Inspector Megure suddenly realized the problem. "When someone stretches, both hands go up... Could it be that Master Fujieda, who 'stood up and raised both hands' on the surveillance footage, wasn't being threatened at all, but was simply stretching?"
Jiang Xia nodded. "Mr. Fujieda's chair faced away from the camera. We couldn't see his expression, only his movements, which was why we misunderstood."
Mrs. Suwa burst out laughing. "I thought you were clever, but you're actually a little fool. I was watching the surveillance footage with you too. If I remember correctly, my husband fell to the floor soon after standing up and raising his hands—there's no way merely stretching to relax could have caused that."
Jiang Xia said, "Standing up to stretch was Mr. Fujieda's personal habit, but someone took advantage of it and arranged what came next—people in poor health can occasionally feel dizzy or have their vision go black when they suddenly stand after sitting for a long time."
"And to turn that occasional occurrence into something inevitable, the killer added a drug to the victim's black tea: Isoprenaline."
"This drug can induce brief dizziness. It is sometimes used on patients prone to dizzy spells, to trigger an episode and investigate its cause."
"Under the effects of the drug, Mr. Fujieda drank his tea, finished reading, stood up to stretch, became dizzy, and fell to the floor."
"Viewed through low-quality surveillance footage, the entire process looked extremely similar to 'being threatened at gunpoint' and 'being shot and falling down.'"
Officer Megure finally understood. "So that was why the threatening letter specifically said something like that?"
Jiang Xia nodded. "Also, worried that we might miss that scene, the killer deliberately gave us a reminder..."
He turned to look at the old butler standing quietly behind the sofa. "While