Chapter 24 fourth quarter

Just as Mizuho finished packing her bags, Suzuki came to inform Wujing of her visit.Mizuho came to the entrance and met him. "I heard you're going back?" he said.Suzue should have told him. "Before you go back, please listen to me." "I also want to chat with you." Mizuho said, then tilted her head. "However, it's probably just to confirm my own thoughts. We should both want to go together." "So, you also see the truth of the incident?" Wu Jing lowered his head and looked up at her. "Yeah." Mizuho nodded slightly, turned around and looked behind him, making sure that no one was listening to the conversation between the two of them.

"I got confirmation from my grandmother too. My reasoning can't be wrong." Hearing that Mizuho had talked to Shizuka, Wu Jing was slightly surprised. "What did the old woman say?" "She said that everything should be handled by her, and I have promised her that I will not interfere." "Hey..." Wu Jing bit his lower lip, looked down for a moment and then raised his head, "It seems that I really need to have a good talk with you. Can I go to your room to talk?" "Well, please." Mizuho pushed the slippers to him. The two entered the room and sat opposite each other across the table as before.Wu Jing first took a deep breath, and took out the sketchbook that Shui Sui had seen before.

"You should have figured out the identity of the murderer?" he asked. "Yes." Mizuho replied. "My reasoning can't be wrong." After hearing what Mizuho said, Wujing whispered tentatively, "Is...Yongdao?" Mizuho nodded. "That is to say, you have also seen through his modus operandi of pretending to be Zong Yan?" "Not only that, I also know that my grandmother has been hiding it for him." Mizuho added. "Then next, I will state my reasoning to you. If there are any mistakes, please point them out in time." After speaking, he began to state his reasoning about the incident in the basement, and his thoughts basically tended to be the same as Mizuho's.

"It's not wrong." After listening, Mizuho said, "You are clearly an outsider, yet you can reason to this extent." "Because I am an outsider, I can look at the whole thing more objectively." Then, looking into Mizuho's eyes, he asked, "By the way, what do you think is his motive for committing the crime?" "That's not yet clear." Mizuho begins to talk about her conversation with Shizuka, and Nagashima seems to have a deep love for Laiko. "Actually? Does Mr. Yongdao really love Mrs. Lai Zi?" "Well... Grandma said she noticed it from Mr. Yongshima's attitude."

"In terms of attitude...but...let me make an analogy." Wu Jing pondered his words for a moment, "Is it possible that this is a misleading?" "Misleading? Misleading what?" "In other words..." Wujing was at a loss for words and didn't know what to say. "In this incident, there are a few points that have always concerned me." He chose to switch the subject. "How did Mr. Nagashima call Sohiko and Rieko Mita to the basement in the middle of the night? How did he know about Matsuzaki's bribery? How did he tamper with Ms. Mita's typewriter? These questions have not yet been solved. "

"Well, indeed..." Mizuho was speechless.As he puts it, these issues have not been resolved at all. "So I came up with an idea. Could it be that the Nagashima family has some kind of secret connection with the Sohiko family and Mita Rieko?" "Secret connection?" Mizuho couldn't help frowning.It never occurred to her. "You mean to say that the three of them share a certain secret?" "Exactly. Moreover, this secret is not ordinary. What kind of secret is it? The Nagashima family is not related to the Takemiya industry, and it should not be a business connection."

The puppeteer's tone was flat, but Mizuho gasped. "Could it be..." "That's right." Wu Jing seemed to sense her surprise, and nodded. "Whether it has something to do with Mrs. Lai Zi's suicide—that's what I think." "Auntie's suicide... But, what kind of relationship is there?" "Forgive me for being too jumpy," the puppeteer said. "I doubt it was a suicide." "It's not suicide? It's impossible! Kaori and uncle saw the moment aunt jumped off the building with their own eyes." "Their testimony may not be correct."

Wu Jing's light gray pupils looked straight at Shui Sui. "From Ms. Kaori's description, it can be seen that she is unable to see the appearance of the woman who jumped from the building, no matter in terms of time or location. So, to be precise, Ms. Women like Mrs. Lai Zi ran up the stairs and jumped off the balcony." Mizuho felt his heart beating violently, and then his heart beat faster, and his whole body became hot. "You mean, the woman who jumped off the building wasn't her aunt?" "Yes. There is another person who has this doubt. That is Mr. Qingjiang. You told me that he said this before he was alive, and he never believed that Auntie Zizi would die in this way. I guess Mr. Qingjiang's reasoning It’s all starting from this, so it’s also a starting point to build a series of assumptions.”

