Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroshitsuji or its characters, the same goes with ideas that originate from another manga/anime/game/book, etc.
Chapter Four: Information Gathering
"...So, where are we," Lau piped up as they stood outside a...peculiar building.
It was a tall building that was in between two others with tannish-yellow bricks. On its front was a rectangular sign, which read "Undertaker" in black font. The purple sign was embellished with a golden-yellow lining and a skull sat in the middle on the top of the sign. Cobwebs were on the projecting corner of the building. Along the front of the building, a coffin rested beside the door, yellow flag and a tombstone rested on the other side of the wall.
"If you didn't know, then what was all that about," Madam Red questioned before turning to her nephew. "And why are you familiar with this kind of place!?"
"This funeral parlor is run by an acquaintance of my lord's," Sebastian informed her while Grell — as they learned the other butler's name was — tried to calm down his employer.
"The Undertaker," she read from the sign, curiosity in her voice, as the raven butler opened the door for the group to enter.
The interior of the funeral parlor consisted of a decent-sized, though dark, room. Coffins were strewn about, some with lids on them and some without, and there was an unlit chandelier hanging from the ceilings. Shelves that held various assortments — most of which they probably didn't want to know what those things were — were lined up along the inside walls, and a desk sat in front of the far wall.
"If we're looking for answers, this is the place," Ciel told his aunt as he walked inside, followed by his servant and other noble company (plus the other two butlers). "Are you there, Undertaker?"
"He-he, he-he~ Welcome~ I thought I'd be seeing you before long," someone suddenly said, chuckling/cackling every now and then. They heard a noise and saw a hand moving aside the lid to a coffin behind them. "My lord, it's so lovely to see you~ Do I finally have the pleasure of fitting you for one of me coffins today," the person suddenly asked, grinning as the coffin lid was completely opened. Angelina, Lau, and Grell completely freaked out while the last of the three was on the floor.
Undertaker was a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties to (possibly) early-thirties. He was tall — around six-foot-one — and had a lean, fairly muscular build and a pale skin tone that seemed to have a grayish tint to it. He had long, silver hair that ended a couple inches past his knees with a single braid and his long bangs covered his eyes. He had extensive black fingernails and a noticeable scar across his face, neck, and left pinky finger. He wore a long, black robe with gray trimming, black pants crossed with black buckles and black boots secured by black buckles, and a gray scarf was strapped across his chest and knotted by the hip. He also wore an incredibly lengthy top hat that had a black sash extending down from the top, an emerald ring on his left index finger, black beads around his neck, and a chain of lockets secured over his left shoulder.
"I didn't come here to play; I wanted to—" The boy was cut off when the funeral director raised a hand to his face before pulling back again.
"No need ta say; I'm already aware, very well aware. With one look~ I can tell what's on your mind," he said in his strange way of speaking. "One of my recent customers was a bit unusual, shall we say. I helped though; I made her look beautiful again," he informed almost giddily, his hands close to his face before they were hidden by his sleeves again.
"I would like the details, please," Ciel requested politely.
"Please take a seat first, I'll go make tea," the...eccentric man told them.
'Sit where…?' was the thought running through the minds of everyone, sans Ariel who knocked against the closed coffin nearest to her. This earned her odd looks from everyone, except Undertaker and Vincent.
"Wha-what are you doing, Lady Vega," Ciel asked hesitantly, only to earn an arched eyebrow in return. He knew that look; it was the 'are-you-seriously-asking-me-that-question' look.
"Which would you rather sit on? An empty coffin or one with a dead body," she asked rhetorically before sitting down on the closed lid, apparently judging it to be free of a corpse.
"Ah~ Countess of Vega, it's been a long time since you've visited," Undertaker addressed, and the others could've sworn that they heard a slight undertone of fondness in the funeral director's voice.
"It's only been a couple months," she replied, giving a polite smile.
A few minutes later, after everyone was situated, everyone had a...beaker of tea, though all three butlers and Ariel had politely declined. Grell, Sebastian, and Vincent were standing by their respective masters; Ciel was sitting next to Ariel, not wanting to take a chance of sitting on a coffin with a body in it; and Lau and Madam Red were sitting on coffins closer to the door, still nervous around the strange funeral director.
"Now then, you wanted to know about Jack the Ripper," Undertaker asked rhetorically, opening a jar that contained bone-shaped cookies. "Everyone's been scared because of this disturbance...but this isn't the first time I've handled this kind of thing," he said, munching on one of the treats.
"Isn't this the first time? What do you mean," the former Baroness inquired, apparently having not listened the man's words from earlier.
"It's happened before, a case where prostitutes were killed," he graciously clarified for her before extending his hand that held the jar of cookies to the two younger nobles. "Do you want some," he asked the both of them.
