Chapter 47

47. "" (Part 1)

Liverpool, England.

7:23 p.m.

The cruise ship Noah's first port of call was the English city of Liverpool.

If there hadn't been a fire aboard the Noah, all the passengers disembarking now would have been more relaxed. Instead, the fire had forced them off the ship. Much of their enthusiasm for exploring Liverpool, their first stop, had vanished as well. However, most gradually lost patience during the lengthy fire safety inspection and ultimately chose to ease themselves into Liverpool's rich and vibrant nightlife.

It was a passably happy ending.

I sat in a chocolate shop near the cruise ship. From there, I could watch the crew's movements on board at close range. Mrs. Hudson sat across from me, holding a cup of hot tea as she joined me in admiring the bay at night. Sherlock and Watson had gone with the Liverpool police to give their statements.

They had been gone for nearly two hours.

"How dreadful. So Maren Flynn did something like that too. She isn't even twenty-five yet, is she?" Mrs. Hudson lamented beside me. "That fortune-teller must have led her astray."

If Mr. Watson were telling this story, it would surely be dramatic and full of grand twists and turns. If I told it, though, I was afraid it would read more like a straightforward account of events.

That afternoon, I had gone to the exhibition hall at Sherlock's request to take part in the fortune-teller Valentine Butler's challenge.

In fact, I had gone with Sherlock to examine the body kept in the freezer.

The person had been dead for over a month, with a pale face and vacant eyes that sent a chill down one's spine. More striking still, the blackened marks on the skin made it clear that the case was closely connected to poisoning. Most puzzling of all, however, was the back, where a remarkably unusual mark had been deeply etched into the skin, like an ancient totem or a mysterious amulet, seemingly concealing an unimaginable story. Yet these marks had appeared when the body was already stiff, adding further mystery to the entire case.

Sherlock, who had gone with me to examine the body, had worn a composed expression, showing that everything was under his control.

I only had to keep following his plan.

So I went straight to the exhibition hall.

Our original goal had been to win Maren Flynn's trust, so we needed to undermine Valentine Butler. However, during our time in the exhibition hall, my words provoked the fortune-teller into taking a desperate gamble. He simply set fire to the entire ship, intending to destroy the corpse and wipe out the evidence. There was no need to go into detail about the process.

All that mattered was that this established he was also a criminal suspect.

After he and Maren Flynn set the cabin on fire, they planned to leave in a lifeboat themselves. Unfortunately for them, Sherlock, who had long since taken control of the supplies across the entire cruise ship, was watching their movements. In the end, they failed even when they tried to escape by jumping into the water.

The two had no choice but to surrender.

The case had come to a close for the time being.

I wasn't very interested in the truth behind the whole story. For the moment, I was only passing the evening absentmindedly, looking forward to the next manga update.

There were still a few things I needed to confirm.

To be honest, I felt as though I had been peeking at someone else's deepest secrets on the manga forum.

I was about to respond to Mrs. Hudson when Lucian and Frida suddenly sat down at my table, acting so naturally that one might have thought we were old friends who knew each other very well. I couldn't help feeling surprised, and a few doubts arose in my mind.

Didn't they have any other friends to spend time with?

But when I saw that Lucian was carrying a large platter of treats for dipping in hot chocolate, I tacitly accepted that they could sit beside us.

Lucian first deftly placed a ceramic pot of hot chocolate, heated by a candle, in the middle of the four of us, then set out fresh fruit: raspberries, blackberries, imported kiwifruit, bananas, and strawberries. There were also pieces of hazelnut chocolate cake, marshmallows, gummies, and a kind of crispy Spanish fried dough called churros.

Before I could say anything, Lucian handed me a skewer to eat with, and everyone else had already begun enjoying this warm dessert for a snowy winter's day.

"You don't know this, but Maren Flynn ran an acting studio herself and was always recruiting people. What no one expected was that she was recruiting them to impersonate the wealthy businessman Talbot. It wasn't just this time. Starting a month ago, she had already found four fake husbands and transferred Mr. Talbot's money into her own name in installments."

Lucian told the story vividly. "At first, we thought the old husband and young wife were living apart because their relationship had broken down and they weren't getting along. But actually, after they married, Maren Flynn alone was unwilling to fulfill her duties as a wife. Mr. Talbot was still willing to accommodate her, and since he was busy with work, he let his young wife travel wherever she liked. Maren Flynn met Valentine Butler along the way and fell under his influence..."

