Chapter 5 Section 5

In the afternoon of the second day, when Narita was sorting out materials in the chairman's office, the front desk informed the guests that they had come.The lady at the reception lowered her voice slightly: "It's a tall man in a black suit. He said, just tell you you're from the club..." Although Narita was full of complaints, he still asked the lady to take him into the reception room immediately. In this reception room, which was simply separated by curtains, the detective from yesterday sat expressionlessly, but this time the female assistant did not come.This made Narita feel uneasy, but he pretended not to notice.

"Have you gained anything?" Sitting across the table with the detective, he asked questions immediately.After staring at his face for two or three seconds, the detective nodded thoughtfully and replied, "Well, that's it." He took out a notebook from the backpack next to him, which was exactly the same as the one the female assistant had used before. "I went to the 'Hanaoka' takeaway shop in the morning. It was the shop that prepared banquet dishes for you the day before yesterday. The clerk there told us something very interesting." "Interesting thing?"

Narita's body stiffened. "Well, in fact, the clerk came here to retrieve the tableware at around nine o'clock the night before yesterday, because Mrs. Ryoko told him that the banquet would end at nine o'clock. But due to the actual delay, he has been in the corridor waiting." "and then?" As Narita urged him to continue, he recalled what seemed to be two men in clothes with the name of the store standing in the corridor. "According to the clerk, he was originally waiting on the left side of the venue, but standing there blocked the path of the toilet guests, so he moved to the right side of the exit. You should know that walking along the right side of the corridor, After passing the reception room is Mr. Tojiro's room."

"You mean," Narita said first, "if someone leaves the banquet hall and walks towards the chairman's room, they will definitely see it, right?" "exactly." "Then what was his testimony?" Unexpectedly, the detective suddenly stretched out his right hand and spread his five fingers in front of Narita. The hand was skinny but big. "They said a total of five people passed by there. It's rare that the memories of the two clerks would be so consistent." "Five people……" When Narita was about to count silently in his head, the detective explained.

"The maid Asako went back and forth once, so there are two people. Then Mr. Gao Ming; after a while, another pair of men and women around 30 years old walked past. They didn't seem to know the two people, but according to my guess, it should be Narita Sir, you and Miss Jiang Lizi." "You are so perceptive. We must have seen them when we came back from the chairman's room." Narita said sarcastically, but the detective's expression didn't change at all.He kept his iron face like Bao Gong, and leaned out in the direction of Narita. "If this testimony is to be believed, no one walked from the banquet hall to Mr. Tojiro's room during the period from 9:30 to 10:00 the night before yesterday."

"Indeed." Ignoring the uneasiness in his heart, Narita also answered in a voice without any emotion, which was not inferior to the detective at all. "Although this contradicts your reasoning, I don't think it's a big problem. There's no need for the prisoner to pass through the corridor. Isn't there a way to go out from the entrance and go around the backyard to invade the room? Mrs. Tokuko The doors didn't start locking until after ten o'clock, so there must have been doors open then." That's not a problem, Narita repeated. "Physically it makes sense," said the detective, "but psychologically it's impossible. It takes time to find an unlocked door, and it's not known if it will be found. And if this If Tokuko starts to lock it at that time, then you won’t lose money by stealing chickens. The most reliable method of committing crimes is to pass through the corridor, and if you notice the eyes of the takeaway shop clerk, you may temporarily suspend the plan.”

"Then tell me, what method did the prisoner use?" Narita couldn't help but increase his voice, he was already a little annoyed that the detective insisted on coming to him. "I don't know yet." In stark contrast to Narita, the detective's voice has no sense of frustration. "So I changed my perspective and am trying to overcome the problem of why the prisoner took Mr. Tojiro away." "Why did you take him away? I don't have a clue about this. I said it yesterday." "I know this, so I have to collect all kinds of data..." As he spoke, the detective took out a small black box from the bag, which was a miniature tape recorder.

