Chapter 26

The reason a Great Detective usually behaves eccentrically or possesses an outlandish personality isn’t merely for the sake of entertainment. It is a necessary measure to grant the story persuasiveness; it stems from the paradox that a Great Detective’s character gains reality only after losing it.

A Great Detective is required by the narrative to be a mental superhuman.

—Josef Tiss
From “Mystery as Character Fiction”

Under Ice’s command, all those involved—along with a handful of Ice’s most trusted subordinates, the only knights informed of Princess Victie’s death—gathered in the center of the grand hall.

I could sense everyone’s anxiety, yet beneath it, a faint expectation for progress lingered in the subtle movements of the crowd.

But in truth, I was likely more anxious than anyone else.

I could only pray that my unease wouldn’t show on the outside.

“Now then.”

As the seated participants fixed their gazes upon me, I stood before them, swallowed once, and began my presentation with an air of overflowing confidence—or at least, an imitation of it.

“First, there is something I wish to say. For those of you who have read my paper, you know that my theory of investigation and deduction is based entirely on logic and probability.”

“Hey, cut the preamble and just tell us who the killer is already.”

Bob shifted his weight irritably, his eyes darting restlessly.

Even he was clearly feeling the pressure.

“It doesn’t work that way, Bob.”

I offered a calm, composed smile.

“If I were to point out the culprit’s name right now, no one would believe me, and chaos would break out before I could even explain the evidence. I must build the logic step by step, starting from the very beginning.”

“You are quite right,” Geralt said, leaning on his cane and coming to my defense. Bob fell silent, looking somewhat sour.

I continued.

“Logic is self-explanatory, but what does it mean to base a deduction on probability? There are no absolutes in this world, yet there are things that are ‘likely to happen’ based on common sense and pure possibility. My method is to examine and deduce starting from the most likely scenarios. I said something similar when I countered Master Geralt’s deduction earlier, but essentially: ‘Unlikely options are not adopted until all more likely options have been exhausted.’”

“Now,” I said, pausing to slowly scan the faces of everyone in the room.

“I will now present my deduction using that method. As I explained, we will follow the sequence from the very start. Therefore, let us first examine the most fundamental question: whether or not we should even treat this incident as a murder case in the first place.”

“Are you saying it might not be a murder?”

Arle tilted her head in confusion. Her reaction was understandable; in this situation, it seemed almost bizarre to doubt it was anything other than a killing. Nevertheless, a deduction must be constructed logically from the ground up.

Just like the Great Detectives in the fiction I admired so much.

“We shall examine that. First, it is certain that there is a corpse in the cathedral. A headless corpse. As long as there is a body, it means something occurred that resulted in death. The possibilities, as far as I can think of them, are: murder, suicide, accident, or fabrication.”

“Fabrication?”

Uraenus reacted with a start.

“Yes, fabrication. Since we have a headless corpse, we must consider it. Let’s look at that first. Fabrication would mean that the body is not actually Princess Victie’s, but belongs to someone else. It would mean someone brought in a corpse of similar height and build from somewhere. Now, in this case, Queen Ice, King Uraenus, and Archbishop Mintz all confirmed Princess Victie was present until lunch. I will not doubt their word. If those three were accomplices, they wouldn’t need to stage such an incident for a fabrication; they could simply agree among themselves to declare her dead. At the very least, no one would have openly objected. It’s hard to imagine they staged this just to show us, the third parties. Besides, we likely won’t even be allowed to speak of this publicly, so there would be no point.”

“Correct. I intend to swear you all to secrecy regardless,” Ice replied expressionlessly, and I pressed on.

“So, it is certain that Princess Victie was present in this hall until lunchtime. If a substitute body appeared and the Princess vanished in its place, it would mean she disappeared of her own volition. In other words, Princess Victie herself would have to be at least one of the culprits behind this incident. If that were the case, her motive would be clear. There is no need to explain why the Princess would want to fake her own death and run away.”

Uraenus and Mintz dropped their eyes to the floor as if avoiding my gaze. Only Ice met my eyes directly, staring back with an unblinking gaze.

“In that scenario, the Princess would have required several collaborators. At the very least, Miss Arle would have to be an accomplice. As a physician and her attendant, it was Miss Arle who positively identified the body as Princess Victie’s. If she had said it was someone else, the whole plan would have collapsed.”

“Wh—Me?”

All eyes turned toward Arle, who looked utterly bewildered.

