“Seen them? Where did you see them?”
“In Kenzo’s album. There was a photo with that written underneath. I… No name—just ‘My Mortal Enemy’… At the time I thought the words were strange, so I recalled them straight away.”
Itoko and Ryosuke exchanged a furtive glance. Ryuji looked troubled. From his spot in the corner, Ginzo kept a careful watch on all three.
“Where is this album you’re talking about?”
“It should be in his study. My brother was always very particular about letting people touch his things. I just happened to catch sight of that photograph.”
“Madam, may I have your permission to search the study?”
“Of course you may. Saburo-san, please show the inspector the way.”
“I’ll go too,” said Ryuji, getting up from his seat. Ginzo also got to his feet and followed the others.
Kenzo’s study was to the left of the main house’s entrance hall, in other words in the south-east corner of the building. It was a spacious Western-style room—about 200 square feet, the equivalent of twelve tatami mats in size, but it had been partitioned into two by a thin dividing wall. The smaller of the two areas was for Saburo to use as his own study, and he had his own separate door at the north end of the room. This meant that Kenzo had a space the equivalent of around eight tatami or about 140 square feet to himself. The east and north walls were covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases crammed with foreign books. Under the window on the south side was a large desk. Right in the middle of the two areas was a metal charcoal-burning heater.
“Saburo-san, where’s this album?”
“On this bookshelf… around here somewhere…”
The things Kenzo used regularly were conveniently arranged on a bookshelf to the left of the desk. There was a photograph album, a series of diaries and some newspaper clippings, all neatly lined up. Saburo reached out to take the album, but Inspector Isokawa swiftly put out a hand to stop him.
“Just a minute.”
The inspector stood for a moment surveying the contents of the shelf.
It appeared that Kenzo had been scrupulous about keeping his diary. Beginning in 1917 up to 1936, or last year, he had twenty volumes arranged in chronological order. Moreover, they had all been made by the same Tokyo company, and their size, binding and paper quality were identical. They revealed a lot about what kind of person Kenzo had been.
The inspector brought his face up so close to these volumes that he was practically rubbing his forehead on the bookshelf. He stared at them for a while, then eventually turned to face the others, a frown on his face.
“Someone has tampered with these diaries recently. These three volumes here, 1924, ’25 and ’26 are not properly aligned with the others. Also, all the rest have a very light layer of dust on them, but these three don’t. And then there’s one even stranger thing.”
Inspector Isokawa very carefully took the three volumes from the shelf. He showed each one to the other men. Ginzo squinted to see better, but was mystified by what he saw. All three volumes were missing pages, apparently cut or torn out. The 1925 diary was missing around half of its pages. The binding was practically hanging off.
“Take a look. These pages have been cut out recently. Could you tell me how old Kenzo was between 1924 and 1926?”
“Kenzo turned forty this year, so in 1924 he would have been twenty-seven,” replied Ryuji, using his fingers to count.
“So these were his diaries from the ages of twenty-seven to twenty-nine. What was he doing in those days?”
“He graduated from university in Kyoto when he was twenty-five, and stayed on there for the next two years as a lecturer. Eventually he became worried enough about the respiratory problems he’d been having that he decided to quit his job, and for the next three years he spent his time doing very little besides trying to recuperate. If you look in his diaries, there’s quite a lot written about that time.”
“So you’re saying these volumes cover the period around when he gave up teaching and was being treated for pulmonary disease? I need to ascertain who cut out these pages, and why. And what happened to those missing pages, how did this person dispose of them? Like I said before, this looks like a very recent job… Hey, is anything the matter?”
The inspector turned abruptly to look at Ginzo, who was coughing rather pointedly and tapping the charcoal heater with his pipe. The inspector got Ginzo’s meaning immediately. He strode briskly over to the heater and tugged open the metal door in the front. He gave a snort of satisfaction. The interior was piled high with the remains of burnt paper, some leaves of which still retained their original form.
“When was this heater last cleaned out?”
“There was nothing like that in it last night,” said Saburo, peering inside. “I was in here yesterday evening until around seven, reading a book. I added more charcoal to it a few times. I did it myself so I’m absolutely sure there were no papers in it then.”
Ginzo was watching Saburo’s face carefully, his own betraying no emotion. Feeling Ginzo’s eyes on him, Saburo blushed crimson.
“That’s fine. I’ll look into it more thoroughly later,” continued Inspector Isokawa. “Please make sure none of you touches these burnt remains. So, Saburo-san, this must be the album you were talking about.”
There were five photo albums in all. They each had the years written on the spine in red ink. Inspector Isokawa pulled out the one marked “1923 to 1926”, laid it on the desk and very carefully began to look through it. He’d barely reached the fifth or sixth page when Saburo piped up.
“Inspector, that’s it. That’s the photo.”
He was pointing to a business-card-size photograph, quite faded, creased and worn. All the other photos around it appeared to be amateur shots, probably taken by Kenzo himself, but this one was obviously taken by a professional photographer. It was the kind of official headshot photo you would use on something like a university entrance exam application.
