"Of course not!" Stelle shot back at Shinichi Kudo's doubt. "Because the person who drugged the drink was the victim himself."
Before Shinichi could object, Stelle turned to Yusaku Kudo. "I went to settle the bill. The first time I passed by, I saw that man slip something into one of the glasses and hand it to his wife. When I walked past again, the wife had swapped the glasses."
"So the man only drank his own stuff—what's wrong with that?"
Nakamura Saki looked up at Stelle, too stunned to know what expression to wear.
It was her wedding anniversary; her husband had meant to kill her, and when she turned the tables she'd been caught. She ought to feel sad, frightened.
But Nakamura Saki never imagined every move she and her husband made had been seen by the same person—someone who didn't even think she'd done anything wrong. Strangely, she felt a little relieved.
Shinichi Kudo was shocked. "So you just stood there and watched? Didn't do a thing?"
"Mm…" Stelle was puzzled. "What was I supposed to do?"
Shinichi: "Stop them from drinking the poison. Then no one would have died!"
Stelle: "If I'd stopped them this time, there'd be a next. Someone would die sooner or later. Today's ending is already the best we could hope for."
"How can you say that?" Shinichi protested. "They might have misunderstood each other; talking might have fixed everything. But once life is gone, it never comes back."
"Killing over a misunderstanding—wouldn't that be worse?" Stelle rolled her eyes. "If it was just a misunderstanding, why didn't they talk it out earlier? Lost their voices?"
Shinichi Kudo had no comeback.
He still felt Stelle was wrong, but for the moment he couldn't say why.
Yusaku Kudo, standing beside his son, shook his head with a sigh; Shinichi still had too little experience.
Still, the girl called Stelle was unusual—she seemed to treat life and death lightly, yet she wasn't without compassion; she simply followed her own logic.
What interested Yusaku Kudo more, however, was the man with Stelle.
He was quiet, had barely spoken, and kept a low profile.
But a closer look showed he was highly alert, deliberately staying out of everyone's line of sight.
And he kept his attention on the girl; his eyes hardly left her.
When his gaze occasionally swept over the corpse, it showed no emotion. On instinct, Yusaku Kudo suspected the man had killed before.
A potentially dangerous character, and this child Stelle had her own peculiar way of thinking. Yusaku Kudo worried she might be learning the wrong things from him.
At last the police arrived.
Scotch had no idea what the others were thinking. His eyes swept the officers entering the restaurant; seeing no familiar faces, he exhaled in relief.
Inspector Megure greeted his old acquaintance, the "Kudo kid."
He wasn't surprised they'd identified the culprit before he arrived; what amazed him was that today's case hadn't been solved by the Kudo kid himself.
When he learned someone had simply witnessed the crime, he understood.
Nakamura Saki confessed at once. Inspector Megure didn't stay long; he recorded the scene, collected the evidence, and prepared to leave.
Before going, he reminded Stelle to come to the station in a couple of days to give her statement.