Chapter 27

“Now, roughly speaking, we can break this murder case down into two parts.”

“Two parts?”

Raika frowned, tilting her head as if trying to disassemble the case in her mind.

“Um… do you mean the explosion?”

Kirio checked hesitantly.

“Exactly. The murder of the Princess and the explosion—these can be considered separately. Now, regardless of how you look at it, the murder is the more troublesome of the two. A sealed room, the absence of a culprit, a headless corpse… there are mysteries galore. Therefore, I will begin my deduction with the explosion.”

That was right. The explosion was the first thing I had a hunch about. And from there, several things regarding the entire case had become clear.

“Jin and Master Geralt agree that the blast was caused by an explosive known as a Dragon Round. It’s an explosive that, even in small amounts, causes a large blast and generates a massive amount of smoke. Remembering what I learned in class after hearing their explanation, I can say this about the case as a whole.”

I scanned everyone’s faces to see if there was any reaction, but they all waited in silence for my next words.

Taking that as my cue, I raised my voice a notch.

“Explosives were brought into this ceremony hall. Furthermore, they were smuggled past the body checks. This didn’t happen by accident or some stroke of luck. This incident was planned.”

I threw the statement out with an air of finality, but everyone just looked blankly at me.

“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? No one would commit such a crime without a plan,” Merlin finally replied, though it was hardly the praise for my deduction I had hoped for.

“Are you an idiot?”

Bob barked, his voice loud as the tension finally snapped.

I see. It seemed no one quite grasped the significance of establishing the premise that the incident was planned. If you’ve dabbled in mysteries, you’d know this part is actually quite crucial.

“No, the fact that this incident was planned will hold great meaning later on. Moving on—the next question is whether it was an inside or outside job. Specifically, did the explosion originate from inside or outside the ceremony hall?”

“Outside.”

Jin spoke with absolute certainty.

His words held a detached ring, as if he were simply reporting a fact rather than expressing confidence.

“I was paying close attention while on guard duty, naturally. I confirmed that there was nothing near the southern wall of the landing just before the blast. Besides, I would have noticed any movement to set or throw an explosive.”

“And the same goes for me,” Raika interjected, looking annoyed.

“It’s true that we committed an unthinkable blunder as guards, but we aren’t that incompetent.”

“No, even if you failed to notice it…”

Jin’s dull eyes locked onto me.

I fought the urge to be intimidated and met his gaze head-on. With a smile.

“Didn’t you just say it yourself? That this was planned. It’s one thing if you luckily weren’t spotted, but if I or Raika had seen someone throwing a bomb, the plan would have been over then and there. Would anyone make a plan like that?”

“Exactly.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t in total agreement with Jin.

“However, Mr. Jin. For that very same reason—that the incident was planned—we can also rule out the possibility that the explosion came from the outside.”

“What?”

“Listen. Remember that we are deducing on the premise that the culprit is among us. When the smoke from that blast cleared, we were all right there, near the stairs on the second floor. So, if we assume the explosion was triggered from the outside, we’re left with this, setting aside the finer details: the culprit was somehow outside the hall, somehow threw a smuggled bomb toward the second floor, and then rushed inside and up the stairs to make it look like they had just come out of their room.”

“…Right, that’s how it would have to be.”

Jin nodded several times, looking into the distance as if organizing my words in his head.

“But how would the culprit know if the Princess and the guards were exactly near the second-floor stairs?”

“Huh?”

The point was apparently so unexpected that Jin’s expression became unguarded.

“W-Well… right. They could just confirm when we entered the hall. You can predict how long it takes to go from the entrance to the second floor.”

Though flustered, Jin countered, speaking as he thought.

“Listen. If you had stayed in the entrance hall for even a few dozen seconds for some reason, that plan would have been ruined. If the culprit triggered the blast and jumped into the hall, they would have run right into you. Faced with someone jumping in from the outside the moment an explosion occurs on the second floor, would you assume they were uninvolved? No, even without a delay, if you were just halfway up the stairs during the blast, they’d be caught. To make it look like they came out of their room after the explosion, they’d have to overtake you on the stairs. Well? Would you make a plan that relied on such a gamble?”

