Later, during a conversation with Koshisui, Xingchen learns that the middle-aged man next to her is named Koji Takada, who is the editor-in-chief of a local magazine in Tokyo. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Through a friend's introduction, Koji specially came to Fukuoka Prefecture to find Koshisui, hoping to use her detective's reasoning ability.

A few days ago, Tsunesei Yamaouchi, a mystery writer who has been at the top of the income list for many years, died suddenly before his 60th birthday, but he left behind a huge inheritance estimated at billions of yen.

Yamanouchi, who suffers from heart disease, has not appeared in public for the past year, only in his own mountain villa, where he has spent the rest of his life writing.

Mr. Koji has been Yamaouchi's editor for a long time, so their friendship is almost like family.

Yamauchi didn't have any relatives, so he passed on the inheritance to Koji through a lawyer, but there was a slightly more difficult additional condition to this matter.

Including Mr. Koji, there are five candidates for inheritance, and these are all friends or benefactors of Yamauchi.

Even if Yamanouchi died, he gave full play to his professional habits as a detective writer and specially prepared a reasoning game for these five people, and only by unlocking the "code" within the specified time and finding out the person hiding the "suicide note" could he win the inheritance.

"Sister Nana, let me go with you to decrypt it!" Xingchen felt that it was too awkward to call Nanatsuki, so he simply called Koshisui Xiaoqi. (Seven in Japanese is pronounced Nana.) ）

"Mr. Guangji, what do you think?" Yue Shui is entrusted by others, and it is inconvenient to make decisions directly.

Koji looked at Xingchen's cute expression, thinking that the other candidates would not let such a young child be a spy, and one more person would give him more power.

"Since this kid can find us through subtle clues, which means that the level of reasoning is not bad, let's come together. ”

"Thank you, Mr. Koji, I don't think you will regret this decision!" Xingchen said confidently.

Yamauchi's "code" was sent to Mr. Koji along with the invitation to the competition, and the details were as follows:

"In the court, the head of the paradise was cut off in order from the front to the back"

"Come on, let's count."

"Put the second head on the right side of the fifth head."

"The pleasant rhythm begins, it begins"

Xingchen looked at the "code" written on the paper and couldn't find any clue, but his intuition told him that this trip would not be so simple.

Yamanouchi stipulated that the place of the competition was the villa where he lived before his death, called the doll's house - Lucia Pavilion.

Lucia is a transliteration of the foreign word russian, and the Japanese language is relatively scarce, and after the Meiji Restoration, many imported products were too lazy to translate and directly expressed in English.

"Sister Nana, I wonder how you're doing?" on the way to the Lucia Pavilion, Xingchen asked Yue Shui tentatively.

"After graduating from high school, I went to Belgium to go to university, and I was only able to come back during the school holidays for a few days, but I didn't expect to encounter such an interesting thing as soon as I came back. Yue Shui smiled and chatted with the stars.

The Lucia Pavilion was built deep in the mountains, on a floating island in the middle of a lake.

Along the way, Xingchen took out the cases he encountered and the reasoning process to share with Yue Shui. By the time Mr. Koji drove them to the lake, they had become friends who talked about everything.

Through the thick fog, the onion-shaped roof of the Lucia Pavilion is faintly visible, a signature feature of Russian architecture.

"You've done a great job, Mr. Koji. A middle-aged and elderly man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and meticulously combed hair stepped forward and said, "I'm Fujio Tashiro, Master Yamanouchi's butler, and I've been waiting for you for a long time. Please go this way, we need to take a boat to the villa. ”

Led by a steward, the group boarded the island in a small speedboat. As soon as he set foot on the island, the speedboat was immediately driven away by the driver.

"You don't need to panic, this is what Master Yamanouchi has explained. The butler reassured the crowd.

Lucia's Pavilion says it is a villa, but it is actually comparable in size to a medieval castle. From the outside, the villa is about 30 meters high and 50 meters wide, and is located in the middle of the island in a regular pentagonal shape.

The annual maintenance cost of the villa alone is a lot of money, and Xingchen can't help but feel the corruption of the capitalist century.

After entering the villa, the first person everyone met was holding a wine glass, dangling, obviously a drunk uncle.

