by Soji Shimada
“The service is unusually good tonight,” I remarked to him.
“This way there will no grounds for complaint from her ladyship,” he replied.
“Hurry up and reveal the trick behind this bloody case. If you really can, that is,” said Togai, who was standing drinking his tea. He was expressing what everyone felt, and all eyes were immediately on Kiyoshi.
“The trick?” Kiyoshi looked puzzled. “There’s no trick here. Just as I’ve been saying all along, this is a series of murders committed by the doll Golem, who has been possessed by the vengeful ghosts of the dead.”
Kiyoshi’s performance was painful for me to watch. His habitual teasing tone was back and I was sure he wasn’t being honest.
“I have discovered from my own research that before this mansion was built, this area was a large, open plain. One evening long, long ago, a young Ainu man threw himself off the very cliff that this house is built on.”
That’s how Kiyoshi’s story began, but it was clear to me that he was making it up as he went along. I had no idea what his true intentions were. It felt to me as if he were trying to play for time.
“This Ainu boy had a young lover by the name of Pirika, who out of sorrow jumped off the cliff after him.”
Kiyoshi was clearly retelling some tale he’d heard somewhere or other.
“Every spring since then, on that very spot, a blood-red iris is said to bloom.”
I remembered that Pirika had been the name of the restaurant in the village where we’d eaten the day we arrived at the Ice Floe Mansion. There’d been a photograph of irises on the wall, and a printed poem about the flowers. Still, these irises had been the regular purple shade. I’d never seen or heard of a red iris.
“The young lovers had been kept apart by the selfishness of the other villagers. The son of the most powerful clan in the village wanted to marry Pirika himself. If Pirika agreed to marry him, the boy’s father had promised to give everyone in the village a wheelbarrow. Despairing of ever being free to be together, the lovers took their own lives. Since then, the grudge that the two lovers held against the rest of the village has been roaming this land. With the construction of this mansion their souls have found a kind of base from which to act. Their spirits—”
“Ah!”
He was interrupted by the voice of someone in distress. I realized it was Eiko, who had just sunk to her knees, her hand pressed to her forehead.
“Please… my cup…”
I reached out to grab her teacup right as she slumped to the floor. Togai and Kozaburo came rushing over.
“Get her to the bed!” said Ushikoshi.
“Looks like some kind of sleeping drug,” said Kiyoshi, as he examined her. “If we leave her to sleep, she’ll wake up just fine in the morning.”
“Are you sure it’s just sleeping pills?” Kozaburo asked him.
“I’m positive. Look how peacefully she’s breathing.”
“Who could have done this?” said Kozaburo, looking at the household staff.
“No idea.” The three of them shook their heads.
“The criminal is in this room!”
When angry, Kozaburo had the energy of a much a younger man.
“Anyway,” he continued, “it’s dangerous for Eiko to stay here. Let’s get her up to her room.”
His tone made it clear that there was no room for discussion. Right now it was easy to picture what he’d been like back in his youth.
“But the bed in Ms Hamamoto’s room got burnt,” said Ozaki.
Kozaburo looked for a moment as if he’d had an electric shock.
“If she’s been drugged, then I think we should let her sleep it off right here,” said Ushikoshi.
“All right then, but that hole! That hole needs to be blocked up!”
“But to do that we need to stand on the bed…”
“Then do it from the outside!”
“But truly, to start hammering right by the head of someone sleeping after a dose of pills like that, well, tomorrow morning she’s going to wake up with a terrible headache,” said Kiyoshi.
“But this room is dangerous!”
“Why? Room 10 or Room 13 are exactly the same as this one.”
Kiyoshi hadn’t said it, but in Room 13 where Sasaki had died, the ventilation hole had been completely blocked up. What would be the point of blocking Room 14’s vent too? Everyone was thinking the same thing.
Kozaburo stood still, his fists clenched and his head hanging down.
