Author's note: I'm really getting better and better on these updates. As a matter of fact, my finals are approaching real fast now (they're, what, two weeks and a half away?) and as a result of my crazy logic I'm getting to write fanfics more and more. Duh. Anyway, fourth chapter on.
Disclaimer: I don't own DC. DC owns me, though. That is all.
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To Fight Through
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"We only have to kill her now."
Agatha Christie
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Days came and passed. After the incident letters had flowed in, full of sadistic triumph, and warning them off the house for the last time before the curse befell upon them all. Unmoved, the guests and staff kept going with their daily occupations, and the various little white cards were gathered up by Ran in Sonoko's dossier. There was beginning to be pretty lot of them by now; they were kept in plastic sheets and labelled after the time and location of their discovery, "Note found on Ebihara-san's chair at 9 pm, October 11th," "Note found on Dr Araide's desk shortly before noon, October 12th."
One of them particularly was addressed to Ran: it pictured her as a cheap detective who sent people to the gallows, and accompanied by an ugly scrawl of a naked woman threatened by a guillotine-like blade over her head. Ran was so disgusted she very nearly threw it in the fire.
In the daytime, she looked out for further intelligence about the letters or the study, but on the first matter everyone was inscrutable and in the second there was NOTHING. There were no gatherings, no visits in the library, no mysterious disappearances for a few hours: they all acted exactly as though they were on vacation. Yet when she asked Araide about it, he smiled pleasantly and said everything was going on charmingly – after that she gave up understanding.
The days wore on. A queer-looking routine settled in, rather similar to the one that must lead the inhabitants of a besieged town. Not a word, or very little else, was said either about the letters or the wreckage of Makoto-kun's office; not a question was asked to Ran about the results of her investigations. Somehow, all of this was beginning to feel rather surreal. The guests passed in and out of the mansion like ghosts on a stage, the servants fulfilled their task in ethereal silence, and in the midst of all this Ran sat by her fire, read detective novels, completed her dossier and thought in capitals.
The Less Likely Suspect, The Made-Up Alibi, The Unknown Mobile, The Corpse In The Cupboard, The Hidden Murderer In The Basement – strolled carelessly in and out of her mind like uninvited guests to a masked ball, turning and spinning out of sight more and more rapidly in a sort of delicately intricate dance, deliberately confusing in their swirls of black-and-white dominos and swaying lanterns – in such daydreams her mind wandered off sleepily, touched by the hearth's warm glow and the veiled darkness around her armchair. She nodded off.
Something was bound to happen, though. The letters showed it in all their triumph: the wreckage of Makoto-kun's office had encouraged the culprit, and the failure of Ran's investigations had thrilled him – or her. "He or she will strike again," she said to Sakagushi-san, with whom such conversations weren't unusual; the older lawyer was the only of the guests who could speak of the matter freely. "And bigger, this time. I'm afraid my presence has had the opposite effect than it was meant to."
"How so?" Sakagushi-san asked severely, with the air of someone who knows perfectly the answer but wants her to say it all by herself. They were sitting together in the library at the end of the afternoon, where they'd been abandoned earlier by Kenjin-san and Asama-san. Outside, the wind was brushing against the brown-and-gold leaves, almost ready to fall, with the soft sounds of metallic rustling.
"Well – I was supposed to frighten him off, but somehow he doesn't seem very affected. On the contrary. It looks like he wants to show everyone what an amateur I am and how helpless when faced with him.
"I told you I didn't think you weren't the fittest person for this case, you know." Sakagushi-san tapped the bottom of her glass against the armrest.
"I know," Ran said, and looked away.
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The second incident occurred the very evening – only it was much bigger than anything the first had been like. Ran had been sitting up at her desk, employed in categorizing today's letters, labelling them, and taking down in a notebook what small events had taken place since the previous entry.
'Nothing much. A slight row between Kenjin-san and Ebihara-san, about something Ikenami-san had said. These two dislike each other very much. If one of them is the Poltergeist, the other will probably be in dang—"
She had hardly affixed those words on the page that a crashing noise, alike in sound and in volume to a crack of thunder or the sudden roar of a motorbike, exploded somewhere in the depths of the building. It came out terrifyingly clear, and it died out just as suddenly. Ran's armchair was flung back in haste as she grabbed instinctively for the torch she left on her desk handy for all emergency, and she dashed out of the room without a second thought for the consequences of leaving her door wide open; the only thing she dared think about was that somebody had been shot.
