Murder in the Crooked House

by Soji Shimada

  “I guess that even after sticking a knife in a victim’s heart a murderer feels anxious. They can’t know whether the victim is really dead. There was no time for me to set up the snow-under-the-lock trick. I wanted to get out as quickly as possible.”

  “So when you set up the locked room, did you use the shot-put like that student said the other day?” Ushikoshi asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Kiyoshi took up the story again.

  “But even if you say it’s because you’d lost your mind, by tying that cord around the victim’s wrist, it made it quite obvious that the killer had been inside the locked room. But you didn’t go into the next locked room at all, did you? That managed to create all kinds of confusion for the detectives.

  “Anyway, as he was dying, Ueda realized that he could move his wrist and tried to leave a message. If he lifted both hands up over his head in a V-shape, he could make the Japanese semaphore signal for ‘ha’. In Japanese semaphore most syllables require two separate placings of the flags, but ‘ha’ just happens to need only one.

  “But the problem with ‘ha’ alone, is that it might not only signify Hamamoto. It could just as easily have meant Hayakawa. So he needed to signal ‘ma’ as well to make it clear who he meant. Unfortunately, it takes two placements of the flags to make a ‘ma’—the right arm horizontally out to the side with the left arm placed thirty to forty degrees below it, or pointing diagonally downwards; followed by a dot where you cross the flags above your head. However, it was impossible to recreate these two separate placements in one single move, not to mention that he was already signalling ‘ha’ with his arms.

  “But of course he had his legs. Semaphore is created using flags which are held in both hands, but Ueda decided to use his legs to create a ‘ma’. That’s why his legs are pointing at that strange angle, and the circular spot of blood on the floor beside him is the dot. That was the meaning of the blood spot and the ‘dancing corpse’. I checked out semaphore signals in the encyclopaedia in the library yesterday evening.

  “And then we come to the murder of Eikichi Kikuoka—”

  “Hold on a minute!” I said. “There are still so many questions about the first murder.”

  I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Several other people began calling out. It was typical of Kiyoshi to skimp on the details when he’d already worked everything out for himself.

  “What about those two stakes stuck in the snow?”

  “And the doll that looked in through my window?”

  “And the scream that came thirty minutes after the murder? What was that?”

  “Ah, yes, those things. Where to begin? Well, they’re all connected. Kazumi, you’ve worked out the meaning of the stakes by now, surely? So as not to leave footprints in the snow you could walk backwards in a crouching position, erasing them with your hands as you went. As long as you took the exact same path going back as the one you took when you came. But that method isn’t perfect and too easy to spot. So what’s an alternative? The easiest is to make it snow again, just in the area where your footprints are.”

  “And how do you do that? Beg it to snow? And only where you’ve been walking?”

  “You do it the opposite way around. You only walk in the places where you can get it to snow.”

  “What? I’m still asking you how you get it to snow.”

  “From the roof. You make it snow from the roof. And as luck would have it, that night it was covered in powder snow. Normally, as long as it isn’t blown off by the wind, when snow falls off a roof it lands directly under the eaves. But this house is built on a slant and leans to the south. When the snow falls off this roof it lands about two metres away from the eaves.”

  “Aha!” said Ushikoshi.

  “Mr Hamamoto had to be careful. The snow would only land in a parallel line to the roof, so that was the only place he could step. The best thing was for him to mark the line and go and return along that exact same route. But drawing the line in the snow would be way too much trouble. And if it happened to snow that evening, the line would disappear. So that’s the reason. You get it now?”

  “I still don’t get it. Why put stakes in the ground?”

  “As markers! Instead of drawing a line. The imaginary line between those two stakes was the exact position of the edge of the roof. In other words, the route that he needed to walk. It would be hard to see your own footprints at night, but on his way there he could aim for the stake at the west end of the house, and on his return the east one. On the way back he would have tried to erase his footprints a little bit I assume. Of course, he would also have pulled out the stakes and taken them with him, then burned them in the fire.