"You are a famous critic of mystery books - Mr. Tadaji Kamimei!" Mr. Koji, as the editor-in-chief of the magazine, often has to deal with people in the literary circle, so he recognized Mr. Tadaji at first sight.

"Welcome, especially this beautiful young lady!" Reasoning book critic Tadaji walked up to Yue Shui with a mouth full of wine, and said to Guangji, "Is this the helper you found?"

At this time, a sunny boy who looked like a high school student happened to come down from the second floor.

After seeing everyone, the high school student greeted me politely, "My name is Inukai Takashi, and I happen to live next door to my house in Tokyo, Yamauchi, and I thank him for treating me like a relative." I don't know why I was selected as a candidate for inheritance this time, so please advise. ”

For no reason would make you a candidate for the succession of billions of huge inheritances?

Xingchen thought to himself: Maybe you are the illegitimate son of that writer.

"But when I think about it, I think of trying a reasoning competition in this big house, and I think of it as a master of reasoning, Mr. Yamauchi. The situation is as exciting as the master's early work 'Lucia Puppet Murder'!" said Gao Zhi, a high school student, casually.

"Uh, what's that?" "Yueshui, who has been in Belgium, has obviously not read Yamanouchi's mystery novels.

"Nothing. Gao Zhi doesn't seem to want to say too much on this issue.

"Hey, Tashiro!" the drunken Tadaji shouted to the butler, "I want brandy!"

"Oh, he's completely the owner of the house!" High school student Takashi doesn't seem to have a good impression of the drunken Tadaji.

"As soon as Mr. Tadaji drinks, his temper grows. The old butler explained for Tadaji.

"Recently, he seems to have drunk more than before, but the manuscript of the review is not as sharp as before, and those simple sarcastic articles have gradually increased, which shows that the impact of divorce is surprisingly great!" The person who said this was a beautiful woman in a low-cut dress and a bewitching appearance.

"Are you Miss Umezono, who won the grand prize in the reasoning contest with 'The Hourglass of the Dead', and are you also one of the candidates for Yamauchi's inheritance?" asked the editor-in-chief, Mr. Koji.

"Master Yamanouchi is like my master, but even if I don't get his inheritance, I can already spend enough money on my own. Miss Mei Yuan said, holding a lit cigarette.

"Don't listen to her boasting, she belongs to the kind of 'one book' writer, except for the debut novel 'The Hourglass of the Dead', which is well written, the rest of the works are not good at all, and there are rumors that she plagiarized other people's works. Koji whispered to Koshisui in detail about Kaoru Umezono.

'Others' should refer to Master Yamanouchi, and looking at the wind/commotion that flows from Miss Umezono's bones, Xingchen thinks that she has an inexplicable relationship with the dead Master Yamanouchi.

Even though Mr. Koji had lowered his voice, he was still heard by Miss Umezono.

"It's not good to say bad things behind other people's backs, I've also heard that you've been in debt as a result of speculating in stocks, but I don't know if it's true or not?" Miss Umezono sneered unceremoniously at Mr. Koji.

"Ahh

A scream interrupted the argument between the two.

The crowd followed the prestige and saw the critic Tadaji with his hands around the thin waist of a maid.

"I saw that you couldn't get the brandy on the shelf, so I wanted to pick you up!" "Tadaji is obviously playing drunk with drunkenness.

"No...... No, I can get it alone. "The young maid in the maid's costume Kirie wants to be shy and wants to resist Tadaji's salty pig hand, but she doesn't know that her performance is even more unstoppable.

Tadaji's behavior at the moment is really smearing the faces of the male compatriots, but the other three candidates saw it but didn't stop it, who knows whether Tadaji is really drunk or fake, crazy people and drunk people are unreasonable, in order to avoid harming the pond fish, the three candidates are very aware of the choice to stand by.

Yue Shui saw the maid who was being bullied by Tadaji, and thought that her friend was also working as a maid in someone else's villa, she was a little angry and ready to drink, but Xingchen opened her mouth one step ahead of her.

"Is that good?Mr. Tadaji?" Xingchen stood up to relieve the maid, "This maid's sister has been working in the villa for probably some time!