“If you’re worried about your daughter, I can have a guard put on this room all night. Of course, it’d be inappropriate to have him actually sleep in here with her, but we can lock the door and set a chair outside in the corridor. He can keep watch until morning. How does that sound?”
Ushikoshi turned to Constable Anan.
“Anan, how about it? If you think it would be too hard to stay awake, I can get Ozaki to take over halfway through the night.
“This room doesn’t have a spare key, does it?” he continued. “So I suggest that you keep hold of the key yourself, Mr Hamamoto.
“Anan, I don’t know who the killer is, but he or she is probably one of us. Therefore, if someone comes, you don’t let them in. Even if it’s me or Okuma. Not until everyone has got up tomorrow morning and checked in. Is that acceptable to you, Mr Hamamoto?
“Right, everybody, you’ve heard the plan. As for me, I’m feeling a bit sleepy after listening to our learned fortune teller’s fascinating bit of folklore. I’m dying to hear the rest but I’m afraid it’s really going to send me to sleep. And it wouldn’t do to make too much noise while our lady hostess is trying to rest. So how about going to bed now, everybody? It’s already late. Let’s hear the rest tomorrow.”
Everyone seemed pretty much in agreement, except for Kozaburo. He couldn’t help thinking of how many people had already been murdered in completely locked rooms.
“I’m not completely comfortable with this,” he mumbled.
SCENE 3
The Tengu Room
Everyone had settled down to sleep. The dark corridors and spaces of the Ice Floe Mansion were deserted, and the only sound was the wind raging to itself.
The lock on the door of Room 3 made a faint noise as it turned, ever so gently, and the door very slowly opened. The pale light that filtered in from the corridor brushed the faces of the dolls, vaguely illuminating them. Among them, Golem’s grinning face.
Someone tiptoed into the room, as cautiously as if they’d been crossing a thin layer of ice, and approached Golem. When they reached the window, the light from the corridor revealed their face in profile.
It was Kozaburo Hamamoto. Well, he was, of course, the only person who had a key to that room.
Kozaburo never even glanced at Golem, sprawled in his usual position on the floor. Instead, he turned his attention to the southern wall of Tengu masks and began to do something quite mysterious. He set about removing the masks from the wall, one by one.
Each time he had gathered about ten or so in his arms, he would lay them down on the floor, and gradually, the gently sloping middle section of the room’s south wall was revealed for the first time.
But then something astounding happened. Golem’s feet twitched, and then his wooden joints began to creak as his legs were gradually pulled in towards his body. The painted grin on his face never changed.
The doll got slowly to its feet, and with the clumsy, jerky movements of a puppet, took a step towards Kozaburo.
Slowly, but steadily as the second hand on a clock, Golem lifted both his arms and drew his palms closer together in a circular formation as if to place them around Kozaburo’s neck.
Kozaburo, still absorbed in his work, had now cleared the major part of the south wall. Several masks still clutched in his hands, he took a couple of steps over to the corner of the room, to fetch some bricks that were lying there. He had turned his back and was bending down to pick up a brick when he sensed something. With the brick in h
is right hand he turned slowly around. And there was Golem, standing right behind him.
The shock sent Kozaburo’s body into convulsions and his face froze in an expression of terror. The wind howled, and at the same time he somehow managed to call out. The masks in his hands fell and scattered on the floor, and the brick followed with a dull thud.
Right then there was a flash of lightning and suddenly the room was lit with a fluorescent glow as bright as daylight. Automatically, Kozaburo looked towards the doorway. All the detectives stood there.
“Secure the scene!”
The voice didn’t belong to one of the detectives heading towards Golem, but came from Golem himself!
“Why are you taking the Tengu masks down from the wall, Mr Hamamoto?” Golem asked. “There can only be one explanation. You are the only person who knows that these Tengus killed Eikichi Kikuoka.”
Golem reached up and removed his hat, then put his hands up to his grinning face. As he lowered his hands again, the ghoulish grinning face disappeared and was replaced by Kiyoshi Mitarai’s.
