The courtroom erupted into an uproar at the defense counsel's unabashed declaration of love for her husband. Those who had come to watch the trial after being moved by the romantic story of Grand Duke Richard and me were especially vocal, letting out dreamy sighs of admiration.
The corners of my mouth crept upward.
Exactly the reaction I'd hoped for.
After all, everyone in this courtroom needed to believe they were witnessing the love story of the century.
"..."
At the same time, Benedict's lips slowly parted.
To anyone else, it might have seemed like an insignificant change. But after spending day after day facing him across a cramped prison visiting room, I knew better.
That really shocked him, didn't it?
He must have been quite startled by my confession.
This was a man who would probably move fewer facial muscles if the judge sentenced him to death on the spot.
Then again, I supposed he had every reason to be flustered by a public declaration of love we hadn't agreed on beforehand.
Of course, Benedict wasn't the only person in the courtroom who had been stunned.
"A-are you trying to desecrate this sacred court with such outrageous nonsense?"
The Chief of the Police Bureau, who had been expecting an admission of guilt rather than a confession of love, turned bright red.
He began shouting furiously.
I gave him a perfectly shameless look.
"Desecrate this sacred court? Is there anything more sacred in this world than love?"
"Defense Counsel! If you continue making statements unrelated to the proceedings, I will have you removed from the courtroom."
The judge banged his gavel and barked a warning.
Of course, as would soon become clear, there was no such thing as an irrelevant statement when it came from a lawyer in court.
I smiled innocently.
"Of course not! I'll begin my defense now, Your Honor."
Now, there were two ways to secure a Not Guilty verdict for a client.
The first option was ideal, but it wasn't easy.
Proving that someone had committed a murder was one thing. Proving that someone hadn't committed it required a solid alibi.
Unfortunately, the Grand Duke had been arrested at the crime scene. He had no alibi.
That left me with option two.
I would have to demolish every piece of evidence and testimony the Police Bureau had presented.
"I request permission to cross-examine the witness."
I intended to deal with the testimony first.
After all, I'd already spotted a weakness in the gardener's statements while reviewing the newspaper articles and investigation records.
I turned sharply toward the witness.
His Adam's apple bobbed nervously.
"Could you describe the garden at Baron Hayden's estate, where you work?"
"Pardon...? Um, well... We planted large trees and smaller trees in alternating arrangements, and there are statues of mythological figures at each new junction along the paths."
"At approximately what time did you witness the victim?"
"Between ten and eleven at night, I believe. That's when I make my rounds."
"Are there any oil lamps installed in the garden?"
"No. We don't have any because a spark from one could fall into the garden and start a fire."
Just as I'd expected.
I smiled and continued.
"Then it must have been extremely dark. Perfect conditions for the defendant to commit the crime."
"Y-yes... That's right."
The gallery stirred at my apparent acknowledgment of the circumstances surrounding the crime.
The Chief curled one corner of his mouth into a sneer, looking as though he'd been waiting for me to make precisely this kind of mistake.
I paid him no attention.
"You testified that you saw the defendant standing in the dark garden holding a dagger, correct? Since he still had the weapon in his hand, that must have been before he stabbed the victim."
"Yes. That's correct."
The witness hesitated slightly, apparently puzzled that my questions seemed to reinforce the Grand Duke's guilt.
I continued in my gentlest voice.
"Is patrolling the garden one of your regular duties?"
"Yes. The gardeners take turns doing it."
"And what exactly does a patrol involve? I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with how that works."
This time, sighs rose from various corners of the gallery.
"She calls herself a lawyer, but all she's done is ask pointless questions!"
"Is she an idiot?"
The gardener apparently considered the question irrelevant to the case as well. He frowned slightly before answering.
"We check whether there are any hazards in the garden or any intruders on the grounds."
"And if you discover a hazard or an intruder, what do you do?"
"Sometimes we deal with the problem ourselves. If it's something we can't handle alone, we alert someone else at the estate."
As my questions about garden maintenance continued, bored groans began to echo around the courtroom.
"Defense Counsel. Kindly satisfy your personal curiosity about matters unrelated to the case elsewhere. I remind you that I have the authority to order your removal from this courtroom."
Even the judge had finally lost his patience.
I nodded obediently and turned back to the witness.
"You stated that you clearly saw the defendant standing in the garden with a knife in his hand."
"That's correct. I believe I've answered that several times already."
Even the gardener, who had been answering my questions without complaint, was beginning to sound irritated.
The Chief looked no happier.
And Victor, who was watching the trial from a seat some distance away, had long since begun to look thoroughly disappointed in my defense.
"Good."
At last, all my ingredients were prepared.
Now it was time to start cooking.
My eyes sharpened as I fixed them on the gardener.
"What action did you take when you saw the defendant that night?"
"Action...? What do you mean...?"
Startled by the sudden change in my tone, the gardener flinched.
He cautiously asked for clarification, as though trying to work out where my question was leading.
