Author's note: Quick update this time – to apologize for last chapter's lateness. Besides, I'm leaving tomorrow night on vacation, so… This chapter concerns both Shinichi and Ran's relationship and the actual plot of the story, so I recommend reading it through. Some explanations in here are essential for the rest of the solution. :)
Disclaimer: Nooooooo. I don't own anything, and much less make any money out of it.
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'So you think I'm the murderer? What do I have to do to convince you that I'm not, be the next victim?'
'Well, that would be a start.'
Peter Stone (Charade, 1963)
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At ten o'clock the next morning, they were standing together in the quad, and Shinichi was crouching in the wet grass – it had rained again that night, and the sky was grey and overcast – under the windows of Makoto-kun's office. Standing behind him, Ran watched as he parted the plants carefully and inspected the ground. His back was tense, denoting his concentration; she looked at it then rolled back up to the shoulders, underlined by the lines of the well-cut jacket. The nape, bent and shadowed by locks of black hair. The hair itself, dark and silky—
"Are you certain you found them there?"
"Positive," said Ran. "I told you you wouldn't find anything." The jawline, the neck falling towards the collarbone. The shell of the ear.
"I wasn't looking for traces of anything," he said. "When did you say you had found them? In the morning after the incident?"
"Yes…" A glimpse of the profile, as he turned for a fraction of second to glance at a bed of orchids. The rapid move of the arm, the hand brushing against the leaves of a shrub, the elbow retreating to the knee. Then he straightened up and got to his feet, brushing his clothes and interrupting without knowing it her contemplation.
"After you had asked Briggs to lock all the doors and windows giving onto the quad?"
"Yes."
"After it had rained all night?"
"Yes."
He looked at her, sharp blue eyes piercing a hole in her chest, all the way past her heart and straight into her soul. Her breath caught and she released it slowly, wishing her heart would stop skipping beats. Why was he affecting her that way? It had been ten years, hadn't it?
"Tell me you haven't fallen for that," he said in a half-amused voice.
"I haven't!" she protested in a surge of perfectly genuine irritation. "Of course the footsteps I found were made after the incident!" She realised she sounded just like an unnerved schoolgirl, coughed, and resumed in a more professional manner, "if they had been made before the culprit wrecked Makoto-kun's office, on his way inside the room, like he evidently wants us to believe, the rain would have washed them out since it only came afterwards. As it is, our man, or woman, made up the evidence of his having gone through the window, in a way to divert us from the door. We were supposed – or, at least, I was supposed to make the association rain plus wet ground plus footsteps without a second thought."
"Very good, Sherlock," Shinichi said. He had a small, fleeting smile, and Ran suddenly knew what had changed: the embarrassment of resurging memories, such as there was between them the day before, had disappeared, and his restraint in his relationship with her had moved into a straightforward attitude. If that was what he wanted and she followed, it would inevitably bring conflict and discord between them…
"I suppose he had gone in with a picklock the first time over, and then the same the second time, when he came to make the prints," he added gravely, "since Briggs and co had closed all doors and windows giving onto the quad, so there was no other way in."
So we'll fight this until we fall. Very well. "There had to be something fishy about his ability to enter the room, then," she said, and he looked sharply at her, then smiled. "The lock is rather a complicated one, and only Briggs had the key to it. I asked him. Not one of his bunch has ever disappeared.""The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime," Shinichi murmured. "You're right – there must be a reason behind all this drama. I don't suppose he or she should have gone to such an extreme scheme if there hadn't been something important he wanted most to conceal. It is nonetheless extremely clever of him – or her – to use both the weather and the necessary deductions that follow on the detective's side as a way to hide – whatever was to be hidden. Of course, if it had rained earlier in the evening, the times would be so watertight there would have been no way at all to deduce the footprints were false – anyway, it's all extremely well-thought."
"If you would kindly stop admiring the intellectual capacities of the lunatic we're trying to catch," Ran said irritatingly, and at that moment it began to rain abruptly. Heavy drops crushed against the walls and the stones in the quad, rapidly darkening them; by the time they had retreated safe and dry inside the building, it was pouring more and more rapidly and rattling against the glass of the double-window Shinichi was closing behind them.
"By the way, I forgot to note this in my report," Ran began as they directed themselves in the general direction of the library, and told him about Akira-san's phone call she had surprised that same morning she had discovered the suspects. Shinichi listened in silence and considered carefully while she told him her deductions and suspicions on that matter. "Of course, in that case, it would exculpate Akira-san from being our culprit," she added. "I don't think he has the brains anyhow."
"Oh, he does," Shinichi said lightly. "I think Kano-kun is much more intelligent than he lets pretend. Take billiard. Yesterday evening he played two parties out of Kenjin-san and me in a few minutes. He juggles with the whole complex system of bounces and redundancies as if it were child's play. In fact," he added, more thoughtfully, "I should think he is one of the most likely to be the Poltergeist – along with Taichi-san and Sakagushi-san."
"And which of them do you think is the more likely to be our culprit?"
