[AT] Dead Candidate...
[After Transition]
I continue to focus on the memorial room but it's not long after that that the silence is pierced by the sound of a piano playing Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' and everyone begins to panic and hearing the song I'm shocked since everyone thinks that grand piano and that song are cursed and I remember that the last two times this song was heard deaths occurred and so I quickly get up and run inside through the side entrance and through the hallway past the people who had come out to investigate the sound and I burst through the door at the end of the hallway only to find Kevin Hale sat in front of the piano with his face down against the piano keys pressing the piano keys down and yet Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' continued to ring through the air as if the sound was emanating from somewhere else other than the piano but there was nothing else in the room, standing at the doorway I feel everyone from the memorial hall approach behind me and then follow me into the room in shocked silence as I decide to take action and walk over to the dead man in front of the piano with everyone watching me and I lean down to press two fingers against Kevin Hale's neck to see if he has a pulse and if he's just unconscious for some reason but it's pretty obvious that the man is dead and I'm proved so when my fingers don't feel anything as they are pressed against his neck. "It's no use, there is no pulse. This man, Kevin Hale, is dead." immediately I can hear shocked whispers erupt from the thick crowd behind me with some in shock at what I've just said and some still confused not seeming to grasp the situation while the majority of the room seemed to understand perfectly fine just what has occurred here as they believe it to be the work of the curse which I know not to be the case since that curse is an absolute joke, it doesn't make sense because supposedly no one's used that grand piano in years (8 to 10 years, both of the murders where the piano was heard) but when I played a tune on it earlier it was perfectly in tune despite it supposedly not being tuned for years which means someone has probably been tuning the grand piano in secret.
"Everyone in here stay just where you are and don't leave the room until the police come, can one of you also get out your phone and call the police as well, please. Doctor Nichols, since you are a doctor do you think you can examine the body?" So shocked everyone is that they don't even question my orders or who I am as they immediately quiet down staying where they are with someone closing the door behind them and a few people pulling out their phones to call the police while Alex (who I called Doctor Nichols even though she told me to call her Alex but that is only because I need her to do her job properly and professionally, which is why I addressed her as doctor so that she understand the seriousness of the situation) nods her at me as she quickly rushes over to the body to begin checking it over rolling up her sleeves before she begins to do so, I see just why that ad was put in the newspaper a week ago for Batman and that is because it was warning us about this very thing and must've wanted Batman to realise a death was going to occur and wanted him to stop it before it could but unfortunately for whoever sent the message Batman was too busy and instead sent me who is not as good of a detective and so I could not prevent this murder before it occurred but just as I was getting too inside my own head I can hear the crowd behind me begin to get a bit antsy now that they've had time to think and they are getting really freaked out and scared especially the superstitious ones.
"I-It's the curse, the piano's curse. IT'S TRUE, IT'S THE PIANO'S CURSE!" Harold the butler/aid or whatever he is begins to freak the fuck out starting to shout about how it's the piano's curse that killed Kevin Hale and while a few other people around the room were muttering about it and thinking about it too they weren't saying anything about it which was just fine but because of this fucking idiot who has started to scream about the curse he's started to set off the other people who were thinking it and since this is a small town everyone knows about the curse and so that means even those who weren't thinking it was the curse are now going to and that is not good, sooner or later with them all freaking out they are going to try to leave the room to get away from the cursed piano and I can't allow that to happen since everyone in this room is a suspect and while some are more suspicious than others I can't let anyone leave since Batman expects my to solve this investigation which now means I have to solve this murder which is why I can't allow anyone to leave just like that which means I have to calm them all down and the best way to do that is to disapprove this curse and get rid of their fear which also means I have to figure out where this music that is still playing is coming from and since Kevin Hale's head is still laying against the piano keys I know the source of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' is close but there isn't anything in this room other than the grand piano where the music seems to be originating from.
