Memories of Murder:
Chapter 15:
That was not what Sebastian had ever expected to hear. He had spent the past month trying to find out what happened to Ciel which he had thought might lead to finding his corpse. If he hadn't managed to find a clue within a month, how was he supposed to find his body within two hours?
Ciel's aunt was right. Undertaker knew he couldn't succeed and was only doing it for amusement.
"What happens if I refuse?" he had to find out before it was too late.
Undertaker burst into sadistic laughter. "You won't leave here alive. There's Ash and Angela outside the door and the two of us in here. The only way to get out of this room alive is to agree to the deal."
Sebastian considered it briefly. The odds were not in his favour and they were never intended to be with that sort of deal. He had a 10% chance of succeeding. He looked at Ciel hopefully, perhaps hearing his aunt's recital of what happened six years ago had triggered his memories to come back.
From the confident look in Ciel's eyes and his altered posture, he knew he had his memories back.
"Sebastian, agree to it. It will delay things for two hours- that gives us time to think something," Ciel instructed and placed his hand in Sebastian's.
Sebastian agreed with him. It was the best thing for it.
"I will try my best to find Ciel's body within the time limit."
Undertaker pulled out a pocket watch from his waistcoat.
"Oh really? Well in any case, your two hours starts now. I have asked security to patrol the walls in case you try to escape."
Angelina held the door open for him and he sprinted past Ash and Angela and down the stairs. He stopped at a bench outside the building. He needed to think about everything logically. Ciel came to a stop behind him.
"Do you remember everything now?" Sebastian asked. "Somehow you look different."
"I do remember everything," Ciel confirmed. "Aunt Ann forced one of those prototype pills down my throat. It didn't hurt at all though- she gave me morphine earlier on. It was strangely merciful of her."
Sebastian recalled the lilies in her office. Perhaps they were in remembrance of Ciel.
"She does appear to have conflicted feelings about it," he said.
"Perhaps. But she still killed me. That fact does not change."
Sebastian stared at him with an idea in mind.
"Would you be able to sense where your body is hidden?"
Ciel shook his head ruefully. "I can't remember anything that happened between after I died and when I eventually came back as a ghost. The last thing I ever saw was that creepy old fart's face."
Sebastian shuddered at the thought.
"That will be the last thing I ever see too if we don't find anything. We have 125 minutes left."
Ciel sat down beside him.
"Before you start running around like headless chicken, we need to consider it methodically. There are several ways to dispose of bodies and all of them produce different results. They could have degraded in the well with acid like they did with the previous victims, they could have burned it to ashes or they could have buried it. Only one is likely."
For a moment Sebastian was distracted by the reference to the well and what it had been used for and then he realised the significance.
"Undertaker said 'body'. He wouldn't have used that term if you were ashes or that skull."
"Aunt Ann also used my dead body as leverage to silence my parents so it would have to be intact. Naturally it would have degraded by now. It has to be somewhere reachable as well because they need to have it on hand for manipulation."
Sebastian understood. If the newer building were under construction at the time they could have buried him in the foundations and never been caught for it, but that meant they would never be able to retrieve it in case they needed it.
He unfolded the map of the school which he still had in his pocket and crossed off all of the buildings. Ciel's body was unlikely to be hidden anywhere in the school house. That still left a lot of places where he could be hidden. He couldn't dig everywhere up even if he had a whole day.
If Angelina Durless was genuinely fond of her nephew as the lilies and the morphine suggested, she might have had the decency to bury him somewhere respectful. That would be somewhere quiet so he crossed off all of the sports field and the field where students went at lunchtime. Crossing those areas out revealed more likely locations. He considered the trees hiding the old school building. It would be difficult to bury a body there due to the tree roots. He almost crossed it off when something made him stop. The timeline was bothering him.
William had said the old school building had closed down and then the trees were planted in front of it. How could make that sense if that location was connected to the Seven Mysteries which the mystery club had been investigating before Ciel had been murdered?
Unless there weren't seven until Ciel's death.
He found the minutes of the meeting in his pocket and reread the title. He should have seen it before. It said 'Mysteries of the school'. If there were seven, it would have been 'Seven Mysteries'. He turned to a member of the mystery club from 2010.
"Six years ago, how many mysteries were there?"
Ciel looked thoughtful and then it looked like he had remembered something significant.
"Of course. There were only six. The blood sucking cherry blossom tree wasn't one because there weren't any cherry blossoms around."
They looked at each other and Ciel was the one to break it and look away.
"My body must be buried underneath the cherry blossom tree. It fits exactly."
"Planting the trees had a dual purpose. It concealed your body and the old building."
Sebastian stood up and was ready to go back to see Undertaker when he realised it was too easy.
"Undertaker said to find your body and not just the location. That means..."
Ciel finished his sentence. "You will have to dig it up. That could exceed that time was have left. We also have to find something to dig with first."
Sebastian checked his watch and made a decision.
"You can find the tree and shout for me when you hear me coming. I'm going to Tanaka."