So I reminded him of his earlier testimony.
"A man carrying a knife is obviously a potential danger. He could also be considered an intruder. According to your own description of your duties, shouldn't you have dealt with such a person immediately or alerted someone else?"
An icy silence fell over the courtroom.
Everyone seemed taken aback by the abrupt shift in the atmosphere.
I seized the moment when every eye was focused on us and pressed the witness in a much sharper voice.
"Yet there is no record anywhere of you reporting such an incident. Why is that?"
"W-well, at the time... there definitely wasn't anything wrong in the garden. The Baron wasn't lying on the ground or anything..."
I interrupted his flustered explanation with a sharp snap of my fingers.
"Nothing was wrong. Exactly. I'm sure that's how it seemed."
"Pardon?"
"Because what you saw wasn't a man holding a knife."
"...!"
My firm declaration sent another ripple of murmurs through the gallery.
The Police Bureau's investigators began whispering among themselves.
The Chief shot to his feet.
"Defense Counsel! You're accusing the witness of perjury without the slightest justification!"
"I never said he committed perjury. I'm simply correcting a mistake."
I looked directly at the Chief as I answered.
According to the newspaper reports, the person who supposedly saw the Grand Duke before the murder was the gardener.
But the person who discovered the fallen victim, found the Grand Duke standing beside him, and reported the incident was a maid.
Why hadn't the gardener reported anything?
That question had bothered me from the moment I started investigating the case.
And I'd eventually reached a conclusion.
It was a case of mistaken eyewitness identification.
Unless someone possessed Photographic Memory like I did, their memories could easily become distorted.
Information learned after witnessing an event could unconsciously create false memories of what they had seen.
That was precisely why investigators showed eyewitnesses photographs of several people with similar appearances and asked them to identify the culprit from among them.
"I reviewed the records of your previous statements. At first, you said you weren't sure what you'd seen. Then you said you thought you might have seen an unfamiliar man. It was only after the case appeared in the newspapers and you'd been questioned several times by the Police Bureau that you began claiming you'd seen the Grand Duke holding a knife."
Sure enough, the gardener's statements had become increasingly specific with each successive interview, until he was explicitly identifying Grand Duke Richard.
In other words, as the investigation progressed and the Grand Duke became the principal suspect, the gardener's memory had superimposed the suspect's face onto a figure he'd only glimpsed.
This tendency was particularly pronounced in the very young and the elderly.
And the gardener was certainly old enough to be susceptible.
"I-I wasn't lying!"
The gardener cried out, his voice trembling.
I spoke calmly to reassure him.
"I'm not saying you lied. I'm saying your memory may have been mistaken."
"Th-that's impossible!"
Got you.
I smiled.
"Then could you describe the defendant's appearance that night? The color of his clothes, for instance, or how he was wearing his hair?"
"It was so dark that I couldn't see very well, but... I think his face was definitely the G-Grand Duke's..."
"I find that rather difficult to understand. You couldn't make out anything else, yet you clearly recognized his face?"
I hadn't expected the witness to admit his mistake so easily.
That was why I'd prepared something more.
With a faint smile, I unfolded the documents I'd brought.
My theory about his mistaken identification wasn't based on suspicion alone. I had concrete scientific evidence to support it.
"These are the witness's medical records. I obtained them from the clinic where he receives treatment."
This was why I'd been visiting the gardener's clinic practically every day.
To tell the truth, I'd only managed to get my hands on the records after advising the therapist on how to recover money a friend had borrowed and refused to repay.
As luck would have it, collecting unpaid debts had been one of my specialties in my previous life.
"The witness has experienced a significant decline in his eyesight recently. In particular, he has difficulty distinguishing objects in the dark. I'm sure everyone here remembers that he struggled even to read the words of his oath earlier."
The spectators began whispering among themselves.
After all, they'd witnessed the gardener stumbling through his oath with their own eyes.
The judge examined the documents, and his expression hardened.
I softened my voice again as I addressed the witness.
"You mentioned that there are many statues of mythological figures in the garden, didn't you? I imagine most of them are depicted holding something in their hands. In the darkness, it would be perfectly possible to mistake one of those statues for a person."
"..."
Confusion spread across the gardener's face.
I took advantage of his uncertainty to ask one final question.
"Are you absolutely certain that the person you saw that night was the defendant?"
"...I... I'm not sure."
The Chief's face contorted at his answer.
Even the judge looked bewildered, apparently having never anticipated that the witness would retract his testimony.
I turned toward the bench and drove the point home.
"Your Honor, it appears the prosecution has just lost its key eyewitness testimony."
"B-but the dagger is undeniable evidence...!"
The Chief's voice trembled as he tried desperately to conceal his agitation.
I gave him a leisurely look.
Now it was time to present my counterevidence and destroy the prosecution's physical evidence as well.
"Ah, yes. The dagger. The one the defendant claimed he'd lost."
I smiled.
"Well, I've found that missing dagger."