13. Find That Culprit! But First Let’s Do Some Thinking

Without my knowledge, my Viola Eye necklace had been switched out for a fake. When on earth did that have the chance to happen?!

“Why don’t we all calm down and focus on getting the facts straight? Stellaria, make us some tea.”

“Yes, Master.”

I see—the idea is to drink some tea and approach this calmly! I’m definitely the one freaking out the most here, so this is him doing his best to calm me down. I appreciate the thought.

Drinking the tea Stellaria had brewed both calmed me down a bit and filled me with renewed morale.

All right—it’s time to get the real thing back!

“For a start...there’s the question of whether this was the genuine article to begin with,” Mr. Fisalis murmured.

“What if I already had a fake back in the Rohze manor, you mean?”

“Exactly. There’s always the possibility that it had been swapped out for the counterfeit before we even got here.”

Ah, so we’re tracing things back to the very beginning!

Hmm, I wonder... I never did go out of my way to check if it was the real deal.

I groaned and racked my brains, trying to think back to when I’d packed my stuff back in the mansion...but I couldn’t remember at all!

That was where Stellaria replied, “I remember seeing the seal.”

“Elaborate.”

“Yes, sir. I polished the necklace before putting it away in its box and bringing it here with us. I can confirm that it had the mark of a Viola Eye at that time.”

Come to think of it, Stellaria had put my jewelry away only after meticulously polishing each and every accessory. That must have been when she noticed the seal.

That’s our Stellaria! Way more reliable than a certain good-for-nothing duchess I could name.

“I see. Then that means we still had the real item when we got here.”

“Correct.”

That ruled out theory number one.

* * *

“Next up...let’s think about what happened today. Who got the sapphires out for you?” Mr. Fisalis asked, taking a pen and notepad from the desk and scribbling something down as he did.

“I did.” Stellaria was yet again the one to answer. “I removed the jewelry box from the coffer in the wardrobe when I was getting out the madam’s dress.”

Though nobody was officially in charge of getting my dresses or jewelry ready, typically either Stellaria or Mimosa took on the task of picking out my gown and coordinating my accessories to match.

“So Stellaria brought out the jewelry, then. Did you notice anything off at the time?”

“Nothing of note, no. The box was the same one we received from the jeweler.” She pointed to the case in which we had stored the fake for the time being.

The box—the same one the necklace had originally arrived in—was padded with sleek crimson velvet on the outside, while the inside had a soft, silky lining; it wouldn’t be a stretch to call it a luxury item even while empty. The jeweler’s seal was stamped on the inside of the lid, and his creations always came in a case just like this one.

“Did you check what was inside?”

“I didn’t, no. I’d already polished the jewelry before we left the mansion, after all.”

“I see.”

Turning that over in his mind, Mr. Fisalis made yet another note.

“Did anyone touch the jewel after that?”

“The next to handle it would be me, I’m fairly certain,” Drosera volunteered. “I took it out of the box to put it on Madam Fisalis. I believe you were watching at the time.”

“Oh, that’s true,” my husband replied, thinking back to earlier that evening.

Stellaria had had her hands full, so Drosera had been the one to help put on my jewelry today.

“Did you inspect the necklace beforehand, Drosera?”

“I’m afraid I did not. I got a good look at the clasp when I was closing it...but I didn’t check for the seal,” she answered somewhat cautiously—perhaps because she was doing her best to recall the circumstances.

“Few would, I suppose. Why go out of your way to scrutinize the seal each and every time you take it out?”

“Exactly,” I agreed with a nod. We’d never dreamed that my necklace might get swapped out for a counterfeit one day. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that they didn’t think to check.

Mr. Fisalis put his pen down with a huge sigh. “In short, nobody can confirm whether we had the real or the fake back in this room.”

“That’s what it comes down to, yeah. But I know our maids didn’t switch it out for a fake! Somebody else has to be responsible for this!” I emphatically declared.

Our servants would never do something like that! Considering how much time I’ve spent with them, I can state that for a fact!

I was getting preemptively worked up, but Mr. Fisalis only chuckled when he saw how ruffled my feathers were. “I know. We’d never hire anyone of such disreputable character in the first place. I was only trying to get the facts straight.”

“Well, good.”

“As of now, all we know for sure is that the necklace wasn’t swapped out in the afternoon.”

Everyone seemed to be in agreement with Mr. Fisalis’s presupposition.

With that, we’d sorted out at least one part of the story.

* * *

“Next, we need to consider whether the culprit could have broken into our room and replaced the necklace,” Mr. Fisalis mused aloud, tapping his fist against his mouth once more.

Our second hypothesis was the Room Break-In Theory.

“There’s always been at least one person inside this room, so I don’t think that would have been possible.” Here I’d been convinced this one was our most likely option, but it only took Stellaria’s testimony to write it off in an instant. “Whenever the two of you were out, Drosera and others stayed here. Though of course, I was always with the madam, so I can’t attest to that personally.”

“Indeed. We never set foot outside the room, and nobody ever tried to come inside,” Drosera chimed in, backing up Stellaria’s claim.

Good point. Our maids would never be so careless as to leave the room unattended.

And after the party, I was in the room the whole time.

“Which means...we can rule out the culprit having switched the necklaces in our room,” Mr. Fisalis concluded.

I nodded. “Apparently so.”

That meant there were only two possible windows of time in which it could have been replaced: between our arrival at the villa and us settling down in our room, or from the dinner to the moment we discovered it was a fake.

