The city I was staying in that day was quite small, so it didn’t take much time for news of the murder to make its way to a traveler like me.
Litta’s dead body had apparently been discovered in an inn.
Just as she’d described the day before, she was dead, and her clothes had been changed.
She lay on the floor with a piece of cloth covering her face, her expression not visible. Her cold body was just lying there limply on the floor of the inn.
“Oh…Litta… How could this happen…?”
The person clinging to her remains must have been one of her traveling companions.
According to them, Litta’s two traveling companions had come to her room for breakfast, and they had discovered her body there.
The two of them had been off doing their own thing the day before, so the last time they’d seen Litta had been two days prior, and then that was it.
“……”
The culprit must have come in normally through the door and then left normally through the door after killing Litta. There was no evidence of forced entry, and the window was closed. The walls of the inn seemed thin, and even from inside the room, I could clearly hear the soldiers questioning the townspeople about Litta’s recent movements.
However, as one might expect, it wasn’t easy for them to find anyone who was acquainted with a traveler.
Ultimately, other than Litta’s traveling companions, I was the only person who had been called to her room for questioning.
No one had heard any noises either.
“There’s no doubt this is the work of the Traveling Killer—”
At a loss, one of the soldiers who had come to see the scene of the crime came over to me. I was the last person to talk to Litta.
The soldier’s expression was very gloomy.
“Lady Witch, I’d like to hear your story in detail, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
On my way over, I had given an initial explanation to a different soldier, but, well, in a situation like this, one often has to tell the same story multiple times.
I agreed and explained it again.
“I just happened to be seated at the same table with her at the café—”
I started at the beginning and told everything in order, almost like I was establishing my own alibi.
“…Hmm, is that so…?” The soldier’s expression was still gloomy. “By the way, about what time was that?”
“…I think it was around lunchtime yesterday.”
No question about it. That’s an accurate memory.
When I gave him that answer, the soldier tilted his head to one side with a stern expression. “…How very strange.”
Then he said—
“She died the day before yesterday.”
“…Huh?”
The soldier said to me in my confusion, “She was killed in this room two nights ago. There’s no way she could have been in a café yesterday afternoon, but—”
Baffled, the soldier walked over to Litta’s corpse. “What on earth is going on here…?” He pulled away the cloth that had been hiding her face and showed her to me.
“Lady Witch, are you certain the person you met was this girl here?”
He revealed a frighteningly pale face.
A pale face, twisted in terror.
I was aghast.
“…Who on earth is that?”
There before me—
—was the face of a complete and total stranger.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Excuse me, miss, I’m so sorry to interrupt you in the middle of your meal, but at the moment we are incredibly crowded, and—”
A waitress bowed politely to a traveler who was eating alone in a restaurant in a certain city.
As she ate, she lent an ear to the waitress and learned that apparently the restaurant was so crowded that they didn’t have enough tables. The only open seat they had was at the traveler’s table, which seated exactly two.
In short, the waitress was asking her about giving the other seat to another customer.
“That’s fine.”
The traveler readily agreed.
The place was feeding her, so how could she object to giving up the other seat to someone else?
A few moments later, another single customer sat down across from her.
“Heya.”
She gave a casual greeting, as if the newcomer was an old acquaintance of hers. When she asked, the girl sitting across from her gave a small, slightly confused bow as she said that she was a newcomer who had just begun traveling recently.
✦ ✦ ✦