"Don't want any," the young Phantomhive told him, leaning a bit further away from the man, while Vega politely thanked him and accepted one of the cookies, munching on it silently.
"In fact, the way they were killed was very similar too," Undertaker continued after retracting his hand. "But in the beginning, the police didn't think much of these cases. Though the murdered prostitutes all had something in common."
"Something in common," Ciel echoed.
"...What is it," Sebastian asked in a polite tone.
"Well now, I wonder what, I wonder what it is indeed," he said with his version of the 'I-know-something-you-don't-and-I'm-quite-proud-of-it' tone as he closed the cookie jar. "Is it bothering you," he asked them.
"I see now," Lau spoke up, "so the funeral parlor is only your cover business. How much is it for information," he inquired, only to lean back when the man was suddenly in his face.
Knowing what was about to happen, Ariel moved further away from the young boy's side as to not get involved/dragged into the ridiculousness of the situation.
"I have no need for the queen's coins; there's only one thing that I want from you!" The silver-haired man turned towards Ciel, his eyes seeming to glow with excitement before he was in front of the Earl. "Please~ my lord! Give it to me and I'll tell you anything," he pleaded, pulling back. "Give me the extraordinary gift of true laughter! Just one joke and all me information is yours," he said, hugging himself, swaying, and giggling excessively.
"Lunatic…" the Queen's Guard Dog muttered under his breath.
"Leave it to my, my lord." They turned their attention to the mafia leader. "Here is my joke — it's a classic: on which side does a tiger have the most stripes? On the outside!" However, no one found anything remotely funny, only staring blankly at the man. "Get it? Ha ha? Heh, heh…?"
Failure number one.
"My turn," Angelina declared, stepping forward. "I live for gossip, so this story's going to make you laugh so hard you'll simply curl up and die," she stated, smiling before jumping into her story. Already expecting something, Sebastian covered Ciel's ears while Vincent covered Ariel's. "So Alice's bow gave her the most extraordinary **** for her **** birthday. It was so ******* wide ***** ******with thick veins running down the ******—"
One hour later, both Madam Red and Lau had what looked to be hospital masks with red "X"s tapped over their mouths.
"Now, my lord, it seems like you're the only one left," Undertaker said, fingers interlaced as he grinned at the young nobleman. He was completely unaffected by the scathing glare Madam Red was sending him. He then turned towards the white-clad noblewoman, who stuck out in the dark surroundings. "Unless you would like to try, Lady Vega or Butler Valentine," he said in an almost conversational-like tone.
She merely smiled as her butler politely declined. "Maybe another time, Undertaker," she also declined.
He then turned his attention back to the Earl. "I've been nice to help you out so many times in the past, and I had also given you a special discount last time so I'm not gonna do it again."
Ciel scowled darkly.
A quiet sigh came from behind him, the Earl turning to see Sebastian stepping up. "It can't be helped," the butler commented.
"Sebastian?"
"Everyone, please wait outside," he said, tightening his gloves before looking towards them seriously. "No matter what happens, do not attempt to listen to this."
Like the man — Demon, really — requested, they moved outside for a while, simply standing there in front of the closed door; however, Demon or not, Sebastian didn't know that Ariel and Vincent could still hear through the door.
About three seconds later, they could all hear Undertaker's sudden burst of laughter. It was quite loud, enough to cause the building to shake and for the sign to fall to the ground in front of them. Even the two from the Vega household had slight grins on their faces from what they heard, though they disappeared before anyone could see the smirks/grins.
The door opened, revealing the butler with a smiling face as if nothing had happened. "Please do come back in now; I believe he'll tell us everything we want to know."
As the group stepped back in, they saw Undertaker slumped over a coffin, a wide grin on his face as he still tried to control his giggling.
"Oh my, I've just seen the face of ultimate bliss~" he said to himself, giggling again every once and a while.
"What did you do to him," Ciel asked from where he stood.
"Come, continue...gu fu...whatever you want is fine...gu he he…"
Once everything had settled down again, they returned to sitting on the coffin lids, beakers of tea in their hands — though the same four people still politely declined.
"Actually...I always thought that weren't enough...'guests' gu fu…" the funeral director said a little too gleefully in some of their opinions.
"...Not enough," the Demon butler echoed, not really sure what to make of that comment.
"Internal organs, of course," he answered happily. "Don't you think that the eternally sleeping 'guests' that lay in coffins are so cute? My hobby is to take out the organs for research," he stated, much to the horror of most of the nobles as they looked down at the beakers in their hands.
"This could've stored a kidney before, right," Lau asked rhetorically, a sleeved hand over his mouth as he quickly set the beaker aside. "A criminal could've given it to a loan shark…"
"It could've come from the slums of China," the silver-haired man said, much to the mafia leader's ire, before getting back on topic. "It's an interesting pattern I'm seeing these days; I often get customers who are incomplete, heh."
