The two high school girls understood. "So Hattori suddenly changed into those clothes just now so the murderer would mistake him for Mr. Kume and attack him?"
Conan nodded. "Only then can we make the murderer personally produce irrefutable evidence—like the murder weapon he used when killing the first two victims."
Mouri Ran understood. "Ms. Hiraryo and the Captain were both strangled to death. You want the murderer to take out that length of rope himself?... But isn't that dangerous? If someone strangles him from behind with a rope, even Hattori will have a hard time fighting back. Besides, he studies Kendo. Without a sword in his hands, he's very weak."
Conan: "...Weak?"
He should probably have argued back at this point, but the one saying it was Mouri Ran. Looking up at the muscles that were invisible beneath her appearance yet undeniably real, the weak and pitiful Fake Elementary School Student fell silent for a moment and gave up defending his Osaka classmate.
He merely explained, "Hattori has already prepared a prop to stop the Messenger of the Underworld from claiming his life—you remember that legend, right? As long as you hold a small knife in your mouth, your soul won't be sucked away."
And here, as long as he had a small knife, he could cut the rope and save himself at any time.
"You two really are devious." Suzuki Sonoko relaxed, then immediately clicked her tongue.
"But now everyone's on guard. Will the murderer really risk making a move? Come to think of it, when you two were investigating outside just now, the people in the house were scattered all over the place. Wouldn't it have been even easier for the murderer to kill someone then?"
Conan shook his head. "At that time, the murderer probably still