Hidden among the clumps of hyacinths, you find -
A tiny vial with a slip of paper, barely legible.
De r st Ros , t e c y is fall g i o d sp r
It’s yours to keep!
So as Conan surely expected, he found some “treasure”. After a quick examination, it appeared to be a vial with a piece of paper in it. What an odd way of keeping a message, but there must be more to it. This piece of paper probably was meant to be read by someone.
Conan carefully opened the vial to look at the paper in more detail. He couldn’t read it that well, but what he could read of the message was as followed:
De r st Ros , t e c y is fall g i o d sp r
Naturally, Conan took out his handy notebook to write these letters down. It was now time to decode the message. The first part was obvious, as it probably said “Dearest Rose”, didn’t it? What else could you start a message with? The second part, however…
Judging by the spacing, the first part of it could probably be saying “the city is falling”. That sounded about right. The mayor said it was one of the remainders of this city’s past after all. It would make sense if the letter was talking about the city.
Now for the last part. There were a lot more letters missing there and Conan had trouble putting it into words. But judging by the rest of the letter, it might have said “into despair”? That took him a while to figure out.
“Dearest Rose, the city is falling into despair.”
God. That was one creepy message to find. But who could have sent this? And who exactly was this Rose mentioned in the letter? If the name was Rose, that is. It could also have been Ross or Rosy. Let’s settle on “Rose” for now though, the mayor seemed to love flowers after all.
An investigation with only a first name - of which he wasn’t even sure it was correct - as lead, probably wouldn’t bring him much result. Especially if the name happened to be a last name instead. The possiblities were endless and Conan didn’t have enough clues yet. Perhaps he should ask the mayor himself? It probably wouldn’t hurt if he did.
Well then, let’s use the dove he kidnapped earlier for a nice reply.
