I could only nod at Maria’s arguments.
‘There’s no doubt Mr. Makihara was shot over by the window,’ said Egami, as he followed the bloodstains. ‘The problem is Sumako’s movements….’
‘Maybe there’s some physical proof lying around here that will tell us the story,’ suggested Maria.
‘Okay, everyone on all fours.’
So declared Egami, and he literally started to crawl on the floor, peeking under one of the beds. I looked beneath the other one. Last night, we’d been looking for a rifle, but today I had my eyes wide open for even the slightest clue. And there was indeed something.
‘There’s something here. It’s in the back, so I can’t see it very well.’
Egami stood up, and crouched to look beneath this bed from the head side.
‘Ah, you’re right. Something round. A lighter?’
‘My uncle used a cylindrical lighter. It had a strange shape. He said it was a souvenir from Hong Kong.’
Still crouching, Egami stretched his arm out, but couldn’t reach the object. He went back to lying on the floor again and finally got hold of it.
‘Yes, that’s my uncle’s lighter.’
‘Perhaps he was about to light a cigarette when he was shot,’ I suggested. ‘That’s why he was holding his lighter. And when he was shot and fell down, he let go of it and it rolled down beneath the bed.’
‘Probably. He might also have been playing with his lighter while talking with Sumako, as that was his habit. He then let it fall when he was shot.’
Whatever happened, there was no need to look for any deeper meaning regarding the lighter.
After that, even Maria went crawling on the floor, as we went over the room with a fine-tooth comb. But we didn’t find anything that could be the key to the problem of what had happened in that room.
2
We didn’t want to stay cooped up in the house. Someone suggested going outside. We went downstairs and decided we could go to the observation platform again to discuss the case there. Hirakawa and Reiko were standing in the entrance.
‘Mr. Hirakawa, are you going back to Happy Fish Villa?’
The artist turned to Maria.
‘Yes. I’ll go back to my abode and take another nap. I’m so tired.’
‘Can we join you up to halfway? We’re going out now as well.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Reiko saw the four of us off as we left Panorama Villa on our bicycles. The sky had mostly cleared.
‘You were examining the crime scene upstairs again, I understand? Did you find anything?’ Hirakawa asked Egami who was pedalling next to him.
‘No. We only found Mr. Makihara’s lighter under the bed.’
‘Is that significant?’
‘Probably not. He was either shot just as he was about to light a cigarette, or else he was playing with the lighter as he was talking to Sumako.’
‘I wonder what Kango and Sumako were talking about. Sumako left her husband all alone to go upstairs, so she might have had an important talk with her father.’
‘Who knows?’
Sumako was of course asking for financial support from her father. Egami was playing dumb. Maria and I were cycling next to each other behind Egami and Hirakawa and listened to their discussion.
‘This is a wonderful place, but tragic events have happened here one after another, I heard.’ This time it was Egami who began.
‘I heard Hideto, Maria’s cousin, died in an accident three years ago.’
‘Ah, yes.’ The artist’s voice dropped. ‘That was a tragedy. I always considered this island to be a paradise in the south, but that accident was really terrible. And now you say it was murder? I still can’t believe it.’
‘I’m of the opinion it was murder. I don’t like it, but I don’t believe it could be anything else. Where did he die?’
‘We pulled him out of a stretch of the bay to the north, nearer to Happy Fish Villa than to the centre of the bay. There’s a big rock there called the Eboshi Rock, named after those funny high hats court nobles used to wear in Japan. I could never have imagined that someone as good a swimmer as he was could drown like that….’
‘You couldn’t imagine…?’
‘No, what I mean is,’ said Hirakawa, flustered, ‘I was shocked, but you know, sometimes you get cramp in your legs and swimming in the night all on your own is really dangerous.’
Their talk continued as we passed through the greenery.
‘Why was Hideto swimming at night all alone? Did he do that often?’
‘I wonder. I’m not sure about that. You’d better ask Maria.’
‘He never did anything like that,’ Maria said loudly to the two men in front. ‘He once took me out in the rowing boat in the night when the moon looked beautiful, but we didn’t swim. I remember I said I wanted to get out of the boat to swim a bit and he stopped me, saying it was dangerous.’
The four of us fell silent. This was a bad topic.
‘Mr. Hirakawa, are you tired? Are you going to sleep right away when you get back?’ asked Maria suddenly. Hirakawa turned his head and looked back at her.
‘No, I’m not that exhausted. Why?’
‘If it’s okay, I’d like to see Sumako’s portrait. The one in your studio.’
‘That one? It’s okay with me.’ Hirakawa sounded a bit bewildered.
‘Sorry. If you’re tired, we can come another time, but I suddenly felt like seeing it. I love that painting. I understand very well this might sound rude to you, as you specialise in painting landscapes, but I think that portrait of Sumako is the best of all your paintings. I even felt jealous of Sumako because of that.’
‘Oh,’ said Hirakawa, who was facing front again. ‘Thank you. Then next time, I’ll make a painting of you, Maria. I’ll put my heart into it, so it won’t lose to Sumako’s painting.’
