“Sleep well, Snow White.”
The three went together to Leroux’s room.
They cleaned his face with the water and towel Van had brought. They also cleaned his glasses and placed them on his chest.
“And he was so determined, our editor-in-chief.”
With that, Ellery closed the door. The ominous plate with the red characters still proclaimed “The Third Victim”.
And then there were only the three of them still alive in the Decagon House: Ellery, Poe and Van.
5
After going back to his room and getting dressed, Ellery sat down on the corner of his bed and took out his Salem cigarettes. After two of them had been turned into ash, he left the room.
The other two were already in the hall.
Poe was examining the bandage he’d put over the wound on the back of his right hand, while smoking another cigarette. Van had brought a kettle with hot water and poured some coffee.
“I’d like some too, Van,” said Ellery.
Van shook his head and, covering his cup with both hands, sat down in a chair away from Poe.
“That’s not very nice,” said Ellery with a shrug and went into the kitchen.
He carefully washed a cup and a spoon. He also took a look at the drawer of the cupboard. The six plates that had announced the murders were still there.
“‘The Last Victim’, ‘the Detective’ and ‘the Murderer’,” muttered Ellery as he returned to the hall and poured his own coffee. Poe and Van stayed silent. He looked from one to the other.
“Assuming ‘the Murderer’ is among us, I guess he won’t admit to it at this stage?”
Poe frowned and blew out a cloud of smoke. Van turned his head away and sipped his coffee. Ellery sat down on a chair away from both of them, his hands around his cup.
There was a disquieting silence. The three men sat apart from one another in the hall of the Decagon House and did not even try to conceal the distrust they had for each other.
“Can you believe it?” said Poe in an unnatural voice. “One of us here has killed four of our friends.”
“It might’ve been Nakamura Seiji,” replied Ellery.
An irritated Poe shook his head.
“I won’t say it’s absolutely impossible, but I do say you’re wrong. I don’t even agree with your idea of him being still alive. It’s just too incredible.”
Ellery snorted.
“So the murderer is one of us?”
“That’s what I said.”
Poe banged the table angrily. Ellery ignored the gesture and brushed his hair back.
“Let’s examine everything from the beginning once again.”
He leant back in his chair and looked up at the skylight. The sky was as dark as ever.
“It started with those plates, yes? Someone had to prepare them beforehand and bring them to the island. They don’t take up that much space, so it would be easy to bring them along without anyone noticing. So any one of us could have done it. Are we agreed on that?
“But listen. On the morning of the third day, the murderer started to commit the deeds announced by the plates. ‘The First Victim’ was Orczy. The murderer entered her room through the window or door, and strangled her. Poe, you said the murder weapon, a cord, was still wrapped around her neck. The cord probably won’t serve as a meaningful clue. But the first problem we need to look at is how did the murderer enter Orczy’s room?
“When we found the body, the door and window weren’t locked. It’s possible that Orczy hadn’t locked them in the first place, but I think it’s unlikely. Especially the door. It was Orczy who first discovered those plates. She seemed very scared and anxious.
“So what does that leave us with? There are a number of possibilities, but I think we can basically bring it down to two. One: Orczy forgot to lock her window and the murderer came in from there. Two: the murderer woke Orczy up and got her to open the door.”
“If the murderer came in through the window, why unlock the door?” asked Van.
“Either to find a plate, or to affix a plate he had already brought to the door. But if we limit ourselves to Poe’s idea that the murderer is one of us, then I think we should focus on the hypothesis that Orczy herself opened the door to the murderer.
“Even in the early morning, even if Orczy were still asleep, sneaking into the room through the window would have made some noise. It would have been all over if the murderer had been seen then. If the murderer is one of us in the Mystery Club, he wouldn’t have run that risk. It would’ve made more sense just to wake Orczy up with some excuse and have her let him in peacefully. Orczy was like that. She might have thought it strange, but she wouldn’t have said no to one of us.”
“But Orczy was still wearing her pyjamas,” put in Poe. “Would she have let a man inside dressed like that?”
“She might have. If he’d said it was urgent, she couldn’t very well turn him down, even if she’d wanted to. Except for Carr, after their falling out. But going on that assumption…”
Ellery shot a sidelong glance at Poe.
“You’re the prime suspect, Poe. You were childhood friends, so she wouldn’t be as much on her guard with you as with me or Van.”
“Rubbish.” Poe leant forward. “You’re saying I killed Orczy? That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be funny. But, at least with regard to Orczy’s murder, you’re the most likely suspect. If it were you, her old friend, I would also find it easier to understand the psychology behind the murderer’s peculiar act of neatly arranging Orczy’s body.”
“What about her hand? Why would I want to cut off her hand and take it with me?”
“Easy, Poe. I know this isn’t the one and only answer. There are also other possibilities. It could have been Van, it could have been me. I just say that you are the most likely suspect.
“And as for the problem of the hand, it’s obvious the murderer had in mind the incident that happened in the Blue Mansion last year, but I’ll be honest and say I have no idea why the murderer is alluding to it. What about you, Van?”
