Murderous Intent

~O~

"When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help."

-Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs-

~O~

"Is Lord Siemens asleep?" Charles Grey and the other guests stared at the snoring, red faced man. Charlotte tutted quietly to herself, wondering how much he'd drunk to get himself so sloshed on the wine. She herself had taken a glass, unwilling to miss out on an opportunity to taste such a first-rate drink.

The clock chimed 11 o'clock, marking the late hour, and most of the guests had settled down to talk, or sip their drinks quietly and listen to others talk. Ciel paused in his discussion with Lau, "Sebastian, please escort the lord to his room. I'll take my leave as well."

"Earl, you're going to bed already?" Lau said with exaggerated surprised. Ciel only shrugged good-naturedly.

"It's well past bedtime for a child like me," he replied, and then he raised his voice to address the rest of the guests. "Everyone, please relax and enjoy your night."

Charlotte watched him go over the rim of her empty glass, and giggled to herself. "Ch-Charlotte?" She turned her head to Mey-Rin who avoiding her eyes and clutching a tray of empty wineglasses. "We need to start cleaning up."

"Yes, yes, I know," she dropped her glass on Mey-Rin's tray, and walked over to the messy buffet table. As she did, she caught sight of Charles Grey staring for several long moments at the door Ciel and Sebastian had just exited through. Charlotte didn't look away when his eyes drifted and caught her own, and simply arched an eyebrow at him.

Charles narrowed her eyes at her, huffed, and turned away to play billiards with the other guests.

Mind whirling thoughtfully, the maid made her way to the kitchen, balancing two glass-laden trays in both hands and humming to herself. She paused to stare at Mey-Rin moping in the corner with her head buried in her arms, and went to dump her cargo into the sink.

Sebastian appeared over an hour later to assist with the cleaning up. "How is the young master?" She asked as she scrubbed flecks of food from the china dishes.

"He is as he always is," Sebastian replied just as placidly. He looked pretty amused by her question, and Charlotte rolled her eyes. "I take it you're impatient?"

"Ding-ding-ding, you would be right! Come on, where's the adventure I signed up for? I expected someone to be dead by now!"

Just then a bell began to ring from the alarm system located right outside the kitchen. Sebastian sighed quietly as Charlotte's face split into a wide, gleeful grin. Mey-Rin roused herself from her pity-party and poked her head out of the kitchen to check which room needed assistance.

She immediately stumbled backwards as if the contraption was going to attack her. "It's Lord Siemen!" She panicked and scrambled further into the kitchen, ducking behind the island table. "Oh, I don't want to go…" she whimpered.

Charlotte's arm shot up like a schoolchild answering a question. "I'll go! Pick me! Let me go!"

Sebastian levelled her with a hard stare. Charlotte pouted but lowered her hand. "I'm almost tempted not to let you come along," he told her, "but since Mey-Rin seems so averse to it…then I suppose you might as well come along…" The maid beamed and spun around dizzyingly while he undid his apron and draped it on one the back of one of the kitchen chairs. "At any rate, he seemed really drunk," Sebastian caught her by the shoulder, forcing her stop. "Fetch a jug of water. Mey-Rin, you can take over the washing up."

The hallways seemed to shake, and magnified the sound of the thunder rolling through the sky. Purple flashes of lightning lit up the walls. Charlotte loved to watch storms, the wilder the better. "What a terrible storm," Bard commented idly.

"Maybe it's a sign," Charlotte skipped ahead, whistling a merry tune softly until she reached the door of the room. She rocked back and forth on the balls and heels of her feet as Sebastian knocked politely, "Master Georg? Did you call?"

There was no response for a moment, and then the silence was broken by the sound of something shattering on the ground, and someone screaming in agony. "Master Siemens?" Bard stepped forward and banged harder on the door. "What's wrong? Master Siemens!"

The shouting soon drew the rest of the guests, who hadn't been asleep and had still been in the recreational room. "He's not answering," Sebastian narrowed his eyes. He took a step back, and with two hard kicks, the door caved in to reveal a grisly sight.

