LogFAQs > #957474448

Trial begins, and we have... some familiar faces in the jury - Joan the "maid," notably, and the ex-witness banker Fairplay. Again, we have three pieces of evidence in hand, only one of which was discovered by investigating.

We begin the trial by calling out the lack of motive, like a boss. But with a quick toss of the wine bottle, Van Zieks dismisses our objections and we push forward.

Gregson is first on the stand, and almost immediately we're told about the route that the defendant must have taken to get home. We dispute the bookstore itself, but the jury immediately comes down on Soseki, forcing us into a Summation Examination... We need to tease it out a little, but it turns out there's an alternate route that could have happened - walking around "the long way." Given that an incredibly clumsy man also stumbled that day, we're also able to weasel our way into saying Soseki might have taken the long way round...

... And it's all for nothing, really. There's pretty decisive evidence that Soseki was right at the crime scene; his books are scattered around the victim! In any case, the moment we finish posing this possibility, van Zieks dismisses it with prejudice and brings in the real witnesses. This entire first segment winds up feeling like a mildly interesting battle that achieved absolutely nothing and had essentially no point.

Cop Roly Beate and his wife Pat are on the stand. They're coming off their one-year wedding anniversary, and Roly offers us an up-close look at what it's like to be a London bobby... and it's pretty damn rough. Guy is constantly falling asleep despite that he wants to do the best job he can. Pat is utterly smitten with him, especially (seemingly) his title and it's kind of cute to watch. Anyway, they give some bulletproof testimony that they definitely saw Soseki there. But Patricia is a little too eager to volunteer that there were four books, and we pounce to state that hey, our boy only bought three!...

... but four were indeed at the crime scene. Looks like no, the witness testimony is accurate AF. This quickly results in a second Summation Examination, which is actually one of the more clever that we've seen - it involves a lot of push and pull, but... it's only here that we're able to point out the obvious: that the copy of The Lion's Pride belongs to Garrideb. And we expose Joan's violent tendencies inside with the help of an anecdote about an abusive wife. In other words... Joan could have thrown that knife at her husband and accidentally sent it out the window. And we prove that the window would have been open even in a London winter, because of the smoke.

Before we can bring Joan to the stand, we must KO our officer friend. This time he wakes up and begins his own testimony, and aside from the annoying "SAAAAAAAH!!!!" verbal tic, he's surprisingly competent as a witness. But his first statement almost dooms us: the top-latched window in the Garridebs' home wouldn't allow any objects to cross the street to the other side.

The testimony is actually not that trivial to break. We press, then catch reactions, then press the new statement, catch new reactions, and press some more, until we find out something about a "bouquet." It's actually heartbreaking how much Ryunosuke trashes a single rose being called a bouquet; Roly is obviously quite poor and is doing the best he can for his wife. And indeed she is super-proud of her bouquet, though heartbroken about having dropped it. Yet the bouquet is on the opposite side of the street, toward the Garridebs' place, from the location where the victim was discovered.

In other words, we assert with shockingly little evidence, while Pat was off fetching the other cops... Roly completely moved the crime scene, books and all. And when it comes to motive... it's actually not an obvious one, but due to the paucity of evidence in our coffers... we realize what it is. Despite his love of his job, Roly didn't want his anniversary to be interrupted by investigating a stabbing - so he moved the victim and the rest of the crime scene outside of his jurisdiction.

It's actually quite a saddening scene when he admits it - he cursed God due to how bad the luck was, and finding it out was like realizing a nightmare came true. He works so damn hard as a bobby, and yet his anniversary is interrupted. In the end, the joke is on him, because he forgets the gift he specifically gave to his wife, one that he had scrimped and saved for. Patricia's eyes are watered up the entire time, but she sticks by her husband. It's enormously unethical, but I feel relieved that van Zieks doesn't seem to imply the punishmenet will be that severe.

Speaking of the Reaper of the Bailey, he actually helps us to make our case. Now that we know the real scene of the stabbing was on the other side of Briar Road, that leaves one primary "suspect"... and since she's in the courtroom, Van Zieks helps us to bring her onto the stand. (She apparently has also recovered from the shock of seeing the knife to begin with.)

Joan is prepared to testify, but John refuses to let her testify alone. Extremely gentlemanly, and the dude has a lot of charisma. Both deny that the knife can be linked to them, though they're obviously feeling guilt even at the (almost unknowable) possibility that it really was them. But John is unable to maintain the lie that Joan's rage is entirely with harmless items like cabbages - hell, look at his broken pipe.

In fact, yes, let's look at the broken pipe. The game spoonfeeds it far too hard, but yes, we do find the decisive bit of evidence there. God, talk about some insane luck; I'm not sure if we've ever gotten so straight-up lucky in the courtroom before. More than the unlikely (but sensible!) cases of Acro holding the murder weapon under his chair, or Von Karma having the bullet in his shoulder, this was really just pure chance. But hey - it's pretty decisive.

There's one remaining contradiction in the established facts of the case, though it's been obvious since The Lion's Pride appeared in the victim's hand: how did the knife pierce Olivia Green (???) through the back, if it fell from above?

While it's not that significant, I actually do like this moment - it reminds me a lot of 1-1, where you have to explain why the clock would have been off. The Lion's Pride explains it: she was bent over, picking up this curious projectile that had landed in front of her. And that's when the slightly chipped knife came down.

Soseki - who miraculously didn't appear at all during the trial - is exonerated. The Judge is actually really damn impressed with us. And he should be; there was a moment where Susato got bullied by Van Zieks and we had to stick up for her, because yeesh. But it's one of the cooler Judge moments of the series, as he apologizes in full to Soseki for how poorly his time as a guest of the British Empire has gone.

Another case down, and it's time to go to sleep in... I mean, we could stay in Soseki's old quarters. What it lacks in windows, it more than makes up for with a floor, ceiling, AND walls. But no, we're instead invited to stay in Sholmes's attack and party hard with Soseki before he returns to Japan. Chapter closed.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness