‘Thank you for the lecture.’ I was impressed and surprised by the sudden speech. ‘But we don’t need a lecture on mystery fiction at a time like this, so you could’ve gone straight to the conclusion. What was Mr. Hirakawa trying to tell us by breaking apart a puzzle that was already half-finished? I’d like to know.’
Disappointingly, Maria hadn’t actually thought about that. She suggested we think about it together. I started to think myself a fool for having listened to her dying message lecture.
‘A broken puzzle. A puzzle lying in pieces. A broken Hokusai. Hoku. Sai.’
Egami started to think hard. But I felt we should give up on thinking about the dying message so seriously. There was no way we could solve that puzzle with logic alone.
‘I have another question.’ I tried to move the discussion somewhere else again. ‘There was a storm the night of the first murders, so the killer couldn’t get away from Panorama Villa afterwards. So where was the murder weapon, the rifle, hidden? The following day, Kazuto searched the house with Reiko as his witness, but he said he couldn’t find the rifle. I don’t understand how the murderer could’ve kept it hidden.’
‘That’s not a difficult problem.’
Maria appeared to have forgotten about her dying message and had moved to this topic, too.
‘We didn’t search the house right after we discovered the murders. Nobody had expected more deaths would follow and we even thought the rifle might’ve been thrown out of the window by the murderer. We should’ve searched the house then. The killer couldn’t have left the house in the storm, so the rifle had to be hidden somewhere inside the house. Kazuto and Reiko only searched the house the following afternoon. The murderer could’ve done anything with it in the interim. It’s quite possible they took the rifle out from some hiding place above the ceiling and then hid it in the forest or shrubberies nearby.’
‘Ah.’
I shut up. There had been no mystery at all.
‘It does bother me the murderer is still in possession of the rifle.’
To help ease Maria’s anxiety, Egami said, in a lighter tone: ‘We’re not sure that they do still have the rifle. Perhaps this time, it really has been thrown into the sea.’
‘No, they’re still planning something.’ I was of the opinion we shouldn’t be overoptimistic. ‘I was almost poisoned to death.’
‘Poisoned to death? Oh, the pit viper.’ Maria started drawing on the table again. ‘That was creepy too. But it might not have been an actual attempt at killing you. Perhaps the snake had been milked of its venom and it was only used to threaten you.’
‘Threaten me? Why should I be threatened?’
‘A warning for Mr. Egami and you. Stop looking for the truth, stop thinking about the moai puzzle and stop digging into Hideto’s death. They tried to scare the pair of impertinent amateur detectives, thinking you’d behave yourselves after that. We’d all better be careful, eh, Alice?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. Since last night, even opening the door of the bathroom has been absolutely terrifying. Of all the methods they could’ve chosen, they choose something as dirty as snakes….
‘But why give me—no, Mr. Egami and me—such a warning? Today, we somehow managed to solve the moai puzzle, but we’re still in the dark on all the other happenings. I don’t think we’re worth the warning.’
‘Oh, don’t sound so pathetic, saying you’re not worth the warning.’
But it was the truth. Even Egami seemed to have no clue as to the identity of the murderer. It was only moments ago he proudly proclaimed that he couldn’t work out who the murderer was, based solely on what we’d discovered up until then.
So why did the murderer hide a snake in our room?
‘That locked room still bothers me, though. But Egami won’t play along…,’ sighed Maria.
‘The locked room, eh?’ Egami mumbled. ‘There are many possibilities. In fact, there are so many I can’t figure out which one is correct. I wonder in how many hundreds of ways similar locked rooms have been solved in detective fiction….’
‘Mr. Egami, are you criticising detective fiction?’ Maria asked in surprise. The club president of the Eito University Mystery Club remained silent for a while.