“Sound.”

Jin hadn’t given up yet. He squeezed out his next idea like a man drowning.

“The moment we entered the hall, the culprit put their ear to the door and listened to our footsteps inside to know when to head to the second floor.”

“Would it really go that smoothly? The floor is carpeted. Could you really hear the footsteps clearly?”

“It’s the only possibility! There’s no way the explosion could have come from the inside!”

Jin’s voice was now verging on a shout.

“That’s quite a stretch. And even if you could somehow see what was happening inside, it still wouldn’t work.”

I shook my head.

“Who’s to say you or Miss Raika wouldn’t have retreated down the stairs the moment the blast occurred? What if you headed down to escape the smoke? What if you ran into them before the smoke even reached the entrance hall? Ultimately, the plan to trigger an explosion from the outside and slip up to the second floor under cover of smoke is terribly unstable because you can’t predict how people will move after the blast.”

“But it couldn’t have been from the inside! I wouldn’t have missed it!” Jin roared.

Whether out of pride or something else, he simply could not accept it.

“By the way, regarding the method of smuggling the explosives… Yasha, you said it would be impossible to bring in explosives under the security checks that have been in place for a week, correct?”

“E-Eh? Yes.”

Surprised by the sudden change in topic, Yasha’s stoic mask began to slip.

“That is indeed correct.”

“And even if they were brought in earlier by some means, they would have been discovered during the thorough sweep of the hall and its surroundings a week ago, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Judging by Master Geralt’s tone during his deduction, the Church also cooperated in that check, correct, Archbishop?”

“Hmm? Ah… yes.”

Mintz flinched at being addressed.

“But you didn’t go so far as to strip the walls or dig up the ground at that time, did you?”

“Ah… yes, exactly. It couldn’t be helped; we couldn’t go that far. That’s why Geralt deduced that an assassin must have been buried in the ground along with the explosives. Isn’t that right, Geralt?”

Archbishop Mintz turned to Geralt as if pleading for support.

“Yes, that is correct. I believed that placing the culprit or the explosives in a location that wouldn’t be checked before the full security detail began was the only way to get them inside,” Geralt replied, lightly tapping the floor with his cane while remaining seated.

“I agree with that. The explosives were brought in that way.”

“So they really were buried in the ground after all,” Raika said, leaning forward.

“Not that way. I mean the other one.”

My words were met with silence. For a moment, the grand hall was so still you could hear a pin drop, as everyone puzzled over my meaning.

“I see.”

Geralt’s eyes widened almost immediately.

“The walls.”

Exactly. They didn’t dig up the floor, and they certainly didn’t strip off all the wallpaper. No one would expect them to go that far.

“Yes. The culprit snuck into this hall more than a week ago, peeled back a bit of the wallpaper, and carved out the wall. It didn’t need to be a large hole—just enough space to fit a Dragon Round. Then, they put the explosive in, covered it with something—a thin wooden board would suffice, though a carved stone plate would be perfect if one wanted to be thorough—and glued the wallpaper back over it.”

“Are you saying the culprit took the Dragon Round out of the wall and threw it? And that’s why it exploded from the inside? But no such traces of a carved wall were ever found,” Uraenus said in a hollow, gloomy voice. The fact that I was proceeding under the assumption that Princess Victie was truly dead was clearly taking its toll on him.

But a detective cannot flinch simply because the truth might hurt the bereaved. If I were going to back down for that, I shouldn’t have started this deduction in the first place.

“They didn’t do anything so tedious. And it’s only natural that no traces of the hidden explosive were found. They were blown to pieces by the blast.”

“Of course!” Jin gasped, rendered speechless.

“So the explosives were embedded in the southern wall near that landing by the stairs from the very beginning,” Raika muttered, gnashing her teeth in frustration.

“Yes. They might have used new wallpaper or buried it very close to the floor to make the seams as inconspicuous as possible. Since everything has been blown away now, only God knows the exact details. Regardless, if we’ve come this far, you can imagine how the explosion was triggered.”

“The same way as I did, then.”

