Chekhov MacG Memorial Thread for White Day Murder (Files 725

[Abs.]

I want to post a translation note here, because it is important  ;D

Also spoileriffic (File 726)

Spoiler:

kiku è

[Misztina]

Hey, that's a very, very sly pun there! Thanks. My theory does have a sense!  \o/

Spoiler:

The cigarett's butt 's importance might be that hydrogen cyanid brurns with a little flame, so thta might be the reason why the napkin of the muderer wasn't burned too much. So the poison was there. Maybe before taking the poison, the victim took a capsule, thinking that it would prevent him to get too sick from the sour lemon(or whatever). After that he took the poison, so the capsule remains were still in his mouth and people would assume that he took the poison by eating that capsule.
Maybe the murderer hid the poisoned lemon in her heels and when she fell down along with some glasses, she hid there the lemon with the other lemons,which fell down.

[Abs.]

Hm... because the lemon disappeared from the murderer's glass, so he could have been the only one who took it. ^.~

Haha!  I made you double-post!

[Misztina]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Now I have to edit it!

Okay, I just put it here: Hm... because the lemon disappeared from the murderer's glass, so he could have been the only one who took it. ^.~

[caribou]

ooo i like the missing lemon observation. if the poison is indeed in the lemon then I think the only explanation is that he intended to do a murder skit, and later on say... 'it was the SUPPPAII that killed me!' (or something. haha)

another idea, inspired by Wiki: "Potassium cyanide is an inorganic compound with the formula KCN. This colorless crystalline compound, similar in appearance to sugar, is highly soluble in water."

--- possibly the guy found his drink too sour, and proceeded to add 'sugar' that his wife prepared for him? or his wife added it for him? it looks like he was drinking water though, so i duno. :/

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

I haven't really looked too hard at this file, but one thing that struck me was the lemonade glasses had little papers at the bottom. Perhaps the paper was smeared with cyanide and she managed to get him to rub his face with the paper? I assume something occurred when it got dark... Assuming that's the case, her left hand is the one to watch for. I agree with above theories that the murder was intended to be an act and that the actual murder was intertwined with this "play mystery".

[Abs.]

Probably not a repeat of the skit idea...

I'm thinking the "interesting thing" the president had in mind was to surprise everyone by being able to eat sour stuff.  His aversion to sourness is well-known, after all.  

Spoiler:

When his wife asked him, "Is it working?" he attempted to test it out by eating the disappearing lemon...

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Probably not a repeat of the skit idea...

I'm thinking the "interesting thing" the president had in mind was to surprise everyone by being able to eat sour stuff.  His aversion to sourness is well-known, after all.  

Spoiler:

When his wife asked him, "Is it working?" he attempted to test it out by eating the disappearing lemon...

You reminded me of the miracle fruit which when eaten makes sour things eaten afterwards taste sweet. They are rather interesting. Sometimes they are freeze dried and made into tablet form. Maybe this is the essence of the stage trick? The husbands eats a miracle fruit tablet and then goes on to impress everyone by eating sour things. He tests it out on your disappearing lemon, but whoops, the lemon was dusted with cyanide which puts him out permanently and provides an alibi for the wife. No one expects the sour-adverse husband to try eating the wife's lemon willingly of course. Maybe my accumulation of useless trivia may actually be worth something for once. I'm kinda happy though I guessed about the miracle fruit before I read Abs.'s translation of the second part. Gosho really hints strongly with the miraculous bit.

[Abs.]

It's a miracle!  ...Or is it mysterious? 

Well.  As usual, Chekhov makes sense of the bizarre clues that are given - miracle fruit!  Had forgotten all about those things.

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Case solution round 1! Fight!
The sour wife had to do one of two things to get a poison lemon on her glass. Option one is she prepared a poison lemon in advance and swapped it out for the other lemon. This is risky because it isn't too hard to see the switch off since she has to take out the poison lemon, place it on the glass, and then palm the lemon already on the glass. Also the poison lemon may squish some cyano-juice into her glass when she put it on if she wasn't careful. The second and perhaps safer option is to poison the preexisting lemon on the glass with a dab of cyanide and not have to worry about squishing the lemon. She has already prepared a second lemon to squish on after the husband is poisoned.

In any case, the sour wife's right hand may be poisoned from the contact with the cyanide lemon. That is something to worry about since she touched Ran's left hand front and back with her right hand which may be cyanided.

My guess is the husband took the miracle fruit capsule (because they found a capsule remnant between his teeth) in the dark when the commercial played. He then tested the wife's lemon while she was reading Ran's palm. You can see the missing lemon here. The wife replaced the lemon as soon as she could - during Kogoro's detective pronouncement. It's back already when Conan points out the guy is really dead. The wife asked if the miracle fruit tablet was working - not listening - per Abs's point about the two words sounding alike.