The photo was of a young man of around twenty-three or -four years of age with close-cropped hair and wearing a shirt with a stand-up collar fastened by a brass button.
Underneath this picture was written in bold lettering “My Mortal Enemy”. The handwriting was clearly Kenzo’s own. The red ink had faded to a dull brown.
“Do any of you know who the subject of this photo is?”
Ryuji and Saburo both shook their heads.
“Saburo-san, you didn’t ask Kenzo anything about the photo?”
“If I’d asked him something like that, I can’t even express how angry my brother would have been. I had to keep secret even the fact that I’d seen it.”
“My mortal enemy. It’s a very extreme turn of phrase. Do either of you have any memories of an incident that could have sparked this reaction?”
“My brother was a very private person,” said Ryuji, frowning. “He never let anybody see into his heart. If there had been such an incident, he probably wouldn’t have spoken about it to anyone. It would have been his personal secret.”
“Anyway, I’m going to borrow this photograph for now,” said the inspector. He tried to peel it away from the page, but it was too firmly stuck down. Fearing that he might damage the photo if he pulled too hard, he took a pair of scissors, cut through the thick mounting paper around it and placed it carefully between two pages of his notebook.
I believe there was a review meeting at the police station in S—town that evening.
I confess I don’t know much about police meetings. I only got the gist of what happened from Doctor F—’s notes, so I have used some artistic licence to piece together how things must have gone.
“…And this is what we know about the burnt pages from the diary.”
(Of course, that would have been Inspector Isokawa.)
“As I have already mentioned, yesterday evening, shortly before the wedding ceremony, Akiko from the Ichiyanagi branch family went to the annexe house in search of Kenzo. At that tim
e, Kenzo asked Akiko to close the rain shutters all around the annexe house, and left shortly before she did. Not long after, Akiko returned to the main house, but Kenzo, who should have been there before her, was nowhere to be seen. By then it was getting close to the time of the wedding ceremony and the lady dowager, Itoko, was becoming impatient, so she sent Akiko to look for him. Akiko claims to have found him in his study, burning something in the charcoal heater.”
“I see,” the chief inspector interjected. “So in fact the person who tore out and burned pages from the diary was Kenzo himself.”
“That’s correct. I’ve heard it’s fairly common for people to get rid of old diaries and letters before getting married, but in this case there must be some significance in his doing it right before the ceremony was due to take place. In other words, the message written on that scrap of paper that Akiko took to him in the annexe house must have reminded him about something from his past. And he felt it necessary to destroy all records of it right away.”
“So that’s how you explain the burnt pages from his diaries?”
“Right. He appears to have taken great care to leave nothing of them behind. Every page is almost completely burnt. There are only these five—a very small percentage of the total—that have any legible bits left at all. Now I don’t know whether this is even connected to our case or not, but I’m going to read this small selection for you. Unfortunately, the part with the date is all burnt off, so I can’t be sure when it was written, but I think it was probably around 1925.”
Inspector Isokawa had brought the five scraps of paper that were saved from the fire. Those words, which had so nearly been reduced to ash, held great significance. Doctor F—made a careful memo of what they contained. I’m going to copy his notes here for you.
…on my way to the beach I went by the usual place. Ofuyusan was playing the koto again. Lately I find the sound of that koto melancholy…
…that dog, that brute. I really despise him. I will despise that man for the rest of my life…
…Ofuyu-san’s funeral. A desolate, mournful day. It’s drizzling again here on the island. The funeral was…
…I’m thinking of challenging him to a duel. This inexpressible fury. When I think of the lonely death that she met, I could tear him limb from limb. I consider him my mortal enemy and I hate him, hate him, hate h…
…before I left the island, I paid one more visit to Ofuyusan’s grave. I took some wild chrysanthemums and as I was praying, I thought I could hear the sound of a koto. Abruptly I…
“I understand.”
After reading over the legible writing on the diary pages himself, the chief inspector offered his personal analysis:
“It seems this Kenzo got close to some woman called Ofuyu on an island somewhere. This Ofuyu-san was deeply involved with another man who somehow caused her death. So that man became Kenzo’s mortal enemy. And that man is our murderer.”
“That’s how it seems,” said Inspector Isokawa. “There’s probably a very long and complicated history behind the whole thing. It would help if we knew this man’s name or even the name of the island, but of course the diary pages that could tell us that have been burned. We do know that in 1925 Kenzo was twenty-eight years old, and suffering from a mild bout of pneumonia. He was apparently travelling around the Seto Inland Sea, touring the islands in that region. I’ve asked the Ichiyanagi family which island this could have been, but nobody knows.”
“But we do have that photo… Take it to the tavern where the three-fingered man first showed up.”
“Naturally, it’s already been done, sir. I showed it to the okamisan and the village official and the wagon driver who was with them at the time, and all three swear it was the same man. Of course, they all say he was much older and thinner—wasted away—and that he had a large scar on his cheek, so that his appearance had changed a lot, but all three of them said they were certain it was the same man.”
“So there’s no doubt then. And after the man left the tavern that day no one saw him again?”