‘Thank you. But you don’t have to—’
‘I want to. But I have to finish the one I’m working on now first. So it will have to be next year.’
‘Okay….’
Would Maria be returning to this island next year? Her lifeless answer suggested she herself was doubtful. Kashikijima had become the home of another sad memory.
‘Is it okay if we come as well?’
‘Of course. You two must come, too. A middle-aged man like me can’t hog all the attention of our idol, can he?’
‘Oh, Mr. Hirakawa, you can read “Who the heck is our idol here?” all over Alice’s face.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘That’s why I said we could read it from your face.’
‘Are they fighting back there?’
‘The two of them are always like that. They get along too well.’
‘Mr. Egami!’ Maria cried out.
The thirty minutes before we reached Happy Fish Villa were filled chatting about this and that as we pedalled on.
After a while, we arrived at Happy Fish Villa.
We sat down at the table with the glass top, still covered by the scattered jigsaw pieces of Hokusai’s painting. As we drank the iced coffee Hirakawa had poured for us, we talked about all kind of topics besides what had happened on the island. As we did, I couldn’t help but notice that this artist was almost totally ignorant of the happenings in society. To give an example: he didn’t know who the current president of the United States was.
‘I feel slightly embarrassed to have been exposed as someone who knows so little of the world. I could pretend that it’s proof that I’m a real artist who’s dedicated to the arts, but you’d only burst out laughing if a third rate artist like me made such a claim. Simply put, I have trouble placing the human being that I am within the larger society. I’m simply not interested in human society. Human beings, all destined to die; this insight brought despair to me already when I was a child. I was born defective, perhaps. But, well, the world is a strange place and there are wonderful things to be found that appeal to my inner being. Not just art, mind
you. I feel attracted to wonderful nature, like on this island and to beautiful women, too. Ah, how I wish I could live surrounded by such wonderful things,’ he added philosophically.
We would not be here, had it gone as we had wished.
Who would leave, if it would go as we wish?
If we hadn’t come, gone and lived in this shack,
Oh, how much better that would have been!
‘I think I’ve heard that poem before. Is it from the Rubaiyat? Dr. Sonobe’s speciality.’
Egami answered in the affirmative.
‘I like detective novels too, you know. There was a time I read a lot of them.’ The artist leaned back deeply in his seat. ‘I like Van Dine best of all. But not because the plots of his books are good. I liked that self-satisfied detective Philo Vance. It’s called pedantry, I think? The man shows off his knowledge of art and literature from both East and West while he’s smugly making grand deductions. A man who can spend his time enjoying art the whole day and studying everything that interests him, because he inherited his aunt’s immense fortune. Philo Vance is the embodiment of the life I’d like to live.’
‘You don’t seem too badly off yourself.’
‘There you’re wrong, Mr. Egami. A hack like me can just barely make a living. I always wish I had someone like Philo Vance’s aunt around, each time I’m worrying where the next meal is coming from.’
‘But you’re spending your summers rather glamorously here. You have your own house on a faraway island and spend your summers there: aren’t you one of the Chosen Ones?’
The artist let out a snort, laughing at himself.
‘Actually, I did have someone like Philo Vance’s aunt. The person who built Happy Fish Villa was my uncle, a friend of Tetsunosuke Arima. My uncle had no children. So the house became mine when he died. He was quite well off, and the greater part of the inheritance was split among the family. Then they came to me, a starving artist at the time and the black sheep of the family, and proposed giving me this unbelievably inconveniently located house. And this eccentric man did the eccentric thing of happily inheriting it.’
‘I think this home fits you really well,’ Egami said with a kind expression on his face. ‘Have you ever wanted to live here permanently, where it’s always summer?’
‘Yes. It pains me every year when the day I leave the island comes near. When I was a kid, I’d always get stomach ache the night before the new school period started. The morning of the opening ceremony would be too terrifying and I wouldn’t get anything down my throat. Even if I did eat something, I’d throw it up. There wasn’t any particular teacher I didn’t like, nobody who’d bully me, I wasn’t that bad at studying and I had some friends like any other person, but despite that, I felt a terror for school from within the depths of my soul. My stomach would cry out in fear of returning to that cage. Of course, it’s not that horrible anymore at this age, but I still feel depressed the day before I leave this island. I’m just a pathetic, childish man who only wants to spend his life surrounded by the things he loves.’
‘You say you lament that you were born into this world, but it doesn’t appear at all like that to me.’ Egami shook his head. ‘To me, it seems as though you’re taking revenge for being born, by living so well.’
‘Living Well is the Best Revenge. Some art critic used that as a title for a book.’
The artist picked a jigsaw piece up from the table and fiddled with it. Egami and he had been talking as if they’d been completely alone.
‘Maria, didn’t you say you wanted to take a look at the painting?’
‘I do. I think it’s in the back?’
She stood up. It was a simple lodge-style house with a kitchen, washroom and a bathroom, so “in the back” actually meant in the rear corner of the room. Maria walked with her usual wiggle to the back wall, followed by Egami and me. Hirakawa sipped his iced coffee, still leaning back in his chair.
