The History of Twilight Mansion
Each of them lost in their own thoughts, the group made their way to the game room.
The next stretch of time passed in idle amusement. Hakuba Saguru and Mogi Haruji squared off at billiards, Chikumi Fuyuyo and Mouri Kogoro settled into a chess match, while Kurata Ikumi, Mouri Ran, Conan, Xia Yu, and the uninvited Morikawa Shigo played cards at another table.
With five players, the deck in the game room couldn't accommodate a proper game, so they agreed to play Old Maid instead.
They played several rounds, and over the course of them, Xia Yu came to appreciate just how absurdly lucky Mouri Ran was. Ran never once drew the joker — and her hand was always the first to be paired off and emptied.
Even Xia Yu herself couldn't escape the joker sometimes.
This round was no different. The moment Xia Yu picked up her cards, her mood sank in spite of herself. The joker had landed in her hand yet again.
After a few rounds of drawing, only two cards remained in Xia Yu's hand — and the joker was still one of them.
It was Morikawa's turn to draw. Xia Yu held her cards out, fanned away from him, and watched his finger drift toward the card that wasn't the joker. Disappointment welled up in her eyes before she could stop it.
Just as Morikawa was about to pull the card free, he happened to glance up and caught the look on her face. He paused for the briefest moment, then smiled, shifted his finger to the other card, and drew it out — the joker, sure enough.
He stole another glance at Xia Yu. Sure enough, she'd brightened. She's easy to please, huh.
The round ended shortly after, and the loser was Morikawa. Ever since he'd drawn that joker, his luck had gone sour — the stubborn card clung to his hand to the very end, until naturally he was the only one left holding cards.
Morikawa didn't seem to mind the loss at all. He simply dealt his chips out among the others, then returned the joker to the deck.
This time Ran won again. She tidied the cards on the table and began dealing.
Once the deal was done, Xia Yu picked up her hand — and this time, something felt off. One of the cards seemed thicker than the rest. She slid it out and examined it closely: two cards stuck together.
She thought nothing of it and began to peel them apart. Only when they came free did she realize the two cards had been glued together — with blood. And judging by the color of the stain, it had been there for a very long time.
Xia Yu wasn't frightened, exactly. But confronted so suddenly with something entirely unexpected, she froze for a moment, visibly stunned.
"What's wrong?" Morikawa had noticed her unusual reaction and looked over with concern.
Then he spotted the bloodstained card in Xia Yu's hand. His eyes shifted subtly, and he took the card straight from her fingers before she had any chance to stop him.
"Ah!"
Conan and the others saw it too — the blood on the card Morikawa had snatched away. Ran couldn't suppress a frightened cry, and it drew the eyes of everyone in the game room. Mouri Kogoro in particular, terrified that something had happened to his daughter, hurried over at once.
It was then that the group learned from Mogi Haruji that the maid, Ishihara Aki, had once said nothing in the mansion had been touched since the murders forty years ago. The blood on that playing card was surely one of the traces left behind from the original incident.
Just then, the maid Ishihara Aki knocked and entered, announcing that dinner was ready and that their host was waiting for everyone in the dining room.
Mogi Haruji spoke up, barely concealing his excitement. "At last, the star of the show makes his appearance." As he said it, his eyes stole a discreet glance at Morikawa Shigo's expression.
Morikawa paid the intermittent stares no mind and simply followed the others toward the dining room, his manner perfectly at ease.
Along the way, he fell into step beside Xia Yu, curiosity written across his face. "I did a little digging before I came. You were all invited here by the owner of this annex, right? Are you a group of detectives? What are you here to investigate — the murders from forty years ago, or the treasure?"
"Treasure?" Xia Yu shot him a searching look. "What treasure? Nobody mentioned any treasure to us, I'm pretty sure."
This time it was Morikawa who looked at her strangely. "You came all the way to Twilight Mansion without even asking what you were walking into?"
"Oh my~ So Mr. Morikawa knows something we don't," Hakuba said, lingering a few steps behind before sliding in beside him. "Might you enlighten us as to the nature of this treasure?"
He had clearly been following the exchange between Morikawa and Xia Yu from behind, and the moment the word "treasure" surfaced, he couldn't help but cut into the conversation. The others, without being obvious about it, all slowed their pace as well — every one of them, it seemed, was keenly interested.
Chikumi Fuyuyo most of all. She studied Morikawa with narrowed eyes — this man who existed outside her plans. How could he know about the treasure hidden inside Twilight Mansion? Was he connected to the Karasuma family? Or was he like her — with a relative caught up in the events of forty years ago?
Since everyone clearly wanted to know, Morikawa didn't refuse. He gave a brief account of the two incidents that had occurred at Twilight Mansion forty years ago. "First, there was the old man Karasuma Renya. He learned that this annex, left to him by his mother, held a treasure of considerable value, and on his deathbed he wanted to find it. So he invited a whole crowd of scholars here to search for it. When they failed to turn anything up, he had every one of his guests killed."
"Ah — how could anyone do that?" Ran murmured, stricken by the atrocity that had unfolded within these walls. The others fell into pensive silence.
Morikawa noticed, among them, that Chikumi Fuyuyo's complexion had gone distinctly unnatural.
He paused, then went on. "The second incident came that same year, after Karasuma Renya's death, at an auction held right here in this annex. Apparently, to auction off more than three hundred pieces from Karasuma's prized art collection, they invited all manner of prominent figures — politicians, financiers, the cream of society. And then, the very next day, two mysterious guests arrived. Not long after, the people inside the annex turned on one another, slaughtering each other over the artworks and treasures until the place became a hell on earth. And those two mysterious guests vanished — along with every one of Karasuma Renya's three hundred pieces."