Tsuguru and Aya join Lord Godard’s family for a meal. While Tsugaru, the human carriage driver, and the human butler Alfred have human food, Godard and his children drink animal blood in bowls like tomato soup.
His son Claude thinks the pair to be con artists, but Aya proceeds to explain in detail how she knew the driver’s wife had recently gotten him to stop drinking. She even gets him to feel bad and realize what a fortunate man he is! I also love how Aya and Tsuguru chuckle at each others’ jokes.
Since she’s unable to partake in the meal, Aya uses it to lay out the list of most logical subjects. Only two lack alibis: Alfred and Claude. This irks Claude in particular, and by extension his dad the Lord, but Aya assures them it’s unlikely an outsider did it.
Kurosawa Tomoyo is masterful at giving Aya a calm, collected, and direct manner that commands respect. Among everyone only she is the master detective, and those who doubt or question her process are quite frankly out of their element and resorting to emotionalism.
That said, we later learn that Aya doesn’t have a clue yet who killed Lady Hannah, and the dinner conversation was merely to buy her some time. When Claude confronts them in the hallway, he threatens to snap Tsuguru’s neck. In doing so, Aya confirms that his, and everyone else at the dinner table, had impeccably clean hands.
While Shizuku stays with Alfred and the young maid Giselle (and assures them she doesn’t work for Tsuguru and they can insult him all they like), Godard takes Tsuguru and Aya back out to the woods, where he once again insists that his household is innocent.
Godard then asks if they’ve heard of “Fushi”, or the immortal one. Tsuguru says he has. Aya adds that while they’re indeed immortal, even they can be defeated by an oni, only they were otherwise fairly weak and stupid, and driven to extinction in the Great Purge.
Godard then points out that Aya and Tsuguru might be talking about themselves: the immortal one and the oni. He then gets an arrow to the neck, and then rushes into the woods to capture the human vampire hunter who loosed it.
He’s about to kill him in “self-defense”, but Aya stays his boot. Instead, she questions the man, named Josef, and quickly learns that he was on a train near Berlin the night of Hannah’s murder. That said, he came to avenge his friend Hugo, another hunter who vowed to kill Godard.
Aya’s last question allows her to determine that even Josef wasn’t sure that Hugo’s stake was silver. As thanks for his being so forthright, she allows Josef to run off unharmed, irking Lord Godard. But he hired Aya, and so it falls on him to trust her and not his own instincts in this matter.
For her part, Aya believes she now has everything she needs to solve the mystery—or as she calls it, “this humorous and tragic farce of a murder case.” I’m looking forward to her conclusions.
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