Chapter 10: And Washed the Spider Out
The rich aroma of coffee woke Conan up with a start. He was disoriented at first—why was he in the hallway?—but as the last fogs of sleep dissipated he recalled the events of the previous night. He sat up, causing someone's jacket to slide off his back.
"Ah, you're awake, Edogawa-kun," Hakuba said. It was his cup of black coffee which Conan had smelled. Alex sat beside him in the miniature nest of jackets and blankets they had slowly turned their little surveillance corner into.
Conan rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Did I miss anything?"
"The power's back. We've called Inspector Tazuka. Mr. Ling, Ms. Suarez and Marie Semple went downstairs for breakfast already; Hirokawa Masako-san brought up a tray for Edmund Kett, and Sera-kun and Hattori-kun are bringing the food up for us."
Hakuba had his laptop open in front of him while Alex was on his phone. "Is the cell signal back too?"
Alex shook his head. "Not yet. Hakuba's making notes, and I'm studying Japanese." He also had coffee beside him; Conan drew in a deep breath and wondered how suspicious it would be if he also asked for a cup.
Now that it was morning with the sun shining, the mood had also brightened. Spider could still be lurking somewhere waiting to attack, Conan knew, but it would be more difficult during the daytime once everyone else was moving about as well; he wouldn't want bystanders getting involved any more than they did.
"I'm beginning to give more credence to the idea that Spider did leave the house in the middle of night for some reason," Hakuba voiced similar thoughts, staring out the window. The clear sky and sapphire sea outside showed no memory of the previous night's tempest.
"Incoming!" Masumi's cheerful voice preceded her and Heiji's return, each carrying a stack of breakfast trays.
Conan looked at the neat array of little dishes and bowls, full of everything from ochazuke in its clear broth to silky steamed egg custard to matcha-and-cream Swiss rolls, and hurriedly helped Alex and Saguru clear the floor to make way for the food. "Yukiho-san made all of this?"
"Yeah. She's a little upset, actually," Heiji said as he set down his trays and snagged a golden-brown red bean bun topped with a circle of black sesame seeds. "She and Raina actually prepared even more food yesterday, but a lot of it's gone missing. Guess someone also raided the kitchen last night."
"Compared to everything else that occurred, some stolen snacks are pretty benign," said Hakuba. "By the way Edogawa-kun, how did you see Spider on the top of the tower roof last night? It was almost completely dark outside."
Conan tapped his glasses. "Agasa-hakase modified one of the lenses. It can turn telescopic—though I didn't have time to use that feature last night—and enables night vision, among other things."
"Ooh, can I see?" Alex asked. Conan handed over his glasses reluctantly, and Alex tested the zoom while Hakuba watched in amusement. "That is so cool."
Heiji jabbed his chopsticks in Hakuba's direction. "Oi Hakuba, eat before your food gets cold."
Hakuba closed his laptop and sat elegantly in front of his tray. "Catching Spider may be of primary importance, but don't forget the reason we're all here in the first place, Hattori-kun. Unless you've solved Mr. Delacey's puzzle already?"
Judging by Heiji's twitch, he had indeed completely forgotten about the will-riddle. Conan looked around at Sera and Hakuba, and set the saccharine level of his voice to 'mild'. "Oh, are you still stuck on that, Hakuba-niichan? I thought you'd have figured out the trick to it already."
"You've solved it, Conan-kun?" Masumi asked in surprise.
"Yeah, I think so! It came to me last night, but given everything that's happened I haven't had a chance to test my theory yet. Once you have the trick of it, it's not that difficult." He smiled sweetly. "In fact, you could almost call it child's play."
He almost laughed at the identical expressions on Heiji, Hakuba and Masumi's faces. "I don't think Spider's going to make his move now; let's head down to talk to the others, and then we should search the island."
Breakfast downstairs was a much more subdued affair than dinner last night had been. Ling Gengxin and Ines Suarez sat on one long side of the chabudai table, Marie Semple on the opposite side facing the tsuboniwa. The three were in the middle of eating a more spread out version of their breakfast bentos, while Yukiho and Masako Hirokawa sipped tea quietly on the side facing the shrine. They quickly moved up to fetch more tea when the detectives entered.
"By the way, how was your morning walk, Marie?" Ms. Suarez said, trying to make small talk with the girl as the newcomers sat down.
Marie frowned, the massive burn on her face even more prominent in the light of day. "What? I just got up."
