Chapter 7: Kashikijima
Saguru and Alex flew from Tokyo to the airport in Amami Ōshima, Kagoshima Prefecture that Sunday afternoon. From there they drove down to the port, where it had been arranged that one of the Hirokawas would take them to Kashikijima by boat.
Four people were waiting for them at the docks when the two arrived; Hattori, Conan and two strangers. One was a dark-skinned, stockily built girl in her early twenties, and the other an androgynous-looking youth their age with short hair and sharp green eyes.
"Mr. Hakuba?" The dark-skinned girl greeted them in perfect, Queen's English. She had large black eyes set in a warm, open countenance. "I'm Raina. My uncle Kazuya's going to be taking us by boat to Kashikijima." She pointed to a tall, reedy looking middle-aged Japanese man who had just appeared at the prow of a small motor yacht. Kazuya Hirokawa waved back. "I'll be helping my family out during your stay, since there are so many guests."
"Alex Rider, I'm accompanying Hakuba on this case," Alex introduced himself. Raina's handshake was very strong, and her hands were calloused, he noted.
"Masumi Sera," the other teen also greeted them in English as they boarded the yacht. "Hattori-kun came with Conan-kun too; now I'm wishing I also brought someone else along." She sighed. "I wish Ran-chan could have come."
"You do too, don't'cha?" Hattori elbowed Conan with a snicker. The boy glared in response. "But it was already hard enough persuadin' Mrs. Scialdone ta let Conan come along; addin' another person would'a been pushing it."
"Speaking of Edogawa-kun," Saguru said sweetly. "I do hope that you will not be asking him for assistance during our rematch, Hattori-kun. That would be unfair."
Conan responded before Heiji could. "Of course not, Hakuba-niichan! I told Heiji-niichan if I think of something I'll keep it to myself and beat both of you!"
"Like I need his help to beat ya," Heiji scoffed.
"Uhm guys, I'll be competing too, you know," Sera said.
Alex cast a wistful glance towards the receding mainland. They had barely cast off from shore and already the competitive egos of the teen detectives were in full swing.
A glint appeared in Sera's eyes. "And by 'beating us', don't you mean calling Kudo Shinichi-kun to solve this over the phone, like you've done before?"
Conan froze. "Ahaha, you've got me!" He laughed, rubbing the back of his head bashfully.
Alex caught Saguru's eyes, reading the indecision in them. On one hand, this Sera girl clearly knew something about Shinichi Kudo, but they couldn't ask her right in front of Conan and Hattori. Not when they were pretending to have stopped investigating Kudo.
"Ah, so Sera-san has also met Conan-kun on a case before," Saguru said to her instead. "And I hear you've attended one of Kaitou KID's heists as well?"
Conan's shoulders stiffened infinitesimally at Sera's mention of Kudo, but after Hakuba neglected to pursue the topic and steered the conversation to KID instead he blinked and relaxed again.
It was just as well, Alex thought. He and Hakuba could question Masumi Sera later about what she knew of Shinichi Kudo. They should be able to find some opportunity to get her on her own and away from Conan and Hattori while everyone was investigating the inheritance case. In the meantime he turned over what she had already said. So Shinichi Kudo was away doing God-knows-what, but he would help his little apprentice solve cases over the phone? What if he called to help Conan while on this trip? Even if he didn't, his contact information should be in Conan's phone. Oh, the possibilities.
Kashikijima was a small, crescent-shaped island, the majority of whose land mass was covered with tropical foliage. Its two tips were very close together; Alex estimated maybe fifty yards apart. A Japanese-styled house with a tower had been built on one tip, and an open-air pagoda stood on the other.
"This island was passed down to my grandmother, who was the last of a family which traced back to the Edo period," Raina told them as they approached. "It was all she got, but she somehow scrounged up enough money to repair the house and turned it into a hotel."
They passed between the two capes to land on a dock in the inner bay; the only good place for a boat to land, Hirokawa Kazuya told them, given the strong currents and rocks surrounding the island. A series of wide steps carved into the cliff-side led from the white sands of the beach to the house on top of the western cape three hundred yards above.
"Do you need any help with that?" Alex asked Raina as they unloaded. He and most of the others only brought a small suitcase each, but she was hoisting a large box of supplies into her arms.
"No, I'm fine, thanks," she said cheerfully. "I help out on the farms and at my uncle's practice all the time—this is nothing." And indeed when they all reached the top of the steps she was only a little out of breath.
