by Soji Shimada
On the other hand, she reflected, it wasn’t all that surprising. Even Kumi herself was finding it difficult to reimagine last night’s events in the cheerful morning light. The terror she had experienced now felt as if it had been a dream after all. The Kanais were outright smirking.
“So you think the roaring man and the one with the strange face at your window were one and the same?” Yoshihiko asked.
“Yes… Well, probably.”
To be honest, this was the first time Kumi had really made the connection.
“But there are no footprints in the snow.”
Sasaki’s voice came from a little way off. Everyone turned to look. He’d opened the window and was leaning out observing the back garden.
“That area over there would be right under your bedroom window, but there’s not a single footprint. The snow is pristine.”
Hearing this, Kumi felt as if she were in another dream right now. She went silent. What could that have been last night? That horrifying face that wasn’t quite human?
Togai, who had spent the rest of the previous evening by himself, drawing a diagram of the flower bed, was the next to appear in the salon, followed closely by Kozaburo Hamamoto.
“Hey! Weather’s really cleared up, hasn’t it?”
Kikuoka was preceded by his usual bellow. Everyone was now awake and gathered in the salon.
The morning sun was indeed radiant. Now that it had risen sufficiently in the sky, the ground had turned into a giant reflecting plate and was almost painfully dazzling to look at.
Kikuoka, too, was ignorant of all the uproar involving Kumi the previous night. He explained that he’d taken a sleeping pill. Knowing well already what his reaction would be, Kumi didn’t mention it to him.
The familiar shrill tones of the mistress of the mansion suddenly filled the room.
“Hello, everyone! It’s about time for breakfast. Shall we move to the table?”
The topic of conversation at the breakfast table was still Kumi’s adventure. After a while, Kikuoka noticed that his chauffeur was missing.
“Looks like young Ueda’s not up yet. Typical! He’s always waltzing in late like he thinks he’s the boss.”
Eiko realized that Kikuoka was right. But she couldn’t decide whether to go and call him or not.
“I’ll go and get him,” Sasaki offered. He opened the French windows, and stepping easily out into the snow, set off in the direction of Room 10, where Ueda was staying.
“Please, let’s not wait for them, or the food’ll be cold,” Eiko urged the guests, and everyone began to eat.
Sasaki took rather longer than expected, but eventually he returned.
“Is he up?” Eiko asked.
“Well…” Sasaki hesitated. “It’s a bit weird.”
Everyone stopped eating to stare at him.
“There’s no answer.”
“Maybe he’s just gone out somewhere?”
“No, I don’t think so. The door’s locked from the inside.”
Eiko’s chair made a loud scraping noise as she got swiftly to her feet. Togai got up too. Kikuoka and Kanai exchanged looks, and then the whole company got to their feet and followed Eiko out into the snow. They couldn’t help noticing that there were only two sets of footprints in the soft snow—Sasaki’s—going out and coming back.
“It was strange that he didn’t reply but there’s one more thing…”
Sasaki pointed towards the west corner of the main building where Room 10 was situated. There was a dark figure lying in the snow. The whole party recoiled in shock. If that body had been lying in the snow for a while, then it must surely be dead. A corpse. Was that Kazuya Ueda?
Their second reaction was to turn and stare at Sasaki. How had he not mentioned this already? And why was he so composed right now?
Sasaki saw the way everyone was looking at him, but he apparently had nothing to say.
Still confused by Sasaki’s demeanour, the guests began to make their way towards the corpse. The closer they got, the stranger the sight. Strewn around the figure in the snow was a whole array of objects, almost as if his possessions had been thrown there with him. But on closer examination they were not exactly his possessions.
Some members of the party, including the butler, Kohei Hayakawa, and Kumi Aikura were seized with a bad premonition and found their feet barely able to move any farther.
When they finally reached the scene, everyone, without exception, was utterly dumbfounded. But at least they finally understood Sasaki’s strange nonchalance.
Kozaburo Hamamoto let out a great shout and fell to his knees, reaching out to touch the figure, half buried by the snow. It was one of his antiques, a life-sized puppet-like doll. Everyone was amazed of course that this doll, which should have been up in Room 3, the antiques and curios storeroom, was lying out here in the snow, but what was more shocking was the way its limbs had been pulled apart. There was only one leg left attached to the body; both arms and the other leg were scattered around in the snow. Why?
For Sasaki and Togai, Kikuoka and Kanai, and all of the house staff, this wasn’t the first time they’d seen this doll. Even without looking too closely they knew at once what it was. It was an antique that Kozaburo had bought in the former Czechoslovakia, back when he’d lived in Europe. He had nicknamed it “Golem”.
Right now it had been pulled apart at the arms and one leg joint, and the various wooden pieces lay partially buried in the snow. Kozaburo immediately began to gather them up, carefully brushing the snow off each piece.
Sasaki wanted to tell him to leave it alone, not to touch anything, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. Did something like this qualify as a crime scene?
“I can’t find his head!”
Kozaburo sounded desperate. Everyone else immediately began to search for the doll’s head, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t anywhere around.
The imprints left after removing Golem’s arms, legs and torso from the snow were rather deep, and so it could be assumed they had been scattered there while it was still snowing.
