Nanjo woke up before Kyrie, he stole the key to the gun room from Genji, knocked on the door to Rudolf’s room, had Rudolf open it, killed Rudolf, returned the gun and the key, and then sealed the room and hid inside it, he wasn’t found by Kyrie because he kept changing where he was hiding, after she left the room he left after her, naturally the time he stated Rudolf had died was just a lie to give himself an alibi.
Well, then.
Shall we begin?
Kumasawa went directly to Doctor Nanjo after saying she would do so, and came back with Doctor Nanjo to the servants’ room, where Kanon was waiting with the cousins. After this, the cousins left, and Kumasawa and Nanjo stayed with Kanon, with Nanjo tending to his wounds. That should, I think, cover that timeframe up.
Rudolf’s death was instantaneous.
You really don’t like any of the servants, do you?
Oh, well. This route has run its course. Let’s just close it off for good and let the good times roll. Nanjo’s examination of the body was entirely truthful and accurate. Rudolf was indeed killed between 11 PM and midnight!
2 Likes
Okay… then let’s get the most ridiculous solution out of the way next.
Kyrie actually is the murderer. She stole Genji’s key to the gun room, took a gun and returned the key even before the story began, already planning to kill Rudolf. She woke up after about an hour of sleep, shot him, taped the window, waited for Genji to go to sleep, stole his key again, returned the gun, returned the key a second time, went back to her room, taped and locked the door and went to sleep. The sleeping pills may have been strong, but they were past their expiration date and thus didn’t hinder her. XD
She also trusted the fact she doesn’t have the gun would be enough to prove her innocence.
Now with that out of the way…
Was Kanon together with the cousins during this time-skip? Otherwise I can claim that he killed Rudolf during it.
-
While Genji was cleaning various places around the mansion, Natsuhi sneaked past him and stole a gun from the gun room. She hid the gun somewhere and returned to the dining room, where the story begins. While the other adults were in the parlor she left unnoticed, which wouldn’t be strange since she barely has a chance to say anything, picked the gun and knocked on the door to Rudolf’s room, Rudolf opened the door, she killed Rudolf and closed the door, it doesn’t matter if she left it unlocked or locked it and took the key with her, she then returned to the parlor without anyone noticing she ever left it. On the next morning, she wakes up and steals the gun room key while all the servants were agitated, she places the gun back on its place and returns the key to where it should be. Then she enters in Rudolf’s room, seals it with tape and hides, she keeps changing her hiding location so that Kyrie is unable to find her.
-
The culprit was Genji. During a certain break he knocked on the door to Rudolf’s bedroom, Rudolf opens the door and is shot, Genji then closes the door and leaves, returning to his duty on the dining room as nothing happened, after all, he’s extremely good at not showing emotions on his face. Sometime before 8:15AM, Genji leaves the servants’ room and hides somewhere in Rudolf’s room after sealing it entirely, he entered the room because the door was either left unlocked or he took the key and put it back after entering the room a seconf time, after Kyrie wakes up, she starts searching the room while he keeps changing his location not to be found, after Kyrie leaves the room Genji leaves it too and keeps acting as if nothing happened. The certain break mentioned in the beginning can be the time between Genji finished in the kitchen and befre he started cleaning the dining room, or even right after he finished cleaning the dining room, his absence could either go noticed or unnoticed, but there’s no guarantee he was the whole time under someone’s supervision.
-
While Genji was cleaning around the mansion, Shannon stole a gun from the gun room without Genji noticing, during the time she was alone with Kinzo, who wasn’t a good witness since he was having a fit, Shannon knocked on the door to Rudolf’s room, killed him, and took the key with her after locking the room, she then returned to Kinzo’s study without anyone noticing she ever left it. In the morning, she woke up before Kyrie, unlocked the room, returned the key to its original place and sealed the room. She hid inside the room and kept changing her hiding location so that Kyrie wouldn’t be able to find her, after Kyrie left the room, Shannon left after her.
1 Like
Yes! This is it! To support that We don’t know when Genji reopened the front door of the mansion! As long as it happened before Kyrie woke up, the murder becomes possible for every servant who slept in the guest house! My money is on Godah like I described above in the blue truth that I far too easily dismissed after you didn’t even bother refuting it in red. He just came back in the morning to seal the room!
Except… how does the narration make sense, then? Why is she surprised to se Rudolf dead? You’ve already stated the sleeping pills are past the expiration date, hence you can’t really claim it was something like amnesia caused by sleep or something of the sort (which isn’t a thing, anyway). I can assure you, the narration was in earnest - and her surprise genuine. Her actions make no sense if she was the culprit. And why, indeed, as she suggested, go through all of the trouble of creating a locked room that implicates her?
As stated before - nobody could’ve simply left the group without leaving unnoticed. Once someone is in a group, them leaving would’ve been noted - and the same applies for this chain of events.
…Where is this ‘certain break’, though? Again, same problem with Natsuhi - he was in a group for the interval of the murder happening. I will not let you ignore my sweet alibis, damn it!
That is not it.
