Conan: I'm a zaibatsu in Tokyo

“Mr. Shoichi Sumitomo.” A middle-aged detective pushed up his glasses, his voice deep and serious.

"Prince Takeda was murdered at his home. According to our investigation, you had a verbal altercation with His Highness before the incident, and even threatened him. What is your explanation for this?"

Prince Takeda was strangled to death in his own bedroom, and many high-ranking officers from the police headquarters came to the scene.

"Explanation? Officer, what do I need to explain?"

He calmly said, "If verbal conflicts can be considered a motive for murder, then your bureau's workload would probably increase tenfold."

The detective frowned, not surprised by Zheng Yi's composure.

Zheng Yi is a repeat offender.

He had been interrogated like this countless times, and the middle-aged detective didn't expect to get anything out of it.

It's just a routine matter, a way to give the royal family an explanation.

Inspector Ayanokoji, standing behind the middle-aged detective, had a furrowed brow.

He had been following Zheng Yi closely and knew that Zheng Yi couldn't possibly kill someone with his mind, and Zheng Yi hadn't done anything strange.

“Mr. Zhengyi,” the detective’s voice rose a few decibels, trying to exert pressure, “because of your past conflict with the prince, you are highly suspicious.”

"Where's the evidence, officer? Just the words 'highly suspicious' aren't enough to convict me, are they?"

The questioning of Zheng Yi has ended.

Zheng Yi appeared fearless, and there were no clues pointing to him.

He's just a suspect.

The subsequent questioning was mainly directed at the princess.

When the princess returned home, she found the prince dead in his bedroom.

"Look here, there are fingerprints on the window!" Conan suddenly exclaimed.

"Really?"

The forensic officer in charge of collecting fingerprints stopped what he was doing upon hearing the sound and looked in the direction Conan was pointing.

Sure enough, there was a clear fingerprint on the dark metal window frame, quite different from the blurred marks elsewhere due to the passage of time.

"This must have been left over from tonight."

The officer said in a low voice, immediately switched to a finer brush, carefully revealed the fingerprints, and then extracted them with transparent tape.

“The location of this fingerprint is crucial,” Inspector Ayanokouji said as he walked over. “It’s on the inside of the window latch, it should be…”

"He must have climbed out the window and then made sure to close it properly?" Conan stood up and scratched his head dramatically.

"Yes."

Ayanokouji took a deep breath, placed her hands on the smooth windowsill, and pressed her fingertips precisely on the spot where her fingerprints had just been collected.

Immediately afterwards, he bent his right leg slightly, lightly braced his knee against the bottom edge of the window frame for leverage, and then took a step with his left leg, landing easily on the terrace outside the window.

"Immediately send this fingerprint for comparison and check if there is a matching record in the database. In addition, notify the forensic center to focus on analyzing the sweat residue on the fingerprint to see if DNA information can be extracted."

The officer took the tape with fingerprints on it and quickly walked out of the room.

It's another typical locked-room situation.

The doors and windows were intact, there were no signs of forced entry, and no murder weapon that could have been used as a strangulation tool was found inside the house.

The only clue was a fingerprint left high on the windowsill.

"Was it you, Your Highness, who first discovered the body?"

“That’s right.” The princess nodded.

"How strange!"

Conan started yelling again.

"Ayanokouji-nii, don't you think the posture of this corpse is strange?"

Conan pointed to the corpse curled up in a ball and said.

"Strange? It's quite common for people to have strange postures after they die, isn't it?" Hongye leaned forward and asked curiously.

"No." Zheng Yi shook his head, pulling Hong Ye aside with a look of disgust, preventing her from going up there and embarrassing herself.

“If someone is strangled, they will instinctively struggle violently at the moment of suffocation, their muscles will tense up, and their body will usually maintain a relatively straight or extended posture,” Zheng Yi said.

When Prince Takeda's body was discovered, it was curled up.

Ayanokouji said, "It's like someone deliberately arranged it like this."

“That’s right.” Conan nodded. “He’s like a boiled shrimp. This extremely curled-up posture doesn’t fit the physiological response of strangulation.”

