Murder in the Crooked House

by Soji Shimada

“Break it.”

  At Ushikoshi’s command, Ozaki and Anan threw their shoulders against the door. After a few tries, it broke.

  Sasaki was lying face up in the middle of the room. On the table there was a medical textbook that he’d apparently been reading. The room looked completely undisturbed.

  Straight through Sasaki’s sweater, right at the level of his heart, was a hunting knife, identical to the ones used in the previous two murders, with the same white string trailing from the handle. But the biggest difference from the previous cases was that Sasaki’s chest was occasionally rising and falling.

  “He’s still alive!” cried Kiyoshi.

  Sasaki’s face was drained of colour, but his eyelids seemed to be ever so slightly open.

  Ozaki turned his head 360 degrees, surveying every inch of the room. I did the same and, simultaneously, we noticed on the wall something which shed light on the strange nature of these serial killings. There was a small piece of paper attached with a pin. (See Fig. 8.)

  “What did you see? Did you see something? Answer me!” shouted Ozaki, clutching Sasaki by the wrist. Kiyoshi put out a hand to stop him.

  “Mr Banana, there’s a stretcher in the van outside. Bring it here!”

  “What the hell?”

  Ozaki was immediately riled up.

  “How dare you think that we take orders from a pain in the arse like you? Shut up, you freak, and get out of our way! Leave this to the experts.”

  “Of course I intend to leave it to the experts. We’ll get out of your way. Doctor Sano, if you please.”

  The white-coated Dr Sano pushed his way through the crowd.

  “It’s dangerous for him to try to talk right now,” he said to Ozaki. “Please don’t speak to him.”

  The expert had given his opinion. And right then, just as Kiyoshi had instructed, the stretcher arrived. Dr Sano and Kiyoshi quickly lifted Sasaki onto it.

  There was not a lot of blood, in fact Sasaki was hardly bleeding at all. But just as Dr Sano and Constable Anan picked up the stretcher to leave the room, a very unexpected thing happened. Eiko Hamamoto burst into tears and clung to the stretcher.

  “Sasaki! Don’t die!”

  Togai, who had materialized out of nowhere, watched in grim silence.

  Ozaki carefully removed the pinned scrap of paper from the wall. It looked to be something the killer had left behind.

  Fig. 8

  He didn’t immediately tell us what was written on the paper, but he showed it to us later. In very simple lettering, it read as follows:

  I will have revenge on Kozaburo Hamamoto. Very soon you will lose the most precious thing—your life.

  Ozaki had regained his habitual professional composure; it seemed that coming face to face with someone on the verge of death hadn’t fazed him much at all. He quickly ascertained that it was not only the door of Room 13 that had been completely locked, but both of the windows had been too, and the glass was entirely intact. He immediately and thoroughly checked the built-in wardrobe and cupboard, under the bed, and the bathroom for anyone hiding. He didn’t find anyone or anything that shouldn’t have been there.

  But the thing I really should point out here is that this time the one previous (excuse my pun) break in the case, the twenty-centimetre-square ventilation hole in the wall, was completely blocked by a thick piece of plywood. This time it really was the perfect locked room. The door frame was entirely intact, and there was no gap or crack to be seen.

  What’s more, the door had been broken down by two of the police officers themselves, and they had been the first to set foot in the room. And this had been witnessed by a large crowd of onlookers. There had been no time for anyone to have tried some sort of trick. Our only hope was that Sasaki himself had seen something.

  Around an hour later, we were all gathered in the salon when the news came that Sasaki had passed away. The time of death was after three in the afternoon, and the cause was, of course, the knife in his chest.

  “Where were you around 3 o’clock, Mr Togai?”

  Chief Inspector Ushikoshi had called Togai over to the corner of the room and was questioning him in a low voice.

  “I’d gone for a walk. The weather wasn’t too bad and I needed space to think.”

