Chapter 43: Strange Water Marks
Although a whirlwind of overlapping conjectures spun through Conan's mind, he kept his expression perfectly innocent. Tilting his head with practiced childlike curiosity, he looked up at the astrologer to ask about the exact details of the commission.
It was then that Noelle stepped forward, her posture impeccably straight as she smoothed the front of her maid uniform. She explained that for quite some time, the vibrant flowers in the front garden of the estate had been mysteriously plucked. Despite her diligent patrols, the culprit had managed to evade detection, prompting them to hire a private detective to investigate the matter.
"I had heard the name Tokitsu Junya during my time working in Shikoku," Noelle explained, her tone earnest and polite. "He is a high school detective who reportedly assisted the local police in solving numerous complex cases. When I learned he had recently relocated to Tokyo—following the media coverage of the Lavender Villa case—I believed he would be the perfect candidate for the commission."
Tokitsu Junya had indeed taken the job. Not long after, he confidently presented his findings: the culprit was merely a mischievous child from the neighboring property. To back up his claim, he even pointed out a set of small footprints trampled into the grass.
Mona had initially accepted this deduction. However, at the time of the reveal, she had awkwardly cleared her throat and admitted that her funds were... temporarily tied up. She had requested the detective return at a later date to collect his commission fee.
The situation took a sharp turn when Noelle, while tending to the grounds, caught the true culprits red-handed. A group of stray cats had been wandering into the garden to play among the flowers, leaving behind a chaotic mess of overlapping paw prints hidden in the dirt beneath the bushes. When Mona relayed this discovery to Tokitsu Junya, the young detective's pride flared. He firmly and arrogantly denied that his deduction could possibly be flawed, accusing Noelle of lying to get out of paying the fee.
Infuriated by his stubborn arrogance and baseless accusations against her maid, Mona had crossed her arms and flatly refused to pay him a single yen.
Listening to the entire sequence of events, Conan's brow furrowed. He entirely agreed with Mona's frustration. The evidence the detective had provided was laughably insufficient; a set of footprints in the grass was circumstantial at best and certainly couldn't definitively prove the neighbor's child was the flower thief., a true detective's duty was to the truth. If a client raised valid doubts and presented new evidence, the only correct course of action was to re-investigate the scene, not blindly defend a flawed conclusion out of sheer ego.
Conan adjusted his glasses, the lenses catching the overhead light with a sharp, white gleam. "But Sister Mona... aren't you a famous Astrologer? Couldn't you just use your magic to divine who picked the flowers? Or is your Astrology just not good enough for that?"
Mona's eye twitched. She planted her hands on her hips, glaring down at the bespectacled boy. "O-Of course I can! But Hydromancy is a sacred and complex art meant to peer into the vast truths of the cosmos and predict the fates of individuals! How could I casually waste such deep power on something as trivial as stolen petunias?!"
This brat is absolutely infuriating, Mona grumbled inwardly, grinding her teeth. He's like a dog with a bone. He just won't let anything go!
At that moment, the police concluded their preliminary questioning on the other side of the room. As they turned their attention toward Mona to gather her official statement, she seized the opportunity to change the subject, marching over to the media console to pull up the security footage from the camera directly facing the study.
Naturally, Conan wasn't about to miss out on crucial evidence. He discreetly wove his way through the legs of the towering police officers, squeezing right to the front of the monitor.
The grainy footage began to play. It clearly showed the open door of the study before Tokitsu Junya entered. Through the doorway, the antique books resting on the desk were perfectly intact. Then, Tokitsu stepped inside, and the heavy wooden door clicked shut behind him.
The timecode ticked forward. The door never opened again. No one entered the hallway, and no one exited the room. The study itself only had one window located near the ceiling, and it was permanently sealed shut from the inside.
By all definitions, it was a perfect locked room.
When the footage finally showed the door opening again, the camera captured the aftermath: the precious books on the desk had been completely shredded and destroyed.
"Impossible!" Tokitsu Junya screamed, pointing a trembling finger at the monitor. "There's a problem with this surveillance tape! It's been tampered with! Someone is trying to frame me!" Frantic, he demanded the officers rewind the video, scrutinizing the footage frame by frame, over and over again. Yet, despite his desperate searching, he couldn't find a single skipped frame or digital artifact. The video was entirely authentic.
Conan stepped back from the screen, his mind racing. Currently, every single piece of evidence pointed to Tokitsu Junya. The narrative was simple: the detective had deliberately vandalized the books to retaliate against Mona for refusing to pay his fee, but his plan backfired when Mona unexpectedly blocked him at the door before he could make his escape.
However, looking at Tokitsu Junya's genuine panic, and factoring in the prior conflict between him, Mona, and Noelle, Conan's intuition screamed that the situation was far more complex.
But if he didn't do it, Conan thought, chewing on his lower lip, why would Mona and Noelle go to such extreme lengths to frame him? Do they have some hidden grudge?
