Murder in the Crooked House

by Soji Shimada

  “Me, I don’t think anyone got into Room 10 by way of that door facing the outside. But the ventilation hole was facing inwards towards the rest of the house. Someone got up to no good with that open hole, I’ll warrant.”

  “But it was way up high in the wall.”

  “Well, the only other explanation is that the bugger must have got in using some secret passageway, or some other trick like—”

  “Chief!”

  Ozaki was back.

  “The doll’s right hand—there’s string wrapped around it.”

  “What?”

  “Come and see!”

  The three detectives rushed out of the library and over to the interior-facing window of the Tengu Room. The Golem doll was sitting just under the window, leaning back against the wall, and as Ozaki had said, wrapped around its right wrist was a piece of white string.

  “This stinks,” said Ushikoshi. “Let’s go back. I’m not falling for this kind of bullshit.”

  “The suspect must have done this.”

  “They must have. Right after forensics returned it to the house. Someone’s playing silly buggers with us.”

  They went back to their seats in the library.

  “Getting back to the matter of the footprints, if they were made to disappear by some sort of clever ruse, I don’t think it would mean very much. Since for Kikuoka’s murder it’s almost one hundred per cent certain that the killer is inside the house. If, back at the time of Ueda’s murder, the killer had already planned to kill Kikuoka next, he might as well have left the footprints to cast suspicion on an outsider for the crime.”

  “Perhaps… Well, never mind. So in that case, where are we?”

  “We’re back to assuming that there were never any footprints in the first place, and that the killer used some kind of trick to commit the murder from inside the house—”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all along!” said Okuma loudly.

  “But how does that doll fit in with things? Did it fly through the air under its own power and land out there in the snow? It’s not possible. And even though we’re quite sure that someone in this house is responsible for these murders, there would still have been a surprising amount we could have learnt from footprints. For example, whether they were made by a man’s or a woman’s shoe. The stride can also tell us their height and their gender. If the length of the stride seems to indicate it’s a woman, but the shoes are definitely a man’s, then we could suspect a woman deliberately wearing a man’s shoes. It would still have been safer to get rid of the footprints. As much as possible, anyway.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  Taken off guard, the three detectives all answered at once. The door opened very slowly to reveal a very nervous-looking Kohei Hayakawa.

  “Um… Sorry to disturb you, but lunch is almost ready.”

  “Ah. Is it? Thanks.”

  Hayakawa started to close the door again.

  “Mr Hayakawa? Did Kikuoka’s death bring you some relief?”

  Ushikoshi was as blunt in tone as he was in words. Hayakawa’s eyes widened and his face turned ashen. His hand gripped the doorknob.

  “Why are you asking me a question like that? You think I had any connection with—”

  “Mr Hayakawa, please don’t underestimate the police. We’ve looked into the business with your daughter, Yoshie. Tokyo police know that you attended your daughter’s funeral in Tokyo.”

  Hayakawa’s shoulders slumped.

  “Please, take a seat.”

  “No, thank you. I’d rather stay standing… I don’t have anything to tell you.”

  “He told you to sit!” yelled Ozaki.

  Hayakawa shuffled towards the detectives and sat down.

  “Last time we spoke, you sat in that very chair and deliberately hid the truth from us. Now we can forgive that just the once, but if you try lying to us again, I have to tell you we won’t be able to let it go.”

  “Inspector, I don’t mean to hide anything from you. I wasn’t hiding anything back then either. I wanted to tell you. The words were right there on the tip of my tongue. But even though Mr Kikuoka is dead now, at that time it was Mr Ueda who had been killed. I thought bringing up that story would have seemed suspicious…”

  “And how about today? Now it’s Kikuoka who’s dead!”

  “And you suspect me? How on earth could I have done it? It’s true that when my daughter died I hated Mr Kikuoka for it. My wife too—we lost our only child. I’m not denying it. But I couldn’t kill him, no matter how much I might have thought about it. I was in the entranceway between the salon and the kitchen. And besides I’m not permitted to go into the rooms.”

  Ushikoshi stared Hayakawa straight in the eyes, as if he were trying to see through a keyhole into his mind. There was a long silence.

  “So while Mr Kikuoka was still in the salon, you didn’t go into his room at all?”

  “Certainly not! Ms Hamamoto has specifically told us not to go into the rooms when we have guests staying, but anyway, with that room, there isn’t even a key. There’s no way to get in.”

  “Hmm. I have another question for you. This morning Mr Kajiwara went out to the storage shed to fetch an axe and a stepladder. Isn’t that storage shed kept locked?”

  “It is kept locked.”

  “But this morning I didn’t see him taking a key.”

  “You have to put in the right numbers. It’s one of those whatchama—”

  “You mean a combination padlock?”

  “Right.”

  “Does everyone know the combination?”

  “Everyone who lives in this house does. Do you want to know it?”

  “No, no. That’s fine. We’ll ask you if we need it. So you’re saying that the guests didn’t have the combination, but Mr and Ms Hamamoto, Mr Kajiwara, you and your wife did?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nobody else at all would know it?”

  “No. Nobody.”

