“The murderer came here last night from Cat Island. He watched us, hoping for an opportunity to commit his next murder, but he drew a blank and so, this morning, he returned to the rocky area. It was still raining at the time, I think. That’s why the murderer didn’t leave any footprints going from the entrance of the ruins to the staircase.
“The rain stopped while he was preparing the boat in the rocky area. From then on, footprints would remain intact on the ground. At that point Leroux made his appearance, although I don’t know what he was doing there.
“Leroux saw the boat and the murderer. In a panic, the murderer grabbed one of the rocks lying around, chased after Leroux and silenced him. Fearing someone might come running because of Leroux’s cries, he moved his boat to the inlet. He waited a while to see if anyone was out of bed and then sneaked in here to hang the plate up. Something like that.”
Poe’s thumb had not once left his temple. With one elbow on the table, he asked angrily: “But Ellery, who is this murderer hiding out on Cat Island?”
“Nakamura Seiji of course,” Ellery declared without any hesitation. “I’ve been saying that from the start. I wasn’t serious when I said I thought you were a suspect just now.”
“Suppose I accept the possibility Nakamura Seiji is still alive, for argument’s sake. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t see what motive this Seiji could possibly have for wanting to kill all of us. I can’t think of anything. Or are you simply saying he’s mad?”
“A motive? Of course he has one. A strong one.”
“What? What do you mean?” Poe and Van cried out simultaneously, leaning forward.
Ellery’s hands skilfully gathered the cards he had fanned out on the table. “We talked about each other’s motives just now, but Nakamura Seiji has a much more obvious one. I only realized it myself last night, after I’d gone back to my room.”
“Really?”
“What is it, Ellery?”
“Nakamura Chiori. Remember her?”
Silence reigned in the gloomy hall, except for the distant sound of the waves. The rain had eased to a noiseless drizzle.
“Nakamura Chiori. You mean?…”
Van’s voice had become weak.
“Yes, our junior member, who died because of our carelessness in January last year. That Nakamura Chiori.”
“Nakamura—Nakamura Seiji, Nakamura Chiori.”
Poe muttered the words as if he were chanting a spell.
“But it just can’t be.”
“It can be and it is. It’s the only reason I can think of. Nakamura Chiori was the daughter of Nakamura Seiji.”
“So that’s it.”
Poe frowned deeply, tapped a Lark cigarette out of his cigarette case and put it straight in his mouth. Van closed his eyes, his hands on the back of his head. Ellery gathered the cards, placed them on top of the case and continued:
“It was Nakamura Seiji who committed the murders that happened here on this island six months ago. He burned someone to serve as his body double, either the missing gardener or someone else of similar age and build and the same blood type. Nakamura Seiji is still alive and now he is acting out his revenge for his daughter—”
At that moment, he was interrupted.
“Uuurgh!”
An unnatural sound escaped Poe’s throat.
“What’s wrong?”
“Poe?”
His chair screeched across the floor, then Poe’s large body tumbled forwards and fell.
“Poe!”
Ellery and Van rushed to him, trying to get him back up. Poe, doubled up with pain, pushed their hands away. Then, finally, it was over.
With one last violent convulsion, his four limbs thrust out stiffly in the air and he crashed back on the floor face up. That was the end of Poe.
The Lark cigarette Poe had thrown away after just a single puff was lying on the blue-tiled floor, smoke rising from it. Ellery and Van could only look in shock at the now motionless “Last Victim”.
9
It was nearly dusk and the sky was still covered with grey clouds, but it didn’t look as though it would rain. The wind stopped shaking the trees and the noise of the roiling waves had also softened into a melancholic melody.
Poe’s body was carried to his room by the two survivors. On the floor lay the jigsaw puzzle, which had hardly been touched since Van last saw it. The cute upturned faces of the fox cubs looked terribly sad.
Ellery and Van made sure not to disturb the puzzle and placed Poe’s large body on the bed. Van covered him with a blanket and Ellery closed Poe’s eyes. From his painfully contorted mouth rose a hint of almonds.
After a moment of silent prayer, the two left the room without saying a word.
“Another time bomb. Damn.”
Ellery’s voice trembled with fury as he trampled on Poe’s cigarette, which had turned to ashes on the floor.
“One of Poe’s stock of cigarettes was poisoned with prussic acid. He probably sneaked into Poe’s room and injected one of them with a syringe.”
“Nakamura Seiji?”
“Who else?”
“It could have been one of us.”
Van dropped into a chair. Ellery walked to the table and lit the lamp. In the flickering light, mysterious shadows started dancing on the white walls.
“Nakamura Seiji…” muttered Ellery as his eyes focused on the flame.
“Now I think about it, Van, Nakamura Seiji used to be the owner of this house. He’d naturally know all about the geography of the island and the layout of the buildings, and I’ll bet he also has spare keys to all the rooms.”