Judging by Tokitsu Junya's earlier reactions, he had never crossed paths with either of them before this commission. A simple dispute over an unpaid fee hardly warranted the creation of an elaborate, flawless locked-room mystery just to send a high school detective to jail. It didn't add up.
Despite Conan's internal doubts, the video evidence was damning. Officer Takagi had already closed his notebook, his expression settling into one of mild finality. He had concluded that Tokitsu Junya was the culprit.
Yet, as Takagi Wataru prepared to make the arrest, he couldn't help but secretly mutter to himself. Why was it so easy to catch the culprit today? Usually, whenever he responded to a scene, some brilliant detective would dramatically appear out of nowhere, point out a hidden trick, and solve the case for him. But today? No sleeping detective, no dramatic twists. It felt like a crucial step of his daily routine was missing, leaving a strange, hollow unease in his chest.
Takagi shook his head and offered a polite, self-deprecating smile. He was definitely overthinking things. With such conclusive, unbroken video evidence, there was simply no room for error.
"Ahem. Mr. Tokitsu, I'm afraid I have to ask you to come with us to the station," Takagi said, his tone shifting to professional authority. ", you will likely be held responsible for covering the financial losses regarding Ms. Mona's damaged property." Turning his attention back to the astrologer, Takagi pulled out his pen. "Speaking of which, Ms. Mona, could you provide a rough estimate of how much those books were worth?"
"About thirty-five million yen," Mona replied smoothly. She walked over to the desk, casually glancing at the torn spines and scattered pages before giving a dismissive wave of her hand.
"Thirty-five million?!" The collective gasp echoed through the room.
Tokitsu Junya's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. "Why don't you just put a gun to my head and rob me?!"
He had originally planned to just bite the bullet and admit defeat. He figured they were just a few dusty old books; compensating her wouldn't cost much, and paying the damages upfront might convince the police to let him off with a warning instead of jail time. But hearing that astronomical figure—a sum that would instantly vaporize every single yen he had saved from years of detective work—shattered his composure. He thrashed against the officers holding him.
"Why are you acting so surprised?" Mona crossed her arms, her chin tilting up haughtily. "I'm not pulling numbers out of thin air. Didn't I explicitly tell you these were rare, out-of-print texts? They are incredibly valuable."
In truth, Mona had calculated this exact price to drain his bank accounts dry. As far as she was concerned, this arrogant boy was entirely undeserving of the title 'Detective.' If he was this careless with a simple stolen flower case, heaven only knew how many innocent people his sloppy deductions had wrongfully convicted. Demanding his life savings was an act of benevolence; in Teyvat, crossing the wrong person with such arrogance might have cost him his life.
"Indeed," Noelle chimed in from the side, her voice calm and entirely serious. "In fact, the most inexpensive volume in Lady Mona's study is valued at no less than five hundred thousand yen. Which is precisely why I stated earlier that Lady Mona could not possibly be lacking the funds to pay a simple commission fee."
Conan blinked, genuinely taken aback. If a single book was worth at least half a million yen, and this massive study was lined wall-to-wall with overflowing bookshelves... just how much wealth was sitting in this room? No wonder Noelle had defended her employer's financial status. Mona wasn't just well-off; she was sitting on a literal fortune.
Wait, Conan thought, sweatdropping. Does that mean her whole speech earlier about 'living an impoverished life to pursue the true path of astrology' was actually real? She just spends all her money on books and equipment!
The surrounding police officers, having just processed the sheer monetary value of the paper scraps scattered across the floor, immediately stiffened. They began tiptoeing around the room as if handling a minefield, terrified that accidentally stepping on a stray page might cost them several years' worth of salary.
Conan tuned out the commotion, his eyes locked on the study. He still felt, deep in his gut, that Tokitsu hadn't committed the crime. He mentally replayed the surveillance footage a dozen times, searching for the trick. The door hadn't opened. The video wasn't spliced. Unless the true culprit possessed the supernatural ability to slip through the cracks of a closed door, knock out Tokitsu Junya inside a locked room, shred the books, and vanish into thin air, the crime was physically impossible.
His gaze slowly drifted down to the floor at the entrance of the study.
Aside from a very peculiar set of water stains pooling near the crack beneath the door, there were absolutely no other clues.
"Oh my!" Conan suddenly shouted, pointing a small finger at the floor. He wasn't about to let this go. "These water marks by the door are so strange! Look, it's almost like something wet slid right under the gap!"
"Ah!"
Before Conan could investigate further, a fist came crashing down onto the top of his head.
"Brat, why are you running around the crime scene again?!" Sonoko scolded, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her face as she planted her hands on her hips. "It's obviously just some water that got accidentally spilled on the floor! What's so strange about that?!"
Conan rubbed the smoking bump on his head, wincing as he looked back toward the center of the room. Tokitsu Junya's frantic resistance had finally been subdued by the officers. The cold, metallic clink of handcuffs echoed through the air as they locked his wrists together, preparing to drag the disgraced detective back to the station for his final interrogation.
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