  “I understand. Thank you, that’s all for now. Please let our hosts know that we’ll be down for lunch in about thirty minutes.”

  Hayakawa was out of the seat in an instant, a look of relief on his face. As the door closed behind him, Ozaki turned to his boss.

  “That old man could have killed Ueda.”

  “Yeah. The fact that he doesn’t have a motive is the fatal weakness in that theory.”

  Ushikoshi sounded as if he were only half joking.

  “But it would be physically possible. If the husband and wife had colluded, it would have been easier. Anyway, someone working as a butler probably knows the ins and outs of the house far better than the master of the house.”

  “As for motive, how about this? They planned to kill Kikuoka, but Ueda was his bodyguard, so they had to get rid of him first.”

  “That’s pretty feeble. If that was their motive, then the same night they did Ueda in was also the perfect opportunity to knock off Kikuoka too. If Ueda was a bodyguard, there was only one of him, and he was miles away from his employer, stuck in some sort of storeroom that could only be accessed from the outside. They had the perfect conditions to murder Kikuoka. The suspect wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Kikuoka, and only Kikuoka.

  “After all, Ueda was still young, he had the physical strength of an ex-Self-Defence Forces soldier. Kikuoka was much older, and quite overweight. Even Hayakawa might have stood a chance against him. There was absolutely no need to kill Ueda.”

  “But Ueda knew about the business with Yoshie Hayakawa. He could have caused trouble afterwards for the Hayakawas. Maybe they killed him to silence him.”

  “I suppose it’s possible. But then wouldn’t the Kanais and Kumi Aikura be even more of a problem? For sure Kikuoka wasn’t particularly chatty with Ueda. He probably hadn’t ever brought up the topic of Yoshie Hayakawa with him.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Even if the Hayakawas did it, I still don’t understand the locke
d room situation in Room 14. And anyway, at the time of death the two of them were definitely still in the salon. There’s nothing we can do about that. So for now we just have to throw the whole problem of motive to the winds, and narrow it down to whoever could physically have been the murderer.”

  “Yes, I suppose so… Which means…”

  “Which means Mr and Mrs Kanai. And if we’re going to stretch the point, Kumi and Eiko too.”

  “Eiko?”

  “That’s the problem we’re faced with. We have to look at absolutely every possibility.”

  “But how was Kikuoka killed? Even if we try to narrow down the list of suspects, have you got even a rough idea of how it was done?”

  “I think I might have.”

  “How?”

  The two men turned to stare at Ushikoshi. Ozaki seemed eager to hear his boss’s theory, but Okuma looked extremely dubious.

  “I think we have to agree that the door was completely impenetrable. I don’t believe that by using a piece of string, both of those bolts could be turned and the button in the doorknob pushed. I just don’t think all that is possible.”

  “But you don’t think the victim opened the door himself?”

  “No, I don’t. Which means that room – being in the basement and having no windows, and a door that doesn’t open – leaves us with the ventilation hole.”

  “That twenty-centimetre-square hole?”

  “The very same. I’m convinced that Kikuoka was stabbed through that hole.”

  “But how?”

  “The vent is right above the bed. The killer must have attached the knife to the end of a long stick or pole to make a kind of spear and stuck it through the vent.”

  “Aha! But they would have needed something at least two metres long,” Ozaki pointed out. “And the problem with something that length is that would be too long to fit across the corridor space—it’d hit the opposite wall. And then it would be a real pain to carry around. If they kept it in their room it would definitely be noticed, but even before that, how could they get it into the house?”

  “I’ve already thought of that. It must have been one of those collapsible fishing rods.”

  “Aha! I see.”

  “A fishing rod could be extended to just the right length to reach into the room,” explained Ushikoshi. He sounded rather proud of himself.

  “Huh. But would a knife inserted that way really stay in the victim’s body? The knife would have to be securely tied to the rod, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would. And that’s the significance of the piece of string that was attached to the knife. But I still haven’t quite figured out how it worked. It must have been a clever plan. That part I think we’ll have to hear from the killer themselves—after we’ve arrested them.”

  “So you’re saying that Room 10’s murder was carried out the same way?”

  “Ah, now that I’m not sure about.”

  “There was nothing in that basement corridor that could have been used to stand on. I mean that’s why I brought a bedside table from the next room. But even when I stood on that I was still way too low to see into the room. A coffee table would be even lower. All the bedside tables in all the rooms in the house are the same height.”

  “Yes. That is a problem… Perhaps you could put one of them on top of the other?”

  “On that slanting floor? In any other house you might be able to manage it… And anyway, there’s only one table in each room. And then there’s the skill it would take to climb up on two tables on top of each other. It’d be unstable.”

  “Maybe two people could manage together, one climbing on the other’s shoulders. There must be many ways it could be done. But that’s why I was asking Hayakawa just now about the key to the outdoor shed. I was thinking about that stepladder.”

  “This house has only three ways in and out, and all of them are connected to the salon. If anyone went out to the shed they’d have been seen by everyone in the salon. To get outside, you could possibly climb out through the window on the landing of the staircase from Room 1, but then there’s nowhere to get back in. If you came back in through the same window, you’d have to go through the salon to get to Room 14 in the basement. So there’s no point in climbing out in the first place.”