"Mr. Fujijiro's study room is connected to a tape recorder, it seems to be prepared for recording important conversations." "Oh, yes." Narita felt his heart beating faster, and his palms were dripping with sweat. "So I really want to use those recordings to investigate who he talked to recently. Of course, I did this with Mrs. Ryoko's permission." Hearing what the detective said, Narita was somewhat relieved.He didn't seem to see through his trick yet. The detective didn't seem to notice the change in Narita's mood, and pressed the switch of the tape recorder.Immediately, a familiar voice came from inside, the cold voice that echoed from time to time belonged to Tojiro.

"This is the voice of the executive," Narita said. "They are discussing the schedule of the sales planning process meeting." "after this." The detective pointed to the recorder and said. "...so I think it would be most efficient to hold the process meeting next Tuesday, the 10th." Putting it here, the detective turned off the power, and confirmed to Narita while scrolling back: "Just now I said the 10th, Tuesday, right. If the 10th is next to Tuesday, the closest to now is two months ago. Why would Mr. Tojiro want to listen to this recording now?"

Oops!Narita thought to himself that he should confirm the contents of the tape, but he didn't have the time at that time... "This..." He shrugged. "I don't know, I can only ask the chairman himself." The detective then took out the tape from the tape recorder and put it in front of Narita. "I need to trouble you, Mr. Narita, can you listen to the contents of the tape again? Maybe there is some mystery hidden in it, and it is probably something we cannot judge." "I see." Narita took the tape and stuffed it into the inner pocket of his suit. As expected, the detective didn't notice the trap——