Hongye nodded, seemingly understanding but not quite.

They seem to know a lot.

However, arranging the body like this would take some time.

The family's nanny did not see the prince leave, nor did she hear any noise from the bedroom.

The police officer in charge of submitting the report returned, clutching the newly printed document in his hand, and hurried up to Inspector Ayanokoji.

"Report!" The officer stopped and said with a hint of disbelief, "The fingerprint comparison results are in. It has been confirmed that the fingerprints extracted from the window frame belong to the deceased, Prince Takeda."

Inspector Ayanokoji's expression froze.

He subconsciously turned to look at the floor-to-ceiling window.

The prince's own fingerprints?
“Perhaps we’ve all been mistaken. The prince may not have been murdered in his bedroom at all. Maybe he climbed out the window, was killed outside, and then the killer moved the body back into the room to make it look like he was murdered indoors,” Conan said.

After that, everyone turned their attention to the princess and the maid.

These two are the most likely perpetrators.

The police focused their main investigation on the maid.

Because in their subconscious, they still regarded Zheng Yi as the mastermind behind it all, and manipulating a maid was much easier than manipulating a princess.

The maid was so frightened she was completely disoriented.

While the police were questioning the maid, Conan continued to wander around the bedroom.
"What is this suitcase?"

"He's mine." The princess walked over, patted Conan's head, and said, "Little boy, don't run around."

An attendant came over and said to Conan with a smile, "These are all the princess's clothes, cosmetics, musical instruments and sheet music. The princess takes them with her every time she performs."

"Oh." Conan nodded.

After hearing the explanation, Conan looked up at the princess again, blinked, and asked, "Do you wear a scarf even in your bedroom?"

"Um." The princess reached up and touched her neck. "Yes, I don't know why, but I feel particularly cold today."

Conan nodded.

Do you feel cold in the bedroom?
Shoichi, Koyo, and Shiho stayed together, detached, watching the people in the room go about their own business.

Hongye leaned close to Zhengyi's ear and whispered, "The public opinion outside is going to explode tomorrow. Have you thought about how to deal with it?"

"The innocent will clear themselves." Zheng Yi said indifferently, "As long as I am innocent, temporary public opinion can't do anything to me."

Hongye rolled her eyes at Zhengyi. "You're really confident. This time, it wasn't an ordinary person who died, but a prince."

Hongye whispered, "Really, not a single piece of evidence was left behind?"

Zheng Yi looked at Hongye dangerously: "I'm still recording here."

"Oh!"

Hongye quickly covered her mouth, looking helplessly at Zhengyi.

Did I say something wrong?

“Don’t worry,” Shiho said calmly. “Masaichi is innocent, what does he have to be afraid of?”

Conan stood there, his gaze sharp and intense behind his round-framed glasses.

There is only one truth.

A clear, childlike voice broke the silence.

Conan pointed his little finger at the princess, his tone resolute: "The murderer of Prince Takeda is you—Your Highness!"

"Wh...what?" Inspector Ayanokouji looked at the princess in shock, then at Conan, and finally at Shoichi.

"How is that possible? The prince was found in his own home, and the forensic examination determined the time of death to be 7 p.m., while the princess was in the theater at 7 p.m."

“The prince was indeed found at home, but he wasn’t killed there,” Conan interrupted the inspector’s speculation, explaining rapidly.

Conan turned around and looked at the window: "The prince climbed out of his house through the window and sneaked all the way to the Kyoto Opera House!"

"This..." The crowd erupted in an uproar.

"Do you guys remember?" Conan pushed up his glasses and glanced at everyone.

"Before the opera started tonight, the prince stayed indoors under the pretext of 'feeling unwell,' but in reality, he was sneaking out to avoid the maids' sight."

"He climbed out of the window so as not to leave any trace of someone leaving the room, and to make the maid think that he was still resting."

His purpose was to come here and, in the chaos before the performance began, strangle the princess who was preparing backstage!

Ayanokouji frowned deeply.

How did it turn into the prince wanting to kill the princess?

Conan paused, then pointed to the princess's neck, which was covered by a scarf: "Everyone, look closely at the princess's neck. There's a new ligature mark there!"