‘Moving away from grim reality and talking about detective fiction, yes, a locked room is a sort of utopia within the genre. Even now, I remember the shivers I got when I first read Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. But after that, with the hundreds of locked rooms you come across—some with fantastic solutions, some with bad solutions—the more I read, the more I started to forget about that very first sense of excitement I had. So many writers have opened the locked room again and again, like there’s a revolving door. The locked room has become a dress-up doll. If you really love detective fiction, then it’s alright to say: “Maybe we’ve had enough.” What got us excited in the first place is the locked room itself, not some simple magic tricks. They should stop treating a loved one like some simple dress-up doll. I want to come across a simple, honest locked room again.’
‘Don’t you like the tricks and solutions of locked room mysteries?’ asked Maria.
‘Perhaps I like “locked rooms” better than “locked room tricks.” How about a mystery story like this? A mystifying, baffling murder is committed inside a locked room. All the people who’d been close by stand there in blank surprise and fear, when finally a detective appears in front of them, and without a word, he starts boarding the place up. He turns to the group and says just: “Well, and off we go.”…’
I understood what Egami was trying to say.
‘Let’s get back to reality. What are we going to do with our case?’
‘So, are we going to board the room up and seal it forever?’ asked Maria, dissatisfied.
‘There’s nothing exciting about our locked room. If we catch the murderer and ask them about it, they might just say: “Well, perhaps it was just a fluke?”’
Our discussion came to a stop.
We needed to find out who the murderer was. The murderer was undoubtedly on the island.
Who was it? We didn’t know.
Not yet.
CHAPTER FIVE: SUICIDE PUZZLE
1
We ended our half-finished meeting on the investigation and headed for the scene of the third murder, Happy Fish Villa. We thought we might discover something if we examined the place again.
The first thing we did after we arrived was to pray in front of the artist’s remains, which were lying on his bed. After that we became detectives again and started searching the room, being careful not to disturb the condition of the crime scene too much. The scattered pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were still on Maria’s mind, it seemed, as she stood in thought looking at them while I paced up and down the room like a caged animal.
Egami tried the upper drawer of the desk in the back of the room.
‘Anything there?’ I peeked over his shoulder. There was only a small key inside, which turned out to be the key of the drawer he’d just opened. He tried the second and third drawers, but besides work notes, there were only single-player games like slide puzzles—famous ones by Sam Loyd—and a deck of well-thumbed playing cards. There was nothing that caught the eye. But I did think it was strange that the only drawer with a lock had been empty.
‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go back.’
‘Did you learn anything?’ I asked, and Egami pretended to be annoyed. ‘Stop pestering me.’
‘Egami, Alice, look,’ said Maria. She was pointing towards the window, out to sea. There was a rowing boat coming our way, and on it were Toshiyuki and Reiko. What business could they have at Happy Fish Villa, I wondered.
They didn’t look too surprised to see us. Perhaps they’d even expected it. Without even asking what we were doing, Toshiyuki explained:
‘Reiko wanted to see where Mr. Hirakawa passed away, so I brought her here.’
Reiko was holding a bunch of bougainvilleas. She explained that Hirakawa had lo
ved the bright flowers, which she put in a vase from the kitchen, then prayed briefly at the artist’s bedside. Toshiyuki and the three of us clasped our hands together.
‘I wanted to bring my wife here, actually. I wanted her to see with her own eyes what had happened. But she said she wouldn’t come to a horrible place like this. Reiko heard that and said she would come along instead. Would you like to see Mr. Hirakawa’s face? He has a peaceful look.’
‘No, please,’ murmured Reiko. Perhaps she felt it was enough she’d offered the flowers.
‘It’s almost as if there’s some link between the murders, with Mr. Hirakawa being killed right after Sumako, don’t you think?’
Toshiyuki was looking at Sumako’s picture as he spoke the words. Reiko simply said ‘Yes’ as she rubbed her left upper arm with her right hand.
‘Could the fact that Mr. Hirakawa and Sumako used to be close have something to do with it?’ asked Egami, point blank.
Turning to Reiko, Toshiyuki replied: ‘I don’t know how close those two really were. Sumako was hanging around this place all the time when she acted as his model three years ago… perhaps I could’ve phrased that better. It’s the truth though, but perhaps we outsiders saw too much into it. What do you think, Reiko?’