"Sakagushi-san," he said without a hesitation. "Taichi-san's character and judgement appear to me to be much too just and straightforward – then again, it might just be pretence. But Sakagushi-san corresponds better. Doesn't mean she is the poison pen though."
Ran looked down. "I like her, you know."
"So do I. Besides, if she is our culprit, she's all the more likely to lay traps behind her and never leave absolute evidence of her having committed a crime. We might never pin her down to anything. I'd rather have it be somebody else. By the way, I think you mentioned your decision with Dr Araide of taking turns in the building at night – did you?"
"Only the first nights," Ran confessed sheepishly. "After the aggression on Sakagushi-san, we kinda dropped it. Being only two, we couldn't do much anyway."
"Well, now we're three," Shinichi said. "And we can add up Briggs. That makes four. We should be able to do some good work that way. We'll begin tonight, if you don't mind."
Ran said she didn't mind, and sighed. What with nightmares, Shinichi's presence in the daytime, insomnia, aggressions and now those night turns in the passageways, it seemed that somebody somewhere had decided to deprive her of sleepful nights lately.
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Walking all alone in a mansion at night, with hardly a lamp torch as faithful companion and protection through heaven and hell, is always creepy. And the fright makes it even bigger if you're actually looking for a deranged lunatic creeping in the darkness, with a mental constitution and no hesitation at all at shooting you straight out. Ran ruminated this as she walked down the corridors, the light ray of her torch swaying from wall to wall and reflecting in the dark windowpanes.
Of course it was the only means they could come up with to put obstacles in the Poison Pen's way, and probably one of the most effective. It was next to impossible that none of them, during their respective watches, should not come across the Poltergeist one time or another – but whom of the two should have to repent that meeting was difficult to say. There could be a gun pointing at you every corner you turned, and seeing the face of your aggressor would be of no use at all if you died.
Well, Shinichi would have to be sorry, she thought fiercely.
A turn. Another turn. Doors on her left and right, and pieces of furniture – a long bookcase lining the wall, an enormous wardrobe in a corner, a smooth, crimson-dark curtain flying in the way. A row of windows, and in the trailing light of her torch she saw her face like a vampire's pale and hollow. She passed on.
The silence was complete and oppressive. Not a sound; not even the rapid noise of a mouse scurrying in a hole of the wall. Not a footstep either. And yet she knew that somewhere in the house two people at least were awake: Shinichi, preparing to take the round after her, and the Poison Pen, typing out new notes to be found tomorrow. It didn't make her feel any better.
She walked on, sweeping the ray of her torch on her surroundings, and the ottomans, cabinets, firescreens, shelves, writing desks, aspidistras, etc., seemed to move in front of her irritatingly and ask why she was waking them up. She disentangled herself from a jumble of chairs around a rosewood table and hesitated between turning right or left when a sound arouse her attention onto a closed door farther ahead.
It sounded like a creaking, only softer and mellower. Standing in front of the door with one hand on the knob, Ran marked a pause. This felt very much like a booby-trap and she was about to walk into it head-first, but, damn it! one was a black-belt karateka or one wasn't. She thought of Shinichi. It would serve him right if she died.
She opened the door, and an extremely swift thing with black fur and shining greenish eyes shot straight out of the darkness and leaped into her arms. She staggered backwards in the corridor, trying simultaneously not to fall off in surprise, not to drop her torch, and to keep her heart from beating erratically, and found herself carrying an extremely terrified cat whose claws were digging in her shoulder.
A cat. She sighed, feeling very foolish with herself. It was just a cat, probably Emily's or Cook's – nothing to be afraid of. It was shivering in her arms, a very nervous animal. Just what was it doing in this room…
She peered inside, stroking it behind its ears, but nothing conspicuous or threatening came out of the darkness. The car – now beginning to calm down – had probably come in through the door or the window, and a maid or the wind had slammed it shut. She closed the door slowly, still petting the cat – it seemed to feel better now that it was in safety: it had cradled in her arms and was purring gently.
"Yeah, right – you can purr now," Ran told it. Its right ear twitched. "Only you were scared to death only a moment ago, and you nearly scared me to dearth, too." Her voice was crackling but it got better. The cat meowed, and that was the sound she'd heard, only it was mellower and less terrified. She recovered her torch, and the cat climbed higher on her arms finally to drape itself over her shoulders, its tail curling itself around her neck. It was still purring, rubbing its small head against her hair. "C'mon, let's go," she said to it. "We've got a poltergeist to catch."
"Ran-chan?"
"What!" She jumped a good feet high. The blond hair and white blouse of Araide's came into shape in the torch's light, bringing sudden relief after sudden fear; but his usually smiling face was worried and there was a glimpse of madness in the eyes. He was squinting to see her, blinded by the ray of light.
"Thank God I've found you," his voice was shaking, "I've been searching – come with me. There's been an – ah – incident."
"What's happened?" she said, starting after him.
"Come on." He turned back in the opposite direction, so fast she had to run to keep up.
He led her straight to his rooms, where were gathered Hikaru-san, sitting on a chair and shivering, and Sakagushi-san, holding a glass of water for her. Shinichi was standing at the window, looking out into the night; when Ran came in he turned to her with a grave look. Araide himself slumped in an armchair by his wife's and rubbed his face tiredly.
