Murder in the Crooked House

SCENE 1 The Entrance of the Ice Floe Mansion

The cheerful notes of “White Christmas” and the sounds of merrymaking spilt out from the salon behind them.

From down the hill came the grinding of tyre chains, and a black Mercedes-Benz appeared out of the swirling snow—more party guests arriving.

Kozaburo Hamamoto stood in front of the open double doors, smoking a pipe, a brightly coloured ascot tied at his neck. Although his hair had turned completely silver, he was in excellent shape with no hint of excess flab, making his age difficult to estimate from his appearance. He lowered his pipe to exhale a plume of white smoke, then turned to smile at the woman by his side.

His daughter, Eiko, was wearing an elegantly expensive cocktail dress. Her hair was up, exposing her shoulders to the evening chill. She’d inherited her father’s aquiline nose and rather prominent chin, but was nevertheless something of a beauty. She was tall; in heels she stood slightly taller than her father. Her make-up was carefully done, but on the heavy side, as you would expect for an occasion like this evening. Her tight-lipped expression was that of a company president listening wordlessly to the demands of her union members.

The porch was illuminated in a yellow glow as the car pulled in. The instant it stopped in front of the Hamamotos, the door was flung open with great force and a tall, rather heavily built man with thinning hair leapt out into the snow.

“Well, what have we here? My own personal welcoming committee!” he bellowed, rather louder than necessary, his words forming white clouds in the air around him. Eikichi Kikuoka was the kind of man who had probably never spoken softly in his life; the extroverted company president was forever out and about attending social events. Perhaps that was why his voice always sounded a little raspy.

The lord of the manor nodded graciously, and his daughter formally welcomed the guest to their home.

A petite woman emerged from the car behind Kikuoka. She wore a black dress with a leopard-skin coat thrown over her shoulders and her movements were graceful and catlike. Her presence seemed to make the two inhabitants of the manor—or at least the younger—uneasy. Neither of the Hamamotos had set eyes on her before this evening. Her face was kittenish too—tiny, cute.

“Allow me to introduce you to my new secretary, Kumi Aikura. Kumi, this is Mr Hamamoto.”

It was clear that Kikuoka was doing his best to suppress it, but a hint of pride had crept into his voice.

Kumi Aikura smiled sweetly.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said. Her voice was astonishingly high-pitched.

Unable to stand the sound of that voice, Eiko quickly stepped up to the driver’s window and gave the chauffeur parking directions.

As soon as the butler, Kohei Hayakawa, who’d been waiting politely in the entrance way, showed the two new guests into the salon, a grin of amusement appeared on Kozaburo Hamamoto’s face. How many secretaries had Kikuoka gone through now? It was getting difficult to keep count. This Kumi Aikura would be doing her utmost to perform those all-important duties of sitting on her boss’s lap and walking arm and arm with him through the streets of Ginza, no doubt earning a small fortune in the process.

“Daddy?”

“What is it?” Hamamoto replied without taking his pipe from his mouth.

“Why don’t you go inside now? There’s only Togai and the Kanais still to come. There’s no need for you to welcome them personally. Kohei and I will be fine by ourselves. Go and keep Mr Kikuoka company.”

“Hmm. I suppose you’re right… But aren’t you going to catch cold dressed like that?”

“Could you ask Auntie to fetch me a mink? Any of them will do. See if she can get Sasaki to bring it out to me. It’d be nice if he could be out here too to greet Togai when he arrives.”

“Will do. Kohei, where’s Chikako right now?”

“She was in the kitchen last time I saw her…” replied the butler from his post inside the doorway.

The two men disappeared into the house.

Left alone, Eiko hugged her exposed arms as she listened to the music of Cole Porter drifting out from the salon. And then suddenly she felt the soft brush of fur around her shoulders. She turned her head to see Shun Sasaki.

“Thanks,” she said curtly.

“Togai’s late,” Sasaki remarked. He was a young man, fair-skinned and handsome.

“He’ll be stuck in the snow somewhere. You know what a terrible driver he is.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I want you to stay until he gets here.”

“Sure.”

They stood there quietly for a while, until Eiko abruptly broke the silence.

“Did you see Kikuoka’s secretary?”

“Yes, er… Well… Yes, I saw her.”

“What taste!”

Sasaki looked confused.

“Vulgar and ill-bred.”

Eiko frowned. Normally when she spoke, she took the greatest care to conceal her true emotions. It made her something of an enigma to all the young men who moved in her circle.

A Japanese-made mid-size saloon came struggling up the hill.

“Looks like he made it.”

The car pulled up in front of them and the window was wound down. The driver’s plump face with its silver-framed glasses appeared. Despite the wintry weather, Togai was covered in sweat. He opened the door slightly, but stayed in his seat.

“Thank you for inviting me, Eiko.”

“You’re late!”

“The roads were thick with snow. It was terrible. Whoa! You’re more beautiful than ever tonight. Here, I’ve got a Christmas present for you.”

He handed her a wrapped gift.

“Thanks.”

“Hey, Sasaki. What are you doing out here?”

“Been waiting for you. Just about to freeze to death, too. Hurry up and come inside.”

“Right. Will do.”

The two men knew each other and would sometimes get together in Tokyo for a drink.

“Go and park. You know where, right? The usual place.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The saloon puttered off through the snow and disappeared around the back of the mansion. Sasaki hurried after it.

Right away, a taxi pulled up in its place. The back door opened and a tall and extremely skinny man stepped out into the snow. It was one of Kikuoka’s employees, Michio Kanai. He turned and reached back into the taxi, his silhouette like a solitary winter crane in the middle of a snowbound field. It appeared to take all his physical strength to extract his wife, Hatsue, from the narrow back seat. The woman who eventually emerged was his exact physical opposite.

The husband turned to Eiko.

“It’s so lovely to see you, Ms Hamamoto. How kind of you to invite us again.”

It might be a little unkind to say, but Kanai was the master of the ingratiating smile—so much so that the muscles of his face seemed to be permanently fixed in that one expression. You could call it an occupational hazard. With only the slightest flexing of these muscles, he was able to create a smile, even when his real emotion was something quite different. Or maybe it was every other expression besides this smile that required special muscle power. It was hard to say.

It was impossible to recall this man’s regular facial expression, Eiko always thought. In fact, whenever she tried to picture Kanai he was wrinkling up the outer corners of his eyes and showing his teeth. Eiko frequently wondered whether he had been born that way.

“We’ve been looking forward to seeing you. Thanks for making the journey.”

“Not at all. Not at all. Has the boss arrived yet?”

“Yes, he’s here already.”

“Oh, dear. We’re late!”

Hatsue Kanai stood patiently waiting in the snow. At first glance, she appeared pleasant and laid-back, but her eyes were surprisingly sharp, and now her gaze was hastily checking out Eiko, sweeping her over from head to toe. In the next instant, her face broke into a smile.

“What a simply gorgeous outfit!” she announced. Her praise didn’t extend beyond her hostess’s dress.

With the arrival of the Kanais, all the guests were assembled.

The last of them safely inside the mansion, Eiko primly turned on her heel and headed in towards the salon. Cole Porter became louder. She strode like a stage actress passing from her dressing room, through the wings and out to her audience, with just the appropriate mix of apprehension and confidence.

SCENE 2 The Salon of the Ice Floe Mansion

A gorgeous chandelier hung from the ceiling of the salon. Her father had protested that such a grandiose item didn’t suit the style of the house, but Eiko had insisted and won.

In the west corner of this oversized living-dining room, there was a circular fireplace, next to it a pile of branches and logs. Above the fireplace was a giant inverted funnel that served as a chimney. On the brick surround of the fireplace, a single metal coffee cup sat forgotten by the side of Kozaburo Hamamoto’s favourite rocking chair.

All of the guests were seated around a long, narrow table beneath the electric candles of the chandelier. The effect was of a tiny floating forest of lights. The music had changed from Cole Porter to a Christmas medley.

Because the floor of the salon was on a slope, the legs of the table and surrounding chairs had been cut just the right amount to keep the dining arrangements perfectly horizontal.

The eyes of each guest were on the glass of wine and a candle in front of them, as they politely waited for Eiko to begin her speech. Presently, the music faded out and all eyes turned to the mistress of the mansion.

“Thank you, everyone, for making the long journey to be here this evening.”

Her shrill voice carried clearly through the large space.

“We have both young guests, and older. You must be exhausted, but I’m sure it’s going to be worth your while having made the trip as there is something very special about tonight. It’s Christmas Day, and Christmas means snow. And by snow I don’t mean a bit of decorative cotton wool or shredded paper. I’m talking about the real thing. Our Hokkaido home is the best place for the authentic experience. Tonight, for your delight, we have prepared a very special Christmas tree.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, the lights of the chandelier faded to darkness. Somewhere at the back of the room the chef, Kajiwara, had hit the switch. The music changed to a more solemn, traditional carol.