  “Of course, he wouldn’t have had to bother with all that if it had been snowing when he killed Ueda, but it was a precaution in case the snow stopped falling—and it had stopped that night, so he made use of his trick.”

  “So you are saying that after killing Ueda he climbed on the roof and knocked the snow off it?”

  “Yes. He made it snow.”

  “I see.”

  “Next—”

  “Just a minute! What about the doll that was found in pieces near Room 10? Why was it there? Was it used for something?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? That was the place where he couldn’t make it snow. He could only make the snow fall by the edge of the roof.”

  “Huh? So that means… Er, what does that mean? Something to do with the problem of the footprints…”

  “When he climbed the steps to Room 10 he could walk along the edge where the handrail overhangs and not leave any footprints. The problem was the bit between the west corner of the house and the bottom of the steps. There was no way of hiding prints. So he put the doll down in the snow and walked over it.”

  “Aha!”

  “But if he just placed it there as it was, it wouldn’t be enough to cover the distance between the edge of the roof and the stairs, so he disassembled it and spread the pieces across the space. Then he walked across it like stepping stones.”

  “Ah!”

  “That’s why he chose a doll that could be taken apart.”

  “Why didn’t we think of something so simple? But… The doll looked in through Ms Aikura’s window. Was that before…? Or…?”

  “Yes, well, that was only the head. Now as to why he had to do that—”

  “I think perhaps I should explain this part,” said Kozaburo, noticing that Kiyoshi was getting a little impatient.

  “It’s just as Mr Mitarai said. I walked over the doll’s body, used the stakes in the ground as landmarks and roughly levelled out the snow to cover my footprints as I went back inside the house to head up to the roof. But I was still carrying Golem’s head at that point. I planned to return the head to Room 3 and then quietly wait for morning, hiding either in Room 3 or in the library next door.

  “Because everyone thought I had gone to bed in my room in the tower, I couldn’t risk making all the noise of lowering the drawbridge until it was a believable hour in the morning for me to be getting up. I planned to wait until around 7 and then open it, pretending I had just woken up.

  “I was still carrying the head because I didn’t want it to get damaged from lying out in the snow overnight. I had thought about dropping off the head in Room 3 first, but then I decided as I was going there later to wait out the night anyway, it was probably best not to go back and forth too many times and increase the possibility of being seen. So I was carrying it when I climbed the ladder on the side of the main building up to the roof. Earlier I had left the door end of the drawbridge slightly ajar, just enough for me to slip out through and then later get back in.

  “I scraped the snow off the roof and climbed down, thinking I was now almost home and dry. But I discovered to my dismay that Eiko had woken up and closed the drawbridge door completely. The door doesn’t open from the outside and if I were to try to force it, the noise would probably alert somebody and I’d be seen
, and without doubt be suspected of the crime. I’d already killed Ueda and there was no taking that back. And I didn’t want to be arrested before I’d had my chance to kill Kikuoka.

  “Locked out and stuck on a windswept roof, I racked my brain for an idea. There was a short rope about three metres long attached to the water tank that a workman had used to climb up the side of the tank. But obviously it was way too short for me to lower myself to the ground. The ladder was only between the level of the drawbridge and the roof. Even if I’d tied the rope to the bottom rung of the ladder, it still wouldn’t have reached the ground. And besides, I’d locked the salon door from the inside earlier, so I wouldn’t have been able to get back into the main building—or into my own room in the tower, again making me an obvious suspect in the killing. Then I realized I still had Golem’s head. I wondered if by using the doll’s head and the three-metre piece of rope, I could find a way into the house. And then I came up with an idea.

