A/N: Ah, what the heck. I told you I'd update faster than I usually do. Besides, that next chapter of Gem's Entry is pissing me off, and I thought I might as well take it out on this. xP So don't expect so quick an update on Gems. It might be a week… maybe a week and a half till I post it. Or more. (Till then you can work on your AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME Arsene Lupin. –sideways glance at ami-chan-)

Umm. Quite a lot of people thought this would be the 'YOU'RE THE CULPRIT!' chapter. … frankly, you should know better. xD

Disclaimer: Must I, really? For some reason, I don't really see Gosho-sensei coming to write fanfiction here… if he could just work faster on those manga updates of his… -skips off to see if the new chapter came out-

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To Die

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'To die would be an awfully big adventure.'

James Barrie, in Peter Pan

Also last words of his close friend Charles Frohman, just before he boarded the Titanic

-

Ran went to bed that night and dreamt that Sakagushi-san was trying her for the murder of Kudo Shinichi.

-

In the morning things were clearer, fresher, and all in all rather satisfactory. Yesterday's break in the routine had had the merit to make her more realistic towards the whole situation, neither frightening nor troubled; besides, she had hardly even known Shinichi to make the wrong deduction before. Collecting evidence he at present lacked would be the work of a couple of days. With a bit of luck, by Thursday the culprit would be found, the problem fixed, the study dismissed and the remaining guests sent back to their homes.

With such happy expectations to look forward to, she came down to breakfast. Shinichi wasn't there, nor was he in the library where she had expected to find him, leaning over the dossier in the morning sun. She returned into the black and white-paved hall and asked Briggs who'd just entered through the foyer 'whether he knew where Kudo-san was'.

The unexpected answer struck her dumb. "He left early this morning, miss."

She was speechless for a second, then she asked what was most logical to ask, "Where d'he go?"

"To Tokyo, miss. He said you would know what for."

Of course. Elementary, my dear Mouri – he'd gone to fish around for evidence. Probably dived in the police archives in search for the past of the person he suspected… "Did he leave any message for me?"

"Yes, miss. He said not to tell a word, and not to forget to tour the corridors tonight. He said something is liable to happen. He added that he would be back as early as possible." He presented a sealed letter on a gold-framed silver plate. "The morning mail, miss."

The letter was from Sonoko. She read it in the library, still mourning Shinichi's departure. It announced her and Makoto's speedy return from Mexico, Makoto-kun having won the karate competition off-handedly; after hearing of the case's latest development, they had decided to shorten their stay and come back to Japan.

More good news. Shinichi would be back tomorrow, Sonoko and Makoto-kun the day after that, and the case would be solved in quiet tranquillity, away from all publicity or scandal. The perfect, fittest, most reasonable end of all.

And she would never see Shinichi again.

But that would have to be dealt with in time; for the moment, the case at hand demanded the whole of her attention. Hers and Shinichi's relationship was of little importance. (For some reason, she couldn't quite convince herself of that.)

-

The day wore on. Nothing whatsoever happened to break in the quiet routine that settled down – no anonymous letters, no wall-crashing event, no murder attempts, no nothing. Conversations were rare and slow; mostly everyone kept their guard up. Even at lunch, even at dinner there were but few words exchanged. Only in the evening, in the cosy drawing-room with fire sizzling in the hearth and rain rattling against the windows, did tongues get into movement again.

Ran entered in conversation with Sakagushi-san and Hikaru-san and watched warily as Araide passed from group to group, trying to cheer them up. From face to face weary smiles were forced, and the striking contrast between the cheerful behaviour of everyone at the beginning of their stay and their now silent, subdued attitude was clearer than ever.

The change was most prominent in Akira-san, who for all his cheekiness and nonchalance three weeks before, was now the gravest of them all. He hardly spoke to anyone, even to Kenjin-san – and if once or twice he made a move as though he wanted to go and sit by her it was hastily checked.