“Maybe to confuse us?”
“Hmm. Poe?”
“I don’t think the murderer would do something like that just to confuse us. Cutting off the hand without making too much noise must have been difficult.”
“True. So there must have been a reason to cut off Orczy’s hand. What could that reason be?”
Ellery cocked his head and took a deep breath.
“Let’s just leave that problem for the time being and continue. The Carr murder. To start with the conclusion, I don’t think we can come up with the one perfect answer for this case either. From the discussion we had after the murder, we can at least conclude that neither Poe nor Van had the chance to put poison directly in Carr’s coffee. If the cup itself were poisoned beforehand, then anyone had a chance to do it, but there was no way to distinguish the poisoned cup from the others.
“Anyway, with Agatha now dead, the remaining person most capable of putting the poison in the coffee with a magician’s sleight of hand would have to be, I regret to say, myself. However—”
“You’re about to suggest I could have given Carr a slow-dissolving poison capsule, aren’t you?” Poe interrupted. Ellery smiled.
“Precisely. Not that I think it would be a smart move. Suppose you had successfully given Carr the capsule, how could you have known he could get sick and die just as he was drinking coffee? If the poison had started working when he wasn’t eating or drinking, then our doctor-in-training would be the first to be suspected. I don’t think that you’re that foolish.”
“Sharp observation.”
“But there’s another possibility.”
“Hmph, and that is?”
“Poe is a star of o
ur medical faculty and his family owns one of the most prominent private hospitals in O— City. It could be that Carr hadn’t been feeling well for a while and that he had been asking Poe for advice. Or he might have visited Poe’s hospital. Anyway, let us suppose that Poe was familiar with the details of Carr’s health problems.
“On that fateful night, Carr had some sort of attack. An epileptic seizure or something. Poe immediately ran to Carr’s side and pretended to help him, but instead took advantage of the confusion to slip some arsenic or strychnine into Carr’s mouth.”
“You really seem to think I did it, but your story is just too far-fetched. Not even a sliver of reality.”
“Don’t take me too seriously. I’m just discussing possibilities. But if you claim this theory is too far-fetched, I could say the same of your sleight-of-hand theory.
“Perhaps I should take it as a compliment, but I think you are overestimating my magic skills. Hiding poison in my hand and putting it in another cup just as I reach out for my own cup is not as easy as it sounds. If I were the murderer, I would have avoided such a dangerous method. It would be much easier and safer to smear some poison on one of the cups and mark it in some manner.”
“But the actual cup didn’t have any marks or signs on it.”
“Precisely. That’s what’s bothering me. Was there really no mark on that cup?”
Ellery cocked his head as he looked at the cup in his own hands.
“There’s no chip. No crack. Just like the others, a moss-green decagon… No, wait.”
“What’s the matter?”
“We might have overlooked something. Something incredible.”
Ellery got up from his chair.
“Poe, we set Carr’s cup aside just as it was, I think?”
“Yes. It’s in the corner of the kitchen counter.”
“Let’s take another look at it…”
Ellery was already on his way to the kitchen before he had even finished his sentence and he ordered the others to follow.
“You two come as well.”
The cup stood on the table, covered by a white towel. Ellery pulled the towel away smoothly. There was still a little of the two-day-old coffee left in the cup.
“…I was right.”
Ellery looked straight down at the cup and clicked his tongue angrily.
“We’ve been had. It’s a mystery why we didn’t notice it then.”
“What do you mean?”
Van cocked his head. Poe too had a puzzled look on his face.
“It looks the same as the others to me.”
“But it isn’t,” said Ellery solemnly. “A decagonal building with a decagonal hall, a decagonal table, a decagonal skylight, decagonal ashtrays and decagonal cups… Distracted by this grand collection of decagons all around us, our eyes stopped working.”
“What?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something that sets this cup apart. There’s something that makes it fundamentally different from the others. You still don’t see?”
After a while, both Poe and Van yelled out simultaneously.
“You see?”
Ellery nodded contentedly.
“The decagon theme in this building was a major piece of misdirection. This cup doesn’t have ten sides, but eleven.”
6
“So, back to the beginning.”
Back at the table in the main hall, Ellery looked once more at the other two.
“Now we’ve discovered the cup was different, either of you or, of course, I myself, had an equal opportunity to poison Carr. One cup with eleven sides among the decagon cups. The murderer smeared poison on that cup, and if it had been passed to him, he would simply not have drunk his coffee.”
“I wonder why that cup was there in the first place?” asked Van.
“Maybe one of Nakamura Seiji’s jokes,” said Ellery, a smile appearing on his delicate mouth. “Hiding a single eleven-sided object in a house of decagons. Fantastic joke, right?”
“Could it really be just that?”
“I believe so. It might also have another meaning, but that’s not important. The murderer happened to discover that eleven-sided cup and decided to use it. I don’t believe it was something he prepared beforehand. You can’t get something like that unless you have it specially made. The murderer just happened to notice the cup after arriving on the island. And all three of us had an opportunity to do so.”
