Reincarnation
Chapter 8:
"Oh."
For once Sebastian was lost for words.
He had just answered the doorbell to find his young master and the Alois Trancy brat on the doorstep, both with suitcases. Trancy was wearing a pair of very short shorts like his namesake in the 19th Century. Judging by the suitcase he seemed to be intending to stay.
"Good morning," Sebastian," Ciel greeted him politely. "Are you going to let us in or not?"
Immediately Sebastian recovered and remembered his role as a Phantomhive butler.
"Of course," he said and moved aside to let them step inside. "I will take your suitcases. Will Master Trancy be staying for the night?"
"He will be staying for the week," Ciel informed him with a smirk as he walked down the hallways with his best friend.
"Where will he be sleeping?"
"In my bed of course," Ciel replied as it that was obvious.
Sebastian could hear their laughter as they walked up the staircase. He sighed, it was going to be a long week with Alois Trancy in the house. He knew why Ciel had invited Alois Trancy to stay, it was so there was little chance of him ending alone with Sebastian which was something that Sebastian had been hoping to achieve so he could interrogate him. However he could still ask him about the riddle in public.
Sebastian effortlessly carried their suitcases up the stairs, noting that Ciel's seemed lighter that it had looked the day before. When he got to Ciel's bedroom the pair were sitting on the bed that he had perfectly made the day before which was now rumpled and they were watching a video on Ciel's phone. Sebastian deposited the suitcases neatly in the corner and turned to leave.
"Young master Ciel," he said suddenly.
Ciel paused the video and looked up. "What is it?"
"Do you have your copy of the riddle that was found in your ancestor's portrait?"
The boy's eyes narrowed momentarily before he got up from the bed. "It didn't lead to anything so I tore it up, but I did memorise it. Do you want to hear it?"
"If you would."
"First think of the person who lives in disguise,
who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies
Next tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
the middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard
during the search of a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together and answer me this,
What creature would you be unwilling to kiss?"
Sebastian instantly memorised it as he wondered if the boy was telling the truth. His recital had been too quick for something made up on the spot. His fast brain instantly solved the puzzle. A person that lived in disguise and lied was a "spy", the middle of middle was "d"and the sound often heard was "er"
If you strung them together you would get "spy-d-er" which of course a spider.
"The answer is spider. Am I right?"
"Yes. I went to the place where all the spiders gather in this house which is the attic, but all I found was this old chess piece."
Ciel walked over to his bedside table and took a chess piece out of the top drawer and then he handed it to Sebastian. It was the black knight and part of its head had been hacked at with a knife leaving behind discoloured marks.
"Can I keep this?" Sebastian asked him.
Ciel nodded after a second of consideration and Sebastian placed it carefully in his pocket, bowed and left the room.
As soon as he had left the room Alois raised his eyebrows at Ciel.
"Is is all right to give him that?"
Ciel smiled at him. "Yes."
It was actually a red herring, designed to keep Sebastian off the real trail for now, although the chess piece had belonged to the original Ciel Phantomhive. The genuine riddle had been something else completely.
He remembered that day he solved the riddle perfectly. It had changed his life forever.
Flashback
Summer 2012
It was the hottest day of the summer, the temperature had risen to 30°C and the sky was a perfect blue and free from clouds. Due to a water shortage a hosepipe pan had been implemented so Ciel was stuck in the garden with only a book to fan himself with to cool down.
Eventually his arm became sore so he retreated inside. He knew his father had a fan in the study so he headed to that room in his search for something to cool himself down with.
Inside the study his parents were poring over a piece of paper. His mother looked up as he entered.
"You've come inside now. That's good, last year you stayed out for too long and burned to a crisp and got that awful sunburn."
"Thanks Mum," Ciel replied sarcastically. He didn't like to be reminded that he had spent most of the previous summer looking like he was related to a lobster. "What are you doing?"
"The man the reframed your ancestor's portrait found a piece of paper inside that was written on by Earl Ciel Phantomhive," his mother informed him whilst his father got out his magnifying glass. "Would you like to see?"
"No thanks."
He had had enough of hearing about how great his ancestor Earl Ciel Phantomhive had been. He had been the head of Funtom when the company had been at its peak- that was great, but why did his parents have to name him after his ancestor?
