Checkmate + Aftermath

Tryismo Chess Club, Burick, Tsaria, 10:45 P.M

Daniel parks his vehicle into the parking lot. He went inside and into the main gaming hall. He went to the hosts.

"Welcome back Daniel." Margaret said.

"The police have been asking a lot of questions. They can not get a handle on anything." Joseph added.

"By which you mean they haven't come close to resolving the matter." Daniel noted.

"That's right." Margaret added.

"Are you onto the answer?" Joseph inquired.

"I think I might be." Daniel replied.

"Who did it then?" Joseph asked.

"I am not certain if he did it or not, so I am going to question him. What are the policies on swapping places with other players?" Dan inquired.

"A player may have you as their proxy, but you must be the proxy from the beginning of the game." Margaret elaborated.

"So since they are all in the middle of games, I cannot swap places with anyone?" Daniel spoke.

"That is correct." Joseph replied.

"May I be the proxy for whomever goes up against the baron next?" Daniel asked.

"When this bracket is over, we'll ask the person who faces him next if they will allow you to be their proxy." Joseph added.

Daniel waited for the bracket to end. The lady who the Baron practiced against came over to the host, she was going to go up against him again. She decided to allow Daniel to be her proxy.

Daniel approached the table Wang was at and sat down. They were now at table 15.

"I told you our game was not yet over, and here you are. Shall we finish what we started detective?" Wang asked.

"So, your name is Wang?" Daniel asked.

"That is right, I was born in China as Hu Wang. I changed my name after coming to Rhombodian."

"Would you like to admit to anything?" Dan asked, he moved a piece since he was playing white, so he went first.

"What do you mean by that?" Wang asked smugly, he was quick to react to Dan's move.

"You said that our game was not over when we finished talking earlier. Now I understand what you meant." Daniel made his move.

"Oh you do?" Wang made his move.

"I did not realise the true intention of the death message until I learnt your name."

"Oh really?"

Daniel made another move. "I remember our conversation earlier and I did not realise it at the time, but you slipped, but knowing what you said at the end, it was not a slip, rather a cold calculated move."

Wang nodded. "As a grandmaster of chess, you can tell that blundering pieces is a rare thing. But you are right. I did indeed make a blunder. Do you recall what it was?"

"Of course I do." Daniel stated, making a move. "When I told you about the death message, you said you do not know why he wrote it in blood. But I never said that it was written in blood. Not all death messages are written in blood. I found out that you also lied when I discovered the time of death was 30 minutes before you met with him. That combined with the words you purposely chose made me know that you saw the crime scene and the message. So, did you kill Liam?"

Wang shook his head and made a move. "No. I did see the scene and when I did I saw the message. It implicated me more directly. It said Wang, my name. I pricked my finger and changed the message to zugzwang. But at the same time I set a trap for the real killer."

"A trap?"

Wang nodded and made another move. "As you are well aware, when you discovered the scene, the murder weapon, the killer king, was in plain sight, but not in the condition it was when he was murdered."

Daniel made a move. "Yes, Oscar said he put it back together."

"Well, then that means that Oscar killed him, now, doesn't it?" Wang added.

"How so?"

"Because I was the one who put the king together, not him, he lied to you because he realised that the base of the king was not there when he discovered the scene at 9:00 so he had to produce an excuse to explain it away. Only the killer and I knew that the king was broken when he died, and of course you and the other officers figured it out." Wang added.

"Thank you for your time, I think I will talk to Oscar." Daniel got up. "Oh, and I resign, good game."

Wang got up from his chair and shook Daniel's hand. "I was going to beat you in about 10 more moves anyway. Good game."

Daniel started walking towards Oscar's room. The answer was now remarkably nearby. But something felt off. Obviously, Oscar was the killer… but Simon said that the king was the killer. Simon's cryptic words must have meant something, but what?

#

Room H8, 11:11 A.M

Daniel knocked on the door and Oscar let him in.

"Daniel, why have you come to speak to me again? I really do not want to talk right now." Oscar spoke.

"The police have been hounding you, right?" Daniel inquired.

"You do not know the half of it."

Daniel was frowning. "Oscar, I do not want to hear any more lies."

"What do you mean?"

"When we spoke earlier you said that you fixed the broken king, but Wang said he too fixed the king 30 minutes before you discovered the body. Now I must wonder, which one of you lied and which of you told the truth?"

"Look, maybe it was Wang who killed my brother."

Dan shook his head. "No, he did not kill your brother and obviously he could not have killed himself, so the question is, what really happened in that room? Only you know the story."

"What makes you think that?"

"I have been wracking my brain. You had a good motive, but to kill him in such a sloppy manner? No, I just do not see it happening. So, my best guess is, based on the body and what Simon George said, I think that you did kill him, but it was not on purpose. You killed him because it was in self-defence. Am I right?"

Oscar started crying. "Yes. That is correct. I was in his room cleaning and that piece fell on to the floor and broke, I tried to fix it, but he walked in on me. He got angry and attacked me. He pushed me and I pushed him back, hard. He stumbled backwards onto the sharp edge of the broken chess piece, and it got lodged into his back. He fell and died. When I realised he died, I also recalled that I had a motive to kill him, so I wrote Wang's name, because I did not want to go to jail for murder. The prosecutor would say that I made up this whole story just to get the inheritance. Do you know his last words were? He said: 'I should not have gotten angry; it was just a chess piece.' But what I say is true. I killed him in self-defence. I swear it."

"That would explain the signs of a fight on the victim and why he had a wound on his back, if you picked up the chess piece to kill him then the wound would be on his front. It would also explain why Simon George gave me such a cryptic message. He knew that it was justified self-defence too."

"You believe me?"

"I do, and I'll make sure everyone else does as well."

Oscar gave Daniel a big hug. "Thank you Daniel."

Aftermath

No charges of disturbing the scene of a crime were applied to neither Oscar nor Wang. Since the murder was in self-defense, there was technically no crime to begin with.

Oscar was given his inheritance and they all went back to their lives.