The investigations of Professor Hayakawa and Gifu Inazawa made no progress at all. Inazawa kept repeating the same statement over and over, while the professor continued to refuse to account for his own activities on the night of the murder.
It took all of twelve minutes to verify Hisashi Mogami’s alibi. He had been incarcerated behind iron bars from nine fifteen P.M. until nine the next morning. The woman who had accompanied Hisashi Mogami to the Togeki Theater was the owner of Mona Lisa, a fashionable dress shop on the Ginza. Her name was Kyoko Kawabata. She testified that she had been with Hisashi at the theater from three thirty until eight o’clock. After that, both the waitress and the bartender of Linden, a notoriously rowdy Ginza tavern, corroborated that at around eight thirty he had been drinking there and had gotten into a violent brawl.
***
The investigation into Kinue Nomura’s background revealed that her original family home had been in the Honjo district of Tokyo, an area reduced to cinders by the Allied bombing. Fortunately the detectives were able to locate an elderly man who had lived all his life in the neighborhood and had been evacuated to a country village during the war. Thanks to his lively memory, they were able to gather a fair amount of material about Kinue’s background.
The old man told them that Horiyasu had been a fine man and a respected tattoo artist. His wife, however, was a notoriously wicked woman who caused the honest, hard-working Horiyasu a great deal of anguish. Eventually she became involved with a younger man and ran off with him, and her life went downhill from there. Horiyasu was left to raise three young children alone. He did his best to bring them up properly, but it was an enormous struggle.
The oldest, a boy, helped his father with his work and even did some of the actual tattooing himself but, since tattooing was illegal, they couldn’t very well advertise their wares on a signboard outside the house. As a front, they put up a sign that read DEALERS IN SECONDHAND GOODS. By the time the boy, Tsunetaro, went to take his conscription exam, his entire body was covered with elaborate tattoos. Not wanting to be outdone, his sister Kinue began getting tattooed herself. The old man remembered seeing her coming and going in the street. Sometimes, when the weather was warm, she would nonchalantly let her sleeves flap open and he would catch a glimpse of the designs that adorned her upper arms. He seemed to recall that Tamae, the youngest of the three children, had also embarked upon the tattooing process. About that time, the family moved away, so he had no idea what the pattern of Tamae’s tattoo might have been.
“I’m sure the younger one would have gotten an even showier tattoo than her sister had,” the old man told the police. “Those two were competitive from the time they were small, always trying to outdo the other. They fought like cats and dogs, too; I often heard them screaming at each other. I used to close the windows, so my wife—God rest her soul—wouldn’t have to hear the nasty language they used. I always thought sisters were supposed to have a special bond, but apparently that wasn’t the case with the Nomura girls. They were both lookers, that’s for sure, just like their mother. The talk around the neighborhood was that they took after their sinful mother in other ways, too.”
***
The police were very interested in seeing Takezo Mogami’s last will and testament, but Takezo’s attorney refused to unseal that document. His position was that since there was no conclusive proof that Mogami had murdered Kinue Nomura, there was no way he could break the seal on the will without Takezo’s permission. Speaking off the record, the lawyer was quite open about discussing his missing client with the police. He told them that about a month earlier, Takezo Mogami had said that he wanted to add Kinue Nomura to his family register, thus making her his legal wife. Several days before the murder, though, Takezo had met with the attorney and told him that he wanted to postpone that process for a while. In addition, he had mentioned that he was thinking of disinheriting his freeloading younger brother, Hisashi.
The police also turned their attention to Bar Serpent. There were strict regulations governing night life—the so-called “water trade”—and in the Ginza area alone there were innumerable bars like Serpent operating on the sly. Illegal gambling was rife at many of these outlaw bars. Whether Kinue had been afraid for her life or had merely feared a police raid, Serpent had been closed just before the murder. The place had evidendy been scrubbed down, for there were hardly any fingerprints to be found.
That was the full extent of the information that Daiyu Matsushita and his team of investigators had gathered in the three days since the murder.
***
Daiyu Matsushita was not the sort of policemen who used violence, intimidation, and torture to extract confessions from suspects. He preferred to let reason and systematic detective work do the job. His philosophy reflected the New Constitution of 1946. He tried at all times to show respect for a suspect’s human rights, and he would only send a case to the prosecutor if there was direct evidence to back up the accusations. Nevertheless, his patience was being sorely tried by Professor Hayakawa’s use (or abuse) of the right to remain silent. There were times when a cold anger swept through Daiyu and he felt a strong urge to punch the professor right in his uncooperative mouth.
28
It was the first day of September, a sizzling Sunday. Detective Chief Inspector Daiyu Matsushita was exhausted from working day after day in the fierce heat. He didn’t drag himself out of bed until after nine o’clock. Dressed in his rumpled blue sleeping robe, he was eating a late breakfast of rice, fermented soybeans, miso soup, and grilled sardines when the telephone rang.
“Hello?” Daiyu said, still chewing audibly. “Yes Yes. Okay.”
