The Decagon House Murders

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  “Heh. Let’s take a look at the case then.”

  Ellery opened the lid of the case and took the cards out face up. He slowly fanned them out between his hands.

  “Queen of Diamonds, right? Oh!”

  Ellery stopped fanning out the cards and directed Agatha’s attention to one of them with his eyes. One single card was facing the other way round.

  “One card is the other way round, you see.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you take it out and show us the face?”

  “Yes—but it can’t be…”

  With a doubtful look, Agatha took out the card and placed it on the table face up. It was, without any question, the Queen of Diamonds.

  “Unbelievable!”

  Agatha was surprised.

  “Neat trick, don’t you think?” Ellery smiled, put the cards back in the case and the case in his pocket.

  “Ellery, that was really impressive.”

  “Haven’t I shown it to you before, Leroux?”

  “First time I’ve seen it.”

  “It’s one of my best card-guessing tricks.”

  “Agatha wasn’t in on this, right?”

  “I wasn’t, Leroux,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “There was no set-up here,” insisted Ellery. “And I’ll also tell you that this wasn’t a probability trick, betting on the fifty-two-to-one chance that Agatha would choose the Queen of Diamonds.”

  Ellery lit a Salem cigarette and took a slow drag.

  “Let’s do a little riddle now. I need to write this one down.”

  He produced a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote: WHAT’S AT THE TOP OF A TREE AND THE BOTTOM OF A WELL? Then he held the message up and showed it to the group.

  “Why couldn’t you just say it out loud?” asked Leroux, but Ellery merely raised an eyebrow in reply.

  “Got it.”

  Agatha clapped her hands together.

  “A horizontal line! Of the T and L?”

  “We’ve got a winner,” cried Ellery.

  “Oh, I get it now,” said Leroux. “The horizontal line of the letters T and L when you write the words ‘tree’ and ‘well’ out in capitals.”

  “Indeed,” confirmed Ellery. “Now here’s another one: what has four letters, sometimes has nine letters, but never has five letters.”

  The group sat in silence for a few moments.

  “This time I really have no idea,” said Agatha.

  “Oh, I’ll put you out of your misery,” said Poe, as he put a new packet of Lark cigarettes into his birchwood case. “I heard this one at university a while back. There’s no riddle, just a trick. Ellery was merely making a series of statements: the word ‘what’ has four letters, ‘sometimes’ has nine letters, and so on.”

  Leroux groaned.

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Not fair,” agreed Agatha.

  Ellery shrugged.

  “It’s a hard one. I’ll give you that.”

  “You always have to pay attention to the phrasing of a riddle. The language is like a secret code,” said Poe.

  “Speaking of codes,” cut in Ellery, “did you know that the first book featuring a secret code is the Old Testament? I think it was the Book of Daniel.”

  “That long ago?” asked Leroux.

  “Yes, even here in Japan we’ve been using secret codes for quite a long time, you know. There’s that famous question-and-answer poem between Yoshida Kenkō and Ton’a in the Shoku Sōanshū. Didn’t you learn about it in high school?”

  “No, what kind of code is it?” Agatha asked.

  “Kenkō’s poem to Ton’a went:

  “The night is cool

  Oh, the harvested rice ears when I wake

  My hand for a pillow

  Even both my sleeves in autumn

  Blow in the unrelenting wind.

  “Take the first letters of each line of the original text and it says yonetamahe, or ‘Rice please’. He was asking for food. And if you take the last letters of each line and read them the other way around, you get zenimohoshi, or ‘Also need money’.”

  “That’s a miserable story,” said Agatha.

  “And the Buddhist priest Ton’a replied:

  “Night is depressing

  My dear friend

  You did not come

  But something will work out

  So come around for a while.

  “Take the first and last letters again, and you get the message yonewanashi, zenisukoshi: ‘No rice, little money’.”

  “They must have spent quite a bit of time thinking that up.”

  “I think there was another famous secret code in a question-and-answer poem in the Essays in Idleness. What was it again, Orczy?”

  They had been relaxing as they talked, but at the sound of the name they all caught their breath and froze.

  “I—I’m sorry. It just slipped out.”

  So even Ellery could lose his head. Such a mistake was unlike him.

  There had been a tacit understanding between them since dinner that they would not mention what happened to Orczy, but Ellery’s slip immediately brought them all back to the inescapable reality. An oppressive silence filled the room.

  “Ellery, don’t you have any other stories?” said Leroux, trying to help Ellery, who was at a loss for words.

  “Ah, yes—”

  Cruelly interrupting Ellery, who was trying his best to conjure up his usual smile, Carr hit the table.

  “Agatha, how about some coffee?” he said, casting Ellery a scornful look. Ellery started to say something, but Agatha immediately cut him off.

  “Yes, good idea. I’ll make some coffee. I’m sure everybody would like some.”

  She stood up hurriedly and went to the kitchen alone.

  “Hey.”

  Carr glared at the faces of the remaining four in turn.

  “We’re holding a wake for poor Orczy tonight, right? So stop pretending nothing has happened and let’s all be nice to each other.”

