Encounter in Venice Chapter 10: Part Two: One thing is clear, a detective conan/case closed fanfic

Disclaimer:

This fanfic is based on Gosho Aoyama's Meitantei Konan and Magic Kaito and Naoko Takeuchi's Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (sans the magic).

The crime in this story is inspired by a novel by Donna Leon (Death at La Fenice). However, this is not a book parody, and you won't find any spoilers for the novel in this fic (or vice versa).

The lyrics of "Charade" belong to Johnny Mercer, the script of "Charade" belongs to Stanley Donen, and the lyrics of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera belong to Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.

Thanks a lot to Astarael00 and SN 1987A, who have betaed the first chapters of this fic for me. (Rae betaed the first seven chapters (which have been merged into Chapter 1 and 2) whereas SN betaed Chapter 8-17 (now Chapter 3-10). I've learned a lot during the time they helped me, and without them, this fic would be full of typos, grammar mistakes, and long-winded sentences nobody can follow. From Chapter 18 on, the fic is unbetaed since my betas have retired.

Edit: I've merged the short chapters into longer chapters because I don't want to reupload too many chapters after editing the story for the last time.

x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.

(new version)

Oh what a hit we made

We came on next to closing

Best on the bill, lovers until

Love left the masquerade

("Charade", lyrics by Johnny Mercer)

One thing is clear...

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

One thing is clear, Lele thinks while watching the motorboat disappear into the night: Seiya Kou has never considered sharing his girlfriend with Shinichi Kudo as Lele mistakenly assumed. The singer has acknowledged the little flirt between Kudo and his girlfriend with the composure of someone who knows he has nothing to fear, keeping up a pleasant facade to spare her a scene until he could no longer contain himself. Taken out of context, Kudo's impulsive hug was only a harmless and quite amiable gesture towards an old friend or ex-lover Kudo hasn't seen for years. But after all the overt amorous advances Kudo made to Shiho Miyano during the interrogation, the hug must have been the last straw, and Lele can hardly blame Seiya Kou for feeling the need to state his opinion clearly for once. He did it in such a decent and classy manner as well, making use of the discussion about the name of the opera to put Kudo in his place. The Opera (formally only a collection of songs) is called an opera because it has all the most important defining characteristics of an opera, was basically what Seiya Kou said—just like a long-time love affair resembles a marriage when the couple is living together in a monogamous and committed relationship like theirs. Kudo can always visit them for lunch or for tea as her old friend and former classmate, but a happy relationship consisting of two usually doesn't need a third party.

And yet, Lele can't help but feel sorry for the detective, whose passionate nature—the only weakness in his character Lele can detect until now—reminds Lele of himself when he was younger. In addition, Lele has become even more apprehensive about Seiya Kou, whose scheming personality (everything other than the impulsive character his friends have credited him with!) has once again revealed itself. There is something devious about his strategy to get rid of his rival by faking acquiescence and then picking up the gauntlet in such a sneaky way before they left. You can flirt with her as much as you want, he might as well have said. It doesn't bother me in the least since tonight, she will be with me.

Anyhow, regardless of their faults, they are the kind of couple Lele doesn't want to separate even though he fears it can't be avoided if the autopsy results come back positive for poisoning. Among all the people who could have murdered Haruka Tenoh, Seiya Kou is the only person with a motive. Trying to steal his beloved girlfriend from him with considerable success (the technicians said Shiho Miyano went out with Haruka Tenoh whenever Seiya Kou was busy rehearsing his musicals), ridiculing him with an unsingable song cycle called opera, luring his jealous agent to Venice to pressure his girlfriend into moving out of their shared apartment... Considered separately from each other, none of these things appear nasty enough to provide a motive for a murder. But people have already been murdered for much smaller reasons, and Haruka Tenoh was continually provoking Seiya Kou into a fight, as Rei Hino said...

"Come on, it's cold," Lele jabs his elbow at the detective, who is still standing under the street lamp, unmoving like a bronze statue. Despite wearing only a thin dinner suit, he doesn't seem to be freezing in the biting November wind. Nonetheless, he is so lost in thought that Lele has the impression he will stay here until tomorrow morning if Lele doesn't help him.

