The Honjin Murders

by Seishi Yokomizo

  “The rain shutter was definitely bolted shut. Genshichi smashed a hole in it with the axe, just big enough for me to put a hand inside, reach in and slide the bolt. It’s absurd to even suggest that the murderer could have escaped that way. And even if he did, how come there were no footprints out there in the snow? Genshichi and I are absolutely sure of that. Ginzo-san will back us up too.”

  Ginzo nodded his agreement, but at the same time, he fixed Ryosuke’s face with eyes that held more than a hint of suspicion.

  But let’s back up for a moment…

  Before dawn had broken that morning, Ginzo was standing with Ryosuke, staring in horror at the bodies of his niece and her husband. When the police began to arrive, Ginzo was finally able to tear himself away. It was around 7 a.m. and the weather had cleared up. The snow piled high on the roof of the main building was dazzling in the morning sun. The dripping of meltwater from the eaves of the house was becoming faster and faster.

  But Ginzo was blind to the sight and deaf to the sound. His face was twisted in sorrow. And concealed deep beneath that sorrow was a deep sense of regret and anger.

  Wordlessly, he started back towards the main house, but was interrupted by the arrival of Saburo. He’d stayed the night at Great-Uncle Ihei’s house in K—, but now having got word from a servant about what had happened, he had hurried home. He looked pale, but it was his companion who caught Ginzo’s attention—an elegant moustachioed gentleman in his mid-thirties. When the mistress of the house caught sight of him, she looked astonished:

  “Oh, Ryuji! What are you doing here?”

  “Mother, Genshichi just told me the dreadful news.”

  Of course he seemed upset, but at the same time calmer than expected under the circumstances.

  “It’s horrible! Dreadful! I don’t know what to do. But, Ryuji, how are you here so quickly? When did you get back?”

  “I just arrived from Fukuoka. The conference I was attending finished earlier than expected… I thought I would come to offer Kenzo my congratulations. I got off at N—station and had just stopped by Great-Uncle Ihei’s house in K—to ask how the wedding had gone when Genshichi arrived…”

  Ginzo had been watching the young man with great distrust, but as he heard these words, his eyes grew wider until his gaze was practically burning a hole in the side of Ryuji’s face. The stare was so intense that Ryuji himself could hardly fail to notice it. He began to look uncomfortable.

  “Mother, this man…”

  “Oh, this is Katsuko’s uncle. Ginzo-san, this is my second son, Ryuji.”

  Ginzo inclined his head and, without uttering a single word, returned to his room in the main house. For a while he just stood there thinking, but eventually he uttered a single sentence:

  “That man’s lying.”

  With that, he opened his suitcase and took out a blank telegram. After a few moments, he began to write.

  katsuko dead. send kindaichi.

  He addressed it to his own wife, then set out for the K—town post office.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Sickle and a Koto Bridge

  “This is a hell of a case. Downright creepy, if you ask me. I’ve been doing this job a long time, and no matter how grisly or blood-spattered, there’s not much that can surprise me any more. But the more I think about this one, the more unsettled I feel. Hey, Kimura, what do you make of the killer leaving footprints on the way in, but not on the way out?”

  Detective Inspector Isokawa had pulled a desk out onto the engawa of the annexe house and was painstakingly trying to piece together some torn-up scraps of writing paper. His detective sergeant, Kimura, was assisting.

  “Inspector, how about we look at this whole case more simply?”

  “How do you mean, simply?”

  “What if this Ryosuke character is lying? If we decide that, then there’s nothing mysterious about it at all. Whether the screen was bolted shut or not—he’s the only one who knows the truth. He’s free to lie about it as much as he likes.”

  “Well, I suppose you’ve got a point, but then we’ve got the footprint problem.”

  “Inspector, shouldn’t we concentrate on one thing at a time? We can check the garden again later for footprints. But let’s focus on this for now—if Ryosuke is lying to us, then the question is: why?”

  “Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

  “I think that he knows more than he’s saying. I suspect he knows who the killer is.”

  “Still, whether he knows who the killer is and whether the shutters were locked or not are two separate questions.”

  “I don’t think so. Or rather that’s making it too complicated. You know, I just don’t like that man. There’s something sneaky about him.”

  “You can’t go around judging people on first impressions. That’s how mistakes get made.”

  That said, Inspector Isokawa’s own impression of Ryosuke was far from positive.

  All of the siblings from the head Ichiyanagi family had the appropriate appearance and bearing to be called descendants of the honjin. Even the good-for-nothing Saburo, with his indifferent attitude, was in his own, albeit lazy way, clearly the son of a well-to-do family. Ryosuke did not compare favourably at all. He was short and skinny, and looked older than his years. He had a fussy, finicky manner, and there was something a little coarse about him. You could see all of this if you looked in his eyes; those eyes that were constantly moving, forever checking out other people’s expressions. At first glance you’d take him for timid, but in fact he was cunning—someone who never seemed to let down his guard.

  “He’s head of the branch family, right?”

  “Right. He’ll never inherit anything. The one who was murdered, Kenzo, was a scholarly type, and didn’t really bother himself with family business. This Ryosuke’s got quite a reputation for managing the business and profiting from it.”

