Sato Miwako said, "Because this involved a locked-room murder case, we specifically checked with the front desk afterward—the front desk was staffed 24 hours a day, and all the spare keys were kept securely in a locked cabinet. Any loan would definitely have been recorded. According to the records, from the night the assistant died onward—that is, from the moment the locked room was created—no one borrowed Miss Assistant's room key again."
"No, I remember one person borrowing it," Jiang Xia said. "And they did it openly, under the gaze of all, going to borrow the assistant's room key."
The Blonde Secretary said, "...Who was that brazen?"
The lobby manager who had come along to watch seemed to think of something. His expression changed slightly.
The next moment, Jiang Xia's words confirmed his suspicion: "As detectives, police officers, or even ordinary helpful passersby, when we learn that there may have been a murder or a corpse in a room, there is one thing we will definitely do: open the room door and rule out any danger inside.
"In other words, when we discovered that Miss Assistant was Funeral Silver Coin's target and wanted to enter her room, Funeral Silver Coin volunteered to borrow the spare key from the front desk for us—from the moment they got the key from the front desk to the moment they ran back to the locked-room door, that was the only chance to avoid the front desk and switch the key back."
"The person who borrowed the key..." Mouri Ran remembered the scene from back then and froze in shock. "It was Miss Naoko?! But she—she was Funeral Silver Coin's first murder target!"
Suzuki Sonoko stared at the shadow beside the hospital bed, feeling that something that could be solved with hands did not need