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The Golden Fairy – Part 05

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Translator: Kell

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Roxane the fortune-teller.

A wrinkly old woman, rumored to be 80 to 90 years old, lived in the house with her Indian servant and Arabian maid. Last night, when her granddaughter came to visit her, she was killed.

“Hold on a minute. Why did she have an Indian servant and an Arabian maid?” Victorique asked.

“Apparently, she liked exotic servants. She was a knowledgeable old lady, and she could speak conversational Hindi and Arabic. Oh, the maid only understands Arabic, but the servant is fluent in English and French.”

Roxane was shot dead in her room that night. The bullet pierced her left eye and killed her instantly.

Who did it was unknown. People who were in the house that night—the servant, the maid, and the granddaughter—were all suspected of the crime, but the investigation was not going well.

“Why is that?” Victorique asked.

“Well, I think the door and windows were locked from the inside, and they couldn’t find the murder weapon, a gun. All three of them denied killing her.”

“Hmm…” Victorique looked at Kazuya, urging him to continue.

He squirmed under her gaze. That was all the information he got from his conversation with Ms. Cecile. Besides, even the teacher didn’t seem to know anything more than that. He couldn’t give Victorique any more information even if he wanted to.

Suddenly, footsteps came from the entrance of the library. Kazuya looked down the railing and spotted Grevil de Blois, the great inspector that Ms. Cecile was talking about, entering gallantly.

Him again…

Kazuya poked Victorique on the shoulder. “You can ask the guy with the weird hairdo for the rest.”

“…Hmm?” Victorique’s face turned a little grim.

Inspector Blois stepped into the elevator. The metal cage clanged as it rose up.

Two young men wearing hunting caps—the inspector’s men—skipped into the library, holding hands, and waited downstairs. They looked up, waving their free hands.

They worked at the local police station, the same station that forcibly appointed Grevil de Blois, a young male aristocrat with a penchant for crimes, as an inspector. Grevil always dragged them along in his investigations.

As Kazuya pulled his eyes away from the men, the elevator arrived with a loud clang. Inspector Blois stepped out onto a small hall in front of the garden.

A strange-looking man was standing beyond the lush greenery and the soft light pouring from the skylight.

He wore a three-piece suit with a fancy ascot tie. A pair of fine silver cuffs gleamed on his wrist. He was the picture of a fashionable man. But there was something off about him.

His hairstyle. For some reason, he had his thick, blonde hair into the shape of a drill. It could very well be used as a weapon.

Arms folded, he leaned against the door frame at an angle, and spoke. “Hey there, Kujou!”

“…Hello.”

Inspector Blois approached the boy. He didn’t spare glance at Victorique. Victorique herself was looking the other way, smoking her pipe.

“I once used my brilliant mind to save your life,” the inspector said. “Ah, that was a tough case. Takes me back…”

“I seem to recall Victorique solving it, though.”

“I thought I’d talk to you about a case. For some reason, when I tell you about a case, the mind of this great inspector clears up.”

Kazuya was once a suspect in a murder case he happened upon on his way to school, and was almost arrested by Inspector Blois. The one who saved him while he wondered whether he would be deported or tried for murder was a mysterious beautiful girl he met in this garden, Victorique.

Of course, Victorique didn’t help Kazuya out of concern. Her Fountain of Wisdom determined the case to be fragments of chaos that needed to be reconstructed, so she ascertained the truth. In fact, even after explaining her reasoning, she didn’t use it as a basis to insist on his innocence. Kazuya explained Victorique’s deduction on his own to the inspector and cleared his name.

The memory still made him shudder.

Since then, Inspector Blois, having gotten a taste for it, visited the garden whenever he came across a difficult case. While he told Kazuya the details, Victorique would listen and reconstruct the fragments of chaos. He would then go back down and solve the case.

In other words, he was not a great inspector or anything. He was simply counting on a human cheat sheet for help.

“Just talk to Victorique, Inspector. I wouldn’t understand a thing anyway.”

“What? There’s only the two of us here.”

Appalled, Kazuya glanced back and forth between the two.

Apparently, Victorique and Inspector Blois knew each other since before the first case. However, both of them never made eye contact with each other, and the inspector seemed to resent the fact that he had to ask Victorique for help. He could just not come to her, but apparently he had his reasons.