  “First I tied the rope to the railing that runs around the roof and used it to lower myself to Ms Aikura’s window. I thought if I could make Golem’s head appear to be looking in, and wake her up, she’d be bound to scream. I knew that Eiko had only just closed the drawbridge door so she must still have been awake. If she heard Ms Aikura screaming I knew she’d get up. I would estimate the timing and climb back up to the roof, untie the rope and reattach it to the railing by Eiko’s room window. Then I would make a loud noise right above Eiko’s room, making her get up and come over to the window. I hoped she’d open the window to take a look outside. She’s not afraid of much, that girl, so I thought the chances were pretty good.

  “When she didn’t see anything outside, what would she do next? I guessed she’d head to Ms Aikura’s room to find out why she was screaming. If I were lucky, she’d be in a hurry and forget to close and lock the window properly first, and I’d be able to come down the rope and enter through Eiko’s window. Before that I would dispose of Golem’s head from the western edge of the roof as far as I could throw it.

  “If Eiko were to go completely into Room 1, I would be able to slip out of Room 2 next door and hurry to let down the drawbridge, pretending that I was rushing across from the tower because I’d heard screaming.

  “But if Eiko simply stood talking in the doorway of Room 1, and didn’t go right inside the room, I’d have no other choice but to hide in her wardrobe until morning. Likewise, if she did enter Room 1 but came out again to find me standing on the main building side, lowering the drawbridge, that would be very hard to explain away. Not to mention the possibility that she might not even have opened her window in the first place, or that I could have been spotted climbing in through her window by the Kanais. It was all or nothing, really. My advantage was that I knew my daughter’s personality so well that I felt the likelihood of success was rather good. And then, in the end, it went as smoothly as I could have dared to hope for.”

  “Incredible. What a brilliant plan!” said Ushikoshi. “If it had been me, I’d have knocked on my daughter’s window and begged her to let me in.”

  “Of course I thought of that too. But I still had so much left to do.”

  “Yes, you still had to kill Kikuoka,” said Kiyoshi. “Mr Ushikoshi, if this part of the story has amazed you, just wait until you hear the rest. The planning that went into it is stunning. You’ll be in awe.”

  “The murder of Kikuoka… But that happened while I was with Mr Hamamoto. We were definitely together at the time of death, drinking Louis XIII cognac. How on earth did—”

  “He used an icicle. When I first arrived at this mansion, and looked up at the tower, it was as I had expected—there were so many huge icicles.”

  “An icicle!?”

  The detectives looked flabbergasted.

  “But it was a knife,” said Okuma. “It was definitely a knife that killed Kikuoka!”

  “A knife inside an icicle. He hung a knife from a string under the eaves of the tower roof, and it created an icicle with a knife at the tip. Isn’t that right, Mr Hamamoto?”

  “You got it, nicely done! This far north, the icicles are gigantic. Some of them grow longer than a metre. When I’d made my knife-cicles I dipped the tips in warm water to expose the blade of the knife. Then I kept them in the freezer.”

  “Ah, so that’s why there was string attached to the knife. Great trick! But…” Okuma broke off.

  “Yes, that’s right. But theory and practice turned out to be very different. It wasn’t that easy to turn a hanging icicle with a knife into a weapon. It took me a very long time to perfect it.”

  “But why did it have to be an icicle? Or rather, why did you need to attach an icicle to a knife?”

  This was the same thing that I was wondering.

  “I suppose what I really want to know is, I understand how you made a weapon, but how did you manage to—”

  “Well, obviously by sliding it.”

  “Sliding it where?”

  “On what?”

  Several people began clamouring at once.

  “Down the stairs of course! As you recall, this mansion has two staircases, one in the east and one in the west wing. If you lower the drawbridge, then there’s a straight line from the window of the kitchen in the tower down to the ventilation hole in Room 14. It becomes one long, steep slide. That’s the whole plan behind the eccentric arrangement of the divided staircases in this mansion.”

  “J… Just a minute!”

  I couldn’t help interrupting. There was something that was bothering me.

  “So you say you slid an icicle with a knife inside down the stairs… But wouldn’t it get stuck on the landings?”