"Let's go back to the opera house to fetch your jacket or your coat," Lele continues to prod at the young man. "Your coat is still in the cloakroom, isn't it? It's late. I'm sure Alessi and the portiere would like to go to bed as well." As Shinichi Kudo only gazes at him in abstraction and doesn't react, Lele adds in a soothing voice: "Your fiancée is waiting for you in the hotel, isn't she? She will—"

"But Ran isn't my fiancée," the detective obstinately denies. "I've already told you that we aren't a couple."

One of the greatest problems an investigator must always fight against—Shinichi tries to get his point across to Carrara on the way back to the opera house—is one's own tendency to draw conclusions from flimsy evidence. Ran and he aren't a couple just as "Shiho Miyano" and he have never been in a romantic relationship. "Shiho" (Ai's real name sounds somewhat unsuitable for her in Shinichi's ears!) is only a friend who had left Japan so suddenly that meeting her again in a situation like this completely threw him off balance. Moreover, he is naturally worried about her now that he knows she is sharing the apartment with an infamous womanizer like Seiya Kou.

"But she seems to have tamed him, as you said." Carrara throws him another pitying glance. "And since they look perfectly happy with each other, I'd think twice before visiting them for tea if I were you."

Seeing the utter futility of trying to convince Carrara that he is not at all in love with Ai (who belongs to the unaccommodating and complicated type of woman he will always steer clear of), Shinichi bites back the rejoinder which has already sprung to his lips that Carrara shows more interest in a fictitious love triangle than in the mystery. Instead, he rapidly goes through the key questions which remain unanswered at this point of the investigation and counts his own steps until he has cooled down enough to ponder over Ai's disappearance, her "sort-of" friendship with Tenoh Haruka, and her romantically flavoured attachment to her fake employer.

What is she doing in Venice out of all places? Seiya said that they met at Tenoh's house although, in view of Seiya's acting skills and his penchant for lying with every breath he draws, Shinichi knows better than to take his assertions at face value. From Ai's reaction to Seiya's claim that he would never have passed the IQ test at Infinity, Shinichi infers that Seiya was actually accepted into the academy and changed his mind before entering it. The school Kino, Aino, Seiya, and Chiba Usagi went to was most probably Juuban high school since Chiba mentioned that they lived in Azabu Juuban, where Infinity was also situated. Of course one can't rule out the possibility that they all went to another high school and Chiba and his wife only moved to Juuban after their marriage, but checking out Seiya's education shouldn't pose a problem for Shinichi because the internet must be full of Seiya's fan sites. If Shinichi is lucky, the scandal with Chiba's wife won't be difficult to dig up either.

As things are, Shinichi strongly suspects that Seiya knows about Stinger just as he knows about the Organization and Infinity's link to it. If Seiya really met Ai for the first time at Tenoh's house (in Japan?) as he claimed, one can safely assume that Ai had been seeking Tenoh's or Kaioh's help to leave Japan in secret when Seiya, who had been staying there as a guest, asked her to go to Venice with him. The opposite could also be true and Ai actually asked Seiya to bring her to Venice because she wanted to meet Tenoh. This is an even more likely hypothesis since—according to Kino—Tenoh and Kaioh had already moved to Venice at the time of Ai's disappearance.

How did she manage to leave Pandora's Box without a boat? Hattori must have saved her life by putting her into one of the wooden boxes and leaving the ship with her before it exploded. It was the only sensible decision in their situation since staying on Pandora's Box would have meant certain death while abandoning the ship in that way left them a minimal chance of reaching the shore alive. If Shinichi couldn't come back in time for some reason, Hattori told him when they parted, he would find a way to save them until the FBI arrived...

Don't worry. I promise I'll come back in time no matter what happens. I'm too busy to attend your funerals, after all.

