Chapter 237 Thirty-one Gachapon

Yuri Tsuji's mother's name is Tsuji Hinamiko, which is pronounced "hinako". The only person who calls her Nana is the butler, Mrs. Hinamiko's father.

However, the relationship between the father and daughter was almost severed because of a quarrel before Mrs. Heneko got married. Therefore, Tsuji Masazō had no idea about the father-daughter relationship between the butler and Mrs. Heneko.

Although the relationship had once reached such a level, after marriage, Mrs. Yinzi would write a letter to the butler at a fixed time every year to report safety, and the butler would also send a reply at the same time. The father and daughter awkwardly relied on the annual letters to gradually ease their tense relationship.

Until ten years ago, when the butler did not receive any letters at that time in previous years, he immediately realized that something had happened to Mrs. Yinzi.

"Nana is a person who attaches great importance to the concept of time and ritual. She once fell seriously ill on the day of mailing the letter, but she still asked others to help her mail the letter." The housekeeper remained in a half-squatting position and continued in a calm voice, "After I came up with this guess, I also wondered if it was delivered to the wrong place or lost along the way..."

But after a close investigation, the housekeeper discovered that the fact was that Miss Yinzi had not sent out any letters that year.

Both father and daughter have stubborn personalities. They say they have severed their relationship, but the butler has been secretly following the news in Kyoto and has long known that the person Hinami is going to marry is the head of the Tsuji Group, so after confirming the incident, he hurriedly turned to investigating the information there.

In fact, there was no need to investigate further, because the headlines in the newspapers at that time were "Chairman Tsuji's wife committed suicide!" News headlines like these, the news that his daughter had died a few days before the original time of sending the letter, was enough to make the butler dazed for a long time.

He is the only one who does not believe that his daughter would commit suicide. Because he firmly believes that there must be something fishy going on, the butler changes his identity, takes the initiative to come to the manor, and applies to be the butler of the manor in order to investigate the cause of his daughter's death.

The investigation after that lasted for a full ten years. The butler replaced Tsuji Masazo, who had little contact with Tsuji Yuri after his wife's death, and took care of Tsuji Yuri until she grew up safely.

In the process, the butler gradually discovered similarities between the child and Yingzi, which made him more determined to find out the truth.

——He could not allow himself to let his daughter die in such an unclear way, nor could he accept that one day a crisis would befall his granddaughter who was too similar to his daughter.

Finally, a week ago, when the butler went to wake up Tsuji Masazou as usual, he accidentally overheard a conversation outside the door and heard Hinami's name in Tsuji Masazou's speech.

[“I swear! I have gradually cleaned up all traces of what happened to the girl over the years. There will definitely not be any more accidents… Yes, yes, the girl hasn’t had time to send out… the letter? How could I remember such a thing? Uh, I know. I will clean it up again!”]

The housekeeper realized that the suicide incident ten years ago was indeed caused by cat peeping, just as he had guessed! And, letters? The first thing he thought of was the letters that Yinzi used to exchange with him every year. He originally thought that Yinzi really didn't send them out, but after hearing this, he immediately began to doubt it.

A week was enough time for the butler to conduct a more thorough investigation. Last night, he finally found a strange photo of a crow in the photo album that Egg had left behind. The photo was a little thicker than the others in the album.

It was as if the mother had already realized that she would die, so she hid the letter in this way.

"Nana has loved photography for a long time. She told me that she wanted to take pictures of all the scenery she saw." The housekeeper said, "But she died because she took a picture of something that Tsuji Shozo didn't want her to see, the letter..."

Conan remembered the photo of Hinata Tsuji that he had seen on the butler before. The high school girl in the photo did have a camera hanging on her chest. In a family that was not rich, in that era, providing such professional equipment to a daughter who was just an enthusiast was enough to prove the butler's love for his daughter.

The butler's words immediately drew Conan's attention back, or rather, drew the attention back to everyone present.

Because the housekeeper said that the most common phrase written on that piece of letter paper was "Call the police."

Hinata Tsuji accidentally discovered the transaction between Shozo Tsuji and others and found that they were discussing such unscrupulous things as human trafficking and human experiments. Shozo Tsuji seemed to be involved in it, which was totally unbearable for Hinata Tsuji. She chose to collect evidence secretly and hid the evidence she collected in a USB flash drive.

The letter contained the hidden address of the USB flash drive using the word puzzle game that the father and daughter often played when they were children. This also made the housekeeper completely certain that Hinata did not commit suicide, but was murdered by Tsuji Masazō to silence her.

The cause of his daughter's death, the possibility that Tsuji Masazo would attack Yuri, and the bloody crimes in the USB flash drive... all these things made the housekeeper unable to endure it any longer, and he finally killed Tsuji Masazo this morning.

However, by that time, Masazo Tsuji had already sent out the invitations. After thinking about it, the housekeeper decided to take advantage of the situation. The photo found by the children was a clue he deliberately left for the detectives to investigate his daughter's death.

He had not intended to cover up the death of Masazō Tsuji. The butler had originally planned to wait until the detectives had completed their investigation before turning himself in. He pretended to commit suicide just to buy time so that the detectives could get in touch with the case of the death of the egg...

