by Soji Shimada
Because it was so hard to picture, the instructions were difficult to follow, and it took Okuma a long time.
When the bolts were finally undone, the police officers all tried to rush in at once, but the door hit something and got stuck. Ozaki pushed on it with all his strength, and it opened far enough to reveal something that looked like a sofa stuck behind the door. Weirdly, it was the base of the sofa that was visible from the outside—in other words, it had been tipped over on its back. Ozaki stuck a leg through the gap and tried to kick it away.
“Don’t be so rough!” said Ushikoshi. “You’ll disturb the crime scene. Just get the door open.”
When the door finally opened, the semicircle of onlookers gasped. It wasn’t only the sofa; the coffee table was overturned too. Beyond that lay the bulky, pyjama-clad form of Eikichi Kikuoka. There were clear signs that he’d fought, but now he lay face down, a knife protruding from the right side of his back.
“Mr Kikuoka!” cried Kozaburo.
“Mr President!” This from Kanai.
“Daddy!” blurted Kumi.
The police officers all hurried in.
“Damn it!”
The voice came from directly behind them. As Ozaki turned to look there was a smashing noise, and the flower vase was suddenly in pieces on the floor.
“Damn, damn! I’m sorry.”
Kozaburo had attempted to follow the police into the room and had tripped on the upturned sofa.
The irises lay scattered over Kikuoka’s ample body.
“I’m really terribly sorry. Shall I pick them up?”
“Never mind. It’s fine. We’ll do it. Please stay back. Ozaki, pick up the flowers.”
Ushikoshi surveyed the crime scene. (See Fig. 7.) There was a lot of blood—a little on the bed sheets, some more on the electric blanket that had slipped off and was now on the floor, and much more on the Persian rug that decorated the parquet floor.
The bed was bolted to the floor so it hadn’t moved from its original spot. The only furniture that had been moved was the sofa and the coffee table, and both of these had been tipped on their side. At first glance there didn’t seem to be anything else out of place or broken. There was a gas fire in the fireplace, but it wasn’t on, and the stopcock was closed.
Ushikoshi examined the knife in Kikuoka’s back. Two things surprised him; first, that the knife was stuck very deeply in, right up to the handle. It must have been plunged in there with all the killer’s might. But more surprising was that the knife was identical to the one that had killed Ueda—a hunting knife with a piece of white string tied to the handle. The victim’s pyjamas were soaked in blood, but the string was completely clean.
The knife was in the right side of Kikuoka’s back so it had missed his heart.
“He’s dead,” said Ozaki.
This meant that he must have died of blood loss. Ushikoshi looked back at the door.
“That’s impossible!”
The words had slipped out. But how could it be?…
It was the most solid door he had ever seen. Looking at it now from the inside, he realized that it had been made as sturdy as anyone could wish. The door itself was made of thick oak, and its lock was completely different from the simple one on Ueda’s door. There were three separate locking systems. It was as well constructed as a vault.
Fig. 7
The first lock was a button in the centre of the doorknob that you pushed in, the same type as on all the doors in the mansion. The other two were quite a tour de force. On the upper section and lower sections of the door, there were two bolts installed, with metal cylinders that were at least three centimetres in diameter. Each one required turning 180 degrees until they dropped into place. No matter how adept somebody might be, there was no way the locks could be manipulated from outside the room. And the door frame was just as sturdily constructed—there was not a millimetre of space on any side.
Ushikoshi couldn’t comprehend how the room had got in such disorder and a knife had been plunged into the victim’s back. However, he decided to feign complete calm.
“Ozaki, please escort everyone to the salon. Anan, call the station.”
“What to do about these pieces of vase?” asked Okuma.
“Just pick them up and chuck ’em away.”
Along with my own reputation, thought Ushikoshi morosely.
