviously past help?

If so, it was no help to the men tasked with catching her killer.

In 1999, Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell was a senior investigating officer in the Met’s murder squad, based in Kensington, West London.

He had never met Jill Dando, though she had made an appeal on Crimewatch for one of his old murder inquiries and they had attended the same lunch at Scotland Yard, where she had spoken of her fears of a ‘hit’ being carried out on a Crimewatch presenter.

Campbell gave a detailed interview about the investigation to the Mail in the spring of 2001. Today we can draw on previously unpublished extracts from his contemporaneous recollection.

He and his team had been on call for a week but, with no murders to investigate, he had become fidgety. When he was told by a colleague that reports were coming through that a woman had been ‘stabbed’ in Fulham, Campbell decided to take a sergeant and go to see for himself. He did not even wait to hear if the stabbing was fatal.

Bad news travelled fast. As he was leaving the station, he got a call from his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Edwards. Campbell recalled: ‘He said: “Have you heard anything about this stabbing incident?”

‘I said I had and was on my way. He said: “Well, let me tell you something . . . there’s a suggestion it’s Jill Dando.”

‘I remember thinking: “Jill Dando stabbed? Who on earth would have done that?”

Campbell arrived in Gowan Avenue just as the ambulance carrying Jill’s body departed.

Within five minutes, his officers would discover a fired cartridge case on the doorstep and a single yellow bullet which had passed through the victim’s head, hit her front door and fallen to the ground.

This was no stabbing, then. Nor was it a street robbery gone wrong — Jill’s watch and jewellery had not been taken. They were dealing with something more unusual. Scenes-of-crime officers collected several exhibits including a fob and BMW key, a yellow metal earring, a Russell & Bromley bag and contents, fish in a white plastic bag, and a black leather handbag.

Then the rain began to fall again, adding to the difficulties of the murder squad.

DCI Campbell took shelter from the drizzle in the porch of a neighbouring house, having ordered his men to cover the house front, path and road nearby with plastic to stop further evidence contamination or loss. ‘I remember thinking: “How far could he [the killer) have got now?” ’

Later that day he attended the post-mortem examination. The respected forensic pathologist Dr Iain West found an entry wound behind the top of Jill’s left ear and an exit wound above the right ear. The impression of the muzzle of the murder weapon could be seen around the entry wound.

Dr West concluded that the gun had been pressed firmly against Jill’s head, acting as an effective silencer.

Jill’s right forearm had a small bruise on it, which may have been caused by her killer. However, there did not appear to be any defence injuries, nor was there any sign of a struggle at the scene — prompting police to conclude that she was taken by surprise from behind as she was about to unlock her door.

The bullet had damaged the lower part of the door, suggesting that Jill was crouched or had been pushed down when she was shot.

Her fiancé, Alan Farthing, was also at the hospital. He recalled to the Mail a few weeks after the murder how he had been called by Jill’s agent, Jon Roseman, at around 1pm: ‘The first question he asked was if Jill was with me,’ he said. ‘He had been contacted by the Press asking for his comments on reports that Jill had been attacked in her street. I asked if he’d tried her mobile.’

The terrible truth began to clarify. Mr Farthing was taken to Charing Cross Hospital: ‘They took me down what seemed like the longest corridor in the world to the casualty department and to a side room, where Jill was lying.

‘She had a towel wrapped around her head as if she had just got out of the bath, though it wasn’t covering all her hair. I could see it was Jill’s hair. She was lying in a hospital gown, looking peaceful. I held her hand, which was still warm, and confirmed to the officer it was Jill.’

The consultant in charge of the casualty department came to talk to him. ‘He explained what had been done to try to resuscitate her, but made it plain it had been impossible. She had not been clinically alive on arrival or at any stage during the attempted resuscitation.

‘As I was being taken back down this everlasting corridor, I was thinking: ‘“Why did something like this happen? How could it happen?”’

The same questions were being asked by DCI Campbell. He addressed a meeting of the Dando murder team at 11pm that night in the incident room next to Kensington police station. It did not break up until 2am.

They knew by then they were dealing with a ‘phenomenon’ and that the investigation would be the biggest of their careers. But they already faced serious problems. The crime scene had been ‘chaotic’ and the witness evidence so far was of ‘little quality’.

‘We had to ask whether she had been killed because of who she was or because of where she was,’ DCI Campbell recalled.

Perhaps only one person knew why Jill Dando had died. And that was the man seen fleeing along Gowan Avenue.

To find him, the murder squad would have to weigh a number of motives and in the end examined 1,393 potential suspects.

What made her death especially complex was the Crimewatch connection. Had she been the victim of an underworld hit?

But one of the most popular and persistent theories Operation Oxborough had to investigate was that Jill Dando had been murdered on the orders of the Serbian warlord and underworld boss Željko Ražnatović, aka Arkan.

In April 1999, British warplanes were taking part in Nato bombing of Yugoslavia in order to halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serbian forces in the province of Kosovo.

Earlier that month, Jill Dando had fronted a BBC1 broadcast appealing for funds to help the refugees. Two days before her death, the headquarters of the Serbian equivalent of the BBC was hit by a Nato missile, killing 17 staff.

On Monday we will meet the Serb ‘hitman’ who was accused of being the killer in Gowan Avenue. Tracked down by the Mail, he has spoken for the first time about his part in the Dando affair.

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