This part of the programme had been rehearsed what felt like a thousand times over. The military precision of her preparations would have put an army to shame.

“Please take a look through the window.”

There were gasps and exclamations of wonder. A real fir tree had been planted in the back garden and decorated with hundreds of multicoloured light bulbs which suddenly began to twinkle in every colour. The snow that dusted its branches sparkled with the lights.

“Lights!”

At Eiko’s command, the room lighting snapped back on, and the music changed back to upbeat Christmas songs.

“You will all have plenty of chances to enjoy the tree. If you don’t mind the cold, I recommend standing under its branches and listening to the creaking sound of the ice floes rubbing together out in the Okhotsk Sea. Christmas here is the real thing—like nothing you can experience in Tokyo.

“And now, lend an ear to the man who has made this fantastic Christmas experience possible for all of us. My dear father, of whom I am incredibly proud, will now address everyone.”

As she spoke, Eiko began to applaud vigorously. The assembled guests scrambled to follow suit.

Kozaburo Hamamoto got to his feet, his pipe clasped in his left hand as always.

“Eiko, please don’t flatter me so much. You’re embarrassing me in front of our guests.”

There was general laughter.

“Not at all! Everyone here is proud to be a friend of yours, Daddy. Aren’t you?”

This last part was addressed to the assembled guests, and like a flock of sheep they all began nodding as one. The most emphatic of all was Eikichi Kikuoka. It was well known that the fortunes of his company were entirely tied up with the Hama Diesel Company.

“Dear friends, this is the second time most of you have been invited to this old man’s whimsical mansion, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I hope you have got used to our sloping floors, and that no one will lose their footing and take a tumble. But don’t get too comfortable. I do rather enjoy watching you all stagger around.”

The guests laughed.

“Here in Japan, Christmas is just an excuse for bars and restaurants to make a bit of money. It was very wise of you all to come and spend it here instead.

“And now let’s enjoy our champagne before it gets warm. Well, I don’t suppose it matters if it does. You only need to put it outside for five minutes and it’ll be perfectly chilled again. Anyway, I’d like to lead you all in a toast…”

Kozaburo picked up his glass. Everyone reached immediately for theirs and held them up. As Kozaburo toasted Christmas, everyone else in the room murmured something like “Thank you for everything and all the best for the next year” or other choice phrases that they hoped would help to improve their business relationship with their host.

Kozaburo put down his glass.

“Many of you will be meeting for the first time this evening. Young, silver-haired alike, I’ll make the introductions right now. And lest I forget, there are several people among us who also make this mansion their home and are of the greatest help to my family. I really ought to include them in my introductions. Eiko, I’d like to introduce Kohei and Chikako to everyone.”

Eiko raised her right hand and spoke briskly.

“I’ll take care of that. You don’t need to make the introductions yourself. Sasaki, go and fetch Mr Kajiwara, Kohei and Auntie.”

The mansion’s staff arrived in the salon and followed the mistress’s directions to line up by the side wall.

“Mr Kikuoka and Mr Kanai already visited us back in the summer, and so you’ll both probably remember the faces of our staff, but I think it’s the first time for many of you to meet them, or each other. So let me introduce everyone, beginning with our guest of honour. Please listen carefully and remember everyone’s name. No mistakes later, please.

“First of all, this fine figure of a gentleman. I think you are all familiar with Mr Eikichi Kikuoka, President of Kikuoka Bearings? Some of you may have seen his photo in the magazines, but now you have the opportunity to see the real thing.”

Kikuoka had twice been the subject of a big scandal in the weekly gossip magazines. One time he’d got himself into a mess over payments to a mistress at the end of an affair, and ended up in court. The second time was after he’d been dumped by a famous actress.

His nickname had long been “the Chrysanthemum” (the Japanese characters for “Kikuoka” mean “chrysanthemum hill” and he used to have a rather impressive mop of lightish hair). But now as he bowed to everyone, he revealed a rapidly growing bald spot. He turned to Kozaburo and bowed once again.

“Would you mind giving us a word?”

“Sure. Sorry to go first, folks. So every time I come, wonderful house. Amazing location too. It’s a real honour to be able to sit by Mr Hamamoto and share a glass of wine in a place like this.”

“And next to Mr Kikuoka, in the gorgeous outfit, is his secretary, Ms Aikura. I’m sorry, what was your given name again?”

Of course, Eiko remembered perfectly well that the woman’s name was Kumi, but this way she could imply that she didn’t quite believe it was her real one. However, Kumi Aikura wasn’t fazed by this in the least. In her sugar-sprinkled voice, she replied with perfect dignity,

“I’m Kumi. So nice to meet you all.”

This woman is a tough customer, Eiko decided on the spot. For sure, she must have worked in a hostess bar.

“What a lovely name! Not at all ordinary.” Eiko paused for a moment. “It makes you sound like a TV star or something.”

“I’m always afraid I’ll fail to live up my name.”

The high-pitched, girlish tone didn’t falter for a second.

“I’m so short. If I were taller and more glamorous, I might be able to live up to a name like that. I envy you, Eiko.”

Eiko was five feet eight. For that reason she always wore flat slipper-like shoes. If she wore heels she’d be getting up towards six feet. Right now, she was momentarily at a loss for words. She moved on quickly.

“And next to Kumi, we have the president of Kikuoka Bearings, Mr Michio Kanai.”

She’d been thrown, and the words had just slipped out. But even though she heard Kikuoka tease his employee—Hey, when were you made president?—she still didn’t recognize her mistake right away.

Kanai got to his feet, and with his usual fixed smile, began to shower Kozaburo Hamamoto with praise. He didn’t forget his own boss either. The skilful speech went on for quite a while. This was exactly the kind of performance that had got him to where he was in the world.

“And the voluptuous lady next to him is his wife, Hatsue.”

Eiko realized this blunder immediately. Voluptuous… Sure enough, Hatsue had a comeback.

“I had to miss my exercise class to come today.”

From the other side of the table, Kumi gave her a quick once-over and looked very obviously self-satisfied.

“I’m hoping a breath of this pure air will be a boost to my diet.”

She seemed to have been quite put out by Eiko’s comment, and didn’t add anything else.

Returning to the male guests, Eiko quickly regained her usual composure.

“This handsome young man is Shun Sasaki, in his sixth year at Jikei University School of Medicine. He’ll soon be taking the National Medical Examination. For now, he’s keeping an eye on my father’s health, and staying with us through the winter holidays.”

How easy it was to introduce the men, Eiko thought, as Sasaki spoke.

“The food is delicious, the air is pure, no noisy telephones ringing; as a medical student I’d really like to meet the person who could fall ill in a place like this.”

Kozaburo Hamamoto was famous for his dislike of telephones. There was not a single one anywhere in the Ice Floe Mansion.

“Next to Sasaki is his friend, Masaki Togai, a Tokyo University student with a promising future. I think you have probably heard of his father, Shunsaku Togai, member of the House of Councillors?”

There was a slight murmur of appreciation among the guests, naïve excitement at being in the presence of political royalty…

“A real thoroughbred, if you will. Please, Mr Thoroughbred…”

Togai stood up, his face pale, and fiddled momentarily with his silver-framed glasses.

“I’m honoured to be here this evening. When I told my father about the invitation, he was delighted.”

And with that, he took his seat again.

“And next we have a boy who seems to have caught the sun out on the ski slopes, my nephew—well, technically Daddy’s older brother’s grandson—Yoshihiko. He’s rather good-looking, don’t you think? Still only nineteen, and a first-year student at Keio University. He’s staying with us for the winter break.”

The suntanned boy in the white sweater got to his feet, shyly said hello and sat straight back down.

“Is that it? Sorry, Yoshihiko, you have to speak properly.”

“But I haven’t got anything to say.”

“Of course you have. You’re too shy. Your hobbies or something about your university, there are plenty of things you could talk about. Come on, speak up!”

But there was no reaction.

“Well, I believe I’ve covered all of our dear guests. Now I’d like to introduce our staff to you. First of all, the gentleman standing over there, Kohei Hayakawa. He’s been with our family ever since we lived in Kamakura—about twenty years. He’s our butler and our chauffeur and general odd-jobs man.

“Next to him is his wife, Chikako. She’s our housekeeper and is an invaluable help to us all. Please feel free to ask her for whatever you need.