“It wouldn’t be entirely out of the question for Miss Arle, as her attendant, to feel sympathy for the Princess’s plight and help fake her death. However, unfortunately, that theory is hard to support.”

The first to react was Uraenus.

He snapped his gaze back to me and asked, his lips trembling, “So… it wasn’t a fabrication?”

He likely wanted me to say it was—that Princess Victie was actually still alive.

But I crushed that hope without a moment’s hesitation.

“No, it was not. Firstly, there is the problem of the Princess’s escape route. It is clear that the Princess is not currently in the vicinity. Furthermore, the knights have testified that there are no secret passages or hidden gimmicks. That would mean she’d have to escape through the forest where the guards are stationed, and the chances of her not being caught are slim. In other words, the plan is fundamentally flawed. To the guards, who are on maximum alert to protect the Princess, anyone trying to slip through the security net would be a target for capture, whether it was the Princess or not. Even in disguise, it would be difficult. Unless the Princess can travel through the earth like a mole, or possesses the stealth of a top-tier assassin, it’s simply unthinkable. Or does anyone here know of a fact that would prove otherwise?”

No one answered.

“Secondly, this incident is ill-suited for faking a death in the first place. Staging it during the award ceremony is one thing; perhaps there was no other suitable timing. The explosion might also have been necessary to make her vanish. But was there any need for the body to be found in the cathedral? If it were me, I’d have scripted it so that a headless corpse was found behind the ceremony hall during the post-explosion search, or perhaps lightly buried in the ground. That would have made the ‘outsider culprit’ theory far more plausible than it is now. It would still be quite unnatural, of course, but better than this. Because the body was inside the cathedral, the case has become an impossible crime. There was no need to turn this into such a bizarre affair.”

“I see,” Ice muttered, let out a long, weary sigh.

I saw disappointment in her eyes.

“Based on the above, the idea that this was a fabrication is dismissed for now. Next, let’s consider suicide and accidents together. These options can also be ruled out. First and foremost, they are simply hard to imagine. A natural suicide or accident wouldn’t result in a headless state, so we must assume some sort of intent. However, while one might disguise a murder as a suicide or accident, this is the opposite. Unless the goal was to frame someone else, this is a mysterious situation that doesn’t point to anyone’s crime. This makes the existence of such intent doubtful.”

“Secondly,” I continued.

“Whether it was suicide or an accident, and whether the head was severed before or after death, we would still have to consider when and how it was cut, and why the body ended up in that state. Furthermore, it’s more natural to assume someone other than the Princess was involved. Ultimately, we’d end up following almost the same process of reasoning as we would if we assumed she was murdered. In short, there is currently very little benefit to categorizing accidents and suicides as separate cases for our deduction.”

“Hmph. Quite the grand display. So, what’s the bottom line?” Leo prompted, curling his lip to show his canines.

“The bottom line is this: ‘We may proceed with our deduction assuming this incident is the murder of Princess Victie.’”

I spread my hands and explained slowly, as if stating something of grave importance.

After a moment of silence, Jin looked exasperated.

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Plugging the small holes is necessary, my boy. Especially when one wishes to reach a logical conclusion,” Merlin said, his voice sounding nostalgic as he stroked his beard.

Perhaps he was remembering his days of magical research.

“Next, I would like to examine whether the person who killed Princess Victie was someone from the inside or an outsider.”

At those words, tension spiked in the room. For a split second, the gazes of the involved parties crossed paths multiple times.

Amidst this, Ice and Leo remained sitting with unshakable composure.

“It’s an internal job. The culprit is among us. At least, that’s how we should look at it first. Isn’t that right?”

Leo went as far as to say that without a hint of hesitation.

But I couldn’t let myself be surprised or intimidated by him. That wasn’t the way of a Great Detective. I was going to end this case. I told myself this and flashed a fearless smile.

“Exactly. It’s as Leo says. An outside intruder who broke through a strict security net, yet managed to hide their presence and aura from us entirely while leaving no trace? Rather than assuming such a thing, we should assume the culprit is among us. In other words…”

I took a breath.

Geralt narrowed his eyes as if looking at something bright. His lips even seemed to soften into a slight smile.

Was he acknowledging my conduct as a fellow detective?

“In other words, from here on, I will deduce which one of you is the culprit in the murder of Princess Victie.”

I declared it grandly before everyone, like an oracle delivering a divine decree.