Chapter 430

“What?”

I had to take a moment to process what I’d just heard. What? What is? How?

― “Only the Prime Minister’s fingerprints are on the glass.”

Countless possibilities bubbled up in my mind, only to burst and disappear one after another. First, the culprit had deliberately left the Prime Minister’s fingerprints behind. Second, they had merely found fingerprints that had been left there naturally. Third, the Prime Minister had chosen to die himself. Fourth, the Prime Minister had sensed that something was wrong and touched the lamp after the culprit had applied the poison to it.

I had already ruled out the first and second possibilities as absurd almost the moment I thought of them. Inspector Wächter had walked in here looking visibly confused as he searched for his senior, and as I had considered earlier, that could only mean he had discovered some unbelievable piece of information. Narke must have read exactly what was going through his mind.

― “That’s right, Lukas.”

Narke’s words struck directly into my mind. The moment we stepped out of the lobby, the cool night air brushed against my forehead.

― “The Prime Minister killed himself. That’s what they think.”

Everything outside was peaceful. Except for the uniformed figures constantly moving about.

The mana lamps still lit up the city, while the lights in the taverns and residential districts flickered on at irregular intervals, just as they did in any other city. The city carried on as usual, whether the Prime Minister was dead or alive. That meant the time we would have to spend searching for the culprit had just multiplied several times over. I slowly turned around, feeling my body temperature dropping.

Now I understood why the divine power mages had concluded, even after interrogating so many people, that there was no one who had prepared the poison and administered it to the Prime Minister. I also understood why they hadn’t been able to retrieve the lamp.

We had to go back up. I pulled out the cigarette I carried for disguises, quickly lit it, and hurried up the stairs. A vapor with a rather unpleasant taste filled my lungs. If I was going to be wandering around at this hour, I needed to at least smell like cigarettes.

Instead of Johanna, Narke had taken on the appearance of an unfamiliar middle-aged Old Human and gone up in the elevator, pretending not to be with me. I took the stairs and found Kathrin Wächter standing outside Room 6013, while Markus had just come out, hurriedly pulling his arms into his robe with a flustered expression.

“What’s going on?”

I asked Markus as he threw his clothes on, his face pale. The elevator doors opened with a clear chime, and the middle-aged Old Human approached us.

“No, nothing. I just have to leave a little early.”

Markus brushed me off with a brief answer before getting into the elevator with his juniors. The middle-aged Old Human walked toward Room 6020, but the moment the elevator began descending, he turned around and came back toward me.

― “Left to right, then right to left again. The fingerprints were on the left side of the glass. And there were marks showing someone had gripped the entire lamp with their hand and rubbed it slightly. But there were no rashes or visible marks on the skin while the body was still intact, though they’ve disappeared now that the body has decayed.”

“…….”

In other words, there was no trace of the poison having seeped into his hands. Even though he must have applied it by hand.

― “For now, only the investigators summoned from Niederösterreich know about this. They’re considering taking another look at the scene before deciding whether to inform the entire Austrian Investigation Bureau. They’re also thinking about requesting assistance from the Papal See. Markus obviously has no idea when he ordered the fingerprints to be collected, and given the circumstances, he has no intention of voicing such doubts to his junior.”

Narke relayed his thoughts to me in a rapid-fire stream. This was one of those moments when I was glad to have Narke with me. I’d felt that way ever since we came to this country.

I went back into the room and sat down on the sofa. My robe was crumpling beneath my legs, but I had no time to care. The Prime Minister had applied Atropos to the lamp himself. That very Atropos that rots away the entire body. I had a sudden realization. No. It wasn’t a realization. Logically, there was a major obstacle here. And this was the key that would determine the course of the entire case.

If he wanted to kill himself, he could have simply drunk poison.

“Why did the Prime Minister have to make his suicide look like a murder?”

“…….”

Why go to the trouble of poisoning the lamp? It meant he couldn’t let it look like he’d taken his own life. The case had to become a mystery. Then why did it have to look like murder?

This was a crucial question regardless of whether the person who wanted the Prime Minister dead was the Prime Minister himself or someone from outside.

Now, let’s divide the possibilities according to where that intent to kill came from and reason through each one.

First, by his own will. Second, by someone else’s will.