Lord Siemens sat slumped in an armchair in front of his room fire; his eyes sightless, and his torso completely drenched in blood. The guests erupted into screams of horror were loud and, and Irene nearly fainted at the sight. Oddly enough, the only people not utterly terrified by the sight before them were Sebastian, Charles Grey, and Charlotte, who was doing her best not to start grinning dementedly at the corpse.

"Excuse me!" Recovering quickly, Arthur broke through the panicked crowd and knelt beside the body. His fingers easily found the place where the pulse should have beat at the underside of his wrist. "My god," he spoke after a moment in a hushed voice. "He's dead!"

"Oh my…" Grimsby held onto Irene to keep her from falling over in dead faint.

There was a clatter of approaching footsteps, and then Mey-Rin and Finny came running into the room. They stumbled to a stop at the sight before them, and Mey-Rin covered her mouth with her hands. "I-Is he…?"

"Yes," Arthur nodded, closing the dead man's unseeing eyes. "Most likely caused by blood loss stemming from the wound in his chest. It must have been near instantaneous…"

Charlotte was about to raise her hand to suggest taking a better look at the wound – she'd been around dead people for a long time but they never stopped fascinating her – when Bard spoke. "I can't be certain because it's dark," he wiped his brow, turning to Sebastian. "But isn't it kinda hot in this room?"

The inhabitants in the room took stock of the temperature. It had long bypassed cozy, and instead the inside of the room felt very uncomfortable despite the cold, stormy weather. Sebastian nodded thoughtfully and glanced at the lit fireplace. "Yes, it is. I heated up the room beforehand, but this is..." he shrugged helplessly. "Maybe he was cold?"

"What's all of this racket?" All heads swung to the door when Ciel appeared, drawn to the scene by the incessant noise. Behind him stood Tanaka, holding a lit candlestick to light the way. "What is going o-!"

The earl froze when he noticed the dead body occupying the room. His face paled dramatically, and his eyes widened in total shock. Grimsby swallowed several times, and then attempted to be the blustering voice of reason.

"A-At any rate," he started. "We shouldn't move anything until the Yard arrives-"

"No," Bard interrupted him. "It'd be better if we moved the body now. There's no polite way to say thing, but meat rots faster than you might think. Even if we turn off the fire, he'll start going off pretty quickly if he stays next to the hearth."

Irene's lily-white cheeks went ashen. "R-Rot, you say?" She swayed in Grimsby's arms, and he had to grab hold of the delicate woman once again before she fell over. Charlotte almost rolled her eyes, before she realised that it might be best to play along.

"I suggest we move him to a cool, dark place," Arthur said decisively, rising to his feet. "At least until an expert can take a look at him and perform a proper autopsy."

"In that case, we'll move him to the cellar until the Yard arrives," Sebastian agreed. Finny and Tanaka were entrusted with the task of carrying the portly corpse down to the cellars. While they were gone, the rest of the visitors stood in nervous silence, eying each other or keeping their eyes averted entirely.

A fork of lightning lit up the sky, and Lau tutted. "The Yard won't be showing up for a while," he said, pushing the heavy green curtain aside just as thunder hit. "It is quite a storm, isn't it?"

"So you mean we can't leave here either?!" Woodley screamed. Charlotte and Ran-Mao blinked at him placidly. Clearly he was the sort of man used to getting his way, the elements be damned. This unforeseen and threatening turn of events had begun to chip at whatever pedestal he put himself on. "I am not staying at a place where a murder took place!"

"Indeed," the corners of Lau's mouth lifted with amusement. "We are surely on the shores of a deserted island. This also means that there is a good chance that the killer is still inside the mansion."

Apparently that little tidbit had yet to occur to everyone, and they all froze. A silky voice spoke up. "Now that you mention it," Charles Grey stared round at the gathered guests with a too calm expression. "If you think about it logically, then wouldn't the killer be one of us?"