“The man standing closest to us is our wonderful chef, Haruo Kajiwara. As you can see, he is still in his twenties, but his skills are world class. We managed to lure him away from the Hotel Okura, which didn’t want to let him go. Very soon, everyone will be able to taste for themselves how skilled he is.”

She turned to the three members of the staff.

“Thank you, everyone. That will do. Please get back to what you need to do.

“So that completes the introductions,” she continued, addressing her guests once more. “I’m confident you are all excellent at remembering names and faces.

“And now, while dinner is being served, and you enjoy the view of our Christmas tree, I’m sure you have much to discuss. So without further ado, Yoshihiko, Sasaki, Togai, would you light the candles for us? As soon as that’s done, we’ll lower the salon lights. I wish you all a very enjoyable evening.”

The middle-aged contingent immediately flocked around Kozaburo Hamamoto and began to chat, but it was noticeable that the loudest laughter was from the president of Kikuoka Bearings. Kozaburo’s pipe remained firmly in place.

Eiko realized that thanks to the business with Kumi Aikawa and Hatsue Kanai, she had been guilty of one more blunder. She had forgotten to introduce Ueda, Kikuoka’s chauffeur, probably because he had been blocked from view by the large-set figure of Togai. But she soon shrugged it off: He’s just a driver, after all.

Dinner was served. The guests were treated to roast turkey with all the trimmings. As Eiko had promised, here at the very northern tip of Japan they were able to enjoy the flavours of a top-class Tokyo hotel.

While the other guests were finishing their after-dinner cup of tea, Sasaki got up and went to the window to take a closer look at the Christmas tree. It continued its lonely blinking from beneath its layer of snow.

Sasaki watched the tree for a while, but then noticed something strange. Near the French windows that led from the salon out into the garden, there was a thin stake or pole of some kind sticking out of the snow, about two metres out from the wall of the house. Somebody must have stuck it there. The section visible above the snow was about a metre. The stake itself resembled a piece of the wood that was piled up by the salon fireplace. Except that whoever had done this had apparently selected a particularly straight piece. Earlier that day, when he had been helping Eiko with the tree decorations, the stake hadn’t been there.

What on earth? thought Sasaki, wiping the condensation from the window pane to get a better look. He peered out into the night and as he did so he noticed that over towards the west corner of the house, only vaguely visible through the whirling snowflakes, there was a second stake. Because of the distance it was hard to be certain but it seemed as if this too was another thin branch of firewood, protruding about a metre from the snow. As far as he could tell, there were no other stakes visible—at least from the salon window. Just these two.

Sasaki wanted to call Togai over and ask him what he thought they might be, but he was deep in conversation with Eiko. Yoshihiko was in the circle of older guests including Kozaburo, Kikuoka and Kanai, and Sasaki didn’t want to disturb their conversation, although whether it was business talk or idle chat wasn’t clear. Kajiwara and the Hayakawas were nowhere to be seen—probably back in the kitchen.

Suddenly Kozaburo raised his voice above the chit-chat.

“All you youngsters, haven’t you had enough of listening to old people prattling on? Come on, let’s hear something amusing.”

Sasaki took this cue to sit back down at the table, and with that, the mysterious stakes in the snow were forgotten.

To tell the truth, Kozaburo Hamamoto was fed up with listening to the empty flattery from tonight’s guests. In fact, his mood was turning sour. The very reason he had built this eccentric home up here in the far north was to escape the clutches of suck-ups like this.

And yet, like a herd of wild animals they came stampeding after him across hundreds of kilometres. However weird the sloping floor, however eccentric his collection of antiques, they just blindly praised everything in sight. As long as he still had the scent of money, they would hunt him down to the ends of the earth.

His hopes were with the younger generation, and he addressed them now.

“All right, do you like mysteries? I’m very fond of them myself. I’m going to set you a puzzle to solve. Everyone here is attending, or has attended, a top university, so I’m sure you have some of the smartest minds in the country.

“How about this one? In the gold-panning region of Mexico, right by the US border, there was a young boy who piled up bags of sand on his bicycle and crossed the border from Mexico into the United States every single day. The US customs officials assumed that he was a smuggler and would open and search the suspicious sandbags. However, all they ever found inside was plain old sand, and not a single nugget of gold. So what was the boy up to? Here is your quiz: What was he smuggling, and how was he doing it? How about it, Mr Kikuoka? Can you solve it?”

“Let’s see… No, I can’t.”

Kanai immediately echoed his boss.

“I can’t get it either.”

Neither man looked as if he were giving the problem any thought whatsoever.

“Yoshihiko, how about you?”

The boy silently shook his head.

“Do you all give up? This one wasn’t difficult at all. The boy was smuggling bicycles.”

The loudest laughter came from Kikuoka. Kanai also offered his own fawning reaction,

“It was bicycles! I see. Very good.”

“Now that puzzle was one thought up by Perry Mason’s friend Drake and his secretary, Della. Pretty good, wasn’t it? If you want to smuggle bicycles, the way to do it is to base your operation right in a gold-panning region.

“Okay, let’s think of another one… This time I’m not going to give you the answer. Let’s see… What would be a good one…? All right, here we go. This one is a true story—something that a friend of mine used to boast about long ago. I’ve told it many times in my speech to the new recruits at the company. The story is set in the 1950s.

“These days, all the railway companies in Japan, both public and private, have what look like little burners on the rails to prevent a thick layer of snow from building up on the tracks or the rails freezing. But back in the fifties, Japan was still a poor country, and no railway companies had anything like that.

“One winter, maybe 1955, Tokyo had a very heavy snowfall. Fifty centimetres fell in one night. Of course, all the private and public railway companies were forced to suspend operations. I’m not sure what would happen these days, but in Tokyo where they weren’t used to so much snow, they didn’t have snow ploughs. Back then, all the railway company employees used to be put to work shovelling the snow by hand. It was a terrible task and took hours. It was impossible to get the tracks clear by the morning rush hour.

“However, Hamakyu Railways, whose current president is that good friend I mentioned at the start, managed to get their trains running after only the shortest of delays. And by rush hour, all their trains were running on time. So how do you think they did it?

“My friend used a method; I suppose we could call it a trick. However, I must stress that he wasn’t the president back then, and was in no position to mobilize a whole army of employees to help deal with the snow. Nor did he have access to any specialized equipment. He had to rely on his own brilliance. He rose to fame overnight within the company.”

“That really happened? Sounds like a miracle,” said Kikuoka.

Kanai had to chime in too.

“Yes, you’re right. A true miracle…”

“Yes, I know it was a miracle! But I’d like to hear the answer,” said Kozaburo, a little frustrated.

“Yes, yes, of course. I’m going to say that the first train of the day had a snow plough attached to the front.”

“No, they didn’t have anything like that back then. Besides it would have been impossible—the snow was too deep. And if that kind of equipment had been available, then for sure all the other train companies would have owned the same thing. No, he used nothing like that. Just what was already available.”

“Mr Hamamoto, all of your friends are really amazing people.”

Kozaburo paid no attention to Kanai’s gratuitous flattery.

“I’ve got it.”

It was Sasaki who spoke. Next to him, Togai’s expression was inscrutable.

“They kept the empty trains running all through the night.”

“Well done! You got it. As soon as it began to snow and looked like it was going to stick, my friend got the trains to run at ten-minute intervals throughout the night. And back then it took a lot of determination on his part to get something like that done. There are hard-headed bosses who resist new ideas everywhere. But thanks to that level of resolve, he now sits in the president’s chair. What do you think? Are you ready to try another one?”

Togai, eager to recover from his slow start, nodded energetically.

Unfortunately for him, all of the puzzles that Kozaburo came up with were successfully solved by Shun Sasaki. Every time Sasaki opened his mouth and came out with the next impressive correct answer, Togai’s face would turn steadily more crimson, until it matched the lights on the Christmas tree.

Kozaburo glanced at the young man’s expression. He realized what his eccentric quiz had become. A chance to win the ultimate prize.

Both young men, or Togai at least, were treating this quiz as a way to win Eiko’s favour. If he succeeded in coming first, Togai believed that his prize would be a ticket for that most romantic trip around the world—a honeymoon. And then on his return, the rest of his prize money would be the legacy of a lifetime in this mansion.

Kozaburo had predicted this might happen, and with a level of cynicism that had been perfected over many years, he had prepared these puzzles purposely to get this reaction.

“Mr Sasaki, you seem very good at this. Would you like a more challenging problem?”

“If possible,” Sasaki replied, clearly emboldened by his success.

And then Kozaburo said something that made everybody assembled think they’d lost their hearing for a moment.

“Eiko, have you decided yet who you’re going to marry?”

Naturally, Eiko looked horrified.

