The Last Case

Besides Watanuki Tatsuzo, the other two selected suspects were a foul-mouthed guest who looked like a crude thug, and a foreigner.

Mouri Kogoro looked at the three suspects, so neatly and perfectly assembled, and felt the urge to deduce stirring within him.

He muttered to Jiang Xia, "People usually write their names in kanji. But the assistant director told us to write the pronunciation, 'Hozumi,' in the message. 'Hozumi' is written with fairly complicated characters, so maybe the victim did that to make it easier for the guest to read? For example, the guest might have been elderly, with poor eyesight, and unable to make out the characters." He glanced at Watanuki Tatsuzo, then turned to the little thug. "Or maybe the guest hadn't studied much and couldn't really read kanji. Or..." Mouri Kogoro finally looked at Amuro Tooru and lowered his voice. "Could the guest have been a foreigner who wasn't good with kanji?"

Mouri Ran had noticed them whispering long ago and quietly leaned over to listen.

Hearing that, she could not help cutting in, "But Mr. Amuro doesn't have a foreign accent at all, and his name doesn't sound foreign either. The deceased assistant director said he had only contacted the guest by phone, so he wouldn't have thought Mr. Amuro was a foreigner at all."

She always felt that Amuro Tooru did not seem like a bad person. Partly because he himself looked fairly kind, and partly because of Jiang Xia—birds of a feather flocked together, so a friend's friend ought to be a good person.

Vermouth, wearing Suzuki Sonoko's face, nodded in agreement, though she sighed inwardly. Naive Angel, Bourbon is no good person... But that is exactly like her, always seeing the good in people.

Yamamura Misao did not hear the muttering behind