"What!?" Grimsby yelled, his voice the loudest amongst the panicked whimpers. "Why us?! Don't be ridiculous!"

"Most of us have only just met," Arthur pointed out, "it doesn't seem like any of us would have a motive."

Irene suddenly gasped in realisation, "Wait! When we first arrived, the door was locked right?" She glanced at Sebastian who nodded in confirmation. "Then isn't it possible that someone broke in through the window, locked the door to give them enough time for an escape, and then left through the window again?"

"I don't think so," Grey walked over to the rain-smeared windows that opened out onto the narrow balcony that held barely enough space for a single person to stand on. He rapped the glass lightly with his knuckles. "If you came inside in this sort of rain, wouldn't you leave tracks? Besides, this room is on the second floor, and the windows are locked."

"So someone locked it from the hallway and escaped that way?" Grimsby suggested.

"That is also highly unlikely," Sebastian shook his head determinedly. He explained that all of the room keys were locked in a safe, the key of which was still in his possession. "We haven't issued any spare room keys to any of our guests. Instead, all of the rooms have a latch which can only be fastened from the inside." He gestured to the bent latch just barely attached to the broken door. "From the way this is broken, it's clear the door was locked before I kicked it down. Which means…"

Lau giggled, "It looks like we have a 'locked room murder'!"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Woodley snapped. "This isn't some penny dreadful!"

"No, clearly not," Ciel yawned. "If anyone published such a crude locked-room-drama, they would surely get complaints. Don't you agree, Professor?"

Arthur jumped when he was addressed by the earl, but quickly caught on to what he was saying. "Ah, that's right! A needle and thread could easily do the job!"

"A needle and thread…?" Charlotte cocked her head curiously.

Arthur turned to her, once again subconsciously unsettled by the way she moved, but put at ease by her big, blue eyes.

"It's a cliché in mystery novels," the young earl answered before he could. "If you have those, then you could easily open the doors from outside. You'd first have to anchor the latch by jamming a threaded needle in its side, and then run the thread under and outside the door. When you're finished, you could simply shut the door and pull the needle free, the latch would fall back into place. I can only assume that's what happened, since the door wasn't locked with the key."

Charlotte nodded at his explanation, looking disturbingly contemplative.

"In mystery novels, it's the oldest trick in the book," he went on, folding his thin arms across his chest. "But the criminal here isn't looking to write a book. It's more likely that this is some sort of distraction, a realistic smoke-screen."

"That certainly explains the locked room murder," Lau hummed, brow furrowed.

"But it also means that anyone could be the killer," Arthur pointed out. Charlotte winced almost imperceptibly as the room was suddenly filled with the loud voices of Woodley and Grimsby rushing to claim their own innocence, and hurl blame at each other instead. From the way they snarled at one another, they appeared almost ready to come to blows.

"Now, now," Lau attempted to diffuse the situation before it got even more violent and out of hand. "Let's hear everyone's alibis, shall we?"

The company calmed down at the suggestion. Charlotte had observed many times that humans typically liked being told what to do, because it meant they could hand their agency over to someone else and simply follow instructions that they hope will convey them to an acceptable conclusion.

At any rate, alibis were a good idea. The simple process of elimination would narrow down the suspects faster, and make everyone feel a little safer. "Now let's see," Lau pressed his palms together beneath the wide sleeves he was wearing, "Lord Siemens was killed after he had retired to go to his room, which puts his time of death somewhere between the moment he rang the servants' bell, and when the servants arrived at his room. If you have an alibi to cover that time, then you're safe."

Irene Diaz and Grimsby Keane had been in the billiards room, along with Charles Grey, Mr. Phelps (who Charlotte had only just realised had actually fainted at the sight of the dead body) and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Lau, Ran-Mao and Woodley had been in the lounge, along with Sebastian.

Bard, Mey-Rin, Finny, and Charlotte had been cleaning up in the kitchen.

