He felt for Kaganuma’s pulse and checked his pupils. For the first time, something like an expression appeared on the young man’s face. His eyebrows came together slightly, and he bit his lip. Then he started CPR—but stopped after just a few seconds.
“No. He can’t be… He isn’t dead, is he?” asked Mao. The words sounded like a prayer, as if she were pleading with him.
Ms. Nomura and Ishizuka had also appeared at some point. Both were as pale as death as they stared at the first victim—and at the mysterious fake detective.
“I think he was killed with poison, via injection,” Tosu said in a flat voice, without answering Mao directly. Picking up an object lying beside the corpse, he held it out wrapped in a white handkerchief, probably to keep from getting fingerprints on it. It was a syringe the size of his little finger.
“I see. There is an injection mark on his neck,” Shiroshi said from beside him.
“Huh?!” Hastily looking at the corpse, Seiji saw a tiny red dot about a millimeter in diameter. Oh, I see. So that’s from a needle?
“The symptoms were convulsions and difficulty breathing. On closer inspection, there is some dark brown liquid left in the syringe… I believe it may be concentrated liquid nicotine.”
“Huh? Nicotine? Like the stuff in cigarettes?”
“Yes, that’s right. However, when injected intravenously, it’s far more toxic than when it is absorbed through your lungs. Just three or four drops from a needle is a lethal dose. Less than a minute after it enters the body, convulsions begin, breathing becomes impossible, and the victim perishes.”
“L-less than a minute?”
A chill ran through Seiji. In that case, even if Kaganuma had felt a pain in his neck, he might not have had time to realize what had happened to him.
When Seiji looked around, he saw the man’s folding knife lying near his body. It seemed to have fallen out of his pocket while he was thrashing around in agony. The blade hadn’t even been opened.
“…Ugh, ghk—”
Just then, there was a gurgling, spattering noise. When Seiji glanced over, startled, Mao had crouched and was losing her dinner.
Who could blame her? She could easily have been the one who’d died.
“You should go rest in your room,” said Tosu. “…Ms. Nomura, would you walk her back there?”
“Huh? Me…? Y-yes!”
When she was abruptly singled out, Ms. Nomura’s voice cracked, but she timidly ran up to Mao and helped her out of the room.
Oh, good. It looks like she’ll be okay.
But Seiji’s relief didn’t last long.
“This was probably part of the trick,” Shiroshi said from behind the upright piano.
When Seiji ran over and peeked inside, he saw a box behind the soundboard. Its metal housing made it look like some sort of device, but…
“…It’s a smoke machine,” Tosu said.
Huh? What was that?
“They’re used during disaster trainings and stage shows. They vaporize a special chemical to create ‘smoke.’ Unlike the real stuff, it’s harmless, and heat detectors won’t respond to it.”
So that was why the sprinklers hadn’t come on, huh?
They also found something that looked like a remote control lying carelessly on the floor. It had an on/off switch and was small enough to fit in someone’s palm.
Shiroshi clapped his hands once lightly. “So the situation was as follows: The perpetrator of this incident—most likely the executioner—waited for Kaganuma to return to the lounge car, then activated the smoke machine using a remote control concealed on their person. Then, under cover of the smoke, they crept up behind Kaganuma and jabbed him in the back of the neck with the syringe. After that, they no longer needed the smoke screen, so they turned off the machine and discarded the remote.”
Yes, that sounded right. And yet…
“Um, but since the room was all white with smoke, the killer couldn’t have seen anything either, right?” Seiji asked. “How did they know where Kaganuma was?”
On top of that, they’d accurately stuck his neck with a syringe. Was the killer a skilled assassin?
“The fire extinguisher,” Shiroshi said, as simply as ever.
Huh? What does he mean?
“Look at the location of the corpse. See how he collapsed just in front of the fire extinguisher? In addition, there are signs that he tried to unchain it from its base. When the killer struck, I think Kaganuma may have been trying to remove the fire extinguisher from its stand.”
“Oh.”
Seiji remembered his own struggle with the one in the library. If this one was set up the same way, Kaganuma had probably spent quite a while grappling with the chain.
“Since smoke machines are designed to produce smoke by heating a chemical in a vaporizer, the smoke they give off is hot air, and it rises. In other words, the closer one is to the floor, the easier it is to see. Once crouched on the floor, Kaganuma would have been a fairly easy target.”
“Now that you mention it…,” Tosu murmured. He’d narrowed his eyes, as if he was remembering something. “When the smoke got thick, I’m pretty sure somebody screamed ‘Fire extinguisher! ’ The voice was oddly shrill. Who do you suppose that was?”Î
“I-it can’t be—,” stuttered Seiji.
“Yes, I believe that was the killer,” Shiroshi declared. “After ensuring that one of the passengers would search for a fire extinguisher, they lay in wait for them, syringe in hand. Kaganuma happened to be the closest, and he became their victim.”
Seiji felt cold sweat trickle down his back.
“Somebody get the fire extinguisher! Hurry!”
He’d reacted to that voice as well. If he’d been looking for the fire extinguisher in the lounge instead of in the library, would he have been the one to die?
Shiroshi shook his head slightly. “It’s doubtful. Confessing your sin should have excluded you from the executioner’s list of targets. In fact, it’s possible that they activated the smoke machine while we were absent to ensure they would not accidentally kill you.”
“I—I see.” Just as Seiji was nodding…
“I dunno about that,” Tosu objected. “It’s possible you two are the killers, and this was all a setup. The remote would have worked from outside the lounge. Actually, if we’re talking location, you two were closest to Kaganuma.”
No, come on, no way. Seiji was about to deny it, when—
“…My.” Shiroshi blinked, as if he’d just noticed something. “Ishizuka isn’t here.”
“Huh? But he was right over there a minute ago—”
Just then, there was a sharp crash, followed by a scream. Both noises had come from beyond the connecting door. The dining car.
Don’t tell me… The three of them exchanged looks, then scrambled through the door.
“M-Mr. Ishizuka?”
There he was, looking just like a murderer caught in the act.
The man stood tall and menacing in the center of an enormous puddle of blood. He was holding a wine bottle by the neck like a club and bringing it down violently.
A smell hung in the air, chokingly thick. What was—?
“It’s red wine.”
“Oh, you’re right.”