"!" Ayako Ninagawa's eyes widened slightly.
She was somewhat surprised to find herself the primary suspect.
"Teacher, your success rate is still as high as ever!" Tsuneo couldn't help but nod in praise.
First, he helped them rule out suicide, and now he had helped eliminate another suspect. Therefore, the answer to who the culprit was practically shouting to be heard!
"But of course! Hahaha!" Maori Kogoro laughed smugly.
Trying to fool me, the famous detective Maori Kogoro? Keep dreaming!
Heh, I am the Sleeping Detective, after all.
"Ninagawa-san, who was in charge of selling the drinks, is indeed the most likely person to have added that ice cube." Hattori shook his head.
"However, she deliberately swapped the iced coffee for cola on her own accord. No one would put poison into a drink that might very well be returned, right?"
"Furthermore, there was another person who ordered iced coffee just like Mr. Urata. If she gambled wrong and put the poisoned ice cube into the other person's cup, that would be incredibly foolish."
"..." Maori Kogoro thought about it and realized that was indeed the case.
However, he was a bit puzzled as to why the repairman had praised his high success rate just now.
"In that case?" Inspector Megure looked at the only person who hadn't been eliminated.
There was only one left.
"That's right. The only person who could have poisoned Mr. Urata is the one who lined up to buy the drinks and personally brought them to the audience seating area: Miss Mai Kogami!"
Since KID had just helped him pass a hurdle, Conan was still in a cautious state and only dared to discuss things privately. Tsuneo wasn't very interested due to the hassle of giving statements and the fact that he already knew the answer to the puzzle.
So today became Hattori's solo show. Finally, it was his turn to shine at Teitan High School.
The culprit had been pointed out, and all eyes focused on Mai Kogami, the woman with short hair wearing a green hoodie.
"Mai... Mai-san." Yota Mitani looked shocked, staring at his familiar classmate and colleague, instinctively taking a step back.
"As for the timing of adding the ice cube, it's not hard to guess. After buying the drinks, you just had to pretend to add cream and syrup at the counter and seize the opportunity to drop it in," Hattori said, looking at Mai Kogami.
Of course, because of the variable introduced by Ayako Ninagawa, the two iced coffees had been swapped for cola. After dropping in the cyanide-laced ice cube, she couldn't add the cream and syrup.
"Wait a minute. What if Urata realized something was wrong with the drink and went to return it?" Yumi Noda still wanted to defend her friend.
"The reason she only returned to her seat right when the performance started was precisely to prevent that from happening," Hattori had already thought of this.
One could say that from the moment she ordered the identical drinks, every step she took had been planned in advance.
Once the play started, the venue was pitch black. Going back and forth would not only waste a lot of time but also be very inconvenient.
"But that poison-injected ice cube must have been prepared in advance, right?"
"How did she carry it around?" Inspector Megure still had doubts.
She was a human, not a refrigerator. Carrying a poisonous ice cube around wouldn't be easy...
"Nothing is impossible." Tsuneo tossed his empty cup into the trash can and turned to speak.
Whether it could be done or not depended on how much effort one was willing to put into it.
"It was this, wasn't it!" Conan pulled an object wrapped in a handkerchief from his pocket.
Inside the white handkerchief was a plastic coin purse with a metal clasp.
Shaped like a seashell, this type of purse had a relatively good seal. In most cases, it was used by women or children to hold loose change.
"Conan-kun, where did you find this?" Inspector Megure took the purse and asked curiously.
"I saw it in the trash can when I went to the restroom. Since it looked perfectly fine on the outside, I thought it was a bit strange that it was thrown away."
"After I told Hattori-niichan and the others, they let me pick it up." Conan said with a grin.
Picking up trash was a small task he could do. Even as an elementary schooler, he was an elementary schooler who loved deduction...
"As long as you place the pre-prepared poison-injected ice cube into this purse along with a small piece of dry ice, the problem of preserving the ice cube is solved," Hattori explained.
As for the disposal of the purse and dry ice, Mai Kogami had already provided the answer.
After buying the drinks and handing them to Mr. Mitani for distribution, she went to the restroom, flushed the small piece of dry ice down the toilet, and threw the purse into the trash.
"Takagi-kun, take this to the forensics team." Inspector Megure handed the purse to Takagi.
"Although he's just a high school student, he really does look the part of a detective."
"However, you haven't forgotten, have you? Dr. Urata and I both ordered iced coffee, and I handed both coffees to Mitani together. I had no idea which cup he would give back to me."
"How could I poison the drink under those circumstances?"
"Furthermore, if you think I would gamble on a fifty percent success rate, then Ayako, who made the drinks, could just as likely have done the same thing, couldn't she?"
Mai Kogami looked at the high school detective with the thick Kansai accent and spoke in her own defense.
"No, if one is willing to take a little risk, the probability is actually one hundred percent," Hattori said with a smile.
She's really stubborn.
"Both drinks, including the one she drank herself, were poisoned." When Tsuneo reached this point, he couldn't help but glance at Miss Kogami.
She's dedicated enough. Even if she drank it quickly, if there had been any flaw in the ice cube she made, she likely would have sent herself to the afterlife too.
"Both cups had poison?" Inspector Megure asked, shocked.
"Correct. To avoid attracting attention, she couldn't leave her seat to dispose of the poisonous ice cube in her own cup. So, in the dim environment, she could only hide it somewhere on her person." Hattori took out a yellow ten-yen coin and smiled.
"Next, we just need to place this copper coin there, and the truth will be revealed!"
The oxidation-reduction reaction between potassium cyanide and copper would cause the surface of the copper to shine.
Inspector Megure stared at Mai Kogami, preparing to order someone to check.
Mai Kogami's tense expression suddenly relaxed. With a bitter smile on her face, she asked, "When did you start suspecting me?"
"You revealed yourself the moment you took the cream and syrup out of your pants pocket. The rain that fell afterward only confirmed our suspicions."
It was strange enough that she hadn't immediately explained the mix-up between the iced coffee and cola to the police.
Moreover, while watching a play in a very dark venue, unless one brought the cup right up to their eyes, it would be difficult for an average person to distinguish whether it contained iced coffee or cola. Most people would have just poured the cream and syrup in straight away.
Of course, if she had opened the lid to check for some reason beforehand, then there would be no doubt at all.
"That rain... was there a problem with it?" Maori Kogoro thought hard but couldn't recall any details.
"Heh. It was clearly raining outside, yet when we took Officer Takagi to check the car, I didn't put my hood up. I ran in the rain the whole time."
Mai Kogami took off the green hoodie she was wearing and handed it to Inspector Megure.
Yes, after quickly finishing her drink, she had quietly placed the ice cubes into the hood behind her back under the cover of darkness.
Although potassium cyanide is hard to dissolve in cold water, it dissolves instantly upon contact with water. If she had put that hood over her head and let it touch her skin in the rain, she would have been carried away on a stretcher before long...
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