Yuji Kudo, the manga artist behind Detective Conan.

"The unique feature of the device is that the murderer had to stretch a line across the old alley to hang the pre-prepared, rapidly combusting dummy in the middle of the alley."

Yuko walked to the trash can and patted the wall of the other room: "The Shitsubi family and the Yamanaka Watch Shop are only separated by a road, so the murderer must have broken into the Shitsubi family and tampered with it."

"That must be in the mountains."

Officer Ito lit a cigarette, glanced at Yuko who rolled her eyes, and waved the cigarette-holding hand at the silent mountain.

"Only he could enter the Si Ting family without arousing suspicion."

“If Officer Ito’s memory is not bad, you should remember that I just said that the murderer is between Mrs. Oda and Dr. Kawasawa.” Yuko waved her hand in front of her nose with some disdain: “Actually, I think no one knows better than Mr. Shitsubou who has been to the Shitsubou house.”

Everyone was stunned for a moment, and then they remembered Mr. Shiting who had been pulled aside to be comforted earlier. When they turned around, they noticed that he was blushing and roaring as if he wanted to pounce on Mrs. Oda.

"It's you! It's you, you bitch!"

"Hurry up and hold him down!" Ito shouted coldly, and suddenly several policemen emerged from the back of the crowd. Two of them pinned Shiten to the ground, while the others went to Mrs. Oda's side.

"On the day Kotoha disappeared, you were the only one who came to my house."

"What was she doing at your house?" Officer Ito burned his finger with the cigarette butt, casually tossing it on the ground before lighting another cigarette. "This young woman said the criminal tampered with your house. So, you were out while this woman was there?"

The men in the street all understood, while the woman who knew the inside story gave Si Ting a mocking smile, but when she glanced at Oda, her eyes showed not only disgust but also fear.

"This woman..."

The constant whispers made Ito pause, his hand still holding a cigarette. He immediately understood what Oda had done at the Shiten residence to distract the old man from paying attention to the woman's actions.

In either case, as long as she says she'll pour herself a cup of tea or get some hot water to wipe herself, she can easily create personal space and time for herself, and a man whose mind is blank won't care.

“I’m just going to sell pickled vegetables, sir, is that not allowed?” Oda looked at Yuko with a resentful expression. “I don’t understand, what grudge do I hold against you? You’re calling me a murderer, my son…”

"You killed him because of your son, didn't you?"

Yuko's words immediately interrupted Oda's explanation, and the woman's face immediately turned ugly.

"What did she say that made you so angry, and that you sacrificed so much to plan a murder?" "...You still can't prove that I am the murderer."

“That’s too easy.” Yuko snapped her fingers. “Because there’s a clock shop on the street, I noticed as I walked over that there are some wooden clocks in each shop.”

The clocks are crudely handmade, and on the workbench of the watch shop in the mountains, there are also some parts that are much smaller than the springs of a watch mechanism, indicating that the shop makes some cheap clocks to sell to the neighbors in the street.

"Afterwards, when Si Ting wasn't paying attention, you took out a small drill and iron wire from the pickle jar, drilled a hole in the wooden clock after opening it, tied the iron wire to the clock's spring, and even tightened the spring."

Yuko then pointed to the chimney of the watch shop: "The other end of the wire is attached to the rust on the chimney, and the paper dummy that was doused with gasoline, you specially hung a flint on its head, so that with the wire, you don't need a flint."

"I see. When the clock spring tightens, the iron wire breaks and brushes against the flint on the paper figure's head, it can burn completely. The iron wire is then pulled back into the clock in the Si Ting family through the small hole. Apart from the small flint that fell to the ground and the ashes after the fire, there is nothing left in the entire alley."

Officer Ito pointed to the mountains: "If I'm not mistaken, Oda Joe strangled Kotonoha Shiba in your watch shop, didn't he?"

“I think it must be that their affair was discovered by Kotonoha Shiba, who came to collect her father’s watch, and that Oda, who had planned it all along, had his wife kill her right in front of Yamanaka.” Yuko put her hands on her hips: “Let me guess, you must be saying that you two were accomplices, which is why you forced Yamanaka to help you, right?”

"Why, why do you hate Kotoha so much?" Mr. Shitani looked at his son-in-law, with whom he had a distant relationship, but was actually asking Oda Joe.

"Because of that woman, she actually dared to tell my son that his biological father was an executioner!"

Oda suddenly turned pale and shouted at Shiting, "I've been keeping it from him all along! I told him that his father didn't do those heinous things, that he was just implicated by a madman, but that woman destroyed the last bit of comfort the child had."

"You weren't going to buy your son a watch to encourage him..."

Marina said something, but she didn't expect the woman to rush at her like a madwoman, her eyes turning green with jealousy.

"Why can children from families like yours live so recklessly, while my child was about to kill himself by banging his head against a table corner just because someone said he was the son of an executioner!"

"Isn't it because his father was indeed an executioner? If you've killed someone, don't waste your breath with so many questions. If you have the guts to kill, why hide it?"

As soon as Yuko finished speaking, she realized that she had attracted a monster. After feeling helpless and exhausted, she didn't hesitate to slap Oda.

"Your son now has a mother who is a perverted murderer in addition to his father, a deranged executioner. What incredible good fortune he must have accumulated in his past life!" (End of Chapter)