Chapter 486 The answer is no.
As soon as he made his guess, he was met with glares from Kogoro Mouri, Ran Mouri, and Conan.
“We can refute your one guess with many reasons,” Kogoro Mouri said solemnly.
“That’s right!” Ran Mouri nodded in affirmation, then couldn’t help but retort somewhat vehemently, “How could we, as guests, possibly have access to these daggers and silver threads? Besides, the forgery of that painting is in the front hall, while the original is in Mr. Katsumata Ikuto’s collection room. How could Chizuru, who is in poor health, have brought the painting to this room? And how could he have avoided other people?”
"Uh..." Rikuto Ashida waved his hand awkwardly, quickly explaining, "No, no, I didn't mean that..."
Conan's gaze turned serious.
Qianzhu could never be the murderer, and he would never do such a thing!
"Well, actually, there are security cameras installed in the house, and one of them happens to be able to clearly capture this location," the butler coughed, offering a timely reminder.
Upon hearing this, Officer Nakai, who had sent people to check if the copy of "Together We Perish" was still in the lobby and collection room, gave the order for everyone to move to the monitoring room.
The surveillance camera could indeed clearly capture the hallway outside that room.
After skipping the long, useless video clip, they started watching from 8 a.m. this morning.
For the first twenty minutes or so, only a few servants passed by occasionally, but none of them opened or approached the door to that room, and there was nothing unusual under the door.
At exactly 8:30, a figure entered the camera's field of view. From the back, he looked more than 90% like Jingmu. When he opened the door, the slight glimpse of his profile confirmed that it was indeed Jingmu.
With his head tilted back, Conan's hands, hanging at his sides, clenched slightly.
A few minutes later, bloodstains began to seep from under the door of the room on the screen, and Jingmu himself did not come out of the room.
A dozen minutes later, a maid walked towards the camera and noticed the bloodstains seeping through the door crack.
She leaned closer, probably to check, but when she discovered it was blood, she screamed uncontrollably.
Then Kogoro Mouri and the others ran over and opened the door to check.
The room fell silent as the image on the screen paused.
After a long silence, someone finally murmured something, but the voice was quite clear in the quiet room: "Is it really not Mr. Jingmu who murdered Mr. Katsumata?"
"impossible!"
Upon hearing this, Ran Mouri immediately turned her head to retort, her gaze extremely firm, and said, word by word, "Qianzhu would never do such a thing, he absolutely would not."
Conan didn't speak, but his gaze was deep.
Many of the score sheets from last night were inscribed with words of remorse, malice, and denigration of the works.
He suddenly remembered a question he had asked before.
—"If your work were treated that way, would you choose to kill the person who created it?"
"Me? Maybe."
Although that was the answer Chizuku gave at the time, would he really be able to determine that it was Katsura Ikuto who did it just because of the words written on one of the pieces of paper that were the same as those spoken by Katsura Ikuto?
The answer is no.
Qianzhu is gentle enough, but he is also rational enough.
The killer's purpose was clearly to create an effect of 'mutual destruction' similar to that of the painting.
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