“What are you talking about, Daddy? Where did that come from all of a sudden?”

“If you haven’t made your decision yet, how about one of these young men sitting here tonight? How about whoever is able to answer the question I’m about to set them?”

“Daddy, stop joking around!”

“Actually, I’m not joking at all. I’m perfectly serious. This eccentric house, the ridiculous pile of junk I’ve collected that sits in Room 3, that can all be called a joke. But this, right now, is me being serious. Here before you are two fine young men. I would have absolutely no objections to you choosing either one of them. To be honest, I don’t have the energy to object. And if you don’t know which to choose, you have nothing to worry about. Leave it to me. I can choose for you—with a puzzle. I’ve come prepared with a question for that very purpose.”

That’ll do it, thought Kozaburo. Now we’ll see their true colours.

“Of course this is no longer the olden days when the man who solves the riddle gets a reward of the daughter’s hand in marriage. Instead I’ll say that the kind of man who can solve a puzzle like this one will get no objection from me. Apart from that it’s up to my daughter to choose.”

The two young men’s eyes gleamed, possibly reflecting the mountain of gold coins that they had in their sight. In contrast, Kozaburo was inwardly grinning. His full intentions wouldn’t be clear until the puzzle was solved.

“The matter of Eiko aside, I’m very interested in tackling another puzzle,” said Sasaki.

“Not to mention a chance for Mr Togai here to redeem himself… Anyway, this man you see before you both has spent a long life in a forest being buffeted over and over by the wind, and now I’m just a dead tree that has dropped all its leaves. I’ve had enough of all the manoeuvring and haggling that my life requires. I no longer recognize nor care for the marks of what we call ‘good birth’ or ‘pedigree’. It’s what inside that matters. I’ve said it repeatedly, but as you get older, or as your status in society rises, you start to forget about, or cease to care for, the things that others are obsessed with. And so, this quiz I offer not only to Togai and to Sasaki, but also to Mr Ueda and Mr Kajiwara.”

“It makes no difference to me whether a man can solve some puzzle or not,” interrupted Eiko. “If I can’t stand him, I can’t stand him.”

“Well, obviously, my dear. I know you’re not the type to quietly acquiesce if I tell you to marry one of these men.”

“I do what you tell me on other matters, but not this.”

“You’re from a good family, so I know you’re much more discerning than I am. So on that matter I’m completely confident.”

“If I solve the puzzle, may I marry your daughter?”

This last question was from Kikuoka.

“If the young lady is agreeable, then I suppose you may,” said Kozaburo generously. Kikuoka laughed.

And then Kozaburo had one more surprise announcement.

“So please go and call Mr Kajiwara. I’m going to show everyone my room at the top of the tower.”

“What did you say?” Eiko couldn’t believe her ears. “Why are we going up there?”

“Because that’s where the puzzle is.”

Kozaburo got to his feet.

“At any rate,” he added, as if an afterthought, “I’ve got a special trick up my sleeve.”

SCENE 3 The Tower

Kozaburo set off up the stairs from the salon, his guests filing after him. He called back over his shoulder as he climbed.

“My puzzle is a bit of a silly, self-indulgent thing, but it’s something that I was thinking about when I built this house, and I always hoped this day would come. Ladies and gentlemen, next to this building is a tower, which houses my bedroom. At the base of the tower there’s a rather strangely shaped flower bed. Have you ever wondered about its layout? The mystery that I’m challenging you to solve is, One, What is the significance of its design? And Two, Why is it there? That’s all.”

The higher they climbed, the narrower the staircase became, until eventually it came to a dead end. An imposing black door made of iron blocked their way, feeling rather like an exit from this world to the next. The metal had broad horizontal folds over its whole surface, giving the impression of some kind of avant-garde sculpture—a hulking, graceless monument.

Everyone watched as Kozaburo reached for a looped chain that hung from the wall and pulled on it. There was a great rattling sound that seemed to come from a long-gone era, and then something unexpected happened. The assembled guests had expected the door to swing open towards them, hinged on the left or the right, but instead it began to fall slowly away from them—downwards and outwards.

Everyone stayed frozen in one line on the narrow stairs. The staircase was lower on the right side than the left and the roof sloped down over their heads, making the wall appear to lean towards them. Right now everything was disorientating.

Like the second hand of a giant clock, the door very slowly moved from its number twelve position, and continued to revolve downwards. Now there was a second surprise in store for the observers.

What had been visible of the door from the inside—well, if you could call it a door—had been no more than one small section of the whole. As it continued to fall, it became clear that they had been looking at just the lower extremity of a massively tall metal slab. The top reached way up into the heavy black sky and was swallowed up in the darkness. As it fell away from the wall and the gap opened up farther, the noise of the wind was added to the loud rattling of the chain, and a few snowflakes fluttered in. The waiting guests finally began to understand why the operation was taking so long.

The structure was in fact a sort of drawbridge, which led across to the tower. The horizontal folds in the welding weren’t decorative after all; they served a very practical purpose—that of steps in a massive outdoor staircase. The party had climbed the regular stairs from the salon to the top of the main building, but the summit of the neighbouring tower was farther up yet.

The bridge was about to reach its target, and now through the newly exposed rectangular opening, the assembled guests were treated to a view of the night sky. Beyond the madly whirling snowflakes, the turret of the tower loomed out of the darkness, majestic as a religious painting.

The circular tip of the tower looked rather like the highest turret of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Around the outside was a kind of covered walkway with a fenced handrail. From the eaves above the walkway hung several giant icicles, looking disturbingly like vicious fangs in the midst of the furiously whirling powder snow.

With its stunning backdrop, the scene could have been straight out of a hitherto unknown Wagner opera. Behind the tower hung a great black curtain, concealing backstage the northern sea buried in drift ice. The audience was transported to a different time and place—to nineteenth-century northern Europe. Everyone’s attention was on this performance of winter hell playing out beyond the proscenium arch.

Finally, there was a loud clang as the giant bridge made contact with the tower and rested on its parapet.

“Right, the bridge is in place,” Kozaburo called over his shoulder as he set out. “It’s a little steep, so be careful as you climb.”

There was no need for the warning. The guests gripped the handrail as if their lives depended on it, as they inched their way out into the freezing air. The stairway, which led upwards like a ladder placed on a slant, gave the illusion that with so many people climbing at once, it might suddenly lurch sideways and turn upside down. Fearing such a disaster, everyone instinctively clung to the handrail, hoping this would be the one thing that saved them from tumbling to the ground. Glancing down, they saw that they were more than three storeys up, and they became even more terrified. It didn’t deter anyone that the handrail was as cold as ice.

Arriving at the tower ahead of the rest, Kozaburo locked the end of the drawbridge firmly in place. The walkway at the top of the tower was maybe a little over a metre wide, and circled the whole tower; the eaves didn’t completely protect it from the snow, which had piled up all around.

Right at the point where the drawbridge made contact with the tower there was a window, and about two metres to the right, a doorway. There was no light coming from inside, so Kozaburo slipped in through the door to turn on the room lamp, and came back out. The glow that shone from the window onto the walkway was enough for everyone to see where to put their feet. Kozaburo began to move in an anti-clockwise direction around the windswept walkway, past the window and the door. The guests filed along behind him, taking care not to tread in the heaps of snow.

“My challenge is for you to tell me the significance of the design of the flower bed at the foot of this tower. That’s really all there is to it. Because of its size, when you’re down on the ground, standing in the middle of the plants, its shape is impossible to make out. And so I’ve brought you up here for a bird’s-eye view.”

Kozaburo stopped walking and leant over the railing.

“This is the perfect spot to get the full effect,” he announced, tapping the railing. The rest of the party lined up next to him and looked gingerly down in the direction of their own feet. Around three floors below them there was indeed a flower bed. It wasn’t difficult to make out, illuminated as it was by three sources of light—the regular garden lighting, the bulbs on the Christmas tree, and what spilt out from the salon window. As Kozaburo had promised, the full effect was clearly visible from where they stood. Covered in a layer of white snow, it looked like a decorated Christmas cake. The raised pattern stood out in clear relief against the darker shadows. (See Fig. 2.)

Sasaki clung to the railing as he leant out for a better look.

“Oh, that’s what it looks like!”

His voice shivered from the cold and its battle with the noise of the wind.

“Whoa! Splendid!” cried Kikuoka in his usual booming voice.

“Right now, it’s covered in snow so we can’t enjoy the colourful leaves and flowers, but the parts where they’re planted are raised above the ground, so actually the basic design is much easier to make out than usual. There aren’t any distracting features to detract from the lines.”

“It’s a fan,” declared Kikuoka.