"Oh?" Ines blinked. "I thought I saw…never mind." Conan stared at Marie, and she immediately ducked her head, letting her long hair swing over to cover the left side of her face. A short silence fell.
"Has anyone seen Mr. Geskel?" Alex asked casually while nibbling on a piece of strawberry daifuku. Hakuba repeated the question in Japanese to the Hirokawas, who shook their heads.
"Geskel-san likes to keep to his own schedule, and he's told us to never disturb him in his room," Yukiho said softly.
"He seems like a cool guy! I wanna talk to him!" Conan beamed an adorable smile in her and Marie's general direction. Yukiho couldn't help smiling back, and even Marie blinked. "Geskel-san spends a lot of his time outside. I'm sure you can talk to him there, Conan-kun," Yukiho said.
"By the way, were you in your room all night?" Hakuba asked Ling Gengxin.
"Yes. I was tired from the trip here, and conked out pretty much the instant my head touched the pillow," the man confirmed.
"Even with that storm raging outside?"
Ling shrugged. "I'm a heavy sleeper, and I had earplugs on."
Ms. Suarez busied herself with her miso soup.
"I was also sleeping in my bed all night," Marie said pointedly. "Unlike most of the rest of you, it appears."
"Oh, and how did you know that, if you were asleep?" Heiji couldn't help asking.
"You guys made Raina get up in the middle of the night to see what all the ruckus was, didn't you?" she said. "She's still sleeping upstairs right now."
"Speaking of whom," said Masumi. "Was it her idea or yours to come to Kashikijima?"
The girl's uninjured eye narrowed. "Mine. Can't I come and visit a dear friend?"
"I thought you were here for the Delacey fund?"
"Two birds, one stone," Marie said. "And to be frank, I was curious about you two as well," she said to Ling and Ines. "My mother used to tell me about her foster siblings, who lived and played with her. But you two both flew the nest as soon as you could, didn't you?"
"You think that was unfair to Elena?" Ling asked gently.
"I can hardly say that. After all, I did the exact same thing with dear uncle Edmund, didn't I?" And with that, Marie got up to leave.
Ines watched as she carried another laden breakfast tray up to Raina's room on her right arm. "I knew Edmund took her in after her father passed, and he's never been the nurturing sort, but I hadn't expected it to be that bad."
Ling Gengxin clearly agreed. "She's changed a lot."
"You've met her before?" Alex asked, surprised.
The man nodded. "Only a few times. The last was at Elena and Richard's funeral six years ago. Weren't you there too, Ines?"
"Ah yes, I saw her then too. Now I remember. All in black…she used to be such a pretty little girl."
"What happened to Marie's parents?" Conan asked.
"The house they were living in burned down when she was fifteen. Faulty wiring, apparently. They inhaled too much smoke, and Marie, well," Ms. Suarez gestured at her face. It was clear what she meant; Marie Semple would never be a pretty little girl again.
The extent of the storm's damage was more visible as they drew further away from the house. Torn boughs and leaves littered the field where they had played soccer so freely just yesterday, and several of the sago palms had been stripped of their fronds. Kashikijima's two tips sloped down gently towards its middle, so from where they stood Conan and the others could see the general shape of the island laid out before them.
"Okay, so how should we do this?" said Heiji, peering down at the white sliver of beach down in the bay, hundreds of yards below.
Alex took in the terrain. "Searching in a line would probably be best. We can start out close together and spread out as the island widens. Make sure you can always call for the people besides you if something happens, and whoever's on the bay side should keep an eye on the beach below to make sure no one's sneaking by through there."
The five of them ended up ordered Masumi-Alex-Conan-Heiji-Hakuba, with Hakuba overlooking the inner bay. As they started the sweep, still relatively close together, Conan said to Alex: "Did you put me in the middle because you're afraid I'll fall over the edge if we do run into Spider?"
"No, because the trail path runs in the middle and with your height you'd have trouble going over an oversized aloe," Alex replied.
"I could kick them really hard," Conan suggested.
From the look on his face Alex was clearly remembering the boy's power-enhanced kick from last night, only applied to some poor tropical plant. "Just stick to the trail, Conan."
Conversation gradually ceased as they spread out further apart from each other as the island widened and the foliage grew denser. Conan, walking along an established trail, had the easiest time of it. The most he had to do was hop over the occasional shrub felled by the storm and avoid any deep puddles. Hakuba and Masumi had to watch their steps carefully in case the ground near the edges was weak enough to crumble, while Alex and Heiji had the thankless jobs of going straight through the dense vegetation and muddy patches in the middle. The two of them picked up long branches to help them hack their way through, but they were the slowest to progress among the five, and thus set the pace for them all.