  “Is there anyone who can back up that story?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “No surprise. I don’t like to put it this way, but you can’t say you didn’t have a motive to kill Sasaki.”

  “That’s horrible! His death is more of a shock to me than anyone else.”

  Both Eiko and Kumi insisted that they had been alone in their separate rooms. Their testimony was nothing out of the ordinary, but the evidence given next by Haruo Kajiwara was enough to make the detectives’ own hearts stop.

  “I never thought it was important until now, so I never mentioned it. It’s nothing to do with Mr Sasaki’s murder, but the night that Mr Kikuoka was killed I was leaning on the door frame in the doorway of the kitchen when I heard a different noise mixed in with the sound of the snowstorm—a kind of rustling noise. A bit like a snake slithering. But I definitely heard it.”

  “A snake!”

  The detectives almost jumped out of their skins.

  “What time was that?”

  “Well, I guess it must have been around 11.”

  “Right when he was killed.”

  “Did anyone else hear it?”

  “I asked Kohei and Chikako but they said they didn’t hear it. I thought I must have been hearing things, so I didn’t say anything. I’m really sorry.”

  “Tell us more about the sound.”

  “I don’t know. It’s difficult to explain… Sort of sniff, sniff, like a woman sobbing… But very faint. I didn’t hear it when Sasaki died.”

  “A woman sobbing?!”

  The detectives exchanged glances. This sounded like some sort of ghost story.

  “And when Ueda was killed?”

  “I didn’t hear anything. I’m sorry.”

  “So you only heard it with Kikuoka?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  The police officers individually questioned every other person about the mysterious sound, but nobody besides Kajiwara had heard it.

  “What do you reckon? Do you think it’s real?” Okuma asked the other two. “I’ve had enough of all this crap. It’s driving me crazy. Blasted if I can work it out.”

  “I’m at my wits’ end too.”

  “I’m beginning to believe there’s some sort of evil demon living in this place. Or this house itself is the demon. It’s like the place has a mind of its own and has decided to start murdering people. Especially with the murder of Sasaki—that’s not the work of a human. If we’re looking for a killer, then it’s this house!”

  “Or someone is managing to play the most extraordinary trick ever,” said Ozaki. “Like some kind of mechanical thingamajig that somehow pops up in the rooms, or a flying knife, or… something in the rooms that somehow switches around.”

  “Well, if it’s any of those things, then the suspect can’t be one of the guests. It has to be one of the hosts,” muttered Ushikoshi.

  Okuma continued the thought.

  “But it isn’t one of them. If you ask me, out of the eleven of them, it has to be Aikura. I reckon it’s a load of crap that story about the doll looking through her window. No way any of that happened. Impossible. It has to be a made-up story. Those kind of women—total liars. And she doesn’t have an alibi for any of the murders.”

  “But Inspector, if she’s the killer then there’s something that doesn’t add up,” said Ozaki. That Kumi woman couldn’t have seen the face of the Golem doll before the 29th of December when she went to Room 3. But in her testimony from the night of the first murder, she described his face perfectly.”

  Okuma groaned.

  “Well, then, there’s no way our suspect is any of that lot there. They’re hiding something. Very cleverly. Let’s take apart the walls and ceili
ngs. Especially the ones in Room 13 and 14. That’s all that’s left. Don’t you agree, Chief Inspector Ushikoshi?”

  “I think so. Tomorrow’s New Year’s Day and I hesitate to do it, but I don’t think the suspect is going to take the day off just because of that. No, I think we’re going to have to do it.”

  At that moment Kiyoshi happened to walk by. Okuma called out to him.

  “So what went wrong, Mr Fortune Teller? Didn’t you say that now you were here there’d be no more dead bodies?”

  Kiyoshi showed no reaction, but he was clearly out of sorts too.