Wu Jing opened the bag he brought, and took out the clown doll, "Why did Mr. Qingjiang take this doll out? Does he want to investigate what about this doll? For the murderer, what about this doll?" Will being investigated be a threat to him? On the day Mr. Qing Jiang was killed, the police officer Yamagishi once said that there were no traces of being touched by people on the doll——but it is impossible that there will be no traces. Indeed, people The puppet was originally placed in a glass box and was not touched much. However, as far as I know, there have been several people who have touched the doll directly, and the lack of fingerprints of these people on the doll is a bit Can’t explain it? Why did these fingerprints disappear? Probably because they were wiped off by the murderer. And why did the murderer wipe off the fingerprints on them? It may be because there are fingerprints left on the doll that will cause bad things if they are discovered.”

"Fingerprints that would do bad things if discovered?" "That's Rieko Mita's fingerprints. It's because she didn't have a chance to touch the doll. If her fingerprints are found on the doll, the police will definitely investigate when she touched the doll." "Miss Mita's fingerprints?" Mizuho shook his head vigorously, feeling a dull pain near his temple. "I do not understand what you are saying." "This is Mr. Qing Jiang's reasoning during his lifetime. Mrs. Lai Zi who jumped off the building was actually Mita Rieko in disguise."

"How is this possible……" "What an admirable idea." The puppeteer's eyes sparkled. "Although Mr. Qingjiang had such an idea, he couldn't find a way to prove it. At this time, he remembered that Mrs. Lai Zi rushed up the stairs and threw the doll on the ground. If Mrs. Lai Zi is a fake, the doll must be Will bear the fingerprints of this fake." "Qingjiang noticed this, so he wanted to bring the doll to the university for fingerprinting?" "It should be like this, that's right. However, Mr. Qingjiang's thoughts were known by the murderer—that is, the Yongdao family. I think the problem should be the phone call Mr. Qingjiang made before he left the house. Maybe he put the I told the person I was thinking about on the phone. Unfortunately, Mr. Yongdao overheard him. Therefore, Mrs. Yongdao had to race against time to get rid of him." "Unbelievable." Mizuho covered her cheeks with her hands. "Then how did the real aunt die?" Facing his question, Wu Jing's expression was slightly distorted. "It's very difficult to say. I think Mrs. Laizi fell from the balcony and died before the disguised Mita Rieko jumped off the building. She was probably given sleeping pills or something." "In other words, the murderer is those three people...Mr. Nagashima, Uncle, Miss Mita?" "exactly." "Unbelievable." She repeated, shaking her head, "but... Although it was a cross-dressing, it is an indisputable fact that the woman did jump off the building at that time. It is impossible for the woman to be safe and sound?" "So..." Wu Jing stared at Shui Sui. "There is a clever mechanism hidden in it, a mechanism that non-mechanism lovers cannot understand. Without this book, I am afraid that this mechanism will be buried deep in this mansion forever." He took the puzzle book out of his bag. "Is this book really hiding a mystery..." "Yes, the key to this suicide is hidden in the book." After speaking, he turned over one of the pages of the small sketchbook, on which he drew the floor plan of the second floor of the Cross Mansion. "That night, Miss Kaori and Zongyan rushed out of the room immediately after hearing the scream, and the woman jumped off the balcony right in front of their eyes. Afterwards, Zongyan took Miss Jiaori back to the room and placed her in a wheelchair After that, she left the room again. Miss Kaori then took a wheelchair to the balcony where the wife jumped off the building to observe the situation downstairs—is there any problem with the above description?" "No problem." Suho said. "According to Kaori's testimony, there seems to be only the aunt who fell to the ground and the uncle who rushed over under the balcony, and there are no other women." "That's right." Wu Jing nodded slowly, "Madam fell from the north balcony, so naturally there is only Madam's body there." "..." "However, the place where the woman jumped was not the north balcony, she jumped from the east balcony." "That's impossible. In front of Kaori's room, you can only see the north balcony." "You can't see it if you look in a straight line, but if there is one at this position..." As he said that, he drew a line at the intersection of the corridors on the floor plan, "If there is a mirror at this position, what Miss Jiazhi can see in front of her room will become the corridor on the east side. And the north in her eyes The side staircase naturally becomes the east staircase." Mizuho's heart felt a throbbing throb again.Mirror?Could it be that what Kaori sees are all virtual images in the mirror? "All of this is a carefully arranged trap." Wu Jing said calmly. "After Madam was murdered, Souhiko visited Kaori so that she could stay in the room. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Nagashima put the mirror in place, and Mita Rieko disguised herself as Madam and waited downstairs. Afterwards, Rieko uttered a mournful cry And rushed up the stairs and jumped from the east balcony. This mansion is a second-floor building except for the north side. As long as you park a van under the east balcony and put quilts on it, even if you jump from the second floor It is estimated that there will be no serious problems. After witnessing the woman jumping off the building, Zongyan first carried Miss Kaori back to the room. During this time, Yongshima put away the mirror and hid her figure. What happened afterwards was just like Kaori Miss experienced the same, and Mr. Nagashima and Rieko had already left the mansion while she was not paying attention." Wu Jing put the clown doll in front of Shui Sui, "The reason why they replaced the 'boy and horse boy' next to the stairs with a clown was to serve this institution. Because there is a difference in height between 'boy and horse boy' , it might be noticed by Kaori that the left and right are reversed. So, they replaced it with this doll that has no difference in height between left and right." "That's it..." As Wu Jing said before, this explanation is really not acceptable to laymen.However, Mizuho could not find any basis for his counterargument. "Please read this page." He opened the black-covered puzzle book in front of Mizuho.This page introduces various traps that use mirrors.It is written that as long as a mirror is placed at an angle in the box, the box will be empty when viewed from the front.Use this mechanism to hide the items in the box. "I didn't notice it at first, but there are these intriguing notes in the margins of this page. Look here." Where Wu Jing was pointing to, there was a figure that looked like a cross drawn with a pencil, and a straight line was drawn obliquely at the intersection of the cross, and the word "mirror" was written next to the line. "This is... the notes made by my uncle?" "It should be right. Mrs. Zong Yan also found the inspiration for the corridor mechanism from this book." "Qing Jiang said that he found something interesting in this book, and it turned out to be this note." Mizuho shook his head slowly.If the book hadn't been given to Qing Jiang at that time, what kind of situation would it be now? "However, there is still one problem that has not been resolved." Wu Jing tapped the floor plan on the plain noodle book and said. "How does such a huge mirror come and go like a magic trick? Whether Mr. Qingjiang sees through this is unclear, but I remembered what you said a few days ago." "what I said?" Just as Shui Sui finished speaking, there was movement outside the door.Wu Jing immediately got up quickly and opened the door.Jiazhi outside the door held her breath in panic, and looked up at Wujing. "Jiazhi, did you hear that?" Jiazhi shook her head vigorously in denial. "I wouldn't do such a thing as eavesdropping. It's just..." "Just what?" "I saw my grandmother coming from here... her face was blue. I just wanted to come over and see what happened." Shui Sui immediately looked at Wu Jing, "It's a bad thing this time." He whispered. "Perhaps she overheard our conversation." "Where did grandma go?" Mizuho asked Kaori. "I think she seems to have gone downstairs." Upon receiving the answer, Wu Jing immediately left the room, followed by Shui Sui. When they came to the first floor, they saw Lingzhi cleaning alone, and Mizuho hurriedly asked her where Shizuka was. "The madam should be in her own room." She replied blankly. "She happened to meet Mr. Yongdao when she went downstairs, and asked him to come to the room." "In other words, Mr. Nagashima is also in grandma's room?" "yes." "It's dangerous." Wu Jing flicked the hem of his black clothes and ran up the stairs again.Mizuho also followed behind him. On the second floor, Wujing went straight to Shizuka's room.He skipped knocking and broke into the room roughly. As soon as he entered the door, he saw Yongdao standing facing the portrait.He looked surprised when he saw Shui Sui, but in the next moment, Wu Jing rushed to Yong Dao and pushed him away. At the same time, a sharp spear pierced the air and pierced through the portrait. "grandmother!" Mizuho who entered the room screamed.In the corner of the room, Shizuka was holding a musket, pointing at Yongdao. "Why did you kill me..." Thanks to Wu Jing for saving his life, Yong Dao stood up with a sad expression. "We already know, Mr. Nagashima. You pretended to be Sohiko, Mita Rieko pretended to be Mrs. Raiko, and the mechanism of the mirror." Wu Jing raised his left fist and tapped on the portrait, and there was the sound of broken glass rubbing against the inside of the picture. "The back of the frame is a mirror. The mirror is probably covered by a piece of plywood. We can basically confirm that the width of the frame is the same as the width of the corridor. When this portrait is decorated in the corridor, the frame There is probably a row of rollers at the bottom of the painting, as long as you open a lock somewhere, you can easily move the painting." It turned out to be such a thing, Mizuho felt relieved.On the night Lai Zi was killed, this portrait was still adorned in a corner of the corridor.If the back of the painting is a mirror, the mechanism Wu Jing described earlier would not be difficult to