  “Why would it? There are twenty-centimetre gaps between the walls and the south end of each of the landings.”

  “So you could be sure that the icicle would pass through those gaps at the end of each landing? But the staircases are pretty wide. Surely you couldn’t predict the exact course the knife would take? What if it had slid down the centre of the staircase? How could you make sure it stayed over… to the… side… Oh, I get it!”

  “That’s right. That’s the only reason that I built this house on a slant. If the house is sloping to one side, then it follows that the stairs are too. This long staircase slide, to exaggerate a little, becomes a kind of V shape between the staircase and the wall. The house leans towards the south, so the knifecicle was sure to travel down the southern edge of the stairs.” (See Fig. 9.)

  “Wow!”

  Fig. 9

  I wasn’t the only one lost in admiration. If Eiko had been here too, what kind of praise would she have been heaping on her beloved father right now?

  Ushikoshi took over the questioning.

  “So the icicle would have definitely slid through that twenty-centimetre space at the end of the corridors… I would never ever have imagined that someone could build a whole house with the sole purpose of killing another human being. Especially one so crooked… And then, Mr Hamamoto, you are saying that the icicle entered Room 14 through the ventilation hole?”

  From here, Ushikoshi began to sound a little pained.

  “You experimented over and over to make sure the hole was in the exact right position, so that you could place the icicle at the top of the drawbridge and have it fall without any extra force straight down into Room 14.”

  I realized what Ushikoshi was trying to say.

  “But right in the middle of the long slide was Room 3, the Tengu Room. There’s no slide in there to support an icicle!”

  “But there is,” said Kiyoshi.

  “Where?”

  “The Tengu mask noses!”

  “Oh!”

  I wasn’t the only person to exclaim in surprise.

  “The southern wall is covered in Tengu masks. The window in that room was always kept open about thirty centimetres, supposedly for ventilation. Didn’t you think that was strange?”

  “Of course! Somewhere among those hundreds of Tengu masks there must
have been a pattern of noses arranged in a diagonal line, acting as an extension of the staircase. But it was concealed by all the other masks that filled up the whole wall. Camouflage! Now that was clever!”

  “You must have practised for ages, Mr Hamamoto,” said Kiyoshi.

  “Yes. It took a long time to get the position of the masks just right. It all depended on the speed of the icicle. There were so many other points I had to take into consideration, I don’t want to sound as if I’m bragging…”

  “No, we’d like to hear it all,” said Ushikoshi.

  “Anyhow, I had plenty of time. I made excuses to get Mr and Mrs Hayakawa and my daughter out of the house and kept practising. I was worried that the icicle might snap in two on the way down, or because I was sliding it over quite a distance, whether the heat produced by friction would melt it. It was easy to make sure the icicles I prepared in advance were long and thick, but if too much ice remained when it arrived in Room 14, no matter how high the heating was turned up, I was afraid that it might not have completely melted by the morning. Likewise, too much water remaining after the icicle melted would also pose a problem. Therefore, I had to make the icicle as short and thin as possible, but still strong enough to reach its target in Room 14 before melting. Luckily, it turned out that the icicles always slid so quickly that they reached the bottom in an instant, and friction caused a surprisingly small amount of melting.”

  “But weren’t you still worried about the amount of water it produced as it melted?”

  “Indeed. At times I gave serious thought to creating them out of dry ice. But I’d have to purchase the dry ice from somewhere, and that might mean I could be traced. So I gave up on that plan, and that’s why in the end, to avoid suspicion, I had to spill water over Kikuoka’s body from the flower vase.

  “Actually, the water created other problems too. First of all, there was always a small amount of water remaining on the stairs. And then as the icicle entered Room 14, it always dripped a slight amount of water into the basement corridor and down the wall below the ventilation hole. It was always possible that somebody might notice. However, the corridor down in the basement was dimly lit, and the heating would be on all night, so I figured it should evaporate completely by the morning. There wasn’t much of it.”