  “I’m beginning to believe that everyone in the salon was in on the plot.”

  “What, Anan too? You think my police constable was mixed up in this?” chuckled Okuma. “But seriously, ask anyone who was there, and they’re going to say that they didn’t happen to notice anyone resembling a house painter casually passing through the salon with a stepladder tucked under his arm.”

  Suddenly Ushikoshi had a thought.

  Maybe there was one other way it could have been done. Only the occupants of the ground floor would be able to get in and out of their window. That meant either Sasaki or Togai. Those two had definitely been in the salon at the time of Kikuoka’s murder, but Eiko and Kumi weren’t. Either of those two could have climbed out of the window on the east staircase landing—

  “How about a rifle or some other kind of modified gun?”

  Ushikoshi’s thought process was rudely interrupted by Okuma’s own musings.

  “Some kind of gun that could shoot the knife using a spring mechanism, or elastic. They’d have needed string for that kind of trick—”

  “But we’re still stuck on the problem of the stepladder,” said Ozaki. “And how the sofa and coffee table in Room 14 got overturned. Plus, we can’t ignore the signs of a struggle. The killer was definitely inside Room 10.”

  Ushikoshi glanced at his watch.

  “Yes, we’ve been ignoring that aspect. I think we need to search everyone’s room again. Let’s focus on Mr and Mrs Kanai, Eiko and Kumi. Search for a fishing rod or some kind of pole longer than two metres, or some kind of modified gun or rifle. Also look out for something that could be used as a kind of collapsible stand or step stool. All of those kinds of things.

  “Of course we don’t have a warrant, so we’ll need each person’s consent. I’m sure the young students will be happy to let us take a look. And I think with so many people, everyone will probably give in and consent in the end. We’ve still got officers here, haven’t we? Let’s split the task up between them and Anan, preferably all working simultaneously. Let’s not leave out the empty rooms either. And it’s possible that someone’s dumped it out of the window. I want the snow around the whole house thoroughly examined—a wide enough perimeter in case the killer threw it. Oh, and the fireplace too. It’s possible that the killer might have burnt the evidence in the hearth in the salon. Better check just in case.

  “Right, let’s get down to the salon. We’ll announce the searches to everyone after lunch. We’ll be careful to ask as politely as possible. Don’t want to go offending the gentry.”

  When lunch was over, Ushikoshi and Okuma made their way back to the library in silence, sat down in the exact same chairs as before and watched the sun gradually sink in the sky. They had the feeling that they might be forced to watch the sun again tomorrow, and the day after that too. Neither man felt much like talking.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t hear the door open, but Chief Inspector Ushikoshi didn’t feel inclined to turn his head around until he heard his name spoken. His hopes were riding on this result. He could barely look Sergeant Ozaki in the eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “We searched every room in the house. And every person too. There were no women police officers available, so we’ll probably be fielding complaints from the female contingent.”

  Ozaki’s speech was a little more sluggish than usual.

  “I see. And?”

  “We found absolutely nothing. Nobody was hiding a fishing rod; there isn’t one in the whole house. No long poles either. The billiard cues are about the longest thing here. And of course we didn’t come across any modified firearms.

  “There was no evidence that anything had been burnt in the fireplace beside
s regular firewood. We combed the ground around the house to a distance farther than an Olympic javelin champion could have thrown, but found nothing.

  “There are no stools or stepladders. Just like Room 14, in Kajiwara’s and the Hayakawas’ rooms there are desks—well, not as fancy as that one—but they were both so large and solid that it would have been extremely difficult to move them anywhere. And their height wasn’t that much more than the bedside tables—barely another twenty centimetres.

  “Then I thought that perhaps the long object we were looking for might be a javelin, so we went to check the sports equipment in Room 10. But there was no javelin in there. There were pairs of skis and ski poles in there, and in the storage shed we found a long-handled shovel, a hoe, spade, broom—all those kinds of tools. But to bring those into the house would be just the same situation as with the stepladder. We give up.”

  “I’m so sorry. But I guess I kind of expected it,” said Ushikoshi with a sigh. “Do you have any other ideas?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Ozaki, “I did come up with something.”

  “All right, tell me more.”

  “I wondered about a frozen rope. Whether it could be used like a long pole.”

  “Clever! And what did you discover?”

  “Nobody had any rope, but there was some in the storage shed.”

  Ushikoshi began to think furiously.

  “You know that could be an important point. Some kind of long pole… Something inside this house that is long. Maybe something that is always there right in front of our eyes. Something that takes just a little bit of fixing up and suddenly you’ve got a long pole—something like that. Is there anything in that display room next door?”

  “We searched it thoroughly, but a stick or a pole—”

  “There has to be something somewhere. If there isn’t, it means the suspect would have had to get in and out through the door, and then somehow lock it behind him… Something that you can disassemble and end up with a long pole… I don’t think the bannister on the staircase is removable… the firewood… Did they tie several pieces together with string to make it longer?… No, not possible. Damn it! Are you sure there’s nothing at all in the next room?”