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"Then you two should go back and rest early. After all, whether it's the inheritance or catching the murderer, I'm counting on you..."
Another peaceful night passed.
The next morning, Baihe Qing came to the dinner hall as usual. Mary came earlier than him because she needed to make breakfast.
Before him, the rest of the people had basically arrived.
Except Kevin, the journalist who was a former soldier.
"What did you say? There's no one in his room?!"
In the hall, not many people noticed the appearance of Shirakawa Kiyoshi. The eldest son Tone Takahiro looked at the old butler Kurahashi Motoaki in front of him and asked in disbelief.
"Yes, Mr. Kevin is not in the room, and I have just looked for him in other places in the annex, but I couldn't find him..." Kurahashi Motoaki replied respectfully.
"Damn it! How could it be? Could it be that he also..."
[Another person is missing...]
Listening to the conversation between the two, Shirakawa Kiyoshi made eye contact with Mary, then sat down in his seat and picked up his chopsticks.
But no matter what, you still have to eat first.
"Why do I feel like there's one less person in this villa every time the sun sets..." Mei Ling said quietly, holding a knife and fork.
"Mr. Kevin was also killed?" Kitakami Kazuhiko had a puzzled look on his face, "But why? Did the murderer have any reason to kill him?"
"No reason." Hearing what he said, Bai Heqing said.
"Detective Shirakawa, why do you say that?" Tone Takahiro asked hurriedly after noticing that Shirakawa Kiyoshi had arrived in the hall.
"Being missing doesn't necessarily mean that someone has been murdered. Moreover, Mr. Kevin has nothing to do with the inheritance, so the murderer really has no reason to kill him." Bai Heqing replied.
"Detective Shirakawa means that Mr. Kevin disappeared on his own? But the reason he did so was..." asked the second young master Tone Kosuke.
"That batch of inheritance." Mei Ling suddenly spoke up, and said meaningfully: "Our Mr. Kevin may have found the specific location of that batch of inheritance..."
Seeing that she spoke, Bai Heqing lowered his head again and continued to eat breakfast.
"Why do you say that?" Tone Takahiro asked anxiously. It was obvious that he cared very much about the inheritance left by his father.
“There’s no particular reason. It’s just that a few days before coming to the annex, this man would come to my boss from time to time to ask for information about the inheritance.
Two nights ago, when I couldn't sleep and went to the corridor to smoke, I also saw this man wandering around the annex alone... so I made this guess."
Mei Ling replied casually that the boss she was referring to was Yang Douxin who had been poisoned to death.
"Why didn't you tell me about this before?!"
"Brother! Calm down!"
Upon hearing this, Takahiro Tone suddenly became excited and angry, but Mei Ling just looked at him with a smile.
"Master Li Gen, because this is unnecessary. No matter how hard our Mr. Kevin tries, he can't take the inheritance away from the island now. Instead of stopping him, it's better to let him continue to work hard. Maybe he can help us find the inheritance earlier, right?"
"you……!"
As if his chest was blocked, Takahiro Tone pointed at him and held his breath for a long time. Finally, he sat back in his seat with a grim face and said nothing more.
"Well, now is not the time to think about these things..."
Seeing his expression, Mei Ling smiled and comforted him, "Anyway, that man will be fine. Let's finish breakfast first, and then we can go find him together. Maybe Mr. Kevin will bring us a big surprise... Detective, you think so too, right?"
When she suddenly asked this, Bai Heqing looked up at her and nodded slightly.
"Ah."
It seems that the time to leave this island is approaching.
Chapter 437 Activating the Water Tower
After breakfast, everyone decided to act separately.
Qing Baihe and Mary came to Kevin's room to look for clues, and the rest of the people divided into several groups, trying to search for his whereabouts inside and outside the villa.
Kevin's room was almost the same as the one they had seen the day before. The light was still on on the desk in the corner. Bai Heqing walked over and saw a crumpled piece of paper pressed by a pen on the desk.
He picked it up and took a look. There were extremely sloppy scribbles on the paper, which looked like the Chinese character "山" (mountain) written upside down.
Although it was a bit abstract, he could barely make out that the drawing on the paper should be the floor plan of the villa.
Many places on this graffiti are crossed out, except for a circle on the far right.
Looking at this somewhat inexplicable graffiti, Bai Heqing suddenly remembered that Mei Ling had mentioned to him before that in the middle of the night a few days ago, she sometimes saw Kevin wandering around the villa alone.
Could it be that the place marked on this graffiti is the place that Kevin has investigated?
【First floor of the annex building. 】
This word suddenly flashed through Baihe Qing's mind.
The rooms on the second and third floors of this villa are completely open. If there were any secrets in these rooms, everyone would have found them long ago. There is no way they would have to wait for Kevin to investigate them one by one.
Only the first floor of the annex was submerged in water.
What Mei Ling had seen before was Kevin going to the first floor of the annex alone in the middle of the night to investigate.
