After looking through the students who were in and out of the music room today, we managed to narrow down the list to four possible suspects based on the length of time they spent in the music room and eye-witness accounts of strange behavior.
"I was simply here for class, I don't see how that makes me a suspect!"
Our first suspect, Rachel Snow was attending classes in the music room, same as her other classmates. However, multiple students noticed her fidgeting during the class. We have nothing much to go on but it's still suspicious behavior.
She's a member of class 3-2. Her hobbies include mountaineering and watching stageshow magicians. I hear she also volunteers at the nearby creche during her free time.
"M-My question is the same as Miss Snow's."
Our chubby second suspect goes by the name of Jude Black. He's in the same class as Rachel and his hobbies include watching anime and drawing doujinshi. He took several bathroom breaks during his class at the music room which made him quite suspicious.
"I know I look like the most suspicious but I promise I didn't do it! You have to believe me"
Our third suspect's the goody two-shoes rep of class 2-2, Anna Brown. She was at the music room to collect some materials from Ms Milligan but the teacher had her hold down the fort instead. She was alone for 20 minutes making her the most likely person to be able to set up a trick for the locked room. Her hobbies include singing and dancing.
"You dragged me out of football practice for a couple of worthless trophies?! Gimme a break!"
Last and definitely the least was our queen bee's loyal dog, Brock. His hobbies include football and being a royal pain in my ass.
Apparently, he stopped by the music room hit on the teacher but ended up flirting with Anna instead. Anna had to endure his crap for 5 minutes before the teacher returned.
"So that reduces the time class rep had no alibi to 15 minutes, huh?...."
Library girl muttered while standing beside me.
"...Either that or the jock's her accomplice"
Miguel interjected
"Either way, let's examine the room for clues that could help us identify the culprit, it's way too early to start pointing fingers."
Sara said while searching round the piano. I guess she found it hard to believe her class rep would do such a thing.
I decided to join in the search for clues.
While it's true that I knew whodunnit, exposing the culprit is another ball game entirely— our culprit executed a clever plan and cornering this thief would require some finesse. I couldn't just say I read their minds and expect anyone to take me seriously.
The music room consists of two adjoining rooms— the main music room and the store room for equipment. Aside from the shelf for the missing trophies in the main room, there was a piano at the center of the room and chairs stacked at the four corners of the room. The store room was filled with smaller instrument in boxes and the boxes were stacked on an old rug spread across the floor.
After looking around, I noticed a few things that could give my 'deductions' some logic. That said, I'll only take center stage if the others aren't able to solve this case by themselves.
I made a few preparations just in case.
"Hey, library girl"
"..."
"Library girl!"
"Huh, you're talking about me? I have a name you know, it's Katherine, K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E"
"Kay, got it. Library girl....."
"C'mon!"
".... Your boyfriend over there said he needs you to find something for him."
"Oh—"
That actually got her to listen?
"Wait, how did you know we were dating?"
"According to him, it's a key piece of evidence that'll close this case"
"Don't just ignore mee!"
"Are you going to do it or not?"
"*Sigh—Ohkay, finee"
I told her what she was to look for and where.
"Leave it to me!"
She said as she zoomed out of the room.
"What's up with her?"
"Kya—"
Still not used to Sara sneaking up on me.
"Kya?"
She reiterated with a mischievous grin. I tried to regain my composure.
"She had to use the restroom. Anyway, what's up?"
"Nothing really. And no new leads."
She turned her attention to Ms Milligan
"Was there anything you found out of the ordinary? Anything at all?"
"Now that you mention it, this time around, I'm pretty sure the music was a recording."
Upon hearing this, both Sara and Miguel rushed to the piano. They found a small wireless speaker inside the piano.
Everyone in the room could notice the grin on Miguel's face, it seemed something had clicked for him as he rushed past me to inspect the sliding door at the entrance.
"If my deductions are correct, then this case is as good as solved!"
Miguel walked to the center of the room and leaned on the piano, prepared to give his...deduction.
"First things first. Jude, I need you to go fetch something for me from the classroom"
"Huh? isn't he a suspect as well?!"
Brock protested menacingly.
"Ofcourse not, his frequent bathroom breaks was a result of the spoiled pizza I saw him eat this morning"
Crazy as it sounds, that much was true.
Miguel whispered his request into suspect #2's ear.
"A-Are you sure?"
"Ofcourse! Now chop chop"
Jude headed out to retrieve the 'thing'.
" Now then, to solve this mystery we have to start by solving 'the phantom of the music room'. It was a simple trick that involved a hidden compartment in this very room. Whenever the teacher was about to open the door, the phantom ran and hid inside the compartment.... "
".....Where's your proof?" Sara asked
"I.... have no real proof"
"Then shut up!"
"Calm down and hear me out. If you accept that as fact, then this incident can be explained"
Sara sat down and allowed him to continue.