"I'll check it out right away, and I'll let you know if there's a problem." "Thank you." The detective stood up, apologized for taking Narita's time, and turned to leave the reception room. When Narita walked out of the reception room, he met the female staff at the reception.After she showed him the smile of the service staff, she said: "That person just now is really strange!" "You think so, too? He's a queer man." "Well, he said that after he found Mr. Narita, he asked a very inexplicable question: He wanted to know who made the chairman's coffee." "coffee?" "Then I told him that I ordered it from the coffee shop across the phone, and then he asked me if the chairman drank it without sugar milk or with milk. How could I know that kind of thing? ..." When getting off work, Ryoko called Narita and said that the detective of the club wanted to announce something important, and hoped that everyone would gather tonight. "Do you know the whereabouts of the chairman?" "It doesn't seem to be the case, but it is very important anyway... In short, you should come here." "I see." Narita put down the receiver, stared at the air for a while, picked it up again, and then dialed the phone number in Eriko's room. "Ah, it's Narita, the detective seems to have found something." "It seems to be, do you know what he found out?" "I don't know, but the female assistant came to ask Mazi several times. It is said that she secretly confirmed with Mazi whether the person she saw that day was really Tojiro." "How did she answer?" "She replied that it was indeed him, but they still seem to have doubts...how can this be?" "You can't panic, it's okay, they definitely don't have conclusive evidence. Oh, by the way, do you put milk with the chairman and coffee?" "Coffee? Well, it should be." "Did you really pour out the milk then?" "Huh? Milk?" Jiang Lizi fell silent on the other end of the phone, did he forget to pour? — Narita bit his lip. But Jiang Lizi replied, "It's poured out, it can't be wrong." "Really?" "Really, I remember it very clearly." "That's all right." In the end, Narita said something, so let's pretend we don't know anything, and then put down the receiver. Only Ryoko, Gao Ming, Jiang Lizi, and Narita were summoned that night, and Tomohiro, his wife and children did not show up.This gave Narita a very ominous premonition. The location was chosen in Tojiro's room, and Ryoko assured that no one touched anything after the incident. "Have you found anything like a clue in the audio tape?" When Narita sat on the sofa, the female assistant took the initiative to ask questions. "Unfortunately, I found nothing." Narita took the tape out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Really." She took the tape and carefully put it in her pocket.Seeing this, Narita's uneasy mood eased a lot. After confirming that everyone was seated one after another, the detective locked the entrance door and sat facing the four of them.The assistant stands a little further away. "The purpose of my calling you here today is to-" At this point, he paused, looked at the four faces in front of him one by one, and continued: "I hope to hear the truth from some of you here." "Truth?" Gao Ming raised his eyebrows, "What does this mean?" "That's what the facts mean." After finishing speaking, the detective took out the notebook and opened it, and said in a sincere tone: "At around 9:30 that night, you all said that you saw Mr. Fujijiro. If this is true, then the prisoner did not sneak into this place at all. The opportunity of the room. There are only two possibilities, first, the prisoner did not enter the room; second, you are the prisoner." "Are you joking?" Gao Ming raised his mouth and said disdainfully, "What reason do we have to abduct the chairman? It's ridiculous!" "Is there a motive?" In stark contrast to Gao Ming, Ryoko asked in a calm tone. "I can't think of any motive for kidnapping Mr. Tojiro." The detective said with a nonchalant expression, "For example, for Mr. Gao Ming, the disappearance of Mr. Fujijiro will be a very troublesome matter. Because the divorce between Mr. Fujijiro and his ex-wife has not been resolved, the inheritance distribution will fall into a very passive situation. .” Gao Ming raised his face, neither affirming nor denying. "Miss Jiang Lizi is even more obvious. If her husband disappeared before she was naturalized, it would be completely meaningless for her to be close to this rich family." The detective seems to believe that Jiang Lizi married into this family purely for property.However, even she didn't refute it herself, maybe she realized that doing so would only make the atmosphere worse. "From Mr. Narita's point of view, the disappearance of his employer will not do him any good." "Look, the analysis makes sense." Gao Ming cast a contemptuous look at the detective. "However, if one condition is added here, it is very likely that these three people will work together to conceal the disappearance of the chairman." "What conditions?" Seeing Ryoko's obviously nervous expression, the detective frowned a little. This was the only change in his expression before he made a major speech. "The condition is that Mr. Tojiro has passed away at that time." Hearing the detective's words as if pronouncing a verdict, Ryoko couldn't help shaking her body.That's just how her inner changes manifested outwardly. On the contrary, Jiang Lizi's reaction, which sounded like gasping, caught the detective's attention even more. Although she immediately lowered her head after realizing it, the detective still stared at her flushed face for a while. "What nonsense." Gao Mingqiang said with a smile on his face, but was overwhelmed by Ryoko's tone of "Please continue!", and his face became stiff. The detective continued to take up the conversation: "I tried to imagine the scene where those three people reappeared in this room after Mr. Tojiro died in this room due to a heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. It only takes a little brainstorming to understand whether it is the best policy to announce Mr. Tojiro's death. The three people most likely made the following plan: to hide Tojiro's body first, and give people the false appearance of his mysterious disappearance to buy time, so as to settle things such as Tojiro's divorce from his ex-wife and E Lizi's naturalization. Of course, first Apart from divorce, I don't know whether I can still be naturalized under such circumstances." Although the