“They were. There’s no other time that he would have been able to make them. That was the first clue I had to solving this case. It was those bloody fingerprints—there were other prints in more obvious places, such as the folding screen, but those were made by fingers wearing koto picks. In contrast, the clearer fingerprints were left in more difficult to find locations. I thought there must be something significant about that. This suggested two things to me. The fingerprints in these two locations (the pillar and the rain shutter) were discovered a long time after the others, and I was sure the killer had counted on that. In other words, it would have been disadvantageous to the killer if the investigators had found them any earlier. It didn’t matter that they were found, just that they shouldn’t be found quickly. So why? I deduced that they must have had a different appearance to the other fingerprints, due to how dry they already were. If they’d been found too early, the discrepancy between the colour of those prints and the other ones would have been obvious. I concluded that it was better for the killer that that they were found as late as possible. The second point was that these two spots were concealed well enough for there to have been fingerprints there during earlier activity in the annexe house, such as the sake cup ceremony. But even before that, I found it strange that a criminal who was cautious enough to put koto picks over his fingers would also be careless enough to leave his fingerprints all over the place. So I came to the conclusion that those fingerprints must have been left deliberately, and moreover long before the crime was committed.”
“Hah!”
The inspector sounded impressed.
Kindaichi-san grinned.
“And now the stage was set. Kenzo took the severed hand to the main house. Now you might ask why—considering Kenzo had gone to the effort of taking the shoes and the clothes up to the charcoal kiln—hadn’t he disposed of the hand at the same time? I believe he was following Saburo’s instructions. I think Saburo was enjoying himself far too much. He probably couldn’t resist using the hand for some nefarious purpose of his own, so he got Kenzo to leave it in a hiding place for him to pick up later. Of course, Saburo didn’t want to keep it himself. He had to be prepared in case the house was searched after the murder. He hit on the idea of getting Kenzo to put it in the cat’s coffin that he knew Suzuko had hidden in her room. And as he had hoped, right after the murder Suzuko took the coffin out and buried it, making it the perfect hiding place.”
“And after that Kenzo went to the study and dealt with the diaries?”
“Yes, that’s right. Probably Saburo had already marked which passages should be used. All Kenzo had to do was tear out the pages and partially burn them—along with the scraps of the letter in his kimono sleeve. However, as we know, he didn’t burn those scraps, he didn’t get rid of a single piece, just kept them in his sleeve… There’s no doubt that with someone as scrupulous as Kenzo, he must have left those scraps there purposely so we would ‘find’ the letter from his so-called mortal enemy.
“Then shortly afterwards, the wedding ceremony began. Here there were two circumstances of note. The first was that the koto was moved to the annexe house. Luckily for Kenzo’s plan, the mayor made that suggestion. If no one had brought up the subject, Kenzo surely planned to do so. He was quick to tell Katsuko that the koto was hers.
“The second thing of importance was that Kenzo told Saburo to accompany Great-Uncle Ihei home. It was purely to give Saburo an alibi for the murder. By the way, I have a question for you, Ryuji-san.”
Ryuji-san raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sure the inspector here has already asked you the same question, but I know that you were already here on the evening of the 25th. That being the case, why didn’t you attend your brother’s wedding ceremony? And why the next morning did you pretend to have just arrived?”
Ryuji-san looked pained.
“First, I have to say that only now do I understand why… Kenzo strictly forbade me to come back from Osaka for the wedding. I guess he didn’t want me to fall under suspicion, so he was making sure I had an ironclad alibi. Of course I had no idea of his motives, but the tone of the letter he wrote me made me extremely worried and I felt I had to come. So I left the conference one day early and came to K—town to find out what was going on. I thought it was better not to show my face at the wedding, so I stayed away. But then the next day there was all the commotion, so I met up with Saburo and Great-Uncle Ihei and arrived at the house in the morning.”
“Your big brother really loved you, didn’t he?”
“I’m fairly sure he wasn’t acting out of love. I think it was because I was the only person who really understood him.”