There they are again, the memories which always assail Shinichi whenever he doesn't expect them, accompanied by the sense of guilt he has never managed to get rid of. As a rule, Shinichi doesn't allow himself to waste time and energy by dwelling on old regrets. But tonight, after this disappointing reunion with Ai, he can't help but hark back to the past and muse on how different things could have been if it hadn't been for a few unfortunate coincidences and wrong decisions. If Hattori and Shinichi had taken Vodka with them instead of leaving him in the log cabin, if Shinichi had resisted the temptation of backing-up Pandora's Box and simply terminated the whole enterprise, if he had reacted a bit faster when Vodka attacked him, if he hadn't trusted Ran's watch and double-checked the time, if he had told Ran the truth instead of lies... Would Hattori still be alive?

About three years and eleven months ago, Shinichi woke up in the woods with excruciating headaches, three large bruises on his back, his left shoulder, and his left arm, what felt like a few broken ribs, a broken watch, and the realization that, after hitting his head against the boulder he was presently lying on, he must have passed out for who knew how long. Opening two capsules of APAH and swallowing their contents without water, he gave himself a few seconds to peer over the precipice—a black wolf-shaped creature under the full moon—and to assess the current situation.

The man in black under the cliff was, without doubt, dead, as no human being could have survived such a fall. And even though Shinichi was convinced that every human being had an essential right to live, he didn't feel particularly saddened by Vodka's undignified final exit after the latter had tried to shoot him and wounded Ai in the nearby log cabin. Having been Gin's direct subordinate for many years, Vodka would have made an important witness in court. But losing his balance and toppling off a cliff while trying to club another person to death was actually a most fitting end for the secretary of the much-feared "second crow". In a sense, Shinichi was relieved, as the circumstances surrounding Vodka's death allowed him to abandon the corpse and sprint in the direction of the village with a clear conscience. Additionally, he was so terrified of being late that he wasn't even surprised when he spotted Ran in front of the door of a farmhouse even though she was supposed to be staying at Toyama's in Osaka.

"Shinichi! What are you doing here? I thought you're in Kyoto! And what happened to your watch? How on earth did you manage to smash it like that?"

"Oh, it's... nothing worth mentioning." Shinichi anxiously glanced at Ran's watch, which said nine thirty-five, and ascertained with satisfaction that he had only passed out for a few minutes. "I accidentally stumbled over a root and tore my shirt on a twig when I fell." It was most disturbing how easily the lies came to his lips these days. But telling her he had been attacked by Vodka, who—for an unknown reason—had managed to escape from the log cabin despite having been neatly tied to the heater by Hattori and him, would only trigger a chain of further questions he couldn't answer now.

She couldn't believe he was just as clumsy as Eisuke-kun, Ran exclaimed. But was that blood on his shirt?

It wasn't his but the blood of a victim of his recent case, Shinichi reassured her. He only got a few bruises and scratches, nothing worth mentioning. However, he had to give someone a call at ten forty sharp. Did she know where a public phone box was?

He could call from the farmhouse where she was staying if he wanted, as it was only a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from here. But why didn't he use his mobile phone? Was anyone murdered in the woods? He shouldn't walk around in the village looking like this! And where was Hattori?

"Hattori will be staying in Tokyo until tomorrow night, and my phone is dead," Shinichi grimaced when Ran fished her mobile phone out of her pocket. "I'd rather not use your phone either. It's a long story I really can't explain to you now. Let's search for a public phone box, shall we?"

Naturally, Shinichi could have double-checked the time on Ran's mobile phone but, assuming that the vintage watch she got from her mother kept good time since she always took care that it was properly wound, he didn't consider the idea even once. Deciding to let Vodka's corpse lie where it was until he had rescued Ai and Hattori, as he didn't want the inhabitants of the village to gather at the log cabin before the whole operation against "the seven crows" was over, Shinichi suggested after finding an old public phone box that Ran and he roamed the shore near the woods together until ten forty, claiming he didn't want to disturb his "client" before the agreed time.