"One thing that sets this apart from other incidents is the fact that a recording was used. Our culprit wanted to make us believe they had disappeared from the room but didn't account for our teacher's absolute pitch"
Absolute pitch, the ability to identify and reproduce any musical note without a reference tone said to be possessed by one in ten thousand people. With that, she could easily differentiate between a recording and live music.
Guess Ms Milligan was blessed with far more than a rocking body, way to go teach.
"—Thanks to this and the evidence on the lock we can assume the culprit stole the trophies and left the room before we got here"
Sara headed towards the door to confirm this 'evidence'.
"Is this.... A magnet and.... traces of play clay?"
"Bingo."
"Care to explain?"
"Alright sweetie, if you don't understand I'll spell it out for you"
Sara's icy glare got like ten times more terrifying. Miguel ignored it and continued
"My take on what happened is this— Our culprit discovered the hidden compartment used by the phantom, then made the necessary preparation by sticking the clay into the lock jamb to prevent it from locking properly once Ms Milligan leaves the room...."
At that moment, Jude entered the music room holding a handbag.
"...Our culprit then hid in the secret compartment and waited for her to leave. Once Miss Milligan 'locked' the door, the culprit simply came out and stole the trophies, then placed the wireless speaker in the piano, opened the sliding door and replaced the clay with strong magnets and to create the illusion of a locked room until the lock is properly adjusted with a key"
He took a deep breath then continued
"Yes.....our culprit needed to have some level of knowledge about locks to pull this off. They also needed cover to slip into the secret compartment without anyone noticing— something like a large crowd or class full of students...."
His ego was rapidly reaching it's climax
"The culprit.....IS YOU RACHEL SNOW!..... You love watching magicians so it's not unreasonable to assume you have some knowledge of locks from escape artists and you volunteer at a creche so obtaining play clay's a cinch...."
"What the hell are you on about!? Phantoms? Locks? You've been rambling a lot sh*t and now you're claiming I'm the culprit?! What a load of bull!"
"It's true that my deductions are mostly speculation, which is why I asked Jude here to search through your things for evidence. After all, with concrete evidence, even a completely unbelievable argument can be accepted as facts"
Jude opened the handbag he was holding, pulled out a small item and placed it on the piano. It was one of the trophies that went missing.
"That's your bag, isn't it? Now then, why don't you tell us where the other trophies are?"
"I-I haven't seen that before in my life! You have to believe me"
"Save it for the cops"
Miguel O'Hara was on cloud nine. After all, he had just cracked open the case with his impressive deductions— well, impressive as far as bull*hit goes anyway.
At the very least, he bought enough time and set the foundation for my logic to stand on.
"I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I'm pretty sure Ms Snow is not the culprit."
Miguel ignored me as always. It seemed like my campaign was over before it even began.
But then—
"Go on, exactly what problems do you have with his logic"
My ice queen skillfully included me in the conversation by acknowledging my statement. Thanks a lot Sara.
Everyone's eyes were fixed on me.
"Two things actually. First off, how exactly did the culprit know when Ms Milligan would be leaving? It's not like they would remain hidden the whole day and end up skipping out on class, that'll ruin their chances for an alibi."
"I was wondering what you were going to say but that's it? There's a faculty meeting today which started at lunch break so it's only natural she'd be out, infact, it's still going on as we speak. How did you not know that?"
So her return was unexpected. The final piece is in place. I turned my attention to Ms Milligan.
"So you returned to get something?"
"Yes, I forgot a few things in the music room and I was returning to get them when I met Mr O'Hara"
Sara was looking at me with a rather disappointed expression and so was everyone else in the room—including Brock.
It seemed like my first question had the intended effect. At that moment, no one was expecting much from me and more importantly, the culprit's guard was down as I moved on the offensive.
"My second question.... Miss Milligan, when we first arrived, pretty boy over there said the culprit's trick had to have been set up today and you readily agreed with him. Why is that?"
For the first time during this investigation, Miguel O'Hara acknowledged my existence
"That's easy, it's —"
"I'll like an answer from Miss Milligan, not you pretty boy"
"Well, Mr O'Hara helped me out with cleaning this room yesterday, if there was anything of the sort, he would've noticed."
" Did he do it alone?"
"Yes"
"You gave him the key?"
"Yes"
" When did he return it?"
"This morning"
"Oh?—"
I turned to face Miguel. I couldn't tell the expression on my face at that moment but if you ask anyone present, they'll describe it as the menacing smile of a predator who's found his prey.
"Well, well pretty boy. You had enough time to find the secret compartment and set up the trick"
"Impossible. While it's true that I could've found the compartment, Miss Milligan would've noticed the clay since she must've entered this room multiple times after I returned the key!"
"Then why don't we change our perspective, what if the clay was just a red herring?"
" Huh?!"
" What if it was meant to divert one's attention from a far simpler possibility. What if it was meant make us think a trick was used on the door and not that the culprit simply unlocked the door and walked in".
"Get to the damn point!"
