"Ciel, would you please stop banging your head against the table?"
Ciel scowled up at Madam Red and gently rubbed his bruised shin. Someone had kicked it when he was passing through the bustling marketplace.
"But what do I do?" he moaned. "What do I do? Where do I look? Who do I ask?"
"Obsessing over things isn't going to help," his aunt said sternly. "Just calm down and let things go as they will."
"If I let things 'go as they will,' all of England's aristocracy will go the way of the dodo—you and I included."
"I sincerely doubt that," Madam Red said. "Just wait until they make a mistake."
"But they haven't made one yet!"
"But they most certainly will. Everyone makes mistakes. You do, I do, Sebastian does…" She glanced suspiciously at the butler, "…probably. The point is, everyone makes mistakes, especially when they get comfortable and confident. The murderer will eventually feel that they are invincible; they'll make one wrong move, and then, bingo! You'll catch them. All you have to do is wait."
"But I'm not sure how much longer I can wait," Ciel complained. "Her Majesty's subjects are being targeted and threatened. Will I have to wait until they come for me?"
"Just wait," Madam Red urged and confidently moved a chess piece, resulting in her defeat.
Eleanora was moving quickly through the bad parts of town, easily navigating the twists and turns and expertly heading towards her employer's house. She was comfortable—no one bothered her, she was in familiar territory, she was just about to let herself imagine dinner when she heard a pitiful, weedy cry:
"No, no! Please, no! I'll do anything! I'll pay you anything! Just don't kill me!"
She paused. Someone was getting mugged—mugged or murdered. Not at all uncommon in these parts, and normally she'd just cruise on by, but the person who was apparently being attacked had a voice different from the ones usually heard here—proper English, snobby accent—a nobleman.
Two big butch men appeared out of the darkness, dragging a young, well-dressed man along by his arms.
"Shit!"
Eleanora ducked behind a corner and listened.
"It's none of your business; just keep walking and leave and go home; think of dinner think of dinner…"
The nobleman was still crying and begging for mercy. His offers of rich rewards again made Eleanora pause. Saving a nobleman did have its benefits. She could get money out of it—lots and lots of money. Or she could wait and then steal his wallet. Either way worked.
She carefully crept out of her hiding spot and looked around. The butch men had dumped the nobleman in a dead end, surrounded by three walls and the men blocking the only exit. The nobleman was whimpering and offering vast amounts of wealth—just hearing about it made her lick her lips.
"P-Please, I'll do anything, anything at all! What do you want?!"
One of the men was chewing an unlit cigar; he spat into the street.
"Boss wants you dead," he said gruffly. "So we wanna kill you."
"K-Kill me?" His eyes went wide with shock. "Oh, please don't kill me, please, I'll do anything!"
"Shut up!" the other man shouted and kicked the nobleman in the stomach, immediately crippling the young man. The aristocracy was not known for their toughness. Then the other man kicked the young man in the back, and then in the stomach, and then they lifted him up and began pummeling him with their fists…
They were beating him to death.
Eleanora bit back a groan. She had seen numerous deaths in her lifetime, but beating was always one of the cruelest ways to go—it hurt both the victim and the audience.
The nobleman didn't last long. He went deathly limp about five minutes in. The men kicked his head a couple of times and they turned to leave…
They spotted Eleanora.
"Hey! You!"
She ran.
She ran as fast as she could, using all the tricks she had learned in her life on the streets, making sharp turns, doubling back, kicking over trash cans…They were still following her.
She made another sharp turn and rammed into someone's back.
"Hey! What's the big idea?"
The person had an aristocrat's voice—not the voice of a poor person. They turned around and Eleanora could see the moonlight glinting off of their glasses and their sharp teeth as they grinned.
"Well, and just who might you be?"
Eleanora was about to wonder if the person was a man or a woman when she heard the butch men come running after her.
"She went that way!"
"Quickly! Catch 'er!"
She scrambled to her feet and pushed past the strange man-woman and almost tripped over another dead body—a noblewoman.
The men were coming and the man-woman was asking her questions. She looked around; she knew where she was; she could make it home in five minutes if she ran.
So she ran.
She burst into the kitchen through the back door, tossed aside the basket of groceries, ignored all the protests and demands of the other servants, and ran up the stairs, never stopping until she was in her room with the doors and windows locked. She began to pace the room like a caged animal, pausing and listening at every sound.
The night went by and she began to relax. She had lost whoever had been chasing her. She didn't see anything. She didn't know anything. No one had seen her. She was safe.
She collapsed onto her bed with a sigh. Safe. No one had seen her. No one knew that it was her. She was safe.
Safe.
Madam Red left through the middle of their fifth chess game to answer the telephone. She returned pale and shaking, but with a triumphant look in her eyes.
"What? What is it? What happened?" Ciel asked, already knowing what moves he would make to win.
"That was Grell just now," Madam Red said, sitting back down across Ciel. "And let me tell you, you should listen to your aunt more."
"Why? What happened? What did Grell say?"
"She said," here Madam Red couldn't resist a victorious grin, "She said that she just found your witness."