“I get it. He was less afraid of your falling under suspicion for his murder than of your reading his true intentions.”
Ryuji-san nodded.
“That’s probably true. That morning, as soon as I heard what happened, I immediately thought my brother had done it. Why he did it, and how he could have done it, those were the things I couldn’t fathom.”
“I’d like to thank you. That clears up what you were doing here. Next, the scene of the crime. The sake ceremony had just finished and Kenzo had covertly taken a koto bridge from the Lovebird and slipped it into the sleeve pocket of his mother’s kimono. I guessed that from what you told me, Inspector Isokawa. How did I work it out? Well, the koto bridge that we found in the pile of leaves had no other fingerprints on it besides the three-fingered man’s. That means it couldn’t possibly have been one of the bridges attached to the koto that night. That evening, both Suzuko and Katsuko had played the Lovebird koto. Every koto player takes a few moments before playing to tune the instrument, adjusting the position of the bridges with their left hand. If the koto bridge we found outside the annexe house had been taken from that instrument, it goes without saying that it would have both Suzuko’s and Katsuko’s fingerprints on it. It would be pointless for the killer to wipe off another person’s fingerprints and then put his own on the koto bridge instead. So it stands to reason that the bridge we found in the pile of leaves outside was never on that particular koto that evening. It had been removed from the koto while still in the storehouse and the bloody fingerprint added to it before it was used in the commission of the crime.”
Ginzo-san nodded calmly and puffed on his pipe. Ryuji-san was still staring at the floor.
“I discovered the koto bridge that had really been on the koto that night, the one that Kenzo had taken from the instrument after Katsuko finished playing, still in his mother’s kimono sleeve pocket. I’m guessing that Saburo was supposed to have got rid of it later, but Kenzo didn’t get around to telling him. Or perhaps Saburo just forgot about it in all the confusion following the discovery of the murder. Anyway, it stayed inside the pocket until today.
“I believe I’ve covered all the preparations; now we come to the moment of the tragedy…”
Kindaichi-san’s expression darkened. We all found ourselves holding our breath.
“It’s an atrocious crime, and the fact that it was planned and thought through down to the last detail makes it even more terrible. Did Kenzo lie motionless in the marriage bed waiting for that waterwheel to start turning? And when he heard the sound of it starting up, did he leap to his feet, and, pretending to head towards the lavatory, fetch the katana from the closet? Then after slashing Katsuko to death with that sword, he put three koto picks onto his fingers, played some chords on the koto and rubbed bloody traces of the koto picks onto the folding screen. I admit that the fact that he left those koto-pick traces on the screen gives me a grim sense of satisfaction. Not because Kenzo used the picks to conceal his own fingerprints but because it displays his meticulous nature. He’d already used koto string and koto bridges. It was fitting that he should use koto picks too. I feel that was his reasoning. Next, he pulled off the koto picks at the washbasin, and on his way back, took hold of the end of the string that was hanging through the ranma, pulling it with him back to the tatami room. Then
he killed himself in the way that I demonstrated to you earlier. And that was how the mysterious Honjin Murder was committed.”
Everyone stayed silent, lost in their own thoughts. The cold had seeped into my core and I gave an involuntary shudder. Right away, as if the contagion had spread, the rest of the assembled guests began to shiver. That was when Ryuji-san suddenly spoke up:
“But what I don’t understand is why my brother didn’t just leave the rain shutters open. It would have looked as if the murderer had got in and out that way. Surely that would have seemed more natural?”
Kindaichi-san’s reaction was dramatic. He began to scratch away in that knotted thatch of hair with passionate abandon. When he spoke, his stammer was more pronounced than ever.
“Th-That’s th-the m-m-most fascinating part of this case—”
He grabbed his cup and downed the dregs of his tea. Then he continued in a calmer voice.