"Shut up, this isn't a curse at all. Look closely, it's not a curse or ghost that's playing the piano. It's this thing inside here, this tape recorder that is playing the music. In other words, this is a murder, a premeditated murder that has been disguised to look like the previous two incidents from ten years ago and eight years ago." Wanting to calm them all down I walk over to the grand piano where the music is originating from and acting quickly I inspect it looking underneath the piano and around it before I decided to lift the piano top and found inside one of those big boombox like old tape recorder things inside which I promptly pulled out and held aloft for everyone to see as I told them the origin of the music allowing the music to keep playing to prove a point when I hit the pause button on the tape recorder and immediately Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' stops playing after my finger presses the button down which everyone seems to notice as it puts an end to the so called cursed music which immediately calms them all down and makes Harold the butler/aid look all sheepish, Afterwards I make it very clear what I am thinking to stress the issue that this is not a curse and that this is done by man and so I tell them all that this was a premeditated murder made to look like the last two incidents so that they calm down and don't start going crazy but it seems while they did actually calm down they got an even bigger shock to know that the winning mayoral candidate Kevin Hale had just been murdered.
"Hey, come on man. Don't go making up wild stories, dude. Oh yeah, who are you anyway?" The son in law of the current mayor or his daughter's boyfriend or whatever starts to question me but I am questioning his fashion sense since he's dressed up in dark clothing with a dark grey turtle neck sweater as well as wearing some black circular sunglasses along with a grey beanie that allows his ponytail to peek out of the back but what mostly grinds my gears about him is the fact that while everyone is shocked and surprised at my announcement his face doesn't even change that much and instead of question why there is a dead man he questions me about my identity which makes him highly suspicious in my eyes, but now that he's asked just who the hell I am I have to tell them something since they don't look like they are going to let it go since I've made myself the centre of attention by taking charge and while most of the common people here are looking at me with something akin to but less than hope to help protect them since I've already proven to be so reliable there are others in the room who do not have such pure motives to know my identity and since I've already gone this far then there is no need to hide my identity and since I am actually here as who I say I am then there shouldn't be any problem and since I am assistant head of R&D at Wayne Enterprises then my intelligence shouldn't be called into question when I start solving this murder because everyone knows I'm a genius so I shouldn't have to hide my intellect and I'm sure as shit not going to be like Bruce Wayne and pretend to be some stupid rich idiot playboy who sleeps with models all the time (mostly because I don't have the kind of capital to live such a lifestyle and I would need money for the models, a whole lot of money.
"Me? I came here on vacation, from Gotham City. I am assistant head of R&D at Wayne Enterprises; Nick James and I also write detective novels in my spare time." I tell them all my identity and I also add that fake bit at the end about writing detective novels just to have some kind of reason for my good investigative skills and deduction which means I will have to write a few short detective novels when I get back to Wayne Manor just to cover my tracks and make sure they are there if anyone investigates me at some point and for some reason focuses on this little fib but it shouldn't really matter much and I do enjoy writing so it's not so bad, immediately people start gossiping together mentioning that they have never heard of me before which makes sense but they have heard of Wayne Enterprises so they now I am an important person and they know I am intelligent and have a curious mind since I write detective novels, while the majority of the people settle to start gossiping and talking about me to each other there are a select few individuals that are looking at me not paying attention to anywhere around them and instead analysing me with a few being upset that I'm here on vacation and not here to do some business on behalf of Wayne Enterprises but that doesn't matter much as they can still make connections with me and benefit from this in some way since I do still hold a high position and no doubt quite a few of them are wondering how this can help and benefit them in the future.
With all of them all caught up in their own things with some of them being scared, a few of them being manipulative, a few of them thinking about other stuff and Alex still examining the body of the deceased Kevin Hale I decide to start travelling around the room while they are all distracted and start looking for clues which I missed earlier more focused on my audience, now it's time for me to start looking for clues...
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Currently 34+ Chapters.
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