  SCENE 5

  The Library

  The morning of the 1st of January 1984 saw Kiyoshi and myself holed up together in the library. Kiyoshi had completely lost face with Sasaki’s murder and had been in very low spirits ever since. He refused to answer whenever I spoke. He sat there pressing his fingers together in various triangular and square shapes, and muttering under his breath.

  From my seat in the far corner of the library, I had a view of the jostling ice floes on the northern sea. I sat contemplating them for quite a while until the constant racket of hammers and chisels from the downstairs floor finally succeeded in disturbing my reverie.

  “Omedeto!” I said to Kiyoshi.

  “Yeah,” he replied, distracted.

  “I’m congratulating you,” I said again.

  He finally looked up at me.

  “For what?” he said with obvious irritation.

  “It’s what you say to one another on New Year’s Day. Today is the first day of 1984.”

  He groaned.

  “You seem very angry. I suppose it’s to be expected, after all that grandstanding you did… But why aren’t you down there checking how the police are getting on with ripping out the walls and ceilings of Room 13 and 14?”

  Kiyoshi laughed scornfully.

  “Do you think they’re going to find anything? Hidden passageways, secret rooms?” I asked.

  “I think I can place a bet on it,” he responded finally. “Tonight the police’ll be sitting there on that sofa in the salon completely exhausted, and with nothing but blisters on their hands to show for it. Especially that young one—Ozaki—I’ll bet he’s putting the most effort into the search right now. Tonight he’ll actually be quiet for once. I can’t wait.”

  “Room 13 and 14 don’t have any hidden tricks, then?”

  “Of course not.”

  I tried to work out how he could be so sure, but nothing came to mind. In the end I asked another question.

  “You really know just about everything about everything, don’t you?”

  To which my friend just stared up at the ceiling and reprised his mutterings. It was very strange.

  “Are you saying you’ve solved the whole thing?”

  “Far from it. I’m very confused right now.”

  His voice sounded hoarse.

  “Do you at least have an idea what direction you should be looking?”

  Kiyoshi turned and looked very seriously into my eyes.

  “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

  I felt strangely uneasy, and then a little fearful. Eventually, I decided I should man up a little.

  “Do you think I should go and talk to them? Perhaps I could be of help.”

  “No point. Better solve it than talk about it… But that’s too difficult. There’s an up and down staircase… So which one would he be standing on?… That’s the problem. There may never be an answer. I’m going to be forced to gamble…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Kiyoshi tended to ramble this way when he was close to solving a case. It often freaked people out. To me it always sounded as if he were just one step short of being completely off his rocker.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Right, now I’ve got a question for you. Why do you think Kazuya Ueda’s body was arranged the way it was? Like he was dancing?”

  “Ah, I think if we spend the whole day in this room, we’ll find the answer.”

  “In this room?”

  “Yes. The answer is in here.”

  I looked around. The room was filled with bookshelves.

  “Could you be a bit less vague? Okay, how about this? Sasaki’s murder yesterday—you’re feeling responsible and it’s made you depressed. The way I see it, you had no idea what’s going on and yet you promised that there would be no more deaths—”

  “That couldn’t be helped!”

  Kiyoshi sounded distraught.

  “Besides him… but… well… I don’t think that can be… anyway now…”

  My friend didn’t seem to have a grasp on reality at all. But whatever the case, I had never before heard him describe a murder as something that couldn’t be helped.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “And now, listening to what you’re saying, I’m confident I’m right. I think Sasaki committed suicide.”

  To which Kiyoshi seemed to react with shock. He was dumbfounded for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.

  “Suicide… I see. I didn’t think of that. Well, that’s one way…”

  His shoulders sagged.

  Not to have thought of such a simple thing… I was worried about him. But then,

  “That’s a great idea,” he continued. “If we tell them that it was suicide, it’ll confuse them even more.”

  I suddenly felt angry.

  “Kiyoshi! Have you been plotting this the whole time? Because you don’t really know what’s going on, you’ve been spending your whole time pretending to be some kind of famous detective? Wow. That’s low even for you. If you don’t know, then just say you don’t know. The professional detectives have been racking their brains over this case, but still don’t understand it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But because you’ve been faking it for so long, your shame is going to be all the greater.”