“Yes, exactly like how Master Merlin forced the cathedral doors open. Magic. As long as you know where the explosives are hidden, you can detonate them with magic. With enough skill and preparation, you wouldn’t even need an incantation or a preliminary gesture; a mere glare would suffice.”

If it were me, I was confident I could burn a massive tree to ash with nothing but a look.

“It’s no wonder you couldn’t sense it, Mr. Jin.”

“Wait a minute! The detailed schedule for the award ceremony wasn’t even finalized until the last moment, was it? You’re talking like this was all planned, but how could anyone plan where to bury explosives?” Bob jumped in, jutting out his chin as he found what he thought was a hole in my logic.

It was a solid counterargument. But of course, I had an explanation ready.

“It’s true that the finer details weren’t decided until the very end. Since the contents of the ceremony itself weren’t fixed, a precise plan would have been impossible. That is correct. However, even without detailed information, one can still plan within a certain margin. Regarding these explosives, as long as the ceremony was held in this hall, it was inconceivable that the explosives would go to waste, no matter the flow of events.”

“Huh? What do you me—oh…” Bob cut himself off mid-sentence, realizing what I was getting at.

“Exactly. If you knew the layout of this hall—if you knew the second floor functioned like a hotel—then it was a certainty that everyone, including Princess Victie, would pass through that space in front of the second-floor stairs multiple times. If so, there was no mistake in planting them there. Even if the schedule changed slightly on the day, those Dragon Rounds would never have been rendered useless.”

“W-Wait, but hold on a second.”

Kirio spoke up, her confusion evident.

“If the explosives were detonated using magic…” She trailed off as a realization hit her.

Yes, Kirio’s line of thought was correct. It was a fundamental rule of magic: magic is for short-to-medium range. If you are too far away, the spell won’t activate.

Which meant, in this case…

“If magic was used to cause the explosion, the most suspicious people are those who were closest to the wall at the moment of the blast. Which means…”

“Jin and Raika?” Arle whispered, stunned, before shaking her head vigorously as if to deny her own words.

“Not quite. There’s one more,” Leo added, his golden eyes locking onto mine, supplementing Arle’s answer.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Since there were three people there, it was only natural.

“The final person… Princess Victie herself.”

“Nonsense! Victie did it?!” King Uraenus shouted, half-rising from his seat.

“Sit down,” Queen Ice commanded with a single, quiet word.

“What is your intention in including Victie in that list?” she asked me, her eyes and voice cold as ice.

But I no longer froze under that gaze. I could now easily imagine the raging regret, self-loathing, and confusion hidden behind her frozen mask.

“Let’s broaden our perspective beyond just the explosion for a moment. In Master Geralt’s deduction, the culprit was an outsider. That was because he believed it was physically impossible—completely unrealistic—for someone to kidnap the Princess after the blast, kill her in the cathedral, and return to the second-floor landing before the smoke cleared without being seen. As a result, even the outsider theory ran into several contradictions.”

Geralt gave a muffled chuckle as I reached that point in my explanation. He seemed to be enjoying the critique of his own deduction from a detached perspective.

“Now, as I said before, I am proceeding on the premise that this was a premeditated murder committed by someone among us. In other words, killing Princess Victie after the explosion would have been a chronological impossibility. And Princess Victie herself is among those suspected of triggering the blast. Throw away your preconceptions and consider just those two elements. What is the most likely option? What is the most natural hypothesis?”

“A switch,” Raika said, as if in a fever dream. “The Princess was already dead by then, and the person with us was an impostor. And that impostor used magic to trigger the explosion.”

“Precisely. That is the very first hypothesis we must examine. Ah—I know you have objections, so just wait a moment.”

I held up a hand to restrain Bob, who was about to stand up and say something.

Can I do this?

I asked myself. My heart was thumping against my ribs and my throat was as dry as a desert. But on the surface, I remained calm.

If I pushed the deduction further from here, I would finally have to name the culprit.

Can I really do it?

I asked myself one last time. No answer came back.

Fine. It didn’t matter if I could do it; I had to do it. As long as I was a detective, as long as I intended to bring this case to an end.