  † † †

  “And here you are. Sugar and milk as well.”

  Agatha put the tray with six moss-green cups down on the table.

  “Sorry we ask you to do it every time,” Ellery said, as he took the cup closest to him. The others also reached out for cups. Agatha took one for herself and pushed the tray with the last remaining cup to Van, who was sitting next to her.

  “Ah, thanks.”

  Van placed his half-smoked Seven Stars cigarette in the ashtray and held the cup in his hands, warming himself.

  “How’s your cold, Van?”

  “Ah, much better, thanks. Ellery, we didn’t really talk it over, but is there really no way of contacting the mainland?”

  “There doesn’t appear to be one.”

  Ellery drank his coffee black.

  “There’s a lighthouse on J— Cape, so I thought we could try waving a white flag from here. But I suspect it’s unmanned.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right.”

  “Then one of us would need to risk his own life to swim to the mainland, or we could make some sort of raft.”

  “Neither of those plans sounds much good.”

  “We could make a signal fire,” Poe said.

  “I don’t think a few burning pine needles would be enough to attract the attention of the outside world,” countered Ellery.

  “We could set fire to the Decagon House if necessary,” insisted Poe.

  “I think that would be going too far,” cut in Van.

  “It would be stupid and dangerous. But you know, Poe, Leroux and I w
eren’t just looking for a means of communication with the mainland when we went around the island earlier.”

  “What else were you looking for?” said Poe.

  “Something that we failed to find, even though we searched pretty much the whole island… No, wait.”

  “What?”

  “The Blue Mansion—we didn’t search the ruins of the Blue Mansion,” Ellery muttered, touching his fingers to his forehead. “There might be an underground room there.”

  “An underground room?”

  It happened just at that moment.

  Interrupting Poe and Ellery’s discussion, someone fell on the table, groaning horribly.

  “What’s wrong?” Agatha screamed.

  Everyone stood up. The table trembled. Brown liquid flew from the half-drunk cups. He thrashed about and kicked his chair to the floor as his legs jerked like a broken mechan­ical doll’s. His upper body finally slipped off the table onto the blue-tiled floor.

  “Carr!” Poe shouted and ran to his side.

  Thrust aside by Poe, Leroux stumbled and knocked over his own chair.

  “What’s happened to Carr?” Ellery exclaimed.

  Poe examined Carr’s eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know. Does Carr have any medical issues that anyone knows of?”

  Nobody answered.

  “This is bad,” said Poe.

  Carr continued to breathe weakly, making a shrill wheezing sound. Poe put his large arm around Carr’s shoulders.

  “Help me, Ellery. We need to make him throw up. I think it’s poison.”

  Carr’s body convulsed strongly, pushing Poe’s arm away. Only the whites of his eyes were visible as he lay on the floor, curled up like a shrimp. After a while there was another heavy convulsion. Brown vomit came out of Carr’s mouth, accompanied by a terrible cry.

  “He will live, won’t he?” Agatha asked Poe with a terrified look.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can’t you help him?”

  “I don’t know what poison it is. But even if I knew, there’s little I could do here. We can only hope it wasn’t a fatal dose.”

  The same night, half-past two in the morning.

  Carr died lying on the bed in his room.

  5

  Everybody was too exhausted to say anything. It wasn’t fatigue they were suffering from, it was something closer to paralysis.

  It was different from what had happened to Orczy: this time someone had suffered, collapsed and died a horrible death in front of their eyes. The visceral, vicious breakdown of everyday life had numbed their senses.

  Agatha and Leroux stared into space with half-opened mouths, their minds elsewhere. Van kept sighing, his head resting on his hands. Poe, his eyes fixed on the window, didn’t once reach for his cigarette case. The look on Ellery’s face never changed, like a Noh mask with its eyes closed.

  No moonlight came in from the skylight.

  Occasionally the beam from the lighthouse lit up the patch of dark sky visible above. The light of the oil lamp flickered as if it were alive. The monotonous rhythm of the waves could be heard, coming and going, coming and going.

  “Let’s get this over with,” said Ellery. “I want to sleep.”

  He was barely able to keep his sleepy eyes open.

  “Agreed,” Poe replied sluggishly, which seemed to wake the other three from their stupors.

  “The only thing I can tell you,” Poe went on, “is that some kind of poison was used. I don’t know what type.”

  “Can’t you make a rough guess?” asked Ellery.

  “Well, maybe.” Poe frowned deeply. “Based on how fast it acted, I think it’s a very strong poison. It caused shortness of breath and convulsions, so there is a good chance it was a neurotoxin. Common poisons that fall under that category are potassium cyanide, strychnine and atropine. It might also have been nicotine, arsenic or arsenous acid. But atropine and nicotine would cause dilation of the pupils, and I didn’t see that. Cyanide would have caused a unique smell—you know, the so-called bitter almond smell. But I didn’t detect that either. So it was probably strychnine, or some sort of arsenic or arsenous acid.”

