The Moai Island Puzzle

by Alice Arisugawa

  ‘That light, was it moving towards Happy Fish Villa? Or was it moving away from there, towards this place? If it was a bicycle light, it should’ve been moving.’

  ‘I said I caught a glimpse, but it was really nothing more than that. Hmm, it was… yes, the light was heading towards Happy Fish Villa.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘I’m eighty percent confident. I only saw it for a second or so, and then it disappeared into to the trees. I wasn’t standing watch at the windows you remember, so I went back to my room. You did too.’

  It appeared that more questions would prove to be fruitless.

  Junji’s testimony had indeed touched upon a crucial point. But could we trust it? He was the only person to have seen the light that might’ve been from the murderer’s bicycle, so there was room to doubt as to whether he was telling the truth or not. The claim he’d seen the murderer’s bicycle heading towards Happy Fish Villa was also an implicit claim to us that he had an alibi, of course.

  There was a silence, in which everyone was waiting for Junji to continue. When he finally noticed that, he briefly said: ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Thank you. And finally, it’s my turn.’

  Egami adjusted his position on his seat and looked in front of him.

  ‘My movements last night have already appeared partly in Dr. Sonobe’s, Kazuto’s and Mr. Makihara’s testimonies, but allow me to tell you everything from the beginning myself. After dinner, I passed the time talking and working on the jigsaw puzzle with the doctor. That was until slightly before midnight. Then I went to my room, but Alice—whom I thought would already be sleeping—wasn’t there. I wondered where he was, but wasn’t particularly worried and went to bed. I thought that he and Maria were having a chat and enjoying the evening breeze outside. I was just about to doze off when Alice came back, and fell asleep right away. It was past one when I got up to go to the bathroom. As I already told you just now, I had a little talk with Mr. Makihara in the hallway then and he saw a light near Happy Fish Villa. If you allow me to add one remark: at that time—around twenty past one—I looked down through the window and saw the two bicycles parked near the French windows.’

  ‘Ah, I saw them too.’

  Hearing Junji confirm that fact too, Egami nodded lightly and continued: ‘I couldn’t see the third bike from the hallway. Doctor Sonobe and Maria also testified they only saw two bicycles. A bit before two, I woke up again. For some reason, my throat was all dry, so I went downstairs to the kitchen to have a glass of water. Kazuto arrived too in search of a drink and we had a whisky-and-water together. Around ten past four, the two of us retreated to our rooms. That is all.’

  Egami lit another cigarette. He squinted at the smoke he himself puffed out in silence, as if he was putting his thoughts in shape.

  ‘My conclusion is that none of us has an alibi. As the murder happened in the middle of the night, I guess that’s only natural. We managed to narrow down the estimated time of the crime considerably, but we didn’t find out who the murderer is….’

  He was talking to himself.

  ‘Is there any point of interest you’ve noticed?’ Egami asked everyone again, and Toshiyuki answered with a groan.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is different from what we’ve been talking about, but there is something I want all of you to take a look at. Alice, could you show everyone that piece of paper you picked up with the secret code or whatever it is?’

  It was only then that I remembered the piece of paper I’d picked up on the way back. I took it out of my breast pocket, unfolded it and passed it to Egami.

  ‘What’s this?’

  He gave it a glance and then looked up at me.

  ‘I picked it up on our way back from Happy Fish Villa,’ I explained. ‘Mr. Inukai, Mr. Makihara and Kazuto had also seen it lying in the roadside on their way over there, but they passed it by because they were hurrying to the crime scene. Mr. Egami, this piece of paper was lying on the side of a relatively straight part of the road, on the Panorama Villa side relative to the hill with the observation platform. It wasn’t lying there when we passed by that spot yesterday afternoon, was it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t there. I’m quite certain.’

  ‘Maria, you also remember it wasn’t there, right?’ I asked her, just to be sure.

  ‘It wasn’t there. On this island, anything lying around stands out, even an empty can or a scrap of paper.’