Daiyu threw his chopsticks onto the table and stood up. Kenzo, who was sitting across from him reading the morning paper, gave him a quizzical look. His brother said, “Damn, they’ve just found the body of my pnme suspect, Takezo Mogami. I hate it when that happens. Do you want to come along?”
“I do,” Kenzo said. As soon as they had thrown on their clothes, the two men piled into the police car sent from headquarters and headed west on O-Umemachi Street at top speed. In the backseat of the car, Kenzo turned to his brother. “You said they’d found Mogami’s body. How?” he asked.
“I have no idea. They didn’t tell me any details on the phone.”
“Where was he found?”
“In some sort of warehouse that belongs to Mogami. No one was living there, and the house was registered under a false name.” That was all Daiyu Matsushita had to say on the subject. No matter how many questions Kenzo asked, his older brother just sat there in silence chain smoking, blowing half-formed smoke rings, and absentmindedly dropping cigarette ashes in his lap.
They drove rapidly through Ogikubo, Nishi-Ogi, and Kichijoji, where the tattoo contest had been held. With each passing mile, the scenery became a bit more rural. In the vicinity of Mitaka Station, just after crossing the railroad tracks, they spotted Officer Akita standing in front of a police box. He raised his hand in greeting and, when the car stopped, he climbed in.
No sooner had Akita closed the door behind him than Daiyu Matsushita was demanding, “Who found the body?”
“An employee of the Mogami Group.”
“How did he happen to find it?”
“The place is known around here as the Haunted House, because of some weird things that have happened there. Mogami bought it in foreclosure, and he had been having trouble getting rid of it because of its reputation. He finally decided to tear the house down and rebuild it in another location, and the construction and demolition work were scheduled to begin tomorrow. The employee had come out to inspect the site, and he found the body in the storeroom.”
“What was the cause of death?”
“One shot to the head with a pistol. He appears to have died instantly.”
“Where was the gun?”
“The victim was grasping it in his own hand.”
“So it was suicide?”
“It’s too early to say f
or sure, but it certainly looks that way.”
“Hmm.” Daiyu Matsushita nodded, but his face wore an expression of extreme displeasure. The car pulled up to a rusted iron gate and came to a stop.
“This is as far as we can go by car,” Officer Akita said. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
“Right-o,” said the chief inspector, suddenly cheerful again. He climbed out of the car, tossed away his half-smoked cigarette, and stood staring straight ahead. The place they were in was about a thirty-minute walk north-northeast from Mitaka Station, and the scenery retained something of the aura of the old Musashino Plain. Things had changed quite a bit since Kunikida Doppo had written his masterpiece Musashino. In the hazy distance the tall towers and chimneys of modern factories rose above the trees. At eye level, though, there was a certain timeless pastoral appeal in the forest and the clear, murmuring brook.
At that particular moment, Daiyu Matsushita was completely oblivious to the bucolic charm of the scenery. The only reason he was looking around so intently was because he knew his first impressions could end up being useful in solving the crime.
“That’s the place over there. It’s the house in that grove of trees.” Officer Akita pointed toward the end of a road that meandered along for sixty yards or so, closely following the curves of the small river.
“Is this road the only way in, or out?”
“That’s right. But if you wanted to cut through the fields and the forest, you could escape in any direction.”
“How far is it to the nearest inhabited house?”
“At a guess, I’d say three or four hundred meters.”
“Right. Let’s go!” Chief Matsushita set off at a brisk pace. The weather had been clear for days on end, and the surface of the road was hard and dry, so there was no need to worry about disturbing any potential footprints.
They walked for several minutes and came upon a crumbling mud wall. A policeman who had been snoozing in its shade hastily snapped to attention and gave them a smart salute. A few steps farther along they came to the main gate, which was bolted from the inside.
“How do you open this thing?” Daiyu Matsushita asked Officer Akita, as he had tested the gate’s resistance at several places, without success.
“There’s a service entrance on the other side.”
Leading the way, Daiyu walked along the mud wall and around two corners. A service gate in the rear wall led to an enclosed area of three hundred tsubo—eleven thousand square feet. The men stepped through the gate and found themselves waist-high in luxuriant grass and flowering weeds. In the heat and humidity, the tall summer grass gave off a heady aroma. The buildings consisted of an L-shaped residence of fifteen hundred square feet and, at the rear, a single storehouse whose whitewashed walls had long since begun to crumble into dust, like the earthen wall that surrounded the property.
“What sort of state is this place in?” Daiyu gestured toward the main house.
“All the tatami mats and the other furnishings have been ripped out. There’s nothing left. These are such hard times that they even stole the glass from the windows. The place has been emptied. It looks as if tramps have been using it as a flophouse.”
Daiyu nodded as he lit yet another unfiltered cigarette, then set off toward the storehouse. When the door was opened, the musty odor peculiar to storehouses assailed their nostrils, mixed with the unmistakable stench of a dead body.
“Open all the windows,” the chief inspector ordered. One of his subordinates leaped into action, and in a moment brilliant sunlight was streaming into the dismal space. A huge cloud of blowflies was flying around inside. Attracted by the blood, they whirled in frenzied circles like a small tornado.