“Actually, someone did.”
It was Detective Sergeant Kimura who spoke.
“He was spotted the same day by a peasant farmer by the name of Yosuke Taguchi, who lives near the Ichiyanagi place. He says he saw the man standing in front of the residence’s main gate, peering in. Perhaps the man realized how suspicious he looked, because he asked in a really unconvincing way whether he was on the right road for H—village, and upon getting the answer, wandered off in that direction. Yosuke walked on, but when he looked back, the man was clambering up that steep hillside on the north side of the compound. It’s reasonable to assume that he climbed up there to get a better view of the whole Ichiyanagi residence. This all happened ten minutes or so after he left the tavern.”
“And that was the evening of the 23rd? Two days before the wedding?”
“That’s correct.”
“Incidentally, all the staff who were in the kitchen when the man turned up right before the wedding ceremony, and this what’s-his-name, Yosuke Taguchi—have you showed the photo to all that lot too?”
“Naturally. But they weren’t much use. They all said he had his hat pulled down and was wearing a mask over his nose and mouth. And the kitchen at the Ichiyanagi house is pretty dark…”
The chief inspector smoked a cigarette as he considered the case. Then he looked down at his desk where there was an assortment of articles lined up.
a glass
a katana sword
a scabbard for a katana sword
three koto picks
a koto bridge
a sickle
He looked over the items as he spoke.
“I assume this is the glass from that tavern. Fingerprints?…”
The young man in charge of forensic analysis responded.
“Should I give my report? I have a photo here. It shows that there were two sets of fingerprints on the glass. The first belongs to the okamisan; the second consists of only a thumb, index finger and middle finger, which leads us to believe they were made by the so-called three-fingered man. We found the same prints on this sword, the scabbard and the koto bridge. Additionally, the prints on the koto bridge were made in blood. The sword and the scabbard also had traces of Kenzo’s fingerprints; the koto bridge had none besides the killer’s. As for the koto picks, they should have had the killer’s prints on their underside, but they were so completely soaked in blood that we weren’t able to check for prints. And as you can see, the handle of the sickle is made of a very rough type of wood, so we were unable to find any clear prints on it either.”
“Where did the sickle come from?”
“I’ll explain,” said Inspector Isokawa, getting to his feet.
“It was found embedded in a camphor tree in the garden of the annexe house. Upon investigation we found that a gardener had been working at the Ichiyanagi residence about a week before the murders. We asked him about the sickle and he told us he’d left it behind, but as for being stuck into the trunk of the camphor tree, he said it would be very unlikely that anyone would climb a tree with a sickle. I see no reason to doubt the gardener’s word. So we are left with the problem of why it was stuck in the tree, and why the blade had been made so extremely sharp. We confiscated the sickle in the hope of finding how it could be significant in the case.”
“Thank you. I see there are lot of unanswered questions. And what about fingerprints at the crime scene?”
“We discovered the killer’s fingerprints at three locations. The first was inside the storage closet near the larger room, where we believe he had been hiding before the murder. Those had no blood on them. Then there were another two locations with bloody prints: the inside of the rain shutter and the supporting pillar on the south-west side of the larger room. These latter prints were in the most obvious location, but they were the last to be discovered. We missed them at first because the whole house had recently been painted red.”
“So this
confirms that there was definitely a third person, namely the killer, in the house? There’s no chance that this was a lovers’ suicide?”
“A suicide?” Inspector Isokawa looked dumbfounded.
“Ah, that’s not my own opinion,” the chief inspector added hastily. “I don’t believe anyone could pierce their own heart with a sword and then throw the weapon out into the snow, locking the shutters again afterwards.”
“But are you saying that somebody does support that preposterous theory? If you look at the crime scene, there’s no possible way it could have been suicide. First of all, there’s the position of the murder weapon in the ground. And then the koto bridge – it’s clear that it was dropped there as the murderer escaped. Even if the rain shutters were open, it would be impossible to stand inside the house and throw either the katana or the koto bridge, for that matter, to land in the spots where they were found. Are you telling me that someone believes that could be done?”
“It was Seno. That man is always hoping cases turn out to be suicide so he doesn’t have to pay up.”
“Pay up?… Oh, that Seno! The insurance company agent. So how much was Kenzo covered for?”
“Fifty thousand yen.”
“Fifty thousand?!”
The police inspector’s reaction wasn’t excessive. In those days, in a rural region like that, fifty thousand yen was a considerable sum.
“And when did he take out that policy?”
“Five years ago.”
“Five years?… But why would a man with no wife or children need to take out such an expensive insurance policy?”
“It seems that Kenzo has a younger brother by the name of Ryuji. Five years ago, at the time of Ryuji’s wedding, the estate was divided between the brothers. The third brother, Saburo, was incensed because his portion was too small. He kicked up such a fuss that Kenzo decided to make Saburo the beneficiary of his fifty-thousand-yen life insurance policy.”
“So Saburo stands to receive fifty thousand yen.”
Inspector Isokawa had a very strange sense of foreboding.
The Honjin Murders Page 6