“Is the son of a concubine the criminal?”
When I pointed out the suspect, the son of a concubine, Um, was called forward with an expression of grievance.
“What do you mean! Am I the criminal? Do you have any evidence?”
Huh? That’s why I’ve been running around all day.
Don’t you know? When criminals are first pointed out as suspects, they always deliver the classic line; “Do you have any evidence?”
“Evidence? I have more than enough.”
“What? What did you say?”
I scoffed and took out the safe lock from my belongings, the very one from the crime scene.
There was a significant secret hidden within this lock, discovered by Im Ha-yeon.
“Looks like there are signs of tampering to hide the truth, but maybe due to the unexpected situation, it was rushed and the inside remains intact. This lock was opened with a key.”
“You opened it with the safe key?”
One of the family members, realizing the implication of my words, muttered in shock.
“There are only two people who manage the key to the mansion’s safe room—the victim, the homeowner, and the legal wife. I’ve heard that both always carry it on them.”
“Well then, there’s an even more perfect suspect than me! Everyone knows! The lady has a motive!”
The son of a concubine forgot his manners and pointed a finger at the legal wife.
“Yeah, and didn’t you say their relationship soured because she worked too hard at night?!”
“I’ve heard that recently, without any consultation, she brought in another concubine who they fought over?”
“Look at that! Did you hear that?”
Um straightened his shoulders as if he was in a dramatic reversal.
“Yes, yes! Are you suspecting me?”
In contrast, the suddenly accused legal wife turned red and protested against the family members, feeling wronged.
That’s true. In fact, the wife was also on the suspect list investigated by the constables. It’s true that in terms of motives, she ranks higher than the son of a concubine.
However.
“The lady is not the criminal.”
“No? How so?”
“This incident occurred during a theft. The lady, who had equal authority in managing the assets by possessing the safe key, has no reason to commit murder during a theft.”
She might have had a motive for murder, but it was unrelated to this case.
“Then why do you suspect me?!”
The son of a concubine seemed sore about his masterful reversal plot failing, scowling at me.
“If you were going to scheme, you should have done it perfectly.”
I mocked him sarcastically.
“What?”
“The Shadowless Thief’s origami crane. Amidst all the lies, the only real truth, the origami crane indicates you are the criminal.”
“If the origami crane is real, then it must have been the Shadowless Thief’s doing!”
I already explained why it wasn’t me! Are you perhaps the type that finds it troublesome to read the explanation pages, only checking who the real culprit is at the end?
I glared at the son of a concubine with a cold expression.
“I happen to have a friend doing work as a constable in the government office. One of the constables who could tamper with evidence from the Shadowless Thief.”
Where could the origami crane have come from?
It was easy to reach a conclusion. If it wasn’t me, the only place to acquire the Shadowless Thief’s origami crane would be the government office investigating the Shadowless Thief case.
As I asked around the constables, it wasn’t difficult to find one that matched the description.
“Wh-How do you know?! Ah, no! I do have a friend! But what evidence does that mean? Anyone can know a constable in the mansion!”
That’s true. There might be other ways to access the evidence, but hey.
“It’s the Left Hand Sword.”
“What?”
“It’s the sword of the man who killed the homeowner. He held it with his left hand.”
I have quite a few reasons to point you out as the criminal.
“How, how do you know that?”
“You left a lot of evidence yourself, didn’t you? It couldn’t have been difficult for the homeowner, stabbed multiple times and unable to open the steel door, not to recognize that, right? Um, show me your left hand.”
“Ugh!”
Um tried to hide his bandaged left hand behind his back, but that backfired.
“Your left hand is injured!”
“Blood is oozing out!”
Behind him were the people of the mansion.
“When someone who hasn’t handled a knife stabs a person, injuries like that tend to happen.”
Not knowing how much force to use when stabbing, sometimes a hand that slips can end up at the blade’s edge.
It’s knowledge familiar to those who enjoy detective stories, like how cyanide has an almond smell.
“I just happened to get injured yesterday! And even if I were left-handed! As a son of a concubine, how could I possibly get the key to the safe room?!”
“The source of the key was left behind at the crime scene.”
The biggest decisive clue that pointed you as the criminal was right there.
“What?!”
The criminal’s eyes widened, unable to grow any larger.
Now, time for the final blow.
I used the Small Wheel Mental Image Technique. Sensing all eyes on me, I began the final reenactment to explain why the son of a concubine was the criminal.
“The criminal successfully killed the victim but became very flustered because it was an accidental murder! The countless scuff marks in front of the victim at the crime scene are the evidence! However, the direction of those footprints shows something very strange!”
“Direction?”
“The toes of the footprints bizarrely did not point towards either the deceased victim or the safe.”
The footprints were oddly pointing in only surprising directions.
“Stop!”
The suspect yelled at me, his face pale.
“So you’ve realized. The criminal was lingering, looking towards the door. It was a steel door that had been closed moments ago, as if talking to someone who was there.”
Last night, there were not only the murderer and victim present at the crime scene.
There was an observer standing by the door, witnessing the man’s crime.
“Enough!”
“There was someone there. An accomplice who could stealthily steal the keys from the victim sleeping next to them and who closed the steel door when the homeowner tried to flee.”
“No, no way…”
I slowly walked toward where everyone was looking at me with horror.
Last night, the homeowner had been engaging in relations with a woman and was said to have met the criminal in the safe room before his death.
That meant the person who handed over the key last night was…
“Isn’t that right, Lady Concubine?”
The victim’s concubine, the observer who had watched the entire incident.
“….”
The lady’s eyebrows trembled as she looked down, avoiding eye contact.
“Mother! Please say nothing!”
The lady concubine, having her son’s plea echoed in silence, suddenly shut her eyes.
If she wouldn’t respond, then I had a method.