Shannon was with Kinzo in the interval of Nanjo leaving to tend to Kanon’s wound to Kanon, Nanjo and Kumasawa entering the study. During this interval, she did not leave the study. Naturally, since she would’ve at that point become a part of the group consisting of Kinzo, Nanjo, Kumasawa and Kanon, she couldn’t have simply left unnoticed during that time, either.
In addition, let’s just say that after finishing cleaning the dining room, Gohda immediately left for the guest house.
After finishing the cleaning on the kitchen it was never specified where he headed to, and and after finishing the cleaning on the dining room it was also never specified that he was with Kumasawa the whole time after finishing it, in fact it just says he waited for Shannon and Nanjo with her, but that could just be after he killed Rudolf, if you want to deny the moments in which his location is not clear I must request that you use the red.
After finishing the kitchen, they went directly to the dining room, “them” being Genji, Gohda and Kumasawa -
nobody left the group in that time, as the narration implied. Absolutely no deceptions there. Same with this: after finishing the dining room cleaning, Genji and Kumasawa were together, waiting for Nanjo and Shannon to come down. By the time the mansion was locked up, the time had run - Rudolf must’ve been dead by that point. And even if you want to give it a few extra moments, Genji and Kumasawa were together when they made one last examination of the mansion. Again, just as implied in the narration.
You will not have your way with these approaches.
Now, let’s go back to the definition of an accomplice, for now I won’t pry that it’s not in red, but lying about the location of someone or following them without doing anything wouldn’t count as being an accomplice, actually, by following the culprit you’d be a witness, and witnesses can be coerced not to speak about the crime. Therefore, I propose that the crime was executed by Genji with Kumasawa as a witness, she was forced not to talk about the little trip they made to Rudolf’s room while they were waiting for Shannon and Nanjo.
Come now.
If someone had witnessed the culprit comitting the murder - hell, if someone (other than the culprit, of course) had KNOWN who the culprit was through any set of circumstances - and not spoken up about it, they would’ve definitely been an accomplice - regardless of what their motivations for hiding it at that point might’ve been.
While the cousins stayed by the portrait, and Kumasawa went to get Nanjo, Kanon was alone, supposedly going to the servants room, however he had stolen a gun from the gun room while Genji was cleaning it, he went to Rudolf’s room first, knocked on the door, Rudolf opened it, Kanon kills Rudolf and locks the door, leaving with the key. On the next morning, Kanon uses the bustle amongst the servants to snatch the key to the gun room, places the gun back, and then returns the key. He then enters in Rudolf’s room, seals it and hides somewhere inside it, he keeps changing his hiding location to avoid being caught by Kyrie.
The cousins, after seeing Kanon walking away as he headed towards the servants’ room, joined him almost immediately. He wouldn’t have had the time to kill Rudolf in that period. ‘Almost immediately’ in this case is a timespan of a few seconds.
As Kinzo revealed there is no inheritance, Kanon’s face was striken with absolute horror.
Why would that be? It is not as though Kanon had any chances of getting the inheritance for himself. Furthermore, he does not seem to be the type to care that much for material wealth. So, why the horrified reaction? I’ve reflected on this for a while, and only a single good answer comes to me.
He realized he killed a man for nothing.
Why would Kanon kill Rudolf, and how would this have anything to do with the inheritance? The answer would be love, of course. Kanon did not have grand dreams for himself, but he loved Jessica. Even if he might have no wishes for himself, he would wish for the safety of Jessica. In this case, financial safety. The battle over the inheritance made Rosa, Eva and Rudolf threats to Krauss’ claim to the inheritance, and by extension, Jessica’s future. For Jessica’s safety to be guaranteed, the battle for the inheritance would have to be resolved in Krauss’ favour. And Kanon could do nothing about it… except eliminate his rivals.
I know this game is only about the how, and thus it is superfluous to write this in blue, but I’ll do it anyway. It was Kanon who killed Rudolf, and it was for the sake of Jessica’s future.
Then, the question becomes “how could Kanon kill Rudolf between 11 PM and midnight?”. It has been confirmed in red that Kanon couldn’t have murdered Rudolf between 11:40 and 11:53. He was with the cousins from 11:53 onwards. Until 11:10, his hand was being fixed up and from 11:15 to 11:40, he was in Kinzo’s study. So, that leaves 11:10 to 11:15 as the only gap in narration during which Kanon was unsupervised. Kanon shot Rudolf to death during this brief interval between him leaving Nanjo’s care and him arriving in Kinzo’s study. However, since Nanjo and Kanon apparently arrived in the study at the same time, I have a feeling that that blue is not going to fly, and it should be assumed that Kanon and Nanjo were together for that period of time.