It was a remarkably beautiful but windy night. And as Shinichi was walking beside Ran, silently listening to her story of her father's old mahjong friend who invited them to his farmhouse for the weekend and who, just like the Sleeping Kogoro, had passed out from their drinking binge, his mind wound back to Ai and Hattori, who had been squabbling ceaselessly ever since they left Paris and who were probably sulking at each other at this very moment, impatiently waiting for his return so that they no longer had to endure their involuntary tête-à-tête. The two of them hadn't interacted with each other very often before they all set out to secure Pandora's Box, and their bickering—the first indications of a tentative friendship?—simultaneously amused and irritated Shinichi.

"Of course we can continue as planned! It's just a tiny flesh wound, really nothing worth mentioning. If it's only for a few hours, I'm sure I'll be all right. Just come back in time, will you?" Ai had shot Shinichi a friendly threatening glare before pointing an accusing finger at the boxes stuffed full of printed copies of the Organization's documents. "It's not my dream to be blown up with their files because I'd like my tragic demise to happen in a romantically beautiful setting."

Wasn't the sea beautiful enough for her, Hattori had countered, much to Shinichi's exasperation. Getting blown up for the sake of humanity in the middle of the ocean wasn't a mundane death in any aspect. Even a tiresome spoiled princess like chibi nee-san couldn't demand a nicer ending.

It wasn't picturesque at all to bite the dust among computer cables and plastic folders, and it was even less acceptable to die together with a mystery-obsessed idiot who still believed in prophetic dreams and lucky charms and was proud of his sing-song Kansai dialect she couldn't put up with in her condition. She would be perfectly all right if he shut up and let her suffer in peace. In answer to Hattori's remark that there was nothing he liked less than sitting with the Queen of Gloom in absolute silence, she suggested that he study the files in the kitchen until Shinichi returned. "Or just jump into the sea if you prefer that. I bet the water is pleasant enough for a swim."

"What are you grinning about?" Ran gave Shinichi a puzzled look.

"Sorry, I was distracted. So you're going to stay here for the weekend. How do you like the isle?"

She loved it although there was a rather creepy incident tonight which had shaken her: Chasing after the dog she had volunteered to walk out, she discovered a small log cabin on the Werewolf Cliff from which she heard odd sounds reminding her of the muffled cries of a human. In spite of her fear of ghosts and werewolves, she knocked down the door to the cabin and found a short, burly man in black, who looked strangely familiar to her. Since there was blood on the floor and the man was tied to the heater, she deduced that the poor man had been attacked and robbed. Of course she didn't hesitate but immediately freed him, whereupon the thankless stranger, much to her surprise, didn't express any gratitude at his rescue but only urged her not to tell anyone about the incident before ushering her out of his cabin. Disturbed about the incident, she tried to reason with him, telling him that what happened to him was actually a matter for the police. But in the end, he managed to convince her to keep the matter to herself with the story that the person who had whacked him into unconsciousness (with the blood-smeared raven sculpture, which was now lying on the floor) and tying him up like that was none other than his hot-headed wife, who was out of her mind due to a tragic misunderstanding. He was also sure that said wife—insecure and extremely jealous—would return home soon as she always did, which was why he didn't want Ran to stay in his cabin for fear of further unpleasant scenes.

Understandably, Ran was in a dilemma now, as she was no longer sure that his story was the truth. Going to the police, however, entailed creating a scandal in the village, which would only make the miserable life of that married couple even more miserable if the things the man told her were true. What did Shinichi think about the little mystery? Should she go the police or not? She actually went out for a second time tonight because she hoped that a fresh breath of air would help her clear her head and come to a decision.

"I don't think you should go to the police and rush things," Shinichi hastily advised her. "Just wait until tomorrow and I'll look into this matter for you after solving my recent case."

Ran looked suitably confused at his lack of interest. Nevertheless, Shinichi didn't want to present her with a more elaborate lie and, to his consolation, her joy of seeing him again distracted her from the strange case whose "culprits" were Hattori and Shinichi himself.