Victorique lifted her head. “Go ahead, Kujou. I will read, and you two can keep talking. I might talk to myself sometimes, but don’t worry about it. If what I say turned out to be a hint, it’s none of my business.”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

“All right, let’s talk.” Inspector Blois rolled up his sleeves. “Hey, look at me.”

Kazuya gave up and decided to listen.

Inspector Blois drew out a pipe from his pocket and put it into his mouth in the most imperious manner possible. Kazuya watched as white smoke rose from his mouth and pip and disappeared into his drill-shaped hair.

Victorique was still facing the other way, smoking a pipe herself.

After exhaling a puff of smoke, the inspector spoke. “A fortune-teller named Roxane was murdered last night. The people in the mansion had finished dinner and were unwinding on their own. The fortune-teller was resting in her room, which was located on the first floor. The manservant said he was outside her room, returning the hares back to their shed.”

“…Hares?” Victorique asked.

Inspector Blois gave a jerk, then nodded toward Kazuya. “This fortune-teller kept several hares and one hound. Sometimes she would set the hares loose and let the hound kill them. I don’t know why, but apparently there are two kinds of hares, one is killed and the other is raised with care and live a full life. I don’t know the criteria for classifying them, though. She was a strange lady, apparently.”

“I see.” Victorique said.

Even though they were practically having a conversation, they didn’t look at each other’s faces. Kazuya was stuck in the middle—not that it was anything new, of course.

“The maid was in the next room, cleaning. Her granddaughter was upstairs, dancing with a record playing loudly. After hearing a gunshot, everyone gathered in the hallway of the house. Worried about the fortune-teller, the maid knocked on the door and called out to her, but there was no answer. The door was locked. The manservant panicked and suggested breaking down the door with an axe. The door was made of a light, thin material that could easily be opened and closed by an old lady in a wheelchair, so he thought a swing of the axe should do the trick. But the granddaughter objected firmly. She said she didn’t want anything destroyed because the house would be hers after her grandmother’s death. An outrageous thing to say, if you ask me. The manservant backed down, but the maid, who was a foreigner and didn’t understand what the granddaughter was saying, brought a self-defense gun from the next room and shot the lock of the door before anyone could stop her. Enraged, the granddaughter lunged at the maid, and the two women got into a scuffle. In the meantime, the Indian servant entered the room by himself. Then, according to him, the fortune-teller was lying on the floor near her wheelchair. She had been shot through her left eye and died instantly. The window was also locked from the inside. The murder weapon was not found.”

“Hmm.”

“I have absolutely no clue what happened.”

“Huh. I see,” Victorique said. She gave a big yawn, looking extremely bored, and stretched out her slender arms like a lazy cat. And then another yawn.

Inspector Blois stared at Victorique’s face with burning hatred, then turned his eyes away. “Well, I know who did it, though,” he said. “The servant who was outside the room is very suspicious. But I don’t have any evidence…”

“The maid is your culprit, Grevil,” Victorique mumbled in the middle of a yawn.

The inspector froze and looked at Victorique in shock, but quickly pulled his eyes away and turned back to Kazuya.

“What do you mean by that?!”

“How should I know?! Stop shaking me!”

“The maid can only speak Arabic,” Victorique said in a low voice. “And only the fortune-teller could understand her.”

“Huh…”

Kazuya and Inspector Blois turned their heads to Victorique, the latter still holding the former’s shoulder.

“What do you mean, Victorique?” Kazuya asked.

“Elementary. I wouldn’t even call it a fragment of chaos. Listen carefully. The maid knocked on the door and shouted in Arabic. There was no answer, so she went to get a gun from the next room. She then shot the lock on the door to destroy it.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Only the fortune-teller and the maid herself knew what she said exactly.”

Kazuya turned to face Victorique. “What did she say, then?”

“Something like this, perhaps. Though I don’t know which of the two she made the bad guy, the granddaughter or the manservant. ‘Your life is in danger. You heard the gunshot just now, didn’t you? Get away from the window and come near the door. I’ll help you.'”

Kazuya and the inspector shared looks.

“What? Not sure I follow… Hmm…”

While the inspector mulled things over, Kazuya spoke. “So… the fortune-teller was still alive then?”

“Of course.” Victorique nodded firmly.

