The Outcast Writer of a Martial Arts Visual Novel — Bailiff 4
“The illegitimate son is the culprit?”
The moment I named my suspect, Master Eom, the son of the house, was dragged before me wearing an expression of pure indignation.
“What nonsense! Me, the culprit? Do you have proof!”
Oh, I do. That's exactly what I spent all day chasing down, you know.
Am I right? They say that when criminals are first accused, there's one stock line they all share — Do you have any proof?
“Proof? More than enough.”
“Wh-what?”
I snorted and drew from my coat the vault lock recovered from the crime scene. Hidden inside that lock was a crucial secret — one that Lim Hayeon had discovered.
“There are marks showing the lock was damaged to conceal the truth, but whoever did it was pressed for time by an unexpected situation — the inside is perfectly intact. This lock was opened with a key.”
“Opened with the vault key?”
One of the household members grasped the implication of my words and murmured in shock.
“Only two people hold keys to the vault room in this estate: the victim, the master of the house, and his lawful wife. I'm told both carry their keys on their persons at all times.”
“Then you have a suspect even more perfect than me! Everyone knows it! The wife had a motive!”
The illegitimate son forgot all courtesy toward the head of the household's wife and jabbed a finger straight at the legal wife.
“That's right! Now that I think of it, didn't they say his nighttime habits drove them apart?”
“I heard he recently took another concubine without even consulting her, and they fought over it!”
“You see that? You all heard it, didn't you?”
Master Eom squared his shoulders as though he'd just staged the great reversal of the century.
“You—you wretches! You dare suspect me!”
The legal wife, suddenly cast as the culprit, went red in the face and protested her innocence to the household.
It was a fair argument. The suspect list the constables had compiled did include the wife, and in terms of motive for murder, hers was indeed stronger than the son's.
However.
“The wife is not the culprit.”
“She isn't?”
“This case began as a robbery that turned into murder. A woman with equal authority over the estate's assets — enough to hold the vault key — would have no reason to kill anyone while stealing.”
She may have had a motive for murder, but it had nothing to do with this case.
“Then why suspect me at all!”
The illegitimate son, apparently furious that his miracle reversal play had failed, scowled deeply at me.
“If you were going to scheme, you should have perfected everything else too.”
I said it with a sneer.
“What?”
“The paper cranes of the Shadowless Divine Thief. Among all the fakes, the one genuine article — the paper crane — told me you were the culprit.”
“If the crane is genuine, then it was the work of the Shadowless Divine Thief, wasn't it!”
I already explained why it wasn't the Shadowless Divine Thief, didn't I? Perhaps you're the type who can't be bothered to read the explanation pages and just skips to the end to see who the real culprit is. I fixed Master Eom with an icy stare.
“I happen to have a friend who works as a bailiff. A bailiff with access to the evidence in the Shadowless Divine Thief case.”
Where had the paper crane come from?
Reaching a conclusion was easy. If not from me, then there was exactly one place to obtain one of the Shadowless Divine Thief's paper cranes: the government office investigating the Shadowless Divine Thief case.
Once I asked around among the constables, it wasn't hard to find the one bailiff who fit the bill.
“S-so what if I did?! N-no, wait! It's true I have a friend. But how is that evidence! Half the people in this estate know a bailiff or two!”
True. There were surely other ways to get at the evidence. But here's the thing.
“It was the Left Head Constable.”
“What?”
“The blade that killed the master of the house. It was gripped in the left hand.”
I have quite a few reasons for naming you the culprit.
“H-how could you possibly—”
“You left plenty of evidence yourself. You stabbed a man repeatedly — a man who couldn't even open a steel door he'd shut while pierced by the blade — and you thought I wouldn't notice that? Master Eom. Show us your left hand, if you would.”
“Ugh!”
Master Eom hid his arm behind his back to keep anyone from seeing his bandaged left hand — which only made it worse.
“His left hand is injured!”
“There's blood soaking through!”
Because the whole household was standing right behind him.
“When someone untrained in blades stabs a man, that's the kind of wound they tend to give themselves.”
Not knowing how much force it takes to pierce a person, their hand slides off the grip and onto the edge of the blade.
Like how cyanide supposedly smells of almonds — the sort of knowledge anyone fond of detective stories knows by heart.