“Constables! Search the concubine’s room right now!”
I ordered the constables for the final conclusion.
“Bloody shoes and missing jewelry have been found!”
“How, how could this be?! It’s a frame-up! A frame-up, I say!”
The frame-up was what you were trying to pin on Im Ha-yeon.
I had indeed asked Im Ha-yeon to find evidence that you guys were the culprits. Thanks to that, I was convinced.
Upon hearing the constable’s words, the lady opened her tightly shut eyes, as if steeling herself for some resolution, and looked at me.
“Enough. I didn’t solve the ghost ship case for no reason.”
“Mother! Ugh! Because of you!!! You barbarian!”
The fury of the murderer dripped with malicious intent, making my spine tingle.
“Ahhh!”
“Be careful!”
As I turned around, a bloody dagger came flying close to me. An at-first neglected weapon by the suspect.
“You’re just a beast that defies heaven and knows nothing of morality, talking about barbarians.”
I must have looked ridiculous. A man too comfortable in life to be worried about cutting himself on a child’s blade.
I grasped the dagger with my right hand. The criminal flustered; it would be the first and last time I wouldn’t bleed from a knife.
With my left hand spanning my inner strength, I grabbed the collar and slammed him to the ground.
“Guh!”
“Kang Ho-pil!”
“Bind the criminals and prepare for transportation.”
The case is over. You scumbag.
———————
“Y-You! How could you do this! Your father raised you like his own!”
The legal wife fumed and shouted at the criminal son.
“Ha! Is that the man who treated me as a hostage and treated my mother like a cheap courtesan?”
“Your father may have acted strangely at night, but he never treated your mother as a courtesan!”
“Look at my mother’s increasing wounds; how can you say that?!”
“…….It’s all my fault. I’m a foolish mother, hoping my son would live a new life. Please, just with my life…”
“Mother!”
Perhaps pretending to be a caring mother, but she likely had a motive for murder related to the lady concubine.
The original plan would have been to only pass the key to her son, but when it came to it, she ended up closing the steel door.
Normally, she would have tried to stop the situation or avoid the worst.
As the situation started wrapping up, I approached Im Ha-yeon and Miss Zhuge who were in a corner.
“You connected the dots really well with just the footprint.”
“When I looked up at the footprints, I saw the faces of two people outside the door. That’s when I realized—the person who could steal the key and the one they trusted most.”
The legal wife’s children were all married off, and the woman who slept with the homeowner last night was a concubine. Does the concubine have children? It seems the son of a concubine is left-handed.
Did she have any connections to the constable? Ha-yeon was looking for evidence, and I was looking for a witness; it was a series of deductive reasoning.
“Wow, Master Kang, you are amazing!”
“Haha. I wouldn’t have figured it out without both of you.”
I didn’t make some superhuman deduction. Ha-yeon and Miss Zhuge helped me find evidence the constables had already investigated and scrapped the information.
All I did was find the last piece of the puzzle.
“In the end, you caught the criminal yourself.”
“Exactly. Master Kang!”
It’s embarrassing to be looked at like that.
“Master Ho-pil! We will transport the criminals!”
“Transport the criminals with minimal personnel and gather the surrounding constables.”
I barely managed to calm my mouth from widening in praise and commanded the constables.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Aren’t we going to catch the last accomplice?”
It’s time to wrap this up.
—–
“Kang Ho-pil caught the Shadowless Thief!”
“They say it was a fake Shadowless Thief!”
“It’s all the same. Isn’t he just a thief!”
“Looks like solving the ghost ship incident wasn’t just luck!”
The news of catching a fake Shadowless Thief spread from the government office and began circulating among the people after just one day since Ho-pil took office.
“Haha! Look who it is! It’s none other than Kang Ho-pil, the one shaking things up at the government office! Come, sit!”
Hearing that news, I visited the government office where the Head of the Right Guards was.
“I heard you wiped out the fake Shadowless Thief.”
I personally tied up the person who handed over the origami crane on the case day. I left the interrogation to the experts, who were more than capable.
“It’s all thanks to you! I never thought you’d sell the origami crane collected as evidence! After interrogating him, we caught the fake Shadowless Thief!”
There were quite a few people who sold the origami crane; they probably weren’t easy to fold either, given their identity as righteous thieves.
“To use the Shadowless Thief’s origami crane as a means of evading capture; the absurdity of it!”
“It’s been a long time since I caught so many thieves at once! The officials are all smiles, so when the Shadowless Thief case is wrapped up, they’ll greatly commend your efforts!”
In the Martial Arts World, impersonating someone else’s alias is a serious offense. Initially, I worried it might complicate things with the guild, but since thieves are the same, I could breathe easy.
In the end, my fame increased, and I cleared the Shadowless Thief’s name.
“Now that the fake Shadowless Thief is completely dealt with, I can focus on the real Shadowless Thief.”
From now on, I’ll move casually and sprinkle information to my cohabitant.
“That’s…… Hahaha…”
The Head of the Right Guards seemed to have something to say at my remark and smiled bitterly.
“What’s wrong?”
“About the constable who sold the origami crane. He had something strange to say.”
“Something strange?”
“He claims he only acted as a middleman to repay debts. At first, he only sold it to collectors a little bit. He says a different person introduced the thief.”
A completely unexpected story flowed from the Head of the Right Guards.
“Introducer? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know either. Apparently, the person from the gambling house forced him to do that in exchange for forgiving his gambling debts. Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it?”
Wait.
A sudden shock hit me like a hammer, striking the back of my neck.
Why did they try to frame the Shadowless Thief? What did they gain by putting the blame on the Shadowless Thief?
The fake Shadowless Thief, the gambling house, and the gambling debt.
There’s only one thought emerging.
‘The guild is moving again.’