"What's going on?" panted Ran, and the cat disentangled itself from her shoulders, jumped soundlessly to the floor, and trotted up to Sakagushi-san. It curled around her leg, meowing. Ran looked at it for a second, catching her breath, and repeated her unanswered question.
"Well," the older lawyer said, glancing at Hikaru, who was clutching her husband's arm for comfort, but Shinichi interrupted her.
"I think I'd better tell her." Sakagushi-san nodded, and he turned back to Ran. "It seems that Hikaru-san has been aggressed in a corridor," he said bluntly. Hikaru gasped, and Araide gripped her hand so hard his knuckles whitened. Ran dropped herself in a chair and said, "What?"
"From what we've managed to understand from her," Shinichi went on, more coherently, "she had forgotten a book in the drawing room and was returning here when somebody grabbed her neck from behind and – obviously attempted to strangle her. There was no light on, and she couldn't see anything. But the culprit – whoever it was – had an iron grip around her neck and told about her baby, how she wouldn't want it to die with her, and – things," he cut short, seeing that Hikaru's eyes were filling with tears.
Ran felt sick suddenly. She knew the man was deranged, but this—"Did you see at least whether it was a man or a woman?" she asked slowly to fight nausea.
"N-no," Hikaru stammered, and wiping away tears, regained some composure. "He was talking in a low voice, so it c-could have b-been anyone." (Ran nonetheless noticed that she had said 'he' rather than 'she': her subconscious had assimilated her aggressor as a man. In which case – it proved absolutely nothing.)
"And what happened then?"
Araide took up, while his wife drained down Sakagushi-san's glass of water. "Hikaru said the – person let her go suddenly, and disappeared in the shadows. She ran back here. At first she was too confused to tell us anything but afterwards – I thought I'd come after you."
Not the best thing to do, Ran thought grimly. If she had gone on her round she might have surprised the poltergeist. Shinichi's eyes met hers for a second, and she knew he was thinking the same. She wondered why he hadn't stopped Araide from going to fetch her.
"I wish I could do something to help," Sakagushi-san said gravely, sitting as well and petting the cat, which had stretched lazily on her lap.
"I don't think you can," Shinichi said, with a sombre look. He walked up to the Araide couple. "Hikaru-san, I'm sorry to rub it in, but if you can remember anything about your aggressor – anything that might help us identify him – I wish you would tell us. It could help us very much, since you're the only one who's had a physical contact with the – the culprit." He didn't look as though he expected much of an answer.
He didn't get one. Hikaru apologized, but the shock and fright and confusion had been too great and she hadn't been able to discern anything. Shinichi smiled, said it was quite all right, and laid his hand on Araide's shoulder for a second before he walked back up to the window.
The ever-ready Briggs came in then, with brandy, china cups, and a silver pot of what turned out to be cacao. Ran drained down half a cup of it before Shinichi took her aside and asked her to 'bring Sakagushi-san back to her rooms.' "I should like to learn more from Hikaru-san," he added in a whisper, "but she is too shocked for the moment to answer my questions. Sakagushi-san was sitting with me and Araide when his wife came in, which is why she stayed with us, but now she would only get to interfere."
Accordingly, the two women paid their goodnights, gave Hikaru a few more words of comfort, and exited the room into the corridor. As they walked together towards the great staircase, the cat trotted ahead of them with a dignified attitude and its black tail in the air, leading the way.
"Is it yours?" Ran asked.
"No. It must be the household cat. He knows where to find me, though – in the evening he comes to visit me in my rooms because he knows I've got milk. Where did you find him?"
"Locked up in a guestroom while I was doing my round."
"Aha. Any luck?"
Ran looked at her. "None. And yet I was turning in the surroundings," she deplored. "If Dr Araide hadn't come to find me, I might have run across our poltergeist and those dirty tricks would have been done and over with. Hikaru-san a pregnant woman, too," she added disgustedly. "I wonder Shinichi-san didn't prevent Araide-san from coming after me."
"He must have been worried for you," Sakagushi-san said in her cool voice.
She hadn't thought of that. "Yes. Well. Maybe. At least tonight exculpates you from being our culprit, since you were sitting with Shinichi and Araide when Hikaru was aggressed. And it narrows the spectre of likely suspects." That was the only good thing she could see in all this mess.
"Unless I have an accomplice," Sakagushi-san reminded her. Farther ahead, the cat stopped at a corner and looked back at them, its grey-green pupils shining in the dark. It waited till they had joined it before it started up again. "We could be two doing the job – or several. For all you know, we could very well all be involved."
"Oh, damn," said Ran, irritatingly. "This case is starting to get on my nerves."
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To those who expected fluff – Shinichi and Ran's relationship isn't going to be easy in this. The chapter's title says it all. Who said I'm sadistic? Nah… I just like to torture them a leeeeetle bit…
A lot of cookie-shaped thanks (n-n) to the people who reviewed so far – you really are awesome, and this story goes on the right way thanks to you. –bows– –gives the cookies–