  “I’m tired. I need to rest.”

  “Then please just listen to my thoughts.”

  He didn’t respond, so I began to speak. I’d also given this case plenty of thought, and I was trying to develop a theory of my own.

  “Even if we decide that Sasaki killed himself, it’s still all wrong. There was that letter pinned to the wall. One which showed a definite lack of writing ability.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That message was really poorly written, right?”

  “You think?”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I don’t think that it could have been written any other way.”

  “For a dramatic letter that announces an intention of revenge, it was third rate. There are so many better ways it could have been said.”

  “For example?”

  “Well, how about a more literary flavour? Let’s see… ‘I vow to rob you of your life’, or ‘I will not rest until I’ve exacted my revenge upon you’, or ‘My blood runs like fire in my veins’ or something?”

  “Well, that’s poetic.”

  “There are so many other phrases like that the writer could have used, like—”

  “Okay, I get it. What’s your point?”

  “I mean regarding this whole revenge thing, if the killer wanted to get revenge on Kozaburo Hamamoto for something, the theory that Sasaki was the killer and then took his own life doesn’t work. He had no reason to take revenge on Hamamoto. He only met the man very recently and the two of them seem to have got on very well. And anyway, to kill himself before killing Hamamoto could hardly be counted as revenge… Or possibly he’s set up some trick that’s going to take Hamamoto’s life.”

  “Well, the police are investigating all possibilities for that. They said they were going to thoroughly check the room in the tower as well.”

  “And how are the deaths of Ueda and Kikuoka a form of revenge against Hamamoto?”

  “Right. They’re not.”

  “And yet, if we drop the theory that Sasaki was the killer and look at who’s left, there are the three members of staff and then the daughter, Eiko, Kum
i Aikura, the Kanais, Yoshihiko and finally Togai. That’s it. There doesn’t seem to be anyone among them who might have a grudge against Hamamoto.”

  “No, nobody.”

  “And really when you think about it, the act of murdering Sasaki can hardly be said to exact revenge on Hamamoto.”

  “I agree.”

  “Unless of course because, as there was some sort of relationship between Eiko and Sasaki, the act of killing Sasaki would cause grief to the daughter, and therefore also grief to the father by association. A bit of a roundabout way to achieve it though.

  “It’s such an impossible case! Starting with that horrible grinning doll, it has so many weird elements. Like those two stakes stuck in the snow—”

  At that moment the library door opened to reveal Eiko Hamamoto and Kumi Aikura. At first the two women appeared perfectly calm as they strolled over to the window, but if you looked more closely you could see there was some kind of simmering tension between them. They didn’t seemed to notice the two of us.

  “You’re really going for it,” said Eiko, as nonchalant as if she were talking about the weather.

  “What do you mean?” asked Kumi carefully. I was wondering the same thing. But Eiko’s next response made it clear. She was referring to the other woman’s pursuit of Sasaki, Togai, Kajiwara and the other men.

  “There’s no point in beating about the bush,” said Eiko with a sweet smile. “I think you understand what I’m talking about?”

  Eiko’s condescending attitude never faltered.

  “I’m sorry, no. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Kumi answered loftily.

  I held my breath.

  “Look, I can forgive you everything else. Perhaps you can’t help that you’re such an irresponsible fluffhead. I’m just different, that’s all. I can’t live the way you do. But what I can’t forgive you for is Sasaki. Do you understand?”

  “What do you mean by ‘irresponsible fluffhead’? You say you can’t live the way I do, but you certainly seem to know a lot about that way.”

  “So you refuse to answer my question?”

  “I’m the one asking you a question.”

  “Look, it would be better for you just to admit it. Or do I need to spell out your relationship with President Kikuoka as his so-called secretary?”