* * *

“Come to think of it, I believe I mentioned that some of our belongings ended up strewn about in the chaos of our arrival,” Stellaria started, deep in thought.

“Yeah, you told us about that,” said Mr. Fisalis.

“Several of the servants toppled over and brought the suitcases they were carrying down with them, ultimately resulting in a bit of a luggage mix-up.”

The rain had made the ground all wet, and one of the attendants had slipped and fallen as a result. She’d then taken down the rest of the servants one after the other like a string of dominoes.

“I remember that. Didn’t Drosera get hurt in all that mess?”

“Boy, did I ever! I still have the bruise to show for it!” the maid in question fumed, showing off her fair-skinned arm. The place where she must have hit it was sporting a conspicuous blue bruise. The poor thing!

“Do you think, maybe...?” I ventured.

“That’s when someone could have swapped it out,” Mr. Fisalis finished.

Stellaria nodded. “Exactly.”

“Interesting... Do you remember whose servant was the first one to fall?”

“If I approach it with a clear head, I might be able to remember...but I was fairly flustered at the time, so I can’t answer with any real confidence.”

Stellaria erred on the side of caution here. It wouldn’t do to work off a fuzzy recollection and end up implicating an innocent person, after all.

“Fair enough. I’ll look into it later. Now we have one lead, at least.”

“Right!”

That was my husband for you—while I sat there panicking uselessly, he kept calmly moving the discussion along and had even managed to zero in on something suspicious! Once again, I was getting to see for myself how he’d earned a reputation for being so good at his job.

* * *

That just left the window of time between the dinner and the soirée.

“I know for a fact who was most suspicious then.”

Hm? Mr. Fisalis’s eyes glazed over all of a sudden. What’s the matter with him?

“You do?”

“I do. Think about it—wasn’t there someone who laid a hand on your necklace?”

“Oh!”

“And who went out of his way to put it back on for you?”

“Ohh...”

It was the “put it back on for me” part that didn’t sit well with you, huh? But he’s right—a certain someone plucked the jewelry right out of my hands, went around behind me, and clasped it back around my neck!

“Viscount Trifolium!” my husband and I cried out in perfect unison.

“There was no need for him to put it on you! He could have just called me over!”

“Uh-huh. Something told me that was the part you had a problem with.”

“That ought to go without saying! I don’t want anybody else laying so much as a finger on you!”

How about you rein in the possessiveness a little there, bud?

“Still, you’re right—Viscount Trifolium had the perfect chance to make the switch. How did he get my necklace off in the first place, though?”

“Who knows? I bet he unhooked while you were dancing. The scoundrel was getting too close for comfort.”

His logic has been so sound up to this point, but now he’s resorting to wild guesses?! I see his personal grudge is starting to cloud his judgment. Where did all that composure of his go?!

“Really...? He’d have to be pretty nimble-fingered for that. Besides, I didn’t think he was that close! What, were you watching us the whole time?”

“Of course I was!”

“Uh-huh...”

Who am I kidding? That’s exactly what my husband would do.

“Erm... Master Fisalis?” Stellaria cut in, hoping to break up our argument—or maybe not? She was holding the necklace in her hands.

“What’s up?”

“It’s about this necklace. If you examine it more closely, you’ll notice there’s a bit of a trick to the clasp,” she replied, handing the necklace over to her master.

Not long after he’d taken the accessory off her hands and started looking it over, both of his eyebrows shot up. “You’re right. It’s designed to look like it’s fastened properly, when in reality it can be undone with hardly any effort.”

He tested that observation by simply touching the clasp. Despite appearing tightly secured, it came unhooked almost instantly.

“Oh! No wonder it only took some dancing to make it fall off!”

Everything suddenly made a whole lot more sense.

“Then doesn’t that mean the necklace must have been swapped out for the fake before the dance—before the dinner, even?”

Here I thought we’d narrowed the culprit down to someone who had been there for our arrival, and yet...

“No... It’s still too early to rule out the possibility that it was replaced during the dance. Maybe the real clasp was just a faulty product to begin with.”

“Seriously...?”

It seemed that Mr. Fisalis really didn’t want to cross Viscount Trifolium off the list of suspects. Even if the guy didn’t have anything to do with this, I was willing to bet my husband would be keeping one eye on him during any future visits to the royal palace. Sorry about that...

“Either way, we clearly have a robbery on our hands. Let’s see... Why don’t we inform Rohtas and have him look into all the visitors currently staying in this villa? Perhaps we’ll figure something out from there.”

“Good idea.”

If we asked Rohtas, he’d pull up whatever information we wanted lickety-split.

“That said, we are here as guests for the villa’s housewarming, so we should strive to handle this matter behind the scenes. No need to disrupt the festivities.”

“I’m with you there!”

“Well then, Vi and I can be in charge of investigating the villa—”

“Huh?! Really?! Gosh, this is so exciting!”

“Excuse me? This is serious business!”

“Aye-aye! Roger that!”

I did my best to imitate the formal bow of a knight.

“Good grief. What am I going to do with you?” He laughed dryly at my antics, then went back to handing out orders. “Stellaria, get in touch with Rohtas and the secret service.”

“Yes, Master.”

Uh, hold it right there! Secret service?!

“Huh? Wait just a second, Cercis! What secret service?!”

“Hm? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

And now he’s just playing dumb!