operate. Afterwards, the huge mirror decorated in Yongdao's store emerged in Mizuho's mind.Kaori once said that it was Sohiko's proposal.In other words, Zong Yan had already designed a mechanism to kill Lai Zi at that time, and the purchase of mirrors for decoration may be just a cover-up.Moreover, it was Zonghiko who designed this portrait and decided its size. "What did you say..." Yong Dao looked up at the imaginary painting, and then faced Wujing again. "I don't understand what you are talking about. You are an outsider, don't reason for me there." "Of course, what I'm talking about is just reasoning. But all the circumstances indicate that you are the murderer. The old lady already knows about your crime of killing Zong Yan and Mr. Qing Jiang." After hearing his words, Nagashima looked at Shizuka in panic.Shizuka still pointed the musket at him. "I saw it." She said calmly. "That night, I saw you... and saw you trying to frame Mr. Matsuzaki." Yong Dao's face was obviously pale, only his round eyes were bloodshot and red. "And Qing Jiang... also died at your hands, right?" After listening to Shizuka's words, he bit his lower lip and clenched his fists.Floating blood vessels can be vaguely seen on the face of the fist. "Answer me! Why did you kill Auntie!" Mizuho asked, but Yong Dao turned his face away. "Let me answer for you." Shizuka said, "You are not the son of my husband, Koichiro Takemiya, are you?" Mizuho looked at Yongdao suspiciously, only to see that he also stared at Shizuka with wide-eyed eyes. "You already know?" The words leaked out of his mouth. "Understood." Shizuka replied. The crowd was dominated by silence, only Yongdao's irregular breathing could be heard, but after a while, even the breathing disappeared.When Yong Dao raised his head again, he regained his usual calm expression. "Since when did you know?" he asked. "I knew it a long time ago." Shizuka replied. "Laizi has always been skeptical about this. Before my husband died, she secretly arranged a DNA test. The result proved that there is no blood relationship between you and my husband. But the irony is that my husband did not wait for the results. passed away." "That woman, lied to me that she didn't tell anyone." Yong Dao was full of resignation, "She and I promised not to tell anyone, but I have to leave this house voluntarily. Of course, as for the inheritance, my father's last words are void." "So you killed her?" Mizuho asked. "It was Zong Yan who proposed the deal to me." Yongdao replied. "He also learned from his wife that I am not Koichiro's child. So, he proposed to me a plan to kill his wife. At that time, his wife knew about his affair with Mita Rieko, and he was facing being ordered to divorce. crisis. That’s why the puzzle fanatic designed this trap that uses mirrors.” "But you still killed the two accomplices in the end?" Yong Dao was silent for a moment, raised his hand to wipe his sweaty cheeks, and sighed deeply. "My goal is to take away everything from the Takemiya family. My mother was abandoned by Koichiro Takemiya and suffered a hellish life. I pretended to be an illegitimate child and approached the Takemiya family just for revenge. Ten years... a full ten years Already." As if recalling everything from the past ten years, Yongdao closed his eyes. "In my plan, those two people are obstacles. Moreover, they were caught by Qing Jiang's tail when it came to killing Mrs. Lai Zi." "Being caught by Qing Jiang's tail?" Shui Sui asked back. "As I said before, a few days before Mrs. Lai Zi's forty-ninth day, when I was staying in this mansion, I accidentally knocked over the vase on the bed. In fact, I accepted Miss Kaori's suggestion at that time , and slept in Zong Yan’s room. But when I got up early the next morning, I found a message stuck on the door. The recipient indicated Zong Yan’s, but did not write the sender’s name. The content of the message was—— " Yong Dao moistened his lips with his tongue, "I already know that it was you and Rieko Mita who killed Mrs. Laizi. If you haven't surrendered by the 49th day of your wife, I will tell the police everything—" "Is this written by Qing Jiang?" "At that time I didn't know who the sender was. But what I knew was that something had to be done as soon as possible." "So you killed them both on the forty-ninth day..." "There was no time to make any elaborate plans. So ... the results fell short." After speaking, he sighed helplessly. "Aren't you the one who left the note for Mr. Matsuzaki?" Mizuho asked. "That's right. I wanted to use that message to call Matsuzaki to the basement and put the blame on him. I purposely typed this message on a typewriter of the same model as Rieko's, and then I found an excuse to enter Rieko's room and hide the ink ribbon in the room." Afterwards, disguise her as a suicide, and the police will definitely find this ink ribbon when they search her home. As long as there is no accident, the person who sent the message to Rieko will be Rieko. The police will think that she is offering advice Counting Matsuzaki, but Zongyan was killed, so I couldn't bear the blow and ended myself." "The development of things can basically be regarded as going according to your plan." Wu Jing said, but Yong Dao gave a wry smile and shook his head. "After