Her conversation with Hikaru-san and Sakagushi-san absorbed her at intervals. "–got married in Kyoto at his grandlmother's–"

"–very formal ceremony, I suppose–"

"–dressed in white–"

A usual, common conversation. She took her part in it but vaguely, uninterestedly, mind going over the last weeks and remembering Makoto-kun's office, the shattered mirror, the black cat jumping in her arms and meowing in her ear, Shinichi's tired expression in the warm glow of the fireplace, Ikenami-san's inert body on the bedroom carpet, the house's still lights from outside yesterday night, Sonoko's high-pitched laugh when she'd greeted her, and back again…

"–best man half an hour late–"

Asama-san was leaning against the chimneypiece, staring in the flames determinedly. She caught his eye and smiled at him; he smiled back and turned away. Kenjin-san was sipping coffee on the low couch, looking grim. Ikenami-san's chair stood empty by the bookcase, where no one had tried to move it.

"–but the ceremony was short."

"–couldn't do otherwise…"

Araide walked up to her and said she'd better take the first turn tonight. "I'll take the second," he added, "and Briggs offered to handle the third, since Kudo-kun is gone–" Ran nodded vaguely. This triggered something else. The conversation no longer interested her. Her mind strayed in yesterday's teashop, in the car running smoothly along the road and Shinichi's profile in backlighting…

"Ran-san?"

"… yes?"

"Are you alright?"

"Ye-es. Just spacing out."

--

She retreated early, leaving the battlefield void of any winner. Her mind too was a no man's land, and both affronting parties were tired and bleeding. Despite her best efforts, she could not help wondering after Shinichi – where he was now, whom he was with… it was probably just as well that there was a knock at the door just then.

Akira-san came in, with the facial expression of a disobedient child caught red-handed in the marmalade pot. "There's something I believe I ought to tell you," he confessed after she'd invited him to sit down. "If you'll listen to me–" he was nervous and agitated; his pale eyes fixed anxiously on Ran's.

"I'll listen to you," she promised. "Keep calm and speak slowly to make sure you don't forget anything." She thought she knew more or less what was coming, but better let him blurt it out. He had never looked so young and hollow – a child, a child, just a child.

"Slowly," he said, fidgeting in his armchair. "Yes – very well. It's–I mean–complicated. I–they–oh, damn it! I say, I'm not making myself very coherent."

"Not at all," Ran said, "but do go on."

He gave a chocked, strangled laugh. "Yes. Keep one's head, right? Very well – never look down." He coughed and resumed, "I know I told you my father had sent me here, but that wasn't exactly the, err–truth. That is to say, I came here for him. I was called here – asked to come – by – well, I'd better not tell you that yet.

"The thing is, a week before I came here I received a phone call. The man – it was a man – told me that he hold secret information on my father, information that would possibly be ruining him if it ever came to be public. I – you cannot imagine what a shock that was to me."

He took a deep breath. "My father made a will, you see – and if he pegs out now all his money except a minute ten percent goes down to a ten-times removed third cousin or the like. I entirely depend upon him for money – entirely. And if he's ruined – if he goes down, I go down too.' He looked up, searching compassion on Ran's face, but she merely mentioned him to continue.

"I – yes. And so this man asked me to come down here as planned, and bring money. Lots of money. That's – err – I mean–"

"Blackmail," Rain said bluntly. Akira-san started violently, and was not able to go on for several minutes.

"Yes. He told me that I'd receive instructions, and by Jove, I sure did. I got a letter. Not one of those anonymous cards – a sealed letter, all printed out. It told me to place the money in the telephone booth down in the hall, you know – but that was the night there was this wreckage – and when I checked the next morning the envelope hadn't bulged. I was there staring at it and then Briggs came down to say there was a phone call for me in the library – and then the man told me I hadn't done as I was told–"

"Yes," Ran said, coolly. "It wasn't very intelligent of you to leave the door ajar."

His head shot up and he goggled at her. "You heard me?"

"Sort of. What happened next?"

"Well – I gave them the money in the end, but they asked for more and more – they started threatening me – they called at any hour of the day and night, saying they were going to divulge their information, they were able to push my father to the brink – to suicide – and it went on and on… My God!" he buried his face in his hands. "It was awful," he murmured between trembling fingers. "I didn't know whom I could talk to, and all those letters and e-mails…"

Ran stood and poured out a glass of sherry. "Drink," she said, forcing it into his hand. "Calm down. It's okay now. You do realize you should have told us ages ago, don't you?"

