Mountain Villa Bandaged Man Murder Case

Part 1
Conan and Ran are invited by Sonoko to her family's mountain villa to see the autumn leaves and meet up with Sonoko's sister Ayako and some old friends of hers. At first they get lost thanks to Ran's lack of direction sense, but they find their way and see themselves in front of a bridge. On the way to the front they see a strange bandaged man in a dark cloak crossing the bridge. When they see him he turns around, shocking them with his face and eye contact as he quickly makes a retreat around the side of the house.

Ran and Conan are greeted by Sonoko herself, who is a bit disappointed since with a "kid" around, she won't be able to flirt a lot. Ran asks Sonoko about the bandaged guy, but Sonoko brushes her off saying he might be a bored local hoping to prank people. Everything seems fine as Ran tries to find her room, accidentally walking in on the boys of the house who are either relaxing or changing clothes... including seeing at least one of them fully nude. Conan is greatly embarrassed as he witnesses this.

When everyone is ready they gather at the dining room, and Sonoko introduces them as members of their university's film club: the handsome Ohta was the main star, the tall Sumiya was the cameraman and SFX man, the pudgy Takahashi was the handyman, the gentle Ayako was the make-up/costume artist and the beautiful Chikako was the script writer. Chikako also happens to have netted herself a great deal as a professional writer, after her first script was a total knock-out some time ago! However, Ayako mentions someone named "Atsuko", which makes Chikako very angry and then leave for a walk.

It begins to rain, and Chikako hasn't returned. Ran and Sonoko chat about the handsome Ohta, and Sonoko seems smitten with him... but he flirts with Ran instead, making both Sonoko and Conan angry and jealous. They go out for a walk in the rain, with both Conan and Sonoko following them - but a huge thunder booms, and Ran runs away in terror. When she's trying to get back to the villa...

Ran is attacked by the mysterious man, who corners her and attacks with an axe! Ran is so terrified that she can barely fight back, but the man leaves as soon as Conan and Sonoko arrive.

The three make their way back to the mansion, and tell the others (Chikako included) about the attack on Ran. They aren't very convinced, and Chikako angers Sumiya by revealing he's scared of thunder, but Takahashi says he did see a man in a black cape around. Sumiya and Oota also saw him before... and for worse, it turns out that not only the phones are down, but the bridge has also been cut. Therefore, they're all stuck at the villa.

Takahashi is about to panic and the others are also uneasy, but the more practical Chikako scolds them severely for giving into what this "bandaged man" wants and says they'll have to wait. However, when she finds a mysterious letter under her doorstep, she's terrified and decides to not have dinner with the group.

Before dinner, Ayako explains that the group disbanded after the death of their friend Atsuko, who hung herself in their club room. She then asks Conan not to talk about it, since she planned the reunion to get everyone back together. When Takahashi is done fixing the rooftop he gets ready to join them for a lavish dinner prepared by Ayako and Ran, but all of a sudden he's terrified and says he's seen someone besides the window. Said someone is the bandaged man, and he has kidnapped Chikako and is taking her into the woods...

Sumiya covers Chikako's remains with his jacket, and the group returns to the villa. Ayako blames herself for everything since she organized the meeting, but Sumiya says it's only the "bandaged man's" fault. Everyone is very shaken and they decide that it's best to go to bed for the night after checking on every window and door for safety; they'll try finding their way to the nearest village in the morning. Conan, Sonoko and Ran find Chikako's slippers near the house's back door, and Conan thinks she willingly left to meet up with someone in secret.

Ran and Conan are sharing a room, and Ran is so scared of how she was targeted that she asks Conan if they can share a bed too. He tries to focus on the current info but is distracted by how close Ran is to him...

The bandaged man strikes again, this time trying to kill Ran in her sleep. Since Ran is an extremely heavy sleeper, Conan first kicks her out of the way and then grabs his bow-tie to amplify the volume of his voice and yell at her to wake up. Ran opens her eyes and she freezes up as Conan tries to tackle the guy to the ground, then the man escapes through the window but not before tossing Conan away and making him twist his ankle. The bandaged man quickly makes a hasty retreat, leaving Conan to wonder why he is targeting Ran and why, if the guy came from the outside, there are no mud or water stains on the floor...

Part 2
Everyone decides to stay up for the night and keep together to throw off the murderous man in bandages. Conan sees that Ayako has a choker that belonged to the dead Chikako; she says she found it a short while ago, but Conan recalls that she had it on when she was abducted. This means that yes, the "bandaged man" is someone in the group.

The group stays in the dining room, and Oota tries to comfort Ran by hitting on her again much to Conan's displeasure. He mentions how he was the closest to the man and tried to grab him, saying he was thin enough for him to wrap his arms around his waist.

Conan realizes that Sumiya accidentally left his camera on, so there's a video with the window incident and Chikako's abduction. He sees Chikako was wearing her choker when abducted, but that poses doubts about how fast she was taken away from the house; none of the three men (the only ones with enough physical strength) could have been fast enough to carry a woman of normal weight around that fast. Also, the three men were inside the building when Chikako was kidnapped...