Kashikijima House was two storeys tall, with a four storey pagoda tower at its upper right corner, almost tipping over into sea below. It was Japanese in style, with a wooden engawa veranda running around the edge of the ground floor and sliding shoji panels for walls. As they approached Alex could see a tsuboniwa—a courtyard garden —enclosed in the center of the residence, where a white-haired woman in a blue fan-patterned yukata was trimming the branches of a miniature maple tree.
"Obaasan, we're here," Raina called out as she set down her box, as the old woman approached and introduced herself. Masako Hirokawa was almost seventy, but she ran the operations of the family hotel with a spryness un-dulled by age.
"My daughter-in-law Yukiho's taken over cooking and the more intensive chores." Masako waved over a slender, dark-haired woman in an apron who bowed elegantly to them before heading back into the kitchen area. "Kazuya and Raina come from the mainland to help out as well whenever we have a large number of guests like now, but I try to do as much as I can. One has to stay active," she told the others while Raina translated for Alex after seeing his blank look.
"Grandma is getting on in age, though," the girl added in a low voice. "Uncle Kazuya has to get back to Kagoshima right away for work, so Yukiho's hired one of the local girls from Kagoshima as extra help, though she won't arrive until tomorrow. I don't think we've ever had so many guests here all at once—usually there's only one or two at a time at most, but we'll be fully booked tonight!"
The ground floor was only for dining and socializing—apart from the tsuboniwa garden Alex saw a small shrine in one corner with tablets and incense for the dead. Curios were displayed here and there, from statuettes of the four Japanese animal deities to a cabinet filled with board games to a glass display case of what looked like antique weapons.
Their rooms were all on the second floor, which had been renovated to be Western-styled with solid walls, doors that locked instead of shoji panels, and hardwood floors instead of tatami mats. Japanese influences still crept in—a hallway wrapped around the floor like the engawa on the ground level, and the bedrooms all had both a window looking out-wards and another facing the inner garden, offering two different scenic views and plenty of natural light.
Hattori and Conan shared a room right next to Saguru and Alex, while Masumi would be sleeping in one of the tower rooms. Their clients the Delacey heirs had all arrived and were resting in their own rooms, Masako told them. After the teens had unpacked, Raina took them on a tour of the house.
"There's the library next to Hattori-san and Edogawa-kun's room, and the heirs are in the rooms on the other side of this floor."
"What did you think of them, Hirokawa-neechan?" Conan asked her.
"You can just call me Raina," she told him. "My mother was a Hirokawa; my last name is Kapoor."
Conan put that together with her dark bronze skin and the curls in her thick black hair. "You're Indian, Raina-neechan?"
"Half, from my father's side. I'm actually British, but I decided to try and live with my mother's family after my parents passed." Raina seemed to be uncomfortable with the topic, and changed the subject. "This is the first time I've visited Kashikijima in weeks. I haven't met any of the heirs, or even Mr. Geskel—he's the other guest who's staying here."
"Did you meet Mr. Terence Delacey when he was still alive?" Sera asked.
"Oh, Mr. Delacey? Yes. I've chatted with him once or twice…it was a few months ago, I think."
"What was your impression of him?"
A furrow appeared between her brows as she tried to remember. "Slightly eccentric, but kind? And a bit lonely, I thought. He liked all kinds of puzzles; he would work on those picture puzzles on the chabudai downstairs while I took over cooking for Yukiho-obasan in the kitchen, which was how we first started talking. It turns out that one of my childhood friends was one of his grandchildren! Isn't it a small world?"
"Did he take walks around the rest of the island, or did he stick to the house?" Conan asked as Raina showed them the two rooms on the second floor of the tower. She would be sleeping in one, and Sera the other. If Delacey rarely left the house, it could narrow their search down.
"He went walking around the island a lot, at least while I was there," she answered. "There're a bunch of trails that would be easy even for someone his age."
They had moved up to the third floor of the tower. "Mr. Geskel is staying in that one—" she pointed to the room on the right—"and that one on the left had been Mr. Delacey's old room."
Saguru tried the doorknob, and found it locked. Probably on Mrs. Scialdone's orders, he thought, in order to prevent one of the heirs trying to get a head start on the search.
The fourth floor above looked to be an attic, used primarily for storage. There were stacks of canned food and chest freezers and fishing supplies leaning against the wall in one corner, while another was filled with random detritus—a rocking chair, boxes of children's toys, a broken electronic keyboard, and a pile of wood and cinder-blocks in one corner. The southern corner of the gabled roof was broken; the large central beam was intact, but there were gaps in the shingles through which they could see pieces of the sky. A ladder led up to the largest of the holes there, and around the exposed beam there was a contraption consisting of a bucket hanging on a rotating axle with a handle, like the devices used to draw water from a well.