‘Nice painting, isn’t it?’ Maria said. We stood behind her and voiced our agreement.
In the painting, Sumako did not have a wavy haircut, but long, straight hair hanging down to her shoulders. She was wearing a white two-piece dress with a hint of pink, and was sitting in a chair in that very room, her legs neatly crossed. Her slender ankles and the toenails on her bare feet were charming. I looked back at her face. Her head was tilted up as if she was peering into the faraway sky above.
Once again I was reminded that she’d been an attractive woman. I stared for a while at this painting of her made three years ago.
‘It’s so beautiful…’ Maria mumbled again as if in a trance.
‘Thank you, I’m happy you like it so much.’ Hirakawa said, still with his back to us. ‘I like it, too. When Sumako and Mr. Arima said they wanted to hang the painting in Panorama Villa, I had to decline politely. I really felt bad about it, because Sumako had been nice enough to model for me, but I just couldn’t let go of it. I just had to keep it here.’
Sumako had been in love with the painter at that time. I wondered what his own feelings towards her had been. Was she just another glass of fine wine to this epicurean, who thought living well was the summit of existence? There was no way to know.
The artist still had his back to us and showed no sign of movement.
‘You’re always welcome to come and see it.’
I heard him sigh.
‘I need to rest now. I’m exhausted.’
3
We were at the arbour on the observation platform.
The three of us were enjoying the breeze as we looked down at the Candle Rock and the Twin Rocks. We had returned to this highest point of the island, as if we were victims of a flood who were about to climb to the arbour’s roof to cry for help.
‘Perhaps my uncle and Sumako really did commit suicide…. I’m starting to think that might really have happened,’ said Maria, as she curled her russet hair between her fingers. I asked her why she’d come to that conclusion.
‘I remembered how peaceful Sumako looked in death. If she’d been shot by someone who’d forced his way into her room, why did she die with such a peaceful look? Wouldn’t it be more natural to have an expression somewhere between fear and shock?’
‘But to go back to the double suicide idea just because of such an impression…. There’s something in what you say, but one could also argue she managed to draw her last breath looking so peaceful because she felt relieved she could at least die next to her father. She might’ve looked different if she was dying all alone. You’d need a better argument to overturn the murder theory.’
I suddenly felt bad for having spoken so lightly about the matter. For Maria, the idea of the two of them having committed suicide together must have sounded better, however slightly, than murder. She might have wished subconsciously for it to be suicide, and there was I, asking her for better arguments. I could probably have been a bit more considerate.
‘Would Mr. Makihara and Sumako have any reasons for wanting to commit suicide?’ I asked, but Maria shook her head.
‘I can’t think of any…so I guess it must’ve been murder after all.’
‘If it was murder, who had a motive for killing the two of them?’ I asked again. ‘Is there such a person?’
‘That’s even more unthinkable. I have no idea why anyone would want to kill my uncle or Sumako.’
Egami, who had been silent up to that point, opened his mouth. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but if Kango Makihara had been the only victim, there’s at least one person with a motive.’
Maria reacted immediately. ‘You mean Junji?’
‘Yes.’
‘They were on really bad terms, but would he really go as far as to murder Uncle Kango? Even supposing he would—and I don’t believe it—I can’t imagine Junji shooting Sumako as well. He might’ve said those things two days ago, but he really loved Sumako. It’s not possible.’
But it was possible. I understood what Maria was trying to say, but as long as Junji had
had the opportunity to murder Sumako and it had been physically possible for him to do so, it meant he couldn’t be ruled out as the murderer.
‘But it’s not as though I have an idea of who else might have done it,’ lamented Maria. ‘I can’t imagine uncle Ryūichi killing his brother-in-law and his niece Sumako, and there’s no way Reiko would do anything like that. Kazuto already gets enough excitement just by shooting at cans, so I can’t see him doing something as vicious as that, and I think the same of the Inukai couple, Mr. Hirakawa and Dr. Sonobe….’
She was very upset.
Nobody was a suspect. But someone had done it. The murderer was among them.
‘I wonder what happened to the rifle.’
Maria was surprised by the question I let slip.
‘If they didn’t commit suicide, then the question of what happened to the murder weapon comes to mind. It wasn’t in the room. Did the murderer throw it out of the window, or did he hide it somewhere?’ This was not pleasant to say. ‘We’re still in danger if they still have the rifle with them.’
‘Still the same.’ Maria glared at me. ‘Little Alice, always full of worries. Are you afraid you’re next? It might be a double suicide after all, so you don’t need to get all panicky.’
‘Not the double suicide theory again?’
‘Yes. There’s no way to find out what happened in that room because there was nobody there to witness it. Who knows what kind of incredible things could have transpired there? I just said “So I guess it was murder,” but I take it back. We just don’t know.’
‘I take it back too.’
‘What?’
‘I said “You’re doing well, Patience” earlier. I take that back.’
‘Take it back all you want. I don’t like Patience anyway. She’s just a cross-dressing Ellery Queen!’
Let’s stop, this is getting silly.
We sat down and remained silent on the hill where Maria had learnt to play the guitar.
The Moai Island Puzzle Page 12