At ten forty, Shinichi stepped into the public phone box and dialed the number he knew by heart with a sense of great relief. He almost wished he hadn't promised Hattori and Ai that he would wait until ten forty to call Mr James Black to make sure that the FBI couldn't arrive before the ship exploded. In retrospect, he should never have accepted Ai's plan no matter how convenient it sounded. Her wounds undoubtedly hurt even though they weren't fatal. Although he knew she had an astonishing tolerance to physical pain, he couldn't get the image of her blood-smeared cardigan and her feverishly gleaming eyes out of his mind.

"If the explosion was scheduled to take place at half past eleven, it's too late for us to step in now, isn't it?" asked Mr. Black's skeptical voice. He was far too perceptive not to notice that Shinichi was playing by his own rules. But since everything went according to Shinichi's—Hattori's and Ai's—plans, Shinichi was confident enough to keep up the pretense despite Mr Black's disapproval.

"I've found a motorboat I can use to fetch them. I can make it until a quarter past eleven. But we also need an ambulance—"

"It's eleven forty-five p.m. on my watch, meitantei-san," Mr. Black's tone changed from skeptical to genuinely surprised. "If the explosion was scheduled at half past eleven, it must have happened fifteen minutes ago."

No, that's impossible, Shinichi wanted to say. However, he suddenly felt too sick to utter a sound. When he stormed out of the phone box and wordlessly took Ran's mobile phone out of her pocket to check the time, the screen showed him that Mr Black was right.

The fact that—unlike him—Hattori did save Ai as promised raises questions which disturb Shinichi in a way he would never have imagined. If Hattori had somehow managed to save Ai (who, wounded or not wounded, could never have swum even for a minute in that weather), Shinichi can't think of a reason why Hattori couldn't have saved himself. One box might have been too small for both of them, but Hattori could easily have tied two boxes together with the ropes he could find in abundance on the ship...

For the first time since he saw Ai again, Shinichi is struck by the thought that—just like he doesn't know how she survived while Hattori died—she still doesn't know the reason why he couldn't fetch them. In his made-up story, he and she have talked about that night so many times that he has taken her understanding for granted. The realization that she must still be in the dark about Ran's slow watch and might resent him for not keeping his promise explains her rather cool reaction to his hug. Or was she so taken aback by his sudden outburst that she didn't know how to react? They both know he usually doesn't hug friends and would probably never have embraced her under different circumstances...

In any case, Ai must have planned her vanishing act even before Hattori, Shinichi, and she left Tokyo for Paris, as evidenced by the one redundant antidote she left in her drawer and the other pill she must have hidden from him, which she used to turn back to her adult state. Who or what was she running from so that she either didn't dare to write or only wrote two letters before she—despite the lack of an answer to her letters—cut off all contact? She had become increasingly paranoid about the telephone line and the internet since she learned from him that they had been watched. On the other hand, hiding in Venice in Seiya Kou's apartment is an idea only Suzuki Sonoko can get. The longer he thinks about it, the less Shinichi can believe that Ai had been fleeing from danger, as she wouldn't have kept her real name and lived with Seiya Kou out of all people if she had wanted to go into hiding.

The turnstile was immediately released when Carrara and Shinichi arrived at the exit. When they pass the counter, Guido Moretti darts both of them a reproachful look before he demonstratively devotes his attention to the theatre programme in his hands.

"Are you sure that Seiya passed you twice tonight since the beginning of the opera?" Shinichi asks.

"Not twice. Three times. He just went past me for the third time when he left a few minutes ago," the portiere replies, tight-lipped and defiant.

But that's improbable, Shinichi thinks as Carrara and he pass the backstage area for another time and climb down the stage to the concert hall. A conspicuous celebrity like Seiya couldn't have returned through the main entrance without anyone noticing him, especially since he must have walked past the left entrance to the concert hall where Alessandra DiGiorgio—a fan of his—was standing, keeping an eye out for him as she openly admitted to her Haibara-Ai-lookalike friend (Nadia Gorowitz?) during the talk Shinichi overheard when he returned from the public phone box.

