The Decagon House Murders

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  He’d had enough of murders. He’d had enough of seeing corpses. He cried out in his heart. He lost control over himself and couldn’t suppress the sudden urge to throw up. He knew that both his body and mind were at their limit.

  But he couldn’t just give up now. He couldn’t run away.

  In his mind, distorted by pain, flashed the face of his love who would never return.

  He was sitting at the decagonal table together with the remaining two, Ellery and Poe. They were nearing the last act.

  For Poe, the situation seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. Ellery denied he had been serious about it afterwards, but Poe was close to being fingered as the murderer.

  Earlier, Morisu had thought his heart would stop beating when Ellery was so interested in the footprints at the scene of Leroux’s murder. Don’t panic. It should be OK. Don’t panic, don’t panic… he kept telling himself, as he fought the urge to throw up again. Then Ellery turned away and Morisu sighed with relief.

  But now, as they sat round the table and the rain began to fall outside, it was clear Ellery hadn’t forgotten the footprints at all.

  Morisu began to worry that he might have made an oversight. Perhaps a fatal one. He ran after Ellery to the Blue Mansion and was told to memorize the footprints as they were. It was then that he realized his mistake. He cursed his own stupidity. It was all over, he thought.

  As the number of victims grew, Morisu knew the number of suspects would narrow and he had anticipated it would become more difficult for him to manoeuvre. He had some things prepared in case the situation called for him to take drastic measures. In the worst-case scenario, he might need to fight with multiple people. He always carried a small knife in the pocket of his coat just in case.

  As Ellery proceeded with his examination of the footprints, he thought several times of attacking Ellery and Poe there and then with the knife. But if he acted rashly and was taken down by them, then the game would be up. At this point, he still couldn’t be sure whether he would be accused or not.

  Morisu felt the pressure rise as he listened to Ellery’s clear voice outlining his theory, all the while thinking about how he could deal with his two opponents.

  Thankfully Ellery’s thoughts had gone off in another direction and reached the wrong conclusion. He thought the murderer was an outsider, not one of the three surviving Mystery Club members.

  Ellery was thinking of Nakamura Seiji. He really believed that Seiji was still alive. Morisu had never thought that his suggestion of Nakamura Seiji would come back to protect him at such a crucial time.

  His head cleared.

  Ellery ran out of cigarettes and Poe passed his cigarette case to Ellery. Morisu decided that this was the perfect opportunity.

  He quickly took a certain object out of his coat pocket. It was a small, thin box. Inside it was a single Lark cigarette that he had laced with potassium cyanide. He had been carrying this weapon around from the start, planning to use it on Poe if the chance arose.

  He also said he wanted a cigarette and was passed the cigarette case. He made the switch underneath the table. He took out two cigarettes, put one of them in his mouth and the other in his pocket. Then he placed the poisoned cigarette in the cigarette case.

  Poe was a heavy smoker, so he would probably smoke another one the moment he got the cigarette case back. There was a chance he wouldn’t smoke and the cigarette case would be passed on again to Ellery, but it did not matter as long as one of them died. He could work out some way to deal with the last remaining person.

  It was Poe who smoked the poisoned cigarette.

  6

  And then only two of them were left in the hall.

  Even now that Poe had died, Ellery was still convinced that Seiji was the murderer. He showed no sign of suspicion towards Morisu at all.

  It did not seem as though Morisu would need to finish the job quickly. He decided to await his opportunity calmly. For, if possible, he wanted the last person to commit “suicide” for him.

  Foolish Ellery…

  Ellery helped him all the way until the end.

  Ellery thought himself the great detective, but he was nothing more than a helpless clown. By chance, Morisu had actually predicted this outcome. “The Detective” and “the Murderer” were the final two survivors.

  But Morisu had to admit he was impressed by Ellery’s master­ful reasoning, starting from the eleven-sided cup, which led them to the eleventh room inside the Decagon House. He himself had been puzzled by the existence of that cup. He could never have dreamt that it was the key to a secret room, even though he had been told about Nakamura Seiji’s love of gimmicks by Kawaminami on the mainland.

  Even so, this development did not endanger Morisu’s position. The discovery of the hidden room actually helped solidify Ellery’s theory that Seiji was the murderer.

  The two of them entered the underground room. Ellery started searching for a path leading outside. Then they discovered that horrifying corpse.

  It came to him the moment he saw the body. It was the body of the gardener who disappeared, Yoshikawa Sei’ichi.

  Yoshikawa had been murdered six months ago. Attacked by the insane Seiji, he had fled from the Blue Mansion to this place, where he had died. Or perhaps Seiji himself had dragged the gardener here to kill him.

  He said this to Ellery, who stood quietly in front of the body. Ellery nodded several times, his hand still covering his nose, saying:

  “Indeed. So that means that Seiji got his body double from somewhere else, in the incident last year.”