“I merely cut myself by accident yesterday! And even supposing I were left-handed! How would a mere illegitimate son like me get the key to the vault room!”
“The origin of the key was left at the crime scene too.”
The single decisive clue that sealed your fate as the culprit. It was there, waiting.
“What—?!”
The culprit's eyes went wide, as wide as they could possibly go.
Shall I deliver the final blow, then?
I engaged the Soyun Mind Image Art. Feeling every gaze in the room pull toward me, I began the final reenactment to explain why the illegitimate son was the killer.
“The culprit succeeded in murdering the victim — but it was an unplanned killing, and he was thrown into utter panic! The proof is the pacing footprints stamped over and over around the victim at the scene! And those footprints show a very peculiar orientation!”
“Orientation?”
“Strangely enough, the toes of those footprints pointed neither at the dead victim nor at the vault.”
Every single footprint pointed in one deeply unexpected direction.
“S-stop it!”
The suspect shrieked at me, his face drained white.
“So you've caught on. The culprit was pacing while facing the door. A steel door that had been shut until moments before — as if he were conversing with someone standing on the other side.”
Last night.
The people present at the crime scene had not been only the murderer and the victim.
There had been a bystander, standing by the door, watching a man commit his crime in silence.
“I told you to stop!”
“There was someone there. Someone who could steal the key from the sleeping victim beside him and pass it along — an accomplice who slammed the steel door shut when the master of the house tried to flee.”
“You—you don't mean—”
I walked slowly toward the place where the crowd's gazes — wide with shock — had gathered.
Last night, the master of the house had lain with a woman and then met his killer in the vault room, where he died. That much was known.
Then the one who passed the key last night was—
“Isn't that right, Lady Eom?”
The victim's concubine. The bystander who had watched the whole affair unfold.
“….”
The concubine's eyebrows trembled as she lowered her gaze.
“Mother! Say nothing!”
As if vowing silence at her son's word, the concubine shut her eyes.
If you won't answer, there are other ways.
“Constables — search the concubine's quarters. Now.”
I gave the order for the final conclusion.
“We've found blood-soaked shoes, and the missing valuables!”
“H-how? Th-this is a frame-up! A frame-up, I say!”
The frame-up is what you tried to pin on Lady Hayeon, you know.
I asked Lady Hayeon to find proof of whether you people were really the culprits. That's why I could speak with such certainty.
At the constable's report, the concubine opened her tightly shut eyes and looked at me, as if making up her mind about something.
“Well done. No wonder you're the bailiff who cracked the ghost ship case.”
“Mother! Uuurgh! You—you did this!!! You black-haired barbarian bastard!”
The murderous intent of the furious killer prickled up the back of my neck.
“Kyaaagh!”
“Careful!”
I turned — and there it was, a bloodied dagger, close enough to touch. The weapon the suspect had failed to dispose of.
“A beast that defies heaven and knows no human bonds, preaching about barbarians. How amusing.”
So I looked funny to you. I haven't lived so soft a life that I'd flinch at a child's blade — my brother once took one to me.
I seized the dagger with my right hand. The culprit faltered. That skin of yours, untouched by a blade — enjoy it. It'll be the first and the last time.
Charging my left hand with internal force, I grabbed him by the collar and drove him back-first straight into the ground.
“Hurk!”
“Bailiff Kang!”
“Bind the culprits and prepare them for transport.”
Case closed. Good grief.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“How could you do this to me! The master raised you like his own son!”
The legal wife raged at the illegitimate son, the confirmed culprit.
“Ha! You mean the man who used me as a hostage and treated my mother like some cheap courtesan?”
“The master had his failings at night, I'll grant! But he never treated your mother like a whore!”
“Then look at the wounds on my mother that grew by the day, and say that again!”
“…It was all my fault. A worthless mother wished for her son to live a new life, and this is what became of it. Please — take only my life—”
“M-Mother!”
Whether it was genuine maternal love or an act, the murder motive had almost certainly lain with the concubine.
Her original plan had likely been nothing more than slipping her son the vault key — but when the moment came, she shut the steel door. Had she been in her right mind, she would have tried to restrain him, or at least prevent the worst.