Ayako, the last one to see Chikako alive, tells Conan that she saw her holding a letter and looking disturbed; this confirms Conan's suspicions about a secret meeting between Chikako and her eventual murderer. He wonders why Ran is a target now, however, and asks her if she remembers seeing something special when she got into the guys's rooms...

The lights go off, thanks to the thunderstorm. Ayako, Ran and Conan go for candles, and Ran is attacked again, but this time she manages to react and breaks the "man"'s axe with a kick. The lights return and one of the windows is all broken; Conan thinks it was done from the inside to fool everyone into thinking the man used it to get into the house, when he's actually among the group. Additionally, he sees some odd signals in the veranda, and that tells him who the "bandaged man" is!

Resolution
Hide= As Ran and Sonoko are talking, Conan decides to put Ran to sleep and use her to resolve the case... but the sleeping needle hits Sonoko instead. So using Sonoko's persona to express his thoughts, Conan unravels the whole mystery of the murder and attempted murder.
 * -|Show=

Conan begins by telling everyone that the killer is NOT from the outside, since Ran and his room was too clean for a space that was supposedly broken into. The killer actually came from Chikako's now-empty room barefoot, went out on the balcony, cut a hole in the window (right next to the lock, a detail only insiders knew about) to enter silently and attack Ran, going back into Chikako's room when she screamed/Conan repelled him and changing clothes inside before joining the group.

Conan/Sonoko continues by saying that Chikako's kidnapping wasn't such, but a trick made with a puppet, a cape, two wires and the already dead Chikako's severed head. A wire was strung over one of the rails, and both of them were tied above the window: when the killer cut them off, the "fake killer" slid over and passed in front of the window (which is what the group saw), then was 'hauled back' by the actual murderer. Only one person could have done that Ryoichi Takahashi, who was repairing the roof and as a former stagehand, is the only one with enough skills to do so.

Takahashi retorts that he was with the group the whole time, and adds that he couldn't have carried Chikako's body with him. Conan/Sonoko retorts that maybe he couldn't have carried the whole corpse, but could do that with only her head. He tries to retort with how the "bandaged man" isn't exactly fat like he is, but can't finish the sentence - because Conan/Sonoko adds that Takahashi is not as fat as he looks and uses padding as well as baggy clothes. So he discarded the padding, killed Chikako and dismembered her body, then carried her head under his baggy clothes and disimulately left it next to her mutilated torso to find, and put the padding back to keep pretending he's overweight.

Conan/Sonoko then says this is why Takahashi, as the "bandaged man", attacked Ran Mouri - because she had seen him half-naked when she barged into his room, and thus saw how he wasn't fat, and he tried to kill her before she could recall it and throw the plan off. Since this happened before he could kill his target, Takahashi also cut the phones and the bridge, then wrote the letter that led Chikako to meet up with him so he would kill her and dismember her corpse... probably a letter mentioning Atsuko, the girl who committed suicide.

Takahashi admits his guilt, and says that he did it for his beloved Atsuko. He explains that he always suspected there was something odd in how Atsuko, a very cheerful girl who had told him about a script of hers that she thought of as a masterpiece, suddenly fell into an eventually suicidal depression around the time Chikako's script was a hit. He went to see the movie based off it and realized that Chikako had stolen Atsuko's "treasure" and made it pass as hers, winning prizes and fame off Atsuko's work.

The day before Chikako got the proper award, Atsuko met up with Takahashi and told him the truth, sobbing about how no one would believe her if she tried to prove she was the author of Chikako's story. The day afterwards, Atsuko committed suicide in the club room, and Takahashi swore revenge on Chikako since she caused the ruin and death of the girl he loved. He consummated this by writing the letter, where he threatened Chikako to reveal the truth if she didn't meet up with him, and then decapitated Chikako when she came to find him.

Takahashi opens his baggy sweater and shirt, dropping some of Chikako's body parts on the floor as well as a knife, which he then points at his neck while saying he's going to join Atsuko in death and be the brave messenger of justice who avenged her. Conan/Sonoko tells him to stop screwing around because he never was as brave as he claimed to be, since he attacked an innocent person like Ran. Realizing his mistake, Takahashi falls to the ground in sorrow and regrets what he has done as the sun comes out, ridding them of the horrors of that cold night. Sonoko soon wakes up, and she accepts the credit for resolving the mystery.

Continuity

 * First case in which the Suzuki family villa is shown. It is revisited again in "The Sealed Western-Style Window".

Manga to anime changes
Main article: List of differences between the manga and anime


 * The manga version of this story was the first appearance of Sonoko Suzuki (while in the anime she made her debut in Valentine Murder Case), as well as the first time that Conan solved a murder through her (which in the anime was first done in A June Bride Murder Case). The manga version established that she never met Conan until now.
 * In the manga, immediately after the attack by the bandaged man in Ran and Conan's room, Conan was still able to walk and run.
 * The anime version ends with Ran bringing up Sonoko's deduction of the case. Conan is worried as his cover might be blown, only for Sonoko to accept the credit for solving the murder. The manga placed this at the beginning of the Karaoke Box Murder Case.
 * Additionally in the manga, Kogoro and Shinichi briefly are shown in the background when Sonoko claims that they couldn't measure up to her deduction skills.