Around halfway around the island, the white sands of the beach below gave way to gravel, then pebbles, then rocks, which grew steadily in size. By the time they made it to the pagoda on the other tip, Conan had a few splatters of mud on his clothes, Masumi and Saguru had scraped their hands, and Heiji and Alex both looked like they'd been dragged through the bush. Other than a few false alarms involving the local wildlife, they hadn't seen another living soul.
"…Could he have left the island earlier?" Saguru wondered, before answering himself: "No, the boat's still docked in the bay."
They looked all around the pagoda, but it was Conan, gazing down into the sea who saw it first—a black misshapen bundle, difficult to pick out against the dark and irregular rocks. It took him a moment to realize what he must be seeing.
"Guys, look! Down there!" he yelled and pointed.
Lying upon the rocks below was the still and broken body of the assassin known as Spider.
Unlike the other end of the island, there were no convenient steps leading down to the water here, so Alex had to scramble down the sea-sprayed, seaweed-strewn rocks instead. His shirt—which he had just managed to get the stains from the KID heist out of—was probably permanently ruined.
"It could be an accident? Maybe he fell and broke his neck," Saguru suggested as they all climbed down, not sounding very hopeful.
Heiji was the first to reach the body. "Yeah, no. Cause of death was this wound here," he pointed to a spot over the man's heart. "From a thin blade, or some sort of arrow. Most likely a bolt from that missing speargun. He would have died almost instantly. He was thrown onto the rocks afterwards."
"Is it bad that my main feeling is 'Good riddance'?" said Alex. "I mean, he did try to kill us."
"I would be happier if he hadn't died like this, when the island was cut off by the storm," Saguru murmured, looking across the bay to the house. "Unless there's someone else hiding on this island—which we've just searched—it looks like Spider met with, and was killed by someone from Kashikijima House. Someone who is still here with us."
"There is that," Alex admitted.
"The thing is, I would have expected Mr. Spider here to be the perpetrator of any unnatural deaths, not the victim," Masumi said.
To Alex's shock, Conan had followed them down. The boy came right up to the corpse and moved to touch it. "Uhm, Conan, what are you doing?! That's a dead body!"
Masumi gave him a comforting, if absent-minded pat on the shoulder. "It's okay, he does this all the time."
"All the time?! How often does the kid run into dead bodies?"
Heiji snorted. "Trust me, you do not want to know."
"There isn't as much blood as I would expect," Conan said, ignoring them. He tested the stiffness of the corpse, then checked his watch. "Judging by the state of rigor and livor mortis, I'd say he's been dead for eight to twelve hours. It's five to ten right now; so the estimated time of death is from around ten o'clock last night to two o'clock this morning."
"We can narrow it down more than that," Masumi said. "When did those cinder-blocks fall from the tower?"
"12:37am this morning," Saguru answered instantly. "So, from just before one am to two am, then."
Alex stared. Spider's body had clearly fallen from a great height onto the rocks. The back of the man's head was smashed in, several limbs jutted out at improbable angles, and glimpses of white bone peeked out here and there. Though it hadn't been long enough for the scent of decay to set in, the flies had already started their work. And the four of them were standing and talking over the body as casually as if it were their breakfast trays back at the house.
It made sense for Saguru if he thought about it, and he supposed Heiji and Masumi as well—if they were experienced enough sleuths they may have run into enough murders to get desensitized to the gruesome remains. But Conan…an eight year old shouldn't be able to handle such a sight.
"How are you so calm?" he heard himself say. "And why are you all letting a child handle a dead body?"
Saguru blinked. "He's done this before, at the Sunset Mansion and the Detective Koshien—"
"Ku-Conan-kun helps out with the Tokyo Met police force all the time—" Heiji said at the same time.
"I don't care!" Alex was so angry he didn't even notice that Saguru and Heiji were agreeing on something for once. "If a kid sees a corpse up close you take them away, give them therapy if they need it. You try to make sure they never see one again, not give them access to every dead body that comes around!"
Heiji and Conan gave each other some very odd looks.
"My Uncle Kogoro's a private detective and he always brings me on his cases," Conan finally said. "Well, he's not actually my uncle, I'm just living with him. But I've already seen too much for something like this to bother me anymore."