“Yes. It’s shaped a bit like a folding fan. But I don’t think it’s enough to say it’s fan-shaped,” said Sasaki.

“Right. It’s not supposed to be a fan,” said Kozaburo.

“You designed it to surround the tower, and so it ended up being that general shape,” said Sasaki.

“You’re exactly right.”

“There aren’t any straight lines.”

“Hmm. Yet again, Mr Sasaki, you’re on the right track. There’s an important point in there.”

Kozaburo looked along the row until he found Haruo Kajiwara, the chef.

“What do you think, Mr Kajiwara? Can you solve a riddle like this one?”

Kajiwara looked as if he hadn’t really thought about it at all.

“No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Well, then… What kind of object is it? What are its properties? Any ideas? But there is one more thing I need to tell you. The location of this strange and unusual flower bed within the Ice Floe Mansion is of great significance. It has to be in that exact spot. I want you to think of it as part of the mansion itself. The reason this building is leaning slightly is because of the design of that flower bed. I want you to think hard about the connection.”

Sasaki looked astonished.

“It’s because of that flower bed that this building leans?”

Kozaburo nodded.

That strange flower bed and the slant of this building… pondered Sasaki, as he watched the falling snow that seemed to be sucked down by the flower bed below. As he stared down at the white walls that showed the strange design in relief, he thought how the snow was like a multitude of little darts flying towards their target. And slowly he began to lose his sense of balance, and fear that he too was going to fall. He guessed it was probably because the main building, as well as this tower, both leant in the direction of the flower bed as if they were about to topple right into it.

Just a minute… Sasaki thought. He believed he had just made a connection. Was that it? The slant of the tower and the feeling you were about to fall, the unease, all those kinds of sensations, did they have something to do with the puzzle?

Human emotions? But if that were the case this was a supremely difficult puzzle to solve. Vague, abstract ideas, but how did they connect? It was like some kind of Zen-style conundrum.

A fan… a classic Japanese symbol. One that when you look down at it from a tall tower, you get the weird sensation you’re falling. That’s because the tower leans… Now what school of thought does a tower represent…? Was it that kind of a riddle, perhaps…?

No, probably not after all, Sasaki decided. Kozaburo Hamamoto was more Western in his style and way of thinking. This wasn’t going to be a spiritual or philosophical problem. He definitely preferred the kind of puzzle that had a clear-cut answer, which when revealed, would be immensely satisfying and cause everyone to say, “Of course!” Which meant that there was a more concrete solution. It was a clever puzzle for sure.

Sasaki continued to ponder.

Togai, however, was even more enthusiastic than his friend.

“I’d like to sketch the shape of the flower bed,” he said.

“Of course you may,” replied Kozaburo. “But you don’t have a pen and paper with you right now, I’m sure.”

“It’s cold.”

Eiko spoke on behalf of the rest of the guests who were all starting to shiver.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, if we stay out here much longer we’re all going to catch cold. Mr Togai, I’m going to leave the bridge in place, so feel free to come up here and draw your sketch whenever you’d like. I’d love to invite you all to visit my room here in the tower, but with so many people it’d be terribly cramped. Let’s go back to the salon and ask Mr Kajiwara to serve us a cup of steaming hot coffee.”

There were no objections to that plan. Kicking the snow out of their path as they walked, they set off to finish their tour of the walkway, back to where the drawbridge waited.

As they made their way back across towards the main building, it was as if they were re-entering the real world, and there was a general sense of relief. Outside, at least for now, the snow continued to fall.

SCENE 4 Room 1

The snow had finally stopped falling and the moon was out. There’d been no sign of it when they’d been up on the tower, but now its pale whitish glow shone through the curtains. The whole world was silent.

Kumi Aikawa had been lying in bed for what seemed like hours, but she couldn’t sleep. One of the main reasons was that she couldn’t stop thinking about Eiko Hamamoto. And when she thought about that woman her stomach lurched. She felt like a jouster waiting for tomorrow’s tournament.

Outside it was utterly still, and to Kumi’s mind way too much so. She began to feel uneasy. Room No. 1, to which she’d been assigned, was on the top floor of the main building. It had a great view, but Room No. 2, next door, which belonged to Eiko had a far better view of the sea. Frankly, though, she’d have been more comfortable in a room on the ground floor, where she thought perhaps there’d have been more reassuring noise.

To city dwellers, complete silence was as disturbing to their sleep as a construction site. In Tokyo, there was always some kind of din, even in the middle of the night.

Kumi was reminded of blotting paper. The thick layer of snow that shrouded everything outside had that effect. She was sure that it was maliciously absorbing all the sounds. She couldn’t even hear the wind any more. What a horrid night!

But then she did hear something. A strange noise, very faint, but surprisingly close by. It seemed to be coming from above the ceiling. It was like nails scratching a rough surface—not a pleasant sound. Kumi’s body stiffened and she strained to listen. But that was it. The noise had stopped.

What could it have been? She quickly turned and fumbled for the watch on the bedside table. It was a classic ladies’ watch with a tiny face so it was difficult to make out the dial, but it appeared to be after 1 a.m.

Suddenly the noise was back. It made her think of a crab struggling to get out of an earthenware pot. She instinctively braced herself. It was above her. There was something there on the other side of the ceiling!

The next sound was far louder. Kumi’s heart leapt into her throat and she almost screamed. But no, it was coming from outside. She couldn’t guess what was really making the noise, but… She pictured a giant crab stuck to the wall of the building. Step by step it was making its way up towards her upper-floor window. Now she was finding it hard not to scream.

The sound came again. Two hard objects scraping against each other… over and over. It appeared to be getting closer. Help me, help me, she mumbled over and over to herself.

Gradually, her whole body was overcome with acute terror. It felt as if an unseen hand was around her throat, suffocating her, and she began to silently pray.

Please, no! I don’t know what you are but please go away! If you’re climbing up the wall, please turn around, and go back down. Go to someone else’s window!

Suddenly there was a metallic sound. Just once, like a small bell… But no, not a bell at all. It was the window. Something was on the glass.

Almost against her will, Kumi’s head spun around to look in the direction of the window. And it was now that she finally let out a scream, so loud that she surprised even herself. So loud that her voice filled the room, bouncing off the walls and ceiling and back to her own ears. Her hands and feet turned to jelly. When was it that she had started crying? She hadn’t even noticed.

How could it be? This was supposed to be the top floor. There was no kind of balcony or overhang of any kind under the window. It was a completely flat wall like a vertical rock face. And yet, through the gap in the curtains, she saw a face peering into the room.

That face… It was no normal human face. The crazy eyes—wide, staring eyes that didn’t blink. The skin charred to a deep bluish-black. The tip of the nose white with frostbite, the scraggly moustache and beard beneath. The cheeks were scarred—were they burn scars? Despite all of this, there was a faint smile of amusement on his lips. This face, bathed in the icy moonlight, stared at Kumi like some kind of crazed sleepwalker as she wept in terror.

Kumi’s hair began to stand on end. The moment seemed so long that she felt as if she were going to faint, but it was in reality only a few seconds. Before she knew it, the face had disappeared.

But it didn’t matter that it was gone, Kumi now summoned all her strength and let out a new, more piercing shriek. She immediately heard a man’s voice roar in the distance. It was coming from somewhere beyond the window, but Kumi couldn’t tell where for sure. It felt as if the whole house was shuddering with the sound. Kumi broke off screaming for a moment to listen. The roar had only lasted a few seconds at the most, but it echoed in her ears still.

As soon as all was quiet again, Kumi resumed her screaming. She had no idea what she was doing or why exactly she was doing it. It just felt that if she continued to scream, somehow she would be rescued from the terror of being alone.

Right away there was a loud banging at her door, and she heard a shrill female voice.

“Ms Aikura! Ms Aikura! What’s the matter? Open up! Are you okay?”

Kumi immediately stopped screaming. Sluggishly, she sat up in bed and, blinking several times, managed to drag herself up and over to the door. She unlocked it to reveal Eiko standing there in a robe.

“What’s going on?” Eiko asked.

“There was a… There was a man looking in my window.”

“Looking in? This is the top floor!”

“Yes, I know. But he was there, looking in.”

Eiko marched into the room and walked determinedly over to the offending window. Taking hold of the gaping curtains, she briskly pulled them apart, then made to open up the casement windows beyond.

In order to protect against the cold, there were double windows throughout the building. Each window layer had to be unlocked separately, which was a bit of a chore. Eventually, chilled air poured in and caused the curtains to sway.

Eiko leant out and looked up and down, left and right, then pulled her head back in.

“There’s nothing there. Look for yourself,” she said.

Kumi was already back in her bed. Her body began to tremble, but not from the cold. Eiko closed the window again.