When he finished, I found myself puzzled too.

Why didn't Maren Flynn look for a younger, more handsome model? Why did she choose that fortune-teller, who was beginning to put on weight?

Was this true love?

Mrs. Hudson, sitting opposite me, spoke first, her voice full of regret. "Why would she make such a poor choice?"

Her words made her distaste for the fortune-teller abundantly clear.

Frida couldn't understand it either, but she didn't dismiss him quite so thoroughly. "For some people, that Butler might have some charm, I suppose?"

Mrs. Hudson sighed. "It's a vast world. There really is no end to its wonders."

Lucian, who hadn't finished, couldn't help laughing at the two women's remarks. "That's not it. Actually, Butler ran a business in a legal gray area."

He paused, glanced around, and said mysteriously, "Curses."

"Once a client approached Butler, they had to provide basic personal information about the target of the curse, and then Butler would perform the ritual. Generally, they would get a response in about a month. Supposedly, every request was answered, and the curses were extremely effective. That gradually expanded Butler's business. Maren Flynn was one of his clients."

"In other words, Maren Flynn went to Butler to curse her husband. After her husband died as planned, she discovered she couldn't inherit most of the estate she wanted, so she found people to start impersonating her husband and sign documents transferring assets in front of a lawyer?" Mrs. Hudson herself seemed to enjoy this kind of gossip, and her eyes lit up. "How could she be so bold? Isn't that murder for money?"

Seeing that none of them were paying attention to me, I began examining the long, thin churros that looked like biscuit sticks.

They were also called churros, and they were quite different from Chinese youtiao.

Still, as I dipped one in the rich chocolate sauce and quietly chewed it in the corner, I found it had a distinctive flavor. The outside was as crisp as a biscuit, while the inside was softer. One or two had been fried too long, though, and were hard inside as well, which was rough on the jaw.

"That curse business of his was definitely murder for hire," Lucian said. "Now this one case has uncovered an entire gray industry. Most of the people who believed in him were afraid he'd curse them. Now that it's been proven fake, I'm afraid every last one of them will turn on him."

I listened to them tell the story. Seeing that I had been eating dry things the whole time, Frida pushed the juicy fruit toward me as well.

I nodded my thanks and slowly ate the fruit.

In a detective drama, this case really could have filled a forty-five-minute episode. By the time Sherlock had probed out Valentine Butler's existence, the whole story could basically have been wrapped up.

I thought that when Maren had casually said the name "Valentine" while chatting with me, I wasn't the only one who had noticed the unusual relationship between them. Sherlock had noticed too.

The situation here had become much clearer as well.

But Sherlock and Professor Moriarty happened to be caught up in it.

The case had clearly become intricate and complicated, filled with all kinds of intertwined motives and interests. In the contest between Sherlock and Professor Moriarty, the case was no longer merely a standalone puzzle, but a piece on their chessboard.

In this process, Moriarty actually had a way to break the deadlock: he only had to lure the other party into committing a second crime.

Sherlock had kept the existing case under public scrutiny, forcing Professor Moriarty to bring it back to light so he could seize the chance to find clues to the Lord of Crime. But there was actually another way: make the culprit commit a second crime of their own accord. Then anyone could investigate this new case again, which could also bring the old one to light.

At that moment, Maren Flynn knew the body was on this ship, but didn't know how to find it. To protect herself as effectively as possible, the simplest method was to set fire to the entire ship.

Among maritime disasters, fire was also one of the causes of major accidents. All it took was one cabin catching fire. Given how enclosed and airtight a ship's superstructure was, a fire could rapidly sweep through the entire vessel depending on conditions, threatening the whole ship and its crew.

In other words, for Professor Moriarty, the best way to break the deadlock was to have Maren Flynn start a fire and get her arrested for arson.

Doing so would protect his identity for at least one more round.

The danger, however, was that once Professor Moriarty did this, he would turn the situation directly into an ethical dilemma like the trolley problem. Whatever choice Professor Moriarty made, Sherlock would be able to predict the Lord of Crime's future patterns of behavior.

Second, if he wanted to completely distance himself from the affair, he couldn't guarantee the safety of the entire ship.

Simply put, doing this would only keep pushing Professor Moriarty away from humanity and toward purely rational self-interest.

