A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 91

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 91.
The Study was not in its usual state. Neat furnishings and carpet were punctuated by disorder—several books scattered across the floor, a paperweight shattered on the bare patch where the carpet had come away.
But there was no blood.
[!]
The Yellow Exclamation Mark appeared again.
Caroline picked up the magnifying glass from the pen holder on the Study table and examined the carpet.
[Male’s Gem Button]
[Male’s Pocket Watch]
Next to the shattered paperweight lay a small green gem button. Unlike the window that merely read “male,” Caroline recognized it at once.
“A fine jewel from Turkey!”
It belonged to the Baron, a man who fawned over anything beautiful. She remembered it was his sleeve cufflink.
‘And the watch.’
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. The Auctioneer always appeared on stage with a pocket watch dangling from its chain around his neck. The chain was gone now, but the watch itself was unmistakably his.
And when Caroline held the magnifying glass to the carpet nearby, she discovered a faint trace of salt—its edges distinctly white.
‘Ah.’
The facts fell into place.
These two hadn’t met with accident on the Deck. Both had returned from there and made their way to the Study, where they’d come to blows.
‘Items like these wouldn’t fall under ordinary circumstances.’
Two drunk men had quarreled—that much was certain. Both had gone out in high spirits from the intoxication, but drink enough and the smallest slight will distort the temper. They’d struck at each other, and the Baron had seized the Auctioneer’s pocket watch, tearing it from his neck…
‘These two seem unlikely to have been murdered.’
They appeared disconnected from the Arrow and the Napkin both.
That left the Viscount and the circus master. As Caroline narrowed her suspects to those two, she resolved to find one more clue to prove her theory.
Just as she turned to leave the Study, the Testimony Window surfaced in her mind again.
“The Countess was strange today too. Drinks liquor better than any man, doesn’t she? She pinched a couple glasses from someone and couldn’t have passed out on so little.”
“Why was the circus master just standing there without even drinking? The waves were crashing like mad and he was taking the full brunt—we didn’t want to go near him, but he wouldn’t answer a word we said.”
The Baron and the Auctioneer speaking.
Caroline wrote the exchange in her notes. First, the Countess falling asleep was suspicious. She was not a woman who’d be that easily drunk on such little alcohol.
Then…
‘Sleeping Medication.’
Why someone would want her unconscious remained unclear. But it was certain her drink had been spiked with it. Why?
“But it might not have been in the Countess’s drink.”
The Countess drank from others’ glasses whenever someone left their seat first—a punishment of sorts for their presumption. So she might have drunk from someone else’s glass, the one laced with the medication. Who had left first?
‘…The circus master.’
He’d said someone called him away and he’d barely touched his drink before leaving the Cocktail Bar. So he must have lost consciousness somewhere other than there—wherever he’d been summoned.
She needed to find a place bearing traces of someone collapsing weakly. And Caroline knew exactly where she hadn’t been yet.
‘The Engine Room.’
She was heading back down to the Basement.
“Why was the circus master just standing there without even drinking? The waves were crashing like mad and he was taking the full brunt—we didn’t want to go near him, but he wouldn’t answer a word we said.”
But something didn’t sit right.
Aiden had left during the party. Yet when the Baron and Auctioneer went out to the Deck near the end of the evening, they’d seen the circus master standing there perfectly fine. But he’d said he’d been gone since early in the party—so when exactly had he died?
‘Did he even die?’
Caroline frowned at the unresolved question as she descended toward the Basement.
The Basement—once composed of an armory, wine cellar, engine room, and swimming pool—had transformed into what “Will” perceived as a single Engine Room. That was simply how this mind worked.
Caroline surveyed the spacious chamber.
It was crammed with machinery. The ship’s heart, the engine that drove it forward. If her suspicions were correct, the circus master would have received an invitation to this very place. Or perhaps evidence had already been erased from somewhere she’d already visited.
There were no traces of someone collapsing weakly on the floor—though the Deck itself was bare metal, a surface that didn’t retain impressions easily.
‘What clues could I find here?’
Were there any items she could use? She frowned, but nothing came to mind.
For now, her thinking on this case ran thus:
The dead man was the circus master.
And he died either on the Deck, in the Engine Room, or elsewhere. Of course, the place where he’d begun to die was most likely the Engine Room itself—dosed with medication and meant to lose consciousness here.
But how was he killed?
Will might have strangled him, or used the Napkin to suffocate him. Or perhaps…
“An Arrow was used.”
The absence of one made that likely. But where was it fired from? When?
“…I don’t know.”
The gaps in her reasoning left her unable to imagine anything coherent.
‘Still, let me think it through.’
If someone had died in this smooth, all-metal Engine Room, there would surely be blood spattered somewhere. With so many screws and curves, even an exacting Will would struggle to wipe it all away completely.
‘Then let me look.’
Blood traces.
If even one appeared, someone had died in this place; if there was truly nothing, then she had been wrong.
Caroline began observing the machinery with this thought in mind, examining each piece carefully with the magnifying glass she’d quietly brought from the study.
Even as she did so, she harbored no real hope of finding anything significant. Will was intelligent and meticulous. Jane could match him, but Caroline could not. There were bound to be things she overlooked.
‘What?’
That was when it happened.
Caroline spotted something—a brownish stain—beneath one of the machines near the wall.
‘Could it be?’
She wanted to examine it properly, but the machinery’s construction made it difficult to see the back and underside thoroughly. The machine was far too heavy to pull away.
‘What do I do?’
It was then that the mirror in her bag flashed across Caroline’s mind.
The mirror.
She quickly withdrew it from her bag and, inserting its flat surface, examined the space behind and beneath the machinery.
“Ah!”
And she found what she’d been searching for.
Dried blood clung to a spot nearly invisible to the naked eye—a place Will himself could not have reached to wipe clean.
‘The victim died here.’
Then who was he? Caroline found herself caught in yet another confusion. Not the Baron, not the Auctioneer. Not the Countess either. The Viscount had no remarkable story, and at present the circus master seemed most likely, but—
How had he been standing perfectly upright on the deck?
‘Upright?’
Caroline silently mouthed the word to herself.
Could she truly be certain he was upright?
“Why was the circus master just standing there without drinking anything? The waves were crashing like mad, and he was taking it all head-on. We didn’t even want to get close, and he wouldn’t respond to us.”
On the night deck, vicious waves surge relentlessly. The spray stings not just the skin but brings sharp, cutting pain. Yet he had stood there unmoved.
It was impossible in any sober state.
‘He wouldn’t respond to us.’
What if he hadn’t refused to answer? What if he had been unable to answer?
What if he had been standing there dead?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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