"Incomplete," Sebastian inquired.
"That prostitute isn't a whole woman anymore; the uterus is missing, which is quite...odd," he replied, holding a body that had clearly been cut into and everything...if it wasn't fake. Who knew with the funeral director? "The killer makes a big mess of da body, but that particular part is always presumptively excised."
"He did it on a road that was public but not high traffic," the raven butler commented as the silver-haired man set the — possibly fake — body down. "Wouldn't an amateur have a difficult time carrying out such a complicated procedure quickly enough?"
"You're a clever one, butler! That is exactly what I was thinking," the man said, walking forward and stopping behind Ariel. Placing a hand on her shoulder and leaning down, he began to explain. "ya see, if he had to act within such a short time, he would slit the throat with a sharp weapon," he told them, using that hand to make a dragging motion over the base of her neck. "Then he rips into 'er right in the stomach," he continued, using his other hand to make another cutting motion across her stomach, "and takes her precious womanly part.
"From the look of the culprit's work," Undertaker continued, "that cruel accuracy definitely wasn't carried out by a normal citizen. It had to be someone experienced." He kept his arms wrapped around Ariel the whole time, but she didn't seem to mind and Vincent knew the man wouldn't do anything to hurt her. Undertaker then extended one arm and poked the young Phantomhive in the cheek, still never really letting go of Ariel. "You should've been able to figure that out too, Earl. It's very likely that the murderer is an expert. Maybe if he knew you and Lady Vega were here, it could lure him out." He drew back, finally releasing Ariel from his embrace. "There'll be more slain, I'm certain. Sadistic killers like 'dis one don't stop until someone makes 'em. Will you stop him? Can you sniff him out? Like a good little Guard Dog," the man asked Ciel, grinning like he always had.
"The world of darkness has the world of darkness' rules. He wouldn't murder random people for no reason. There must be an influence manipulating him from behind," the young boy stated as Sebastian helped put his coat back on. "I am bound by the honor of my family — I eliminate any threat the queen asks me to...by any means I find necessary."
"Lord Phantomhive, I'll catch up to you in a few minutes," Ariel said as the group started to head out the door. Seeing the look on her butler's face, she gave a slight smile. "Vincent, you may stay if you so wish," she allowed.
"Very well. Just don't take too long," Ciel replied, missing Sebastian's interested and slightly suspicious glance towards the two.
As soon as the group had left the building, Ariel gained a small, truly genuine smile while a knowing gleam entered her eyes. "You didn't tell them quite everything you knew, did you," she asked.
He giggled, sounding like a madman, but they were unaffected by his actions. "I should've expected that you of all people would be able to tell. It seems I've never been able to hide things from you~"
"I've seen the corpses of several of the women," she told him. "While the killer is someone with medical skills, most likely a well-trained doctor who works at one of London's hospitals, there are other wounds that suggest someone else was there. However, upon closer inspection, some of these wounds scraped the bones."
"True, but where are you going with this," he asked, knowing that she was on the right track.
"The precision and detail of the cuts of the medically-trained one suggests that one of the killers is a woman," she continued, noting that his grin seemed to widen. That meant that she was getting closer. "However, the cuts that scrape the bone couldn't have been made by the same person; not only are the cuts messier and drawn out, but a woman couldn't have the force to scrape the bone as deeply as these cuts did. In fact, no Human could do this, am I right?"
There was a moment of quiet before Undertaker burst out in laughter, causing the group in the carriage to wonder what in the world was going on.
"You've already figured out half of the case on your own, as expected," he commended, fondness in his voice yet again. "Are you going to tell the Earl about your deductions?"
The thoughtful look turned to a mischievous smirk. "Now where would be the fun in that, Undertaker? The hunt would end too early should that happen, especially with that butler of his," she replied before embracing the funeral director. "Goodbye, Undertaker. I promise that I'll visit again sometime soon," she said.
"Do keep yourself safe, little Lioness," Undertaker told her as the two left his parlor.
"What was all that about, Ariel," Madam Red asked as soon as she joined them in the carriage, sitting next to Vincent and Sebastian while Ciel sat next to Lau and Madam Red.
"Nothing of much importance," the younger woman dismissed as they started to head back to the town estate with Grell driving the carriage. 'Sebastian had brought up a good point that they may have missed while in the parlor — since the murders happened in the late hours of night, the streets would've been pitch-black, so there would be a question that should naturally appear: how could the perpetrators, no matter how skilled, pull off such an act while getting away without anyone's notice? The natural explanation would be that people normally don't, and normally can't, train their eyesight to see perfectly in the dark, and anyone in the area would notice them if the murderer was carrying a lamp or candle,' Ariel thought. 'However, the only non-Human that I've seen so far is Ciel's butler, and he couldn't have committed the murders since he's tied to Ciel.'