It was creepy along with the fact that he looked exactly like him.
"It's a riddle from the Earl," his father added to sweeten the deal.
At those words Ciel leaned over to see the piece of paper. He was sure that he could solve a riddle written by his overrated ancestor. He read it once, then twice without it making any sense:
At the time that
you
possessed and contained
then removed
what is not possible,
anything and everything
remains, however improbable
must be the opposite of a lie
"Can I take it to solve it?" he asked his parents.
"Since we haven't made any progress, I suppose you can. I'll write it out so I can have a copy," Vincent answered, happy that he son was finally taking an interest in his famed ancestor.
All day Ciel pondered the answer to the riddle. He had held it up to the light to check for concealed writing, rearranged the words and letters, used the first letter of each line and word which led him nowhere. He scratched his head and looked at his surroundings, trying to think of a new approach.
He was sitting on the sofa in the library, surrounded by vast bookshelves full of books. The first edition of Sherlock Holmes: A Sign of Four caught his eye. The book was locked up in a glass display cabinet and he had never been allowed to touch it, although he did know where the key was. According to his father it had belonged to Earl Ciel Phantomhive.
Ciel loved Sherlock Holmes, he had his own copies of all the books so he tried to think of what Sherlock Holmes would do if he was presented with a riddle. Short of performing Gas Chromatography he had done everything possible so he abandoned using Sherlock Holmes as inspiration.
He stared down at the riddle for the hundredth time and ruffled his hair. If he couldn't solve the riddle then he would never be able to surpass his namesake.
The strange roundabout wording bothered him. He knew that the riddle was over 100 years old, but it was a little too rambling and the penultimate line was more succinct than the rest of the riddle. Was that a hint?
He grabbed the oldest dictionary in the library of a shelf in the reference section and began to rewrite the lines.
The first line "At the time that" became "When." He left the second line as "you" as that could not be abbreviated. The third line "possess and contain" was reworded to "have". "Then removed" became "eliminated,""what is not possible" translated as "the impossible","anything and everything" translated as "whatever". He left the penultimate line and reworded the last line as "the truth".
Ciel let out a whoop. He had solved the riddle.
The answer was:
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains , however improbable, must be the truth."
He immediately recognised it as being a famous quote from Sherlock Holmes. His eyes slid back to the first edition of The Sign of Four. If he memory was correct the quote came from that book.
Ciel hurried to the cupboard in the kitchen where his parents kept all the keys and grabbed the one for the display cabinet. He returned to the library and with a shaking hand he inserted the key into the lock and took the book out.
He opened the book and felt the thin hardback cover for any irregularities. In the bottom left corner of the back cover his fingers detected a slight indentation.
"I really hope I'm right- Dad will kill me if I'm not, " Ciel muttered aloud to himself and prayed that something really was concealed in the cover. If he desecrated his father's precious book for nothing he would end up in a lot of trouble.
With a deep breath he peeled the paper corner of the cover away from the harder part to reveal a tiny flat brass key with "library" scratched onto it.
Ciel let out a groan. There was another part of the puzzle. As his father had said, his ancestor took games to a whole new level.
On the positive side he knew that the key fitted into a keyhole that was somewhere in the library. He slowly rotated around on the spot, looking for anything that had been there since the 19th Century.
The bookshelves were all new like the windows, as were half the books. The only sold thing that he could think of was the black and white tiled chessboard floor.
It was now late afternoon and the sun had gone behind the clouds so the light from the sun was dim. Ciel switched on the electric light so he could see the floor better and spot imperfections.
Half an hour later he had crawled around on the black and white tiles of the library floor and had unearthed nothing. He hoped that he would not have to move the bookshelves to check the floor beneath them- he would have to ask for help and any chance of solving the riddle by himself had gone.
Finally he pushed the sofa away from the wall and bent down. Right by the skirting board there was a minute hole in the floor.
Ciel took a deep breath to steady his nerves and slid the key in carefully. It was a perfect fit.
***
If anyone guesses where the first riddle really comes from I shall be very happy, its from a book in a fairly famous series of books
Also sorry for the riddle overload and my rubbish riddle, it was the best I could come up with and I can never solve riddles.