Conan: Death is Watching Me

Chapter 49 The Third Knife
The time is 4: pm.

Gao Mo looked around under the vigilant gaze of several maids in the front yard.

"No one is allowed to enter until the police arrive!" the man with a mustache warned.

The bloody aura gradually faded away, and the sound of water flowing in the bamboo tube in the backyard returned to normal.

But soon the silence was broken by the sound of sirens surrounding the mansion.

The sound of wind whistled in from the door.

Inspector Megure pressed his hat on his head and was greeted by a man with a small mustache as he went to a solitary room on the side.

There were already police officers in the solitary room maintaining the scene, with flash cameras lighting up and taking photos one after another.

Due to the frequent occurrence of cases, the number of accompanying forensic personnel is obviously much smaller than before.

Collecting evidence is more like a formality.

The official testing department has been overwhelmed for a long time. Unless the social impact is huge, you don’t know how long you will have to wait in line.

"It's you again."

Megure Yuyuan glanced at the man with a small mustache, and his attention was quickly drawn to the messy solitary room covered in knife marks.

The bearded owner of the house was stabbed in the chest with a knife and nailed to the pillar of the house. He was covered in blood but remained standing, holding a samurai sword in his hand, and looked like he had experienced a fierce fight.

At this time, Gao Mo was standing at the door observing the scene. The strange yet familiar figure made Megure stunned.

"Who is this?"

"It's my partner, Kindaichi, Inspector Megure," the mustache-faced man explained quickly, "I originally wanted to bring him along to work today..."

"Kkindaichi?"

Megure was a little dumbfounded.

He is one of the few people who knows Gao Mo's identity.

"What are you guys working on?"

"Officer," the police officer at the scene reported, "The deceased is Marudenjiro, 51 years old... The cause of death was a single stabbing of the chest with a samurai sword. He was killed between 3 and 4 p.m...."

"The first people to discover the body were Mr. Mori and this Mr. Kindaichi, followed by the family's servant and the victim's wife."

"It is said that the victim sent all the servants away..."

"Well!"

Megure looked thoughtfully at the messy and knife-scarred scene inside the house, then followed the police officer's instructions to look at the anxious family members and two maids standing nearby.

The hostess was a woman with her hair tied up and wearing a kimono. She seemed to have dressed up carefully. As soon as you got close to her, you could smell a scent of perfume, which could not even cover up the bloody smell in the house. There was a panic on her face that could easily be misunderstood.

"Ma'am, I heard you haven't been home since this morning?"

"I, I'm going outside to relax." The woman avoided his gaze nervously, sweat beading on her forehead.

"What about between 3 and 4 p.m.?"

"What do you mean? Officer, do you suspect I killed my husband? Woohoo, how could a woman like me kill people..."

"I'm just conducting a routine interrogation."

Megure was so overwhelmed by the woman's crying that his attention was forced back to Gao Mo and Xiao Huzi.

"What about you guys? The fighting is so intense here, can't you hear anything?"

"We were all in the backyard and really didn't hear anything," the man with the mustache kept apologizing, relying on his good relationship with his old boss to analyze, "A guest happened to come visit at 3 o'clock, and Marudenjiro said he would take the guest to the private room and then go back, and asked me to wait for him in the backyard.

I waited for an hour but nothing happened, so I couldn't help but come over to check... I thought the criminal was most likely the visitor."

"Visitors?"

Megure took a notebook from the police officer that was found on the deceased.

"It's filled with itineraries. I'm indeed scheduled to meet four visitors today... Besides you, there's Suwa Yuji, Hatano Ikuya, and Akutsu Makoto."

"Hey, that's easy!" the man with the mustache said confidently, "To be able to fight like this in a solitary cell, the criminal must be a kendo expert. As long as we find the one among those three who is good at kendo, the case will be solved immediately!"

"Heh, you sound like you have no suspicion..."

"Officer, you know me too. How could I know anything about kendo?"

"I don't know kendo either," Gao Mo explained hurriedly when he felt Megure's gaze, looking at the photos on the cabinet next to him, "and Mr. Maru seems to be a good kendo player himself."

The photo shows a bearded man practicing with a sword, looking imposing, like a murderous ronin from ancient Japan. "My husband is indeed quite skilled," the hostess added. "He's already a third-degree kendo master. These two katanas are one for decoration, the other for his regular practice."

"Kendo 3rd degree?"

Megure was greatly surprised.

"So the murderer is not ordinary powerful."

Gao Mo walked into the solitary room only after the forensic personnel had finished collecting evidence. He turned his back to the crowd and scanned the chaotic scene. His eagle-eye vision was automatically activated, quickly taking in every corner with a subtle light.

"Wow!"

He had a feeling when he discovered this place before, and now it was even clearer with the extraordinary intervention. All the clues were gathered together and quickly classified according to the "information integration" method.

At this moment, Gao Mo seemed to be back in the supermarket shopping frenzy, his mind clearer than ever.

The first is the messy knife marks all over the room, even on the ceiling. They look like traces of a fierce battle, but after sorting them out with Eagle Eye Vision, it can be clearly seen that they were deliberately made by a knife.

There was no fighting at all.

Or perhaps the bearded man had no power to fight back at all - not only was the knife in his hand not stained with his opponent's blood, it didn't even leave tiny scratches from the chop or the connection between the blades.

Another thing is that the way the bearded man holds the knife does not match the photo.

Finally, there is the lattice cabinet which is also covered with knife marks.

There was a dragon carving on the cabinet. While everything else in the room was destroyed, only the carving remained intact.

The strangest thing is the cabinet itself.

The rows of drawers seemed to have been swapped and moved, and many of the cut marks could not be connected together properly.

"police officer!"

Suddenly, a police officer shouted outside.

"A male body was found in the bushes!"

"what?"

Next to the single room.

Several policemen carefully carried out a tightly wrapped body.

He is a man wearing glasses, a suit, a middle-parted hairstyle and a big nose.

Along with the body was a rather historic samurai sword.

The third knife...

"Dr. Hatano?!" The hostess exclaimed and covered her mouth, tears welling up on her face with shock, as if she had never thought about this scene at all.

"Do you know him?" Megure asked sharply.

"He is my husband's attending physician. He comes here every week for routine diabetes checkups." The hostess wiped her tears and turned her head away.

"Hatano... is that the Hatano Ikuya from the book?"

Megure was confused.

How come another person died?

Serial Killing or...

"What happened?"

The squinting man with sword-like beard whom Gao Mo had seen in the training hall entered the mansion and was led by the police to the scene with a sloppy uncle with tied hair on the other side.

He is still so imposing, and even his suit and tie cannot hide his murderous aura.

"You are all the people Mr. Maru agreed to meet today, right?" Megure asked solemnly, holding a notebook. "Can you tell me your names and the purpose of your visit?"

"I'm Suwa Yuji."

When the squinting man saw the doctor's body and the samurai sword next to the body, his expression changed slightly, and he seemed to be in a state of shock that he could hardly hide.

"Today I'm here to return the 500 million yen I borrowed from Mr. Maru..."

There is another chapter at the turning point

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(End of this chapter)