Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 19 - Chapter 4.3

3

Six people had gathered in Tetia’s bedroom: Tetia, Nicola, Zess, Kamyua Yoshu, Polarth, and Leito.

This was their first time meeting the eldest daughter Tetia. She was sitting up in her bed, with her light reddish-brown hair falling down to her shoulders. She had a fainthearted look about her, as she had yet to recover from the shock of her grandmother’s death. Her face was as pale as a corpse.

Meanwhile, Nicola seemed to be in an even worse mood than before, and Zess had a look in his eyes like a swordsman itching to fight.

As he looked over the residents of the house of Alphan, Kamyua Yoshu said, “Now then... I’ve looked at this situation in my own particular way and pieced together what I believe to be the truth behind this incident. It may prove difficult to listen to, but I would appreciate hearing all of your opinions.”

“Are you planning on making ridiculous claims again, like how the thief may still be here in the manor?” Nicola harshly questioned.

“No,” Kamyua Yoshu answered with a shake of his head. “I don’t believe we can call the culprit behind this incident a thief any longer. After all, it’s disrespectful to refer to members of the noble Alphan bloodline as such.”

“Aha... Then you intend to make me out to be the villain here?” Nicola questioned, smiling with her mouth alone.

Zess trembled with anger, while Tetia remained as expressionless as a doll.

“Perish the thought. A sweet young lady such as yourself could never commit such a violent act, Lady Nicola.”

“Stop messing around! What, are you calling Tetia the culprit?!”

“Not at all... Well, maybe you could say so. I’d say that the truth here is somewhat more complicated than that,” Kamyua Yoshu replied with a grin. What exactly had those mysterious purple eyes of his seen? At any rate, Leito just silently listened. “My first basic thought was to cast aside the hypothesis that the culprit was an outside intruder. I could only conclude that that couldn’t be the case, since it was clear from the state of Dame Mateela’s corpse that she was alive until morning. Climbing that wall during the second hour of the morning and escaping without any passersby seeing simply wouldn’t be possible. No, whoever the culprit was, they undoubtedly remained here in the manor.”

Everyone simply listened intently as he continued on.

“With that in mind, I came to the conclusion that the only ones who could have harmed Dame Mateela are the three people who set foot in her bedroom this morning. As the servant who kept watch through the night is seen as the most suspicious, he is currently under intense interrogation by the guards... However, I don’t believe that he is the culprit either.”

“Hmm, would that be because of the fact that he could not have hidden the hand the culprit cut off, nor could he have cleaned all the blood off himself?” Polarth questioned.

“Yeah.” Kamyua Yoshu nodded back. “Now, if he had an accomplice, that would no longer be the case. He could have lowered the weapon and the hand down to the ground below the window with a rope for an ally to hide. But I find that explanation highly unlikely.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because he would have had no reason to carry out the plan in the morning. The other servants were already hard at work by the second hour of the morning, so there would be no telling when someone might come along and discover the crime. It would be utterly ridiculous to lower a rope out a window or summon an ally to the second floor bedroom while the sun was high in the sky. And it would also be wise to do the deed at night in order to make it look like the work of a thief. In actuality, the guards have already concluded that it wouldn’t be possible to climb over that wall during the morning.” After stopping for a single breath and a silent glance around the people gathered, Kamyua Yoshu continued. “If this crime had been planned out in advance, it absolutely would have been carried out at night. However, Mateela lost her life this morning instead. So perhaps that means it was a spontaneous crime that nobody planned for.”

“A spontaneous crime?”

“That’s right. I believe this was not a plot made in advance to injure the dame, but rather the end result of a series of unfortunate coincidences,” Kamyua Yoshu said, his gaze fixed on Nicola. “Now then, as you visited Mateela’s bedroom in the morning, you’re the second person who could have committed the crime, Lady Nicola. However, you couldn’t have thrust that dagger in so deeply with those arms of yours... After all, the blade broke a rib and made it all the way to her heart. You would need the arm strength of someone such as Zess or myself to accomplish that.”

“Then are you saying I did it?” Zess questioned.

“Ah, no. After all, you wouldn’t have been able to scale the manor wall in the morning either. All you did was throw the pruning shears up into the window, right?” Zess froze in place with a look of terror. The blood had completely drained from his face. “Under Lady Nicola’s orders, you threw the shears from the rear garden into the bedroom on the second floor. And afterward, you had to take care of the bloody shears and the right hand wrapped in the shawl. The task must have eaten away at your very soul.”