Upon hearing this, everyone turned to look at the princess's neck.

The princess hurriedly covered herself with her scarf.

"Your Highness, may you remove your scarf?" the attendant said gently.

Noticing that everyone was looking at her, the princess gritted her teeth, took a step back, sighed helplessly, and took off her scarf.

Sure enough, beneath that layer of foundation, a faint bruise was faintly visible, as if it had been pulled by an extremely fine thread.

“Just before the performance began, the prince secretly sneaked into the princess's dressing room,” Conan continued. “While the princess was changing, he strangled her from behind with a rope, intending to kill her. However…”

Conan felt embarrassed for the prince: "However, he was killed by the princess, who ultimately strangled him with the rope he had used to kill her."

"wrong."

Ayanokouji frowned and asked, "But what about that fax?"

“It’s simple, just set a timer,” Conan said. “He set that fax himself, so that he could have an alibi when he went to kill the princess.”

The prince never expected that this would become the princess's alibi.

Conan continued, "After killing the person, the princess panicked. She knew that if she called the police here, her reputation would be ruined, and she might even be accused of excessive self-defense. So, she did all of this."

"She stuffed the prince's body into that large prop suitcase. After the performance, she used the cover of transporting props or personal belongings to personally take the suitcase containing the body home."

“After returning home, she took the body out of the box and staged the scene to make it appear as if the prince had died in his bedroom.”

"The princess has been under police interrogation and probably hasn't had time to clean the suitcase yet. There should still be traces of the prince's blood inside, right?"

As Conan's voice faded, the entire room fell into a deathly silence.

Only the princess's rapid breathing echoed in the air.

Zheng Yi then spoke up for the princess: "Conan, you're wrong, aren't you? Even if the prince is incompetent, he shouldn't have been able to be killed by the princess after taking the initiative, right?"

Conan didn't care about Masahiro's questioning of his reasoning, and confidently said:
"Just check your suitcase and you'll know."

Ayanokouji walked to the suitcase and said to the princess, "Your Highness."

Seeing that the princess did not refuse, Inspector Ayanokouji opened his suitcase, and the forensic team immediately stepped forward to collect information.

“The child is right,” the princess said. “It was I who killed the prince.”

After saying this, the princess seemed to have lost all her strength and knelt on the ground.

"How is this possible?" Ayanokouji looked at the princess in disbelief.

Although Conan's reasoning was flawless, Ayanokoji and the others were still shocked when the princess admitted it herself.

"Your Highness, did they really go to the theater to kill you?" Ayanokouji asked.

“That’s right.” The princess nodded.

Ayanokouji immediately walked up to Masakazu, removed all the equipment from his body, and then turned it off.

This is a royal scandal; we can't leave behind any audio or video recordings.

Masaichi stared blankly at Ayanokouji, not even having reacted yet, before Ayanokouji had already finished.

The police chiefs nodded in satisfaction as they watched Ayanokouji's actions.

As expected of an outstanding cadre from an official family, he is very thoughtful.

With a complicated expression, Ling Xiaolu asked the princess, "Do you know why the prince wanted to kill you?"

When the princess heard the question, she did not answer, but instead took off her clothes.

"This...this..."

Hongye stared in shock at the princess's actions. Before she could even see the princess take off her top, a pair of large hands covered her eyes.

"Children shouldn't watch this," Zheng Yi said seriously.

He had barely finished reprimanding Hongye when his eyes were covered by a pair of hands.

“Men shouldn’t look at this either,” Shiho said sternly.

Ayanokouji stared in shock at the princess, who was wearing only a bra on her upper body, her body covered with countless whip marks.

The princess said with a sob in her voice, "He is a complete pervert... He has been whipping me all along."

My refusal to submit to his violence greatly displeased him. He would even bring other women home to humiliate me.

The most terrifying thing was that one time he beat a woman he brought back to death... and only I knew about this.

I suspect he was afraid of being exposed, so he wanted to kill me to silence me.

The princess cried, "This time I could feel that he really wanted to kill me, which is why I resisted. I never expected... I never expected that he would kill me directly." (End of Chapter)