Amanda Hughes' Dying Message Theory
After the latest anime episode (1165) of the Kohji case flashback adaptation, where we finally got Amanda Hughes' dying message picture in colours, I think I may have figured out a hidden layer to what she could have been trying to tell with the lipstick-smeared Knight piece.
As some may know, I have speculated that Amanda's Knight piece with wristwatch dying message wasn't completely deduced by Conan and that there was unresolved things with other elements in it, like the chessboard it was on. I had speculated that Amanda could have been trying to implicate Rum's identity through the knight piece (as potentially foreshadowed in Wakita's intro in File 975 with the "Pirate's spirit" [Rum] horse) and deduced that Amanda may have mixed japanese and english in her dying message out of desperation (similar to the victim in File 1057), since we learned in File 1106 that she was learning japanese and could speak fluently). It does make for a harder challenge to realize that such a mix of languages was implemented in the message when there's already limited resources for her dying message. After looking at the knight piece again however, but this time in colour through the anime adaptation, I realized there could have actually been a direct hint in Amanda's message on how the knight piece was intended to be read, and this is not the first time Gosho has done this in this arc.
In File 969-971 (Swimsuit dressroom case), the victim of that case left a dying message that was very similar to Amanda's, in that she smeared lipstick from her mouth on her right hand (similar to Amanda) in order to guide how her left hand gesture was meant to be read.
It was revealed that she smeared the red lipstick on her 5-star-painted nail on her thumb to indicate the flag of China, in order to guide the reader in what language the dying message was meant to be read. If this was foreshadowing to Amanda's dying message technique, then it's possible that when Amanda smeared her hand with lipstick and transfered it on the knight piece horse' eyes, she was also trying to indicate the language in which the knight piece was meant to be read through. When you look at the colours, you can immediately see that the white knight piece with the red dot on its horse eyes was most likely meant to hint to the flag of Japan!
This would mean that Amanda indeed was trying to indicate the japanese word for "horse" in her dying message, which is "Uma".
If she took account of the Knight piece's white colour, then it further fits with the continuation of my deduction on how the chessboard was used in the rest of the message. The red lipstick-smeared right hand of Amanda that was facing the chessboard was not only trying to guide the reader to the language of the knight piece message ("horse" in japanese), but it was also trying to guide the reader on how to factor the chessboard into the message. The white knight piece has 2 fixed starting positions on the chessboard (Left B1 & Right G1), and so with her guiding lipstick-smeared right hand facing the chessboard, she was indicating that the right starting position of the white knight piece (G1) was a part of the message, represented with the letter "G", and together with "UMA" (horse in japanese) making out the letters of MUGA (as, in Momiji's current butler "Muga")
This could be further highlighting that Rum's parting words for Amanda (File 1107), where he left her with a loaded line about his father's long history with Karasuma Renya (the boss) as the former "Rum", indeed carried more weight than it appeared and could have been what made her figure out that the current Rum is not truly the same Rum she met 67 years ago, but rather his son (whose first name she may have known beforehand) in disguise as his father, as mentioned in my File 1106-1109 Review.