So, let’s go for something completely different. Kanon shot Rudolf to death from Kinzo’s study during Kinzo’s episode. He had previously stored a gun inside Kinzo’s study, and Rudolf was on the outside, with a clear line of sight from the study window to Rudolf. Either Kanon had somehow persuaded Rudolf to go there, or he had drugged him, perhaps with Kyrie’s extra strong sleeping pills, and simply placed him there himself. It was a gamble, but he managed to pick a moment when everyone’s eyes would be on Kinzo, and their backs would be turned towards the window, giving him an opportunity to shoot unnoticed. If he knew exactly where Rudolf was, he didn’t have to take long to aim. The gun’s caliber was very small, and thus Kinzo’s commotion managed hide it from the other people in the room. A bit farfetched, I agree, but I really want Kanon to be the culprit, so…
As for how he got a gun and how the closed room was created, it seems like other people have already come up with methods for that. The gun could’ve been stolen as Genji was cleaning the gun room, and it could’ve been returned the next morning as long as Kanon could access the gun room key either by taking it from Genji or through other means. It hasn’t been confirmed the key was in Genji’s possession all the time during day 2. Kanon could’ve created the closed room early in the morning of day 2 and hid in the room, avoiding detection by Kyrie by changing his hiding spot. It might be that Rudolf’s corpse was on the outside of the building the whole night, and the blood inside Rudolf and Kyrie’s room was actually from Kanon’s own hand wound, purposefully spread there in advance when he came to Rudolf’s room before 11:00 to move him outside, creating the illusion that Rudolf’s blood ended up there between 11:00 and midnight.
You’re absolutely correct. It won’t fly. Kanon, Kumasawa and Nanjo were all together while moving from the servant’s room to Kinzo’s study.
Everyone in the study was within each other’s line of sight while in the study. Had Kanon - or anyone else in the study at the time - even so much as tried to pull out a gun, he would’ve been immediately spotted by everyone, let alone if he was trying to shoot someone out of a window. Nobody in the study spotted such a thing happening.
I have to leave for the night, but I might as well toss a parting gift that is most likely going to accomplish nothing.
Kanon had set up some kind of mechanism that allows him to remotely fire the gun without causing suspicion, even when he is being observed by other people. For example, he had set the gun outside, tied a string to the trigger and placed the other end of the string into Kinzo’s study. Then all he needed to do was to move Rudolf in front of the gun and later pull on the thread from Kinzo’s study, with nobody realizing he had just killed Rudolf. As for why all this would even be necessary when he could’ve just shot Rudolf earlier when he prepared this trap… he wanted to confuse the investigation by giving himself an alibi for the time of death. He knew Nanjo could pinpoint the time of death fairly accurately.
Of course, it could be that someone other than Kanon used this method of moving Rudolf somewhere else for the murder to be possible. Like, say, Shannon. But unfortunately I don’t have the time to explore that avenue today or tomorrow, so I’ll leave that for someone else.
Rudolf was not killed by a trap. In this case, a ‘trap’ is defined as a mechanism or contraption that someone had set up in preparation for the murder, that would’ve allowed them to kill Rudolf remotely, be it through timer or direct activation of the mechanism. And please take this one earnestly, trap definitions are an actual nightmare to deal with because you can literally twist them so much that you can end up accidentally saying the killer couldn’t have even handled a gun. So no, the culprit didn’t set up some mechanism that they later decided to use as a trap to kill him, if you think of wordplaying the “in preperation for the murder”. Just take this one as-is, the killer isn’t Jigsaw.
Okay, then let me just paint this with broad strokes before trying to figure out the ‘whodunnit’.
I think we make it a tad too complicated for ourselves by assuming Rudolf had to be killed in his room.
Am I right in assuming the Rokkenjima mansion is not barrier free and Rudolf can only move on his own at the ground level? What if he left his room to meet with his killer?
At around 11.00 Rudolf went up and left his room with the intent to meet with his killer. It could have been in the guest house for example. He went there and waited in the bar. At 11.45 Godah arrived, carrying a gun. He killed Rudolf and hid him for the remainder of the day, then greeted Shannon afterwards. The next morning, after Genji unlocked the front door and before Kyrie woke up, Godah came back with Rudolf’s corpse and put him into Kyrie’s bed, applied the magic circle and the seals, placed the key on the nightstand and hid in the closet before moving around when Kyrie started searching the room.
On the morning of the body’s discovery, when Genji unlocked the front mansion door, Rudolf’s body was already in the mansion. Right before Genji unlocked the front door, the mansion was still sealed. Genji, naturally, unlocked the front door only once. (I wasn’t going to add that last part in originally but there’s always that ONE person…)
Also, no wordplay on the morning or the unlocking part. Just take it as-is: The front mansion door was locked only once in this story. The front mansion door was unlocked only once in this story. Genji was the only one that did the locking and unlocking of the front door. Naturally, the front door was locked by Genji immediately after Shannon and Nanjo left for the guesthouse. No deceptions there.
On one hand, it feels like I’d be overdoing it with the reds. On the other hand, chances are I would’ve been forced to give them soon anyway. So better safe than sorry.
He was in the mansion, but you have not denied that he could have left the room. I’m now thinking about the storage room here…
As I clarified… somewhere, I think it might’ve been discord actually, so you wouldn’t have been there for it:
The wheelchair was left next to his bed for the explicit purpose of him being able to get in it should he have needed to. He indeed would’ve been capable of leaving the room.
(And for ease of mind - I didn’t give out reds or anything of the sort on discord so, information-wise, you’re still on the same level as others.)