"And uhm, your plan might be more doable if Conan-kun wasn't a freaking corpse magnet," Heiji said. "He runs into them without even trying, somehow. I mean, ya came to visit me in Osaka and there was that serial killer who threw a body onto our car, and the guy who fell from Osaka Castle while on fire, and the guy who was stuffed into a car and thrown off a cliff…huh, at least this one fell before we came."
"Plus that man who fell onto the parking lot of the hotel we were visiting, that other man who got stabbed, that woman who got poisoned in the hospital we happened to be at…" Masumi ticked them off on her fingers, before running out and continuing in her head. Saguru's eyebrows rose higher and higher as the litany continued. "Oh wow, that is a lot. Are you cursed or something, Conan-kun?"
"See?" Conan said tightly to a horrified Alex. "Unless you happen to know a good curse breaker, this is just wasting time." He turned back to the body.
Saguru had a speculative look on his face, but it vanished when he saw Alex's. He walked a few steps away, and gestured for Alex to follow. "He reminds you of yourself, doesn't he?" he said, voice pitched low enough that the others couldn't hear.
"He's too young for this," Alex said. "Hell, you guys are too young for this." Rather hypocritical, he knew, coming from someone who had lost his innocence in such matters when he was fourteen, but Alex should be the terrible exception, not just another example.
"Yes," Saguru agreed. "But Conan is not the only one of us who runs into mysteries even when we're not looking for them. In this case, there's no party analogous to MI6 who's at fault. I can't say I believe in fate, but sometimes…things like this happen."
Alex looked to the other three detectives—two teenagers and one child—hovering around the corpse like carrion birds, picking clues and conjectures out from the dead man's flesh and bones. He thought of his own tendency to attract trouble, from deciding to investigate his uncle's death and ending up in MI6 as a result, to deciding to follow a strange man out of a London pub and ending up…here. He sighed. "I know that. And I understand that we want to work with the skills that we're given. But that doesn't mean I have to like it."
"This is on the opposite end of the island from the house," Masumi mused. "I wonder what Spider was doing all the way out here."
"Meeting someone?" Heiji suggested. "It would explain why we didn't catch a single glimpse of him after midnight. He came out to meet someone at the pagoda here, and they killed him."
"Someone from the house? They'd have to come all the way through the storm." Alex still didn't like this situation, but he saw the importance in finding out how this murder had happened as soon as possible. He wrinkled his nose, trying to imagine who would trek half an hour to hold a rendezvous in that kind of weather, and why. "And then they'd need to get back into the house, without anyone noticing."
"Alex has a point," Saguru said. "You couldn't open the storm shutters last night without making a racket and letting in lots of rain. The other way to leave would be slipping out the windows and over the roof, and I suppose if you left a rope hanging you could return the same way. But we were watching the windows on the second floor. No one entered or left through them."
"But we left our posts a few times," Alex reminded him. "And honestly I wouldn't swear that nobody managed to sneak by, in the darkness and rain. After the moon came out it's a different story though."
"The other guests need to be informed about this," Saguru said, glancing at his pocket watch. "And Inspector Tazuka should be arriving soon, if he hasn't already. Alex, do you mind running back to the house to tell the others? Try to go as fast as you can, and time yourself so we have an idea how long it takes to get here from the house. We'll stay and finish examining the body."
"Got it." With a lingering glance at Spider's body, Alex turned, set a stopwatch on his phone, and sprinted away.
As Alex drew closer to the house, he saw a new boat docked in the bay below, and two figures climbing up the steps. One was a middle-aged, stern Japanese man in professional clothes with broad shoulders and a neatly trimmed moustache, and the other a shy-looking girl with bowl-cut hair a year or two older than him, wearing a Totoro t-shirt. He reached the engawa at the same time they did, and saw Raina coming out to greet the new visitors.
"Hello, Inspector Tazuka?" she said to the man. "And you must be Haruko?"
"Ye-es," the girl said, awkwardly and in stilted English. "Taniguchi Haruko. You want me to start help cook?"
"You only have to speak English with some of the guests; I'll show you which ones later," Raina told her quietly in Japanese, and Haruko relaxed considerably.
"Well, where's the owner of this place?" Inspector Tazuka said as he looked around. At least, that was what Alex thought he said.
"My obaasan is, I'll take you to her right now," Raina said, and started leading him inside.
"Wait, Raina!" Alex stopped her. "I need you to translate to the Inspector. Someone's been killed."
"Wh-what?!" Inspector Tazuka only blinked at him, but Raina and Haruko both stared in shock. "Alex, are you joking?"