She was about to bury herself in her books once more when she raised her head, noticing something.

Kazuya and the inspector were staring at her with puzzled looks. Sunlight streaming from the skylight shone on their heads. Tree branches and Inspector Blois’ hair swayed as a gentle breeze blew past.

After a moment of silence, Victorique yawned loudly. Realizing that none of them understood what she was getting at, she wearily added, “Do I need to explain more?”

“Yes. More, more,” Kazuya said. “Please, Victorique.”

“In short, it wasn’t the first shot that killed the fortune-teller. That one was meant to mislead. The maid shot and killed her in front of witnesses. She tricked the fortune-teller by telling her to move closer to the door for her safety, and shot her together with the door lock. The bullet hit her left eye because she was probably trying to peep through the keyhole. But it was the gun’s muzzle that was on the other side.”

“Wait a minute…” Grevil said. “What about the first shot, then? I mean, Kujou.”

“I’m not the one making the deduction. It’s Victorique.”

“The first gunshot…” Victorique yawned once more. “…came from the next room. She did it to frighten the fortune-teller and gather the people in the house. I don’t know where she was shooting at, though. Check the next room. I’m sure you’ll find a fresh bullet hole.”

“…I see.” Inspector Blois stood up.

As if nothing had happened, he pulled and adjusted the cuffs of his three-piece suit, fixed his drill-shaped hair with his hand, and scurried toward the elevator, as though running away from something.

Furious, Kazuya called to him. “Inspector!”

“…What?” He turned around.

“No ‘thank you’ to Victorique? She just helped you with your investigation.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

His face was the very picture of arrogance. Raising his chin and squaring his shoulders, he stared straight at Kazuya. Slowly, he took the pipe out of his mouth and blew a puff of smoke to the boy’s face.

Kazuya coughed.

“Kujou, I simply came here to check how the asian boy I saved is doing,” the inspector said as he walked away. “I’m glad to see you doing well. Ah, but such strange things coming out of your mouth.”

“…Grevil,” Victorique called softly, raising her head.

Already inside the elevator, Inspector Blois turned around with an anxious look on his face. He stared fearfully at the tiny Victorique as if he were looking at something mighty and powerful.

It was a bizarre sight, as if the role of adult and child had switched.

Kazuya quietly glanced at them both.

“The mystery behind the killer’s motive should be hidden in what she shot first.”

“…What are you talking about?!”

“Figure that one out yourself, Grevil.”

Clang.

The elevator started to move. Inspector Blois’ handsome face twisted in frustration. The metal cage descended, taking him back to ground.

Yawning, Victorique lay down on the floor like a cat and began rolling around.

“It was over in an instant,” she grumbled. “The boredom is back. Ah…”

“Hey, Victorique.” Kazuya said, clearly upset. Victorique, of course, did not care about his mood one bit. She just kept rolling around over the books. “That inspector with the weird hairdo will probably take all the credit again. Even though he gets help from you all the time.”

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

He nodded firmly. “I hate unfairness. Besides, he’s got a nasty attitude for someone asking for help.”

Victorique was still rolling on the floor, seemingly uninterested.

“Oh, by the way,” Kazuya added. “Do you two know each other? You don’t seem to get along very well…”

She didn’t answer. He gave up, heaving a sigh.

Abruptly, she jolted up. “Dance for me, Kujou.”

“…What?!”

“Stop sitting around and get up. Then dance. Right now.”

“Why?!”

“To stave off my boredom,” she said with a nod, as if it was the most obvious thing.

“No. I’m leaving! Uhm, afternoon classes are about to start, so…”

“Kujou.”

Green eyes bore at him, freezing him in place. He felt like a frog under a snake’s stare. She blew smoke on his face, and he coughed again.

“Oh, come on!”

“Hurry up, Kujou.” Her glassy eyes were fastened on him. “Dance.”

“…Yes, ma’am.”

Digging into his memories, Kazuya began doing a dance that people did during summer festivals in his hometown. As the son of a military family, he had never been one to dance, sing, or do anything frivolous.

“Hmm. What kind of a dance is that?”

“It’s called the Bon-Odori¹. Wanna try it?”

“Absolutely not. Ah, so bored.”

“You’re so mean, you know that?”

“I think I’ll take a nap…”

Victorique’s sigh echoed throughout the garden.

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