The lemon lady also rigged the body search request to bring her past the table where the lemonade was so she could trip, spill some glasses and dispose of some evidence. I'm going to guess it was a napkin with poison dabbed on it from carrying the poison lemon or a napkin soaked in thiosulfate to wipe her fingers on, deactivate the cyanide, and render cyanide detecting tests negative, but it could be something else. Regarding Mouri's lost cigarette, I am guessing the suspicious detail is that the napkin the sour wife's drink was on is dry, which it shouldn't be since the condensation from the cold drink would have made it wet. My assumption is that the real napkin wound up among the fallen glasses and has suspicious residue - cyanide or thiosulfate - on it.

The incriminating evidence is going to be the miracle fruit capsules which are hidden nearby somewhere or are on the lemon lady's or the husband's personage. Edgeworth ftw!


Who thinks Sato is going to give Takagi the white day present, inverting the gender roles? Did Takagi ever give Sato any chocolate?

[acerola21]

Case solution round 1! Fight!

*Puts boxing gloves on*

Lol jk.  I agree with most of your theory, I just have a few corrections to make based on the raw that I've read, is all - so I have the advantage only because I can read Japanese and I have the raw, ha ha.  I agree that the "miracle" clue means miracle fruits - brilliant catch!  I thought about the "miracle" clue forever and I couldn't make heads or tails out of it, lol.

Spoiler:

My guess is the husband took the miracle fruit capsule (because they found a capsule remnant between his teeth)

Eh?  Capsule?  You mean wafer - the original Japanese is オブラート, which translates to "wafer" - apparently it's a a thin sheet of dry paste or the like, used to enclose a powder to be swallowed.  It dissolves really quickly once it gets inside your mouth.  Ha ha, this isn't your fault, though, since I grew up in Japan and I didn't know what it was until I googled it like crazy in both English and Japanese.

Also, there's a weird point - why would Mr. Urai chew the wafer?  Apparently the wafer was found between the teeth in the back, so Mr. Urai must have chewed on the wafer somehow.  If the miracle fruit was in the form of a tablet or as an actual fruit, then there's no need to wrap the tablet in a wafer, and if the miracle fruit was in the form of powder, wouldn't you just swallow the whole thing rather than chewing on it?  I've also thought about Mrs. Urai dropping the wafer into Mr. Urai's mouth when she touches his mouth, but I doubt that the wafer would get between the teeth in the back if that's the case.

The sour wife had to do one of two things to get a poison lemon on her glass. Option one is she prepared a poison lemon in advance and swapped it out for the other lemon. This is risky because it isn't too hard to see the switch off since she has to take out the poison lemon, place it on the glass, and then palm the lemon already on the glass. Also the poison lemon may squish some cyano-juice into her glass when she put it on if she wasn't careful. The second and perhaps safer option is to poison the preexisting lemon on the glass with a dab of cyanide and not have to worry about squishing the lemon. She has already prepared a second lemon to squish on after the husband is poisoned.

In any case, the sour wife's right hand may be poisoned from the contact with the cyanide lemon. That is something to worry about since she touched Ran's left hand front and back with her right hand which may be cyanided.

Aaaah, I certainly hope Ran doesn't have cyanide on her.  Maybe Mrs. Urai put cyanide in a wafer, then put the wafer next to the lemon and let the wafer melt and get cyanide on the lemon when she grabbed her drink here:



I thought it was strange that she put her hand over the cup like that.  And maybe that's why there's remains of wafers between Mr. Urai's back teeth?  Because some wafers remained on the lemon and he chewed on it when he ate the lemon?  Although, you'd think that someone would notice plastic-y stuff coming out of a lemon, but I don't know any other way to explain how the wafer caught in the back teeth, so this is the best I've got.

Regarding Mouri's lost cigarette, I am guessing the suspicious detail is that the napkin the sour wife's drink was on is dry, which it shouldn't be since the condensation from the cold drink would have made it wet.

Maybe it's more because the paper didn't catch fire from Mouri's cig?  Although, I have no idea what would make paper not catch on fire from a hot cig, but I'm guessing that it has something to do with the wafer.

The lemon lady also rigged the body search request to bring her past the table where the lemonade was so she could trip, spill some glasses and dispose of some evidence. I'm going to guess it was a napkin with poison dabbed on it from carrying the poison lemon or a napkin soaked in thiosulfate to wipe her fingers on, deactivate the cyanide, and render cyanide detecting tests negative, but it could be something else. Regarding Mouri's lost cigarette, I am guessing the suspicious detail is that the napkin the sour wife's drink was on is dry, which it shouldn't be since the condensation from the cold drink would have made it wet. My assumption is that the real napkin wound up among the fallen glasses and has suspicious residue - cyanide or thiosulfate - on it.