Running and shouts. This always had to happen at night – she cursed mentally, and accelerated. Somewhere in the midst of all that confusion, a small, logical part of her mind remarked that if she even ran into somebody who went opposite, that person was all the more likely to be the Poltergeist – but no form, ghostly or visible, did cross her path. There were far too many corridors in this house…
She arrived second best on the spot. Briggs had got there first, and he had had time enough to kneel by Sakagushi-san's shaking body and sustain her up. Panicking, Ran dropped herself by their side, but the lawyer was breathing regularly, fully conscious, only her shoulder wounded. The bullet had dug deep in the flesh and it bled heavily.
"What's happened?" shouted Araide from behind her; realizing Sakagushi-san's state, he pushed Ran aside and took her place. Ran got to her feet, and was left to answering the frantic questions of more guests arriving. They ceased coming after one or two more minutes. Both Asama-san and Akira-san were missing.
Ran thought she'd better handle that in the morning instead of going off in search for them; it didn't seem likely that the Poltergeist, if it wasn't one of them, should attack either that night. More things, on location, caught her eye anyway: the crackled mirror on the wall in front of her, partly shattered at the bottom; the golden bullet she picked up from the carpet; the small feminine pistol she found lying at the corner. Once more, it would probably be useless looking for fingerprints on the grip and trigger, but she wrapped it in a handkerchief anyway.
"How is she?" she asked, returning towards the gathered guests with her findings burrowed deep in her pocket.
"She'll be fine, I think," Araide said, inspecting the wound with the aid of one silent Ikenami-san. "You have a strong constitution, Sakagushi-san. We'll rinse this and bandage it, and then all you'll need is a good night's sleep. Briggs, go fetch some water and disinfectant, please. And large bands of gaze."
"Of course, sir."
Briggs gone, Araide directed them all towards the room in which he worked, with the promise of some whisky-and-soda for those among them whom the gunshot had shocked most. Along with Kenjin-san, he helped Sakagushi-san stand up and walk; Ran was going after them when she noticed something else.
"You coming, Ran-chan?"
"Don't wait for me," she said, absently. "I'll be right behind you."
She stood, motionless, in front of the crackled mirror; a glassy, ill-reflecting spider web interweaved its threads from the middle of the surface all over it to the edges. To mark it that way, the person who had fired must have been standing directly in front of it – and the bullet had hit the mirror and shot right back.
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When she got back to her room later into the night, once whisky-and-soda had been administered to all those who needed it, and the wound had been cleaned and dressed properly, she found that her dossier had mysteriously gone away from her desk. Cursing, she switched savagely the lights off and got into bed. It was not after a hour of tossing and turning and fancying she saw ghostly figures hovering in the corners, that she eventually sank into a restless sleep – and dreamt of blue eyes and an interrupted kiss from ten years in the past.
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The dossier reappeared again in the morning, just as mysteriously as it had vanished the evening before. When she opened her bedroom door, feeling refreshed and her ideas clearer, she found the folder standing neatly against the wall outside, its contents untouched in insolent mockery. Between two pages had been slid a card with the words, in red ink, running along the lines of, "So much work for so little results—"
Rather out of helpless revenge than of professional acuteness, she took it back inside, labelled the note carefully, secured it safely in a plastic sheet, and locked the whole in a drawer.
She caught hold of Briggs in the hall and asked him after it. The butler's face mustered as much surprise as it could in all its impassibility and said, "I am perplex, miss. I have brought your shoes, once polished, in front of your door at six o' clock this morning, and I am positive that no such thing as a folder was laying there. I would have let you know, miss. But perhaps Emily, who is in charge of this corridor, can enlighten you on the matter."
Emily, once summoned, was indeed able to narrow the spectre of the possibilities. She had through that corridor that morning, on her way to the attic, because Cook had asked her to bring to the kitchen the lot of old pans that were stored there, miss, because she said turtle soup was always much better when it was boiled in those old brass pans—("Stick to the point," Ran reminded her) and, yes, she had seen that file – or folder, yes, miss – standing against the wall. That would be around seven o' clock, maybe a tad sooner. No, miss, she daren't touch it, because she feared it might be booby-trapped or something, what with those letters and Kyogoku-san's office and that poor lady shot—
"Ah, yes, the letters," Ran interrupted. "Has any of the other servants – or the cooks – received some, do you know?"
