The Decagon House Murders

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  Ellery put the plates from the drawer on the table and slid them towards Leroux. There were six of them.

  “But…”

  “Yes, as you can see, the plate of ‘the Second Victim’ is still there. The murderer seems to be well prepared. Figured we’d keep an eye on these plates after the first murder. Probably has another set of the same plates. Also—keep this a secret from Agatha…”

  Ellery lowered his voice to a whisper and beckoned Leroux to come closer.

  “A secret?” Leroux muttered. “Why?”

  “She might become very agitated if we don’t break it to her gently. We found it before she got up, so Van, Poe and I talked it over and decided to hide it.”

  “Hide what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “It was Poe who found it. He woke up around noon and, after washing his face, he happened to take a look at the bath unit in the back…”

  “There was something there?”

  “Yes. Inside the bathtub. A hand covered in blood.”

  “What?!”

  Leroux clapped his hand to his mouth.

  “O-Orczy’s?”

  “No, you’re wrong there. It wasn’t Orczy’s hand.”

  “But then whose?”

  “It was Carr’s. Carr’s left hand was cut off and placed there.”

  “No way.”

  “The murderer probably waited for all of us to fall asleep and did it this morning. We didn’t lock the door to Carr’s room. Anyone could have sneaked in and cut off the hand.”

  “And where’s the hand now?”

  “We put it back in Carr’s bed. We can’t count on the police coming here any time soon and we couldn’t just leave it there either.”

  “But why…” Leroux put his fingers to his throbbing temples. “But why would the murderer do such a thing?”

  “Why indeed.”

  “Is it an ‘allusion’ again? But even so…”

  Agatha and Poe came out of the kitchen and prepared the table. Spaghetti, potato salad and soup.

  Leroux sat down and looked at his wristwatch. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon.

  He had only eaten once yesterday. He should have been starving, but he had no appetite at all.

  “Leroux, Poe kept an eye on me all the time, so you can just enjoy your meal without any worries. I also washed all of the tableware again. Or do you think Poe and I are in this together?” said Agatha sarcastically. She had probably hardly slept. Her lightly made-up face showed signs of fatigue. Her rose-pink lips, too, had lost their usual colour.

  2

  After lunch the five headed out to the ruins of the Blue Mansion together.

  The plot on which the mansion had stood was about eighteen metres along each side and completely black, being covered with ashes and bricks.

  It was surrounded by dark-green pines interspersed with dead brown trees. The sky was thick with clouds and the dark, shadowy sea came and went down below.

  The place was as dark and gloomy as something out of a scary fairy tale.

  The cliff to the west of the Blue Mansion overlooking J— Cape was not very high. The line of pine trees around the mansion was broken by a small path leading to a narrow concrete flight of steps, which in turn led down to a rocky area beneath the cliff.

  Four of the group stood at the crest, looking out for boats passing near the island, while the fifth member of the party walked around the ashes and bricks on his own. It was Ellery. As he walked, he poked at the bricks scattered here and there with his feet, inspecting the debris. Then he crouched down suddenly.

  “What’re you doing, Ellery?” Van called over to him. Ellery raised his head and smiled.

  “Looking for something.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “I told you last night, didn’t I? An underground room. I was just thinking that there might be one here.”

  The others exchanged quizzical glances, then slowly walked towards Ellery, who was still crouching amid the bricks.

  “There,” Ellery murmured as he placed his hand on a filthy pitch-black piece of wood about one metre square. “It looks as though this has been moved.”

  It appeared to have been part of the burnt wall once, and some parts of it were still covered by blue tiles. Ellery tried to lift it and it came up surprisingly easily.

  “Found it,” Ellery cried out joyfully.

  There it was, a square black hole. A narrow, concrete staircase led down into darkness. This was certainly the entrance to the underground room of the burnt-down Blue Mansion.

  Ellery flipped the piece of wood over, impatiently grabbed the torch he had brought from the pocket of his jacket and stepped into the tunnel.

  “Watch out. It might collapse,” said Poe anxiously.

  “I know, I’ll be ca—”

  Ellery’s answer was cut short. His body suddenly jerked forward. With a brief cry he fell down, as if he were being sucked into the darkness.

  “Ellery!”

  “Ellery?”

  “Ellery!”

  “You all right, Ellery?”

  The remaining four cried out simultaneously. Van jumped forward and made to follow Ellery into the hole.

  “Wait, Van. It’s dangerous going in like that.”

  Poe held him back firmly.

  “But Poe—”

  “I’ll go first.”

  Poe threw away the cigarette between his fingers, searched the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a penlight. He put his foot on the staircase, carefully illuminating the inside of the hole.

  “Ellery!”

  He yelled, but there was no reply. He bent his large body forward and went down two steps. He stopped suddenly.

  “But this is…” Poe growled. “There’s a thread strung across here. Ellery must have tripped over it.”

  The thin, strong thread was approximately at shin height to an adult, strung between what appeared to be pipes running down both sides of the steps. It was almost invisible unless you looked very carefully.

