Discussion Thread: Detective Conan 994-996

[randompi314159]

Spoiler:

Nice, so it was a school trip after all. Wonder how Conan is going to end up tagging along.

[saorin]

Spoiler:

(...)
Now for the trick behind the murder, I think that Newton's first law, i.e. moment of inertia was used to deal with the victim. The vase was kept on the edge of the cupboard, there was a mechanism installed beneath the cupboard which if activated would slide the cupboard away from the wall.
Now given the victim's habit of sitting on it while smoking proves that the victim was sure that cupboard was seemingly rigid(won't move from weight) so he didn't took precaution and was set up by the culprit to reach for something using his right hand(the smudges on his right hand, his odd body position seems to support this hypothesis) and thus activated the mechanism, which toppled the vase on his head. As he was reaching for the thing quite deeply so his face was vertical and faced his left cheek away from the wall, so the injury caused on his left fore head and he died on the spot. To make it look like that someone attacked him with vase(filled with water and flowers) the culprit poured a little water on his shirt collar.

For the culprit, we can easily exclude the man. The waitress was hiding from the loan sharks but the man discovered it only on that eventful day. From the expression of the waitress we do find that it was the first time she heard this stuff. So previously she was only approached by the victim to be his GF nothing more was there.
Now apparently the manager lacks the motive but given the fact that manager's brother has already complained against him and the victim was the ex-live in partner of the manager. The victim was known for his revengeful nature and if this word of complaining even came to his ears the manager's life would be destroyed, the victim would have waited till the manager got married and then after taking over as the new manager would have showed some inconvenient pics./stuff of the ex-manager. So this was the motive of the manager. And I rule her as the killer, but the waitress can be also the killer using the same trick but I think that is far less likely.

Spoiler:

I agree with most of this. To me, it looks like the thing under the cupboard is something ball-like and has a thread/rope tied to it. When the victim grabbed it, maybe it somehow made the vase topple from the counter and hit him. Maybe the mechanism was connected to the window. It seems to be closed although the guy should have needed it open if he was about to smoke. Though it doesn't seem to open into the room in the flashback scene, so that might be off the mark.

But I'm sticking with the waitress as culprit. She exclaimed when Takagi reached under the cupboard, usually actions to divert attention are a good sign for the murderer. Also,
She was the first one to find him and he needed to be propped up before the others came to hide the trick. She was also the one who pointed out the vase was missing so the manager would send her searching for It.