Volume 90

Chronology
‹ Volume 89	List of Chapters • List of Cases	Volume 91 ›

Volume 90
Information
Release date:	August 18, 2016
Chapters:	949-959
ISBN:	ISBN 978-4-09-127330-7
Publisher:	Shogakukan
Featured Detective & Keyhole
The Phantom Thief Detective Yamaneko Vermouth as Azusa Enomoto
Aoyama's death & Conan side images

Cast

Characters

Conan Edogawa Hiroshi Agasa Subaru Okiya Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi Kazunobu Chiba Jodie Starling Fusae Campbell (background) Kohji Haneda (PC/background) Asaka (background) Shuichi Akai (flashback/background) Shinichi Kudo (flashback/background) Kogoro Mouri Gin Vodka Vermouth Rum (silhouette background) Yoko Okino (background) Masumi Sera Mary Scotch (flashback) Rei Furuya Ran Mouri Sonoko Suzuki Azusa Enomoto Ai Haibara (flashback) Heiji Hattori Kazuha Toyama Makoto Kyogoku (background) Misao Yamamura (background)

Gadgets

Gadgets
Stun-Gun Wristwatch Voice-Changing Bowtie

The Clenched Scissors and the Clipped Letters

File 949 - Sweet Scent

As the case seems similar to the 17 years ago's one with Kohji Haneda, Conan asks Okiya/Akai the reason why he joined the FBI. Okiya replies it has to do indeed with the 17-year-old case in which his father had been involved. Okiya says his father wasn't from the FBI, but refuses to tell Conan more about it...unless the latter tells him about his true identity. Conan says he'll tell him when the case is solved and closed - even though Conan believes it's useless as Akai probably already knows the entire truth.

Kazunori Senba tells the police he wants to go back home as they don't need him anymore. But the police insists on him staying a little longer for some more questioning, and Chiba tells Okiya and Agasa Senba is the one who found out Hiyama's corpse, he injured his foot stepping by accident on shattered glass in the crime's room. Okiya asks Senba if his right leg still hurts him, and Senba replies he actually injured his left foot, though he had an accident last month during which his right leg was badly injured, and still hurts actually. Takagi tells Senba Okiya is just Agasa's assistant, the one who invented the fancy scissors Hiyama had in hand when dying. Senba refuses to tell Okiya about the events as he's not from the police, but Conan tells Senba Okiya just wants to check if the scissors' special function actually worked, because the mechanism could have been activated if the culprit has done something weird around Hiyama's body.

Senba then accepts to recount what happened : he came in Hiyama's house and was searched by the bodyguards who checked if he had metallic objects on him. Senba then went to the central lodge and opened the door, then he waited in the corridor a minute or two, but Hiyama never came. Senba called out for him but still nothing. Afterwards, he wandered around the lodge, checking the rooms one after the other, until the bathroom, only to find Hiyama's corpse there, and the room as it is now. Senba says as soon as he saw Hiyama's head was bleeding he rushed to rescue him. Okiya says then it's strange he went straight ahead without noticing the clearly visible shattered glass on the floor. Senba says he didn't notice it as he had barely cracked the door open to check the room rapidly. It wasn't directly in his field of vision, then he stepped on it by chance. But Conan says it's still weird as since the glass was shattered near the entrance, probably slung to the murderer's face by Hiyama, then if Senba had cracked the door open and immediately opened it wide afterwards to rush to Hiyama, the glass would have been swept aside by the door movement, implying Senba had really faint chances of stepping on a bit. Senba says he actually made a mistake : he now remembers the door to be open when he came, explaining why he directly saw Hiyama and ran to help him without noticing the glass.

