Ch.152Chapter 152 – The Crawling Man (3)

“W-why are you saying that so loudly here?”

“What?”

“W-what if someone hears…? This is a very sensitive matter…”

The client, eyes wide at Sharlotte’s penetrating comment about the current case, startles and begins to whisper in a lowered voice.

“This is the mansion yard. It’s not like I announced that your mother crawls around like a dog every night loud enough for the street to hear.”

“P-please keep it down… voices carry surprisingly well at the front entrance…”

“…So you’ve kept this case request a secret from your mother, as I suspected. I was hoping to get her cooperation as well.”

The client stumbles over his words at Sharlotte’s sharp question.

“Th-that’s impossible…”

“Why?”

“I-I actually asked her about it before. I said the hallway lights seem to be on every night lately, and asked if she was doing something at night…”

Looking around cautiously, he leads Sharlotte’s group toward a shabby shed in the corner of the yard and continues.

“Sh-she reacted quite sensitively. She claimed nothing was happening, but something strange is definitely occurring in the mansion.”

“…Then asking for her cooperation would backfire.”

“That’s why I called you, detective… I-I heard you were very capable…”

He pauses briefly, looking at Zia Lestrade, Rachel Watson, and Issac Adler standing clustered around Sharlotte.

“I-I’d like to speak with just the detective from now on. A-as you know, this is a very sensitive matter.”

“These three are my trusted assistants. There won’t be any information leaks.”

“B-but still…”

“They’ve worked with me on top-secret matters involving royal scandals and international conflicts. A professor’s embarrassing secret is nothing in comparison.”

As Sharlotte speaks gently to him, she gives a slight glare to her companions behind her, who immediately nod and smile reassuringly.

“If you put it that way, I’ll trust you…”

“Then please explain in detail what’s been happening.”

Finally relaxing his guard slightly, the client sighs and leans against the shed door.

“…It all started about half a year ago, when my mother announced she was remarrying.”

He was speaking in a dejected voice when suddenly—

“Her remarriage partner was one of the university assistants. My mother, who had always been so cold and rigid, passionately confessed her feelings as if she’d become a different person.”

“………”

“There was quite an age gap too. About 30 years, I think? But surprisingly, the assistant accepted her… Hello?”

Everyone’s gaze, including Sharlotte’s, began to pierce sharply toward Issac Adler who stood in the middle.

“Come on, everyone, this is too much of a stretch.”

Adler, belatedly realizing the meaning behind those stares, begins to protest with an extremely wronged expression.

“How many women are there in London? I’m not some Casanova, and those rumors about me and half the women in town are just exaggerations…”

“Was the remarriage partner blonde with blue eyes by any chance?”

“Did he use the name Neville St. Claire?”

“Did his height and build resemble this young man here?”

Ignoring his protests, the others began firing questions at the client.

“I-I haven’t met him, so I’m not sure.”

“Hmm…”

“…But it can’t be this gentleman here. If it were, my mother would have reacted earlier.”

Hearing the client’s words, they finally calmed down and nodded.

“Well, as I was saying… after that miraculous proposal succeeded, my mother lived happily for a while.”

“I’m sure she did. We understand how difficult proposals can be.”

“…Hahaha.”

“…Mother began to change noticeably a few months later.”

While Adler laughed awkwardly at Sharlotte’s cold joke, the client’s expression suddenly darkened and he lowered his voice further.

“One day she disappeared without saying where she was going, and returned looking completely haggard after a full two weeks.”

“……”

“When I asked where she’d been, she only said she’d visited Prague in Bohemia, nothing more.”

“Bohemia… that brings back memories.”

Adler muttered, seemingly reminded of something that happened months ago, but quickly fell silent under Sharlotte’s cold gaze.

“After that day, mother’s personality gradually became more sinister and irritable. She remained intellectual, but there was a shadow cast over her somehow…”

The client continued his story steadfastly despite the situation.

“One day she flew into a rage just because I cleaned a dusty display cabinet in her room.”

“…What was inside it?”

“Just ordinary laboratory equipment. There didn’t seem to be anything special that day, but whatever displeased her, she completely cleared it away somewhere by the next day.”

Sharlotte made an interested expression hearing this, then quietly nodded for him to continue.

“And recently, our dog that had lived with us for over ten years suddenly attacked my mother.”

“Hmm…”

“But the decisive and bizarre incident that made me hire a detective happened just two days ago.”

From this point, the client’s voice began to tremble with fear.

“I woke up at 2 AM feeling thirsty and headed to the kitchen for a drink… and then, and then my mother…”

“For the third time, she was crawling down the hallway like a dog, correct?”

“That wasn’t all. I tried to convince myself it was just a bad nightmare and returned to my room trembling, but I couldn’t fall asleep until morning.”

As Sharlotte and the others tilted their heads at this new information, the client whispered with a pale face.

“Because my mother was peering into my window, smiling unpleasantly while staring at me…”

“………”

“And you know what?”

