"At first, we assumed that the sharp marks on this arm came from the captain with the sharp blade who had been issued to the team members below the corpse of the deceased," Fujiwara explained to Gregory, holding a drawing of the knife marks drawn by a thousand feather pats. "But now, we have discovered that the marks on this arm, while also from the sharp blade, are not the same as the other sharp marks on the dismembered corpse - they all belong to the same [Sharp Alpha]"

"You're saying that one of the team members with only a blunt knife left has a particularly sharp knife?" Grigory raised an eyebrow. "Go and check the records of the Franklin Expedition to see if there is anyone on it who is in charge of the blacksmith's work."

"No, it's not sharpened, there's no dulled knife," Fujiwara said with a complicated expression on his face. "Rather...... A high-end knife that was very sharp from the start. ”

"What does that mean?" Gregory's face immediately lost its previous indifference, and he took the paper in Fujiwara's hand and carefully examined the picture on it. "You go ahead and get the core out as soon as possible."

"As you know, we can generally tell the specific properties of a cutting tool from the cross-section of the cut...... And this incision has two very special features compared to all the other incisions, including the few others that at first glance look similar to this one. "When it comes to this, Fujiwara sells a pass.

"This mark is neater and deeper than the other cuts, and it may have come from a very strong one-time impact, but that doesn't mean anything - as long as the force is strong enough, the knife can be ...... as long as it's not too dull," Grigory immediately spotted the first problem, looking at the trace map drawn by Chiba. But he didn't take it seriously at first, and it wasn't until halfway through the conversation that he realized something seemed wrong.

As long as the strength is strong enough? They have all been reduced to the point where they need to eat human flesh, where will there be people with enough physical strength and energy left? And if someone is really strong enough to do this, why do the other scars look so weak?

"Judging from the traces left on the bones by other meat cutting movements, most of the members of the expedition chose to cut the meat in a calmer way, which was relatively mild and less powerful. And this ......" Fujiwara continued to begin to state. "We did a simulation that if we were to cut such a wound in one go with the same dagger that caused the other wounds, it would take at least 20 kilograms of longitudinal force and much faster than normal swing speed. However, his purpose was to cut the flesh, not the bones, and there was no need to use such force. ”

Grigory was silent and continued to listen to Fujiwara's report.

"And the second point, which is actually more deadly, is the outline of all the cuts on this piece of paper – we have specially laid a coordinate system for these wounds as an aid." Fujiwara motioned to Gregory to observe the drawing.

"This is what Qian Yu reminded me - if the arm of the corpse is still wrapped in flesh, there is no way for the cutter to completely fix this arm, because the layer of flesh covered by the outside of the bone is soft and movable, so no matter how hard you grasp the arm, the arm will shake with the cutting action itself when cutting, causing the cut mark to not be exactly a straight line, but a ...... The arc core is a semi-arc with the back towards the grip point. ”

Saying this, Fujiwara simulated a knife with his right hand and a cut human hand with his left hand, demonstrating to Gregory. "Normally, it should be like this, but this particular notch is completely straight, at least an order of magnitude less curvature than all notches."

"So you suspect that this notch does not belong to the time of the Franklin Expedition, but after the bones have been ossified?" In this way, Gregor said in advance what Fujiwara and Chiba had already thought of, but were afraid to make. "There's even a possibility that this trace was chiseled up by modern people with modern tools before we found it, right? And maybe you're now suspecting that it's the author of this memoir, Shinichi Fujimura, who made all this, right? ”

"Yes......" Fujiwara sighed, looking at Gregory, who didn't seem very surprised by this. After all, according to his memoirs, he was the first to discover these bones, so I naturally raised such a possibility. ”

The so-called possibility, of course, is that the marks on this bone are not the traces caused by the real Franklin expedition, but that Fujimura Shinichi himself faked the traces of cannibalism after finding a clean piece of bone - such rumors have been around for a long time, so of course he would have the courage to do so.

However, the luckier thing for him was that the other bones of this corpse were really eaten, so the bone he faked himself was naturally not so conspicuous. Otherwise, even they would have been able to see such a problem, and there was no reason why the archaeologists who had gone with him in the first place could not discern it.

"Actually, I was worried about it at the beginning, because his search that day was very ...... Purposeful, and he was the first to come back — he took us there with so much pride and showed us a bone — a nick was just as clearly visible. Grigory said, shaking his head. Pity...... The other bones found in the vicinity later interfered with our attention, and the bone was touched and studied by Shinichi Fujimura alone, so we didn't have a chance to search the bone in detail. ”

"So, is this possible why he ended up killing Mr. Ito?" Fujiwara said thoughtfully.

"Perhaps," Grigory said noncommittal. "Anyway...... Forget it, let's leave that at that. You go and ask Ms. Yoshiko Kamada what she thinks about it, and then ...... That's it. Today we're going to seal the remains, and then I'm going to provide you with some documentation, and you're going to get a rough idea of the normative elements of a standard academic paper—I'll have both of you responsible for writing a draft. ”

……

However, what everyone didn't expect was that just when everything seemed to have settled and even passed the prosecution period, something happened again - although it looked different from the previous deliberate fraud and murder.

Gregory's suspicion of all the accusations of academic fraud, Shinichi Fujimura, died suddenly at home, and the preliminary judgment at the scene was that it was a heart attack.