Erika's first instinct when seeing the crime scene is to wonder where the other two corpses are... since, after all, the epitaph requires six, and Lambdadelta can't be that inept. Though the Hebrew in that magic circle does look shabby, says Bernkastel.
Switch to some of the stakes complaining that some human is trying to frame Beato with those poorly-done magic signs. Okay, that's an interesting angle : the supernatural beings don't claim the murders this time around...
The servants notice that Genji doesn't seem to have waken up yet, go to the servant rest room... and find his body. (Once again, a couple of stakes are horrified by this development. Shouldn't Battler solving the epitaph have prevented the murders ?) Oh, and there was a small piece of tape on the outside of the door, meaning that Kanon and Kumasawa were the first to open it after it had been placed.
Cut to Natsuhi waking up to the phone ringing... Yep, it's still that same mysterious voice. They announce they've captured Krauss (cue his muffled-but-recognizable voice), and require that Natsuhi (1) keeps quiet about this ; and (2) shall go hiding in a closet at 1 PM in a certain guest room. A little game of hide and seek : if she's found, she loses. Though the voice does indicate they'll free Krauss whatever the result, if Natsuhi keeps her promise...
Lucifer, the head Stake, was preparing to announce the bad news about the murders to mistress Natsuhi, but Kanon and Gohda show up just then anyway.
Later, nearly everyone has gathered in the parlor room. Kyrie and Erika both intuit that it's time to look for a 6th corpse. Aside from the dead, the only missing people are... Grampa and Krauss. Grampa's study is as impenetrable as ever, so Natsuhi leads the run towards her husband's bedroom. There's nobody there, but those blood stains don't look very healthy... (Aside, Bernkastel guesses that since they Never Found the Body, he's still alive.) Natsuhi's Inner Monologue indicates that she suspects that, since she knows Krauss is alive, this is all part of a crazy plan of his. But what ?
A discussion starts about who had the key to Krauss's bedroom, but Erika interject that it's pointless, since Genji's master key has already disappeared. No closed room mystery in this iteration !
Natsuhi runs off to see her daughter's corpse in the guesthouse (and also partly to keep everyone's attention off Grampa's study), and a surprise is awaiting : all four corpses have disappeared !
Bernkastel has theories about this, of course : Krauss has no alibi and could have moved the corpses ; or maybe they faked their deaths and ran off when nobody was looking ; or maybe even those were decoy corpses, and the four just hid away from view. Those theories reach the ludicrous (after all, those wounds looked entirely deadly, while preserving the victims' faces), but Lambdadelta refuses to say anything in red yet.
Back inside the mansion, Gaap makes Genji's corpse disappear too. This should help Natsuhi a bit, but someone's bound to ask about the study again soon...
A lot of moving around in this installment, but that's fine for now. Erika makes for a perfect Deadpan Snarker, by the way. Do we have a trope for the Snark Sue ?
(And I find it intriguing that, so far, the facts support my crazy secret WMG that Gaap may be Krauss.)