The ushers closed the doors to the hall before the second act and kept them shut during the whole performance. Since no one saw Seiya in the concert hall, he must have returned at the beginning of the second interval unnoticed by the ushers and Chiba Mamoru, evaded Luigi Gentile and even Ai, who was searching for him, passed the empty stage unseen by all the ushers and the technicians, for whom he was an unwilling object of infatuation and gossip, climbed the stage, and walked to his dressing room without drawing the attention of either Hino Rei or Kino Makoto. During that time, Tenoh was in her own dressing room, suffering from headaches, which might have been the major cause of her clumsy arpeggios during the second act. Kino and Hino were having tea in the backstage café until Hino returned to her dressing room to study her scores and Kino called Aino Minako for a prolonged chat. When Tenoh opened the door to the backstage café, Seiya left the opera house again through the exit...

Even though this scenario is not absolutely impossible, it is highly improbable and just absurd as Seiya's behaviour throughout the whole interrogation.

Did you give her the painkillers?

No, I didn't visit her after I returned. We met for the last time before the first act in the corridor.

A lie told with such an honest expression that Shinichi would have swallowed it if it hadn't been for the witness accounts of the other suspects and Seiya's own tendency to contradict himself. Seiya must have seen Tenoh when she opened the door to the backstage café to ask Kino for the water while he was going out for the second time. However, it could be a misunderstanding, and Seiya only omitted the fact that he did see Tenoh since he really didn't talk to her and, according to his understanding, didn't meet her. One also can't rule out the possibility that Seiya's statement was actually true and Kino's was false. But what reason should Kino have for lying about having seen Seiya through the door of the café just when Tenoh opened it?

"He is an intimidating man, Signor Seiya Kou," Carrara muses. "The portiere obviously fears him more than us." Receiving no reaction from Shinichi, he insistently presses on: "Signor Seiya Kou also didn't lose his temper when I provoked him as one could have expected. It seems to me he can keep himself in check much better than his friends claim."

"He is an impressive actor," Shinichi listlessly responds. While Shinichi shares Carrara's view that Seiya is not the carefree, light-hearted man he pretends to be, Shinichi doesn't think "intimidating" is the right word to describe a person who lets Ai kick him under the table without showing the slightest hint of annoyance. To all appearances, Seiya lets Ai kick him regularly.

"But why were you so interested in their handwritings? Do you believe in graphology?" Carrara jokes as Shinichi puts on his coat. The commissario is apparently trying to distract Shinichi from some imagined heartache with his silly questions. In a way, his concern is almost touching, and Shinichi decides to put the sympathy Carrara has for him to good use.

He is only comparing their handwritings to the one he found in The Return of Sherlock Holmes on Tenoh's bookshelf because he is curious, Shinichi claims. The books are an exclusive hand-bound edition he has never seen before, and he thinks it's peculiar that Tenoh kept such an expensive and personal gift in her dressing room and not in her apartment. Although this little mystery probably doesn't have anything to do with the case, the Sherlock Holmes painting intrigues him for the same reason. When will Tenoh's personal possessions be sent to Kaioh Michiru at the latest, tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon? He would like to pay Kaioh a visit since he wants to have another look at the painting under better lighting.

"This afternoon if Signora Kaioh doesn't object to it," Carrara rolls his eyes. "Don't you ever get tired?"

"You said you were a fan of Tenoh's." Shinichi ignores Carrara's question, which he takes as a compliment. "Do you know anything about her family and her background?"

She didn't like to talk about her family, Carrara tells him, and the press wasn't particularly interested in her family background. Both her parents were said to be of mixed race, her father a Franco-American and her mother an Italian-Japanese, which is why Signora Tenoh was a rather polyglot person. Her mother died when she was very young so that she was raised by her father in France until she was fourteen and moved to Japan for unknown reasons. There she started her glittering racing career and, at sixteen or seventeen, attended Infinity with Kaioh, who was already her girlfriend when they entered the academy.

"There are many legends about the two of them, you know," Carrara gushes as they are once again walking through the backstage area with sergeant Alessi in tow. "Love at first sight that prevailed after they both cut the ties to their families for each other, dramatic jealousy scenes in hotels where Signora Tenoh flirted with the staff, another girl that tried to kill herself out of unrequited love to Tenoh, things which are probably nothing but idle rumours. But it's true that they're raising an adopted daughter together since I spotted her with them in the cinema once when she was holidaying in Venice. The little girl is said to be very frail and is living at their house in Japan with a good friend of theirs because they don't want the press to bother her."