I think that the wife also disposed of the peels of the lemon there - if the husband ate the lemon, then I doubt that he'll eat the peels along with it, so I'm guessing that the wife picked it up when no one was looking, and disposed it during that trip.  Now that I think about it, I'm guessing that this could be the evidence - the lemon peel with the wife's fingerprints and the husband's saliva on it.  I mean, from the looks of the wife's cup (assuming no one noticed that the wife put a new lemon on it, or that the husband ate a lemon), it seems like she didn't eat her lemon so it's weird that her prints would show up on that lemon peel, and it would also be strange for the husband's saliva to be on it when he hates sour stuff so much.

. . . Though I still have some suspicions about the disappearing lemon being a mistake on Gosho/his assistants' side, then all of our deductions would be wrong. ^^"  I dunno, I'm never absolutely sure about anything.

I also want to make corrections on what I've speculated earlier - I said the act probably involved the husband faking his death, but this is unlikely since 1) Mouri suggested the theory, 2) it was Yoko's idea to hire Mouri for the commercial, not the Urais', and 3) the scene at the beginning of File 725 happened before White SpyChocolate was developed so they had no clue Mouri or any detective would be involved (I have no idea how I ever thought that the scene happened the night before the party, ha ha).  Also, apparently the poison is cyanide for sure, so the whole poison-isn't-cyanide-and-the-almond-scent-was-faked theory is wrong for sure.

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Also, there's a weird point - why would Mr. Urai chew the wafer?  Apparently the wafer was found between the teeth in the back, so Mr. Urai must have chewed on the wafer somehow.  If the miracle fruit was in the form of a tablet or as an actual fruit, then there's no need to wrap the tablet in a wafer, and if the miracle fruit was in the form of powder, wouldn't you just swallow the whole thing rather than chewing on it?  I've also thought about Mrs. Urai dropping the wafer into Mr. Urai's mouth when she touches his mouth, but I doubt that the wafer would get between the teeth in the back if that's the case.

You need to chew the tablet/wafer/capsule thing and allow it to sit on your tongue for a while to work. That's why there was wafer remnants on his molars. It's no good in your stomach.
Also the lemons may be unpeeled already when they are stuck on the glass since they are whole circles. It would be hard to stick a circular slice of lemon on a glass with the peel still completely wrapped around it. Normally if you are meant to squeeze the lemon into a beverage it is a wedge rather than a full circle and still has the peel to minimize juicing your fingers. If it is there for decoration as I suspect in this case -the drink is lemon tea so it already has lemon flavor in it- you don't need a peel since you are not supposed to squeeze it. You are right though that she may have disposed of the lemon peel along with the napkin if there still is a peel. I'll have to investigate the splashy spillings.

Maybe it's more because the paper didn't catch fire from Mouri's cig?  Although, I have no idea what would make paper not catch on fire from a hot cig, but I'm guessing that it has something to do with the wafer.

I'm guessing the napkin shouldn't have been as burned as it is if it was still damp. I'm pretty sure the clue is the napkin on the table is dry when it shouldn't be.

Edit: Oh no, Sato grabbed the lemon lady's right hand to help her stand. Sato may be poisoned as well! It seems the Haido City Hotel is a hotspot for criminal activity....
I finally broke one post per day. Jubilee!

[Abs.]

It seems the Haido City Hotel is a hotspot for criminal activity....

That's why I'm saying that the wife is innocent!  The B.O. did it!!!  

My guess is the husband took the miracle fruit capsule (because they found a capsule remnant between his teeth)

Eh?  Capsule?  You mean wafer - the original Japanese is オブラート, which translates to "wafer" - apparently it's a a thin sheet of dry paste or the like, used to enclose a powder to be swallowed.  It dissolves really quickly once it gets inside your mouth.  Ha ha, this isn't your fault, though, since I grew up in Japan and I didn't know what it was until I googled it like crazy in both English and Japanese.

Guilty.  "Capsule" was a case of best approximation.  I felt that explaining that obulaato = oblate = wafer when "wafer" means

to most people would only add unnecessary confusion.  It was a gamble on my part that the distinction would not have bearing on the solution to the case.

I finally broke one post per day. Jubilee!

I knew you could do it!  Hoo rah!

[ranger]

I think I'll buy some wafers at school tomorrow, I have a sudden craving for them now.

*disappears from manga topics.

[bluekaitou1412]

don't just post food stuff dammit

I think I'll buy some wafers at school tomorrow, I have a sudden craving for them now.

so this