There was the road block.
"His information certainly narrows down our suspects," Ciel stated, bringing Ariel from her thoughts.
"First of all, we look at those with the necessary skill set, crossing out anyone with an alibi for the nights on which the murders occurred. Though, the removal of the organs would suggest some kind of gruesome ritual… We should concentrate our investigation on those involved in secret societies," Sebastian suggested.
"As if that narrows the field," Madam Red questioned. "Why even I have the medical skills necessary for this," she retorted, not noticing Ariel's visible eye narrowing ever-so-slightly as she glanced at her family friend. "Besides which the Season is ending soon! Any doctors who followed the nobles to the city will be returning to the country, and then what—"
"Then we shall have to conclude the investigation quickly," Sebastian interrupted, a knowing grin on his face as his gaze briefly flickered towards the Queen's Lioness. However, the glance was unnoticed.
"Impossible," Lau gasped, clearly disbelieving as Madam Red was.
"I should be able to do this much at least, otherwise what kind of butler would I be," he asked rhetorically, keeping the knowing grin on his face and right hand placed over where his heart would be. Ignoring the shocked/skeptical looks he was getting from the two talkative people in the coach, he leaned forward a bit as he readied to leave. Ciel's amused smirk faded as he made a shooing motion with his hand. "I shall draw up a list of viable suspects and begin questioning them for you immediately, my lord," he told his young master before he opened the carriage door. "Now, if you'll excuse me."
Sebastian let go of the door and was gone in a matter of seconds. Ariel and Vincent were acting as if nothing had happened — even though they were slightly curious about how the raven butler went about his actions — while Lau and Angelina had pressed their faces to the window in an attempt to look for the Phantomhive butler.
"He knows that we're moving, right," she questioned, the former Baroness seeming a bit frantic, but there was no sign of the butler anywhere.
"Sebastian will take care of it for now," the young lord stated (almost) dismissively, as if he didn't just see his butler pull a stunt that would have killed/maimed most people. "We can head home and have a cup of tea while we wait."
The carriage slowed to a halt as they came up to the front entrance of the Phantomhive town estate, but Vincent was driving instead of Grell since the latter had gotten them lost and had nearly crashed the carriage in the process. Just as Lau opened the door to the building, both he and Madam Red gasped in astonishment; standing a couple yards in front of them was Sebastian, smiling as he gave a polite bow with some rolled up parchment under one arm.
"Welcome back, everyone. I have awaited your return," he greeted before taking the top hat that was handed to him by his young master. "The afternoon tea is ready for you in the drawing room," he informed as Ciel and Ariel began to head towards the stairs, the other three — Vincent had followed his mistress — continuing to stand in the doorway with shocked expressions.
"Hold on," Lady Durless spoke up, having finally found her voice, "how are you here!?"
"I finished up with that little errand, so I made my way home to edify you," he replied easily.
"You made the suspect list already?"
"Well, yes. I made a list of names based on what we had discussed, then I contacted them all and asked them the relevant questions," the butler stated, showing them the three rolled up lists he was carrying.
"Come now, Sebastian, that's impossible — even for you," the woman retorted calmly, one hand on her hip. A confident grin curled her red lips, but the raven butler decided to prove her wrong.
"The Earl Chamber's head physician, William Somerset, was attending Earl Howard's party at the time of Mary Ann Nichol's death, thus he has an alibi and was involved with the crime. Alibi…went to a meeting so he has an alibi… Richard Oswald, doctor of the Duke of Bailey was at the White Horse Pub with friends and was not involved… Park was with a friend…secret meeting at the Royal London Hospital… Howard's alibi was a business negotiation….was not involved….nton's head physician, Davi…surgeon of the Royal University of London's hospital, Simon E….not involved. A surgeon of St. Tom's Hospital, O….ate out with his parents…was not related to the incident. Duke Bard's head physician, Nicholas Anthony, was….at the Royal London Hospital performing surgery. Adam…was not….not at the…during the incident, testified by a…."
Ciel and the other two had paused at the base of the stairs, listening to the names rapidly listed off by the younger noble's butler, and the Queen's Lioness had to admit that she was impressed. Ciel himself was smirking, Lau was smiling, Grell had a shocked expression yet also appearing like a star-struck teenager at the same time, and Angelina had this shocked expression while her hat was starting to slide off her head.
"The aforementioned names are the results of my investigation," Sebastian spoke, ending the list and dropping the last roll of parchment on the floor. "From this information, I have narrowed down our list...to one possible suspect."
"Are you're certain you're just a butler, not a military intelligence officer," the former Baroness asked, still skeptic about how the man could do so much in such a small amount of time.
"See, milady, I'm simply one hell of a butler," he replied, smiling with his right hand over his heart.