"Sorry about the mess, we usually only come up to get food from the freezers—hey, watch out!" Raina called out in alarm as Conan nimbly scaled up the ladder and poked his head out of the hole in the roof.
"There sure are a lot of wooden beams and stuff up here," the boy said, looking around. "Are you guys fixing the roof, Raina-neechan?"
"Yeah, one section needed to have its under-beams replaced, so obaasan hired someone from Kagoshima to come and repair it." She looked more and more worried as Conan continued to remain with half his body stuck out of the roof. "Please come down, Conan-kun."
He finally complied. "The view from the top's amazing. You would be able to see the whole island from up there, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, but it's too dangerous for you to go up like that," she chided. "The view from the windows here are just as good."
When the rest of them started heading downstairs, Heiji hung back until he and Conan were alone. "So did ya scope out the layout of the island? Or do ya think the will might be hidden up there?" Heiji whispered.
"Mostly the former. There's a pagoda on the other tip of this island; I want to go check that out later." He paused. "Hakuba looked like he might not be trying to find out what happened to me anymore, but I'm still worried Sera-san might let something slip."
"Hmm. Ya brought yer voice changer, right?" Conan nodded. "So if worst comes ta worst, we can play that trick again. I can pretend ta be ya on the phone while yer with'em. That should throw 'em off the track."
Conan considered it. "Sera-san might see through that setup, so I'd rather not risk it unless things get really desperate. Hopefully, everyone will be distracted by this competition for the will."
The tour over, Raina left to go help Yukiho make dinner, while the teens returned to the library on the second floor, where their clients were already gathered and waiting around the large wooden table.
Conan scanned the three of them; all in their mid-thirties, all of whom returned their scrutiny as if having second thoughts about hiring teenagers upon actually seeing them. It was easy enough to match their appearances with the briefs Mrs. Scialdone had provided. The bespectacled Asian man should be Ling Gengxin, the businessman from Hong Kong. The Latino woman wearing funky earrings and a casual t-shirt with some Spanish printed in curly font could only be Ines Suarez. Then by process of elimination, Edmund Kett was the Caucasian man with a leonine head of straw-coloured hair, a prominent nose and cool grey eyes.
Kett spoke first, his eyes on Conan. "I knew we hired some youths because there were no other alternatives, but surely an actual child is going too far?"
"Conan is with me," Heiji replied in English. "I'm Heiji Hattori. I've found his presence to have been very helpful on other cases before."
Kett scoffed. "That doesn't exactly reassure me about your abilities, then." He looked to Ling and Suarez. "He'd better be representing one of you two."
"We haven't decided that yet; why don't we get introduced first, Edmund?" Ling said mildly, while Conan discretely tugged at Heiji to keep him from responding. "I'm Ling Gengxin; this is Ines Suarez and Edmund Kett. I'm glad you all decided to make the journey here for us."
"I've never met a sleuth in real life before, never mind teenage ones!" Ines Suarez said, leaning forward with a look of interest on her face. "I'm a writer—would you mind if I asked you guys some questions later?"
"Of course not, Ms. Suarez," Hakuba told her. "I'm Saguru Hakuba. This is Alex Rider, who is assisting me on this case."
"Masumi Sera," Sera offered. "I'm by myself, unlike the others."
Ines Suarez had approached to shake their hands, and now she peered more closely at Sera. "Oh, you're a girl! Excellent, why don't you represent me, then, Masumi?"
"Fine by me."
"You women, always sticking together, eh?" Kett said. "Then I call those two English lads."
"Very well, Mr. Kett," Hakuba said politely. Alex narrowed his eyes but stayed silent.
"That leaves you with me then, Heiji. I hope that's alright," Ling said with a smile.
"Oh definitely. Pleased to be working with you, Mr. Ling." Heiji shook his hands. Conan returned the man's smile as well, also privately glad they wouldn't be working on behalf of Kett. "I'm gonna do my best to find that will for you, I promise," Heiji continued with a look at Hakuba.
"I have a question I've been wondering about," Sera said, addressing Ms. Suarez after their introductions were completed and who was working for whom properly notarized (Hakuba for Kett, Sera for Suarez and Hattori for Ling). "Why did you and Mr. Ling leave England and Mr. Delacey? Was he a bad father?"
