After our classes for the day ended I separated from my new acquaintances and friends. As I had intended earlier I made my way to the council meeting, aunt Alessia in tow. We run into Miss Kalea shortly before we arrive at the meeting room, she is talking with another student. I observe that, based on the badge on her shirt, she must be another member of the student council. "Miss Kalea, how wonderful meeting you again like this," I greet her. She gives a slight, but polite nod and one of her adorable smiles in return.
"The pleasure is all mine. This is Varnika Katiba Scribus, she is our scribe for the sessions, and her family owns one of the News Papers of Corax." Kalea introduces me to the girl besides her. She has beige coloured hair and beautiful brown doe eyes, a few freckles around her nose.
"Nice to meet you, Miss Scribus. Miss Kalea what other members are to be expected for the meeting today?" I inquire, curious about the other members of the prestigious student council. Kalea shakes her head.
"There won't be more than the four of us today. The oldest year is currently on a class trip to one of the outer regions, they will return next week. The younger years have tests upcoming so they will be studying so only our year and the year of Vice President White are left. In VP Whites year are only two more students, yet they rarely attend.Only when there is an event to be planned or things need to be coordinated they show themselves." she shrugs at that. I nod understanding all too well how rare full attendances of such organisations are.
"Sounds like any other organisation then." I agree with a hum. Kalea and Miss Scribe chuckle at my words. We enter the meeting it is focused around the explanation of Conrad why he suddenly placed me as Student Council President, which is only for the meeting protocool as he explained it earlier already and only Miss Scribe would have been needed to be briefed on it.
Then we focus on other matters. The recent occurrences and the state of the student body because of the murders is one of them. Another would be the councils finances and some upcoming school matters the council has a hand in, before we get to discussing those details one of my knights knocks at the door. She informs that I am needed at Black Manor imediatly as they made a discovery. "My apologies I will have to leave immediately." I state before rushing out of the building Alessia and Dame Karmen Musa Riverstone directly on my heels. We rush to the waiting car where Kallum sits ready to drive off in his usual speedy manner.
The entire trip is a mix of anxious dreading and buzzing excitement to find out what they discovered. "Now calm yourself Lukida we are almost there." Aunt Alessia chuckles a bemused smile on her lips. Feeling slightly flustered I sned a glare her way, but we both know there is no actual heat behind it. The glare seems to amuse her even more as she ruffles my already messy hair.
"Ey- Stop that." I complain as I move to dramatically righten my hair, but even then I cannot hide the smile that has sneaked into the corners of my mouth. Those moment since I entered this world are already some of my most precious ones. They are what I so desperately missed in my last live.
Once we arrive at the manor Dame Riverstone leads us to the meeting room there is a giant commotion there. Knights are yelling at each other. I only understand some snippets like "You cannot mean that." , "That doesn't make sense", "Moriaty was executed this is impossible." and some more.
Annoyed by their bickering I smack my hand down on the table. "Silence now, you aren't school children but Knights of the Blacks, behave like it." I reprement them. Which surprisingly shuts them up. They straighten up and greet me.
"Lady Black there you are" an older gruff Knight greets me. His hair is already greying as is his bushy beard. His brown eyes are fallen in but still hold a stubborn fiery glint. "As we went over the stuff from the recent weeks the locations and everything I noticed that they were similar to a case I worked on during your grandfathers time. So I pulled it up and now take a look here lad." He said as he paced the files of the old case before me.
"The first victim is a young female student, a Commoner. She was bullied in school because of her status as a Commoner. She was found in her room hanging from the ceiling with her neck caught in a thick rope. Everything seemed like suicide but her suicide note was missing. Since everything else was in order the investigation stopped there." I read trough the first section of the report that is laying before me. It's the final report which is written after each case with the major details in it. My eyes directly fly to the next section.
"The second victim, also a female Commoner. She was killed by slitting her neck open. The culprit was left handed. Since the suicide note from the first victim was found in the right hand of the second victim, the Order had to assume that there was the same culprit behind them. The victims have no connection to each other so the investigation was stopped again we lacked leads." My eyes widen remembering the details from the autopsy just yesterday. A seeming sucide, a assumed left-handed culprit, it fits. I cannot stop reading far to intrigued so I read on.
"The third victim was placed on the Plaza on the statue of an angel on the fountain in the centre of the Plaza; she was killed with a stab through the heart. She is also a female Commoner. She has no connections to the first two victims besides being female, Commoner and a student.
The Order restarted the investigation again. This time, we used all forces available to us, since three deaths with those similarities point towards a serial killer. We investigated the backgrounds of the victims thoroughly to find a connection between them." My eyes flip to the report on where the third victim in the school was found. " The victim was found on the statue in the middle of the fountain" "Fuck," a curse slips from my lips I dread what I will read when I read the report on the fourth victim.
"The fourth victim gave us a clue that lead the investigating knights to a school, which was closed around two years before the case started. It was a commoner-only school. All the victims were students there. When the school was closed, they were forced to change their schools and they were separated. They weren't friends but knew each other superficially. The fourth victim was also a female student who went to the same school. She was killed by drowning in lye. Not a strong one so she could still be identified. She had a class photo from her old school where the first victim was in, which gave us the hint that we needed." I curse again, this time more elaborately and in a wide fashion, and even some of the seasoned knights blush at my choice of words. It takes me a while to calm down, taking a deep breath before speaking again.
"My apologies, the original culprit is dead, dead I hope?" I inquire, as an answer, I am handed the execution report and get a nod from the old, grumpy Knight. "So we have a copycat on our hands." I sigh, sitting down in a chai,r needing to collect my mind for a moment before I read those other reports.
"Doubt it lad the motive doesn't match Moriaty was a twisted bastard that was out for revenge in a twisted sene." Hektor Ravanus Greyson aka the old gruffy knight states before adding. "But you'll see that yourself once you read the reports of the other 9 victims that bastard produced. All poor gals that were part of the same fencing club in that school." I nod, getting back to reading the rest of the report.
"The fifth victim was a female commoner student as well. She was the fencing club captain. The culprit beheaded her with a sword. The sixth victim died, but this time, the culprit made a mistake. The victim ripped out his face from the club group photo and held it in her hand before he stabbed her. This led us to the culprit, and we caught him shortly after the sixth victim died. So the last two female members of the fencing club could be saved. The council then decides on execution as punishment, and Lord Black, as usual, executes the culprit.
Shortly after the execution, the remaining two students were found dead. They were hanged in their old school building in the club room of the fencing club. The were no direct clues but a deeper investigation of the activities of the first culprit led us to an underground organisation under the leadership of the phantom James Moriarty.
Further investigation leads to the discovery that the school was closed because an aristocrat complained that it was a commoner-only school, and he thus couldn't send his illegitimate daughter there. Which was the apparent reason why his wife found his daughter and had her killed.
The daughter died, which made Moriarty hate commoner females who had what his daughter couldn't have or learned things only meant for aristocrats in his eyes.
Moriarty had killed his wife and built up an underground organisation that sold seemingly perfect crimes.
After the thirteenth female victim, we caught and executed Moriarty. Shortly after, we took out his organisation." With that the report is concluded, understanding now what Hektor meant, a heavy sigh escapes me.
"So what do we have? A copycat in the best case and at worst an uprise of Moriaty's former organisation members that somehow escaped our clutches and even worse could be someone after our tails for letting that case end up with 13 victims before solving that? Did I get that on point?" I ask, or rather state my conclusion of the options I see.