“I really saw him.”

“What did he look like? Did you see his face?”

“It was a man. He had a totally creepy face. It wasn’t normal at all. He had crazy eyes. His skin was really dark, and he had what looked like bruises and burn scars all over his cheeks. He had a beard too—”

At that moment there was such a loud clattering noise that they both jumped. Kumi froze. If Eiko hadn’t been right there in front of her, she was sure to have started screaming again.

“Daddy’s coming to see what’s going on.”

Kumi realized that the noise was Kozaburo lowering the drawbridge from the tower.

“You must have been dreaming,” said Eiko, looking faintly amused.

“No way! I definitely saw him. Someone was there.”

“Look, this is the top floor. The middle-floor windows don’t even have an overhang, and there are no footprints in the snow. Look for yourself!”

“I saw him!”

“And there’s no one in this house with burn scars on their face. Nobody who looks frightening. I think you had a nightmare. There’s no other explanation. They say if you sleep in a different bed from your usual one, you often don’t get a good night’s sleep.”

“That’s not what happened. I can tell the difference between a dream and real life! And that was real.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! I heard a noise too. Didn’t you hear it?”

“What noise?”

“A kind of scraping sound.”

“Nope.”

“Then did you hear him yell?”

“I heard you screaming plenty.”

“Not me. A man’s voice. It sounded like a roar.”

“What’s going on?”

Eiko turned to see her father standing in the open doorway. Over his pyjamas he was wearing his usual jacket and trousers, with the addition of a sweater under the jacket. It was cold out on the drawbridge.

“Ms Aikura has had a visit from a molester.”

“It wasn’t a molester!” Kumi blubbered. “Somebody was looking in my window.”

She wiped her eyes.

“The window?” said Kozaburo in amazement. “This one here?”

Everyone seems so surprised, thought Kumi. But I’m the one who had the biggest shock of all.

“But this is the top floor.”

“I told her that already, but she insists that she saw him.”

“Because I did see him.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”

“No, it wasn’t!”

“Then he must have been an incredibly tall man. We’re pretty high up.”

There was a rapping noise. Michio Kanai was there, knocking on the already open door.

“What’s happening?”

“This young lady seems to have suffered a nightmare.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare! Mr Kanai, did you hear a man yell?”

“Yes, I believe I did hear something.”

“Actually, so did I. I thought it was just a dream,” said Kozaburo. “That’s why I got up in the first place.”

SCENE 5 The Salon

The next day was bright and sunny, but winter mornings in the far north of Hokkaido are always cold, even with the heating on. The guests were grateful for the crackling fire in the living room. It didn’t matter how many kinds of home heating systems that human beings came up with, nothing could beat a simple fire with an open flame. Right now, as if in proof of this fact, each guest as he or she came down was drawn instinctively towards the fire, and soon everyone had gathered around the curved brick fireplace.

To Kumi’s disbelief there were many guests who knew absolutely nothing of the mysterious bearded stranger, nor the blood-curdling roar, or even her own screams. Eiko wasn’t down yet, so Kumi decided to treat everyone to a passionate retelling of last night’s events. Her audience consisted of Mr and Mrs Kanai, Sasaki, and Yoshihiko Hamamoto, but they all seemed a little dubious about her story. Kumi felt frustrated that she didn’t seem to be able to communicate her terror sufficiently.

On the other hand, she reflected, it wasn’t all that surprising. Even Kumi herself was finding it difficult to reimagine last night’s events in the cheerful morning light. The terror she had experienced now felt as if it had been a dream after all. The Kanais were outright smirking.

“So you think the roaring man and the one with the strange face at your window were one and the same?” Yoshihiko asked.

“Yes… Well, probably.”

To be honest, this was the first time Kumi had really made the connection.

“But there are no footprints in the snow.”

Sasaki’s voice came from a little way off. Everyone turned to look. He’d opened the window and was leaning out observing the back garden.

“That area over there would be right under your bedroom window, but there’s not a single footprint. The snow is pristine.”

Hearing this, Kumi felt as if she were in another dream right now. She went silent. What could that have been last night? That horrifying face that wasn’t quite human?

Togai, who had spent the rest of the previous evening by himself, drawing a diagram of the flower bed, was the next to appear in the salon, followed closely by Kozaburo Hamamoto.

“Hey! Weather’s really cleared up, hasn’t it?”

Kikuoka was preceded by his usual bellow. Everyone was now awake and gathered in the salon.

The morning sun was indeed radiant. Now that it had risen sufficiently in the sky, the ground had turned into a giant reflecting plate and was almost painfully dazzling to look at.

Kikuoka, too, was ignorant of all the uproar involving Kumi the previous night. He explained that he’d taken a sleeping pill. Knowing well already what his reaction would be, Kumi didn’t mention it to him.

The familiar shrill tones of the mistress of the mansion suddenly filled the room.

“Hello, everyone! It’s about time for breakfast. Shall we move to the table?”

The topic of conversation at the breakfast table was still Kumi’s adventure. After a while, Kikuoka noticed that his chauffeur was missing.

“Looks like young Ueda’s not up yet. Typical! He’s always waltzing in late like he thinks he’s the boss.”

Eiko realized that Kikuoka was right. But she couldn’t decide whether to go and call him or not.

“I’ll go and get him,” Sasaki offered. He opened the French windows, and stepping easily out into the snow, set off in the direction of Room 10, where Ueda was staying.

“Please, let’s not wait for them, or the food’ll be cold,” Eiko urged the guests, and everyone began to eat.

Sasaki took rather longer than expected, but eventually he returned.

“Is he up?” Eiko asked.

“Well…” Sasaki hesitated. “It’s a bit weird.”

Everyone stopped eating to stare at him.

“There’s no answer.”

“Maybe he’s just gone out somewhere?”

“No, I don’t think so. The door’s locked from the inside.”

Eiko’s chair made a loud scraping noise as she got swiftly to her feet. Togai got up too. Kikuoka and Kanai exchanged looks, and then the whole company got to their feet and followed Eiko out into the snow. They couldn’t help noticing that there were only two sets of footprints in the soft snow—Sasaki’s—going out and coming back.

“It was strange that he didn’t reply but there’s one more thing…”

Sasaki pointed towards the west corner of the main building where Room 10 was situated. There was a dark figure lying in the snow. The whole party recoiled in shock. If that body had been lying in the snow for a while, then it must surely be dead. A corpse. Was that Kazuya Ueda?

Their second reaction was to turn and stare at Sasaki. How had he not mentioned this already? And why was he so composed right now?

Sasaki saw the way everyone was looking at him, but he apparently had nothing to say.

Still confused by Sasaki’s demeanour, the guests began to make their way towards the corpse. The closer they got, the stranger the sight. Strewn around the figure in the snow was a whole array of objects, almost as if his possessions had been thrown there with him. But on closer examination they were not exactly his possessions.

Some members of the party, including the butler, Kohei Hayakawa, and Kumi Aikura were seized with a bad premonition and found their feet barely able to move any farther.

When they finally reached the scene, everyone, without exception, was utterly dumbfounded. But at least they finally understood Sasaki’s strange nonchalance.

Kozaburo Hamamoto let out a great shout and fell to his knees, reaching out to touch the figure, half buried by the snow. It was one of his antiques, a life-sized puppet-like doll. Everyone was amazed of course that this doll, which should have been up in Room 3, the antiques and curios storeroom, was lying out here in the snow, but what was more shocking was the way its limbs had been pulled apart. There was only one leg left attached to the body; both arms and the other leg were scattered around in the snow. Why?

For Sasaki and Togai, Kikuoka and Kanai, and all of the house staff, this wasn’t the first time they’d seen this doll. Even without looking too closely they knew at once what it was. It was an antique that Kozaburo had bought in the former Czechoslovakia, back when he’d lived in Europe. He had nicknamed it “Golem”.

Right now it had been pulled apart at the arms and one leg joint, and the various wooden pieces lay partially buried in the snow. Kozaburo immediately began to gather them up, carefully brushing the snow off each piece.

Sasaki wanted to tell him to leave it alone, not to touch anything, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. Did something like this qualify as a crime scene?

“I can’t find his head!”

Kozaburo sounded desperate. Everyone else immediately began to search for the doll’s head, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t anywhere around.

The imprints left after removing Golem’s arms, legs and torso from the snow were rather deep, and so it could be assumed they had been scattered there while it was still snowing.

Kozaburo announced he was going to take Golem back to the salon and set off in that direction. To him, the doll was a precious collector’s piece.

The rest of the group decided not to wait for the lord of the manor’s return, and headed for the concrete steps that led up to the middle floor, right between the outward-facing doors of Rooms 10 and 11. There was snow on the steps, but again only Sasaki’s footprints were visible.

