When Jiang Xia saw Inspector Megure, he immediately reverted to the demeanor of a serious detective. Solemnly, he said, "We were just discussing how this might have been a robbery-murder case—the necklace around the victim's neck is gone."
"A necklace?" Inspector Megure froze. He looked at the notebook in his hand, then at the Forensics Department personnel busy at the crime scene. "Was there a necklace at the scene?"
The forensic technician shook his head. "I haven't seen anything like that."
Inspector Megure stroked his chin, feeling that he had grasped an important clue. "What did that ring look like? I'll have the officers search elsewhere."
Jiang Xia raised a hand and gestured. "It looked very ornate. The inside was engraved with the Russian letters for 'Maria,' so it should be easy to identify—it was said to be the ring of Maria, the third daughter of Nicholas II, so it counts as an antique. The photographer had worn it to show off around dusk. Someone probably set their sights on him then."
"I see." Sato Miwako carefully noted down the details and had officers search other areas. Then she closed her notebook and sighed as she looked at the body on the floor. "The killer really was brutal. But..."
Looking at where the victim had been shot, she pondered, "The skin around the wound is blackened by powder burns, and the spatter range isn't large. That means the killer fired from very close range—but if some vicious-looking man had come to kill him, the victim should have been wary and backed away, unless the killer drew his gun so quickly that he had no time to dodge? No, he shouldn't have opened the door at all. In other words, looking at it from the other direction, perhaps the killer was