Senba notes Conan's undeceived gaze at him and tells him he's not the murderer despite his insinuations. He says if he had killed Hiyama he would be covered in blood, his clothes would be dripping bloody. Senba shows Conan his clothes in evidence but Conan notices Senba's shirt buttons are ill-fastened, as if done in a rush. Agasa and Okiya also note Senba's shirt isn't properly tucked into his trousers in the back, and his tie is too loose, just as his clothes are globally ill-kept. Senba takes fright and assures he's not the murderer as he didn't didn't bring any blunt weapons with him. Fed up with that questioning, Senba leaves followed by Takagi who tries to hold him back. Okiya asks the forensic agents picking up the shards of glass if Senba stepped on the glass barefooted, to which the forensics answer he was actually wearing slippers. Conan and Okiya observe the exhibit slipper whose heel is pierced by a shard of glass and red with blood, just as the inner part of the slipper is, and they deduce the ploy used by the culprit.

Megure tells Okiya the broken glass is exactly the same as the other one on the sink, a Fusae-brand toothbrush glass, reminding Agasa of her first love Fusae Campbell, who became a world-famous businesswoman managing accessory-manufacturing firms. As the forensics ask people in front of the door to move aside as they're transporting Hiyama, Conan and Okiya smell a sweet fragrance coming from the corpse. Megure explains when they examined Hiyama's head injury, they found over it some peculiar substance looking like honey. As Megure is tired still not having an answer to the question he keeps asking Okiya, Agasa and Conan, which is what the link with the scissors actually is, he asks them when they intend to go home... Agasa comments on the case being so off-putting : honey on the victim's head, clenched scissors in his hand, a water tap which kept running even after the murder, etc. He wonders how Senba did manage to pass a weapon on to Hiyama's house even after being searched, if he is indeed the murderer. What's more, all windows are barred in the whole house. Okiya and Conan tell him Senba is really the culprit and they've found out his ploy, except for the weapon he used in the crime.

Conan asks the two bodyguards what they found in Senba's pockets when they searched him. He actually had toys in plastic packets, along with little paper leaflets with pictures of other toys and dolls featured on them. He said these were presents for some children he knew, even though he had already shut up his dagashi shop (where toys and candy are usually sold). He also had a wallet and a key, along with a peculiar big yellowish toy ball, just like dagashi shops sell. They gave it to the police, but actually as they had found it on the ground and knew there is a big park next to the house, they thought it wasn't Senba's but rather a toy which was probably flung in the air and lost by a child playing in the park, though none went to retrieve it. Conan asks them to show him where they found it, which is actually just next to the lodge. A bodyguard went there and found it after hearing a strange muffled sound coming from the lodge's roof. Just next to the place the ball was found, Conan spots a small non-barred bottom window which is actually the washroom's one, in order to get more fresh air inside as all the other windows are barred, and actually even a child couldn't slip through it, which is why bars are useless here. The washroom isn't very far away from the bathroom where the murder took place, and from the cloakroom. The guard remembers the noise on the roof to be quite loud, like a double hit or so.

As Conan and Okiya think about it and realise what the weapon might be, Agasa shouts in fear and tells them he was just startled by hundreds of ants walking a straight line towards the house. Conan doesn't get it why he shouted as Agasa' bookshelf is filled with books about bugs. Agasa answers bugs are cute on pictures but not so much in real life. Conan and Okiya suddenly understand something and follow the ant line up to the house under which landing they glance at something really interesting : the mysterious murder weapon being overrun by dozens of ants.

File 950 - The Clipped Letters

Agasa tells Megure Conan and Okiya have figured out who the murderer is and how he managed not to be suspected at all.

  Show spoilers »

The culprit is indeed Kazunori Senba. Conan and Okiya say he brought the murder weapon with him inside the house : the plastic ball used to contain the toy and leaflet the guards found in his pockets during the search, the crime's weapon could have been put inside the ball and considered above suspicion. But Senba tells Conan he actually discarded it before coming to Hiyama's as he considered it useless. But Conan reveals it to be a lie, as Takagi comes along with the things Conan had asked him to buy in order to show him how the murderer actually used all of them to create his trick. First Conan opens the plastic ball and removes the toy and leaflet, then he tapes the ball's air openings to prevent honey from leaking, puts a big marble inside and covers it entirely with honey, and closes the ball again, and probably tapes it over just to make sure it won't open up later. Then Conan asks Takagi to throw the ball on the roof, along with another ball, a bouncing ball, actually very similar to the one the guard found earlier in the garden. Takagi complies and flings the balls over the roof. Both impacts are heard but only the bouncing ball directly falls from the roof to land on the ground near Takagi. Conan asks him to wait a moment for the other one to appear, while they all come in the lodge.

