The Mysterious Lisa
The exhibition hall they had entered was the "Hall of Hell," and true to its name, the lighting inside was dim to the point where they could barely make out the outlines of the exhibits around them.
But with their exceptional night vision, Xiayu and Lisa spotted the victim at once — a body pierced through with a sword and hung upon the wall.
Xiayu noticed that Mouri Ran hadn't yet registered the corpse on the wall, and instinctively stepped in front of her, blocking her view.
Ran caught the movement. "Xiayu, what's wrong?"
"Ran, don't look. There's a body up ahead."
The moment Conan heard those words, he immediately tried to dash forward to examine the scene — but before he could move, a hand reached from behind and covered his eyes.
Conan's heart lurched. Who is it? I didn't hear a single footstep just now. Could the murderer still be hiding nearby?
He instinctively began to struggle, but his body was quickly pinned, and a soft, teasing whisper drifted into his ear — Lisa's voice. "Little boy, don't move~ This isn't something you should be seeing. Don't be so curious — too much curiosity leads to all sorts of unpleasant things, you know."
Relief washed over Conan the moment he realized it was Lisa covering his eyes. He understood she was simply being kind, thinking a small child shouldn't witness such a bloody scene. But he wasn't an ordinary elementary schooler — he was the high school detective, Kudou Shinichi, and a case was unfolding right before his eyes, one he couldn't touch because of this blasted child's body. Damn it all — it was entirely the fault of those two men in black who had done this to him.
"Lisa-nee-chan, okay, I get it. I won't go sneaking over there again. You can let go of me now."
"Conan, something's happened. Don't run around and cause trouble, all right?" Having heard Lisa's words, Ran steered clear of the body and came over to take Conan's hand, making sure he couldn't bolt off again.
"Yes, Ran-neechan..." Conan could only agree helplessly.
With both Lisa and Ran watching him like hawks, Conan had no choice but to shelve the plan for now. He'd slip away to investigate once their attention shifted off him.
Meanwhile, Mouri Kogoro had already finished calling the police, and they arrived at the scene in short order — Inspector Megure, as ever, a familiar face.
Taking in the people present, Megure gave them a half-lidded look. "You again, eh, Mouri-boy."
Kogoro greeted the inspector cheerfully and gave a brief account of the situation, along with the victim's identity.
The victim was Manager Manaka, the man who had purchased the art museum and was about to convert it into a restaurant.
By this point the officers had brought in the museum staff, all of whom panicked visibly at the sight of Manaka's corpse.
Xiayu studied the expression of the killer in this case — museum director Ochiai — with particular attention. All she could say was, of course someone ruthless enough to hang a corpse on a wall could keep their composure like this. There wasn't a trace of alarm on Director Ochiai's face before the police; she remained calm throughout, showing only a brief flicker of shock at the very start, when she first laid eyes on Manaka's body.
"Officer, every exhibition hall in our museum has surveillance cameras," one of the staff members said. "Perhaps checking the footage will reveal who the killer is."
At the mention of security cameras, Inspector Megure brightened somewhat. To think the culprit's crime had been caught on tape — this time, tracking down the murderer should proceed smoothly.
The group made their way to the security room and began playing back the footage recorded at the scene of the crime.
This was Conan's chance. The moment Lisa's attention shifted to the video, he slipped away from her side and squeezed in among the crowd at the front to watch.
Lisa had noticed his movement the instant he made it — but she let it go. She knew very well how obsessed this little detective was with mysteries and cases; there was no way on earth he'd pass up the chance to pit himself against a killer that had unfolded right in front of him. Earlier, with his elementary-schooler appearance, she had blocked him once out of regard for her own position — but she certainly didn't plan on playing full-time nanny to the little brat going forward. Honestly, the way he scurried around crime scenes so shamelessly, so utterly unconcealed, right up close to the bodies — no wonder so many people eventually figured out who he really was.
Lisa turned her attention back to the recording, which was now playing the victim's final moments. Manager Manaka appeared on the screen, glancing at his watch as though waiting for someone. He never noticed the suit of armor behind him suddenly spring to life — one strike of the sword cleaved into his back, and then, moving with startling agility, the figure cut him down from the front as well. Next, it hoisted the body up with one hand while driving the sword through it with the other, pinning him to the wall. Just as the figure began to stride slowly out of the camera's field of view, Inspector Megure hit pause.
"That scene looks rather like the painting at the crime scene — the one called Divine Punishment."
"Oh! You're right!"
Both Mouri Kogoro and Conan felt the composition in the footage was somehow familiar too, but since they'd spotted the victim the moment they entered the hall, they hadn't examined the surrounding artwork closely and had only a vague sense of déjà vu. Now, with Lisa's prompt, it clicked at once — that enormous, eye-catching painting hanging at the scene of the crime.
From this, Kogoro deduced that the killer must have imitated the painting — that was why the murder had been carried out in such a fashion.
Conan had arrived at the same conjecture. But... his gaze drifted over to Lisa.
Even he, upon seeing the crime scene, had been instantly captivated by the victim, retaining only a rough impression of the painting. Yet Lisa hadn't just connected the killer's method to the artwork the very moment the footage played — she'd named it outright. The title of a painting nobody would know unless they'd gone out of their way to look. Had she realized the connection between the scene and that painting from the very beginning?
Lisa was recalling the unnatural sequence of movements the victim's body had made in the video after the blow to his back, a thoughtful look in her eyes — So that's how it was done.
Then Conan noticed Lisa step over to Xiayu's side and lean in to murmur something to her, and Xiayu's eyes went wide as she whipped her head around to stare at Lisa — Strange. What could she possibly have said to shock Xiayu-nee-chan like that?
At that moment, Xiayu was staring at Lisa in astonishment — She already knows the trick and the evidence? I only remember who the killer is — I haven't even worked backward from the result to find the clues and proof yet, and Lisa figured it out from a single look at the scene and one viewing of the footage?
"Um... Inspector Megure?" Xiayu called out to him. "I already know who the killer is — the method, the evidence, I know all of it."
Inspector Megure and Mouri Kogoro had just narrowed the suspect down to staff members with intimate knowledge of the museum, based on the "No Entry" sign they'd encountered earlier — only to hear Xiayu announce that she had already identified the killer.
Conan had been about to focus on the case himself when he heard that Xiayu had already solved it.
What?! Seriously? That fast? The footage hasn't even been played through a second time yet.
Conan found it hard to believe — and more than that, he had his suspicions that Xiayu wasn't the one who'd cracked it. He kept thinking back to what Lisa had whispered in her ear just now. Very likely, she'd been told the killer's identity and the trick outright.
Who exactly is Lisa? Is she really just an ordinary librarian? What ordinary librarian has insight and memory like that?