  “What about that Ryuji? It seems very fishy that he just happened to arrive home this morning.”

  “Ah yes, that one. Rumour has it he’s quite a good type. The folk in the village reckon he’s easy to get along with. It seems he’s employed by an Osaka hospital, and had just returned from a conference at Kyushu University. It would be a very simple thing to check on, so I doubt very much he’s lying.”

  “Um… By the way, what you said just now: that you think Ryosuke might be protecting the killer… you mean that Ryosuke knows this three-fingered man? According to the okamisan at Kawada’s, he was nothing but a tramp. A seedy-looking type.”

  Kawada’s was the name of the cheap tavern that was mentioned at the opening of this story—the place where the three-fingered man had first been seen.

  At this point, Inspector Isokawa had just finished his initial questioning of the Ichiyanagi family members. And so it followed that he had already heard all about the mysterious three-fingered man. It was Saburo who told him; as soon as he heard that a three-fingered handprint had been left in the annexe house, he couldn’t wait to tell the inspector the tale he had heard at the barber’s shop.

  For Isokawa’s part, as soon as he heard Saburo’s story, he dispatched a police officer to Kawada’s. The officer returned with a full description of the man, and the glass that he had drunk from. The okamisan had been true to her word—repulsed by the man’s appearance, she hadn’t used the glass since. Thanks to these actions, the three fingerprints were still clearly visible on the surface of the glass. Inspector Isokawa sent it straight off to be analysed.

  When Saburo’s story was repeated to Ryosuke’s wife, Akiko, she recalled the strange man who had turned up at the kitchen shortly before the wedding. The police questioned old Nao, the servant, and all the others who’d been in the kitchen at the time, and determined that it had been the same man. They also heard from Akiko how the message the man delivered had been torn up and the scraps stuffed into the sleeve of Kenzo’s kimono.

  The detectives had obtained the kimono that Kenzo had been wearing at the time of his death,
examined the sleeves, and discovered the shredded note. And that was what Inspector Isokawa and Sergeant Kimura were now busily trying to reassemble.

  “Kimura, we’re almost there. Have you got the piece that goes here? No, that’s not it… This one looks right. Now just two more… There and… there. That’s it!”

  Fortunately, not a single scrap of the shredded notepaper had gone missing, and the detectives had succeeded in piecing together the whole thing. However, the paper turned out to be covered in pencilled squiggles, which seemed to squirm before their eyes.

  “What weird handwriting! Kimura, this first word?… What do you think that is?”

  “I think it’s the character for ‘island’, sir.”

  “Island?… Yes, now you say it, it does look like island. ‘The island pact or agreement’, isn’t it? The island agreement… what’s that next word?”

  “I think it says ‘short’. ‘Will shortly’ maybe?”

  “Yes, yes. Will shortly be… is that ‘executed’? Now, I can’t read the next word either.”

  The handwriting was so poor to start with, added to which the paper had been torn into so many tiny pieces, that it took skill to read anything at all. However, the two men worked patiently together, and eventually came up with a message.

  The island agreement will shortly be executed. We agreed to it—be it under cover of night, by surprise attack, by whatever means—an agreement was made.

  From the one you call your “Mortal Enemy”

  The two detectives were speechless for a few moments.

  “Sir, this is a warning,” said Kimura eventually. “It’s advance notice of a murder.”

  “It looks that way. It’s a clear threat. And several hours after taking delivery of this letter, he was murdered. Damn it! This case has turned even nastier.”

  Inspector Isokawa stood up, holding the glued-together message.

  “Let’s go and make some enquiries at the main house. This ‘island agreement’—we’d better find out if Kenzo ever spent time on an island somewhere.”

  Just as the inspector was sliding his feet into a pair of geta sandals, someone called his name. It was the junior detective tasked with going over the outside of the west end of the building with a fine-toothed comb.

  “Inspector Isokawa, could you please come and have a look at this? I found something odd.”

  “What? More discoveries?”

  The young detective directed him to a spot just under the eaves of the lavatory extension on the north-west corner of the building. (If you wouldn’t mind referring once again to the sketch on page 49.) Someone had swept up some fallen leaves into a pile on the ground. The police officer pushed some of the leaves aside with the end of a stick.

  “Take a look at that.”

  The inspector’s eyes widened.

  “Isn’t that from a koto?”

  “That’s right, sir. The missing koto bridge. Someone dropped it out here. It looks like the killer passed this way while making his escape. I thought at first that he might have thrown it from one of the lavatory windows, but as far as I can see, they all have a fine wire mesh over them. The holes in the mesh are too small to fit a koto bridge through. That treetrunk ranma above the amado rain shutters: also impossible. You could throw the koto bridge through the gap but the angle’s wrong—the lavatory wall would have blocked its trajectory towards the leaf pile. But there was one stroke of luck—because it fell into this pile of leaves and got buried, it hardly got wet at all. There’s a bloody fingerprint still visible.”

  Inspector Isokawa looked up at the lavatory windows and then the ranma over the shutters. The young detective was right.