“Spare keys?”
“A master key perhaps. He took it with him after burning down the Blue Mansion and going into hiding. He can enter any room whenever he wants. It was the easiest thing in the world to poison Agatha’s lipstick, or kill Orczy. The same for Poe’s cigarettes. He made sure to stay out of sight and flitted around this building like a shadow. We’re just the poor insects who flew into the trap called the Decagon House.”
“I remember reading somewhere that he used to be an architect.”
“I read that too. He might even be the one who designed this place. He was certainly the one who had it built… Perhaps—hold on a second!”
Ellery looked keenly around the hall.
“What’s wrong, Ellery?”
“I was just thinking about the cup that was used to poison Carr.”
“The eleven-sided one?”
“We now know it wasn’t used to mark the poisoned coffee, but do you remember, Van? You asked the question. Why was that cup there in the first place?”
“Ah, yes, I did.”
“I answered that it was just Seiji’s joke. But I added that it might also have another meaning. Hiding a single eleven-sided object in a house of decagons. Doesn’t that suggest something?”
“Something eleven-sided inside a decagon?” muttered Van, before his eyes suddenly widened in surprise. “It might mean there are eleven rooms here.”
“Precisely.” Ellery nodded grimly. “I had the same idea. Apart from this central hall, the building consists of ten trapezoidal rooms of equal size. The toilet, bathroom and washstand are one room, the kitchen, the entrance hall and the seven guest rooms make nine more. If there’s one more room hidden here somewhere besides those ten…”
“You mean Seiji wasn’t watching us from the kitchen window, but from that secret room?”
“Precisely.”
“But where could it be?”
“Considering the layout of this building, I think it could only be underground. And I have a suspicion…” A smile appeared on Ellery’s lips “…that the eleven-sided cup is the key to the secret room.”
They foun
d it inside the storage space beneath the kitchen floor.
There was nothing strange about the storage space itself. A square part of the floor, about eighty centimetres on each side, could be easily lifted by pulling on a handle.
The hole was about fifty centimetres deep. White boards lined the bottom and the four sides. There was nothing inside.
“This is it, Van.”
Ellery pointed.
“I figured that if the room really existed, it would be in the kitchen, together with the cup. And hey presto!”
They shone a torch on the bottom of the space. There was a small hole there, just a few centimetres wide, almost invisible unless you looked for it. A groove encircled the hole.
“Van, give me the cup.”
“What about the coffee inside?”
“This is important, so just throw it away.”
Ellery took the cup and crawled on the floor. He stretched his right arm into the storage space and slid the cup into the hole in the middle.
“Got it. A perfect fit.”
The eleven-sided keyhole and key connected.
“I’ll turn the key.”
As he had expected, the hole turned following the circular groove. After a while, he felt something slide into place.
“OK, I’m going to open it.”
Ellery carefully pulled the cup out of the hole. As he did so, the entire white bottom of the space started to tilt downwards noiselessly.
“Fantastic contraption,” Ellery said. “There’s a mechanism with cogwheels or something that prevents it from making any noise as the bottom angles downwards.”
It didn’t take long for a staircase leading to a secret underground room to be revealed.
“Let’s go, Van.”
“Should we?” Van had cold feet. “What if he’s down there waiting for us?”
“Don’t worry. The sun has just set. Seiji probably isn’t here yet. Even if he is there, it’s two against one. We can handle him.”
“But…”
“If you’re scared, stay here. I’ll go alone.”
“Ah, wait, Ellery.”
A damp, acrid smell reached their noses.
Their way lit only by Ellery’s torch, the two stepped down into the pitch-black hole.
It was a sturdy staircase despite its age. If they stepped carefully, it didn’t even squeak. Ellery led the way and, making sure not to repeat the foolish mistake he had made the day before, advanced very cautiously.
After not even ten steps down the staircase, they arrived in the fairly large room they had already glimpsed. It started right under the kitchen and stretched out in the direction of the central hall.
The floor and walls were of bare concrete. There was no furniture. The ceiling was just a little higher than Ellery and perforated with small holes. Thin slivers of light shone down through them.
“The light from the lamp,” Ellery whispered. “We’re beneath the hall. Everything we said could be heard clearly from here.”
“So Seiji really was here?”
“Yes. He must have been listening to our every movement. And I bet he also made a path from this room that leads outside the building.”
Ellery shone the light on the surrounding walls. Dirty concrete with black spots. Here and there some cracks and signs of repair.
“There,” said Ellery, and he stopped moving his light. To their right, in the rear, was an old wooden door.
The duo approached.
Ellery stretched out his hand out to touch the rusty doorknob. In a subdued voice, Van asked: “Where does this lead?”
“I wonder.”
Ellery turned the knob. The door creaked loudly. Ellery held his breath and pulled harder. The door opened.