‘I don’t think that something that happened three years ago could have anything to do with the murders now,’ said Reiko, her eyes cast down to the floor. ‘I admit they were pretty close, but I’ve the feeling it was just for a very short period of time and I just don’t see how that could’ve become the motive for the murders now.’ She looked up and addressed Toshiyuki: ‘Was it Kazuto who suggested there was a connection?’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Toshiyuki with some difficulty. ‘Last night I had a talk with him. He’s convinced there’s a link. But he doesn’t seem to have any particular reason for believing so. However….’
He looked pointedly at the portrait of Sumako on the wall in the back. ‘That portrait does bother me. I thought at first it was just a beautiful painting. But now I look at it I can see Mr. Hirakawa put all of his passion for Sumako into his brush when he created this work. And the fact that it’s hanging here and not in Panorama Villa, in a place very visible from the bed, makes me feel Mr. Hirakawa still had a soft spot for Sumako. Perhaps what happened three years ago is still casting its long shadow into the present.’
‘Were you and your wife the only ones there when Kazuto told you this?’ asked Reiko.
‘Yes. Oh, I get it, you were wondering whether Junji was there as well? Don’t worry. He was taking a bath at that moment. That’s right, he didn’t know about this part of Sumako’s past, did he?’
‘I don’t think it’s big enough to qualify as “a past,” but I don’t think he knows. And there’s no need to tell him, either.’
‘You’re absolutely right. My wife and I don’t talk about it either if he’s close by. I only mentioned it now because I don’t need to be so careful here.’
We listened in silence to the discussion of the two. Just now, we’d inferred that there might be a horrible truth behind Hideto’s drowning three years ago, and that it was the root of the murders this year. And now a love affair of three years ago had entered the stage. How was that connected to it all?
I remembered Junji Makihara’s face, right after we’d put Hirakawa on the bed yesterday. His eyes, as he looked at the portrait of his wife, were filled with a pale flame of hatred. Perhaps he did know about his wife, after all.
‘We’re going back now,’ said Egami. Toshiyuki was partly facing Sumako’s portrait, but then he turned back to us.
‘We’re going back as well. It only takes fifteen minutes by boat, so we’ll be back first. We’ll see you later.’
The five of us left Happy Fish Villa together. We watched Toshiyuki and Reiko go down the stone steps and then we got on our bicycles.
2
When we arrived at Panorama Villa, we found everyone in the hall. I felt the atmosphere was tense and my body stiffened. Reiko, whom we’d just seen at Happy Fish Villa, was the first to notice our return. When the others saw the expression on her face, they also looked up and turned to us.
‘They’re back now. Kazuto, if you have something you want to apologise for, now’s the time.’ Ryūichi scolded Kazuto, who was sitting in a rattan chair not facing our way, wearing a scowl on his face.
After a while, Egami asked: ‘What’s the matter?’
Ryūichi clearly didn’t like what he was about to explain.
‘I am terribly sorry. We just discovered that it was this fool who put the snake in your room.’ He indicated his son with his chin. ‘He says he pulled its fangs so it wasn’t dangerous, but it was a stupid thing to do all the same. There’s no excuse for it, but at least listen to what he has to tell you.’
Kazuto remained silent. Ryūichi yelled at him angrily. It was the first time I’d heard him raise his voice.
‘How did you discover it was a prank of Kazuto’s?’ asked Egami, apparently more interested in that fact. Not knowing how to vent his anger, Ryūichi explained:
‘Toshiyuki and Reiko caught him red-handed. After they returned in the boat, they saw him rustling around in the grass with a second yellow-spotted pit viper. Apparently, he’d knocked this one out with a stick and was busy pulling its fangs. I didn’t know whether to be sorry for him or afraid of him when I heard the tale.’
‘I was so surprised.’ Reiko said as she rubbed her left shoulder. ‘When we called out “So it was you, Kazuto,” he jumped up in shock. We asked him why he was doing it and he threw the snake away and said: “I have the right to remain silent.” He hasn’t opened his mouth since.’