  “Right, take care of this. Get it off for analysis. Have you found anything else?”

  “Yes, one more thing. Over here.”

  The junior detective directed them to the huge camphor tree.

  “There’s that too,” he said, pointing up into its branches. “See, around the height of the third branch from the bottom? There’s a sickle stuck up there. I tried to climb up to get it but it’s really stuck fast into the trunk and I wasn’t strong enough to pull it out. I examined the handle and there’s the name of a gardening company branded on it.”

  “The gardener must have forgotten it.”

  “It does look as if the grounds have been recently tended to. But up in a tree like that? I’d understand if they’d left some shears or something, but not a sickle. It’s weird.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  The inspector paused to think.

  “Leave the sickle up there for now. And… what else was it?… Ah yes, don’t forget to get that koto bridge back to the station. And just in case, search really carefully around here one more time.”

  Inspector Isokawa made his way over to the main house, where he found the whole Ichiyanagi family assembled in the sitting room. Ginzo was there too in the corner, smoking a pipe. He’d been encamped in that position ever since returning from the post office that morning, hardly exchanging a word with anybody. He sat there, silently puffing on his pipe and listening to the whispered conversation of the others. Forgetting any sense of restraint or decorum, he was openly scrutinizing the family’s expressions and behaviour. For the family’s part, the presence of Ginzo there in their sitting room was as oppressive as an overcast sky in rainy season. Ryosuke and Saburo seemed particularly on edge: whenever they happened to glance in his direction, they hurriedly averted their eyes if he returned their gaze.

  Only Suzuko had seen that there was something gentle and kind about this old man, underneath his angry exterior. She was behaving affectionately towards him, and right now was lying on the floor with her head in his lap.

  “Hey, Uncle Ginzo?” she asked, pulling on his finger. “I’ve got something weird to tell you.”

  Ginzo glanced at Suzuko’s face, a little confused.

  “Yesterday, in the middle of the night I heard a koto playing. First of all it sounded like plink plunk thrum thrum, like someone had koto picks on their fingers and was really pulling like crazy on all of the strings. Then the second time I heard it was kind of ping ping, like someone was plucking at one string. Uncle Ginzo, do you remember?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, the day before yesterday, in the evening, I heard the same sound.”

  Ginzo looked at Suzuko in surprise.

  “Suzuko-san, are you telling the truth?”

  “Of course I am. And the sound was coming from the annexe.”

  “So the sound you heard two nights ago was the same thrumming, like someone pulling like crazy on the strings?”

  “No. Not like that. Well, they might have made that sound first, but I must have been sound asleep then. That night I only heard the ping ping sound.”

  “Do you know what time you heard it?”

  “I don’t know what time it was. I was so scared I hid under my bedcovers. Coz that night there wasn’t anybody in the annexe. And the koto was still over here. Uncle Ginzo, is it true that when a cat dies it turns into a ghost?”

  That was how all conversations with Suzuko ended up. Just when she seemed to be making sense, she’d suddenly leap into the realm of fantasy.

  And yet, it really seemed that two nights ago she had heard the same koto sound… Ginzo felt that there something very significant about that information. He was just about to ask Suzuko to tell him more when Inspector Isokawa came in, and that was the end of the conversation.

  “I have something I’d like to ask all of you,” the inspector said. “Did Kenzo-san ever spend any time on an island anywhere?”

  The Ichiyanagis looked at each other.

  “Hmm… Ryo-san, what do you think?” said Ryuji. “Kenzo hadn’t really been out anywhere at all recently, had he?”

  “No, it doesn’t have to have been recent,” the inspector said hastily. “It could have been a long time ago. Did he visit an island? Did he stay on one for a while?…”

  “Ah, in th
at case he probably did. When he was young, my brother used to like travelling. He used to go on walking trips all over the place. But what does that have to do with his death?”

  Ryuji looked puzzled.

  “Well, we believe that the island connection is important to solving his murder. It would be helpful if we knew the name of a particular island. The one mentioned here.”

  Inspector Isokawa produced the reconstructed note.

  “There’s a very mysterious message written on this paper. I’ll read it out. Please tell me if it means anything to you.”

  The inspector proceeded to read the message aloud. When he came to the final phrase, From the one you call your “Mortal Enemy,” there was a faint cry. It was Saburo. Under the detective inspector’s piercing gaze, and the questioning looks from the rest of his family, the colour drained from his face and he looked as jittery as a criminal caught red-handed.

  CHAPTER 7

  A Strategy Meeting

  Saburo’s strange behaviour had caught the attention of everyone in the room.

  “Saburo, do you know something about this letter?” asked Ryuji, obviously displeased.

  Under the pressure of everyone’s attention focused on him, Saburo got flustered.

  “I-I—” he stuttered, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  Inspector Isokawa’s glare grew harder.

  “Saburo-san, if you know anything at all, then you need to speak up. This is extremely important.”

  The inspector’s tone was stern, and it put Saburo in even more of a state, but eventually he managed to speak.

  “That phrase at the end of the letter, I… I’ve heard it before. Mortal Enemy. I’ve seen those words before.”