Laughter is Born From Madness

Chapter 57

"How is that even possible...!?" Ciel shouted in alarm.

"It may be hard to believe, but it really did come after Miss Red by virtue of her simply wearing the earl's clothes."

Red nodded as she was blushing heavily in embarrassment to only wearing Ciel's coat. Ciel was blushing at the sight of her but fought it down more as he tried to focus on the others in the room. Sadly, for him, he couldn't fight the small nosebleed that had started.

"As weak as a snake's vision may be, its sense of smell and hearing are highly evolved in compensation." Jeremy began to explain. "Thus it can search out creatures in the black of night by their smells and the sounds of their hearts. To put it plainly, the perpetrator must have trained the snake by rewarding it with prey whenever it was made to smell Earl Phantomhive's scent. If a snake is the murder weapon, keys and alibis no longer hold any weight."

"This is a 'black mamba', which inhabits southern Africa." Red explained about the snake itself. "Its venom contains exceedingly potent neurotoxins. Those who receive its bite are sure to die within an hour. As for unique traits, it is the fastest land snake in the world and excels at climbing trees a perfect snake for any assassination plot. But a snake is still a snake, after all. It had no way of knowing whether or not its victim was Earl Phantomhive."

"Now I get it...the earl not sleeping in his own room was an unexpected development for the one behind all this!" Arthur exclaimed.

"And that night, my bedroom was being used by...Patrick Phelps!" Ciel stated.

"Surmising that it would definitely make another appearance once it got hungry again, we stuck around, and sure enough it did just that." Jeremy continued.

"What a relief Miss Red was able to put on your clothes and was willing to stand in for you, my lord. If that hadn't been the case, lord earl wouldn't have been able to dodge the awful snake, right? And if he'd gone and died on us, we would be in a right pinch! Isn't that so Ran-Mao?" Lau questioned.

Ran-Mao nodded as Lau hugged her. Red walked up to her friend and smiled.

"I'm just glad you're safe!" she said as she gave Ciel a hug, who blushed more and had a larger nosebleed but he hugged back.

Moving away from her, Ciel cleared his throat before saying, "To get back to the subject...! You had me wear the butler's coat to disguise my smell, then?"

"It was convenient since it was able to hide all of what little there is of you." Jeremy smirked.

"You truly are a man of one too many words, Vicar..." Ciel irked as Red tried to control her laughter in the background.

"However, trading vessels are forbidden from importing poisonous snakes." Arthur stated. "Having worked as a ship's surgeon on an African route, I can tell you all cargo is thoroughly examined without exception."

"That means it was smuggled in, hm?" Lau wondered. "The most efficient approach in that case would be to bribe a privately operated freighter, I'd say."