Hearing about the reasoning contest about a huge inheritance, Tadaji's sake immediately sobered up for the most part. Of course, he understands that as long as he has money, any kind of woman will be attracted like a magnet.

"This kid is really kind! Mr. Tadaji's behavior just now is no different from being eliminated from the inheritance game in the first place. ”

The one who spoke was a mature/woman in her mid-thirties in a black suit. She has just the right amount of shawl and long hair, and her noble temperament vividly interprets the words "sexy and mature", and Xingchen is the most resistant to this type of big sister.

"This is an illustrator, Miss Yuyue Laimeng, and she is also one of the candidates. "High school student Gao Zhi arrived at the villa earlier than Xingchen and the others, apparently he had contact with Miss Yuyue.

"Hmph! I dare to compete with a book critic who has read all the mystery novels I have read from ancient to modern times. "Tadaji was ruined by the stars, and he had nowhere to get angry in his stomach, and now he is like a mad dog to see who bites whom.

"I thought so too, so I hired a helper. Yuzuki ignored Tadaji's provocation, "Let me introduce you, Mr. Scarlett Rosyth, the magician. ”

Xingchen didn't know much about other magicians except for the two magicians, Black Feather Kaito and Ninety-Nine Yuanyasu, but Rossyth's special outfit still attracted people's attention, because he wore a silver-white mask, so people couldn't see his true face.

"This mask is to cover the scars, I once had severe burns while practicing magic. Rosyth explained.

Xingchen disagrees, although the reputation of Japanese plastic surgery technology is not as good as that of South Korea, but in fact, Japanese plastic surgery technology is also among the best in the world.

In addition, the foreign name of "Scarlett Rosyth" can speak fluent Japanese, this name is either his stage name or kana, in short, it will never be his real name.

Through the gap in the mask, Rossyth's eyelids and the skin wrapped in the mask showed no signs of burns, which showed that the burns were not as serious as he said, and Xingchen speculated that he must have some reason not to show his true face.

Mr. Tadaji, a drunken book reviewer who is in a divorce lawsuit, Mr. Koji, who asks Koshisui for help over stock debts, Ms. Umezono, who has only written one successful mystery novel, Takaji, a high school boy who looks the most ordinary but has suspicious questions, and Ms. Yuzuki, an illustrator with an eccentric magician.

Each of the five heritage candidates seems to have their own secrets.

"Now that everyone is here, please move to the living room. Another voice interrupted the conversation.

"My name is Daisuke Aritou, and I was sent here as the attorney of Master Yamauchi. Lawyer Daisuke said solemnly, dressed in a suit and leather shoes, "On behalf of our law firm, I have come to monitor whether you are following the instructions of the master. For the sake of fairness, my boss, who is the counsel lawyer, did not tell me anything about the contents of your suicide notes and the hiding places. Therefore, I am unable to answer any questions about the suicide note, so please forgive me. ”

Xingchen is a little strange, generally involving the inheritance of huge inheritances, will be handled by the ace lawyers of various law firms.

Seeing that lawyer Daisuke is not very old, but he is cautious, Xingchen guesses that he may have just interned at a law firm.

Why would such an important inheritance be entrusted to him with full control?

Even though he had just explained that it was to avoid suspicion, Xingchen still kept this question in his heart.

After everyone came to the living room, lawyer Daisuke followed the process and asked you to check the sealing of the file bag.

After making sure that the file bag was not opened, he used a paper cutter to take out a video tape from the file bag and put it in the DVD player for playback.

"My five most important friends, and my beloved quintet, were no longer alive when you saw this video. ”

The emaciated figure of Master Yamanuchi is shown on the TV screen, and this video is supposed to have been filmed by himself while he was preparing his will.

"I would like to thank you all for being able to participate in my final reasoning. So, let's talk about the code sent to you in advance. ”

"Actually, just looking at this code article, it doesn't make much sense. I've got another message ready to pair with the code. Please take a look behind you. ”

Instinctively, everyone looked back and saw five dolls playing the violin, neatly arranged by the window in order from short to tall.

"These five Russian dolls, like you, who make up the quintet, are the second code that solves all the mysteries. ”