“Oh, so it sounds like you wish to treat me as the culprit after all,” Nicola remarked with a chilly grin.

However, Kamyua Yoshu shook his head and said, “No. I believe you only cut off the corpse’s hand, Lady Nicola. Did you perhaps see Zess beside the shack when you opened the window to make it look like the work of a thief? That was when you would have asked him to provide the shears and handle the cleanup. For better or worse, things would have never grown so complicated if you hadn’t called for him.”

“What are you even saying?! Why would I cut off my own grandmother’s hand of all things?!”

“It was to save Lady Tetia, wasn’t it? To conceal evidence of her crimes.”

Now it was Nicola’s turn to freeze in place.

Kamyua Yoshu turned toward the bed. “Lady Tetia, you were the one to stab Dame Mateela in the chest with the dagger, weren’t you?”

Tetia slowly looked toward Kamyua Yoshu.

But just before she could utter a response, Nicola shouted, “Stop! Don’t say anything, Tetia!”

“You... You all realized what I did, didn’t you?” A single tear rolled down her face, as pale as a corpse. “Yes... I stabbed grandmother in the chest with her dagger...”

“Tetia!”

“I am the one who murdered her. Nicola and Zess had nothing to do with it. I’m the only guilty party here...”

“No. It’s true that you stabbed her, but that was last night, correct? The dame lost her life after the break of dawn. You weren’t the one to kill her,” Kamyua Yoshu declared, his gaze shifting back toward Nicola. “The dame was stabbed in the chest by Lady Tetia. But it must have bounced off the bone and not penetrated all that deep. The dame did have a rather plump figure. At any rate, I believe that after Lady Tetia left, she tried to pull the dagger out and seriously injured her own right palm. There was a deep cut on the hand which was just recently found.”

No one dared interject.

“Then, in order to stop the bleeding, the dame wrapped a nearby shawl tightly around her hand. Perhaps she lost consciousness at that point, or maybe she simply lacked the strength to cry out due to the blood loss... Regardless, she was unable to summon the servant outside her door, and was left helpless and alone through the night.”

Nicola bit her lip while remaining silent.

In turn, Kamyua Yoshu shot her a gentle smile.

“Then morning rolled around and Lady Nicola visited her bedroom. I don’t know what happened between the two of you at that point, but the dame fell from her bed and perished. The impact of hitting the floor made the dagger that had been shallowly stuck in her chest plunge deeper, breaking a rib and making it all the way to her heart. Naturally, you went to summon the servant...but then, you knew Lady Tetia had visited the bedroom last night, didn’t you? Or perhaps the dame herself informed you of that fact this morning. At any rate, Lady Tetia’s crimes would have been exposed if you hadn’t intervened, so you had no choice but to devise a plan.”

“But why? Wouldn’t undoing the shawl wrapped around her hand serve to obscure when the injury had occurred?” Polarth chimed in, sounding rather composed.

“No,” Kamyua Yoshu answered with a shake of his head. “That likely wouldn’t have done the trick. As it had been bound throughout the night, the dame’s hand would have become swollen. Lady Nicola needed to dispose of the entire hand in order to conceal that fact.”

“Hmm, the more I hear, the more astounding it all becomes! Were there perhaps signs of such swelling about the hand that was discovered a little while ago?”

“No. The area around the wound was so bloodied that I couldn’t confirm that fact.”

“Ugh, just hearing about it is enough to send a chill down my spine... Still, that leaves all of this as pure conjecture. Just how did you put everything together in order to reach such a conclusion?” Polarth questioned, looking confused.

With a relaxed smile, Kamyua Yoshu replied, “It wasn’t all that hard. The proof was on the bed.”

“The bed? You mean the one in Mateela’s bedroom?”

“Yes. There were some very clear bloodstains on top of it. Since the wound to her chest wasn’t all that serious, it must have all come from her palm. The blood that had been scattered around rather than pooled had dried enough that I could scrape it off with my finger. If it had all been from this morning, it wouldn’t be anywhere near that dry, now would it?” Kamyua Yoshu said, looking over the people present. “The dame’s corpse still retained a bit of warmth, so there’s no doubt that she died in the morning. And yet in spite of that, there was blood from before that on her bed. From the very beginning of my investigation, I went from person to person, asking questions in order to solve the mystery of why that might have been.”