He raised his head slowly and finished in a different, calmer tone.

“…My room is on the third floor.”

Then came silence.

“…I considered calling the police but decided against it. They wouldn’t understand, and it would ruin my mother’s reputation. But I couldn’t just leave this disastrous situation alone either.”

“You did the right thing. This is precisely a case for a detective.”

With genuine excitement in her eyes for the first time in a long while, Sharlotte spoke confidently, and the client asked with a thread of hope.

“S-so… may I ask how you plan to solve this case?”

“We’ll stake it out.”

“What?”

“Tonight, I need to see your mother crawling around the mansion for myself.”

Saying this, Sharlotte quietly put an Arcadia cigarette in her mouth.

“…Then everything will become clear.”

“……..”

Beside her, Adler’s eyes, which had been bright and cheerful until just moments ago, quietly gleamed with a dark color.

“…I need to intervene before it’s too late.”

“Pardon?”

“Should I buy some snacks for our stakeout?”

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As the sun that had been hanging between the clouds began to set, and London’s streets started to sink into darkness.

“…You criticized my hiding spot, yet here we are in the bushes.”

“Unlike you, Officer, I don’t leave my hair or baton sticking out in plain sight. Besides, the bushes are the only hiding place around here.”

Holmes and her companions were crouched together in the bushes decorating the yard, watching the mansion with sharp eyes.

“Isn’t this a bit much…?”

“…Shut up.”

“If we leave you alone, you’ll disappear and cause trouble again.”

“Don’t forget our contract, Adler.”

Incidentally, Adler was squeezed in the middle of the three women who formed a triangle in the bushes, gasping for breath.

“…So, what does everyone think is happening here?”

After watching the mansion in silence for quite some time, Lestrade, apparently bored, asked in a low voice.

“We need to stay quiet…”

“…From a medical perspective, I think it might be severe sleepwalking.”

Though Sharlotte frowned and tried to warn them, Watson, who was equally bored, began offering her opinion in a hushed voice.

“I’ve seen patients with severe cases who were found kilometers away from home. Perhaps her trip to Bohemia was also sleepwalking…”

“…Watson. Don’t you know that sleepwalking is the most common and reliable excuse used by philanderers?”

Sharlotte interrupted, as if she’d never intended to caution them.

“I was just discussing possibilities.”

“…Yes, I considered sleepwalking too. But Bohemia is over 1000 kilometers from England. That’s a different scale from 10-something kilometers.”

“Hmm…”

“If the sleepwalking lasted for weeks, it might be possible, but I heard the professor doesn’t have any illness that causes her to sleep that much.”

As she firmly dismissed the sleepwalking theory, Lestrade and Issac Adler, who had been listening quietly, asked questions in succession.

“What about the possibility of a mental illness?”

“…Maybe she’s being trained by that assistant person?”

“Whatever the case, nothing is certain right now.”

Sharlotte glanced sideways at Adler, then sighed and said.

“The details will come from…”

“…Ah, look there!”

“Shh.”

At that moment, a faint silhouette began to appear in the dimly lit window of the mansion.

“Lower your voice, Watson…”

“Mmph…”

Sharlotte covered Watson’s mouth and narrowed her eyes to observe the situation.

– Swish…

The professor looked around in the corridor and then began to lower her posture.

‘””………!”””

The next moment, all three girls’ eyes widened simultaneously.

– Clatter…

The professor, who had lowered herself out of sight, was now incredibly crawling out into the garden through the pet door in the entrance.

“What the…”

“Whine!”

As they watched with astonished expressions at the professor crawling around the garden in a vulgar manner, completely unlike her intellectual appearance from the morning, a dog’s sound began to be heard from the distance.

“Grrr…”

“…Hmm.”

The professor fixed her gaze on the dog that was tied up in a doghouse outside the garden, responding to its wary growling.

“…Oh my goodness.”

“Good heavens…”

Inspector Zia Lestrade quietly blushed and turned her gaze away from the vulgar act unfolding before them—an act so indecent it was omitted even from Watson’s later published case collection.

“…By the way.”

Suddenly realizing something, she spoke with a serious expression.

“Where did Adler go…?”

“…Ha.”

Sharlotte’s expression quietly crumpled as she realized Adler, who had been squeezed next to her just seconds ago, had vanished.

“I should have just cut off one of his legs since he’d recover anyway…”

“Grrr… grrrrrr…”

“…Huff huff.”

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“”………””

Issac Adler, who had suddenly vanished from the scene, was found again when the morning sun rose faintly in London’s gloomy sky after dawn.

“Would you care to say something?”

“……..”

“Mr. Adler?”

Adler, who had been crouching in the shabby shed in the yard—neither inside nor outside the mansion—wagged his tail at Sharlotte who had come looking for him, and his first words were:

“…Meow.”

Incredibly, in that short time, Adler had transformed from human to animal, just like the professor.

“Meooow…”

“This is ridiculous.”