"I'm serious. We found a dead body on the other side of the island, on the rocks below the pagoda. It's the man you all knew as Geoffrey Geskel—" probably best to leave Spider's true identity and vocation for when the others get back— "And he was murdered."
Raina translated the message for the Inspector, who looked Alex up and down, taking in his disheveled appearance before barking some words back at her. "Who's with the body now?" she asked for him.
"Tell him the detectives who came here for a separate investigation. They're going over the body right now."
Raina passed his answer to Inspector Tazuka. They exchanged a few more sentences, then Tazuka headed inside, and went up the stairs. "The Inspector says he's going to find Grandmother and secure Mr. Geskel's room. He's asked us to check on everyone else, and get them all gathered down here," she told Alex. "Can you start with the people on the second floor? I'll fetch Yukiho and Marie and get Haruko settled."
"Sure." Raina went on her way, tugging a slightly bewildered Haruko along after her.
Alex quickly texted Saguru, then took the stairs three at a time to the second floor. Ines Suarez didn't respond to his knocks; he saw why when her doorknob turned easily under his push, revealing an empty room. Ling Gengxin, on the other hand, opened his door after a few knocks: "What is it, Alex?"
"We need you to head downstairs and to the dining area," Alex told him. "It's really important."
The man's black eyes widened. "Is it the will? Did someone find it?"
"No, it's something else. Someone's dead." Once Alex convinced Ling of the urgency, the man quickly headed down. He moved onto Edmund Kett's room a door below; no response once again, and the door was locked.
Alex was considering picking the lock when the voice he was looking for called from nearby. "Hey, you!" He looked around the corner, and saw Kett was standing in front of the library, waving him closer. "Where's the other one?"
"Hakuba's outside on the other side of the island right now, along with the other detectives," Alex said calmly. "There's been an emergency."
The other man snorted. "Probably goofing off, instead of working for me like he's supposed to be doing." He lowered his voice. "I guess you'll have to do. I found something."
"There's an emergency," Alex repeated. "We need you to head downstairs."
"Alex! There you are!" Kett almost jumped at the sound of Raina's voice. She had just turned the corner down the hall, Ines Suarez behind her. "I've found Ms. Suarez too."
"This is more important," Edmund Kett insisted in a low voice. "I'm not going anywhere until one of you sees what I found. It'll be quick. Just come in, and for God's sake make it look natural."
Alex thought that Kett's surreptitious glances towards Ines and Raina were the opposite of natural, but he sighed. "Go down first Raina, we'll be there in a minute."
He suppressed his irritation and followed the man inside the library. The sun shone high and bright through the window, heating the room to a pleasant warmth. Kett drew the bolt across the window, and as soon as Alex was inside he locked and bolted the door as well after a final glance of suspicion outside.
"Alright," Alex said impatiently. "So what clue for the will did you find?"
Saguru's cell phone buzzed with a text alert, to his surprise—he wouldn't have expected the cell service to have recovered so soon.
There were two messages, both from Alex:
Inspector Tazuka and a teenage helper called Haruko Taniguchi have arrived.
The run from the house to where we found Spider took ~20 min.
"The rain stopped around 2:13am this morning, and the moon came out right after," Saguru said, showing the others the text. "Which means that if Ling, Kett or Suarez had tried to return to the house then, we would have seen them."
"Let's say twenty minutes to run here, a few minutes to kill Spider, another twenty to get back, plus around ten minutes to climb in and out of the house. About an hour total, at the very least," Masumi calculated. "So it has to be someone without an alibi from the period of around one am to two am."
The detectives were silent. Saguru was sure their minds were all running along the same tracks. They had seen both Ines Suarez and Raina Kapoor around 1:30am, so they had alibis. Raina had thought she'd seen Edmund Kett in the living room right before too, and if she was right Kett could also be cleared.
"Hirokawa Masako-san's a li'l bit too old ta be running 'bout an' climbing buildings," Hattori said. "That leaves Ling Gengxin, Hirokawa Yukiho, an' Marie Semple. An' maybe Edmund Kett."
Their ruminations were interrupted by a call from Saguru's phone. He answered it, and snapped to full alertness.
"We need to head back to the house immediately," he said. "There's been another murder."
"What?!"
"Edmund Kett has been killed. And what's more," he added grimly. "They think Alex did it."
A/N: And all the fallout from the previous night begins. Two murders and a frame job-this was a busy chapter.
As always, thanks for reading and for all the lovely reviews!