Chapter 152: The Crawling Human (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 152: The Crawling Human (3)
“Hey, how can you say that so loudly?”
“What?”
“W-What if someone hears us…? This is an incredibly sensitive issue…”
Charlotte’s blunt remark startled the client. His eyes bulged comically as he began to whisper in a frantic, hushed tone.
“This is the mansion’s courtyard. And you were the one who mentioned your mother crawls around like a dog every night. Besides, my voice isn’t loud enough to reach the street.”
“P-P-Please, keep your voice down… Sound carries from the front door to the interior surprisingly well…”
“…As I thought, you’ve kept this investigation a secret from your mother, haven’t you? And here I was, hoping to seek her cooperation.”
At Charlotte’s sharp deduction, the client could only stutter in response.
“Y-You can’t do that…”
“Why not?”
“Well, I… I already tried asking her the other day. The hallway lights have been on every night recently, and I wondered if she was up to something, so I decided to just ask her straight out…”
The client glanced nervously at his surroundings and led Charlotte and her party toward a shabby shed in the corner of the yard as he continued.
“…It didn’t go well. She reacted quite defensively. She claimed it was nothing, but something strange is definitely happening in this mansion.”
“…Then asking for her cooperation might indeed backfire.”
“That’s why I called you, Detective… I heard you were exceptionally competent…”
Pausing for a moment, the client glanced at the people surrounding Charlotte—Gia Lestrade, Rachel Watson, and Isaac Adler.
“…I-I’d like to speak with the Detective alone from here on. As you know, this is a very sensitive matter.”
“These three are my faithful assistants. I guarantee there will be no information leaks.”
“But still…”
“They have been by my side through matters of the highest confidentiality, from royal scandals to national conflicts. The embarrassing secrets of a university professor are trivial by comparison.”
As Charlotte calmly reassured the client, she shot a glare at her companions. They immediately nodded and smiled, backing up the detective’s words.
“If you insist, then I shall trust you…”
“Then please explain what happened. In detail, if you would.”
Finally lowering his guard, the client sighed and leaned against the door of the shed.
“…All of this started about six months ago, when my mother announced her remarriage.”
He continued in a low, heavy voice.
“She is remarrying one of her university assistants. Despite her usually cold and strict demeanor, she confessed her feelings with such passion and enthusiasm that she didn’t even seem like the same person.”
“””………”””
“The age gap was quite significant, too. Perhaps thirty years? Yet, amazingly, the assistant accepted… What is it? Why are you all looking at me?”
Every eye, including Charlotte’s, fixed on Isaac Adler with piercing intensity.
“Everyone, this is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
Adler, belatedly realizing the implication of their stares, protested with a look of profound injustice.
“London is a massive city. I’m hardly a Casanova, and the rumor that half the women in the city are involved with me is just a figure of speech…”
“Was the man she’s marrying a blonde with pale eyes?”
“Did he use the name Neville St. Clair?”
“Was his height or build similar to this young man here?”
Ignoring his protests, the group began interrogating the client in rapid succession.
“I haven’t met him yet, so I don’t really know.”
“Hmm…”
“…But it shouldn’t be him, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t my mother have recognized him and reacted accordingly?”
Only after hearing the client’s reasoning did they calm down and nod in agreement.
“Well, as I was saying… after that miraculous proposal succeeded, my mother lived in a state of blissful happiness for a while.”
“That makes sense. We understand how difficult it can be to propose to someone.”
“…Ahaha.”
“…It was only a few months later that my mother started acting strangely.”
While Adler laughed awkwardly at Charlotte’s icy, barbed joke, the client’s voice dropped even lower, turning somber.
“One day, without saying where she was going, my mother disappeared. She only returned fifteen days later, looking completely exhausted.”
“…….”
“When I asked where she had been, she said she’d been to Prague in Bohemia and refused to say anything else.”
“Bohemia… that brings back memories.”
At the mention of Bohemia, Adler couldn’t help but murmur, likely reminded of an incident from months ago. However, he quickly shut his mouth after sensing Charlotte’s cold gaze fixed on him.
“After that day, my mother’s personality gradually became sinister and irritable. Although she retained her intellectual appearance, she seemed like a mere shadow of her former self…”
Despite the grim atmosphere, the client resolutely continued his story.
“One day, I was simply dusting a display case in her room, and she suddenly flew into a rage for no reason.”
“…What was inside it?”
“Usually just experimental equipment. Nothing seemed particularly special about the case that day, but the next morning, she cleared everything out and hid it away somewhere.”
Charlotte listened with interest, nodding quietly to urge him on.
“And then, just a few days ago, our dog—who has been with us for over a decade—suddenly attacked her.”
“Hmm…”
“But the decisive, bizarre reason that finally convinced me to approach you, Detective, happened just two nights ago.”
At this point, the client’s voice began to tremble with fear.
“I woke up at two in the morning feeling thirsty. I was heading to the kitchen when… well, my mother was… crawling down the hallway like a dog. It wasn’t just that. I tried to convince myself it was a horrible nightmare after I fled back to my room, shivering in fright, but… I couldn’t fall back asleep.”
Upon hearing this, Charlotte and the others tilted their heads, intrigued. The client, his face pale, whispered the final detail.
“My mother was peeking through my bedroom window, staring at me with a sinister smile…”
“””………”””
“And you know…?”