Another team of around a dozen police officers swarmed up the hill, and the mansion became a hive of activity again. Ushikoshi felt steadily more defeated by the moment. What kind of bloodthirsty monster was responsible for this? Four police officers had spent the night in the house. Could the killer not have shown some restraint? Why did he have to escalate to serial murder? And why the locked-room scenario? It wasn’t as if either of the deaths could have been suicide. You’d have to be crazy to think it. In Kikuoka’s case the knife was in his back, no less!
He’d been publicly humiliated. And this wasn’t going to be easily forgiven. He’d completely miscalculated, made wrong assumptions. As a police officer he shouldn’t have dismissed the possibility that it would turn into a serial murder. He was going to have to start over from the beginning.
That evening he got the time of death from forensics—11 p.m. or within thirty minutes either side.
“Let’s get on with the questioning.”
Ushikoshi addressed the surviving guests, hosts and house staff in the salon.
“Last night between 10.30 and 11.30, what was each of you doing, and where?”
Instantly, Sasaki spoke up.
“We were still in the salon. That police officer was with us.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Togai and me. And Yoshihiko. And then Mr and Mrs Hayakawa and Mr Kajiwara. Six of us.”
“I see. Until what time?”
“Past 2 in the morning. I looked at the clock and saw it was already 2 a.m., so we all hurried off to bed.”
“All six of you?”
“No.”
It was Chikako Hayakawa who spoke.
“Actually, we went to bed around 11.30.”
“‘We’ being you and your husband?”
“And me too,” said Kajiwara.
“So you are saying that all three of you passed by the door of Room 14 around 11.30 last night?”
“No. We don’t go that way. After you go down the stairs, you turn the opposite way to get to our rooms.”
“Hmm. And you didn’t notice any strange noises or figures in the vicinity of Room 14?”
“Well, the wind was so loud.”
“True…”
Ushikoshi decided that it was a close call, but timewise, he could probably exclude the three staff members from the list of suspects. However, it was very significant that three people had passed close by the door of Room 14 around 11.30. The killer must have already done the deed and left by then.
“So the other three of you were in the salon until 2 a.m.?”
“That’s correct. With Constable Anan.”
“Anan, is that right?”
“Yes, it is.”
So Sasaki, Togai and Yoshihiko could safely be excluded too. Kozaburo Hamamoto had spent the evening with Ushikoshi himself, so he could be counted out completely.
“Mr Hayakawa, did you lock up completely last night?”
“I did it around 5 yesterday evening. After the first murder, figured we couldn’t be too careful.”
“Hmm.”
That confirmed that somewhere in this house was a homicidal maniac. In other words, the killer was sitting there right before his eyes, one of these eleven people. He’d already ruled out seven of them. That left Eiko Hamamoto, Kumi Aikura, and Michio and Hatsue Kanai. Four suspects, and most of them women!
“Ms Eiko Hamamoto and Ms Kumi Aikura, where were you?”
“I was in my room.”
“Me too.”
“In other words, neither of you has an alibi?”
The two women turned a little pale.
�
��But…”
Kumi seemed to be working something out in her head.
“To get from Room 1 to Room 14, you’d have to go through the salon. The police constable and the others were all in there.”
“That’s right. That goes for me too. There’s absolutely no way to get to Room 14. That room is in the basement, and has no windows. Even if we’d taken an outdoor route, there’s no way in.”
“I see.”
“Just a… Hang on there!”
Michio Kanai was in a state of panic.
“Does that mean that we’re suspects? I was in Room 9 the whole time. My wife can attest to it!”
“Well, in the case of a husband and wife—”
“No, no… Listen! I’m the one most affected by this murder. And therefore my wife too. Mr Kikuoka’s death is the severest blow to us both. I hate to put it this way, but I’m going to have to say it. At the company, I’ve always been a Kikuoka supporter, among all the company factions. I’ve been his follower, if you like, for fifteen years or so. It’s been thanks to Mr Kikuoka that I’ve got where I am. You can investigate me all you like. Go ahead! But my future without the president is bleak. I can’t even imagine what it’ll be like for me tomorrow now. There was no reason for me to kill him. I have no motive whatsoever. In fact if anyone had tried to kill Mr Kikuoka, I would have had to do everything I could to protect him. For my own sake. There’s no way I could have killed him. Apart from anything, look at me! I’m a wimp. Do you see this feeble body winning a face-off against that man? It wasn’t me. No way. And for all the exact same reasons, it wasn’t my wife either.”