  He continued.

  “Let’s go, Van. We need to see where this passage leads.”

  They walked around the body and stepped deeper inside the passage. I’ll just accompany you until the end, then, Morisu thought.

  He also started to wonder whether Ellery might actually be suspicious of him now.

  It was, for example, obvious from the dust lying on the floor that neither Nakamura Seiji nor anyone else had entered this place for a long time. So perhaps Ellery was merely pretending to suspect nothing and waiting for a chance to take him down.

  Morisu followed Ellery into the darkness, his right hand holding the knife in his pocket.

  The passage ended at a door. They could hear the sound of waves nearby.

  Ellery opened the door. The sound of waves grew louder.

  They were standing halfway down the cliff facing the inlet. Outside the door was a little ledge like a small terrace. Beneath it was only deep darkness. It was quite a distance to the water surface.

  Ellery carefully watched his feet as he took a step outside and let the light of his torch check their surroundings. He turned round with a satisfied expression and said:

  “This door is at an angle that makes it hard to spot from either above on the cliff or below from the sea. And with a little effort, it would be possible to make one’s way to the stone steps running along the rock face. Seiji must have used this way to get into the Decagon House.”

  “I’m sure Seiji will come again tonight,” said Ellery as they returned to the hall. “And we found the secret passage. Whether he comes through that passage or the front door, we have nothing to fear as it’s two against one. Let’s try to capture him.”

  Morisu nodded as he made coffee for two. He had secretly taken a number of sleeping tablets from the bottle the day Poe handed them out and he slipped several of them into one of the cups, making sure Ellery didn’t notice.

  With an innocent air, he placed the cup in front of Ellery. Without a hint of suspicion, Ellery drank all of it.

  “I’m a bit sleepy. Yes, with much of the tension gone now… Van, would you mind? I need to take a little nap. Just wake me if something happens.”

  That was the last line spoken by the great detective before he lef
t the stage.

  Soon Ellery was lying with his face on the table, sleeping innocently. Morisu made sure Ellery was fast asleep, carried him to his room and laid him on the bed.

  He had decided that Ellery would need to commit “suicide by burning” for him. The sleeping pills could be discovered from an autopsy of Ellery’s corpse eventually, but he reckoned that the police would discover the corpse of Yoshikawa Sei’ichi, come to the conclusion that Nakamura Seiji’s death last year was suicide and see this as a copycat case. The circumstances of that case were similar to this one, so that would no doubt also influence the police’s opinion.

  The rain finally stopped. It didn’t seem as though it would start again soon.

  He went down to the inlet and prepared his boat, then returned to the ruins of the Blue Mansion to retrieve the kerosene from the underground storage. He dug up Orczy’s buried left hand, removed the ring and returned the hand to her room.

  The remaining plates, clothes with bloodstains, the poison, the knife: everything he needed to destroy, he moved to Ellery’s room. He opened the window and doused the room in kerosene. After pouring it around the other rooms too, he carried the propane-gas tank to the hall and opened the valve. He went outside, moved to the open window, soaked Ellery with the remaining kerosene and threw the empty tank inside.

  That seemed to rouse Ellery. But by that time Morisu had already thrown an oil lighter at the kerosene-soaked bed.

  He jumped several steps back and closed his eyes.

  The after-image of the fire on the back of his eyelids danced and swirled violently.

  The next morning, after a long, almost eternal, sleep he was awakened by a phone call from his uncle telling him about the incident. He called Kawaminami and arranged to meet him in S— Town.

  But first he went to his uncle’s house and borrowed his car, saying he was going to J— Cape to see what was happening on the island. He hurried there, as he said, and put the boat and gas capsule he had hidden there in the boot. At that time, everyone had their eyes on Tsunojima, not on J— Cape.

  After returning the car to his uncle, he put the boat back in storage in the garage. Having finished everything, he went to the harbour to meet with Kawaminami and Shimada.

  7

  After the meeting in the box room of the K— University Mystery Club had ended, Morisu Kyōichi quickly hurried home alone.

  Ellery, or Matsu’ura Junya, had killed his five friends and committed suicide by burning, because of some unknown motive or possibly insanity. It appeared that the police had settled on that. A definite motive had not come up in that day’s meeting, but several suggestive tales about the kind of person Ellery was seemed to have caught the interest of Inspector Shimada.

  Everything had gone even better than he had hoped.

  He had already got rid of two of the paintings he had made to prove his alibi on the mainland. He had done everything that needed to be done. He had nothing to fear any more.

  Everything was over now, Morisu thought.

  It was finally over. His revenge was complete.

  EPILOGUE

  The sea at dusk. A time of peace.

  The waves, shining red in the setting sun, came from far away to wash against the shore and retreat back whence they came.

  Just as he had once before, he was sitting alone on the breakwater, staring at the sea at sunset.

