Chapter 960: The weird body and the hole

"Miss Moriyo, could it be," the old butler worried, "Could it be that something happened to her too?"

"I'm afraid so, but at least we should find the body," Conan put aside the matter of the maid Hihara Hikari for a while and asked the old butler, "Has every corner of the villa really been searched?"

"Yes, because everyone is looking for the master."

"What if she was murdered or had her mouth blocked and hidden somewhere at that time?"

Akaso Kaze thought of the secret passage under the coffin.

"Does your master have any strange behavior recently, or since half a year ago? For example, renovating the mansion, or buying something, etc."

"Speaking of which," the old butler recalled, "About half a year ago, the master said he wanted everyone in the mansion to take a break, so he arranged an overseas trip for about a week. Shortly after that, the incident with the maid Miss Shimizu happened."

"What about recently?"

"Recently, the master suddenly bought an inflatable swimming pool for children online, and seemed to have bought toy airplanes and the like. A very large box was delivered. Oh, by the way, the master also bought a new locked refrigerator recently."

In the kitchen, Conan stood in front of the locked large refrigerator.

"Is it this one?"

He tried it, and the larger freezer below was indeed locked. The upper refrigerator compartment, which was not locked, was normal, but it was also full of ingredients.

"Why lock it?"

"I don't know," the chef who was called over shook his head, "I heard that it contained high-grade meat prepared for the guests coming today, but it wasn't used."

"Is there a key?"

"The master should have it, and Hikari might have it too."

"Hikari?"

"The keys to this kitchen and nearby rooms are all kept by Hikari." The chef explained.

"Ye, yes, that's right," the maid Hihara Hikari, who was called over in a daze, responded, "But I checked the refrigerator, there is nothing, only a large jar of seaweed."

After trying several keys clumsily, the maid Hihara Hikari finally found the key and opened the refrigerator.

Sure enough, as she said, the two-layer freezer, which was empty enough to hold two people, only contained a cylindrical jar.

Conan checked the refrigerator carefully. The freezer temperature was very low, and there was ice inside. There was no problem.

"Are there any other places in the mansion where people can be hidden?"

"There shouldn't be."

"Not good!" A guard in a raincoat ran into the room in a hurry from outside. Seeing everyone gathered in the kitchen, he shouted, "Something, something happened! Someone died in the forest!"

"Forest?"

"Right in front of the main gate!"

It was already late at night, it was still raining outside the villa, the air was sultry, and it seemed to be filled with an irritable atmosphere.

The body was in the forest opposite the main gate. The eldest daughter of the Torakura family, Torakura Moriyo, was tied to a wooden stake with her hands behind her back, lying under a tree, and the body was wet.

The thin clothes were close to her body, revealing her round, pale chest, and there was a small amount of accumulated water in the cleavage.

Her neck was wrapped with a rope, faintly revealing the strangulation marks below. Her eyes were wide open, and her face looked a bit terrifying under the rain.

"It's Miss Moriyo!"

Conan rushed to the scene in the rain, first checking the situation around the body, and then approached to check the body.

The cause of death was strangulation. Judging from the condition of the body, the time of death was about 6 hours ago, which means she might have been murdered when he accompanied Torakura Anji to wash the photos earlier.

Conan turned to look at the two guards and asked: "Did you see her come out?"

The mansion only has one entrance, the main gate, and the guard is also responsible for opening and closing the iron gate. If there was any abnormality, the guard should have discovered it immediately.

"No," the guard said with a flashlight, "No one has gone out during this time."

"Have you been guarding the gate?"

"This, the main gate was opened once, because the furniture company's truck came,"

Another fat guard explained, "The master said the chairs were old and planned to replace them all with new ones, so he placed an order with the furniture company a few days ago."

"But when we were counting the goods, we found that they were wrongly loaded as sofas, so we let the truck driver go back first today. By the way, the explosion that caused the tunnel collapse happened at that time, and we stared at it for a while, but only for a while."

"Could she have come out at that time?" The thin guard looked at Torakura Moriyo's body.

"Was she not discovered when she tied the body to the wooden stake here and returned to the mansion?" Conan thought, "Impossible, just bringing someone over is already very time-consuming."

"And this hole," Conan pointed to the dirt pit the size of a wooden stake dug next to the body, "Was it prepared to insert the wooden stake from the beginning? Just like half a year ago."

"It was indeed intended to hang the body upside down like half a year ago, but this time it was not finished. At least the body was not sucked dry of blood, and there were only strangulation marks on the neck."