“Shall we move the bodies?”
“Wait until the families’re here,” the inspector replied immediately. “If we’re not careful, we might get all the corpses and the stuff around them mixed up. We won’t be able to figure out who’s who.”
With speedy steps, he moved upwind.
“I won’t be able to get lunch down my throat like this,” he muttered to himself, as he removed the handkerchief from his nose and filled his lungs with the breeze from the sea.
The bright sea spread out on the other side of the grey, cold blinds. He was inside a large room, plain and bleak.
The meeting room of the fishing union in S— Town.
Chaotically arranged folding tables and chairs. Thinly scattered groups of people anxiously holding on to each other. Whispers being exchanged.
Sitting alone by the window was Morisu, who had lost count of the number of cigarettes he had put out in the cheap ashtray.
The Decagon House on Tsunojima, gone up in flames.
His heart beat furiously.
Everyone is dead.
It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon when Kawaminami and Shimada finally appeared. They recognized Morisu as they looked across the room and walked straight up to him.
“Any news about what happened on the island?” Kawaminami asked, without any preliminaries. Morisu shook his head silently.
“We’ve heard no details. Some members of the families have just gone to the island to identify the bodies.”
“Is everybody really dead?”
“Yes. The Decagon House burned down completely. They found the bodies of everyone at the fire site.”
Kawaminami’s shoulders drooped and he stood still for a while.
“Was it arson? Or perhaps an accident?”
“No idea.”
Shimada walked to the window and looked outside through the blinds. Kawaminami moved a nearby chair next to Morisu and sat down on it.
“Did you tell them about the letters?”
“No, not yet. But I plan to—I brought my letter with me.”
“OK.”
The two looked at each other with bewildered expressions.
“We were tricked,” Shimada muttered, his eyes still staring outside through the blinds. Kawaminami and Morisu turned around in surprise and Shimada continued in a grave voice:
“This was no accident. It was murder. Revenge.”
Several people in the meeting room stole a glance at the trio. Shimada quickly lowered his voice to a whisper.
“We can’t talk here. Let’s go outside.”
Morisu and Kawaminami nodded silently and got up slowly from their chairs. The heavy steel door opened into a hallway and the three happened to overhear some men standing there.
“…I heard some of the bodies show signs of homicide.”
2
The trio walked out onto the seashore.
They climbed down to the breakwater and sat next to each other on one of the concrete tetrapods poking out of the water.
Beneath the bright sun the calm sea offered a stark contrast to the state of their minds.
“So they all died.”
Kawaminami’s arms shivered as he sat down, hugging his knees.
“I’ve been an idiot.”
“Conan,” Shimada called out to him. Kawaminami shook his head several times.
“We went around, poking here and there, but what did we accomplish? Absolutely nothing. We even came to this very harbour just three days ago. We should have at least warned them on the island then.”
“It’s not your fault.” Shimada stroked his chin and continued, as if to himself: “How many people would have taken those letters seriously and gone running around as we did? Even if we had gone to the police, they would just have told us not to take such things seriously and kicked us out.”
“I wonder.”
“I kept saying Nakamura Seiji was still alive and that everybody on the island was in danger, but that was all I did. I couldn’t cross the sea and go to the island just because of a guess, not without some decisive evidence that showed that everybody on the island was indeed in danger of being murdered.”
“Mr Shimada,” Morisu interrupted. “If everybody on the island has been murdered, does that mean that Nakamura Seiji is indeed alive?”
“Well, I wonder,” Shimada said evasively.
“But who else could the murderer be?”
“Who knows?”
“Mr Shimada, what’s your opinion of those letters signed by Seiji? Were they related to what happened on the island?” Kawaminami asked.
Shimada grimaced:
“We can only assume they were, considering what has happened since.”
“Is the same person behind the fire and the letters?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Were the letters a warning?”
“I don’t think they were a warning, exactly, and it was curious that they were delivered right after everyone had left for Tsunojima. I think the murderer had some other purpose in mind.”
“Such as?”
“Conan, on the first day we met, you made an analysis of your letter and came up with three different meanings. Do you remember?”
“Yes. Accusation. Threat. An invitation to look into the Tsunojima accident of last year again.”
“Yes.”
Shimada gazed sombrely at the sea.
“Following that suggestion, we started a second inquiry into the incident that happened last year and managed to uncover the truth behind that. But I don’t believe the culprit had foreseen that. The sender could not have guessed that we would actually be so meddlesome. So I think the culprit’s real intention with the letters was to accuse you of murder and to suggest the idea of Nakamura Seiji to us.”
“Nakamura Seiji?”
“By signing as Nakamura Seiji, he planted the idea in our minds that the dead architect was actually still alive. The goal of that was, of course, to turn Seiji into a scapegoat.”
