Chapter 87 The Gradually Perfect Secret Room
Chapter 87 The Gradually Perfect Secret Room
"Why do I feel like Miss Tang has been infected by Brother Maori?"
“It feels a little unreliable.”
Megure Jusan and Takagi complained in a low voice, their thoughts coincided with each other.
Perhaps, this is tacit understanding.
After coughing lightly, Megure Jusan said, "Ms. Tang, Brother Maori. Although your guess is possible, the possibility is too low."
"So let's watch it carefully and look for more clues before we come to a conclusion. Gao Mu, go find the whereabouts of that woman. Maybe she knows something."
After receiving the order, Takagi's expression became serious.
"Yes!"
Conan came to the yard and looked around, but seemed to find nothing.
Just as he sighed and was about to return to the room, he vaguely heard the sound of flowing water not far away.
So Conan walked over to find the sound, and after pulling aside the grass, he saw a water windmill, and the sound came from here.
"This is!"
I saw several circles of thin wire wrapped around the shaft of the water windmill.
As if he thought of something, Conan hurried back to the house and found Tian Liquanmi.
The two of them quietly came to a secluded place and began to talk in low voices.
"You mean, the water windmill? The one that starts turning on its own at 7:30 every morning."
"But usually by that time, the master would have come down long ago, because breakfast time is always 7 o'clock."
Conan blinked and continued, "Do you remember how long ago Yuan Jin went up there?"
After thinking about it carefully, Tian Liquanmei shook her head.
"I'm sorry, little friend. I didn't notice these things at the time. But it should be when I was squeezing juice that Miss Tang happened to arrive, so the young master asked me to squeeze a glass of juice to entertain her."
"Did he go to the study to tell his father that there were guests?"
Tian Liquanmei nodded, but then shook her head.
“That’s not entirely true.”
Then, he explained, "Because when I was squeezing juice, for some reason, the power outage at home suddenly occurred."
"The young master went to turn off the switch himself, and then told the old master the news that the guests had arrived. Unfortunately, the old master ignored him and scolded the young master."
"But the master had this kind of personality when he was alive, so we are used to it. Even the lady..."
At the end of her speech, Tian Liquanmei paused, realizing that she had said too much.
"I'm sorry, I said the wrong thing accidentally. Please don't take it to heart. Mr. Maori asked you to come here to ask these questions, right?"
Tian Liquanmei smiled and said, "I didn't expect that at such a young age, you have already won Mr. Mao Li's trust."
Conan smiled awkwardly and scratched his head. "It's actually not that bad."
After leaving, Conan opened the lid of the tranquilizer gun and smiled confidently: So that's it. The murderer is that person.
Suddenly, he stopped.
Just thinking of the method of committing the crime.
But how do we explain the three pools of blood on the ground?
Was it to deliberately confuse the police, create the illusion of fighting with the murderer, and then...
"I see. Now everything makes sense."
Conan was stunned. This was not the sound he made.
He turned around and saw Qinghai Chuantang standing behind him with a smile on his face.
It seems that the inner narration just now was added by her for herself.
"Little friend Conan, please start your performance now."
Qinghai Chuantang smiled and stepped aside. But this behavior made Conan a little flustered, as if he had been "predicted".
Although he was suspicious, the most important thing at the moment was to solve the case at hand.
“This feeling is coming again”
Kogoro Mouri stumbled around, found the most comfortable position, sat on the recliner, and assumed a thinker's posture.
Tian Liquanmei showed a surprised expression.
"Is this the 'Sleeping Kogoro' of the legend?"
"Yes, that's right."
At this time, Conan was hiding under a desk nearby.
Fortunately, Kogoro Mori has completely covered him, so there is no need to worry about being spotted at a glance.
But when Xiaolan saw Conan disappear again, she felt confused: Why is it that every time Conan disappears, he always appears from some inexplicable place?
"Brother Maori, have you successfully deduced the murderer?"
Megure Jusan showed a surprised expression, "Could it be that the murderer is not that tall woman, but one of us?"
"Yes, Inspector Megure, you can say that. However, before I reveal the identity of that woman and who the murderer is, please listen to my reasoning."
Trick the juicer in advance and ask for a glass of freshly squeezed juice at the right time to cause a brief power outage.
The blade of the dagger used is naturally made of iron.
"Install an electromagnet in the ceiling chandelier. When the power goes out, the magnetic force disappears and the dagger will fall down."
"And Mr. Kikumoto was sitting right below. In John Dickson Carr's book, The Man with the Flutter, there is a trick that uses an electromagnet."
When the murderer walked in, the door was actually not locked.
After the murderer entered the room, he used blood to create the illusion of a struggle.
In addition to the three pools of blood, there are actually some tiny, hard-to-find blood spots everywhere.
The murderer did this in order to make the fight look more realistic.
After completing all this, the murderer left the room and closed the door.
Then, using strong magnets, they operated the door’s latch from the outside, creating the illusion of a closed room, thus making the crime impossible.
"And this method is mentioned in Saito Eiji's book Dangerous Water Systems."
There was a water windmill outside that started turning at 7:30 every morning, and the murderer happened to know this and took advantage of it.
A rope was tied to the rotating shaft of the water windmill, passed through the hole of the stone lantern and the bamboo forest, and then passed through the slightly opened skylight, where the dagger had been tied in advance.