Kozaburo announced he was going to take Golem back to the salon and set off in that direction. To him, the doll was a precious collector’s piece.
The rest of the group decided not to wait for the lord of the manor’s return, and headed for the concrete steps that led up to the middle floor, right between the outward-facing doors of Rooms 10 and 11. There was snow on the steps, but again only Sasaki’s footprints were visible.
After climbing the stairs up to Room 10, Kikuoka banged loudly on the door.
“Ueda! Hey, it’s me! Ueda?”
But there was no reply.
Next they tried to look in through the window, but it was made of frosted glass with wire mesh running through it, and they could see nothing at all of the interior of the room. Not to mention that the curtains were apparently closed. On top of that, there were solid iron bars protecting the window on the outside. Kikuoka slid a hand through the bars and tried to open the window, but it was securely locked from the inside.
“Break in if you need to.” They turned around to see Kozaburo standing behind them.
“That door opens outwards! You’ve gotta be kidding me!” boomed Kikuoka.
“It does, but it’s not all that sturdy. Perhaps we could try to break it down.”
Kikuoka threw his huge frame against the door several times, but it didn’t budge.
“Hoy, Kanai, you give it a try.”
Kanai shrunk back in fear.
“Me? I don’t think I’ve got a chance. I’m just a lightweight.”
Ironically, the man most suited to this kind of a challenge was the one on the other side of the door.
“Come on, boys,” said Eiko firmly. “One of you give it a try!”
Realizing it was his moment to impress his queen, Togai hurled himself against the door with all his might, but the only thing that went flying was his glasses.
The next to try was Sasaki
, then Kajiwara, the chef, but strangely not one of the men thought to pair up for the task. However, when Eiko and Hatsue simultaneously threw themselves against the door, there was a cracking sound and the top bent slightly inwards. After a few further shoves, it broke completely.
With Hatsue in the lead, the whole party rushed into the room, to be met by the very sight they had begun to dread. Kazuya Ueda lay there in his pyjamas, the handle of a hunting knife protruding from his chest, the dark stain on his pyjama top already partially dried.
Kumi screamed, and clung to Kikuoka. Eiko and Hatsue stood there in stunned silence. Kozaburo was the only one among the men to gasp out loud. It was the bizarre positioning of Ueda’s body…
Ueda wasn’t in his bed. He was lying on his back on the linoleum flooring at the foot of the bed, his right wrist bound with white cord. The other end was tied around the nearest foot of the metal bed frame, so that he appeared to be raising his right arm over his head. The bed didn’t look as if it had been moved from its normal position by the window.
Ueda’s left hand was unbound, but it too was high above his head. In other words, one hand was tied up, the other not, but both stretched out above his head, almost like a gesture of victory.
But even stranger than the placing of his arms, was that of his legs. He lay twisted to the side at the waist, both legs straight out to his right side, almost as if he were dancing. To be more precise, while the right leg was bent at approximately 90 degrees to his body, the left was placed slightly behind it and lower, at what must be around 110 or 120 degrees.
Just behind his back—to his left, there was a dark reddish-brown spot about five centimetres in diameter, drawn on the linoleum. As all four fingers of his free left hand were smeared in blood and a layer of grey dust, presumably he had drawn it himself. Which would mean that after tracing the circle he had, of his own free will, raised his left hand above his head…
But the thing that caught everyone’s attention was the hunting knife in Ueda’s chest. Attached to its handle was a metre-long piece of white string. The part about ten centimetres from the hilt was trailing slightly into the bloodstain on Ueda’s pyjamas, and was tinged faintly brown. However, the blood had already stopped flowing. From the expression on his face, it was clear he was no longer in pain. (See Fig. 3.)
Fig. 3
It was obvious that Ueda was dead; nevertheless Sasaki, the medical student, got down on the floor and checked the body.
“We’d better call the police.”
Kohei Hayakawa, the butler, set off immediately by car for the general store in the village at the foot of the hill, where there would be a telephone.
It wasn’t long before uniformed police turned up in full force, roping off Room 10 and drawing a chalk outline on the floor. The body of Ueda was long-since cold, but due perhaps to some misunderstanding, an ambulance also came tearing up the hill, snow chains around its tyres. The white clothing of the paramedics became jumbled in with the crowd of dark police uniforms, and what was once a peaceful hermit’s retreat buzzed with activity.
Guests, staff, hosts alike were confined to the salon, listening anxiously to the disturbance that filled the Ice Floe Mansion. It was still early in the morning, and for most of the guests this was only the beginning of the second day of their stay. Kikuoka and the Kanais had arrived barely more than twelve hours ago. Already something like this happening—what on earth could be next? They’d enjoyed just one dinner and now it looked as if they were to spend the rest of their stay surrounded by police officers. Perhaps they would be released and allowed to go home as scheduled, but if they were unlucky, they couldn’t help wondering whether they’d end up under house arrest indefinitely.