First: the Prime Minister wanted to die, but he also wanted it to look as though someone else had killed him. The most plausible scenario we can imagine would be this: the Prime Minister held an intense hatred toward Hungarians and wanted to create grounds for Austria to legally suppress Hungary.

It was true that many Austrians resented Hungary now that the Compromise had secured Hungary’s autonomy within the Empire. But how many people would go so far as to risk their own lives to set up something that might or might not work? And the Prime Minister himself was hardly someone who hated Hungary to that extent. As I had already concluded, he was an ordinary Prime Minister. There was nothing particularly extreme about his political views, either. He was simply the sort of person who would quietly serve out his term and fade away.

And if the Prime Minister really had intended to use his own death to passively suppress Hungary, he could have left behind more evidence at the “crime scene” that would turn public opinion against Hungary. Doing so would have been a much safer way to ensure that his death was actually “worth risking his life for”—the suppression of Hungary—while also creating a far more explosive outcome. If the Prime Minister had planted something that implicated Hungary, this incident could have even triggered a civil war within the Empire.

Second, the Prime Minister had no intention of killing himself. In that case, there seem to be four main possibilities for how he came to apply the poison to the lamp.

2-1. The Prime Minister was placed under a mental manipulation magic. Without realizing it himself, he applied the poison to the lamp and went about his work.

2-2. The Prime Minister was threatened. Someone handed him the poison and told him, “If you don’t apply this to the lamp, I’ll expose something—or kill someone precious to you. And I’ll know immediately whether you followed my orders or not. After all, once you apply it, you’ll die shortly afterward.”

2-3. The Prime Minister didn’t know that applying it would kill him. He applied the substance to the lamp for some other purpose, whether for some magical reason or otherwise.

2-4. After the culprit applied the poison and left, the Prime Minister gradually began experiencing symptoms of poisoning. Sensing that something was wrong, he tried to find the cause and ended up touching the lamp.

‘1 and 2-2 seem realistically unlikely.’

Cross those out.

Instead, the most likely hypotheses were these:

2-1: Mental manipulation magic.

2-3: He applied it for some purpose without knowing it was poison.

2-4: While being poisoned and slowly dying, he sensed something was wrong and touched the lamp.

Still, none of them gave me an answer. Damn this deduction…

I pressed a hand to my forehead. And now there was a new problem.

P1. In cases 2-1 and 2-3: Where on earth did he obtain the Atropos?

P2. In cases 2-1 and 2-3: If he was clearly poisoned the moment he touched it and applied it with his finger, why go to the trouble of putting the Atropos on the lamp in the first place?

P3. In cases 2-1 and 2-3: No dangerous substances were found in or around the Prime Minister’s residence. So what happened to the Atropos?

P4. In case 2-1: Who cast the mental manipulation spell on him?

‘This is seriously driving me insane.’

Countless thoughts swirled through my head. I stared at the yellow glow of the hotel room lamp and muttered distractedly.

“…Someone other than the Prime Minister did put the poison on the lamp. He may have started feeling strange as the poison took effect, noticed that something was wrong with the lamp’s mana, and then touched it himself. If that’s the case, we need to check everyone who entered the residence. Who went where, and when. The Prime Minister left work at midnight and came back in the early morning. There was always a guard posted outside the door, but…”

“They were already investigated, weren’t they? Wasn’t it in the investigation report?”

Narke’s words blurred and scattered in my mind. The more I spoke, the clearer my thoughts became. Narke noticed something strange in my expression and belatedly went, “Ah,” rubbing his chin. I felt a faint tension gather in my throat as I spoke.

“Narke, the Prime Minister is estimated to have died at ten in the morning while drinking water. His secretary found him thirty minutes later.”

“That’s right.”

We had already confirmed that much on the train. They had taken the water glass away, and no unusual poison had been found in it. The estimated time of death, ten o’clock, had been determined by forensic pathologists based on the degree of rigor in the corpse’s muscles, so there probably wasn’t much room for error.

They said the secretary found him thirty minutes after his death, but that didn’t mean the secretary arrived at ten-thirty. The exact timeline written in the investigation report was as follows.

0:00 AM: The Prime Minister leaves work.

6:00 AM: The Prime Minister arrives at work.

7:00 AM: The Chief Secretary arrives.

8:30 AM: Breakfast.

9:30 AM: The Chief Secretary leaves the office.

9:45 AM: An office secretary visits.

10:00 AM: The Prime Minister dies.