"At 7:30 in the morning, the water windmill began to rotate. The rope was constantly rolled up and the knife that stabbed Mr. Kikumoto was pulled out and passed through the gap between the skylights."
"In the end, the dagger fell into the yard, and the ropes were all wrapped around the windmill shaft. This technique was borrowed from Yokomizo Seishi's "The Honjin Murder Case"."
At Megure Juzo's nod, Takagi immediately ran to the nearby water windmill to check, and indeed found the tangled rope on the windmill shaft.
"The tall women Ms. Izumi saw earlier were actually Motoshin and Yuki."
"Let Yuki sit on your shoulders, and then put on a long wig and a hat. After you disguise yourself carefully, others will naturally not be able to recognize you."
"When the police heard the news, their primary suspect became a fabricated image of a woman."
"So, the murderer"
Megure Juzo looked at him, then looked at Yuan Jin and Yuki beside him.
I find it incredible.
"Brother Maori, are you saying that the murderers are these two children? But, but, how is this possible? The tall woman before might just be a prank by the two of them."
Megure Juzo subconsciously wanted to defend the two children.
However, the murderer didn't even want to have the chance to quibble.
He said loudly: "It has nothing to do with Yuki! I did all this!"
Yuan Jin is already in the first grade of junior high school, but he is only 13 years old.
In other words, he is still a young man in conflict with the law.
"Mr. Maori, very good reasoning."
Qinghai Chuantang said this and closed the book in his hand. It was a book with a cowhide cover that he had taken from the bookshelf earlier.
"However, the murderer was not Yuanjin. Mr. Kikumoto actually committed suicide."
If the result of a 13-year-old son killing his father had already surprised them.
But when Qinghai Chuantang proposed the word "suicide", I was shocked.
"I have tried this method before, and it is not enough to kill people. It is also full of loopholes and cannot stand up to scrutiny."
Theoretically feasible and practically feasible are actually two different things.
"The door latch is not a horizontal latch. After all, this place is full of European style, and even the door is no exception."
"Even with a strong magnet, it is unrealistic to lock the door from the outside."
"As for the water windmill technique, it will be blocked when pulling it back, and it is impossible to successfully implement it as expected."
"So, the two bloodstains at the door and the bay window sill have been well explained."
"And the one in front of the bookshelf is actually where Mr. Kikumoto put the book he was reading back to its original place in order to hide the unfavorable evidence."
Qinghai Chuantang opened the book and handed it to Megure Jusan.
I could see that some places on the cover and inner pages of the book had traces of being pierced by something.
Megure Jusan suddenly realized: "That is to say, at the beginning, the dagger actually fell on the book that Mr. Kikumoto was reading."
Qinghai Chuantang nodded.
"Mr. Kikumoto's wounds were actually caused by himself."
"When Yuan Jin came and tried to lock the door with a strong magnet but couldn't, in order to help Yuan Jin complete the secret room, I endured the pain and locked the door."
"When he saw that the rope could not pull the knife out, Mr. Kikumoto came to the bay window, untied the rope, and threw the knife out."
"After doing all this, Mr. Kikumoto lay down on the recliner as Yuanjin wished."
"Finally, the impossible crime was accomplished - murder in a closed room."
Yuki remained silent from beginning to end.
Tian Liquanmei looked at Yuan Jin and seemed to understand something.
"Master, have you been brooding over your wife's death? That's just a meaning..."
“It’s not an accident!”
Yuan Jin interrupted her, "Mother's health was already failing, but that man still kept strict demands on her and didn't show any consideration for her at all."
"My mother's body has clearly reached its limit, yet you still treat her like this!"
Yuan Jin blamed all the faults on his father.
It has been like this since childhood, and his attitude towards his family is so cold and harsh.
Even if I always got the first place in the class, as long as my score was not full marks, I would still be severely criticized and blamed by him.
My mother already had heart disease.
As her condition became worse and worse, the requirements for her became more and more stringent, even to the point of being abnormal.
The mother didn't say anything, but Yuan Jin could feel her sadness.
"If it wasn't for him, how could my mother have died! And when my mother passed away, he didn't even look at her and just left the room!"
"Master, that's not the case!"
Tian Liquanmei quickly explained: "Madam's heart disease worsened, and she forced herself to take care of the master."
"And the master was so harsh on the lady on purpose in order to cheer her up. The master and the lady actually have the same mind."
"I could see at the time that the master was reluctant to leave, but he knew that if he stayed there, it would make you even more uncomfortable, so he chose to leave."
“And, and”
Tian Liquanmei's voice began to tear up.
After choking for a while, she wiped the tears from her face and continued, "The master has a stage 4 malignant brain tumor and he doesn't have much time left. He just asked me to keep it a secret from you and Miss."
"When he is usually strict with you, it is actually for your own good. It is to help you to avoid being criticized and blamed when you integrate into society in the future."
Yuan Jin felt as if his mind suddenly went blank and he couldn't remember anything.
He just stumbled and finally knelt on the ground.
"Why? How could it be like this?"
Tears flowed down my cheeks, slowly wetting the ground.
"Brother, I hate you!"
Yuki finally spoke.
After she yelled these words in a venting manner, tears could not stop flowing out and she had no time to wipe them away.
There seems to be no choice but to lament such a tragedy.
You can skip the last two chapters and not subscribe, it won't have any impact... because there aren't many cases written, it's very daily
(End of this chapter)