Ushikoshi sighed. This man was quite a talker when cornered. That said, what Kanai claimed was most probably true. And therefore, yet again, there were no suspects. It was incredibly frustrating.
“Mr Hamamoto, would you mind letting us use your library again? We need to have another meeting.”
“Oh, of course. You’re most welcome to use it.”
“Thank you. Come on!”
Ushikoshi hurried his men out of the salon.
SCENE 7
The Library
“Never known anything like this damned case!” said Inspector Okuma. “What the heck is going on? Has the cause of death been confirmed yet?”
“Yes, it has,” said Sergeant Ozaki. “Forensics says it was the knife in his back. They detected some sleep medication in his system too, but nothing like a lethal dose.”
“What is going on in this cursed house?”
“They’ve gone over Room 14 but they haven’t been able to find anything. No hidden doors, secret cabinets, nothing like that. Same as Room 10.”
“What about the ceiling?” asked Ushikoshi.
“Same goes for that too. Just an ordinary ceiling. If we looked inside the walls and above the ceiling, we might find something, but we don’t need to go that far just yet. There’s plenty else they need to do first.”
Okuma decided to throw in his two pence worth.
“I reckon they need to check that ceiling out more carefully. It’s that string. Why was it attached to the knife? Everyone in this house besides the Kanai couple has an alibi for around 11 p.m. But the Kanais have no motive. If the killer is one of the people who slept in this house last night, it’s starting to get a bit like a murder mystery novel. Someone planned this trick ahead of time, so that right around 11 o’clock a knife would plunge itself into Kikuoka’s back. That’s the only explanation. Don’t you agree?”
“Hmm. I suppose we have to agree that that is a possibility,” said Ushikoshi.
“Right, eh? And so if you think that, the ceiling’s gotta be fishy. Because of that string. What if they hung the knife from the ceiling so that it fell onto the bed at 11 o’clock?”
“But we’ve checked the ceiling,” said Ozaki. “It’s made of perfectly normal boards. We’ve knocked all over every inch of it, and there are no gaps, no places where it’s been disturbed. No sign of any kind of trick. And besides, as for that theory… Well, I can I think of at least two reasons why it would be impossible. The first is the height of the ceiling. That knife was buried in Kikuoka’s back right up to the hilt. If it had been hanging from the ceiling and then dropped, there is no way it would have gone in so deeply. In fact it’s not even clear that it would have inflicted a wound at all. A knife dropping from ceiling height might have been painful, but probably no more than a bee sting. It would have just barely touched him and then fallen sideways.
“Then could the killer have dropped it from a higher place? Well, you were sleeping in the room above, Inspector Okuma. To have a knife pierce so deeply, it would have to be dropped from at least one more storey up. But then we still don’t know whether it would have gone in so far. But at the very least the fact remains that the killer couldn’t have dropped it from inside Room 14. He would at least have to have dropped it from above the floor of Room 12.”
“Huh? Yes, I guess you’re right.”
“The other reason it wouldn’t work is the blanket,” Ozaki continued. “The knife would have had to pierce him through an electric blanket. And then it wouldn’t have been in his back. It would have been in his chest.”
“But what if he slept on his stomach?”
“Yes, he might.”
“I know that this is too simple, but it’s all I can come up with… Somewhere in this house there is one more person, someone that none of us has seen. That’s all it could be. No matter how you look at it, not one of those eleven people could be considered a suspect.”
“But is that possible?” asked Ushikoshi. “We’ve already searched that spare room where no one’s staying. Surely no one’s harbouring a killer in their room?”