And what's the name of the adopted daughter, Shinichi asks, thinking of the card Ai slipped into his trouser pocket.

"I don't know. They didn't reveal it during their interviews, saying that they wanted their shy princess to live a normal life despite her celebrity parents. If anyone was interested in the identity of the girl, the reporters would already have revealed her name since she is Professor Tomoe's only daughter. But apparently, nobody cared about her enough to investigate."

"Professor Tomoe's daughter? I suppose Tenoh and Kaioh adopted her when the professor was admitted to his mental hospital? Or did they take her out of the orphanage some time afterwards?"

"They adopted her immediately after the mad professor burned down Infinity, according to the article I read. I remember I was surprised that Signora Tenoh would so readily adopt the child of the man responsible for her brother's death. But then again Signor Chiba said that she was a very generous person."

"So Tenoh's brother died in the fire?"

"Yes, he was searching for her at Infinity, so I heard, and was trapped in one of Professor Tomoe's laboratories when the buildings were set ablaze. It was during one of Signora Tenoh's last races."

"Do you know what his name was?"

"Akira. It's a very nice-sounding name to European ears, otherwise I'd already have forgotten it. But I don't know anything about him except that he was only few years older than her and lived in Paris with their father. They must have been very close because she quit racing after he died... To be fair, Professor Tomoe must have thought that no one was on campus when he burned down Infinity, since Signora Tenoh was a star whose races the students at Infinity never missed."

Raising his hand to say goodbye to the portiere (who, after releasing the turnstile for them once again, has just put on his coat to leave as well), Carrara opens the door and waits until Alessi passes before letting it fall into Shinichi's face.

"Still, I don't think many people would have forgiven the professor for what he did and readily adopted his daughter to spare her the orphanage," he continues as Shinichi joins him and Alessi in the campo. "I thought the girl was very attached to both Signora Kaioh and Signora Tenoh when I saw them together. No matter how difficult and tyrannical Signora Tenoh might have been, her behaviour towards the little girl completely redeemed her shortcomings."

"He lived in Paris with their father, so you said... Do you know what the name of Tenoh's father was and what he was doing for a living?" Shinichi asks with a sense of foreboding.

"Some fans claim her father was a fencing teacher. But I don't know what his name was since I've never been interested in fencing."

So who was the mysterious French agent of the FBI who had insider information about Pandora's Box, which he only wanted to share with Kudo Shinichi, a Japanese detective, rather than with another FBI agent, Ai had asked with mistrust. And Shinichi can still remember the way her eyes widened and her brows furrowed although, at that time, Shinichi had attributed her fleeting expression of disbelief to her amazement at the occupation of M Jean Black, Mr. James' Black's cousin, who was a fencing teacher of Franco-American origin.

A/N: As some people might have noticed, I've posted both "Encounter in Venice" and "Ghost at Twilight" on Archiveofourown as well (my name on that site is FidgetFidgets). (I really like it for many reasons, especially because it lets one download the whole fic as a mobi, epub, pdf and html file.)

Regarding the "odd" things in Encounter like why Shiho doesn't grieve for Haruka, why she wrote two letters before writing the mails which "got lost" or why Shinichi thinks Seiya managed to evade Gentile when he returned to the opera house (even though it was Gentile who told the police that Seiya came through the main entrance): they are all part of the mystery/plot. As for the lack of racism in my fic, which someone pointed out to me: I simply ignored the issue since I think fans of classical music usually aren't very racist towards good musicians.

In other news: holmesfreak1412 has borrowed the APAH painkillers for her fic "The Cure" (which is, despite its evil plot, a very interesting read XD). I only wanted to point out that I really don't mind her borrowing APAH (although the side effects APAH has in her fic are her original idea) and that the universe of "The Cure" doesn't have anything to do with the ones in "Encounter in Venice" and "Ghost at Twilight."