The Moai Island Puzzle

by Alice Arisugawa

  ‘Despite my protests, Maria insisted on sleeping on the sofa. With my heart pounding so hard it could’ve burst out of my chest, I sneaked out of my bedroom and came back after murdering the Makiharas. Maria opened her eyes briefly, and when our fingers touched, she laughed and said “Your fingers are so cold,” and fell asleep again. I don’t know why I raised my hand to my face and stared at it, but I smelled gunpowder and in a panic I hurried to the sink to wash my hands.’

  Egami nodded several times and continued.

  ‘You took the rifle from the attic room and went to Sumako’s room. You knew how to handle it. Kazuto told us everyone on the island had done target practice with it. The lock on the door of Sumako’s room was broken, so you slipped quickly inside and took aim. And well, this is just my imagination, but you shot her suddenly, didn’t you? I think you shot her, a person you hated so much, without telling her why she had to die.’

  Reiko looked puzzled. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Simply by trial and error, trying to get all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to fit. I’ve had to jump to a few conclusions. You fired at Sumako instantly and hit her in the chest. So far, so good. But what you hadn’t foreseen was that her father, Kango Makihara, was also in the room. You only noticed him after you’d shot her, so in a panic you shot him as well. But because you were so confused, you didn’t manage to take good aim at him and the bullet only hit him in the thigh. And why were you so confused? It was probably because, like you, he’d also appeared very suddenly!’

  ‘How—?’

  Reiko was about to ask a question, but swallowed it halfway.

  ‘Just a guess. Mr. Kango suddenly appeared from the head side of the bed, did he not? He’d been crawling on the floor looking for his lighter which had fallen underneath the bed, when he suddenly heard a gunshot and jumped up. And when you saw him, you were surprised as well. You’d been seen, this was bad, shoot. But, because it had all happened so suddenly, you missed and hit him in the thigh. He fell over because of the shot, hit his head on the corner of the night stand and fell unconscious. It was total chaos. With the blood rushing to your head, you told yourself you’d got both of them and ran as quickly as possible away from the crime scene. With all kinds of other thoughts buzzing in your head, you didn’t think to make sure both of them were dead. Perhaps you were afraid that three shots, one after another, would definitely be noticed by someone.’

  Reiko confirmed Egami’s account. Before she’d gone back to her bedroom, she’d hidden the rifle in the ceiling space above the attic room—where the rifle had originally been kept. After that, she’d sneaked into Kazuto’s room and destroyed the wireless transceiver. But how had the murder scene been transformed into a locked room?

  ‘What happened in Sumako’s room after you’d fled? Nobody knows exactly, but I’ll hazard a guess. What I’m about to suggest is nothing more than a theory. I have no evidence. I’d be happy if you’d forget it once you’ve listened to it. After you’d left the room, the two people left inside were Mr. Kango, who was unconscious and bleeding from the thigh, and Sumako, who had been fatally shot in the chest. And that room became a locked room. It becomes painfully clear who locked the door.

  ‘It was Sumako, of course. And it all comes down to the question: why did she do it? We have a jigsaw puzzle here. Piece 1: her father was wealthy. Piece 2: her husband was in need of money. Piece 3: her father had been shot in the thigh and was losing blood rapidly. Piece 4: Sumako’s own wound was in the chest and was fatal. Piece 5: Sumako had studied nursing and law. By combining these five pieces, I formulated the following theory.

  ‘First of all, Sumako realised that she herself couldn’t be saved, but there was a good possibility her father could be, if his bleeding was stopped. In other words, if she opened the door to get help, she wouldn’t be saved but her father probably would. Nevertheless, she didn’t do it.

  ‘That was because she realised that by not doing so, her death would have more favourable consequences. She was going to die anyway, so she would have her father die with her. And she would make it appear as if her father had died before her. That way, she would inherit from her father. Then, if she was perceived to have died after her father, even if it was just one second later, her beloved husband would inherit everything through her. She used her last remaining strength to stagger to the door and force the stiff lock shut. Now you now understand why the door wouldn’t open. She couldn’t allow anyone to prevent her father and her from dying.’