“You forgot to erase the letters on his forehead, Mr Hamamoto,” said Kiyoshi. “How do you like my mask? It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”
In his hands, he held a mask identical to the face of the Golem doll.
“Forgive my tricks. But they were all learnt from you.”
“Aha!” said Kozaburo. “So that’s why you dressed the doll. I see now! An excellent move. Nicely played, Mr Mitarai, I have to admit defeat. I’ve always believed in good sportsmanship. I give up. It was me. I killed Ueda and Kikuoka.”
SCENE 4
The Salon
“If you think about it…” said Kozaburo Hamamoto, taking a puff on his pipe. We were sitting around the dining table—Hamamoto, Ushikoshi, Okuma, Ozaki, Kiyoshi and myself.
“…this is the perfect night for me to make my bizarre confession. The person I’d prefer didn’t hear what I have to say is fast asleep under the influence of sleeping drugs.”
Sensing something was afoot, the other occupants of the Ice Floe Mansion began to turn up in the salon. Eventually everyone was assembled, except for Constable Anan and Eiko. The storm was still raging outside, and it seemed no one had been able to sleep. The grandfather clock in the corner read 2.50 in the morning.
“Would you prefer to have more privacy? We could move to a different location,” Kiyoshi suggested.
“No, it doesn’t matter. I’m in no position to make demands. All of these people have been living in fear because of me. They have a right to hear what I have to say. Could you just allow me one selfish request? Make sure my daughter…”
He faltered for a moment.
“We wouldn’t be able to wake Ms Hamamoto even if we wanted to,” said Kiyoshi. “The sleeping drugs she took are incredibly strong.”
“I get it now! It was you who drugged her, and you who set fire to her bed. How did you manage it? You were with us the whole time.”
“All in good time. I’m going to start at the beginning,” said Kiyoshi. “If I go wrong or leave anything out, let me know.”
Everyone began to gather at the table, hoping that the string of murders had finally come to an end and the case had been solved.
“Understood. I doubt, though, that it’ll be necessary.”
“I had a really hard time figuring out your motive for killing Ueda,” began Kiyoshi almost impatiently. He seemed to be in a hurry to get the story out.
“Well, actually that’s not quite accurate. To tell the truth I had a hard time figuring out the motive for the whole thing. But with Ueda in particular, you don’t seem to have any reason for killing him.
“However, I got it right away with the murder of Kikuoka. I realized the only person you actually wanted to kill was Kikuoka, at least at the beginning. For that reason you spent so much time and money building this eccentric mansion. Its sole purpose was for murdering Eikichi Kikuoka. But in the end you had the desire to kill both Ueda and Kikuoka. You’d refined and polished your plan, but Ueda got in the way. That was it, wasn’t it?”
“It was important that I was the one to kill Kikuoka. If I didn’t, I would have failed in my duty,” said Kozaburo. “The other day, I noticed something strange about Kohei and Chikako when they returned from their daughter’s funeral. I questioned them about it and they eventually broke down and confessed that they had hired Ueda to kill Kikuoka.
“I panicked. I told them I would pay them back the money they’d used, but they had to withdraw their request. I trusted them, and I’m sure Kohei did as I asked. But Ueda refused to stand down. He was stubborn but also had a streak of chivalry in him. He had his own intense personal hatred of Kikuoka. It seems that he had had some kind of run-in with the man too.”
It turned out that Kikuoka was almost universally despised.
“What kind of run-in?”