Slowly raising his head, he finished in an uncharacteristically calm tone.
“…My room is on the third floor.”
A heavy silence enveloped the group.
“I thought about calling the police, but I gave up immediately. They wouldn’t understand, and it would tarnish my mother’s reputation. But I couldn’t just leave this disaster alone.”
“You did well. This is indeed a case that requires a detective’s expertise.”
Charlotte’s eyes sparked with interest for the first time in a while. Her confident tone gave the client a glimmer of hope.
“W-Well then… may I ask how you intend to solve this?”
“Well, for starters, I intend to conduct a stakeout.”
“Pardon?”
“Tonight, I’m going to see for myself if your mother is truly crawling around the mansion as you say.”
Charlotte took a quiet puff of her Acadia cigarette.
“…Then everything will become clear.”
“……..”
Beside her, Adler, who had been smiling brightly until a moment ago, now wore a gaze that gradually gleamed with an eerie, dark hue.
“…We should intervene before it’s too late.”
“Pardon?”
“Should I buy some snacks for the stakeout?”
*
The sun, which had been faintly visible through the gathering clouds, eventually set, and the streets of London were swallowed by darkness.
“…You were so critical of my hiding skills, yet here you are, crouching in the bushes anyway.”
“I’m not like you, Inspector. I at least have the common sense not to let my hair or baton stick out while under cover. Besides, there are only bushes here; where else are we supposed to hide?”
Charlotte and her companions, crouched inconspicuously within the decorative shrubbery of the yard, watched the mansion with keen eyes, refusing to miss a single detail.
“Isn’t this a bit much…?”
“…Shut up.”
“You’ll just disappear and cause trouble again if we leave you alone.”
“Don’t forget the contract, Adler.”
Adler was currently gasping for breath, squeezed between the three women who had formed a tight triangle around him to keep him contained.
“…So, what do you all think is going on here?”
After a long period of silent surveillance, Lestrade quietly posed a question to the group, perhaps out of boredom.
“We should be quiet rig—”
“…From a medical standpoint, I’m afraid it’s a severe case of sleepwalking.”
Charlotte was about to snap a warning, but Watson, equally bored, began to voice her opinion in a whisper.
“In extreme cases, patients are found kilometers away from their homes. It’s entirely possible that her trip to Bohemia was the result of a severe bout of sleepwalking…”
“Watson. Don’t you know that sleepwalking is the most common excuse used by cheaters?”
Charlotte suddenly joined the conversation, her previous warning forgotten.
“I was just discussing a possibility.”
“…Yes, I considered sleepwalking as a probable cause. But the distance between Britain and Bohemia is well over a thousand kilometers; that is on a completely different scale than the cases you mentioned.”
“Hmm…”
“If the sleepwalking lasted for weeks, it might be possible, but I’ve heard from Professor Moriarty that there is no disease that makes you sleep for that long.”
As she firmly dismissed the sleepwalking theory, Lestrade and Isaac Adler asked their questions in quick succession.
“Is there a possibility she’s suffering from a mental illness?”
“…Perhaps she’s being manipulated by that assistant?”
“Whatever the case, it’s unclear right now.”
Charlotte glanced at Adler and sighed.
“We’ll learn more soon…”
“…Oh, look over there!”
“Shhh.”
Just then, a faint figure appeared in the window of the dimly lit mansion.
“Keep your voice down, Watson…”
“Uh…”
Charlotte silenced Watson and squinted, focusing on the movement.
Swoosh…
The professor began to lower her posture after surveying her surroundings.
“………!”
In the next moment, the eyes of the three young women widened in unison.
Clatter…
The professor disappeared from their direct line of sight as she crouched down. Then, shockingly, she began crawling out on all fours through a small dog door in the front entrance and entered the garden.
“What the…”
“Grrrgrgrrr!”
Her intellectual demeanor from the morning was gone, replaced by a vulgar, animalistic expression as she crawled across the ground. Charlotte and the others watched the grotesque performance with astonished eyes. Suddenly, a bark erupted from a kennel in the distance.
“Grrrr…”
“…Hmm.”
Alerted by the growling of the dog tied up outside, the professor fixed her gaze on the animal.
“…Oh, my goodness.”
“My word…”
An utterly vulgar act unfolded before them, causing Inspector Gia Lestrade to blush and avert her gaze. It was a display so indecent that it would surely be omitted from the case files Watson usually wrote.
“…By the way…”
Realizing something, Lestrade spoke with a serious expression.
“Where did Adler go…?”
“…Haah.”
Just seconds ago, Adler had been squeezed between them, but now he was gone. Charlotte’s expression crumpled as she watched the scandalous scene, her mood souring further.
“We should have just cut off one of his legs. It would have healed anyway…”
“Grrrrr… Grrrr…”
“…Hah, hahh, aaah~!”
*
“………”
Isaac Adler, who had vanished from the scene, was rediscovered as dawn broke and the dreary London sky began to brighten.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“……..”
“Mr. Adler?”
Hunched down in the shabby shed—neither fully inside nor outside—Adler looked at Charlotte. With a swish of an imaginary tail, the first word he flicked her way was:
“…Meow.”
Astoundingly, in that brief span of time, Adler had transformed from a man into an animal, mirroring the professor’s descent.
“Meooow…”
“This is pure madness.”