  Reiko seemed stunned by what she was hearing for the first time, and she stopped rubbing her left shoulder.

  ‘After Sumako had made it impossible for anyone to enter, she lay down on top of her unconscious father, who was lying on the floor. Perhaps she’d wanted to beg him for forgiveness, even if he couldn’t hear her any more. And perhaps she wasn’t afraid to die if it was by his side. But I think the most important reason for her lying on top of him was in order for us to us to assume that she’d had been shot after him, and that her father had died first. When asked which of them had been the first to die, Dr. Sonobe had said it was impossible to tell.

  ‘Which means this is a case in which it’s difficult to discern the order of death medically. Sumako was aware of that, and that’s why she faked the scene. I heard there was a case once where a family had been buried in a landslide and everyone had died. It was obvious the times of death must have been very close, medically speaking, but they needed to determine the order because of the inheritance. How do you think they did it? They decided that the person buried deepest down had died first, and so on.’

  As a not very serious law student, this was the first time I’d heard about the case, but perhaps Sumako had known about it. Maybe she’d remembered just before she died and hoped the same reasoning would be applied in her case. Of course, now she was dead, we’d never know.

  ‘Sorry, that was a very uninteresting story I made up. Let’s forget it. I’ll get some boards and nails and seal the room up. I’ll place a sign, saying it’s a mystery room and nobody should go inside.’

  I sensed a tone of resignation in Egami’s words. Perhaps he himself also noticed it, because his manner of talking changed back again.

  ‘And now for the next murder.’

  4

  ‘The murder of Mr. Hirakawa. Let’s talk about the murder where you had to go through ordeals at least as perilous as the first one. That day, after the storm had passed and the weather had cleared, you took the rifle outside the villa, so you’d be safe even if the house was searched. You had plans to kill Mr. Hirakawa that night and you intended to hide the weapon near the future crime scene beforehand, is that right?’ asked Egami.

  Reiko ran her hand through her short hair.

  ‘Yes. At that time, most were of the opinion the Makiharas had been murdered, but nobody mentioned the possibility of more murders to follow. Furthermore, they assumed the rifle had been thrown into the sea. So, before anyone made a serious attempt to search for it, I decided to hide it in the forest and then take it over to High Tide Cape in advance. Luckily Mr. Hirakawa had left his backpack behind when he’d left, so I had an excuse to take it over to Happy Fish Villa.’

  ‘And when Kazuto said he wanted to search the house to look for the rifle?’

  ‘I’d already hidden it in the forest. I thought I’d need to get it over to High Tide Cape as soon as possible, before he proposed searching in the vicinity of the house as well, so I went over to Happy Fish Villa as soon as we’d finished searching the house.’

  ‘I see. Then let’s go over what happened later that night. You could head out to commit your crime empty-handed because the weapon was already in the vicinity of Happy Fish Villa. You sneaked out of the house, but you got a severe shock at the bottom of the stone steps because the boat wasn’t there.’

  Drawing the scene in my mind, I imagined how Reiko must have felt. Beads of sweat gathered in the palm of my hand.

  ‘There were two options you co
uld take at that point. Go back up the steps and take a bicycle. Or swim to the other side. Perhaps you’d decided on the former originally, but in the end you decided not to use that method. Was it because you didn’t want to risk being seen leaving on a bicycle? Or was it because Maria and Alice were still sitting on the bicycles, with no idea as to when their long chat would finally end?’

  Reiko answered, hesitantly.

  ‘Because Maria and Alice were there.’

  ‘And that’s why you decided to swim. You could have chosen to commit the crime at a later time, or on another day, but you chose to go ahead.’

  ‘I wanted to get it over with as soon possible. I was also afraid the rifle might be found if I postponed it to another day.’

  ‘Aha, so that’s why. You swam across the bay in the night. A T-shirt, short pants and short hair. You probably found the swimming wasn’t all that inconvenient. You came to shore on High Tide Cape, picked up the rifle you’d hidden beforehand and entered Happy Fish Villa. The door wasn’t locked. What was Mr. Hirakawa doing at the time?’