Okiya reveals Hiyama did come to greet Senba at the entrance, and this latter asked him to use his washroom in order to recover the murder weapon. They go to the washroom which faces the bathroom where Hiyama was killed, and Okiya shows them the bottom window. He opens it and slips his arm through it, grabbing an item outside, below the window, which is actually the plastic ball. It didn't fall from the roof, as the marble and honey inside slowed it down dramatically, and it rolled down to the gutter, resumed its course up to the gutter's vertical hole, where rainwater is usually being collected, then fell inside the pipe, down to the bottom, eventually emerging on the ground and stopping just in front of the bottom window. Takagi confirms it to be true. Senba, the culprit, actually went in the park next to Hiyama's house and flung both balls at the same time on the lodge's roof, to make it believe that only one ball had been flung, not to arouse the guards' suspicion. The bodyguard only found one ball as indeed the other one was being slowed down and was still on the roof.

Actually, if Conan put a marble inside the ball, Senba had used a big metal ball instead, and when he retrieved the heavy plastic ball, he put it inside his sock to create a blackjack-like weapon to bludgeon Hiyama with, which explains why Hiyama's head injury had honey on it : the plastic ball was chipped by the violent blows Senba gave to Hiyama, and honey leaked from it accordingly, through the sock. Senba still claims he would have blood all over his clothes if he was the killer, but Conan tells him he had undressed before murdering Hiyama, and then had dressed again after taking a shower in the washroom, which is why his clothes were fastened in a rush, due to him being tense after the crime and not wanting to attract the guards' attention because of his too long appointment with Hiyama. He also needed to have people believe he had quickly found Hiyama's corpse and alerted the guards, as it would have been suspicious otherwise. The washroom exactly faces the crime scene, thence taking a rapid shower is very easy, just as to dry yourself with toilet paper and flush it into the bowl afterwards. There is also a faint probability the police will find blood traces in the corridor then, as both rooms are facing each other, and because Senba had first attracted the victim into the washroom to assault him.

Megure wonders why Agasa, who usually solves cases alone, remains so silent at the moemnt, and Agasa replies he wants to leave the younger ones dealing with it for once. Okiya carries on and says Senba attracted Hiyama in the washroom claiming something like the water tap was out of service, and when he entered, Senba struck him with the weapon. Hiyama went to hide in the bathroom, followed by Senba, and slung a glass to this latter, to no avail. Senba cornered him in the bathroom and killed him. To get rid of the bloody sock and plastic ball, Senba couldn't actually just stand barefooted in his slippers, fearing the police may ask him why these latter were wet, and he would have had to confess to having taken a shower and to explain why. Therefore, he just removed the ball from the sock and put on his clothes again after the shower and drying, included the bloody sock, and put on his slippers again as well to deliberately step on a shard of glass, in order to have a reason to remove his sock and explain why it was bloodied. After dressing again, Senba quickly alerted the guards who rushed to Hiyama, while he discreetly got rid of the chipped plastic ball (with the metal ball in it) under the house's landing, hoping to have a chance to retrieve it later on. But leaking honey attracted hundreds of ants and the ball was eventually found and given to the forensics. Okiya and Conan got the trick when they saw blood in the inner part fo the slipper while there was supposed to be blood on the heel's part only, as it is where the shard pierced the slipper, which means the other blood must be the victim's, and is therefore on Senba's left sock.