After climbing the stairs up to Room 10, Kikuoka banged loudly on the door.

“Ueda! Hey, it’s me! Ueda?”

But there was no reply.

Next they tried to look in through the window, but it was made of frosted glass with wire mesh running through it, and they could see nothing at all of the interior of the room. Not to mention that the curtains were apparently closed. On top of that, there were solid iron bars protecting the window on the outside. Kikuoka slid a hand through the bars and tried to open the window, but it was securely locked from the inside.

“Break in if you need to.” They turned around to see Kozaburo standing behind them.

“That door opens outwards! You’ve gotta be kidding me!” boomed Kikuoka.

“It does, but it’s not all that sturdy. Perhaps we could try to break it down.”

Kikuoka threw his huge frame against the door several times, but it didn’t budge.

“Hoy, Kanai, you give it a try.”

Kanai shrunk back in fear.

“Me? I don’t think I’ve got a chance. I’m just a lightweight.”

Ironically, the man most suited to this kind of a challenge was the one on the other side of the door.

“Come on, boys,” said Eiko firmly. “One of you give it a try!”

Realizing it was his moment to impress his queen, Togai hurled himself against the door with all his might, but the only thing that went flying was his glasses.

The next to try was Sasaki, then Kajiwara, the chef, but strangely not one of the men thought to pair up for the task. However, when Eiko and Hatsue simultaneously threw themselves against the door, there was a cracking sound and the top bent slightly inwards. After a few further shoves, it broke completely.

With Hatsue in the lead, the whole party rushed into the room, to be met by the very sight they had begun to dread. Kazuya Ueda lay there in his pyjamas, the handle of a hunting knife protruding from his chest, the dark stain on his pyjama top already partially dried.

Kumi screamed, and clung to Kikuoka. Eiko and Hatsue stood there in stunned silence. Kozaburo was the only one among the men to gasp out loud. It was the bizarre positioning of Ueda’s body…

Ueda wasn’t in his bed. He was lying on his back on the linoleum flooring at the foot of the bed, his right wrist bound with white cord. The other end was tied around the nearest foot of the metal bed frame, so that he appeared to be raising his right arm over his head. The bed didn’t look as if it had been moved from its normal position by the window.

Ueda’s left hand was unbound, but it too was high above his head. In other words, one hand was tied up, the other not, but both stretched out above his head, almost like a gesture of victory.

But even stranger than the placing of his arms, was that of his legs. He lay twisted to the side at the waist, both legs straight out to his right side, almost as if he were dancing. To be more precise, while the right leg was bent at approximately 90 degrees to his body, the left was placed slightly behind it and lower, at what must be around 110 or 120 degrees.

Just behind his back—to his left, there was a dark reddish-brown spot about five centimetres in diameter, drawn on the linoleum. As all four fingers of his free left hand were smeared in blood and a layer of grey dust, presumably he had drawn it himself. Which would mean that after tracing the circle he had, of his own free will, raised his left hand above his head…

But the thing that caught everyone’s attention was the hunting knife in Ueda’s chest. Attached to its handle was a metre-long piece of white string. The part about ten centimetres from the hilt was trailing slightly into the bloodstain on Ueda’s pyjamas, and was tinged faintly brown. However, the blood had already stopped flowing. From the expression on his face, it was clear he was no longer in pain. (See Fig. 3.)

It was obvious that Ueda was dead; nevertheless Sasaki, the medical student, got down on the floor and checked the body.

“We’d better call the police.”

Kohei Hayakawa, the butler, set off immediately by car for the general store in the village at the foot of the hill, where there would be a telephone.

It wasn’t long before uniformed police turned up in full force, roping off Room 10 and drawing a chalk outline on the floor. The body of Ueda was long-since cold, but due perhaps to some misunderstanding, an ambulance also came tearing up the hill, snow chains around its tyres. The white clothing of the paramedics became jumbled in with the crowd of dark police uniforms, and what was once a peaceful hermit’s retreat buzzed with activity.

Guests, staff, hosts alike were confined to the salon, listening anxiously to the disturbance that filled the Ice Floe Mansion. It was still early in the morning, and for most of the guests this was only the beginning of the second day of their stay. Kikuoka and the Kanais had arrived barely more than twelve hours ago. Already something like this happening—what on earth could be next? They’d enjoyed just one dinner and now it looked as if they were to spend the rest of their stay surrounded by police officers. Perhaps they would be released and allowed to go home as scheduled, but if they were unlucky, they couldn’t help wondering whether they’d end up under house arrest indefinitely.

A plainclothes police officer appeared in the salon. He was ruddy-cheeked and well built, with an air of importance about him—most likely a homicide detective. In a superior tone he introduced himself as Detective Inspector Okuma from the nearby Wakkanai Police Station, seated himself at the table and proceeded to question everyone present. However, there didn’t seem to be any obvious pattern to his questioning—he just seemed to be asking whatever occurred to him in the moment, and there was a lot of confusion.

When eventually he seemed to be done with his vague line of questioning, Okuma had one more.

“So where’s this doll you’re talking about?”

Kozaburo had put Golem back together again, minus his missing head, and he was still there with them in the salon.

“What the… Is this it? Huh! Where’s it normally kept?”

Kozaburo picked up Golem and led Okuma up to the antiques display room, Room 3. When they returned, Okuma seemed amazed, chatting in simple layman’s terms about all the precious items in Kozaburo’s collection, but after a while he fell silent and seemed to be thinking something over. For a short while he managed to give off the air of a competent detective. Eventually, he brought his hand to his mouth and lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Would you agree that what we have here is a classic locked-room murder mystery?”

That had been pretty much obvious from the start.

Detective Inspector Okuma was such a bumbling yokel that nobody really felt that this was a serious murder investigation until around four o’clock that afternoon when Detective Chief Inspector Saburo Ushikoshi from the Sapporo City Police Headquarters turned up. He was accompanied by a younger detective named Ozaki.

The officers pulled up chairs to the dinner table, and introduced themselves. Then Chief Inspector Ushikoshi spoke.

“Bit of a weird place, this.”

His tone was excessively casual. Although his younger colleague, Detective Sergeant Ozaki, seemed rather quick-witted, Ushikoshi came across as a more simple, matter-of-fact type. From first impressions, there didn’t seem to be much difference between him and the Wakkanai police inspector, Okuma.

“It takes a while to get used to this floor,” continued Ushikoshi. “You feel as if you’re going to take a tumble.”

Young Ozaki looked scornfully around the salon, but said nothing. His senior colleague turned to address the assembled residents of the Ice Floe Mansion and their guests. He didn’t get up from his seat.

“All right then, everyone, we’ve introduced ourselves to you. Or rather, I should say that we are police officers and therefore some of the most boring people on this planet. Apart from our names, there’s not much more to tell about us. That being the case, I think it’s about time you all did us the honour of introducing yourselves. If possible, we would like to hear where you usually reside, what kind of work you are employed in and what brings you here to this mansion. Any more details, such as what your relationship was to the deceased man, I will be asking you later when I interview you all individually, so there’s no need to cover that right now.”

Just as Detective Chief Inspector Ushikoshi had said, there was nothing interesting at all about the three detectives. Not in their clothing, nor their manner of talking, which, although polite, suggested that no scene of carnage would ever perturb them in the slightest; their facial expressions slightly intimidated the assembled guests and left them a little tongue-tied. Each gave their own faltering self-introduction, which Ushikoshi occasionally interrupted with a politely phrased question, but he took no notes.

When everyone had finished, Ushikoshi addressed them all in a manner which suggested that now this was what he had really wanted to say all along.

“Right, I’m sorry to have to say this, but it has to be said sooner or later. From what I understand, the victim, Kazuya Ueda, is not from around here. Yesterday was only the second time in his life that he had visited this mansion, or had even set foot on the island of Hokkaido. Which means that it would be very difficult to imagine that he has friends or acquaintances in this area, and certainly, no one who might have paid him a visit last night.

“So was it a robbery? It doesn’t look like it. His wallet containing 246,000 yen was in a relatively accessible spot in the inside pocket of his jacket, but it wasn’t touched.

“The strangest aspect of this case is his bedroom door, which was locked from the inside. Let’s imagine that a complete stranger knocked on his bedroom door: it’s extremely unlikely that he would have opened it just like that. And even if he had opened it and let a stranger in, there would have been some sort of a struggle and voices would have been raised. But there was no evidence of a struggle in the room. What’s more, Mr Ueda was ex-military, and therefore physically much stronger than the average person. There’s no way he would have been overpowered so easily.