He took small sips of sherry, looking sheepish. "Yes. But I couldn't – not so easily. I thought – I was afraid, I guess." He drank slowly, considering. Alcohol seemed to revive him a little – he was less pale and less vampire-like, and his cheeks were redder. At length it was with determination that he looked up and added, "but this must come out now. That's why I told you."

Ran smiled a small, reassuring smile at him, which seemed to comfort him. "That's all right. Akira-san, can you tell me who it is, among the guests, whom you gave the money to?"

"I… yes." He cleared his throat again. "It's Ebihara Toshiaki-san."

Ebihara-san. Somehow, a part of her mind told her she shouldn't be surprised – Shinichi had probably guessed all about it. It was easy to see how the pieces of the puzzle, completely at random a few minutes ago, now perfectly fitted: Akira-san's phone call in the library and Kenjin-san having a row with Ebihara-san and the latter trying to extort information from Shinichi…

"I didn't know what to do," Akira-san was saying. "But after Ikenami-san was poisoned, I just couldn't–"

This drew Ran out of her reflections. "So you assume that Ebihara-san's responsible for this?"

"Why… yes," he replied, looking genuinely surprised. "He must be. There can't be two people in this – Ebihara-san blackmailing me, and somebody elsesending those letters and aggressing people, can it?"

"I don't know," Ran said thoughtfully. "There's always the possibility, of course. Or he may have an accomplice. I'll tell Shinichi about it – I expect he already knows about this–" she stopped, catching the leering look Akira-san was giving her. "What?"

"The two of you are already so familiar – calling each other by your first names and everything," he said, with the half-mocking smile twitching his lips. "When're the wedding bells to ring, may I ask?" He certainly felt better. She shouldn't have given him so much sherry.

Surprisingly, she didn't blush, didn't stammer, and though her heart began to thump erratically there was no outward sign of it. Had Shinichi been in the room, things would have been wildly different. Instead she frowned and said, "What are you talking about?"

"Your intimacy. With Kudo-san. You two are having an affair, aren't you?" The leer had turned to a more concerned expression, which she ignored.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

His face fell serious. "Oh, don't play the fool. You know fully well you're in love with the man. It's visible. You can tell me, you know."

This couldn't go any further – she couldn't allow it. She had decided weeks ago that she wouldn't allow personal feelings intruding into this, and she wouldn't begin now. It would break too many things – it would be having one's guard down only a second in excess, and she'd learnt long ago that being defenceless was the nearest step to having lost. "Listen – there is a very good reason against my loving Shinichi, or his loving me. And I won't tell you anything about it. So drop it."

Akira-san looked disappointed but didn't push it any further, and after a few more minutes he said he'd better go. At the door he turned back. "What if they know I've spit it, and attack me tonight?" he asked nervously.

"Then grab your aggressor's wrists and mark them," Ran said. "That way even if you die we'll be able to get them." He didn't look any relieved.

After he'd (finally) gone, she sat back at her desk and wrote it all down while it was still frehs in her mind. Then she paused and stared at the page, thinking.

Ebihara-san. Had Akira-san been right, and was he really their Poltergeist? – but somehow, this didn't fit in quite right. She couldn't imagine old, fat Ebihara-san creeping in the corridors in his Scottish dressing robe and cackling evilly while he dropped anonymous letters under people's doors. So either he had an accomplice – or those were two completely different cases.

Neither prospect was pleasant.

She felt like she was very close – very, very close to the solution. There was just this little detail that would allow her to understand it all – the one breach, the one little piece of the puzzle that would somehow give sense to everything else, make it form into a logical pattern. It flickered in and out of sight like a swaying ghost, escaping swiftly when she made a grab for it. That was the way Shinichi must have felt, when he'd been leaning against the car door with this bizarre expression…

She was still thinking about it when she prepared herself for her turn in the building. Black clothes. Lamp torch. Shinichi had found the solution on his own… she placed the dossier in a drawer, turned off all the lights, switched her torch on and went out into the corridor. What was it he had understood? What was the little detail he had eventually come across?

'We were simply looking into the matter the wrong way…'

If all it took was a matter of perspective… she turned left then right, the lightray reflecting on startling glass cases.