Other evidence are the blood which probably spurted on Senba's slippers while he was bludgeoning Hiyama, as he didn't want to leave footprints in the room and thence kept his slippers, and which also spurted on Senba's naked body. Though he washed it, luminol testing will find it all the same. Senba confesses to having spent much time washing the enormous amount of "that demon's blood" which had spurted on his body, more than he had expected. Senba killed Hiyama due to him swindling and stealing Senba's son's land for profit. Senba was at the hospital when his son got swindled by Hiyama, due to the latter paying henchmen in a car to collide with Senba. Senba ordered Hiyama to own up to it before dying, and Hiyama confessed to being responsible for it, swearing he would pay for Senba's hospital fees if he spared his life. When discharged from the hospital, Senba was shocked to see the demolisher's huge metal ball razing his dagashi shop to the ground, that shop which had been in his family for generations, which is why he decided to crush Hiyama's head with a metal ball as well. He says he can't lie any longer in front of a child, especially being himself a toys' store owner, used to making children smile.

Okiya explains to Megure that the clenched scissors are Hiyama's dying message : he had hid in the bathroom to take a toothbrush glass and put it under the water, allowing for a chemical reaction that enabled him to quickly cut into the glass the letters corresponding to his murderer's name. Indeed, he slung the glass to Senba to deliberately break it and attract the police's attention on the shards actually in the sink : if on the floor the remaining letters of "FUSAE BRAND", after the glass was broken, are actually "F-U-R-A-D", in the sink, whose tap was left running both by Hiyama to attract the police's attention there, hoping they would find the shards and the scissors and get it, and by Senba as the latter didn't think it really important and didn't want to leave more prints in the room, the letters "S-A-E-B-N" can be found, then "SENBA". Agasa can't show Megure the trick as he doesn't want to damage one of Fusae's glasses again. Hiyama had acted that way not to arouse Senba's suspicion, as this latter was in a hurry and wouldn't be frightened by shards of glass here and there, and wouldn't think of such a complicated dying message.

Upon realizing Hiyama's dying message with the glass is very similar to the missing letters on the mirror in Kohji Haneda's room, and that Koji's murderer didn't notice it amidst the complete mess in the room, Conan and Subaru each rearrange the missing letters and discover Haneda's dying message:

Since the remaining letters on the broken mirror found on the floor of Kohji's room are "P-T-O-N" from "PUT ON MASACARA", and as Kohji had left his tap running, the mirror glass shards that must be in the sink are probably his dying message : "UMASCARA". "UMASCARA" can be changed to "RUMASACA", and so to "RUM ASACA", "ASACA" standing for the mysterious "Asaka" bodyguard who vanished after his/her boss Amanda Hughes had been murdered, and "RUM" standing for "Rum" the Black Organisation member and boss's second-in-command, who most probably is Asaka and who actually seems to be responsible for Amanda's and Kohji's murders.

People

Amanda Hughes
	Deceased (APTX 4869?) Kohji's big fan Wealthy American

Asaka
	Missing person Amanda's bodyguard Possible Black Organization agent

Kunihisa Hiyama
	Victim (bludgeoned) 61 years old President of real-estate company

Kazunori Senba
	50 years old First discoverer Former dagashi shop owner

Soul Detective Murder Case

File 951 - The Soul Detective

Conan believes that the bodyguard Asaka was the black organization member Rum. The website with the information about the murder has been taken down. Then Kogoro gets a phone call from a TV-producer who invites Kogoro to a talk-show with the Soul Detective Gaito Hotta, who claims that he is going to solve the Koji Haneda murders by calling Koji Haneda's spirit. Conan joins along with an excuse of wanting to eat in the restaurant in the hotel, where a meeting with Hotta is going to take place.

File 953 - As If Connecting with a Demon in the Darkness

  Show spoilers »

"Mama!?"