Suddenly, they both groaned and held their noses.
“What the!…”
“What a horrible smell.”
An overpowering odour filled the darkness. It was so repellent that it made them want to vomit.
They guessed immediately what the source was, and shuddered in disgust.
It was the smell of decayed flesh.
Ellery’s hand wouldn’t stop shaking, but he clenched the torch tightly once more and pointed its beam towards the darkness beyond the door.
It was a deep darkness. As they had suspected, this appeared to be a path to somewhere outside.
He pointed the beam lower. As it swept over the dirty concrete floor, it fell on…
“Aah!”
“Urgh!”
They cried out at the same time.
They had found the source of the horrible smell.
A lump of flesh of a nauseating colour, its original shape unrecognizable. Yellow-white bones sticking out. Dark, empty eye sockets.
It was unquestionably the half-decomposed corpse of a human being.
10
It was past midnight.
There was nobody left in the decagonal hall. The lamp had been extinguished and only darkness remained.
The faraway booming of the waves played a melody from a different dimension. The stars peeked inside through the decagonal skylight, resembling an open mouth in the darkness.
And suddenly a sharp noise came from somewhere inside the building.
It was followed by a completely different sound, the noise of a living thing sighing. The sighing turned into whining, the whining into a roaring noise which enveloped everything.
The Decagon House was on fire.
The white building was wrapped in a crimson light. Smoke rose in thick clouds. A roar rumbled through the night sky. The gigantic blaze burned on furiously, as if trying to scorch the passing clouds.
The extraordinary light was even visible in S— Town across the sea.
TEN
The Sixth Day
1
He was awakened by the shrill ring of the telephone.
He finally managed to lift his heavy eyelids and glance at the clock next to his pillow. Eight in the morning.
Morisu Kyōichi raised his body sluggishly and stretched his hand out to the receiver.
“Hello, this is Morisu speaking. Yes… Eh? Could you repeat what… Yes. The Decagon House on Tsunojima gone up in flames? Are you sure?”
He threw off his blanket, clutched the receiver more firmly in his hand and demanded forcefully:
“But what happened to everyone?… Ah…”
Energy drained from Morisu’s body as he nodded his head heavily.
“…Yes. And I am to… Oh, OK. Understood. I’ll be there. Thanks.”
He put the receiver down and reached out for his cigarettes. His sleepiness had been dispelled completely. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and concentrated on keeping calm.
After smoking it completely, he put a second one in his mouth and picked up the receiver again.
“Kawaminami? It’s me, Morisu.”
“Ah, hey. What’s up so early in the morning?” a drowsy Kawaminami Taka’aki answered from the other end of the line.
“I’ve got bad news.” Morisu told him. “The Decagon House burned down.”
“Wha-what?!”
“I was told everyone died.”
“Impossible… How could… You’re not joking? April Fool’s Day isn’t until tomorrow.”
“I wish I was joking. I was just told over the phone.”
“But—”
“I’m heading for S— Town now—you’ll come too, I hope? Can you reach Mr Shimada?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll meet you over there then. All concerned parties are to assemble in the fishing union’s meeting room near the harbour. Got it?”
“Got it. I’ll find Mr Shimada and bring him along.”
“OK. I’ll meet you there.”
Monday, 31st March. 11.30 a.m., Tsunojima.
A crowd was milling about in all directions.
The rubble of the Decagon House was still smouldering, resembling nothing so much as the burnt corpse of some grotesque monster.
The sky was clear. The blinding reflection of the surrounding sea was redolent of spring. The contrast between the peaceful background and the dark, tragic scene on the island itself was unbearably shocking.
“Inspector. We got a message that most of the families of the deceased are gathered now in S— Town,” yelled a young police officer, holding a walkie-talkie in his hand.
The inspector, a portly man in his forties, yelled back with a handkerchief held to his nose: “OK. Bring them over. Tell me as soon as they arrive. Make sure they don’t come up here.”
He returned to his discussion with the medical examiner, who was inspecting a body burnt black beyond recognition.
“And this one?” he asked. It was unbearably hot and a penetrating stench filled the area.
“A male,” answered the medical examiner from behind his large mask.
“A male of small build. Some deep lacerations on the back of his head. Could have been a blow from a blunt instrument.”
“Hmm.”
The inspector nodded wearily and turned his eyes away from the body.
“Hey, how are things over there?” he yelled as he walked towards another investigator looking at a different body, lying among some bricks further away.
“This was probably also a male. It also appears this was the source of the fire.”
“Oh.”
“Seems like kerosene was poured all round the room and then lit. Our corpse here seems to have poured kerosene over himself too.”
“Oh, so it might be a suicide?”
“Well, we would need to compare it with the other facts, but I think there’s a good possibility.”
The inspector scowled and walked away rapidly. A police officer ran after him with a question.
The Decagon House Murders Page 20