I’d split it like this:
[どぶねずみがまぎれこんだんじゃない][って]ことだ.
って can replace は in casual speech. So the pattern of the sentence would be X は こと だ。Which I think gives us:
Literally:
The thing is/It’s that the brown rat didn’t get lost.
Better translation in English (switching negatives around):
It’s not that the brown rat got lost.
Thanks Zuzu I like that explanation!
I was looking at the sentence again in the context of the sentences around it on page 116:
黒星けいぶがさっきのねずみをつかまえた。
Detective Kuroboshi grasped the rat that he just caught.
首輪がついていますね。
There is a ring around it’s neck!
どぶねずみがまぎれこんだんじゃないってことだ。
This brown rat didn’t just get lost, you see.
みんなの注意をそらすために、犯人がもちこんだんですね。
In order to divert everyone’s attention, the criminal brought it in.
I’m reading the ん in んじゃない in third sentence as an explanatory particle.
It’s interesting that the word ねずみ seems possible to translate as mouse or rat, but the word どぶねずみ seems to specifically indicate a rat.
I didn’t know ねずみ could also mean dark grey, and it’s nice that they used both its meanings in this chapter!
I love your interpretation, it makes a lot of sense. One thing that puzzles me is why the negation is in んじゃない and not in まぎれこんだ? Couldn’t the text just as well have said どぶねずみがまぎれこまなかったんだってことだ?
The subtleties of phrasing things slightly differently are well and truly lost on me, but I got the impression that this gives more emphasis. He’s just discovered a big clue - maybe rather than saying “this mouse didn’t wander in here by chance”, he’s saying, “this isn’t a case of a mouse just happening to wander in here by chance.” - or something similar?
Hi all,
I think this is the first time I can read before the weekend or I arrive here and all my questions were already asked 
.
Page 118 -
In sentence 2, I have a little trouble parsing the last part of the sentence. I’m not sure I understand it well. So I share below my “approximate” translation.
あやしい三人の客のうち、まちがいなく変装しているひとがひとりいるからだ。
あやしい三人の客のうち → amongst the three suspicious guests
まちがいなく変装しているひとが → clearly someone wearing a disguise
ひとりいるからだ → and here is my problem, I read it as “it is because there is one…”, as in
ひとり いる から だ
So something like [explaining the conclusion of the previous sentences]…It is because there is clearly one disguised person amongst the three suspicious ones.
What do you think?
Tx!
That’s how I read it too. In the previous sentence she said I now know who took the Bulgaria Cheese. And she’s now giving her reason for knowing Because among the three suspicious guests, there is one person who is unmistakably in disguise.
I have finally caught up with this week’s reading and read through this thread. Reading all the questions and comments really helped cement things I wasn’t completely sure of, thanks!
I shall endeavour to get through next week’s tomorrow.
Nice!
Although if you waited just a day or so you could lean on the vocab sheet 
Page 116
I arrived at a slightly different translation:
さっき appears to be very much attached to ねずみ by the の so I had that as aforementioned rat
There is only one verb in this sentence, but you have two in your translation - previously, the Inspector jumped out to catch the rat (p 111), but he didn’t actually catch it until now, I believe.
My translation is simply: Inspector Kuroboshi caught the aforementioned rat.
The vocab isn’t really the problem anymore, it is largely parsing and figuring out which homonym it is (i.e. which kanji - gosh I wished they used more kanji!), and getting my head around different verb tenses (since the rules for the vocab sheet have all verbs in dictionary form, it’s not helpful for this last bit).
Sounds good! I thought he’d caught the rat on page 111, which is why I translated つかまえた as “grasped”. And then I translated さっきのめずみ as “the rat he just caught” because I was trying to come up with something in normal English for “the recently rat”.
But looking at the pictures again he doesn’t have the rat on the last few pages, so your suggestion makes more sense. And “the aforementioned” is a nice translation of さっきの!
What am I to make of this sentence on page 118?
そしていま、ねずみの名前をきいて、とった宝石をどうしたかもけんとうがついた。
So now I heard/asked the name of the mouse, I possibly had a rough idea […] the stolen gem somehow.
I am not sure how 宝石 can be the object of けんとうがついた in this sentence? I am sure I am making a silly mistake somewhere 
Yes, I agree with this - I think he’s running around trying to catch it in the intervening period.
The vocab sheet will still help with that aspect though - if you’re reading alongside then it can help you pick out the words, because they’ve been separated out in the sheet, and somebody will have identified the appropriate homonym (although there’s less vocab per week at this point, because we’ve encountered lots of it before, so it’s probably less helpful for the parsing than it was). I’m not trying to argue you should read in a way that doesn’t work for you, sorry 
just thought it was worth considering cos I know you haven’t had that aid up till now.
Anyway, really awesome that you’re up to speed again!
I interpreted this as having a somewhat implied “where” - so if you wanted to keep the translation more direct you might say something like “I had a rough idea of the stolen gem”, but it would be more likely that in English you’d say something like “I had a rough idea where the stolen gem was” or perhaps “I had a rough idea of the stolen gem’s location”.
See guillepolito’s answer!
Ah, guess I should throw a theory out there.
I really have no idea.
We have a rat labelled number 2, so evidently there’s another rat (number 1) involved. This leads to the probable conclusion that rat 2 was intended to work as a distraction, while rat 1 probably swiped the jewel.
Sparkles is the only one not shown in the illustration where they’re all looking at the jewel, so I’m guessing it’s them, but I can’t see any actual reason it’s them. In fact, you’d think they’d need to be fairly close to the jewel for the rats to work… unless they were standing a way away so that the release of rat 2 caused everyone to look towards a totally different part of the room… but then how does rat 1 (or the culprit) get close enough themselves without being totally obvious?
I suppose rat 1 escaped via the window? Good job the police officer didn’t notice a fat-off rat crawling out.
As I mentioned further up the thread somewhere, I guess the cat competition was intended to scoop up all the cats in the neighbourhood so that the rat was safe from attack on its way [wherever the hell it was going]. That is, however, literally the silliest thing imaginable, in at least four or five different ways.
In my head I split this sentence
like this:
( とった宝石をどうしたかも) けんとうがついた
とった宝石 => the taken jewel
どうした => how it was => how was it done
where
かも / かもしれない can be simply put as “maybe… I wonder…”
You can read more of this form in here
And finally
けんとうがつく = I have an idea
My understanding is that とった宝石 is the object of どうした, not けんとうがついた.
どうする roughly means “what to do (about something)”, but it past tense it is something like “what was done” or “what happened (to something)”.
とった宝石をどうした => what happened to the taken gem
かも => maybe / perhaps
けんとうがついた => is believe this comes from 見当が着いた: arrive to a estimate, conclusion or guess.
Putting them together: (I) arrived to a guess about what might have happened to the taken gem.
Aaaah, I read どうした as ‘somehow’, but it being どう + した makes a lot of sense. Thanks!