From my perspective, I didn't want that situation to come about.

This wasn't to protect Professor Moriarty's identity.

In fact, that identity would be discovered sooner or later. So what if it were discovered now?

If I discussed the issue purely in terms of the outcome, that really was what I thought. Professor Moriarty and the others, however, wouldn't think that way. They were determined to keep their identities hidden. This was something I couldn't discuss with Professor Moriarty.

So my views on the matter were—

First, don't put human nature to the test. Human nature couldn't withstand such tests. I believed everyone wanted to be a good person at the outset, so they shouldn't be forced into a situation where they had no choice. I didn't want Professor Moriarty to become an "artistic figure" disqualified from being human prematurely.

Second, don't harm innocent people. None of the passengers had boarded the ship wanting to suffer. Why should they become "sacrifices" in the contest between Sherlock and Professor Moriarty?

On the whole, I was more inclined to protect innocent people than merely to protect Professor Moriarty's identity. Although Professor Moriarty's identity would be revealed sooner or later, the key now was how to handle the situation. I hoped no more innocent people would be dragged into it, but as for Professor Moriarty, he had to hold fast to his identity, and that was something I couldn't interfere with.

So I analyzed the possibilities with Lucian beforehand and had him prepare fire precautions. At the same time, I needed to force the culprits to act and keep them in an unsettled state. The more eager they were to act, the more easily they would make mistakes and leave a trail, allowing others to get a handle on the situation.

But doing that would indirectly ruin Sherlock's plan.

In fact, until I escaped the fire that afternoon, I hadn't seen Sherlock in person and didn't know his current state of mind or what he was thinking. I couldn't be sure whether he had already seen through more, and that made me very uneasy.

I had also begun to doubt whether Professor Moriarty had really run into trouble in the fire, or whether he was merely putting on an act and hurting himself for sympathy. I worried that he might be deliberately playing the victim to counter other people's suspicions of him, especially Sherlock's.

Yet when the fire broke out, I still went to look for him without hesitation.

I was afraid he really was acting out such a pointless charade. Even if he got hurt in the process, Sherlock would still suspect him. So the question was, was the injury worth it? Professor Moriarty already had little time for academic research, and now an injury would delay his work on Asteroid Mechanics. That was a terrible bargain.

If he really had nothing to do with the matter and I hadn't gone to save him, he might actually have been hurt, and I couldn't have borne the guilt. At the very least, I needed to call and wake him, reminding him to evacuate safely.

If he really was involved, I was also willing to testify that he hadn't been injured, so he could devote himself to academic research without worry.

"If he really were the Lord of Crime, he wouldn't have been trapped when the ship caught fire."

I had even thought up the line for him.

To tell the truth, deep down, I still suspected that Professor Moriarty had carefully orchestrated the fire.

I thought someone had told Valentine and Maren how to engineer a man-made maritime disaster, which was why they had considered starting a fire. Because psychological suggestion had played a part, they might still believe the idea was their own rather than something influenced by someone else.

And the person manipulating things behind the scenes was very likely Valentine's secretary. Although the secretary hadn't made much of an impression on me, I clearly remembered seeing him beside Valentine yesterday. Yet today, during the inspiration challenge, he hadn't been present to oversee things or help host.

Wasn't that suspicious?

As I pondered the question, my phone gave a ding, alerting me to a new manga update.

I apologized to the three people chatting beside me, left the Chocolate House on the pretext of taking a call, and found a quiet bench. Then I hurriedly opened the manga and flipped impatiently to the second-to-last page.

In the panel, the young secretary in his suit and dress shoes transformed amid the great crowd disembarking to seek shelter, becoming an ordinary, unremarkable black-haired young man once more. Finally, he stood quietly in a secluded corner, watching Valentine Butler and Maren Flynn after Sherlock and Watson captured them. With one hand, he sent a text message on his phone: "Mission accomplished."

The scrolling comments were full of exclamations.

[So it was Fred Pollock, the master of disguise on Moriarty's team! He actually infiltrated them in disguise and got that fortune-teller and Maren to start the fire.]

[The young professor was playing on a whole other level this time!!]

[That's our young professor. 666]

[The two sides going at each other is so awesome!]

[Looks like the young professor's identity can stay hidden a little longer this time.]

I had just breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the scrolling comments weren't finished.

[Hidden? Lanny Hamish already knows the young professor is the Lord of Crime.]