  I turned to Egami. ‘So that means that it wasn’t there yesterday afternoon, and we picked it up this morning. From what we’ve heard now, it’s clear nobody went all the way out to that place on a bicycle during that period. You know what that means, right? This belongs to the person who went out there in the night, but didn’t testify about that just now: the murderer.’

  ‘I understand.’ Egami looked at everybody. ‘Did anyone drop this piece of paper? Is there anyone who might’ve dropped it who is prepared to claim it has nothing to do with the murder?’

  Nobody offered an answer. That meant that the person who had dropped it was indeed the person behind Hirakawa’s murder. I had no idea what this scrap of paper meant to the murderer, but whoever they were, they were probably cursing themself at the moment. The murderer couldn’t just brush it away, saying the piece of paper was theirs and that it had nothing to do with the murder. If we’d pursued the question further as to why it was dropped there in the middle of the night, the murderer would have had no way to answer.

  ‘Was it the murderer who dropped this…?’ asked Egami, pushing the unfolded piece of paper to the middle of the table.

  ‘What’s this tyre mark …? Did Mr. Inukai and the others run over it on their way to Happy Fish Villa?’

  ‘No, that’s what so strange,’ I answered. ‘Nobody ran over it. It was lying in the roadside, and they say they only passed it by. It was the same on the way back from Happy Fish Villa. I’d almost passed it by, but then I stopped to pick it up. This tyre mark was already on it. None of us could’ve made it.’

  ‘That’s curious. It means the mark was there already. And it’s fresh: grains of sand fall off when I rub it with my finger. This sand got there last night. But I have no idea what that indicates.’

  Egami was obviously intrigued by it. I, too, was bothered by the problem, but there was something that piqued my curiosity even more.

  ‘What do these symbols mean?’ I asked, and Egami looked up at me in surprise.

  ‘What? But it’s obvious. The direction the moais are facing.’

  CHAPTER FOUR: MOAI PUZZLE

  1

  ‘The direction the moais are facing…?’

  I cried out, almost screeching, in surprise. Egami had answered so casually, I simply couldn’t take it in for a moment.

  ‘Quite. Didn’t it dawn on you immediately that the points mark the locations of the moais on the island? The one that’s a bit bigger than the others is the one on the observation platform. There are twenty-five of those symbols. That’s exactly the number of statues. I suppose we should check if all the directions are correct, but it’s safe to assume they are. That was what we were planning to create ourselves.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Maria, ‘but who made it? The three of us came here all ready to solve the puzzle, but we’d only just started when those murders happened and we had to let it rest. Who else could have made it? Nobody else had the time.’

  ‘Maria, did you take a good look at it?’ replied Egami. ‘I don’t mean what’s on the map itself: I mean the piece of paper. Does it look new to you? Look at the folded lines. There’s no way such clean, deep lines could have been made if it had been folded just two or three days ago. The fraying is old as well. This map was made a long time ago.’

  Now that Egami had pointed it out, it seemed obvious. The map had clearly been made years ago. That meant….

  ‘Does that mean…it was made by Hideto!?’

  Maria cried out in shock and cupped her mouth with her hand. Kazuto
and Sonobe hurried over to take a look.

  ‘My brother made this map!?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, I remember Hideto had a habit of pressing too hard when he was writing, even with a fountain pen. Just as on this map.’

  Sonobe picked the map up and passed it to Reiko as if to ask her to take a good look at it as well. Fearfully, she took the map in her hands, but as she was looking at it she started to tremble. She was trying to hold down the emotions that were welling up inside.

  ‘It’s not a drawing or writing, but what do you think, Reiko? Could it be Hideto’s work?’ asked Sonobe impatiently.

  Reiko’s eyes were still fixed on the map. In a weak voice she finally said:

  ‘I don’t know. I—I don’t know….’

  ‘But you would be the one best able to tell.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Maria implored the doctor. ‘There’s no way Reiko can say for sure Hideto wrote this, just by looking at the markings. She’s thinking about it, so stop pestering her.’