  ‘…He was busy with a jigsaw puzzle.’

  ‘That puzzle of an ukiyo-e by Hokusai? I can’t even begin to guess whether you shot him without any warning as well, or whether you had a talk first.’

  Reiko started to say something, but she then looked down. The night had filled the window behind her completely and cast a dark shadow over her back.

  ‘When I pointed the rifle at him, he looked at it and said only: “Revenge for Hideto?”’

  The artist had grasped the situation immediately. Even while he’d been wallowing in the good life, somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always known that the hammer of justice would come down on him.

  ‘I simply answered “Yes” and stood facing him for a while, with my finger on the trigger. He said “Please give me a minute.” and slowly got up. He walked over to the desk, unlocked the drawer and took something out of it. I was afraid he would take out a hidden pistol, but it was something else. He held the diary and the three maps in front of me and said: “This is the confession of my sins and a memento of Hideto. If someone found these, you’d be in trouble, and they’re also shameful to me. Please dispose of them as you see fit.” I took them and he returned to his chair, closed his eyes and smiled mysteriously. And, as the thoughts of why I couldn’t forgive him arose in my mind, I…I shot him.’

  Reiko stopped talking, her eyes still down, and Egami looked at her. They remained like that in silence for a while, but then Egami started again.

  ‘After you’d committed the murder, you thought about how you’d return to Panorama Villa with the diary, the three maps and the rifle. You couldn’t swim back across the sea. It would risk ruining the evidence and the rifle. Walking back was dangerous because of the snakes. With no other option left, you decided to borrow Mr. Hirakawa’s bicycle and you returned to Panorama Villa with all three items fastened to the carrier rack. You didn’t need to stop your bicycle in front of Panorama Villa. You could have got down off the bicycle a bit before that, hidden the evidence and rifle somewhere in the forest and sneaked back inside the house on foot. But there remained another problem. The fact that Mr. Hirakawa’s bicycle was here at Panorama Villa meant that someone had crossed the sea and, because the boat was out of action, it would be obvious someone had swum to the other side. But if you wanted to put the blame of the murders on Kazuto, you couldn’t have people conclude that the murderer had swum across the bay. Even though you were exhausted both physically and mentally, you decided you had to go back to Happy Fish Villa on the bicycle.’

  ‘How do you know about my movements in such detail?’ Reiko must have thought it creepy.

  ‘Because of the tyre mark on the map you dropped on the way back to Panorama Villa. My inferences were guided by that map.’

  ‘Yes, I’d dropped one of the maps. I only noticed it when I’d returned to my room and opened the diary, but I never even considered going back to search for it. I didn’t know where I’d dropped it, but I thought that even if it was found, it wouldn’t be a clue that could connect me with the crime. Oh, I forget to tell you, that night I was wearing gloves so gunpowder wouldn’t be left on my hands, so I hadn’t left any fingerprints on the maps when I took them. But despite that….’

  ‘If you’d only dropped the map, I wouldn’t have been able to deduce you were the murderer. It’s only because you ran over it and left a tyre mark that a crack formed in your impregnable defence.’

  Egami carefully explained his chain of reasoning to Reiko.

  She listened silently, asking no questions.

  ‘You returned to Happy Fish Villa solely to put the bicycle back in its proper place. And then you swam back across the sea once more to get back to Low Tide Cape. Am I correct?’

  Reiko answered: ‘Yes,’ and it was at this point I joined the conversation for the first time.

  ‘Just a second. There’s something I want to ask.’

  Reiko cocked her head slightly as she turned to look at me.

  ‘Why was the jigsaw puzzle Mr. Hirakawa had been working on scattered all over floor? Did Mr. Hirakawa himself break the puzzle in pieces? Or was there another reason?’

  Reiko hesitated to answer. I glanced at Egami.

  ‘I’d like to know as well,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea why the puzzle was in that state.’

  ‘There’s no way you could’ve known,’ she said warmly, as if to defend the detective. ‘Only someone who was there could know.’