detective's tone was the same as when he first spoke, in the eyes of Narita and the others, he seemed a little more confident. "Absurd." Gao Ming repeated words similar to those just now, but this time his voice was a little trembling. "What evidence do you have to prove these claims? First of all, we were not the only three who met the chairman at that time, and the maid also saw him when he brought coffee. Do you want to say that she is also an accomplice?" But the detective ignored his words and said to Jiang Lizi. "Where were you when Miss Mazi brought the coffee?" She looked at the detective with an angry and disappointed expression, pointing to the wall behind the sofa. "I was standing against the wall." The detective nodded suddenly. "So that's how it is. If you were in that position, Miss Mazi standing outside the door would indeed be invisible. But I still have a question: when Mazi brought the coffee, Mr. Fujijiro was concentrating on a discussion with Mr. Gao Ming. It is said that at that time Narita-san took the tray, why didn’t you pick it up, Ms. Eriko? Although it’s a bit impolite to say that, women usually do things like this, right?” "You also said it was 'usually'?" Knowing that making such a rebuttal at this time would only be counterproductive, Narita couldn't help but speak. "At that time, I happened to be relatively close to the door, so I took it." "Just...? I said just now that you were discussing business matters. As a secretary, you should be next to Mr. Tojiro, right... Well, I won't pursue this matter any further." The detective did not continue to dwell on this detail, and walked silently to the shelf by the wall.The coffee cup tray on it was still the same as that night. "I want to ask Miss Jiang Lizi." The detective's voice made her twitch violently. "Mr. Tojiro, do you add milk to your coffee?" Narita's face turned slightly to Eriko, and he winked at her, as if to say: You can rest assured.She said with certainty: "Yes, he said it was healthier to drink that way." "That's it." The detective looked at the coffee mug and milk jug and said, "It's true that the milk in it has been emptied." "It must be." Jiang Lizi replied proudly. "only," The detective picked up the spoon, "There is no sign of the spoon being used, which is too strange. If you want to put milk, you usually use a spoon, right?" Ah, Narita couldn't help shouting softly, at the same time Jiang Lizi seemed to be talking to himself, only Gao Ming stared at Jiang Lizi with reproachful eyes. "There is another wonder." The detective went to Toujiro's desk this time and opened the drawer. "The prisoner probably stole the key ring from here. It was placed in a hard-to-find place, but there was no trace of searching for it. In this way, I can only think that the prisoner knew the key ring was placed here from the beginning. at." "You're talking on paper." A slight smile appeared on the corner of Gao Ming's mouth, as if this reasoning was completely useless for discussion: "Every one of your inferences seems to make sense, but you forgot the most important thing, the maid heard it with her own ears. Oh, I had a conversation with the chairman!" Narita glanced at the detective. He might have seen through the tape trick, but as long as there is no evidence, there is always a way to deny it.Narita tried to gauge the detective's confidence, but the detective's eyes still had no emotion at all. And he shot that gaze at the female assistant, who immediately took out the tape from his pocket and stuffed it into the tape recorder.This tape was given to her by Narita just now. "Asako only saw Mr. Tojiro's cuff and heard his voice, and this can be done by using a tape recorder." After the detective finished speaking, the female assistant immediately pressed the switch.Inside came the conversation that Narita had listened to during the day, which was played by the detective during the day. It was a conversation between Tomohiro and Tomohiro. What's the matter, when I was about to ask this question, the key part I heard last time sounded: "...so I think it would be most efficient to hold the process meeting next Tuesday, the 10th." After saying this, Tomohiro's voice suddenly disappeared.After a few seconds of silence, it was Tojiro's voice again, and then the voice was muted, and Tojiro spoke again.Perhaps seeing Narita and Gao Ming's expressions, the detective asked his assistant to turn off the tape recorder with satisfaction. "Just like this, only Tojiro's voice is left and then played, and if he echoes with him, it will sound like an ordinary conversation to others." The detective turned to Narita and said, "This tape was not put in the tape recorder because Mr. Tojiro wanted to hear it, but you guys replaced the tampered tape with it. So, Mr. Narita knew very well that this is the case. The content on the tape didn’t make any sense, so we didn’t listen to it after we gave it to him. If he had listened, he should have discovered that we had made such a modification.” Narita felt that the blood on his face was slowly disappearing with a 'swoosh', and his current complexion should be pale.He now finally knew why the detective had given the tapes to him for safekeeping. "How is it, Mr. Narita?" Ryoko, who had been silent until now as if in a coma, forcefully forced a sound from her throat to ask.Narita replied: "When we came to the room, the chairman had hanged himself." "Narita!" Gao Ming shouted loudly, but he also slumped on the sofa after a while.It seems that he has given up the last struggle. Ryoko stared at Narita's mouth without blinking, and then asked in a surprisingly calm tone, "Why did father commit suicide?" "I am not sure." Narita shook his head, "That kind of thing happened between him and Mrs. Wenjiang, so I judged that it might have been impulsive. Besides, at that time, compared to pursuing the motive of suicide, I was completely troubled by 'what should I do next' Occupied. I was the one who proposed to hide the corpse, and the reason was just like Mr. Detective said just now. Considering the future, wanting to please the vice chairman is also one of my goals." Not only did Narita conceal the matter between himself and Jiang Lizi, he didn't even mention the insurance money that Jiang Lizi should get. "So where is my father's body now?" Ryoko asked.Narita looked at her and said, "I don't know." "have no idea?" "Yes, when we returned to this room to dispose of the body, the chairman's body was gone."