But...is that guy so good at swimming?
Behind Bai Heqing, Mary looked down at the oxygen cylinder against the wall, squatted down, and glanced at the instrument on it.
[It’s empty now.]
No, when she and Shirakawa Qing came to this room the night before, the oxygen tank was not empty.
Confused, she picked up the oxygen cylinder and reached out to touch the bottom of the bottle.
[The bottom of the bottle is still wet, at least within a few hours, someone must have used it. ]
"Baihe, this oxygen tank is empty." Mary turned around and pointed to the oxygen tank in her hand towards Baihe Qing.
"I actually forgot about it..." Bai Heqing looked back and nodded slightly.
"This oxygen cylinder is indeed the best evidence to prove that Kevin has been conducting investigations on the first floor of the annex building in the middle of the night these past few days."
"Do you think the inheritance was hidden by Eijiro Tone on the first floor of the annex?" Mary asked.
“I’m not sure, but considering that Tone Eijiro renovated this annex immediately after purchasing it fifteen years ago, even if there is no inheritance on the first floor of the annex, there must be clues related to the whereabouts of the inheritance.
Kevin may have discovered this clue during his secret investigation in the past few days."
"What are you going to do next? Do we have to go down into the water and take a look ourselves?"
"That's not necessary."
Bai Heqing shook his head, and the two walked out of the room together.
"Not to mention that my shoulder injury hasn't healed yet, I'm not a good swimmer either. I'll easily become a water ghost if I go down...
Of course, it doesn't mean that there is no solution at all. I think that fifteen years ago, the accumulated water in this villa was definitely not scooped out one scoop at a time by the construction team at that time.
There must be some device on this island that can pump seawater from outside the island to keep the water level in the villa constant at all times.
In this case, this device must be able to pump out the seawater again. As long as we find this device, we can go to the first floor of the annex."
"As for the person who might know where this device is..."
Mary stroked her chin and thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers, looked at Bai Heqing, and said with a smile: "That must be the person who had been in this villa fifteen years ago!"
After deciding on their next move, the two left Kevin's room and headed straight to the kitchen of the annex.
There, the two saw the old butler Kurahashi Motoaki and the housekeeper Oiri Sumiko who had already started preparing lunch.
"Good morning, Butler Kurahashi." Bai Heqing spoke first and greeted him.
"Two of you?"
Kurahashi Motoaki, who was washing dishes, looked back and a kind smile suddenly appeared on his face.
"Have you found Mr. Kevin? Or are you two hungry?"
"We're almost there. We came here to ask where the device that controls the water level in this villa is?" Bai Heqing asked.
"A device to control the water level? You two must have seen it before. It's the water tower behind the annex.
The water level in the annex has always been controlled by the machine in the water tower, but..."
Having said that, Kurahashi Motoaki sighed softly.
"Only Mr. Eijiro knows how to control the Water Tower. Even I don't know... But if you two really want to know, you can go to Mr. Eijiro's room. I think there may be records there."
Just like that, after getting the room key of Tone Eijiro's bedroom from Kurahashi Motoaki, Shirakawa Kiyoshi and Mary hurried over together.
Unlike the guest rooms where everyone else stayed, Tone Eijiro's room was more luxuriously decorated, but neither of them was in the mood to appreciate it.
After entering the room, the two men divided the work tacitly and started searching from the left and right sides of the room respectively.
Whether it was Shirakawa Kiyoshi, a policeman, or Mary, an agent, they were both extremely skilled in this behavior. They searched every corner of Tone Eijiro's bedroom at an extremely fast speed.
In the end, only Shirakawa Kiyoshi found a handwritten schedule in a book that Eijiro Tone had placed on his bedside table.
"Is this... a schedule?" Mary came over to take a look, looking puzzled.
On this timetable, the capitals of several important countries in the world are written in rows, and the different hourly times are written behind them.
"No, it should be a time difference watch."
Looking at the form in his hand, Bai Heqing frowned slightly.
"If I remember correctly, the times marked at the end correspond to the time differences between the capitals of these countries and Tokyo."
In this time difference table, the top is the midnight time in Tokyo, and the bottom is the time in London, England.
Looking carefully at the capitals of various countries and the time differences on the table, Shirakawa Qing suddenly remembered a piece of information that Kurahashi Motoaki had inadvertently revealed to him and Mary the night before.
During his lifetime, Tone Eijiro had a hobby of collecting clocks from other countries. Therefore, many rooms in the annex are filled with clocks produced in various countries around the world. Just adjusting these clocks every day would take up a lot of Kurahashi Motoaki's time...
"I see……"
A guess suddenly popped up in his mind. Bai Heqing turned to look at Mary and asked, "What time is it now?"
"It's almost noon, what's wrong?" Mary looked at the time on her watch and asked curiously.
"Time is running out. Come on, I know how to activate that water tower."
Having said this, Shirakawa Kiyoshi took Mary and quickly left the room.