Once things had more or less settled, I made my way over to Lady Hayeon and Lady Jegal, waiting off to one side.
“From a single set of footprints, you reasoned all the way to that. Impressive.”
“When I tilted my head to match the footprints earlier, I caught the faces of two people outside the door. That's when it came to me — who could steal the key, and who that person trusted most.”
The legal wife's children were all married off, and the woman who'd shared the master's bed last night was a concubine. Did the concubine have children? Ah — the illegitimate son. And he was left-handed.
Did he happen to know a bailiff, perhaps? Lady Hayeon could find the evidence, and I would find the witness. That was the whole chain of reasoning.
“Young Master Kang, you were aaamazing.”
“Haha. If not for the two of you, I wouldn't have figured any of it out in the first place.”
It wasn't as though I'd performed some superhuman feat of deduction. Lady Hayeon and Lady Jegal gathered the evidence and the constables' investigative records, and Lady Jegal distilled those records in the blink of an eye.
All I did was find the last piece of the puzzle.
“You're the one who found the culprit in the end, though.”
“That's right, Young Master Kang.”
Look at me like that any harder and I'll start blushing.
“Bailiff Kang! We're ready to transport the prisoners!”
“Use the minimum number to move them, and gather up the rest of the constables.”
I barely managed to compose the mouth that praise had pried open, and gave my orders.
“Yes, sir? Is something the matter?”
“We still have one last accomplice to catch, don't we?”
Time to wrap things up.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“So Bailiff Kang has caught the Shadowless Divine Thief!”
“I heard it was a fake!”
“Fake, real — either way, he's a thief, isn't he!”
“So solving the ghost ship case wasn't just luck after all!”
The news that a bailiff had caught a fake Shadowless Divine Thief within a single day of his appointment spread beyond the government office and out among the people.
“Kwahaha! Well, if it isn't Bailiff Kang, the talk of the entire office! Come in, come in, have a seat!”
I visited the office where the Chief Constable presided, on word that the accomplice had been caught.
“I hear you rounded up the entire pack of fake Shadowless Divine Thieves.”
I'd caught the bailiff who'd passed along the paper crane on the day of the crime and bound him with my own rope. As for the interrogation — I'm no expert, so I left that to the professionals.
“That's all your doing! Who'd have thought the crane he collected as evidence would be a stolen good! We grilled that wretch and ended up arresting the whole lot of fakes!”
The bailiff was hardly the first person to sell off a Shadowless Divine Thief paper crane. Since it was a righteous thief's artifact that no ordinary person could even fold, it seemed demand ran high among people other than thieves.
“Using the Shadowless Divine Thief's own paper cranes to slip out of the dragnet. What an absurd notion.”
“This is the biggest haul of thieves in one stroke since I've drawn government pay! The officials are all smiles, so once this Shadowless Divine Thief business is wrapped up, they'll sing your praises to the heavens!”
In the martial world, impersonating another's epithet is a grave crime. At first I'd worried about souring relations with the Thieves' Gate, but since even the thieves themselves approved, that was one weight off my chest.
And in the end, it raised my reputation and cleared the Shadowless Divine Thief's name. Two birds.
“With the fake Shadowless Divine Thief settled for good, I suppose you can devote yourself to the real one now.”
From here on, I'd just move about carelessly and let the odd tidbit slip to my housemate.
“Well… about that… hahaha…”
The Chief Constable laughed darkly, as though he had something he didn't want to say.
“Is something wrong?”
“That bailiff who sold the cranes. He's been saying strange things.”
“Strange things, sir?”
“Claims he only brokered the sales to pay off his debts. At first he sold just a few to collectors. And someone else, he says, was the one who brought him the thieves.”
Words I never expected came flowing out of the Chief Constable's mouth.
“The one who introduced the thieves? What do you mean, sir?”
“I'm not entirely sure myself. Says the gambling den folk made him do it — in exchange for wiping out his gambling debts. Ridiculous excuse, isn't it?”
Wait.
A hammer-blow of shock slammed into the back of my skull.
Why did they try to frame the Shadowless Divine Thief? Why did they want to stain her name?
A fake Shadowless Divine Thief.
A gambling den. Gambling debts.
Only one conclusion surfaced.
The Domun — the Gambler Division — is moving again.