  Poe cautiously stepped over the obstacle and hastened down the staircase. In the dark in front of him he could see a yellow halo. It was Ellery’s torch.

  “Van, Leroux, come down here. Be careful of the thread—Ellery?”

  Ellery was lying at the foot of the stairs. Poe picked up the torch lying on the floor and shone it on the feet of the two coming down after him.

  “Ellery, are you all right?”

  “I’m OK,” answered Ellery, still stretched out on the concrete floor. But then he groaned and grabbed his right ankle.

  “I think it’s sprained.”

  “Did you hit your head?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Van and Leroux joined them.

  “Give me a hand,” Poe ordered them, and took Ellery’s arm.

  “Wait, Poe,” said Ellery as he got up gingerly. “I’m fine, honestly. Let’s just take a look at this underground room.”

  Leroux took the torch from Poe and scanned the room.

  The underground room was big—about fifty square metres. The four walls, the ceiling and the floor were all just bare concrete, with pipes running along them. In the back stood a big machine, probably a generator, but there was nothing of interest besides that. Some wooden planks of all sizes, dirty bottles and cans, a bucket, some rags… The room contained only junk.

  “As you can see, Ellery, nothing out of the ordinary here,” said Leroux.

  “Nothing at all?” Ellery muttered. He stood supported by Poe and Van and had followed the light of the torch with his eyes. He appeared to have made a swift recovery.

  “There can’t be nothing. Check the f
loor, Leroux.”

  Leroux did as he was told and cast the light on the floor again.

  “Ah, look at that.”

  They were looking at an arc-like area of two metres’ radius, near the staircase where the four were standing. It was completely free of any of the junk that lay in the rest of the room. And, curiously, there was no dust or ash inside the arc either.

  “Now that’s what I call odd. As if somebody wiped this part clean.”

  A strange smile appeared on Ellery’s pale face.

  “Someone was here.”

  3

  “Doesn’t appear to be that bad. And you don’t seem to have hit your head,” said Poe as he treated Ellery’s right ankle. “A sprained ankle and some bruises and scratches. One night with a poultice should do the trick. Unbelievable, how lucky you are. You could have been killed.”

  “I must have instinctively broken my fall,” said Ellery, biting his lip. “But it was a real blunder on my part. I was too careless. I walked straight into his trap.”

  The five had returned to the Decagon House.

  Ellery was sitting with his back against the wall, his leg outstretched on the floor as Poe treated the ankle. The other three watched, too nervous to simply sit down in their chairs.

  “We’d better fasten the hall doors from the inside. And nobody should go outside, especially after dark. Someone is out there, trying to get us.”

  “But Ellery, I simply can’t believe it.”

  Agatha seemed confused. She’d been told Ellery’s theory of Nakamura Seiji being the murderer when they arrived back from the Blue Mansion.

  “Can Nakamura Seiji really still be alive?”

  “The underground room just now is enough evidence, I think. At least, it proves someone was there until recently. He guessed that we would find out about the underground room and try to enter it. That’s why he laid a trap like that on the stairs. If I hadn’t been so lucky, I’d be the ‘the Third Victim’ by now.”

  “OK, all done, Ellery.”

  Poe tapped Ellery’s freshly bandaged ankle lightly.

  “Don’t move about too much tonight.”

  “Thanks, Doctor… Where are you going?”

  “There’s just something I want to check.”

  Poe walked across the main hall and disappeared through the doors leading to the entrance hall. He was back within a minute.

  “Precisely as I thought. Sorry,” he said to Ellery with a grim voice.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “That thread. Turns out it’s mine.”

  “Yours? What do you mean?”

  “Fishing line. My fishing gear has been in the entrance hall since the first day. A roll of my stoutest line is gone.”

  “Oh, so that’s what it was.” Ellery leant back against the wall, clasping his arms around his raised knee. “There’s no lock on the front door. So anyone, whether it’s Seiji or anyone else, can come and go whenever they want. Nothing easier than for them to steal a roll of fishing line.”

  “But Ellery…” Poe sat down on a chair and lit a cigarette. “I don’t think you should assume that Seiji is alive and that he’s the murderer.”

  “You think I’m wrong?”

  “I don’t say your theory is completely impossible, but at the moment, I don’t think we can judge whether the murderer is someone from outside or not. That’s my objection.”

  “Hmm.”

  Still leaning against the wall, Ellery looked up at Poe’s bearded face.

  “It seems like our Doctor Poe hopes the murderer is one of us.”

  “I don’t hope anything. But I do think that it’s more likely. That’s why, Ellery, I suggest going over all of our rooms together.”

  “An inspection of personal belongings, eh?”

  “Yes. We know the murderer must be in possession of another set of those plates, Orczy’s left hand, some kind of knife and maybe some remaining poison.”

  “Good suggestion. But Poe, if you were the murderer, would you hide incriminating stuff like that in your own room? There are plenty of safer hiding places elsewhere.”

  “But still, just to be sure.”