  ‘Please tell us,’ the detective asked the murderer.

  ‘Mr. Hirakawa appeared to have been prepared to die when I shot him. But his feelings of resentment, his hatred towards me were something he couldn’t get rid of. When I went back to Happy Fish Villa to return the bicycle, I went inside rather gingerly. I wanted to make sure he really had died. Because, once again, I’d left the crime scene without making sure my victim was dead. Mr. Hirakawa really had died and was lying over the table. But he hadn’t simply died, he’d left a message revealing I was the murderer.’

  Where could he have written anything like that? He couldn’t have written any message in blood on the table, the floor, or the puzzles pieces. I was pondering over this when Egami suddenly muttered: ‘Oh…I get it. He used the jigsaw puzzle.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Reiko nodded. I voiced my questions: weren’t the puzzle pieces coated in vinyl? Hadn’t Hirakawa’s fingers been clean of any blood?

  ‘Not like that, Alice. He didn’t write with his blood on the puzzle. He used the puzzle itself to write something,’ said Egami.

  ‘…What?’

  ‘He took pieces out from the left side of the puzzle, which he’d already finished and left his message via the empty spaces, didn’t he?’

  Reiko nodded.

  ‘Yes. The empty spaces spelled out “REIKO.” I was so surprised I cried out. He was already dying, so he’d had to improvise to compose the message. The letters weren’t very neat, but they did spell “REIKO” quite clearly. I was relieved the bad luck of me having to return his bicycle had turned into the good luck of me discovering his dying message. For a while I couldn’t make up my mind as to how best to destroy it. A lot of people knew he’d half-finished the puzzle, so the best solution would’ve been to put the couple of dozen pieces back in their places. But they’d been thrown together with the hundreds of other loose pieces, and there was no time for me to search for the right ones. So, with no other choice left, I threw the whole puzzle on the floor and scattered the pieces around.’

  So it was a dying message. And it’s no wonder I couldn’t solve it. To be exact: those pieces were the remains of a dying message.

  ‘You went to commit the crime while Alice and Maria were still chatting outside.’ Egami summarised. ‘So that means before midnight. Let’s say you arrived at High Tide Cape at ten minutes past twelve. The murder and other activities took fifteen minutes, so you got back to Panorama Villa and hid the evidence and the weapon
at five minutes to one. You turned around and reached Happy Fish Villa again at twenty-five minutes past one. That corresponds with what Mr. Makihara said, that he saw a bicycle light moving near Happy Fish Villa at that time. And after parking the bicycle, you discovered the dying message and broke the puzzle apart. You swam back to Panorama Villa and returned here at a quarter to two. You had quite a busy night.’

  ‘Appearances to the contrary, I’m a very active woman.’

  Thus spoke the murderer, who exchanged a slight smile with the detective.

  5

  ‘Only Kazuto’s murder left now,’ Egami continued. ‘The scenario had already been written. He would take the blame for all the crimes by confessing to the murders in a note and then committing suicide. Before you committed your final murder, you typed out the suicide note on a word processor. What you hadn’t expected was that Kazuto was in possession of another firearm. However, he appeared to have a soft spot for you, so that didn’t prove to be a major obstacle. Perhaps it suited you even better, because if you could work out a way to use his pistol, the “suicide” would be perfect. You saw your opportunity when everyone started to go their own way, so you headed to the annex to put a sudden end to the case, taking along the rifle, the other evidence and the fake suicide note.’

  ‘And,’ interjected Reiko, ‘I didn’t wait for Kazuto to drop his guard, so I pointed the rifle right at him and took the pistol from him. There was no time, so I didn’t go into some longwinded explanation of how much I hated him. He was the complete opposite of Mr. Hirakawa and cried out “Why? Why?” He couldn’t even get up because he was so frozen with fear. I put the muzzle of the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.’

  Egami took over from there.

  ‘You then put the pistol in his right hand and, in order to leave gunpowder on his hand, you took a shot at something random. And the target just happened to be the painting puzzle hanging on the wall.’

  ‘I suppose that was another mistake….’