Chapter 7.1 Write-up
Ottokar Revesz, usually calm and melancholic, is extremely agitated. Why isn’t clear at this point. He tells Norimizu that now that the will has been opened, surely, Norimizu is here to explain its contents to him. Norimizu replies that, more than the will itself, there are three different causes to the murders that have been shaking up the manor. Revesz still believes there can only be one : that Tsutako will not get any money. Norimizu replies that this goes much further back, to the love triangle between Santetsu, Digsby and Thérèse, that Disgby built the manor possibly as some kind of trap, and that Santetsu had it renovated 5 years later to counter that. Still, it seems that 40 years ago, Digsby predicted all that has happened so far.
Revesz then asks if this is all because of his affair with Nobuko ? Norimizu explains (at length), that Nobuko couldn’t have broken the vase in the way she said she did. Necessarily, Revesz was in the room with her, and Grete, who was hidden, witnessed it. As she also was a having a secret affair, she was enraged, but because of the terms of the will, she couldn’t say anything, for fear of being exposed herself.
Norimizu also accuses Revesz of shooting the crossbow at Olga Krivoff. Even though he wasn’t in the room he somehow managed, through a VERY convoluted process, to have the crossbow shoot from the wall. However, it seems he didn’t really want to kill Olga Krivoff, but only to reinforce his own alibi. Suddenly, Serena is heard singing in the corridor. Norimizu leaves Revesz crestfallen.
Norimizu, Hasekura and Kumashiro sit down to discuss the latest revelations. Circumstancial evidence (his shoes) has also been found against Revesz. Kumashiro wants to arrest him, but the case still isn’t watertight. Especially since… Norimizu reveals that he simply made up the trick used to fire the crossbow. He wanted to provoke Revesz into subconsciously revealing the fourth part of Faust’s curse, the part with the Kobold, and apparently… he did. Hasekura and Kumashiro (and the reader…) are dumbfounded. It now seems that Nobuko is the mastermind ! They decide to go back to interrogate her, but Norimizu stops on the way, to go to the ancient clocks room, and see Tsutako there. He accuses her of being the puppet master of this case