“That’s exactly what he was supposed to do. But something unexpected happened—something that completely threw off the plan. Circumstances that he had never imagined… It snowed. Just imagine—he’d planted a trail of footprints—the same ones that he had leading into the front door—but heading away from the building through the garden to the west. The idea was to suggest that the killer had escaped that way after the murder. But the trail of footprints was completely buried by the snow. Should he make a new trail? But that was impossible. For one thing, he had already got rid of the three-fingered man’s worn-out old shoes in the chimney of the charcoal kiln. Likewise, there was no point in opening the rain shutters now to suggest the killer escaped that way, but then leaving the snow completely untouched outside. There was nothing for it but to turn the crime into a locked room murder scene—Well, we can’t know for sure exactly how he reasoned, but I think that was why he left the rain shutters locked. In other words, what we have here was not after all a meticulously planned locked room murder, but a case where the killer was reluctantly forced to create one. In other words, an accidental locked room murder mystery.”
(THIS CONCLUDES DOCTOR F—’S NOTES)
CHAPTER 18
Red Spider Lilies
That concludes Doctor F—’s report. He did make some further notes regarding Saburo’s involvement in the case, but I have obtained that information from other sources, and I will attempt to summarize it myself.
Once Saburo had recovered from his tetanus infection, Inspector Isokawa grilled him about his role in the case. He confessed everything, and it was more or less exactly as Kosuke Kindaichi had predicted. He’d got mixed up in the plan when he’d discovered his brother performing his dry run. This is how Saburo told it:
“I’ll never forget that menacing look on my brother’s face… That night I noticed there was a light on in the annexe house, so I tiptoed up to take a look. My brother had been in a strange mood for days. He’d been in another world, deep in thought about something, and easily startled by the slightest noise. It had been most obvious that afternoon when I’d got back from the barber’s and told everyone about the three-fingered man. I saw his expression change. This was fresh in my mind, so when I saw the light on in the house I just had to go and see what he was up to. The garden gate was tightly locked with the bolt pulled across on the inside, so I climbed over the fence to get into the annexe grounds. I crept around to the west side and spied on him through a small gap between the rain shutters. Imagine my shock when a katana suddenly came through the ranma above my head! I would have screamed, but in the terror of the moment I couldn’t speak. I stood there, dumbstruck, as the sword hung there in the air. Then a few moments later it began to make that ping ping twang sound before flying up in the air and landing on the ground by the stone lantern. Right at the moment it landed, the rain shutters opened and my brother’s face appeared. It all happened too quickly for me to think to hide myself, and so Kenzo found me standing there like a fool. The expression of fury on his face—I’ll never forget it. He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me into the house, where I found the three-fingered man lying dead on the tatami. And with that gory wound in his chest—”
Even Saburo couldn’t help trembling when he recalled the ghastly scene.
“I was convinced that my brother had taken leave of his senses, and that I was about to meet the same fate as the man on the tatami. Kenzo was worked up and held me so tightly that for a while I couldn’t even breathe. But gradually he got less agitated, and like a balloon releasing air, he sort of deflated. In fact, I had never seen my brother so dejected. Kenzo was always weak, he always used to brood over things like a girl, but he never showed that side of himself in everyday life. He always came across as cold-hearted and haughty. To see him so low, with no pride or honour left, frankly I felt sorry for him, but at the same time it gave me a kind of thrill…
“Finally, Kenzo managed to pull himself together, and began to tell me about his plan, but only part of it. He was almost in tears when he begged me not to say a word to anybody. The reason I say only part of his plan, is that he never mentioned Katsuko-san to me at all—just that he planned to kill himself but he didn’t want it to look like suicide. It had to look like murder. Of course, I was horrified and told him he couldn’t do that. So he asked me why not.”
Saburo’s reply to that question of Kenzo’s was remarkable and somewhat chilling; proof that he was indeed a true fanatic of the detective novel genre.
