Conan’s Corpse Picker

  Chapter 46 Choose one from three

   Jiang Xia walked into the side room and looked at the murder scene.

Opposite the door, a corpse holding a samurai sword was nailed to the wall by another long sword through his chest.

   It looked like there had been a vicious fight here—knife marks all over the walls, even the ceiling. The surroundings were also shattered.

  The deceased is the head of the family here, Marudenjiro.

   A while ago, he suspected that his wife was cheating, so he asked Kogoro Mouri to come and investigate.

   Today, Kogoro Mouri found out the results and came over to deliver.

   During the conversation between the two, other guests came to visit. Marudenjiro left Mouri Kogoro and went to the side room to receive other guests first.

   Mori Kogoro waited for a long time, but Marudenjiro didn’t come back.

   When he saw his client again, Marudenjiro was already a corpse.

   After calling the police, the police did not do anything.

  —When Jiang Xia came, the suspects had already been found, no more, no less, exactly three.

  One of them is Mrs. Maru’s lover and family doctor. The other two were people who had borrowed money from Marudenjiro, one was a sculptor and the other was a kendo instructor.

   Jiang Xia swept his eyes and stopped on the corpse’s leg.

  —a paw-leg shikigami.

   Jiang Xia’s expression has softened a lot, and it’s good to have a harvest.

   Then he decided to drop the shikigami earlier, pick it up and go home earlier.

   Jiang Xia looked at the kendo coach among the suspects: “You are the murderer.”

   He didn’t pay much attention to the wording, after all, in this world of detectives, the wrong murderer would not be accused of libel.

  …mostly murdered by the framed, or by their relatives and friends.

   Mumu Police Department heard Jiang Xia’s conclusion, and his heart thumped.

  —A few minutes ago, Kogoro Mouri said the same thing as Jiang Xia.

  Mori Kogoro felt that if he could match up with the kendo master Marudenjiro like this, he could only be another kendo master, Suwa.

   However, under the reminder of a certain child, they discovered some wrong details one after another, and believed that the murderer was not Suwa, but someone deliberately framed it.

   Brother Jiangxia, what’s going on today?

   “That…” The Mumu police department hesitated to look at his new and old brother, and then looked at the strong sun outside, and began to think “will the possessed souls be killed by the sun” for no reason.

  Mao Lilan came over and reminded Jiang Xia in a low voice:

   “The deceased’s holding the knife was wrong, usually his dominant hand was in front, but he obviously held it backwards.”

   “That’s right.” Mouri Kogoro said calmly, “This way of holding the knife, and the marks of the fight, at first glance, it looks like a layman’s actions—the ceiling is covered with knife marks, who would fight in that kind of place?”

  Conan gave Mouri Kogoro a faint glance. This is clearly his line. And when he said it just now, he was knocked on the head by Mouri Kogoro, but now, Mouri Kogoro actually used it himself…tui! Uncle Double.

  Jiang Xia squatted down, pretended to check the body, secretly reached out and grabbed the shikigami on Yumaru Denjiro’s leg, and said casually, “Those are using our reverse thinking.”

   Shikigami was a little afraid of him, and slowly shrank in a circle.

   But still stubbornly holding the corpse, refusing to come down.

   Jiang Xia regretfully let go.

He stood up and glanced back at the messy room: “To be able to carve so many knife marks shows that the murderer has a lot of time to set up the scene. Even if he is not familiar with kendo, he can know how to hold it more smoothly with a little gesture. Reverse.”

  Conan heard half of it and understood Jiang Xia’s meaning: “You mean to say that the murderer arranged this so that we can come to the conclusion that the scene was deliberately arranged like this by laymen, and then exclude the experts first?”

   And among the three suspects, there is only one kendo master… Could it really be Suwa?

   Uncle Maori guessed right as soon as he came up!

  Conan was surprised by this fact, but soon, he turned back to a dead fisheye with disdain.

   After all, there are only three suspects here.

   With a one-third probability, catch some cats to choose, and one of the three can only guess correctly.

   The Mumu Police Department also breathed a sigh of relief. Brother Jiang Xia’s logic was still online.

but…

   He touched his chin thoughtfully, feeling that the reasoning was not rigorous enough:

“However, it is also possible that a layman knew that Mr. Suwa would be coming today, so he deliberately made the murder scene more exaggerated, so that when we saw these traces, we thought it was Mr. Suwa pretending to be a layman. but it was actually arranged by a layman because it was too layman to be easily thought of as a layman’s scene deliberately arranged by an expert.”

   Jiang Xia: “…” He barely understood what the Mumu Police Department was saying.

   But if you go on like this, it will only end.

   So Jiang Xia turned away silently, pretended not to hear, and continued to say his own:

   “The deceased shed a lot of blood. When the murderer poses for him, some will inevitably get on his body, hands or soles. You can try to test it on Mr. Suwa. If not, look for discarded clothes along the way.

   “Besides, there is one more point…”

   Jiang Xia walked to the wall, where there was a standing cabinet consisting of many drawers.

   Compared with other places, the damage to the cabinet is even worse, and the knife marks on it are dense and messy.

   If you look carefully, you can find that there are actually two types of scratches on the cabinet. One is very deep, like it was carved on purpose, and there are weird breaks at the beginning and end. The other is consistent with the knife marks elsewhere.

   This means that the order of these drawers is deliberately disrupted.

  —The deceased had carved words on the cabinet. After the murderer found it, he disrupted the order of the drawers, and then, in order to cover up the nicks, he simply arranged the whole house as if it had been slashed by random knives.

   Jiang Xia’s gaze followed the broken mark.

   Then he put on gloves, took out a few drawers, and rearranged them.

   Soon, as the drawer returned to its original state, the knife marks on it recovered, forming two pseudonyms “すわ”.

   – is the pronunciation of “Suwa”.

   (end of this chapter)