“So Mr Shimada, the person you suspect is…”
“Nakamura Kōjirō?” Morisu asked carefully. “You mean that now we know that Nakamura Chiori is Kōjirō’s daughter, the person with the motive for murder is not Seiji, but Kōjirō.”
“Going by motive, I agree that Kōjirō is the prime suspect. But…” Kawaminami glanced at Shimada. “But he was in Beppu all the time.”
“Conan, do you remember what that young man said?”
“Eh?”
“The son of the fisherman who took your Mystery Club friends to the island.”
“Ah, yes.”
“He told us that it wasn’t difficult to go to and from the island in a motorboat. Can you be sure Kō didn’t do just that?”
“Oh.”
“Kō said he had been cooped up in his house the last few days to write a thesis, and shut out all visitors and phone calls. But was he telling the truth?”
Shimada nodded slightly, still staring at the sea.
“Yes. I find it hard to say this as his friend, but I have to suspect Kō. He lost his daughter, the only bridge between him and his unreachable love, and in such an awful way. And because of her death—remember what he told us?—his love was murdered by his own brother. He has more than enough of a motive.
“And Kō was also the previous owner of the Decagon House. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine he somehow managed to hear that the people responsible for his daughter’s death were going to the island. He wrote those letters to you to suggest Seiji was still alive, divert suspicion to Seiji and to vent his own pent-up rage. He sent one of those letters to himself, too. To make him appear to be one of the victims as well.”
Now all three of them wer
e looking silently at the sea.
“I agree,” said Morisu finally, in a dull voice. “He’s the only one I can think of with a motive to kill all of them, on that island of all places. Kōjirō is the most likely suspect. But Mr Shimada, this is nothing more than conjecture.”
“I know, Morisu,” Shimada answered ironically. “It’s nothing more than conjecture. And, rest assured, I have no intention of looking for evidence. Neither do I plan to tell any of it to the police.”
Noticing two boats appearing from beyond J— Cape, Shimada stood up.
“Police boats. They’re coming back. Let’s go back in.”
3
“Who are those three?” the inspector asked a nearby police officer. He had just returned from inspecting the crime scene over on Tsunojima.
He had been told by a local estate agent, Tatsumi Masa’aki, the person currently in charge of the building on the island, that students from K— University had been staying in the burnt-down Decagon House. They were friends of his nephew and he had given them permission to stay there a week, starting last Wednesday.
Tatsumi had a list of names of the club members who had gone to the island and the police used that list to make enquiries at the university and to contact family. Some of the students had been living away from their parents’ homes, in boarding houses, so not all the families had been tracked down. Still, they had managed to identify bodies to the point that they now had a good idea of which corpse belonged to which victim. The inspector had also started to question the families of the deceased, but had obtained little useful information from any of them.
“Eh? Which three?” the officer replied, and the portly inspector pointed towards the window.
“Those three over there.”
“Oh, they’re friends of the deceased from the same university club. They’ve been waiting all afternoon to ask about the case.”
“I see.”
The inspector cocked his large head. The two younger men were leaning against the window and talking. Next to them stood a lanky man in his thirties looking out of the window, his back to the police.
The inspector pulled his hands from his coat pockets and walked over to the three men.
“Excuse me. You’re members of the same club as the deceased students?”
The two younger men looked up quickly.
“I’m from the police. I’m—”
“Ah, hard at work, I see.” The lanky man, who had been looking outside, turned around. The inspector clicked his tongue.
“I had a feeling your back looked awfully familiar.”
“What a coincidence. I was hoping it would be you, though.”
“Mr Shimada, do you know this man?” one of the young men asked in surprise.
“I told you I knew people in the police, right, Conan? Let me introduce Police Inspector Shimada Osamu of the First Investigation Division of the Prefectural Police.”
“Shimada? Ah, so you’re?—”
“As you have correctly guessed, this man here is the second son of our temple family.”
“Aha.”
Inspector Shimada coughed loudly once and glared at the nonchalant face of his younger brother, whose physique was the complete opposite of his own.
“And what are you doing here?”
“I’ve been with these two here all this last week, for a certain reason. It’s a long story, so I’ll just keep it to myself.”
Shimada Kiyoshi then turned to the two young men.
“This is Morisu, a member of the K— University Mystery Club, and this is Kawaminami, an ex-member.”
“Hm.”
Inspector Shimada turned to the two with a perplexed expression.
“I’m Inspector Shimada. These are really very tragic circumstances to meet under,” said the policeman formally as he dropped into a chair nearby. “Mystery… So detective fiction, I assume? A club for that, eh? Hm. I used to read mystery fiction a lot when I was young, too. What do you usually do at your club?”
“We have a reading circle for mostly mystery novels and some of us write,” said Morisu, as a plain-clothes policeman arrived and gave the inspector a report several pages long. He flipped through it and nodded.