"No," answered Ling Gengxin immediately. "Mr. Delacey gave us everything we needed—food, a roof over our heads, security and education and even siblings, of a sort. He was very kind."
"So why did you all leave, then?"
Ling began to look uncomfortable. He fidgeted, suddenly more like a schoolboy being punished than an adult in his late thirties. Finally, he gave in:
"I can't speak for Edmund, or Ines. As for me…Mr. Delacey was a very kind man, but…how can I explain this, there was always an unconscious expectation for what we were supposed to become. Not his fault; I suppose that when you take in a poor orphan from some village in rural China, you'd expect the kid to forget his past completely and embrace his new, upper class, British lifestyle. And I might have, if I had been younger when he adopted me. You know, I spoke no English at all when I first came over to England—you can imagine that made school a complete hell, at least until Ines joined my class—but I worked hard to fit in, to become Jerry instead of Gengxin, and I eventually did. Then one day I came across a Chinese tourist and couldn't answer any of her questions because I'd forgotten almost all my Mandarin, and realized that I actually didn't want to let go of everything about my heritage."
"I think Ines felt a bit of the same as I did. Neither of us said anything to Mr. Delacey—it felt ungrateful, and unfilial. But that urge to go back to our roots kept building, the moreso because it was in silence. And then one day when I was nineteen I couldn't take it anymore and spontaneously took a trip to my old village in Fujian."
"It was nothing like I remembered. The little village was a city now, and there were concrete apartments where oxen used to wander in the rice fields. I was a xiāng jiāo rén; as much of an alien there as I had been in England when I first emigrated. When Mr. Delacey called and asked why I would want to go back to a country where I had such bad memories, I'm afraid I didn't respond as calmly as I should have, and we ended up having something of a row."
"That's why you guys became estranged?"
"It sounds rather silly now, I know," Ling Gengxin admitted. "I refused to go back to England, wandered around for some time and eventually ended up in Hong Kong. Met and married my wife there, and we're expecting our first child in November, so ultimately I can't say I regret it."
"But you still came here."
Kett snorted. "He wasn't going to pass up the chance at that much money any more than me and Ines would, right Jerry?"
"What about you two?"
Ines shrugged. "My story's pretty much the same as Gengxin's, except replace China with Brazil and add in some drama about a boyfriend I was seeing at the time, who turned out to be a complete douchebag. God, I was an idiot then." She looked at Edmund Kett. "But what happened with you and Elena? You two were the golden siblings."
"Similar disagreements involving our lifestyle choices," Kett answered coolly. "I would really rather not talk about it." He looked around impatiently. "Now that that's all decided, can we get on with it? That old woman is supposed to give us the clues once we're all here."
Saguru called downstairs using the landline, and a few minutes later Masako Hirokawa entered the library. She carried a sealed envelope in one wrinkled hand, and her black eyes were obsidian-bright.
"Delacey-san left this in his room before he passed, and I was instructed by Scialdone-san to show it to those three at the same time, in order to be as fair as possible," she said, her aged voice still clear and firm. She took a single sheet of paper out of the envelope, laid it on the library table, and left the room with a bow. Everyone else leaned in closer to look.
There were three rows of shapes on the sheet, all made of square blocks coloured either black or white, seemingly at random. Drawn and shaded in with a black fountain pen and ruler, Saguru noted. Terence Delacey had a neat hand—every right angle perfect, with no blotches of spilled or smudged ink.
The first shape at the very top of the page was a square, formed of eight by eight smaller squares. The second shape in the middle was a broad rectangle with a thinner rectangle protruding from one end, like a cricket bat laid on its side. At the bottom were the numbers five and six (or maybe fifty-six?), again formed out of black and white squares:
Legend: x – black squares, o – white squares, - - empty space
xxooxoox
oxxoxoxo
ooxooxxx
xoxxoxoo
oooxxoxx
xxoxoxoo
oxoxoxxo
xoxoxoox
oxxoxoooxoooxoooo
xooxooooxxxooooxxoxxooxxxox
xxooooxoooxxooooooxxoxoxoxo
oxooxxxooxxoxxooo
xoxx - oxooo
o - - - o
xxxo - oxoox
- - x - o - - o
oxoo - oooox
"Well, I'm completely stumped," Ines Suarez declared.