  The doctor leant backwards, as if Maria’s words had hit him straight in the chest, and shut his mouth. She hadn’t spoken loudly, but her words had been full of determination.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t tell just from this,’ repeated Reiko as she gingerly returned the map to the middle of the table.

  Sonobe muttered: ‘I see.’

  I, who had been watching the three of them, felt relieved and a weight being lifted from my shoulders.

  ‘Three years ago, just before his unfortunate death, Hideto made an attempt to solve the moai puzzle.’ A large part of Egami’s cigarette had turned to ash and he let it fall into the ashtray. ‘In the weeks before he died, he told Maria he was close to solving the puzzle and that the key lay in the direction the statues were facing.’

  ‘Yes, he’d been going all over the island. But he wouldn’t allow Reiko to go with him because of the snakes,’ said Maria.

  Egami nodded and continued.

  ‘Okay. So it is very possible that the maker of this map was indeed Hideto. But is there anybody here who actually saw him draw it?’

  Nobody answered.

  ‘Nobody? Then we’ll leave it as a possibility that it was drawn by Hideto. Anyone object to that?’

  Nobody answered.

  ‘Anybody who claims they were the one who made the map?’

  Nobody answered.

  ‘Then the person who made the map is one of the following: Hideto Arima, Kango Makihara, Sumako Makihara or Mr. Hirakawa.’

  Kazuto let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘That’s right. It’s by no means certain that my brother made it. It could have been Mr. Hirakawa.’

  ‘But, but...,’ Ryūichi choked a bit on his words. ‘But if this was made by Hideto, why has it just now appeared before us like this, at this time? It didn’t come out of the back of a desk drawer or anything like that. It was lying by the side of the road leading to the crime scene. What does that mean?’

  ‘That’s just what I don’t understand,’ said Egami softly. ‘Just now, all of us arrived at the conclusion together that this piece of paper was dropped by the murderer. Then we assumed it was a map of the directions the moai statues are facing—we still need to confirm that—and have limited the candidates for map creator to Hideto, Mr. Makihara, Sumako, or Mr. Hirakawa. But when it comes to the question of how and why the murderer was in possession of the map, there’s nothing we can say about it for the time being.’

  If this had been a scene on the stage and we had been in the middle of a performance, then the lighting of the scene would slowly have changed. The case had taken on a completely different character. We didn’t know why father and daughter Makihara were killed, and the reason for Itaru Hirakawa’s murder was also still unknown. But the moai puzzle was a secret code that would lead to the hiding place of a fabulous diamond treasure. Was the treasure the reason for the series of murders?

  Several ideas flashed through my mind like static electricity. The murderer had been in possession of a map made by Hideto, who’d been trying to solve the moai puzzle and had almost got his hands on the treasure, until he died just before finding it. The murderer had had the map until only yesterday!

  The question was obvious: had Hideto Arima’s death really been a simple accident? Or had he perhaps been murdered by the same person behind the recent series of murders that had us quaking in our boots? I didn’t dare voice the question, however, and had to keep such thoughts to myself.

  ‘Anyone with ideas to share?’

  Nobody replied immediately to Egami’s question. After a while, Satomi piped up.

  ‘Everyone looks tired, you included, Egami. It’s past three o’clock already, and we haven’t had any food. In a situation like this, I can understand you might not feel like eating, but I think it’s better to have at least something, to keep our strength up.’

  ‘Ah, sorry, I didn’t notice you were—.’

  ‘Oh, no, Reiko, you shouldn’t mind that much. With all that’s happened, it’s only natural. Shall we have a break now and prepare some sandwiches?’

  ‘I’ll go make them.’

  ‘Reiko, you take a rest if you’re tired.’

  Maria stood up.

  ‘I’ll make them. Reiko, you sit down.’

  Perhaps the three women had wanted to leave the depressing discussion. In the end, all three of them got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘Shall we go and search for the rifle?’

  It was Kazuto who broke the silence of the remaining men.

  ‘The murderer is still in possession of the rifle. That’s dangerous. We should make a thorough search for it together.’