Leito let out a little gasp, so small that nobody else could hear it.

He could clearly recall Kamyua Yoshu flicking the dried blood from his fingernail. And yet in spite of that, he had been unable to pick up on the same line of thinking.

“Lady Tetia was the only one to visit the dame’s bedroom last night. It had to be either her or the servant in the antechamber who had caused the dame to bleed like that. But if the servant had been the culprit, he certainly would have finished her off during the night, which wouldn’t lead to the current circumstances. Therefore, I reached the conclusion that it was Lady Tetia who stabbed her with the dagger, and Lady Nicola who tried to make that look like the work of a thief. So, what do you all think?”

Nicola didn’t say so much as a word.

Staring intently at her half-sister, Tetia asked, “Nicola, is that true...? You and my brother Zess did that in order to protect me?”

“You didn’t know anything about it, did you, Lady Tetia?” Kamyua Yoshu said.

“No... I had no idea what was going on when I heard about grandmother having been killed by a thief, and that her right hand had been removed. I was left wondering if something so strange could have truly happened, with someone just happening to break in and kill her after I had injured her last night...”

“Why exactly did you attack the dame?” Kamyua Yoshu questioned, causing even more tears to stream from Tetia’s eyes.

“I... I visited grandmother’s bedroom in order to discuss the matter of who would be the heir to the house of Alphan. Though it is true that my mother was a maid, I have been officially acknowledged by the authorities of Genos as a legitimate child. There was no way she could have twisted things to make Nicola the heir instead, so I wanted to ask her to please reconsider her position.”

“But she refused to consider your request.”

“That’s right... Instead, she handed me that dagger and pressured me to kill myself...” Tetia’s slender fingers were gripping her bedding tight. “‘If only you weren’t here, everything would be fine... Pay for the unforgivable crime your mother committed with your life...’ That’s what she told me. And she heaped such horrible abuse upon my mother... Before I realized it, I had thrust the dagger into her chest...”

“Is that what happened, Tetia?” Zess asked in a low, quiet voice. His eyes were filled with terrible anguish. “If I had only known, I would have taken up a blade in your place. Why did that old hag hate us so much...?! If someone wasn’t born into a noble house, are they not allowed to wish for as much happiness as anyone else?!”

“There’s no helping that... Our mother accepted my noble father’s advances, after all...”

“Even so, grandmother had no right to abuse you like that! Our father is the one at fault for getting his maid pregnant!” Nicola shouted. There were tears streaming down her face now too. “I didn’t even want to inherit the house! I... I just wanted to marry Zess!” As she wailed, Nicola glared at Kamyua Yoshu with her teary eyes. “That’s why I went to grandmother’s bedroom, to try to persuade her! To tell her she should cast aside her stupid plans and let Tetia’s husband be the next head of the house!”

“You told the truth about that, I know. But why did that end in the dame losing her life?” Kamyua Yoshu asked in a gentle tone.

Nicola looked like she was suddenly overtaken by chills, wrapping her arms around her own body. “Grandmother was there atop the bed, grasping at me. ‘Tetia did this! That girl is a criminal, and now you can be the heir...’ Her face was pale, but she was grinning like a wild beast when she managed to grab me. I tried to flee, and she fell from the bed...”

Nicola looked like she was about to collapse. However, Zess supported her slender body without a moment’s delay.

As she looked upon her sister, Tetia whispered in a hoarse voice, “Nicola, Zess, I wanted you two to be together...so I decided to shoulder the name of house Alphan myself... But grandmother, she just wouldn’t permit it...”

“Grandmother was obsessed with status! Even though viscount is no great title in the first place! And yet she wanted to protect that title more than her own flesh and blood!”

Nicola and Tetia were both sobbing. Zess’s mouth was shut tight, as if to stop himself from crying too.

These three all just wanted to protect one another. Even as someone who had never known what it was like to have a family, Leito could still imagine the anguish and sadness they must have felt.

“It would seem that my logic was right on the mark. The one to ultimately kill the dame was the third person present... The dame herself,” Kamyua Yoshu very calmly declared with a gentle smile.