A plainclothes police officer appeared in the salon. He was ruddy-cheeked and well built, with an air of importance about him—most likely a homicide detective. In a superior tone he introduced himself as Detective Inspector Okuma from the nearby Wakkanai Police Station, seated himself at the table and proceeded to question everyone present. However, there didn’t seem to be any obvious pattern to his questioning—he just seemed to be asking whatever occurred to him in the moment, and there was a lot of confusion.
When eventually he seemed to be done with his vague line of questioning, Okuma had one more.
“So where’s this doll you’re talking about?”
Kozaburo had put Golem back together again, minus his missing head, and he was still there with them in the salon.
“What the… Is this it? Huh! Where’s it normally kept?”
Kozaburo picked up Golem and led Okuma up to the antiques display room, Room 3. When they returned, Okuma seemed amazed, chatting in simple layman’s terms about all the precious items in Kozaburo’s collection, but after a while he fell silent and seemed to be thinking something over. For a short while he managed to give off the air of a competent detective. Eventually, he brought his hand to his mouth and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Would you agree that what we have here is a classic locked-room murder mystery?”
That had been pretty much obvious from the start.
Detective Inspector Okuma was such a bumbling yokel that nobody really felt that this was a serious murder investigation until around four o’clock that afternoon when Detective Chief Inspector Saburo Ushikoshi from the Sapporo City Police Headquarters turned up. He was accompanied by a younger detective named Ozaki.
The officers pulled up chairs to the dinner table, and introduced themselves. Then Chief Inspector Ushikoshi spoke.
“Bit of a weird place, this.”
His tone was excessively casual. Although his younger colleague, Detective Sergeant Ozaki, seemed rather quick-witted, Ushikoshi came across as a more simple, matter-of-fact type. From first impressions, there didn’t seem to be much difference between him and the Wakkanai police inspector, Okuma.
“It takes a while to get used to this floor,” continued Ushikoshi. “You feel as if you’re going to take a tumble.”
Young Ozaki looked scornfully around the salon, but said nothing. His senior colleague turned to address the assembled residents of the Ice Floe Mansion and their guests. He didn’t get up from his seat.
“All right then, everyone, we’ve introduced ourselves to you. Or rather, I should say that we are police officers and therefore some of the most boring people on this planet. Apart from our names, there’s not much more to tell about us. That being the case, I think it’s about time you all did us the honour of introducing yourselves. If possible, we would like to hear where you usually reside, what kind of work you are employed in and what brings you here to this mansion. Any more details, such as what your relationship was to the deceased man, I will be asking you later when I interview you all individually, so there’s no need to cover that right now.”
Just as Detective Chief Inspector Ushikoshi had said, there was nothing interesting at all about the three detectives. Not in their clothing, nor their manner of talking, which, although polite, suggested that no scene of carnage would ever perturb them in the slightest; their facial expressions slightly intimidated the assembled guests and left them a little tongue-tied. Each gave their own faltering self-introduction, which Ushikoshi occasionally interrupted with a politely phrased question, but he took no notes.
When everyone had finished, Ushikoshi addressed them all in a manner which suggested that now this was what he had really wanted to say all along.
“Right, I’m sorry to have to say this, but it has to be said sooner or later. From what I understand, the victim, Kazuya Ueda, is not from around here. Yesterday was only the second time in his life that he had visited this mansion, or had even set foot on the island of Hokkaido. Which means that it would be very difficult to imagine that he has friends or acquaintances in this area, and certainly, no one who might have paid him a visit last night.
“So was it a robbery? It doesn’t look like it. His wallet containing 246,000 yen was in a relatively accessible spot in the inside poc
ket of his jacket, but it wasn’t touched.
“The strangest aspect of this case is his bedroom door, which was locked from the inside. Let’s imagine that a complete stranger knocked on his bedroom door: it’s extremely unlikely that he would have opened it just like that. And even if he had opened it and let a stranger in, there would have been some sort of a struggle and voices would have been raised. But there was no evidence of a struggle in the room. What’s more, Mr Ueda was ex-military, and therefore physically much stronger than the average person. There’s no way he would have been overpowered so easily.
“Which leads me to suspect that the murderer must have been known to, or even close to, the victim. But as I said earlier, Mr Ueda had no friends living in this area.
“What we have been able to ascertain from talking to you, and from our own preliminary investigations, is that Kazuya Ueda was born in Okayama Prefecture and grew up in Osaka. At the age of twenty-five he enlisted in the Ground Self-Defence Forces, was based in Tokyo and Gotemba for a while, but was discharged three years later. At the age of twenty-nine he joined Kikuoka Bearings, and was thirty years old when he died. Ever since his time in the Self-Defence Forces, he was the unsociable type, and doesn’t appear to have any close friends. A man like Ueda is extremely unlikely to have friends or acquaintances up here in Hokkaido. We also believe it unlikely that someone from the Tokyo or Osaka areas would come all the way up here just to pay him a visit. In conclusion, there are no people in Kazuya Ueda’s close circle besides the people in this room right now.”
Everyone exchanged uneasy glances.
“Now it would be different if this were Sapporo or Tokyo, or another major city, but if a stranger were to turn up in this remote location, someone would be bound to notice him or her. Down in the village there’s only one inn. And perhaps because of the season, last night they didn’t have a single guest.