Briggs' words sprang out in her mind, 'He said not to tell a word, and not to forget to tour the corridors tonight. He said something is liable to happen.'

Tonight. She checked the rooms she came across, but the doors were either closed or there was no one inside. Empty rooms, richly furnished but deserted. She passed on, and neither cat nor ghost came her way. It was all eerily silent, such as only immense mansions deep in the woods could be; the soft sounds of her footsteps were the only intruding.

'Don't forget to tour the corridors tonight.' And for the first time in years, he didn't tell her to run and hide. Protection no longer hung between them, and he accepted that like a gentleman. And here, finally, was the trust she had sought all along, away from all notions of gratitude and truth. It was ironical enough – he was busily holding the door for her to get out of his life.

Honesty was one devil of a thing.

And it hurt like hell.

Don't forget to tour the corridors tonight. She walked on, opening and closing doors in her wake, inspecting dark passages, jumping a good foot high every time she met her reflection in a mirror, the lightray trailing on it like a flash, losing herself in this labyrinth of a house. Nothing on the second floor. She directed herself toward the staircase and climbed up to the third. There was nothing there; not a sound, not a move, not even a gust of wind. She walked on.

Something's liable to happen.

Whether it be from these words echoing in her mind or from common, karateka-bred instinct, she sensed the presence behind her and leaped out of reach, a second before the long, cold hands closed around her throat.

Her back slammed hard against a very concrete wall and her torch was snatched away from her numb grip with incredible strength; only shades and dark reflections on the row of windows in front of her. As her eyes accustomed themselves to obscurity, her aggressor came up again from her right, as elusive as a feline, but this time Ran was ready to welcome them.

She dodged the first punch at her temple and aimed a blow at what was supposed to be his shoulder. A cry of pain, and she ducked and made for the nearest corner, knowing there was a switch there and if she reached it and turned it on–

She didn't make it two steps. A leg swept hers and she fell backwards against the wall again – frozen hands closed hard around her throat, cutting all breath short suddenly. An abrupt mist came over her eyes; in a blur, she could hear her aggressor's rasping pants, felt them heat over her face. The hands squeezed.

She gasped; in a daze, she tried kicking but he pushed her easily away. His thumbs buried heavily around her windpipe; she couldn't breathe…

She struggled faintly but he pinned her down against the wall – his body was hovering over hers, her legs were threatening to give in and somehow, somehow she thought of Shinichi, his weary face in the gold-reddish glow of the copper fireplace, the blueness of his eyes when he smiled, and the world was spinning in lack of air–

Words sprang up in her mind again – not Shinichi's, not Briggs', but hers, hardly an hour ago–'Grab your aggressor's wrist and mark them. That way even if you die we'll be able to get them.'

It was ironical that in the end her words should come down to her; but then again everything in this case had been ironical, from beginning to end.

Her hands clasped around the wrists that choke her and dug. Her nails buried hard until she felt skin piercing, blood trickling. They'll be able to find the man's DNA on her fingers, she thought faintly. She was grasping for air, lungs screaming in need of oxygen, her whole body gone limp and numb – her hands fell, useless, by her sides.

Her legs finally gave in, so that her only support for swaying on her feet were those hands keeping around her throat, keeping her against the wall, keeping strangling her.

A desperate rasp for air – she felt the strong, cold fingers relax a second then tighten again, then the black oblivion on the borders of her sight tilted upside down and she was sinking… sinking.

-

DUN DUN DUN! A cliffie, yeah!

-runs into hiding-

No, I won't tell you what happens next. I won't. Ran could be dead for all I know. –sticks out tongue and mutters something about Akai­– But I can offer you mournful cookies, if you need them thorough the next two weeks.

By the way, since that new 'traffic' option on our personal accounts (what's up with and changing everything around?), I've been able to see that quite a lot of people are reading this. …… Lurkers all around! Where are you people!

… nah. Never mind. It makes me quite happy to know that even people over in Timbuktu (which for some reason is my notion of VERY. FAR. AWAY.) are reading and (hopefully) enjoying this. –grins and gives cookies–

-runs into hiding once more– uh… see you in two weeks? n–n"