  Chiori…

  He had been repeating her name in his mind for a while.

  Chiori, Chiori…

  He closed his eyes and the fire of that night came back to vivid life. A giant fire of remembrance, which enveloped the decagonal trap that caught his prey and burned through the night.

  Her image joined that sight in his mind. He tried calling out to her. But she was looking away and did not answer him.

  What’s wrong, Chiori?

  The flames danced more furiously and burned brighter. The image of his love was caught in the fire, until its contour was swallowed completely and she disappeared.

  Silently he stood up.

  Several children were playing in the water. He stood there, staring at the view through narrowed eyes.

  “Chiori.”

  He muttered her name once again, this time out loud. But she did not appear any more, whether he closed his eyes or looked up at the sky. A fathomless sense of emptiness tortured him, as if something had been ripped away from his heart.

  The sea was about to blend in with the night. The waves carrying the last light of the setting sun lapped silently.

  Suddenly, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around in surprise.

  “Hey, it’s been a while.”

  A tall, lean man with a friendly smile was standing there.

  “I asked the caretaker of your apartment building and he told me you often come down here to the shore.”

  “Oh.”

  “You look down. I’ve been watching you for a while, but I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked as though you were thinking about something.”

  “Not really. But why did you come looking for me?”

  “Oh, nothing important.” The man sat down next to where he was standing. He put a cigarette in his mouth as he muttered: “One a day.”

  “It’s been a while since everything that happened,” the man went on. The police seem to be all done with their investigation. What do you think?”

  “What do I think? Ellery did it.”

  “No, no, I am asking you whether you think there might be a different truth behind it all.”

  What is this man trying to tell me?

  He looked out to the sea in silence. The man looked up at him as he lit his “one a day”.

  “I told you once I thought that Kō might be the murderer, but as I have an abundance of spare time, I tried casting the nets of my imagination wider and I caught an interesting idea. And I’d like you to listen to it.”

  Could he have seen through everything?

  He didn’t answer and turned away from the man’s eyes.

  This man… Impossible.

  “Don’t be so cold and please listen to me for a while. It’s a rather incredible idea and you might even laugh at it. You might even scold me again, but just consider it simply a product of my imagination.”

  “Please keep your ideas to yourself,” he said in a flat voice. “Mr Shimada, it’s a thing of the past now.”

  He turned around, ignoring the man’s calls, and went down to where the children were playing.

  He thought it pitiful how disconcerted he felt.

  Impossible.

  He shook his head heavily and tried to calm himself.

  Impossible. He could not have noticed it. Even if that man’s fertile imagination had by chance brought him to the truth, so what? There was no evidence. There was nothing he could do now.

  Right, Chiori?

  He asked his girlfriend. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t even show herself.

  Why?

  His anxiety turned in an instant into a tsunami. The heavy, wet sand clung to his feet. And then, there at his feet, he saw something glistening.

  This is…

  He crouched down with a stunned expression on his face. His mouth twitched and he let out a deep sigh.

  It was a small green glass bottle. It had been half buried in the sand at the water’s edge. There were several pieces of folded paper inside.

  Oh.

  He picked the bottle up with a faint, bitter smile. He turned round to the man who was still sitting on the breakwater, looking at him.

  So this is to be my judgement?

  The children were about to go home. He slowly walked to them with the bottle in his hand.

  “Hey, kid.”

  He stopped o
ne of the boys.

  “Could you do me a favour?”

  The boy looked up at him with puzzled eyes. Smiling as calmly as the sea in the evening, he gave the bottle to the boy.

  “Could you give this to that man over there?”

  About the Author

  YUKITO AYATSUJI (born 1960) is a Japanese writer of mystery and horror novels and one of the founding members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, dedicated to the writing of fair-play mysteries inspired by the Golden Age greats. He started writing as a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, which inspired the club featured in The Decagon House Murders and has nurtured many of Japan’s greatest crime writers. The Decagon House Murders was Ayatsuji’s debut and is considered a landmark crime novel in Japan, where it revived the traditional puzzle mystery format and inspired a new generation of writers. It is the first of Ayatsuji’s works to be translated into English.

  HO-LING WONG is a translator currently living in the Netherlands. He is also both a Member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan and former member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club. He did not commit any murders on Mystery Club excursions.

  also available from

  PUSHKIN VERTIGO

  ‘Readers will delight in the blind turns, red herrings and dubious alibis… Ingenious and compelling’ Economist

  ‘The solution is one of the most original that I’ve ever read’

  Anthony Horowitz, author of Magpie Murders

  Copyright

  Pushkin Press

  71–75 Shelton Street

  London WC2H 9JQ

  Jukkakukan no Satsujin Shinsou Kaiteiban

  © 2007 Yukito Ayatsuji. All Rights Reserved.