“It’s the report from the medical examiner,” he said to the two young men. “Just a preliminary one though. A thorough examination will be held later.”
“If it’s not against regulations, could you perhaps tell us more?” Kawaminami asked. “I want to know everything, no matter how insignificant it might seem.”
The inspector glanced at his brother and pursed his lips.
“This guy will just come and pester me later anyway, so I suppose I might as well tell you myself.”
“Thanks.”
“Based on the bodies—all of them in bad shape—it appears that all of the deceased, except for one, were already dead before the fire. Very likely homicide. The remaining person actually died in the fire, burnt to death, but that one appears to be suicide. He had doused himself in kerosene and the fire probably also started in his room. We can’t say for sure, but this man might have killed everybody and then committed suicide. Please keep this information to yourself. His name was…” The inspector stared at the report in his hands. “Ah yes, Matsu’ura. Matsu’ura Junya. You know him, of course?”
Morisu and Kawaminami gasped and nodded.
“Was it really suicide?” Shimada Kiyoshi asked in a rather surprised tone of voice. The inspector wrinkled his nose and scowled at his brother.
“I just told you we can’t say for certain at the moment. I’m still waiting for the reports with more details on the causes of death of the other victims.”
He turned back to the two young men.
“What kind of person was this Matsu’ura Junya? I’d like to hear what you think of him.”
“What kind of person?”
It was Morisu who answered.
“He would have been in his fourth year at the faculty of law this April. Excellent grades, intelligent and eloquent, but he could be a bit peculiar.”
“Thanks. And another question, Morisu.”
“Yes?”
“Was this visit to Tsunojima some sort of Mystery Club trip?”
“I guess ‘trip’ might be the right word. But it wasn’t an official activity of the Mystery Club.”
“Then I assume they were a group of particularly close friends within your club?”
“Yes. Well, yeah. They got along quite well, I think.”
The same officer returned and whispered something in Inspector Shimada’s ear.
“OK. Got it.”
The inspector stuck both hands in his coat pockets and slowly got up out of his chair.
“I have some other business to attend to now, but I think I might need to meet with the remaining members of your club in the near future. Kawaminami, if you could make it, I’d like you to come along, too, as an ex-member.”
“I understand,” replied Kawaminami obediently.
“Well then, goodbye.”
The inspector gave his brother a glance and started to walk away, but then turned back to Morisu and Kawaminami as if he had suddenly remembered something.
“Suppose this Matsu’ura Junya is indeed responsible for all this, do you have any ideas about a motive?”
“Hmm,” answered Morisu, cocking his head. “I just can’t believe it. To think that Ellery would do that.”
“Who?”
“Oh, I’m talking about Matsu’ura. Ellery was something like his nickname.”
“Ellery… Anything to do with that writer, Ellery Queen?”
“Yes. It’s a bit of a club tradition. Members go by the names of famous foreign mystery writers.”
“Oh, all members?�
��
“No. Just a select group.”
“All of those who went to Tsunojima were members with nicknames like that,” explained Kawaminami. An interested twinkle appeared in Inspector Shimada’s eyes.
“Kawaminami, did you also have a strange name like that when you were in the club?”
“Well, yes.”
“What was your nickname?”
“It is a bit embarrassing. I was Doyle. Conan Doyle.”
The inspector laughed.
“Haha, one of the masters. Then I guess that Morisu here is Maurice Leblanc?” the inspector asked, amused.
Morisu frowned slightly and muttered a “no”.
A self-deprecating smile appeared on his lips for a brief moment; then, with downcast eyes, in a low voice, he answered:
“I’m Van Dine.”
ELEVEN
The Seventh Day
Tuesday, 1st April 1986. From the morning edition of the A— newspaper.
another massacre at the decagon house on tsunojima
In the early morning of 31st March, the bodies of six university students were discovered in the ruins of the burnt-down Decagon House on Tsunojima, S— Town, Ōita Prefecture. The students were staying there.
All six deceased were students of K— University: Yamasaki Yoshifumi (age 22, 4th-yr Medical), Suzuki Tetsurō (22, 3rd-yr Law), Matsu’ura Junya (21, 3rd-yr Law), Iwasaki Yōko (21, 3rd-yr Pharmacy), Ōno Yumi (20, 2nd-yr Literature) and Higashi Hajime (20, 2nd-yr Literature). They had been scheduled to stay in the Decagon House for one week from Wednesday, 26th March.
Investigations have revealed the possibility that five of the six deceased were murdered before the fire broke out. The massacre and subsequent fire are considered to surpass even the quadruple murder that occurred last September in the Blue Mansion on the same island and […]
From the evening edition of the A— newspaper (same day):
body discovered in cellar of decagon house
The Decagon House Murders Page 21