"If any of us had, you would already know about it, miss," Briggs said, a little stiff in his manner – reproachful, maybe? – and Emily put in, "I didn't, miss, and I'm sure the other girls would have told me if they had, and Cook, too, because she quite likes me, not like poor Ann – 'I do wonder who's doing all this trouble,' she said to me only yesterday, just like that – but that was before we heard of the poor lady shot, or we wouldn't have talked of it that way—" and so on.
When Emily's diatribe was over, Ran thanked them both and, after a moment's thought, went straight into the library. She sat there in her favourite armchair, stared outside the window at the autumn trees that were bedecked with brown and red-gold leaves, and resolutely began to brood.
She brooded on for long minutes. There weren't so many alternatives now; the situation had reached a crisis. Besides, it was all out of her hands. They couldn't allow anything like yesterday to happen again – next time, it might be fatal to the victim. She wasn't altogether certain the first attempt had meant to be so, but – Anyway, the exterior world could no longer remain out of this.
Not for the first time, but with a greater sense of alarm, she realized how acutely the case in hand had reached a critical and dangerous point, how absurd and hazardous was their gathering, how stupid the simple fact that they should remain there, in this grand, unreachable house, at the mercy of any passing lunatic. She shouldn't have accepted to come into the matter at all; it had done more bad than good.
"Ikenami-san," she called out to the practitioner as she passed the library's doors, "do you happen to know whether Sakagushi-san is feeling any better, this morning? Will she be able to leave her room?"
The elder woman stopped dead in her tracks and glared at her with such intensity Ran might have just insulted her. "Yes, she will," she said stiffly, almost grudgingly. "She has been very properly shot. There won't be any after-effects."
"There won't? That's great. In that case, would you mind telling her (and any guests you happen to come across on your way) that I should like to see them all in the—" she hesitated. Not here; this library was a place for peace and silence, not for many people talking loud together and arguing. "—in the sitting-room in the left wing, first floor."
"Certainly," was the short, severe, almost rude answer.
"Thank you. I'll see you there in fifteen minutes." Ikenami-san walked briskly away, and Ran remained where she was. She touched the bell after a second's reflection, and asked Briggs what she had just asked the practitioner. If all the guests were assembled in the good room in due time, it was certainly thanks to him.
Sakagushi-san appeared supported on one side by Araide, on the other by Hikaru-san, and was seated in the deeper and most comfortable armchair, which Akira-san sprung from at her entrance and hurriedly left at her disposal. She appeared to be very feeble, but her sharp grey eyes met Ran's with unmoveable determination.
Discussion would be hard.
Her account of yesterday night's events ran thus: around half-past ten the evening before, she had been sitting by the chimney, reading, when a small card had been slid under her door and heavy, rapid footsteps could be heard running down the passage. (This was confirmed by Kenjin-san, who indeed found the note laying on the floor when he'd helped her back to her room.) She'd gone after him, of course, not forgetting to take her lamp torch with her, but the man was as elusive as the shadows themselves – in fact, he always seemed to tear past a corner the very moment she reached the corridor he'd just left, so that the light ray never showed anything more than the rapid swirl of a sleeve or a disappearing leg.
"Are you quite certain it was a man you saw?" Akira-san asked in a plaintive voice – almost anxiously, Ran thought.
"I'm positive. The footsteps were too harsh and heavy to be a woman's – unless she was wearing very strong shoes, which wouldn't have been all the most practical for running," Sakagushi-san said, considering. She fell into a contemplative silence, out of which Ran eventually had to urge her, by prompting her to continue.
"Yes – sorry. I don't know exactly how long this running lasted – it felt like centuries, but it can't have been more than two, maybe three minutes. We kept on the second floor all along. I think we passed your room once, Asama-san."
"You did," he said. "I heard you."
"Yes. Well, after some time that man suddenly rounded back on me, or took another passage, or waited at a corner, for I collided with him then. My torch dropped and I think broke. That's when he shot me – only he shot the mirror. He must have seen my reflection and fired, thinking it was me… the bullet made a rebound and hit my shoulder instead. I think I shouted – and he heard voices and got frightened, and fled."
Ran scanned the faces while the older lawyer talked of that fight and flight, hoping to get some involuntary reaction of – something, indignation or leer maybe, but they were all a set of polite, attentive blanks.