Once it was confirmed that everyone had being occupied during the time of the murder, the tension in the air seemed to relax. "Besides," Grimsby pointed out, thinking clearer now. "None of us even knew what room Siemens was staying in. Finding him in such a large mansion would take quite some time, right?"

So the murderer would have had to be someone who understood and could therefore perform a Locked Room scenario, knowledge of Lord Siemen's bedroom, and no alibi. Coincidentally, all of that incriminating evidence pointed right to Ciel.

Oh la la! Charlotte thought delightedly. The plot thickens! What an exciting development!

"I hope you'll pardon the implication, Earl," Charles said just as silkily as before, "but what were you doing during that time?"

Ciel's jaw tightened at the thinly veiled accusation. "I was sleeping in my room," he replied.

"Can you prove that?" Charles asked, and the earl was forced to shake his head in response. "So for now, that makes you the prime suspect." Charles smiled, and his expression was unnecessarily pleased. Cocking her head again, Charlotte came to the quiet realisation that she didn't like the oily man.

"Certainly I am the only one who hasn't got an alibi," Ciel inclined his head. "But I don't have any reason to kill the lord."

"Well, you can't say that there was 'no reason' at all," Lau pointed out wisely. "Most of the reasons for someone to kill another are reasons that seem utterly inconceivable to other people. It doesn't matter how many times a scientist studies it, the psychology of a person is something that cannot be comprehended by other people. Besides, your company has a branch in Germany, does it not? There could have been some memos outside of the official books with a major bank executive from Germany, like him."

For the first time Ciel looked genuinely annoyed."Are you suggesting that my Funtom Company is in some horrible debt? That is absurd."

"It's not unrealistic though," Lau shrugged, "No matter how big a company is, there are times when all of it can vanish overnight…"

"Wait a minute!" Finny interrupted, his blue eyes wide and shining with tears, "I don't understand all the complicated stuff, but the young master would never-!"

"Finny, enough."

Finny's mouth clicked shut at the coolly spoken order. He immediately retreated, now radiating such misery that even Charlotte felt a little twinge in her non-existent heart. The silence that followed his outburst was tense and uncomfortable, and then Grey spoke. "I'd like to offer some insurance. Insurance that we'll get out of here alive, that is," he added. "Since the mansion is currently under the control of a killer, and we can't leave until the storm settles, what if we gagged him before the storm settles?"

"Let's lock him up then!" Lau chirped excitedly.

"Lock him up?!" The three servants yelled. "Why would we lock up the young master?!"

"Eh? But he's scary!"

"If it makes you feel any better," Ciel heaved a put upon sigh. "Then go ahead."

"If we're going to confine him, then it can't be in his own room," Grey noted, "The rooms of nobles generally have some kind of secret escape route built in. My place has them too."

Charlotte thought of the many vents and tunnels that linked throughout the whole of the manor, and even Sebastian acknowledged this with a nod. "Very well then, we'll keep an eye on him while attending to his-"

"That won't do either," Lau cut him off, "You're his servants. You might help the earl escape."

"In that case, it would be best if one of the guests stayed with him to keep watch," Grey turned expectantly to Irene, Grimsby, and Woodley.

Grimsby immediately went pale, and wrapped his arms around his lady. "No, thank you!" He snapped, puffing up like a pigeon. "Like I would leave Irene all by herself in this manor!"

"I-I just can't!" Woodley's excuse was less imaginative.

"I don't want to either!" Lau chimed in, and the tone of his voice made it clear that he'd long since ceased taking the situation seriously.

Arthur wondered in the privacy of his own mind just how and why he had been forced into this situation and role. "I don't particularly want to either," he admitted with a resigned exhale, "But someone has to do it." He didn't believe the Earl had actually murdered Siemens – for God's sake he was a 12 year old child! The logistics alone made his involvement unlikely – but his incarceration seemed to calm everyone else.

The blonde maid smiled at him sweetly, "Take good care of him then, Mr. Doyle!"