Whilst a caretaker was not the same thing as a gardener he should still have something around for digging or know where the tools were kept. Tanaka was in the middle of drinking green tea when Sebastian burst in.
"Do you have a shovel?" Sebastian demanded. "It's urgent."
Wordlessly Tanaka walked to the other room and returned with a large shovel. He handed it to him and Sebastian went running off to the trees, failing to notice that Tanaka was following him from a distance.
He rejoined Ciel and looked up at the cherry blossom tree. Even if it had a dead body buried beneath it, a cherry blossom in full bloom was a sight to behold.
"Did you know that the blossoms are really white, they are only pale crimson because they drank the blood from the corpse underneath the tree? Or that's what the legend says" Ciel said and shuddered. "It feel strange to know that I am technically here and under there."
Sebastian slammed the shovel down into the earth. "Soon you will be in the same place."
It would have taken an average person two hours to dig deep enough, it took Sebastian half an hour. Ciel climbed up the tree and watched him whilst sitting on a branch. After 30 minutes of digging the shovel hit something and he bent down to see better. He had hit Ciel's real skull. He felt a shiver go down his spine at the sight. There was quite a difference between ghost Ciel and the real one.
Ciel who had jumped down from the tree stiffened suddenly. "There is someone coming."
Light footsteps became apparent and Ciel's aunt walked into view. Her face looked arctically pale.
"I cannot believe you actually found him," she gasped and looked like she was going to faint.
"Of course. Where would I be if I couldn't solve a mystery?" Sebastian smirked and tried not to sound like he was bragging. "Will you give up now and surrender? It was a promise and I have fulfilled my half."
Her eyes flashed dangerously at him and he had a feeling there had never been an intention to keep the agreement if he had succeeded.
"I will never surrender!"
She fumbled in her coat pocket and brought out a knife. Sebastian straightened up hastily and was ready to tackle her when they were joined by someone else who had noiseless footsteps. It was the last person he had expected, or it was technically someone he should have considered before.
Tanaka twisted her arm around and took the knife away from her whilst keeping hold her of with his other hand.
"Sebastian, you can stop now. You have done more than enough for the young master."
Everything clicked into place with that. His gut feeling had been right along, Tanaka really was more of a butler than a caretaker. To be more precise, he was the Phantomhive family butler. Vincent Phantomhive hadn't given up after all. He had sent Tanaka in his stead. Tanaka had an illicit copy of the old building key because he had been searching for Ciel's body.
"Tanaka!?" Angelina screamed. "Did Vincent send you?"
Tanaka's expression was the sternest Sebastian had ever seen it
"Miss Durless, give up know. You cannot escape it, the guilt will only get worse. Let them take his body back. It does not belong under that tree."
Everything was a blur after that. There were Police officers all over the school grounds who were mostly gathered around the well. Undertaker and the Weston Six were taken away handcuffed and pushed into Police cars. Sebastian watched from his position on the grassy bank on the school field. Ciel stood next to him watching all the events unfold.
Then Ciel looked behind him and gasped. Sebastian turned to see Tanaka walking towards him with Ciel's parents in tow. It was the first time he saw Ciel look like he was going to cry.
Vincent Phantomhive was the first one to speak.
"Thank you for finding Ciel's body."
Sebastian was unsure of what he could say to that. He had been the one who had made the most effort to find his body. Vincent had even held more cards than him so he should have found it first. He had known who his son's murderer was from the start and had someone working for him on the premises.
"I found it because I was looking for it."
Vincent looked like he understood his meaning exactly.
"My hands were tied. I wanted to uncover everything even at the risk of the family name just to obtain justice for him. My wife wanted his body to bury more than that so I had to play it differently."
His limited actions were more understandable now, but Sebastian still couldn't agree.
"We found that the caretaker was an old man named Tanaka so I saw an opportunity there. We paid him off and Tanaka replaced him as if there had never been a change."
One of the remaining puzzles was solved now. Finny's description of Tanaka had been completely different to the one Sebastian knew, because he was describing the one Tanaka had taken the place of.
"When I encountered you, I decided to drop the act and give you a few hints to help you," Tanaka explained. "I also placed the skull in the well to keep you going and to hint what the well had been used for."
It was something he had not considered before. For criminals that covered their tracks well, leaving a skull behind in the well was quite an oversight.
"Tanaka took some samples of the water from the well and we worked out what it had been in it. It wasn't decisive enough evidence so he continued to observe the Weston Six and wait for Angelina to weaken," Vincent explained.
Everything had been explained now. There were no mysteries left to solve now.
"Is it all over now?" he asked.
Tanaka nodded. "It's finished. We can take the young master's body back home and see that his murderers are punished."
A/N: Anyone who guessed the cherry blossom tree was right, however no one noticed inconsistencies in time and naming of the mysteries. (In Chapter 13, Ciel doesn't call the mysteries the Seven Mysteries)
The next chapter will be the final one.