"Something puzzles me, though," Sakagushi-san was adding as an afterthought of her sensible mind. "I'm almost certain I heard his revolver fall down on the parquet – it made a metallic sound. But if none of you found it," looking round, "I suppose he must have recovered it when he rushed back in with everybody else."
"As a matter of fact, he didn't," Ran said, making all of them start. She fished the pistol out of her pocket and laid it neatly on the table, where it stayed for a second in the utmost silence. Then—
"That's mine," Sakagushi-san said.
Sensation. Ran glances rapidly at her then back at the revolver. It was small and thin, easily handled, its black grip standing out against the golden sides shining in broad daylight. It was certainly a woman's gun. "Are you quite certain ?"
"It is, anyhow, similar to mine in every point." She picked it up, careful to touch only the handkerchief, and turned the cylinder open. "Five bullets – and there were six in mine. One shot fired." She clicked it shut. "I keep my gun ready for all emergency in the top drawer of my desk – I saw it there only yesterday morning. That will have to be checked, of course."
Briggs was dispatched in verification and Sakagushi-san handed the gun back to Ran. "You'll want to keep it, I suppose."
Ran wrapped the tissue more tightly around the revolver, pocketed it, and waited for the noise to settle down. They were all talking together, rapidly, confusedly; like horses, she thought, scenting a thunderstorm hovering close and trying to break free of their stalls. They all knew what was coming – they all knew what she was going to say. Ebihara-san stood abruptly and walked over to the window, where he stood with his hands in his back. Ikenami-san lit a cigarette with nervous, irritated gestures. Akira-san laughed sheepishly. It seemed that the room was but one, immense held-back breath.
"Of course, you understand this cannot go on after such an accident," Ran said, each word from her building up a tension that weighted heavier and heavier on everyone's shoulders. Silence fell when she had finished, it was sharp and cold. People stared at their feet, or stared resolutely into complete emptiness.
"We cannot allow any similar event to occur again," Ran went on mercilessly. "I'm sorry – I cannot do anything more for you. It's all out of my hands – we have to call for the police."
Briggs was helpful enough to come in then and say that the top drawer of Sakagushi-san's desk was void of any pistol. "In all likelihood, miss, the culprit has taken it away." Eyes glared at him, but Briggs, master of deadpan, stood his ground impassively.
"Thank you, Briggs," said Ran. "So you see, minna-san, what the situation is like. Our man, or woman, is ready to rob and murder to reach his or her objective – whatever it is. We can't permit that risk, I'm sure you understand that."
"We can't really interrupt the study—" Araide began.
"The police here is out of the question," Asama-san said gravely.
"Do you have any other alternative to offer?" Ran said with irritation. "Does any of you happen to have a brilliant idea to stop the massacre? Would the culprit – who is, I remind you, among us right now – kindly unmask himself?"
"Maybe the police itself – the official police isn't necessary. Constables here will never do. But someone like a detective – paid to be silent, paid not to make any trouble – would be more to the point. Discretion – it would not only prevent scandal, but the man would also be able to investigate more quietly, with perhaps better results."
Ran's heart skipped a beat. She had seen this coming all along – she had braced herself against it, but when she had recovered her hold upon her senses, the snowball had taken momentum and was already rolling down the hill. Agreements or protests filled the air, fused with the quickness of flashlights, as all the guests immediately grasped the buoy that had been thrown among them. A paid detective, yes – but somebody capable, somebody who knew what he was about, but somebody also who wouldn't call attention onto them, who was known to make long absences…
Ran closed her eyes.
The name of Hakuba Saguru was advanced – he was famous for being half-British, and to travel often. But that would not do. He was in England at the time, working on a particularly though case – it was all in the newspapers. Besides, no-one here had even met him, not to speak to, and they needed someone trustworthy, someone entirely reliable, whom at least several of them knew…
And then Asama-san proposed, in his low, grave, serious voice of Doom, "I suggest we call for Kudo Shinichi."
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Aaaaannnndddd… CUT!
(very sadistic author loving cliff-hangers only when she's making them up)
Aww, come on. You'll see Kudo-tantei next chapter. And the way it's going, that should come out sooner than expected. (I hope.) Here, take a cookie (even if that's poor making-up for the absence of our favourite raven-haired detective…)