Delacey's old room on the tower's third floor had a beautiful view of the sea and of Sakurajima's sloping bulk in the distance. It was cozy with rugs and books and a collection of English teas, but it contained no hints about its former resident's riddle. After everyone made their own search of the room and was disappointed, they each made a copy of the puzzle, and then scattered to follow their own leads. Ling and Suarez headed up to the attic ("There's got to be something in that pile of junk up there"), Sera, Conan and Heiji descended to explore the rest of the island, while Edmund Kett went in search of Masako Hirokawa, apparently convinced that the old woman knew more than she let on.
Alex found Saguru in their room. "Any ideas?" The way the black and white blocks were laid out so precisely made him think of a crossword, only there weren't any hints given on what to fill in.
"The way those smaller squares are coloured black or white has to mean something. I'm assuming they form a code of some kind." Saguru scribbled calculations on a sheet of paper as Alex watched. "If we let the black squares be one and white be zero, we can translate this into binary. Then if we let zero be 'A', one be 'B' and so on…"
Converting the binary numbers to letters that way gave complete gibberish. So did trying to use ASCII. While Saguru tried out other codecs, Alex got bored and headed downstairs.
Yukiho Hirokawa was making some sort of soup in the kitchen area, while Raina was crouched in the genkan entrance, pulling on sneakers. She had a football tucked under one arm. "Do you want to play?" she asked. "Yukiho says she doesn't need any more help with the food prep, and there's a grassy area nearby."
Alex readily agreed, and followed her to a field on the southern side of the house. The grass was relatively smooth, and a compact row of sago palms and spiky aloe plants formed a natural defence against either ball or player falling off the nearby cliff edge. They had just marked the two goals with bamboo poles and started to play when a voice called out: "Can I join?"
It was Conan. "I really like soccer," he added. Alex, who was beginning to be able to distinguish between when the boy was genuinely excited and when he was faking to butter up adults, thought that he recognized the former.
"Of course! Want to be on my team, Conan?" Raina said.
"Sure, Raina-neechan!"
"Hey, that's a bit unfair," Alex said, but he was grinning. He punted the ball, and they were off.
Alex was on his school's soccer team, and he scored the first two goals without too much trouble. Raina wasn't as skilled, but she'd clearly played before, and she was both athletic and enthusiastic. But the real surprise was Conan. Though the boy couldn't kick as far as him or Raina, he was extraordinarily agile. He engaged Alex in a fierce period of tackling—with nary a hip check or wandering elbow, which showed surprising self-control—nimbly stepped around Alex's screening, won the ball and passed it over to Raina, who scored.
Raina whooped in glee, and Conan high-fived her. "Nice one!" Sera's voice called. She and Hattori approached, apparently finished with their examination of the island. The two of them quickly joined in; Hattori to Alex's team and Sera to Conan and Raina's, and the afternoon flew by as the game grew more and more intense.
By the time they finished the sun hung much lower in the sky, and Conan had scored a final goal with an impressive bicycle kick, winning the match for his team. Alex, sweat-soaked and content, walked over to Saguru, who had been watching from the sidelines for the past few plays. "Did you get anywhere?"
Saguru startled; his gaze had been on the others, who were clustered around Conan. "Not with the cipher, no."
He passed over a bottle of water, and Alex guzzled it down. "I wish you weren't representing Kett," Alex admitted quietly after he had finished.
"I know," Saguru sighed. "Not every client is agreeable to work with. Luckily, I don't think it'll take long before someone solves that puzzle."
"Admitting defeat already?"
"Never. I will try a new approach after dinner. Come on, let's go in—you all need a shower before we eat."
Alex had a better idea, and went swimming instead. The others quickly followed suit except for Raina, and soon they were all splashing in the cool azure waters of the bay. Heiji started a water fight with Conan, which drew everyone in briefly before fizzling out again. In the end, Alex simply laid on the fine white sands of the beach, soaking in the sun until Raina came out to fetch them for dinner.
Dinner was held on the ground floor, with everyone seated on zabuton cushions around a low chabudai table which stretched almost from one end of the room to the other. The shoji panels were all slid back, giving an unobstructed view of all sides: the verdant tropical forest, the tsuboniwa garden and the endless, rolling sea covered by a spectacular sunset.
"Mr. Geskel is still outside, but apparently he prefers to eat on his own so we can get started without him," Raina translated for her grandmother. Alex needed no further invitation.
The food was just as impressive as the view. There were eight small plates in front of him, each filled with an individually-sized example of Kagoshima cuisine, from golden brown fried tsukeage fish cakes dipped in ginger and soy, to a small bowl of rich tonkatsu stew, made with daikon radish and konnyaku and flavoured with miso, to Alex's favourite: crispy-bottomed dumplings filled with tender morsels of the region's famous kurobuta pork.