Ellery put both elbows on the table, and joined his fingers at eye-level.
“The murderer waited until everyone had gone to sleep and sneaked into the room where Carr’s body lay. He then went to all the trouble of cutting off the corpse’s left hand, just as with Orczy, and throwing it in the bathtub. I’ve no idea why he did that, though.”
“Agatha said she heard something. That was probably what it was.”
“Yes, Poe. Everyone was a little bit on edge by then. The murderer committed himself to quite a risky job. So that means that there was an important reason to cut off the hands. But it remains a mystery to me.”
Ellery frowned and continued:
“Anyway, as I said, all three of us had an equal opportunity to kill Carr. Let’s go on to the next.”
“Next is Agatha… No, Leroux first?” Van said. Ellery shook his head.
“No, first was the attempt on my life. Me, Ellery. In the underground room yesterday. The night before that—I think it was just before Carr collapsed—I mentioned the possibility of there being an underground room in the Blue Mansion. I suppose that having heard that, the murderer—probably after cutting off Carr’s hand and sticking the plate to the door—sneaked outside and laid the trap. Everybody was there when I mentioned the possibility of an underground room, so anyone could have done it. Since I almost became one of the murder victims, I should be ruled out as a suspect, shouldn’t I?”
Ellery watched the reactions of the other two. Van and Poe looked at each other and signalled their disapproval.
“But I admit there’s nothing to prove it wasn’t all a one-man show. I wasn’t even badly hurt. And now to the murder of Leroux this morning.”
Ellery gave it some thought.
“There were some strange features to that murder. It was committed outside and the victim was beaten to death. Unlike the two earlier murders, there was no cutting off of hands. This murder was different.”
“I agree. But even so, any of the three of us could have been the murderer,” said Poe.
Ellery rubbed his thin chin.
“That’s true. Let’s keep the examination of Leroux’s murder for later, then. I need more time to think about it.
“Last is Agatha’s murder. As we just found out, potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide, or something like that, had been applied to her lipstick. The only problem is when and how was the poison put there?
“Apart from when she was applying it, the lipstick had been in her room the whole time since she came to the island, inside her make-up pouch. Since the day before yesterday, following the murders of Orczy and Carr, Agatha had become extremely cautious and would always keep her door locked. The murderer wouldn’t have been able to sneak into her room. On the other hand, Agatha did use lipstick every day. She died this morning, so that means her lipstick was poisoned between yesterday afternoon and last night.”
“Ellery, just one thing.”
“Yes, Van?”
“I think the colour of the lipstick Agatha used today is different from yesterday.”
“What?”
“The colour she wore this morning was horribly bright. I couldn’t even believe she was dead.”
Van continued:
“Agatha was using a different shade of pink yesterday and the day before. Rose-pink, I think it’s
called.”
“Aha.”
Ellery tapped on the edge of the table with his fingers.
“Now that you mention it, she did have two tubes in her pouch, one of them pink. So I guess the poison was put on the red one earlier. It was put there on the first or second day, when Agatha wasn’t yet on her guard and the murderer could easily sneak into her room. But she didn’t use that lipstick until this morning.”
“A time bomb,” Poe said, stroking his beard. “And, again, any of the three of us had the opportunity to pull that off.”
“That’s what it boils down to. But Poe, if we believe the murderer to be one of us, it doesn’t help to go on saying that any of us could have done it every time.”
“So what do you propose?”
“A vote,” Ellery said with a calm expression, before breaking into a smile. “I’m joking, of course, but let’s hear what each of us has to say. Van, who do you think is the most suspicious?”
“Poe,” answered Van surprisingly easily.
“What?” The colour drained from Poe’s face, and he put out the cigarette he had just lit in the ashtray. “Damn it, it wasn’t me. But I guess saying that’s no good.”
“We can’t just take you blindly at your word, of course. I’m of the same opinion as Van: that of the three of us, you are the most suspicious,” Ellery said squarely.
Poe was visibly disturbed and asked angrily: “Why? Why am I suspicious?”
“Motive.”
“Motive? Motive, you say? Why would I want to kill four of my friends? Tell me that, Ellery.”
“I heard your mother is being treated in a mental hospital,” replied Ellery coolly. Poe choked back a reply and clenched his fists until the knuckles turned visibly white and started to tremble.
“It happened several years ago. Your mother was caught attempting to kill a patient in your hospital. Her mind had already become unbalanced, I heard.”
“Is that true, Ellery?” Van’s eyes were wide open in surprise. “I didn’t know that.”
“His father hushed it up. Because it would hurt the reputation of the hospital. The patient who was attacked was probably paid off. The lawyer who acted on their behalf is a friend of my father, that’s how I learnt about it. The wife of a doctor must be under quite some mental stress. It might be too much for a woman with a weak mind. She might even imagine a patient was stealing her husband away…”
The Decagon House Murders Page 18