"You had the key all throughout yesterday and only returned it this morning. It's pretty safe to assume that you could've duplicated the key"
"That's ludicrous"
Miguel responded looking like he was about ready to kill me. Sara quickly refuted his statement.
"I've seen you hanging around with a bad crowd in the slums downtown. It wouldn't surprise me if you knew someone who could do it."
"Tch— your speculation doesn't change the fact that the trophy was in her bag and a magnet was at the door"
His response was exactly as I expected
"You could've planted the magnet yourself while you were inspecting the door. As for trophy..."
I slowly started moving towards the piano
"You could've simply planted it in her bag while no one was looking. You're both in the same class after all"
"You bastard—"
"—By the way, I heard from Katherine that the the two of you were supposed to have lunch together. So what were you doing at the music room?"
Actually, I heard it from her thoughts but she's not exactly here to contradict me so I'm gonna keep on rollin'
"I simply had a few questions for my music teacher, is that so wrong?"
"Even though you knew she was at a faculty meeting? Must've been quite important that you'd ditch your girlfriend without so much as a text"
"That was...."
"Oh you don't have to answer that, it's none of my business really. After all—"
I picked up the trophy
"—Once the police examine this, I'm sure they'll find your fingerprints all over it. That'll be sufficient to prove you planted it in her bag."
"Go ahead! You won't find my fingerprints on it. That'll finally shut you up once and for all"
Like a fool, he took the bait. I moved in for kill.
"Oh? You sure that's the answer you're going with?"
"Huh?"
"After all, the natural answer's supposed to be 'ofcourse my fingerprints would be on it since I cleaned the room yesterday' right?"
"!"
"You see, while searching for clues I noticed there were hardly any imprints on the shelves where the trophies were supposed to have been. This means you probably lifted them up one by one to clean the surfaces so it's natural for your fingerprints to be on them"
I looked at Miguel O'Hara straight in the eyes as I made my next statement
"And yet, you said without a doubt that your fingerprints were not on it— almost like you were certain the prints had been wiped off"
Miguel O'Hara's first mistake, a result of over preparation.
"I-I probably just m-made a mistake, s-since I cleaned the trophies yesterday"
"You still used your hands to put them back on the shelves. If your fingerprints aren't on them, that's big trouble for you. By the way, now that I look closely, what is this?"
I pulled a tiny strand of yellow wool stuck to the trophy
"I wonder where this came from?"
Almost like divine intervention, library girl returned from her 'errand' with a pair of yellow wool gloves in her hands. They appeared to be quite dirty.
"*pant pant—Miguel, I'm back with the evidence you requested!"
"W-What?"
The cheery expression on Katherine's face contrasted Miguel's lifeless one like night and day.
"Perfect timing library girl"
"That's not my name!"
I directed my attention back at Miguel
"Oh, did I forget to mention? I had your girl over there retrieve the gloves you used when handling this trophy from waste disposal. Too bad for you, looks like she found it before the school could get rid of it for you"
I said Katherine's timing was divine intervention but that was actually a lie. I used my mind reading to track her movements through her thoughts and timed it so she would enter at the precise moment that would deal the most psychological damage..... and it seemed to the working.
The man known as Miguel O'Hara was cracking like an egg.
"I'm no forensic scientist, but I'm pretty sure they'll be able to match this piece of wool to those gloves and once they dust the inside for prints, they'll find yours. I'm pretty sure if they examine the bag as well they'll find more pieces of wool to prove you planted the trophy yourself"
This was a bluff, the most they'll be able to get from those gloves are partial prints. But he doesn't know that, after all, his mind was scrambling for rebuttals to my claims but he was panicking way too much to formulate a counter argument.
"THESE ARE ALL JUST YOUR WILD THEORIES, Y-YOUR'E TRYING TO FRAME ME!"
He was already done. He just needed one final push to break completely.
"Didn't you say it yourself? With concrete evidence, even a completely unbelievable argument can be accepted as facts"
"..."
"WHICH IS WHY..... I'll like to call everyone's attention to one final piece of evidence"
" YOU'RE NOT DONE?!"
Ofcourse I'm not done, I'm just getting to the best part.
"Once we go over the case from the top one last time, this final, irrefutable evidence that proves without a doubt that Mr Pretty Boy is the culprit of this case will be visible for all to see."
Nothing Miguel O'Hara could say or do at that moment could change the outcome. After all, I was controlling the flow of the conversation. I tackled the problem in such a way that fixed all eyes on me. Each person in the room was waiting to hear the next words to come out of my mouth, the next movement I made and the final thread of suspense I laid out for my audience.
Miguel O'Hara had executed a brilliant strategy worthy of the newspaper club's vice president. However, I was able to assemble the 'logic' to present the results of my mind reading as a clear argument and manipulate everyone into accepting my 'deductions' as fact by using part of the premises of his own 'false deductions' as a springboard.
"Now then, it's about time I end this farce like they do in a class trial"