  Some of us agreed, but I felt reluctant. I felt pessimistic about it. I loathed myself slightly for having given up already, even before we had started the search.

  The sandwiches were brought in. As the women had been kind enough to make them, we all felt obliged to eat one or two. I winced at the bitter coffee before realising I’d forgotten to put sugar in it.

  2

  We’d left no stone unturned, but we hadn’t found the rifle within the walls of Panorama Villa. By the time we gave up on our search, the hands on the clock were already past five o’clock.

  Egami and I went up to our room, joined by Maria. We had a lot to discuss. He and I sat on one bed, and Maria sat on the other. I could sense a sparkle in their eyes that conveyed their commitment to solving the mystery. It was Egami who spoke first.

  ‘What does the fact the murderer was in possession of the map mean?—that’s the question. We can infer that the diamond treasure Tetsunosuke Arima buried is somehow connected to it all. And, if this map was made by Hideto, the problem becomes very serious.’

  Maria responded briskly.

  ‘Do you mean the murderer may have stolen the map from Hideto three years ago? And it’s very likely they weren’t given it, but took it by force. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘This isn’t a game of detectives any more. You do understand I’m quite serious about this?’ asked Egami, and Maria nodded.

  ‘Let’s be open about what each of us is thinking. We can decide if the ideas are wrong or not after they’ve been discussed. Hideto had almost laid his hands on the diamonds, when he suddenly lost his life in an “accident.” Too suddenly. I think there’s enough room for doubt as to whether it really was an accident.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Okay, Alice. If the map you found today was made by Hideto, then I can think of the following scenario. Three years ago, Hideto succeeded in solving the moai puzzle. Having worked out the location of the diamonds, he went out one night to dig them up. But someone noticed. This person, X, may have followed Hideto when he went out to dig the treasure up, or maybe X asked Hideto if they could help. Or it could be that Hideto himself asked X for help. Anyway, X was there on the scene when Hideto was digging up the treasure. X wanted to keep the diamonds for themself, so they killed Hideto…. That’s one possibility.’r />
  I had the same exact scenario in mind. Maria appeared to have been anticipating Egami’s theory, because she showed no signs of disagreement and listened in silence.

  ‘If that scenario is utter nonsense, then so be it. It’s not a very pleasant scenario anyway. But I’d like to be sure. I need to ask you some questions, Maria. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay then, let’s start with the big one. Were there any doubts at the time as to whether Hideto’s death really was an accident? It wasn’t a natural death, so naturally the police must have come here to investigate.’

  ‘Yes. But their investigation was just a formality. The cause of death was drowning, and they even performed an autopsy, but they discovered nothing out of the ordinary. No unnatural wounds on his body or anything.’

  Egami thought for a while. Those were facts that went against his idea of murder, but they had not definitively resolved his doubts.

  ‘Hideto had been looking for the treasure under the assumption the key lay in the direction the moais were facing. So then, after his sudden death, did you find anything to show proof of his work? Like a note with the results of his investigations, or something like that?’

  Maria looked nervous as she pushed back the bang of hair that was hanging over her forehead.

  ‘We didn’t find anything. We were all so stunned by the sudden accident, nobody thought of it. Reiko had collapsed because of the shock, so a lot happened then…. We assumed his notes had got lost in all that confusion, but, after what we found out today, I simply don’t know. Maybe it hadn’t been lost. Maybe somebody stole it.’

  ‘The confusion….’ There was something that bothered me. ‘I guess this is the antithesis of the theory that Hideto was murdered, but suppose Hideto’s death was indeed just an unfortunate accident and, in the subsequent confusion, somebody happened to come upon Hideto’s notes, or something of the kind, and decided to take the treasure for himself? As for why it has only popped up now, three years later, that’s a different question. Our map-stealing X went looking for the treasure together with Kango Makihara and Mr. Hirakawa, but they got into a fight about how they were going to divide up the spoils and it turned into murder. Can we agree that’s also a possibility?’