10:30 AM: The body is discovered.

The chief secretary had left the office at 9:30 because, on the deceased Austrian Prime Minister’s orders, he had to receive the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Hungarian Prime Minister was scheduled to visit the Imperial Palace before heading to the Austrian Prime Minister’s office.

There were no other visitors. There couldn’t have been. A secretary had been stationed in the lobby the entire time, keeping watch from the entrance onward.

From six to seven in the morning, the Prime Minister was alone, but he was alive. From seven until half past nine, the Chief Secretary remained in the same room with him. Even at 9:45, another secretary stopped by the Prime Minister’s office. He had only fifteen minutes left before his death. No one entered the room during that time.

That was why so many investigators had suspected that the poison absorbed through the food, water, or alcohol at breakfast at 8:30 had spread throughout his body over the next hour and a half. I muttered quietly amid the flood of thoughts rushing through my mind.

“Hypothesis 2-4 has to be discarded.”

What was I thinking? I scolded myself for what I had concluded thirty seconds ago. It wasn’t someone else who had applied the poison to the lamp.

If someone had disabled the barrier and illegally warped into the office, the culprit would have had to fight the Prime Minister, who was a mage himself. If the sounds of magic being used had continued to ring out, the secretary waiting outside would have come in immediately to check. In fact, the Prime Minister would probably have shouted or rung the bell before that even happened.

If the culprit had cast a mental manipulation spell immediately after breaking in, applied the poison to the lamp, and then left, it might have made sense… but in that case, there would have been no reason to poison the lamp in the first place. If the Prime Minister was already under mind manipulation, why not simply poison his glass of water while he was defenseless and leave? That would have worked too. But if that had happened, the poison should have been found in the glass. It wasn’t.

It was certain. The person who had applied the poison to the lamp was unmistakably the Prime Minister himself.

Even though I hadn’t told Narke what hypothesis 2-4 was, he fell silent for a moment, then nodded. That was fine. When solving a case like this, there was nothing wrong with letting him read my thoughts.

“Right. If the poison was applied to the lamp no earlier than 9:45, then it seems unlikely that someone came in during that window and poisoned the lamp.”

“This is where the problem lies, Narke.”

“Yeah. Go on.”

“First, where did the Prime Minister get the Atropos? Second, why the lamp of all things? Third, whether you look at the investigation report or the newspapers, there’s no dangerous toxic substance among the Prime Minister’s personal belongings.”

“Haha.”

Narke laughed aloud without changing his expression, then tilted his head.

“You’re thinking exactly what I am.”

“Then I assume you’ve figured something out by now.”

At that, Narke gave me a small smile.

We had no way of knowing where the Prime Minister had obtained the Atropos.

So, leaving that aside, let’s move on to P2. Why did he have to put the Atropos on the lamp, of all things? The answer would depend on whether we went with hypothesis 2-1 or 2-3, but by this point, we have to remember that the premise of hypothesis 2 was murder by someone else’s will. So we need to think from the criminal’s perspective.

“Why did they have to make the Prime Minister put the Atropos on the lamp? What did they need from the lamp that made it necessary to combine it with the Atropos?”

Narke looked at me with a slow, knowing smile, leaning back on his arms. He knew the answer too. I blinked, waiting for him to say it.

“…They needed the mana from the lamp, Lukas.”

“Exactly. We’re on the same page again. And that tells us something important: the Atropos was one of the Prime Minister’s possessions, but it wasn’t actually poisonous on its own.”

Atropos wasn’t normally a poisonous substance. I continued quietly as I looked at Narke.

“It only becomes poisonous through some kind of catalyst. And that catalyst was the mana released by the magical lamp. What do you think, Narke?”

“…Hahaha! This is exciting.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, and Narke answered with a grin.

“What could I possibly add to the top scorer’s answer?”

“…….”

“Haha! That was a compliment~”

Narke burst out laughing at my complicated expression before straightening himself again.

“So, we know where we have to go now. Don’t we?”

“Yeah.”

I sprang to my feet again and grabbed my bag.

“Let’s go.”

There was another problem.

We also had to consider the possibility that not all of the Prime Minister’s belongings were currently in the Investigation Bureau’s possession.

We had personally witnessed the existence of suddenly appearing relics back in Germany. At the very least, we couldn’t rule out the possibility that the case containing the poison had been warped somewhere using that same technology. So there was something we needed to find out first.