“Well, we can’t really say.”
“Hmm. For now, while we have them all gathered here, we should perform a thorough search of all the rooms in the house. But I don’t—”
“No, I reckon you’re right,” said Okuma. “Likely a house like this has some secret space that a person could hide in. I say we should focus on that. That could be how it’s being done. In a weird messed-up place like this, I’ll wager you there’s some trick built in.”
“So what you’re saying,” Ozaki interjected, “is that we have to consider that the owners of this place—in other words, Kozaburo Hamamoto and his daughter, Eiko—must have been in on the plan. But when we consider motive, the Hamamotos, together with Sasaki and Togai, have to be excluded off the bat. They had no connection at all with Kazuya Ueda. And obviously Eikichi Kikuoka is counted out now.
“According to the data when we were researching Ueda, Kozaburo Hamamoto and Eikichi Kikuoka don’t go back all that far. They weren’t childhood buddies or anything like that. They met when they each became presidents of their respective companies. It was through work that their relationship began, specifically when Kikuoka Bearings had dealings with Hama Diesel.
“That all began fourteen or fifteen years ago, but it doesn’t seem that the two men were ever particularly close. Their companies didn’t seem to have any friction in their dealings either. Hamamoto and Kikuoka have met fewer than ten times in their lives. Kikuoka had only become Hamamoto’s house guest very recently—only since Hamamoto built this holiday home. It certainly doesn’t seem that they had the kind of relationship that might lead to murder.”
“And they’re not from the same part of Japan?”
“No, completely different. Hamamoto’s from Tokyo, Kikuoka from the Kansai region. All of their employees told the Tokyo police that until their companies became successful, the two men had never met.”
“Eiko had never met Kikuoka either, I assume?”
“Definitely not. Before this visit, Eiko had only ever met Kikuoka last summer when he came to stay.”
“Hmm.”
“Others have confirmed that Kikuoka only visited this house on those two occasions. Sasaki, Togai, Yoshihiko Hamamoto and Haruo Kajiwara – they all say the same thing, that this was the second time they had met Ki
kuoka. However you look at it, there really wasn’t enough time for any kind of feud to have developed between them and Eikichi Kikuoka.”
“Yes, common sense would suggest that all the people you’ve named should be excluded as suspects.”
“Yes, as far as motive is concerned.”
“And yet, in all the cases we’ve ever handled, there has never been such thing as a motiveless crime, except for those committed by some sort of pervert or psychopath,” Ushikoshi pointed out.
“That’s right.”
“Grudges, theft, jealousy, sudden rage, sexual urges, money… all kinds of petty reasons like these.”
“And of the names you didn’t mention, there’s the secretary and the protégé and his wife. But there’s also the housekeeper couple, the Hayakawas. How about them?” asked Ushikoshi hopefully.
“Until yesterday we knew nothing about them, but now we’ve found something. We received new information today. Tokyo HQ told us that Mr and Mrs Hayakawa had a daughter around twenty. That daughter met Kikuoka here when he was visiting last summer.”
“Aha!”
Immediately, Ushikoshi and Okuma’s eyes lit up.
“On the curvy side, fair-skinned and rather attractive according to reports. I don’t have access to a photo of her though. If you’d like one I think we can ask the Hayakawas.”
“Got it. And then?”
“The daughter used to work at a bar called Himiko in Asakusabashi in Taito Ward, Tokyo. In August of this year, she came up here for a visit. Kikuoka probably showed an interest in her—apparently, he was an infamous womanizer. Everyone says that about him.”
“Was Kikuoka still single?”
“Far from it. He has a wife and two children—a high school-aged son and a daughter in middle school.”
“Really? He had plenty of energy, then, that one.”
“Kikuoka, although he seemed an open-minded, generous type, also had a rather underhand side to him. It seems that if anyone ever showed him ingratitude at work, he would seem to laugh it off, but later he’d always be sure to get his revenge.”