Subduing It

The moment Shiraishi went to the restroom, he discovered that the squat toilet had been tampered with—

If they had inspected it carefully, it would have been easy to find.

It was just that—

The police had never considered that there might be another corpse in the house. They had been looking for gold bars, for places that had been rummaged through. They would never have thought the gold bars had been thrown into a cesspit, much less that a burglar had broken in to look for shit. Naturally, they had only given the restroom a cursory glance.

Yamane had not taken Shiraishi to inspect the restroom either. It was not until Akako went in that she discovered something and reminded Shiraishi. As a witch, of course she had to know how to deduce!

Shiraishi even suspected that she had used magic to look inside, but—Akako would definitely never admit it. It was rather disgusting, after all.

"You were silent at first because you were indeed considering confessing. You thought that, at the very least, you could not reveal that Takeda Shinichi had been here, lest your real crime be exposed.

"The first-floor window was naturally opened by you as well. Though you lacked experience, you at least knew that if you wanted to mislead the police into suspecting an outsider, the house could not be a locked room.

"Unfortunately, you ultimately had no experience. Outside the window you opened was muddy ground. That made opening it pointless. Officer Yamane determined it was a locked-room case, meaning it had been an inside job.

"Helpless, you had already considered confessing. But when the locked room was solved, you thought you could shake off the charges, so you actively tried to clear yourself. After all, you truly had not killed Negishi.

"However,