‘If you don’t talk, we’ll have to consider you to be the murderer, Kazuto.’ Toshiyuki, who was standing next to the table, said that as if to challenge him, but Kazuto only responded with: ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Then why were you doing that?’ Toshiyuki had a very grave look on his face. ‘To me, it seems perfectly obvious that you’re the murderer and you wanted to scare off Mr. Egami and Alice from trying to solve the case. If there’s some other reason, you’d better start talking.’
Egami asked Kazuto: ‘Did you put the snake in our room last night?’
Kazuto merely replied ‘Yes’ and went silent again. If it had all been a simple prank, he would’ve reacted differently. The use of a term like ‘the right to remain silent’ meant he himself acknowledged his crime had been discovered. Was he really the murderer?
Perhaps he couldn’t cope with all the eyes staring at him, because he suddenly stood up and, before anybody had time to stop him, quickly disappeared down the corridor from the hallway.
‘Wait!’
By the time Ryūichi had realised what had happened and cried out, we could hear the loud bang of the back door closing. Someone sighed loudly.
‘Alice, I’m really sorry.’ Ryūichi bowed his head deeply. ‘I really have no idea what’s going on in his head. He might have some insignificant reason he finds hard to talk about. He’s angry as well now, so if you could give my son a bit of time?’
I simply said ‘Yes.’ It felt as if I, too, was somehow responsible for Ryūichi’s burst of anger and I didn’t feel at ease. Egami was as calm as ever and Maria looked as if she was absolutely stunned.
‘I think I’ve an idea of what’s going on.’
It was Sonobe who suddenly spoke. This time everyone focused on him. From the context, he probably meant he knew why Kazuto had concealed a snake in our room. I wanted to know why.
‘It was a prank that got out of hand. But there was a reason why he went that far. What he couldn’t talk about, was his envy of young Alice here. Jealousy.’
‘Jealousy…?’
I couldn’t believe my ears. I had been expecting the most evil of intentions, but the doctor had used a mundane, almost banal word.
‘Yes, that old green eyed monster!’
‘But why should Kazuto be jealous of me? I’m the small
est fry around here.’
‘It’s not pleasant for Kazuto if I say all of this, but I guess it can’t be helped. He adores Reiko and Maria. He didn’t like how Maria and you were getting along so well. You remember how, after Mr. Hirakawa’s death, we all talked about what we’d been doing the night before? He had a pained expression on his face while he was listening to your exploits, that you’d gone out rowing in the night together, had toppled the boat and swum back. And you also said that you’d spent the night talking together outside. He was jealous of that romantic night of yours. Perhaps he’d seen you from his room in the annex. Perhaps he’d also become frustrated at seeing you having fun swimming in the sea earlier. He can’t swim at all, you know.’
I remembered two things. The morning after we’d caused the boat to capsize, Kazuto had behaved strangely at the breakfast table. Talking little, mumbling to the wall. That was the first. The second was when we’d gone out for the swim. I remembered that someone had been looking down at us from the first floor. Maria had suggested at the time that it was Kazuto, and perhaps it really had been him. He sure wasn’t a straightforward guy.
‘But that’s odd, Doctor,’ said Maria with an embarrassed expression. ‘Why should Kazuto be jealous because of me? I overturned the boat with Alice. So what?’
‘You think it’s strange he was jealous because of you? No, it’s very likely he did just that. Especially if it had to do with swimming. He has quite a complex about not being able to swim. The fact he’s the only person who can’t swim among us is even more depressing for him.’
‘Actually, my wife can’t really swim either,’ noted Toshiyuki as he looked at Satomi.
I remembered two more things. Regarding Satomi not being able to swim, I recalled that she’d been sitting under a parasol the whole time Toshiyuki was swimming. Regarding Kazuto’s complex about not being able to swim, I recalled that when I’d asked him whether he could surf, he’d looked very sullen.
The Moai Island Puzzle Page 22