The clue about Asaka

The culprit is Sanpei Kokuri. The motive was that Hotta used his late sister's corpse for his show. A few years ago Kokuri's sister committed suicide in the mountains due to a break-up. But her body was never found. Later Hotta was making a show in the mountain (most likely in connection with a missing person case, that Conan and Kogoro discussed in the taxi) and 'found' the body claiming to have 'felt' it's spirit. Kokuri realized that Hotta must have found his sister's body a long time ago, but instead of reporting it to the police, he had buried it to use it in his show. So he killed Hotta in revenge for having humiliating her.

Masumi calls Mary "Mama", indicating that she is her mother.

The only information that the victim had was that he believed Asaka to be a woman. He was going to pretend that he had summoned Kohji's spirit and have it say that a woman was going to kill him. The culprit said that someone saw Asaka holding "that small mirror". Mary consider that detail as 'boring'. Mary is not willing to trust Conan, stating that he isn't the same boy they met, and she orders Masumi to switch hotel.

Conan considers that if Asaka is Rum, then perhaps what Haibara said about being feminine refers to looking girly on the outside but strong like a man on the inside. If Rum had been a bodyguard 17 years ago, then they must be old now. Conan also ponders the possibility that Mary is Rum after having shrunken, being girly yet strong and older than she looks.

Gin suggests Kogoro to be finished off

Later, Gin and Vodka discuss about the murder case and The Case of Kohji Haneda. Gin comments that Rum screwed up in that case, in fact Gin is intrigued that Kogoro went to investigate the murder case and stick his nose in the Organisation's matter. Gin says " It's like encountering a demon in the darkness, if that guy is the demon we should finish him off while he sleeps".

People

Gaito Hotta
	Victim (stabbed) "Soul Detective"

Sanpei Kokuri
	35 years old Tohto TV director

A song named ASACA

Characters introduced

Rokumichi Hado
	Victim (hanged) 39 years old Rock musician

File 957 - Truth of the Betrayal

  Show spoilers »

Rokumichi Hado's death is in reality a suicide, but his manager Kanae Enjo tried to make it look like a murder. Rokumichi killed himself after being overwhelmed with the regret of having accidentally caused his old girlfriend to miscarry their unborn child; said girlfriend was Kanae, who found his corpse and desperatly tried to make it look like a murder, in hopes of distracting others and not have their sad past revealed.

People

Rokumichi Hado
	Victim (hanged) 39 years old Rock musician

Kanae Enjo
	40 years old Rokumichi's manager

Okuyasu Fuse
	58 years old Record label president Rokumichi's friend

Hirokazu Kajiya
	51 years old Magazine reporter

Curse of the Nue

File 958 - The Monster of Yadori Village

Heiji is invited to a village in Shizuoka Prefecture to investigate rumors of Tokugawa-era golden treasure buried there. Ran, Conan, and Kazuha tag along. They hear about the death of a local man named Charles Abel, whose last words were "Nue", a creature from Japanese mythology. While staying in a decrepit hotel in the area they hear the "Cry of the Nue" from outside.

File 959 - The Night in which the Nue Screams

As the cry ceases, they all go to their respective rooms. Suddenly, Heiji notices a blaze outside and orders everyone to evacuate the hostel. Once out, they wonder what's going on as, all of a sudden, a huge Nue cries and emerges from the corner of the hostel. The monster bites a sign and takes it away, escaping. Heiji and Conan run after him while the others go and fetch water to put out the fire. The two detectives find nothing at all, except the sign with huge bite marks on it. They notice blood traces around and follow them, only to find out Someji's corpse, killed by the Nue which left enormous claw marks on his back.

People

Densuke Takekuma
	58 years old Mayor of Yadori Village

Michiki Tanzawa
	Victim (poison) 62 years old Archaeologist

Yasukatsu Someji
	Victim (slashed) 55 years old Historian

Fumie Masuko
	46 years old Novelist

Hajime Tsurumi
	22 years old Reporter

Charles Abel
	Deceased (cave-in accident) Foreign miner

Dog
	Golden retriever Former owner was Charles Abel

Cover in other countries

Germany

Italy

Thailand

Korea

Vietnam

Indonesia

France

See also

• Manga
• Volume 81-90
• Detective Conan