“To us, it may seem insignificant. Ueda took something that Kikuoka said as an insult to his mother. It seems there was a dispute between his mother and her neighbour over land. The neighbouring house had suffered a fire and the fence that divided the properties had been burnt. Ever since, the exact location of the boundary between the two properties had been unclear. Ueda’s mother let neighbourhood cars park on the disputed land for a fee, and her neighbour had taken her to court over it. His mother was obstinate too. She was involved in a fight that could only end by one side or the other moving out, and needed money for that. Kikuoka called her a ‘stubborn old bag’ and other pretty awful things, which really awoke Ueda’s fury. But I don’t suppose it’d have come to murder until Kohei Hayakawa offered to pay him to do it. Well, whatever, it’s not my place to make judgements on the motives of others…”
“And so you decided to kill Ueda. You thought if you were going to kill him anyway, why not use his murder as a kind of foreshadowing of the carefully prepared murder of Kikuoka? In a way that would cause so much confusion in the investigation. That’s what the string tied to the handle of the knife was about, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
I glanced at the Hayakawa couple. Chikako was staring down at the floor, and Kohei hadn’t taken his eyes off his employer.
“That’s because in the subsequent murder of Mr Kikuoka, you were planning to use a knife with string attached, or rather you needed to attach string to the handle of that second knife to accomplish the crime. So you decided to foreshadow the crime by tying string to the knife used to murder Mr Ueda, when in fact there was no need for any string on it at all. But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why did you tie Ueda’s wrist to the bed with that piece of cord?”
“I’m not really sure myself. I was in quite a state and not thinking properly. I’d never killed anyone with a knife before. I couldn’t imagine what would happen. I suppose I was afraid that he might go wandering outside half dead or something.”
“How did you manage to take down a great big ex-military type like that all by yourself?” said Okuma.
“Yes, well, I had to employ some shameful tactics. I talked to him numerous times about the Self-Defence Forces so that he came to trust me, but still, no matter how much his guard might be down, there was no chance I’d overpower him in a fight. I’m sure he’d even had training to deal with that kind of sneak attack.
“There was a chance that I might bump into someone so I wore a jacket to hide any blood spatter. Part of my plan was to take it off to kill him and then put it back on to hide any blood that might have got on my sweater. The jacket had one more use too. When I went to his room—”
“How did you get in?” Ushikoshi asked.
“I just knocked on his door, announced myself, and he let me in. It was as simple as that. He had no reason to believe that I was going to murder him or Kikuoka. Kohei had never told him I had anything to do with his request not to kill Kikuoka after all.”
“Hmm. Go on.”
“I entered his room, took off my jacket and observed Ueda. If I could have done i
t, I would have stabbed him right there and then, but it wasn’t possible. He was too big, and I was particularly afraid of how strong his right arm looked. I really wasn’t thinking straight. I had the knife in my jacket pocket and all I could think was if I could just get his right wrist tied to the bed, it would be so much easier to do the job. And then after thinking about it for a while, I executed my plan.
“I held out my jacket telling him it was a little too big for me and if it happened to fit him I would let him have it. I told him to try it on. He put it on and fastened the buttons, but of course it was too small for him. While I was pretending to check the fit, I took the knife from the pocket and concealed it in the sleeve of my sweater, then announced that the jacket seemed too small for him after all. I undid the buttons and took hold of both sides of the collar, pulling it simultaneously downwards on both sides, as if to take it off for him. He stood quietly and let me do it. After getting the collar past his shoulders, I suddenly tugged downwards as hard as I could, and because the jacket was so small on him, it got stuck tight, temporarily disabling both his arms. Even then, he had no idea what I was up to. I pulled the knife out from my sleeve and plunged it as hard as I could into the left side of his chest. He must have thought the knife was going to come out through his back. Even now I can’t get his bewildered expression out of my head.
“Then I took my jacket off him and put it back on myself. My sweater was a dark colour so the blood spatter didn’t show up at all. I was lucky too that there wasn’t too much blood on my hands. I hid the sweater in the bottom of the wardrobe in my room. You detectives were very polite when you went through my room, and you stopped at digging through all my clothing. That saved me, but in fact, when I look at it now, there aren’t really any obvious traces of blood.
“After I’d committed the murder, my mind was a bit crazy, and when I came to, I realized that I was tying Ueda’s right wrist to the bed frame, even though he was already dead.”
There was a shocked reaction from the listeners at this.