[Think about it. In the case in the second chapter, when Lanny suddenly hugged his computer and said he believed in the professor, shouldn't we have suspected he'd already been guessing what the young professor was really up to?]

The contents of those comments sent a chill down my spine.

I began to wonder whether I had accidentally revealed my suspicions about Professor Moriarty. Had my expression or my words given something away?

I was filled with unease.

I hurriedly went back to the scene they had just mentioned. It was the moment after I had led Professor Moriarty through our difficult escape.

He had asked me what I wanted to do if today were my last day.

The scrolling comments gave me an ominous feeling.

Could what I said then have made him think I suspected his identity? Even the commenters thought so, after all.

Did Professor Moriarty think so too?

I began to feel anxious.

I seriously started recalling what had happened.

At the time, I had thought that if today really were my last day, I would definitely have regrets. Even though I had few material desires, no lofty aspirations in life, and no friends around me, and was merely a good-for-nothing who worked hard at exams, there wouldn't be much value in my death. Yet even someone like me happened to have a regret.

And Professor Moriarty happened to be right in front of me.

So I had earnestly wanted to ask, but Professor Moriarty seemed affected by my emotions and grew somber too. I immediately felt that what I had wanted to ask was highly inappropriate.

I watched the scrolling comments drift past one by one.

[The young professor must be wondering whether Lanny knows he's the Lord of Crime.]

[Why exactly was Lanny hesitating?]

[This is super important, right?! I want to know!!!]

My inner conflict resurfaced with those comments.

In truth, Professor Moriarty's question had stirred thoughts I shouldn't have had.

In fact, because of the case during the first month of the semester, the university professors had all been invited for tea and questioned by the authorities. Through a curious turn of events, Professor Moriarty had become the professor for three of my major courses. That meant Professor Moriarty should know my final academic results for all three.

Christmas break came after the final exams, and I had heard from others that all the results wouldn't be announced until a week before classes resumed. In other words, I had to wait at least two weeks. I had already prepared myself to wait patiently for my results. Then Professor Moriarty asked what I wanted to do if I were going to die that day.

I felt that if I were going to die that day, I wanted to know my final exam scores first.

I was really curious.

I had worked hard for three whole months. During those three months, aside from work, all I did was study. I spent every day in the library, sacrificing even the chance to take part in Sherlock's famous case, A Study in Scarlet, so I could memorize material and practice problems. I had worked so hard to keep my place at the top of the year.

So I really wanted to know what scores I had gotten.

I remembered accidentally making a spelling mistake somewhere on an exam, and I didn't know how many points would be deducted.

Thinking about it, if I really were going to die, shouldn't I have that wish fulfilled first?

But I felt that if I asked such trivial questions, setting aside the fact that Professor Moriarty definitely wouldn't tell me my results because revealing them early was against the rules, the atmosphere also felt wrong when I was about to blurt them out.

We had just been through a matter of life and death. It seemed I couldn't ask about my results. It would make me look small-minded and expose my true nature as a gloomy creature.

So I thought, Why not ask about Asteroid Mechanics?

But what could I ask about it?

If I were going to die today, that book looked as though it would take at least a year to finish. It was like Leonardo da Vinci planning to paint The Last Supper for me to see before I died, or Beethoven planning to compose the Symphony of Fate for me to hear. Those works were indeed great, but I couldn't wait that long...

Was I supposed to tell Professor Moriarty that if I unfortunately died, he should remember to burn a copy of Asteroid Mechanics for me on this day next year? If I got the chance in the underworld, I would be sure to read it carefully.

Would he think I was joking?

I also felt that saying that definitely wouldn't be right.

However I looked at it, both questions were too hard to bring up, so I could only give up. "...It's nothing. Never mind. You should just forget it."

I looked at the professor's silent expression in the manga. He didn't reveal any of his thoughts.

I wasn't sure whether that was fortunate or unfortunate.

I prayed silently—hopefully he wouldn't read too much into it.

I decided to read the manga again from the beginning.

However, when I turned to the first page, the main title hit me like a blow to the head, and my vision went dark for an instant.

It read, "Noah Incident (Part 1)."

What on earth did that mean?

Was there a Part 2 to the Noah Incident?!

I felt as though my heart had been cut open with a knife.

I longed to return to the 221B Apartment and spend this cold winter alone.