| Cosney Megundal |
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Cosney Megundal was a well-known businessman and philanthropist living in London during Ryūnosuke Naruhodō's time in the city. He was Naruhodō's first client in England.
History
Making a deal with Crogley
Cosney Megundal worked as a loan shark. He gets all his money from interest rates of people and never returns any of it to them. Instead, he uses it for donations to give London commercial areas named after him, this made him like a celebrity. One day, he wanted to leak government secrets. So he made a deal with a telegraph technician named Robert Crogley and would give him a large sum of money to him. In order to hide a secret telegram from England to Japan, Crogley visited his father, "Thrice-Fired" Mortar Milverton, and asked him to embed the information into two separate music discs. Megundal made the first transaction with Crogley and obtained the first music disc.
Murder of Mortar Milverton
- Main article: The Adventure of the Runaway Room
Telling Gina Lestrade what to do
Cosney Megundal met with Milverton on a cold February night in an omnibus to proceed with the second transaction. However, the transaction went awry due to Milverton wanting more money. Megundal eventually stabbed Mortar Milverton with a knife to the chest, killing him instantly. Then Megundal heard a scream from under his seat and found Gina Lestrade hiding in the compartment filled with tools trying to pickpocket people. He dragged her out and had her sit next to Milverton's corpse, with blood getting on her hands, making Oscar Fairplay and Adam Redifast witness her. After the two men left for the police, Megundal gave his black coat containing the second disc to Beppo, bribing him into depositing it into Hatch's Pawn Shop. Then he told Lestrade not tell the police or anyone else what she had seen or heard back there. He also told her to take the deposit receipt for the coat and hold it for two months from that day. In the event that he could not do this, Lestrade would have to go to the pawn shop and extend the deposit time to prevent it from being sold off as unwanted merchandise.
Megundal was then arrested for the murder of Milverton. Three days later, he was put on trial with Ryūnosuke Naruhodō as his defense attorney by Hart Vortex's order, and Barok van Zieks as the prosecutor. After Naruhodō brought up a possible third party inside the omnibus, Megundal was questioned if his attorney's assumption was correct. After he confirmed the deduction, Lestrade suddenly sent off a smoke bomb in the courtroom, allowing her to put some of Milverton's blood on the skylight and floor of the carriage while the commotion was going on. Afterwards, Megundal and Lestrade testified together to claim that he took the fall to let the pickpocket escape. This was all a ruse to sway the jury to vote "Not Guilty". But van Zieks revealed that the omnibus was somehow tampered with false evidence during the trial, which lead everyone, including Naruhodō, to question Megundal's innocence. This caused the businessman to snap and pound the witness bench, enraged that even his own attorney was turning against him. Since there was no evidence that those stains weren't there, the judge reluctantly declared Megundal "Not Guilty" despite many protests. He then laughed in mania and clapped as the courtroom was lit in an uproar.
Death
His demise
Afterwards, Megundal tried to pay Naruhodō a thousand guineas for defending him, only to be turned down by the angry attorney. He was then summoned by a bailiff go to the Crown Court to inspect the crime scene. Megundal complied as he considered himself a celebrity of London and it was his duty. But at the Court, he was locked up in the omnibus and it was set on fire. Megundal attempted to get out but ended up dying in the flames.
The following morning, Vortex revealed to Naruhodō and Susato about Megundal's death, and that Scotland Yard made no arrangements for the businessman to be present during the inspection.
His Legacy
- Main article: The Adventure of the Unspeakable Story
Two months later, Lestrade went to the pawn shop to receive the coat and discs before they were sold off. But then Robert Crogley, under the alias of "Egg Benedict", also came for them as well. During the pickpocket's trial for the murder of Hatch Windibank, it was revealed that Megundal's death was all arranged by Crogley: the technician used the money Megundal gave him for the first disc to hire people to kill him. After his crime is brought to light, van Zieks told Crogley that what he did made him no better than Megundal.
Personality
Mugshot
Cosney Megundal strived to carry the welcoming and jovial air of a selfless philanthropist and man of the people, spending vast amounts of his fortune on the preservation and restoration of many commercial areas, asking only for the newly restored areas to carry his name.
The dark reality, though, was that this was all an act meant to mask his insatiable greed and garner the undeserved trust of others. Said charity was funded by the dirty money obtained through his loan shark work. Money and fame were all he held sacred, resorting to criminal acts such as murder and treason to grow his fortune.
Name
- His name is a play on "kozeni megundaru" which is kozeni megundeyaru in the Kansai dialect, meaning "I'll spare you some change".
Development
- Character designer Kazuya Nuri struggled to work out how trustworthy or suspicious Megundal should look, since he would be Naruhodō's first foreign client. He eventually settled on a design that leaned more toward "suspicious".