In the middle of the room, an empty beer crate was lying on its side. On the floor in front of the crate lay the sprawled body of Takezo Mogami, coveied with flies.
29
That’s the end of Mr. Broom, Kenzo thought melodramatically. While Takezo was alive, Kenzo had perceived him as a romantic rival, but he felt no satisfaction in seeing him dead. He remembered with a chill that the woman they had both loved was dead as well.
The corpse of Takezo Mogami was clutching a pistol. The barrel was pointed at Takezo’s head, and a small hole was clearly visible above the right ear. A rivulet of reddish-black flowed from this entry wound onto the floor, where it had congealed and mingled with the fine dust that blanketed all the surfaces of the neglected storeroom. The portly cadaver was well on the way to decomposition, and the powerful aroma was nauseating.
“How long has this man been dead?” the chief said.
“I’d say between three and four days,” the white-gloved forensics specialist replied.
“So that would make it the day of the Kitazawa murder, or the day after.”
“That’s right.”
“And the cause of death was this pistol?”
“Yes, the bullet entered above the right ear and penetrated the brain on a diagonal trajectory. He would have died instantly.”
“Is there any evidence to suggest a struggle or a fight of any sort?”
“We haven’t come across any.”
“What about personal effects?”
“There was a wallet containing a little more than two thousand yen in paper notes. And there’s this gold watch, which at current prices would be worth seven or eight thousand yen.”
“What about this distorted expression on the face? It almost looks as if he’s smiling. Is it anguish? Pain?”
“Mmm, quite a bit of time has elapsed. It’s really hard to tell.…”
“And the pistol?”
“It’s a Browning, made in 1936, with a silencer attached.”
“Does the pistol match the case that was found at Mogami’s house?”
“Perfectly.”
“Any fingerprints on the gun?”
“Only those of the deceased.”
“Is there anything to suggest murder?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“Assuming it was suicide, he must have sat on this empty box, pointed the gun at his head… pulled the trigger. The momentum of the blast could have caused him to tumble onto the floor.”
“That sounds reasonable,” the specialist said.
“What about the bullets in the gun?”
“It’s a six-bullet chamber and it was fully loaded, except for the one fired into the victim’s head.”
“Does the bullet match the entry wound?”
“We won’t know for sure until we remove the bullet, but I strongly suspect it’ll be a match.”
“Since there was a silencer attached to the gun, even if a shot was fired in here it wouldn’t have been heard outside. Is that correct?”
“Yes. This sort of thick-walled storehouse has a natural tendency to absorb sound and, besides, this place is quite far from the outside wall. I think it’s safe to say that unless someone was actually on the premises, no one would have heard the shot.”
“Okay. Now, would you bring me the worker who discovered the body?”
Daiyu Matsushita knelt down and peered at the corpse. Taking another long look around the storehouse, he left and returned to the main house. He sat down on the filthy veranda. A young man in his mid-twenties, trembling visibly from the shock of finding his boss, was brought before the chief.
“My name is Ichiro Yoshioka.” The young man bowed his head respectfully. “I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m employed by the Mogami Group.”
“You’re the one who found the body, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And there’s no question that the body is that of your boss, Takezo Mogami?”
“No… no question at all.” The young man closed his eyes.
“Could you please tell us in detail about how you happened to find the body?”
“Well, about three months ago our company bought this property. Our boss—Mr. Mogami—took it in foreclosure on a personal debt, just for the value of
the land. The buildings aren’t much to speak of, as you can see, and the place has a bad reputation. They say when you pass by here at night, you can hear voices groaning. Personally I think ghost stories are a lot of nonsense, but I have heard that the person who first built this house went bankrupt and hanged himself in the storeroom. The next person who owned this property supposedly went mad, and his successor got into some sort of trouble with the law and is now in prison. So when this property fell into his hands, the boss wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Because the place truly seemed to be jinxed, or at least unlucky, the best course of action seemed to be to tear down the buildings. The demolition was scheduled to begin tomorrow, and—“
“Wait a minute,” the chief interrupted. “When was that decision made?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“So everyone who worked for the company would have been aware that this house was going to be demolished in the near future.”
“Everyone who was involved would have been aware of that, yes.”
“Would your manager, Mr. Inazawa, have known about it?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, let’s hear what happened next.”
“Well, because of the murder of Miss Nomura, everything was running behind schedule, but we couldn’t just let this place sit forever, so I came out here to survey the situation. One of my colleagues was supposed to meet me at the station. When he didn’t show up, I went ahead on my own. I wasn’t particularly nervous about being alone. I figured that even if this house really was haunted, the ghosts wouldn’t be around in broad daylight. As I was making the rounds of the property, I noticed the door of the storeroom was ajar. I thought that was strange, but I didn’t see any signs of an intruder. When I threw open the door, the first thing I noticed was an extremely unpleasant smell, so strong that I had to hold my nose to keep from being sick. When my eyes got used to the dim light, I saw a dead body lying over there, dressed in a suit that I remembered having seen the boss wear. I was so shocked that I just wanted to flee, but I knew that wouldn’t be right, so I ran to the nearest police box.…” The young man paused.
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