Finally caught up! Sasaki continues to be Mariko had better break up with him by the end
The body swap is interesting but also feels like it changes nothing from a practical standpoint b/c the victims had no distinguishing features between them (other than their hair, which is moot). We’ll see how/if the window thing factors in…
I also wonder if this is what Moe is telling Saikawa, or if Moe is recounting from her POV.
EDIT: Looking at the discussion of “Switch Back” in Week 3, I also thought that in respect of movies, it could have been an auto-reverse of the film, which would then extend the possible TOD. Although playing movies backwards doesn’t seem very useful, so I’m not sure why you’d invent that… Another idea that just occurred to me is that perhaps Yukiko and Yasuko were swapping more than we thought. Perhaps Yasuko was actually the one who usually wore long hair, the swapped when they came to the manor, and so the murder was a “switch back” to their originals. Or something.
I’m changing my theory from “Sasaki did it (but doesn’t remember)” to “Sasaki didn’t do it, but will be arrested for it anyway, and S&M will have to clear his name later.”
Ha, was your theory that he didn’t remember being the murderer? Then it could be possible I guess. You kind of made me suspicious of him and I think it’s not entirely impossible, especially if some amnesia is involved. Also story wise it’s a big blind spot for Moe since she’s just been assuming that he’s innocent from the start. And we know that any theory that comes before the end of the book is wrong, so the culprit has to be someone who hasn’t really been suspected before. Buuut I don’t know still seems like a bit of a stretch. Which is why it might be true. Can’t make up my mind >_>
Something like that. There’s something “off” about him - he keeps talking about how slow he is, and his mood change when the police showed him the bodies was suspicious.
She seems pretty unlikeable to me, but that might be because we only know about her from Sasaki’s point of view. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is also more complex than she seems…
I don’t think Mariko is unlikeable at all. Yeah Sasaki is constantly complaining about her and saying she’s awful, but what has she actually done that’s been bad? All she’s done is chat with her friends and try to spend time with her fiancé. The ‘worst’ thing she’s done is freak out a bit when she found out it was murder and gossip.
She’s clearly being portrayed as the annoying girlfriend but I also don’t think she’s that bad. She takes him a bit for granted but not in a way that seems really unreasonable to me.
Anyway if she does happen to be involved in the murder she’s a really good actress because that freaking out seemed very believable to me.
I agree, I could see it as him (subconsciously?) realizing he killed the wrong one, because he didn’t know they had swapped. Assuming he only killed one and the other one was suicide or an accident or something.
Apart from the fact that one of them was the son’s girlfriend and the other was not, for all we know…
I actually suspect the son by now. He knows how to close the window from the outside and how to escape from the roof, and when he tested Moe’s beliefs regarding the small window between the rooms, and she told him that it would be possible for him to get through technically but impossible because of the projector, he seemed pretty relieved with his grinning…
Which means, the ones left over are Makiko, the actress, the son, Sasaki, and the butler.
What could be possible motives? Makiko and Sasaki, no idea really. The actress could want to get rid of the son’s girlfriend so that she can take that spot. The son could have the same motive and did not want to simply break up with his girlfriend? The butler could have some issues with his stepdaughters and wants to get rid of them for some reason? Plus, all three might know about the window; the actress because she was told so, and the butler because he witnessed this at some point.
OK here comes my final theory: [BIG SPOILER] The son and the actress did it together. They both went into the two rooms, locked the doors, killed them both at the same time, then the one helped the other get through the window by removing the projector, and they both escaped through the window. Probably the girl killed the one who was not properly strangled, because she did not have the physical strength, while the son managed to kinda fake the suicide by hanging the other one and then cutting her down? They did it to get rid of his girlfriend, and they killed the other one just in case, or to blur the trace of the motive, or maybe because he had an affair with the other one as well? In any case, by now I believe this is how it happened.
Your theory doesn’t explain the swap does it? But not bad!
I don’t know who did it but as I mentioned earlier my partial theory is that only one of the two was intentionally killed (the other one was suicide or an accident or collateral damage) and it was the wrong one, because of the swap which was unknown to the murderer. Not crazy confident about it but we’ll see ^^