Indeed, the other party did not carefully clean up the traces at all, and it is easy to judge that he killed Mr. Tsuji. The little detective wearing glasses sighed inwardly and thought so.

"I'm still very concerned. What did you find there that made you so impatient to come to him in advance?" The butler skipped his own affairs and returned to the previous topic. There was a faint hope in his tone, "Little Detective, since you know the relationship between Nana and me, have you also investigated the cause of Nana's death?"

They had not told the butler what they had found in the cabin before. They only said that they had found information about a case related to Masazo Tsuji. Later, the matter was shelved because Masazo Tsuji was found dead. So until now, the butler still didn't know what happened in the cabin.

Facing the old man's gaze, no one could tell the truth.

Should they tell this old man, who was only a shell left, that the daughter he had been looking for for ten years was actually sealed in a plaster statue? For ten years, his daughter had always been close to him, and the housekeeper even often went to the wooden house to take care of the plaster statues.

This is too cruel, for everyone.

"It's true that Miss Hinami was killed by Mr. Tsuji. We have found evidence sufficient to prove Miss Hinami's innocence." Conan finally chose to say this, and his voice became low.

"...But I believe that when Miss Henzi left that letter, she definitely didn't think of asking you to help her avenge in this way, Butler."

After all, she was a woman who, even though she knew that doing so would bring her own death, still decided to expose these crimes. She did not waver even if the culprit was her own partner. She even wanted the law to punish Tsuji Masazo until her death.

How could she be willing to let her father's hands be stained with the blood of his enemies?

"Yes, I know, because Nana is that kind of silly girl who is full of justice and makes people worry. She risked her own life to do what is right. I couldn't accept the possibility of losing her, so we had a big fight." The housekeeper's eyes were dim. "If I had known that it was that time that I really lost her forever, I would never break off my relationship with her..."

His voice could no longer be choked. The tears he should have shed for his daughter had already dried up in the past ten years. Now all that was left was an empty body half-kneeling here. The flame of revenge that had supported the body's actions was gradually extinguished after the death of his enemy.

"Maybe I have died a long time ago." He smiled, and his smile was exactly the same as the girl's in the photo. Only then could people see the blood relationship between him and his girlfriend from the wrinkles on his old face.

"The day I learned that I had lost my daughter forever, my soul must have died with her."

…

When the Kyoto police came to take the people in the manor away, the detectives and their families who were involved in the so-called detective gathering also prepared to go down the mountain.

Conan, who had been in the limelight during the reasoning, was running around to avoid Hattori Heiji's increasingly strange gaze, so the children who couldn't find Conan came to find the detective who was talking to Hagiwara and others at the gate of the manor in confusion.

"You want to know the role that Yuri Tsuji played in this case?" The detective raised an eyebrow and praised her generously. "She is very sharp."

He never really treated children as greenhouse flowers, so he said it naturally: "The eldest daughter knew about the housekeeper's murder plan a long time ago. She just pretended that she didn't know and turned a blind eye to all the housekeeper's actions and even covered them up."

Speaking of this, Chijiang Nayue thought about the clues she had found in the living room before.

I'm afraid that the young lady never believed from the beginning that her mother really committed suicide, but she was still a child and could not find any evidence. She also couldn't get her father's company when she was in the most painful time, so to her, the housekeeper who took care of her when she grew up was her real relative.

In fact, the adults all understood after the truth was revealed. At that time, Yuri Tsuji chose to go to the swimming pool after it had just rained in order to give the housekeeper some space so that the other party would not care about her feelings, and she also told such a lame lie.

It was so lame that she actually told Hattori Heiji and the others that she was just resting after training... Before that, it was clearly raining outside. As a swimmer, didn't the young lady know that it was very dangerous? Impossible.

The housekeeper once hinted to the detectives to go to the swimming pool so that they could have the opportunity to contact the eldest lady, learn about Hinami Tsuji, and find out the information he wanted to know.

But the detective didn't tell the children what happened next.

On the other side, Conan bumped into the housekeeper who was about to get into the police car while dodging. The exhausted-looking old man moved his lips and begged the police officer beside him to let him say a few words to the child for the last time.

This request should have been denied, but Conan realized that the butler wanted to tell him something important, so he pleaded pitifully with his puppy eyes, and the seemingly young police officer allowed them to say a few words under supervision.

The old man breathed a sigh of relief.

"Another thing I know, which I didn't tell you before, is that I didn't know... who was untrustworthy," he said. "The conversation I heard that day was actually more than that. For example, this so-called detective gathering actually seemed to be prepared by him for a specific person, and the other detectives were all fronts."

Before getting on the bus, the old man said the 'name' he had heard.

Bourbon.

While thinking about the name of the wine, which sounded like a code name, a nervous and overly involved young detective seemed to have accidentally read it out loud.

"Hmm? Bourbon whiskey is a very good drink." The next second, a voice suddenly sounded behind him.

"But children are not suitable for dealing with alcohol." The blond man kept smiling, squatting behind him, and gently pressed his hand on his shoulder. "If Conan-kun has anything you want to know, you are welcome to consult me, okay?"

Conan shuddered.

When did this guy get behind him?