Matsuzaki left the basement, I called Sohiko. Although it was the middle of the night, as soon as I said there was something urgent, he rushed to the basement immediately." "And you killed him?" Nagashima nodded: "I sneaked up on him when he first entered the room. Then I moved his body, followed the previous exercise with Matsuzaki, and sprinkled the pieces of the puzzle around him. Then I stuffed the hair that I pulled out during the fight with Matsuzaki into it. So far, everything has gone smoothly according to the plan, but the sky is not as expected..." "That's right. Zong Yan said with his last breath that he had contacted Rieko before he came to the basement, and the police would soon find out that I was the murderer..." "So, you called her too?" Mizuho clenched his fists and said, Nagashima glanced at her, then turned his gaze back. "I don't think she will report to the police. If she does, the truth about Mrs. Lai Zi's suicide will be revealed. However, I can't leave this time bomb alone. I can only deal with her together." "You killed her in the corridor, right?" Wu Jing said, and Yong Dao was slightly surprised. "You know it quite well, as you said. I ambushed her in the corridor and stabbed her in the front. Then I moved her into the room and placed her next to Zong Yan's body. I really don't want to use such a I killed her in a crude way, and if I could, I could have made her death look more like suicide." He seemed very unwilling to waste the perfect plan of killing Zong Yan in vain. "Afterwards... Ms. Suzueda will take the job of pretending to be an external criminal. This is also one of my miscalculations." "She disposed of all the evidence that framed Mr. Matsuzaki. You must have been caught off guard." Nagashima nodded in agreement with Mizuho's words. "Quite caught off guard. When I woke up in the morning and found that the situation had changed, I really didn't know what to do for a while. However, the puzzle pieces I picked up from him out of caution did come in handy at this time. " "When the riots started and everyone went into the basement, you sneakily stained the fragments with Uncle's blood while no one was looking, then put them back in the box and purposely broke the box so the police would notice." But Yong Island shook his head this time. "There's something wrong with your reasoning. Don't even think about it, what the guy dropped on the floor was a fragment of a 'Portrait of Napoleon'. Putting this thing back in the box didn't help me at all, so I went to the reception room before the riot started Steal a fragment of 'Mother Goose'. Then when the riots started, after entering the basement, see the opportunity to stain the fragment with blood, and then put it in the box together with the fragment that Matsuzaki dropped in the next day If fragments of 'Mother Goose' are found in the box, the police will immediately point their fingers at Katsuyuki and Matsuzaki who played puzzles with Sohiko the night before. If nothing else, the cowardly Matsuzaki will immediately choose to surrender. " In fact, the reasoning ability of Yamagishi detective and others is higher than Nagashima imagined. "Did you kill Qingjiang because he noticed the truth?" Mizuho confirmed to him for now. "He's too smart," Yongshima said. "Even if Matsuzaki has already pleaded guilty, he is the only one who is still persistently approaching the truth step by step. Every word he said touches the core of the incident. So much so that I am sure that it is this man who left the note." "Not only that, but he also intends to investigate the clown." Wu Jing on the side said.Yong Island nodded. "That day I left the old lady's room and met Jiazhi in the corridor. She told me that Qingjiang called the university library." "library?" "Ikaori said, he seems to be asking if there are any identification books in the lobby of the library that teach the method of collecting fingerprints. Hearing this, I realized that he wanted to collect the fingerprints on the clown." "I see." Wu Jing muttered in a low voice. Yong Island seemed to have nothing to say, he hung his head weakly.Seeing him with nowhere to escape, Mizuho said. "But, Mr. Nagashima, you should also be surprised, right? Grandma and Kaori would make a false alibi for you at the same time. Everyone likes you very much." But he shook his head slightly. "It's true that I was treated very kindly by everyone. But...it doesn't change the fact that my mother died in pain." "you……" At this time, Shizuka said sadly: "Before the DNA test, my husband already knew that you were not his son." Nagashima's shoulders trembled like an electric shock.He raised his head and looked at Shizuka with red eyes, as if he didn't believe her words. "lie……" "I'm not lying. My husband told me himself. However, he said that you are responsible for your unfortunate life. So even if you are not his real son, he will compensate you—— Laizi told you I don't know what, but my husband and I didn't intend to expose you at all. His will was also written on the basis of knowing the truth." "Everyone..." Yong Dao knelt on the ground as if collapsing, holding his head in his hands. Mizuho stood there blankly, looking at Koichiro's portrait. The musket arrow fired by Shizuka accurately stabbed Koichiro in the heart.