"Now this is first class service," he said happily as he ate.
"Indeed," Saguru murmured from beside him. "I wonder how much it costs to run all this; it can't be cheap." Then he was distracted by his kibinago and didn't speak again for several minutes.
Conversation was relaxed and intermittent, as they all got to know each other or became reacquainted over their meal. Alex was relieved to find that his lack of Japanese fluency wouldn't hinder him here as much as he had feared. Between Ling Gengxin who spoke Mandarin, Cantonese and English, Ines Suarez (Spanish, English and some Portuguese) and Edmund Kett (just English, as far as he knew), English became the lingua franca by default.
The three former siblings spent most of the time catching up with each other. From their talk, Alex gathered that Edmund Kett was unmarried and worked as a manager at a shipping company, Ling was an underwriter at an international reinsurance agency in Hong Kong, and Ines Suarez was an author whose best-selling work was a series of bodice-ripping romances ("Though I'm planning to expand into other genres!"). They had finished with dinner and moved onto dessert when the final guest on the island returned to the house.
"Oh, that must be Mr. Geskel," Sera pointed outside to where a tanned Caucasian man with almost shoulder-length blond hair was approaching from the steps outside. "I wonder what took him so long."
"Enjoying the beach, probably. You and Hattori didn't run into him earlier?"
She shook her head. "We went all around the island but didn't see him at all. Maybe we missed each other."
Alex heard the light steps as Mr. Geskel entered the dining area, but he was occupied with his dessert—a white, spongy, steamed confection filled with red bean paste called karukan—until he felt Hakuba tense up beside him.
He glanced sideways at Saguru, who was visibly holding himself from jumping up, and then at the stranger. The man's blue eyes glinted as he saw the half-British detective, and his mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile.
As the others made room for the new arrival, Alex nudged Saguru under the table. The other teen responded by tapping slowly on the back of Alex's hand. Morse code. Alex mentally translated the message, and felt the taste of the karukan turn to ash in his mouth.
Sera, Hattori and Conan had also noticed Hakuba's reaction and were giving him and Geskel looks. His expression now controlled, Saguru grabbed an orange from a bowl of fresh fruit in the center of the table and peeled and ate it, neatly gathering the seeds into a small pile on a plate in front of him.
Conan glanced from the seeds to Saguru and back again, and Alex saw the boy's eyes go wide. Hattori winced a moment later—he guessed that the Osakan had just received a poke from under the table.
"That was a wonderful meal, Hirokawa-san. Thank you." Saguru got up and excused himself. Alex followed. Geskel looked like he was about to come after them, but Masako Hirokawa appeared and started talking to him rapidly in Japanese, forcing him to stay in his seat.
"Hakuba-niichan! You said you were going to show me that new game after dinner!" Conan's childlike voice called out as they went up the stairs, and then came the patter of little feet running after them.
They all gathered in Saguru and Alex's room: first Conan, followed by Hattori and Sera a minute later. Saguru drew the curtains to the hallway window, and closed the door before standing by the one which looked out onto the courtyard.
"Okay, what was that all about?" Hattori asked irritably.
"Those seeds were a warning, weren't they?" Sera said, looking at Saguru. "Five orange pips, for mortal danger."
Hattori groaned. "Of course you Holmes geeks had to pass a message that way."
Sera shrugged. "I'm not a Sherlockian, but my brother is, and I've read the stories. And of course Conan-kun has been a longtime fan."
Conan gave her a strange look. "Shinichi-niichan showed them to me! But back to that man downstairs. He's the one you were warning us about, right Hakuba? Mr. Geoffrey Geskel."
"His real name isn't Geoffrey Geskel." Saguru started pacing back and forth. "That man usually goes by the alias Gunter Von Goldberg II, but I and several others call him Spider. He's an assassin."
A/N:
h9i6t3: Right now I'm thinking Bourbon will play a role in part III, and he might have a cameo later on in this installment, but I haven't quite decided yet.
I had a nicely formatted version of the puzzle, but then ffnet ate it, so I had to replace the squares with letters instead. That was a total pain. If you want to see a better representation of what it's supposed to look like, the chapter on AO3 has the proper version.
Continuing my tradition of adapting places from other mystery novels, Kashikijima is taken from The Moai Island Puzzle by Alice Arisugawa.
As always, thanks for reading and for all the lovely comments!
