Spoilers follow for the killer, the sound trick and the ending.
The Counting Song Heard in the Dark, international episode 1221 (Japanese episode 1163), is an anime-original mystery whose killer is antiques dealer Kadokura. He arranges repeated metallic sounds to suggest that Ippei Zaizen is still alive with the coins, then uses a delayed fire to conceal the staging. His pocket watch becomes a clue to the treasure he has taken.
A warning brings Kogoro to the opening of an old safe
Kyoko Tominaga, the proprietress of an inn in a traditional house, receives an email warning that its treasure will be targeted. She hires Kogoro to provide protection, and Conan and Ran accompany him. A safe found during renovation is about to be opened in front of people with an interest in its contents.
Businessman Ippei Zaizen has negotiated to buy the safe before it is opened, allowing him to claim what is inside. Appraiser Seiji Kawabata and antiques dealer Kadokura are excited by the discovery of valuable coins, while Tominaga is visibly dissatisfied with the bargain.
The treasure includes an old twenty-yen gold coin and dragon-design fifty-sen silver coins. One gold coin is valued at thirty million yen in the case. Zaizen reacts angrily when the others touch the money and drives everyone out, showing a distrust of people matched by his intense faith in wealth.
The others say Zaizen has become increasingly obsessed with money since leaving his company. His possessiveness isolates him with the coins in the annex, creating the conditions in which sounds from the room will be mistaken for evidence of his continued activity.
The sound continues while everyone else is together
Zaizen does not join the communal dinner. When Kogoro leaves for the toilet, he hears a metallic sound that seems to come from the money, suggesting Zaizen is still in the building handling it. Tominaga later explains that she saw him striking silver coins when she brought his meal; he was checking whether they were genuine.
At about eight, the others are still gathered in the main room. Tominaga turns down the lights so they can look at the moon, and a fire is then noticed in the annex. The peaceful gathering is abruptly broken by the discovery of Zaizen, who has been struck with a blunt object.
Cut glass and footprints suggest an intruder approached from outside. Megure and Takagi investigate, but Conan remains convinced that one of the three people close to the treasure is responsible. Kawabata, Kadokura and Tominaga each have a history of conflict with Zaizen.
The metallic sound creates a false timetable
The crucial assumption is that the metallic sound proves Zaizen is alive and testing the coins at the time it is heard. Witness descriptions of how clear or changed the sound seemed make it worth questioning that assumption. A noise associated with a person can continue without that person making it.
Kadokura has prepared a mechanism that repeatedly moves and produces the coin-like sound. In the episode’s reconstruction, heat changes magnetic attraction so the apparatus moves in a pendulum-like cycle. The explanation invokes the Curie-temperature effect; its role in the mystery is to separate the sound’s timing from Zaizen’s actual actions.
He also arranges for an ice support under a lantern to melt, allowing the lantern to topple and start the fire. The delay helps make the later emergency appear to coincide with the crime, while the flames are intended to destroy the device that has produced the misleading sounds.
The warning email, cut glass and footprints form the surrounding story of an outside thief. Their function is to send suspicion away from someone already present at the inn. The sound and fire then supply an apparent timetable for that false account.
Kadokura stops checking the watch he normally relies on
Kadokura habitually checks the time on a pocket watch, but after the incident he no longer opens it. A stolen coin is concealed inside. The abrupt change in a familiar habit makes the object significant in a way that the general disputes over Zaizen’s money do not.
Conan demonstrates the sound mechanism with Takagi’s assistance, bringing a candle dish toward the apparatus. The reconstruction exposes why the repeated noise could not safely be treated as a witness to Zaizen’s survival. It joins the concealed coin and Kadokura’s changed behavior in the explanation of his crime.
False investment information lies behind the revenge
Kadokura suffered disastrous investment losses after acting on false information supplied by Zaizen. He lost his home and his family life, leaving him with a deeply personal grievance against the man now guarding the treasure. The murder is tied to that earlier ruin, as well as the coins in the room. His family’s later circumstances remain unclear.
Zaizen’s conviction that only money can be trusted becomes a bitter theme once that history is revealed. His hoarding and Kadokura’s revenge come together around the same objects, while the people outside the annex mistake a fabricated metallic rhythm for signs of a living man.
The final piggy-bank joke gives a brief release after the reconstruction. What remains memorable is the sound’s change of meaning: first a sign of possessive vigilance, then a mechanical echo covering a death that has already occurred.
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