“You came to see me?”

I was in the cell of the Prime Minister’s youngest secretary, who was being held in a special detention facility. Police officers stood guard outside the bars. Unlike the Prime Minister’s residence, there was no elaborate barrier set up here, so I had been able to get inside with nothing more than an investigator’s uniform and a fake ID.

“Yes. I heard you were usually the one who packed the Prime Minister’s luggage.”

“Why do you ask? Technically, that isn’t actually my job.”

He frowned as he looked at me, apparently afraid that I might try to make him out to be the culprit. I could understand. He had probably been interrogated all day yesterday.

“It’s nothing special. There’s just something I was curious about. The Prime Minister has been traveling abroad quite often lately.”

“Overseas trips, yes. It’s not just recently. He travels abroad quite frequently.”

“I see. I’d like to know what he always made sure to take with him.”

“…….”

He thought about it for a moment before answering, though the uneasiness still hadn’t left his face.

“Of course… a couple of suits, undergarments, perfume, and a book of poetry. That’s about it. He’s not the sort to travel with many things. Two fountain pens and a diary, too. As for documents he needed for each trip, he handled those himself, so I’m not very familiar with them.”

“That’s really not much.”

“…Then what were you expecting?”

“That’s not what I meant. What perfume did he use?”

“Penhaligon’s. He received it as a gift when he visited Britain. Ah, now that I think about it, he sometimes carried holy water with him, too. He would get a fresh supply whenever he stopped by a church.”

“Hmm… I see. As you’d expect from a Catholic country, the Prime Minister was Catholic as well. More importantly, I hear he recently returned from Italy.”

At the mention of Italy, he frowned again. Then he looked at me with a tired expression.

“Yes. I’ve already given quite a few statements about that. Bosnia, the Papal States, and Italy.”

“I imagine you have. It was his most recent trip, after all. More importantly, what did he have in his luggage when he went to Italy?”

“That was everything. We brought the gifts for the nobles and members of the Imperial Family separately, so the Prime Minister didn’t have to carry those himself.”

“And what about when he came back?”

“That was everything as well. We transported the gifts he received ourselves. He only returned recently, so he hadn’t even opened them yet.”

“I mean his luggage.”

“…Hmm… He got a new watch. There was a watch case I hadn’t seen before.”

“…….”

I smiled, nodded, and rose from my seat.

Knock, knock—

“You will have to come out now, sir.”

Right on cue, a police officer struck the bars with the back of his hand and called out. I gave the secretary a polite nod and left the room. Now it was time to head to the place Narke had already cleared a path to.

“Ah, you’re here.”

An Austrian investigator was standing before me again. The difference this time was that Narke had obtained a badge that could get us through the barriers—using mental manipulation magic to take it from someone, or perhaps from somewhere it had been stored.

We stepped outside the building for a moment, where he pinned the badge onto me, then we went back up to the evidence storage room. Narke held up two fingers.

Two minutes.

That was all the time we had if we didn’t want the other mages to notice anything. We had decided to avoid methods that carried unnecessary risks whenever possible, but given the circumstances, if a variable arose, securing the information as quickly as possible was the best course of action.

The investigator opened the evidence room for us. At a glance, his eyes looked slightly unfocused, making it obvious that Narke had used mental manipulation magic on him as well. The investigator led us to the table where the Prime Minister’s personal belongings had been laid out. The dim room was lit by a single lamp, but the items themselves were easy enough to see.

“These are all the belongings the Prime Minister had with him. He was a rather modest person, you see.”

“Hmm.”

Narke glanced at me.

The items from the Prime Minister’s luggage were on the table to the left, while his personal belongings from his office were on the table to the right. There was another table at the back containing the personal belongings he had used on the second and third floors of the residence, but we had no reason to look through those right now.

The contents of his luggage were just as the secretary had said. A couple of suits, undergarments, perfume, and a book of poetry. Two fountain pens and a diary. A watch case, along with the documents he had to bring with him as needed. There was nothing unusual on the table to the right, either. Documents, at most.

But this was enough.

I smiled, rubbing my chin, then turned toward the investigator as he was about to leave the room.

“Where is the holy water?”

“Holy water? There was no such thing.”

He turned around, asking in confusion. I smiled and nodded, sending him on his way. Then I spoke quietly.

“Found it.”