  The six half-drunk cups were still on the table. Agatha had been staring at them while listening to Poe’s explanation, but now she suddenly burst out laughing.

  “So it was in the coffee. That means that I’m the prime suspect.”

  “Yes, Agatha,” Ellery replied drily. “Was it really you?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you it wasn’t?”

  “Well, no. That would be illogical.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  The two laughed silently. They were as aware as everyone else of the bizarre, abnormal tone of their conversation.

  “Would you two stop it?” reprimanded Poe in a low, grim voice, after which he put a cigarette in his mouth and offered his birchwood case to Ellery.

  “We need to think about this seriously.”

  “I know. We’re not joking around just for the hell of it.”

  Ellery pushed Poe’s cigarette case back and took his own Salem pack from the breast pocket of his shirt. He took out a cigarette and tapped the filter on the table to pack the tobacco down.

  “Let’s start by going over the facts,” he said. “It was Carr himself who asked for coffee. While Agatha was in the kitchen, the rest of us remained here. It took about fifteen minutes for Agatha to boil some water, make the coffee and return with the cups on the tray. Agatha placed the tray on the table. To be precise, the tray contained six coffee cups, the sugar jar, the jar of powdered milk and seven spoons placed on a saucer, one of them to be used for the milk. Is that correct, Agatha?”

  She nodded meekly.

  “Regarding the order in which the cups were taken,” continued Ellery. “I took the first cup. Who was next?”

  “I was,” said Leroux. “I took mine almost at the same time as Carr.”

  “I was next after that, I think,” said Poe.

  “And then I took one and placed the tray in front of Van,” said Agatha. “Right, Van?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “OK. To sum up, it went: me, Leroux and Carr, Poe, Agatha, and finally Van.”

  Ellery put his cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

  “Let’s think about who had a chance to put the poison in Carr’s cup. First of all, Agatha.”

  “But the cups were all identical—I could have ended up taking the poisoned cup myself. Even if I knew what cup the poison was in, there’s no way I could have arranged for Carr to pick that particular one,” Agatha countered with a cool voice. “If I were the murderer, I would have handed out the cups myself.”

  “Now that you mention it, you’ve always handed out the cups to us before. Why didn’t you do so this one time?”

  “I just didn’t feel like it this time.”

  “Ah. But I will tell you this, Agatha: the murderer might not have been targeting Carr in particular. The murderer’s end goal is to kill all of us, but it doesn’t really matter who ‘the Second Victim’ is.”

  “So you think that Carr just happened to draw the short straw?”

  “I think that’s the most logical approach to take. Nobody was sitting on either side of Carr, correct? Nobody could have put poison in his coffee after it had been brought here. So it could only have been you.”

  “But the poison could already have been in the sugar or the milk.”

  “But you yourself also took milk, remember? Besides, Carr took his coffee black, without sugar. So he didn’t even use a spoon to stir it with.”

  “Ellery, wait,” Leroux chimed in. “I saw Agatha while she was making coffee. The kitchen doors were open and my chair was right opposite, so I had a clear view of Agatha’s
hands. The counter was also well lit because of the candle on top of it. She didn’t do anything suspicious.”

  “Glad you told us that, but I’m afraid that doesn’t constitute conclusive evidence. Considering the distance between this table and the kitchen counter, it’s possible you might have overlooked something. It isn’t like you were keeping a watch on her from start to finish.”

  “I’m sorry,” stammered Leroux.

  “Nothing to be sorry about. You weren’t to know what would happen.”

  “No, I mean, I was keeping a watch on Agatha all the time.”

  “Leroux!”

  Agatha’s eyes widened in surprise. Leroux looked away and repeated “I’m sorry” in a timid voice.

  “But it was the natural thing to do,” he continued. “One of us killed Orczy this morning, and it might have been Agatha. Even our dinner of crackers, canned food and juice was a horror to me. Actually, I think your behaviour was the strangest, Ellery. You were the first to try the food, tucking in as if everything were perfectly normal.”

  “Is that so?” A faint smile appeared on Ellery’s lips. “So, Leroux, you are absolutely positive that Agatha isn’t the murderer.”

  “Well, that’s—”

  “Carr is dead. Poisoned. Surely you don’t think his death was a suicide?”

  “No—”

  “But as I just said to you, Ellery,” Agatha broke in. “If I were the murderer, how could I have avoided winding up with the poisoned cup myself? I drank my coffee.”

  Ellery blinked slowly as he put out his Salem in the decagon-shaped ashtray.

  “There were only six cups. You could easily have remembered the position of the poisoned cup. You picked your own cup and gave the last to Van. If the poisoned cup had been among the last two cups, you could have simply passed that cup on to Van. Even if you had ended up with the poisoned cup, you could simply not have drunk from it.”

  “I’m telling you, it wasn’t me.”

  Agatha’s long hair swung wildly around as she shook her head. Her hands, holding the edge of the table, trembled.

  “Ellery,” Van said weakly, “if Agatha were the murderer, would she really have chosen to kill Carr like this, in a way that makes her the most obvious suspect? She’s not that stupid. What do you think, Poe?”