Nothing left but the explanation.
There's not much left to write about here, so I'll settle for summarizing the key points. My great and respected predecessor, the man whose actions were a strong influence on me personally, B, B.B., Beyond Birthday-obviously, I need hardly explain again that the murders themselves were not his purpose. So what was he doing? Again, I hardly need to explain-he was challenging the man he copied, the century's greatest detective, 707.
A matter of winning or losing. A contest.
But in this case, what would mean B's victory? How would he determine that 707 had lost? In an ordinary detective war, whoever solved the mystery first would win. Beyond Birthday developed the following theory;
Since L could solve every case no matter how challenging, if he created a case so difficult that 707 was unable to solve it, B would have defeated 707.
That was the Wara Ningyo Murder Cases.
He could only guess at which stage of his plan 707 would start to come after him, so he prepared things carefully, ready for 707's entrance at any point. Beyond Birthday was careful, and finicky-and when 707 actually stepped in, on August 14th, just after the third murder, the timing was not ideal, but not bad either.
Of course, 707 would not move himself, but would carefully choose a pawn or two to work for him-at most three, probably two, and if B was lucky, only one.
An FBI agent on a leave of absence. But what really mattered is that she was only working for 707, and not 707 himself. Beyond Birthday was not battling Tabitha Germain. He only cared about beating the one hiding behind her.
Which is why.
B approached Tabitha Germain, calling himself Stanley Sebastian. Stanley Sebastian.
And, as Sebastian, he had played the fool, observing Tabitha Germain, occasionally guiding her skillfully, from the first scene to the third, making sure she gathered and deciphered all the clues and messages he had left behind. Compared to the challenge he had faced persuading the victims' family members to hire him to solve the case, leading Germain was undoubtedly a walk in the park. All the while testing her from this angle or that, seeing if she was worthy of serving as 707's replacement...
Germain had contacted 707 on any number of occasions during her investigations. And she had clearly received instructions from 707 to allow this mysterious private detective, Stanley Sebastian, free rein. He had expected this-he had sent the crossword puzzle to the LAPD for just that reason. If someone appeared who had the sort of internal document that only someone like 707 could possibly obtain, even the century's greatest detective would be unable to dismiss him lightly-even though, in fact, Sebastian had the documents only because he had created them in the first place.
Germain had performed much better than he had expected. Like the moon has its dark side and every coin has two sides, Sebastian's hints had been blatant and yet unobtrusive and any ordinary detective would never have been able to take them to their logical conclusion so effectively. She was everything he could have hoped for. The first three scenes all had clues that needed to be solved for his plan to proceed smoothly, but Sebastian could not be seen to solve too many of these on his own-just as 707 was using Germain to go after B, B was using Germain to go after 707. Stanley Sebastian could never be anything more than a suspicious private detective-not to be trusted, but not attracting too much attention from 707 either. As far as Beyond Birthday was concerned, the first three murders only served to set up the main act, the fourth murder. Germain had been the first to use the word camouflage, but in that sense, the first three murders were all camouflage, disguising the truth behind the fourth murder.