“This is what I told Kenzo. When a murder is committed, the prime suspect is the one with the most to gain. In the case of Kenzo’s death, that would be whoever inherited the Ichiyanagi family estate—in our case, my older brother, Ryuji. But as Ryuji was nowhere near at the time, he wouldn’t be on the list of suspects. I told him suspicion would fall on me instead. He asked me, ‘Why? Why would anyone suspect you? You’d hardly benefit at all from my death. All of this property would pass to Ryuji.’ I answered, ‘That’s not quite accurate. If you die, I’ll inherit fifty thousand yen in insurance money’…”
Kenzo’s face must have been a picture when Saburo explained this. I’m sure he stared at him as if he were seeing some kind of alien monster.
“Eventually though, according to Saburo, Kenzo’s face broke into a ghastly grimace and his tone changed.
“‘Saburo, you’re a clever one, aren’t you? You have quite a head on your shoulders. Right, then go ahead—tell everyone that it wasn’t murder, that I killed myself. But if you do, you won’t be able to collect a single yen of insurance money. You do realize that when it turns out that the deceased has committed suicide, there’s no payout on the insurance? Is that what you want? To throw away your chance to get your hands on fifty thousand yen? You’re not as smart as you thought, are you?’”
Older brothers, younger brothers alike, every member of the Ichiyanagi house was peculiar in some way, but Saburo was for sure the most freakish of them all. After hearing Kenzo’s explanation, he must have found himself in a terrible dilemma. But he came up with a solution favourable to himself: in order to be free of suspicion of Kenzo’s murder, he made his brother promise to manufacture an alibi for him. Once he’d extracted this promise he was in a fine mood, devoting himself to the plan and drawing on his extensive knowledge of detective novels.
I believe that the reason Saburo was so enthusiastic about helping his brother with the plan was of course in order to be sure to get his fifty thousand yen, but also because this was the first time in his life that he was able to feel superior to his big brother in any way. He was revelling in it. As Kosuke Kindaichi also pointed out, the more Saburo became involved, or the more the plot became similar to that of a detective novel, the more the status of the two brothers switched. Kenzo quite readily followed all of Saburo’s commands. Every bizarre trick that Saburo came up with, he’d give a bitter smile and follow his orders. This was Saburo’s forte, and he must have been having the time of his life.
The ruse with the three-fingered man’s photo, as well as the stunt with the burnt
diary pages—these were all Saburo’s ideas. Needless to say, the idea of cutting off the corpse’s hand to use for fingerprints was his as well. To be fair, the scheme to frame the three-fingered man for the murder had already been in Kenzo’s mind, but he had not come up with a precise plan of how to achieve that. He had the vague notion that if he buried the body where no one would find it, then eventually suspicion would fall on the three-fingered man… that was as far as he’d got. Saburo took over, embellishing and improving, and staging the performance to perfection.
There are people in the world with such a talent, and Saburo was certainly one of those. Rather than taking on the leading role themselves, they are able to take the outline of a script written by another and embellish it, edit it, offer advice and suggestions, and turn it into a fascinating piece of theatre.
However, in the case of this murder–suicide, Saburo ended up going beyond his role of stage director. He just couldn’t help getting a little more involved. The situation played so much to his strengths, that in the end he just had to put himself centre stage too. He explained it this way…
“I planned to use the severed hand again if anyone at all had suspected suicide. I got Kenzo to hide it in the coffin so it would be buried along with the cat. Then the next night I snuck out to dig it up again. That was when Suzuko had her sleepwalking episode. I looked up and saw her staggering towards me. I held out the severed hand with its three fingers to scare her.
But, you know, I’d never dreamed of having to use the hand to do the same trick again. It was that meddling, jumped-up Kosuke Kindaichi who forced me into it. If he’d been a more serious, dignified kind of detective, I never would have acted so childishly. But he turned up, just about the same age as me, looking so scruffy, with that feeble stammer. It got right up my nose that he was swanning around pretending to be a detective. Then he came and told me that mechanical tricks in locked room murders were boring. He challenged me. Thinking back, I realize now that this was a deliberate strategy, and I fell right into his trap…
The Honjin Murders Page 15