  “Hey, Poe,” Van said. “Wouldn’t it be even more dangerous if we made a search?”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Suppose the murderer is really one of us five, then he would be with us as we searched the rooms. We’d be giving the murderer an easy chance to get into the others’ rooms.”

  “Van’s right.” Agatha spoke up. “I don’t want anyone to come inside my room. The murderer might hide those plates or something else in one of the rooms. Or lay some kind of trap.”

  “Leroux, what do you think?” Poe asked with a grimace.

  “I just can’t stand this Decagon House any longer.”

  Leroux stared down at the floor, shaking his head slowly.

  “It’s like someone said earlier. That their eyes hurt just from looking at the walls. It’s not just the eyes. My head gets all dizzy looking at them…”

  4

  “Are you after the salt? You just put it over there,” said Van to Agatha, who, having tasted the soup, was looking around with a small plate in her hands.

  “You keep such a good eye on me,” replied Agatha, wide-eyed. “Nothing gets past you!”

  She had replied sarcastically, but there was no strength in her voice. The bags beneath her eyes were getting bigger.

  They were in the kitchen of the Decagon House.

  Dimly lit by the lamp they had brought from the hall, Agatha was busy preparing a meal, while Van watched over her every movement. The other three were in the hall, occasionally glancing at the kitchen through the open doors.

  Agatha bustled around the kitchen, trying to get the business of the murderer out of her head, but she was finding it hard to concentrate. She was looking around the kitchen again.

  “The sugar’s over here, Agatha,” said Van finally. Agatha shuddered and glared at him.

  “That’s enough,” she cried, putting her hands to the scarf that tied her hair. “If you’re so afraid to eat what I cook, you can go eat from a can for all I care.”

  “Agatha, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Enough!”

  Agatha picked up a small plate and threw it at Van. The plate grazed his arm and hit the refrigerator behind him, breaking into pieces. The disturbance brought the other three running to the kitchen.

  “I know I’m not the murderer,” Agatha cried, both fists clenched tight and shaking like a leaf. “The murderer is one of you four, I know it. But you still have someone watch me? I tell you, I’m not the murderer!”

  “Agatha!”

  Ellery and Poe raised their voices simultaneously.

  “What? Even with your guard posted here, if someone is poisoned again you’ll all blame me anyway! You’re all here to make a murderer out of me!”

  “Calm down, Agatha,” said Poe sternly as he took a step towards her. “Nobody wants to do that. Pull yourself together.”

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  Agatha stepped back, her eyes flashing with fear.

  “Stay away—I get it, you’re all in this together. The four of you killed Orczy and Carr. And now it’s my turn!”

  “Agatha, come to your senses.”

  “If that’s what you want, I’ll become your murderer. Yes. If I’m ‘the Murderer’, I won’t become a victim. Ah, poor Orczy, wretched Carr—yes, yes, I am the murderer. I killed the two of them. And now I’ll kill the rest of you!”

  It took the four of them to hold her down. Agatha had completely lost control and was swinging her arms and kicking her legs wildly. They dragged her back to the hall and put her on a chair.

  “I can’t take any m
ore of this.”

  Agatha’s shoulders sagged and she stared into space with dead eyes. Her trembling body slumped down on the table.

  “I beg of you, I want to go home. I’m tired. I—I want to go back home.”

  “Agatha.”

  “I’m going. I’m going home. I’ll swim back…”

  “Agatha, stay calm. Take a deep breath.” Poe put his large hand on Agatha’s back and tried to calm her.

  “Agatha, nobody is accusing you of murder. Nobody is going to kill you.”

  Like an unwilling child, Agatha was still resting her head on the table. Gradually her mumbling of “I’m going home, I’m going home” died away and turned to sobbing.

  After a long while, she suddenly raised her head. And, in a monotone, husky voice, said: “I need to finish the dinner.”

  “That’s OK. Somebody else will do it. You go and rest.”

  “No.” Agatha pushed Poe’s hand away. “I’m not the murderer.”

  5

  Nobody spoke during the meal.

  If anybody had opened their mouth, they would inevitably have talked about the case. The silence was an escape from the threatening reality. Perhaps the silence was also born out of fear of provoking Agatha, who was still in a state of shock.

  “We’ll clean up, so go and rest, Agatha,” said Poe softly. Agatha usually avoided smoking in front of other people, but now she was staring blankly at the smoke rising from her cigarette.

  “I’ve got some tablets if you have trouble sleeping. Just take them and go to bed.”

  Wariness flashed in Agatha’s eyes.

  “Tablets? No way!”

  “It’s OK, it’s just sleeping pills.”

  “No, I won’t take them.”

  “OK then—watch carefully, Agatha.”

  Poe opened the leather bag which was hanging from the back of his chair, and took out a little medicine bottle. He dropped two white tablets into the open palm of his hand, broke them in half, then gave half of each tablet to Agatha.

  “Now I’ll take the remaining two halves right in front of your eyes. Then will you trust me?”