“Which leads me to suspect that the murderer must have been known to, or even close to, the victim. But as I said earlier, Mr Ueda had no friends living in this area.

“What we have been able to ascertain from talking to you, and from our own preliminary investigations, is that Kazuya Ueda was born in Okayama Prefecture and grew up in Osaka. At the age of twenty-five he enlisted in the Ground Self-Defence Forces, was based in Tokyo and Gotemba for a while, but was discharged three years later. At the age of twenty-nine he joined Kikuoka Bearings, and was thirty years old when he died. Ever since his time in the Self-Defence Forces, he was the unsociable type, and doesn’t appear to have any close friends. A man like Ueda is extremely unlikely to have friends or acquaintances up here in Hokkaido. We also believe it unlikely that someone from the Tokyo or Osaka areas would come all the way up here just to pay him a visit. In conclusion, there are no people in Kazuya Ueda’s close circle besides the people in this room right now.”

Everyone exchanged uneasy glances.

“Now it would be different if this were Sapporo or Tokyo, or another major city, but if a stranger were to turn up in this remote location, someone would be bound to notice him or her. Down in the village there’s only one inn. And perhaps because of the season, last night they didn’t have a single guest.

“And then there is one more huge problem with this case: the matter of the footprints. Normally, this isn’t the kind of thing that police officers talk about with the average person, but on this occasion I think it’s called for. I’m referring to the fact that Kazuya Ueda’s time of death has been established: last night between midnight and half past. Sometime between 12 and 12.30, the killer stuck a knife in Ueda’s heart. In other words, he or she must have been in Ueda’s room somewhere in those thirty minutes. Unfortunately for this killer, the snow stopped around 11.30 last night. So it was no longer snowing when the murder was committed. And yet, there are no footprints in the snow belonging to the killer; neither arriving nor leaving the scene of the crime.

“I believe you already know that room can only be accessed from the outside of the mansion. If the killer had been there in that room—Room 10, is it?—at the time of Mr Ueda’s death, then at the very least there should have been footprints leaving the room. If not, then Mr Ueda must have somehow stabbed himself in the heart, but there is nothing to suggest that this was a suicide. But it still remains that there were no footprints. And that’s a huge problem.

“Allow me to amend that slightly. Don’t imagine that we, the investigators, are stumped by the lack of footprints or the locked room. Footprints can be swept away by a broom, for example. There are many ways this trick could be pulled off. The locked room even more so. Crime fiction has already shown us a myriad of solutions.

“And yet, if there was an intruder from the outside, he would have had to continue erasing his footprints from the door of Room 10 all the way down the hill as far as the village. That’s no simple task. And no matter how scrupulously he erased them, there would be some trace somewhere in the snow. Our expert went through the area with a fine-tooth comb, but came up with absolutely nothing. Since 11.30 last night, it hasn’t snowed at all. And whether between Room 10 and the village at the foot of the hill or any other corner of the grounds, there is absolutely no sign of footprints, or a clever attempt to cover some up.

“I think you understand what I’m trying to say. I hate to put it so bluntly, but with the exception of the windows for now, access to Room 10 can only have been gained from the three doors on the ground floor of this building: the front entrance, the French windows from the salon or the service entrance from the kitchen.”

Everyone in the room took this as a declaration of war.

“But on the other hand…”

It was Sasaki who had made himself spokesman to try to disprove the police’s theory.

“Did you find any evidence of footprints being erased between any of those three entrances and Room 10?”

It was a good question.

“Well, for a start, between the salon door and Room 10, there was a whole jumble of footprints, so it was impossible to tell. I can say that the chances that footprints had been erased from either of the other two entrances, or from under any of the windows is very slim. We investigated, and the snow appears to be undisturbed.”

“So what you’re saying is, there’s just as little evidence it was one of us as it was an outside intruder?”

Sasaki’s rebuttal was logical.

“But as I already told you,” Ushikoshi went on, “the footprints are not the only aspect. There’s everything else that I explained to you just now.”

“But there’s no broom of any kind here in the main building,” said Eiko.

“You’re quite right about that. I already asked Mr Hayakawa here about it.”

“So then, how is it there are no footprints?”

“If the wind had been strong last night, the powdery snow would have blown over the footprints,” said Sasaki. “But there wasn’t that much wind.”

“I don’t believe it was blowing at all around midnight,” said Eiko.

“And what about the other mysterious aspects of this crime?” continued Sasaki.

“Right, right. The string attached to the knife. And that weird dancing pose that Mr Ueda was in,” said Togai.

“The position of the body was hardly something unusual as far as we are concerned,” said Ushikoshi. “It’s obviously agony to have a knife stuck into you. Kazuya Ueda was in terrible pain. I’ve heard of cases where the victims died in all kinds of convoluted poses. As for the string, I’ve heard of cases where someone was lightly dressed for summer and had no pockets to hide a knife in, so tied it to his body instead.”

Everyone had the same immediate thought: But it’s winter!

“What about the cord tying his right hand to the bed?”

“Yes, that is one of the unique aspects of this case.”

“So you don’t have a precedent for that one, then?”

“Hey, hey, calm down, everybody!”

Okuma, the local cop, looking as if he rather regretted the frank exchange between the laymen and the professionals, placed himself between the two camps.

“That’s our job to investigate. You can trust us to get it done properly. We’d appreciate your total cooperation.”

Cooperation? As suspects in a murder investigation? thought Sasaki privately. But of course all he could do was nod.

“So here’s a simple diagram of the murder scene,” said Ushikoshi, unfolding what looked like a sheet of writing paper. “Is this the state of the room when you found it?”

All the guests and staff stood up and leant forward to study the paper.

“Right here there should be a circular dot that looked like it was drawn in blood,” said Togai.

“Yes, yes, the blood mark,” replied Ushikoshi, as if it were a childish prank that he didn’t particularly care about.

“Looks about right to me,” said Kikuoka in his gravelly voice.

“Is this chair usually in this position, Mr Hamamoto?”

“Yes, it is. The top shelf is just too high to reach, so it’s there to stand on.”

“I see. And then there are the windows. The one on the west side has bars on the outside, but the south side doesn’t. It’s made of clear glass, and unlike in all the other rooms, it isn’t a double window.”

“That’s right. That’s because the south-side window is on the middle floor. I believed it was far enough from the ground that it was too difficult for an intruder to enter. On the west side he could climb the stairs and break open the window. But there’s nothing much of value in there, really.”

“There are some shot-puts on the floor here. Are they always there?”

“Hmm. I hadn’t noticed them.”

“Are they usually kept on the shelf?”

“No, they could be anywhere in the room.”

“These shot-puts seem to have string wound around them several times with a wooden tag on the end. What’s that for?”

“Yes, I own two types of shot-put—four-kilogram and seven-kilogram. When I purchased them I attached wooden tags to write their weight on them, so I could tell them apart easily. I’m afraid after I bought them they met the same fate as the discuses I purchased too—I never used them and they just got left sitting around.”

“That’s how it seems, except that the string attached to the tag on the seven-kilo shot-put seems to be rather long…”

“Really? I wonder if it came loose? I never noticed.”

“Actually, it looks to us as if more string was added to make it longer. The length of the string from the shot-put to the tag was a total of 1 metre 48 centimetres.”

“What? Do you think the killer did that?”

“Probably. This wooden tag that reads ‘7kg’ is 3 centimetres by 5 centimetres, and about 1 centimetre thick. Here it has a piece of Sellotape attached that extends about 3 centimetres beyond the tag. It looks like a fresh piece of tape.”

“Wow.”

“Do you have any knowledge of this?”

“No, none at all.”

“Is it some kind of trick?” Sasaki asked. “Do you think the killer stuck it there on purpose?”

“I wonder… And then, over here, there’s an approximately twenty-centimetre-square ventilation hole. It faces the open space by this indoor staircase. Is that right?”

“That’s correct. But it’s not at a height that would allow anybody in the main building to stand in the corridor and be able to see into Room 10. If you stand in front of Room 12, you’ll be able to tell—Room 10’s air vent is way up high in the wall on the inside. The other rooms, Room 12 for example, if you stood on a step stool or something, I suppose you might be able to see inside, but not Room 10…” (See Fig. 1.)

“Yes, I’m aware of that. I already checked it for myself.”

“So this isn’t a perfect locked room after all,” said Togai. “As there are no footprints outside, the killer must have performed some sort of trick using this air vent.”

Sasaki was quick to respond.

“A twenty-centimetre-square hole isn’t even big enough for someone to get their head through. And what about the cord tied around the victim’s wrist? And the trick with the shot-put? He had to have been inside the room.”

“So what happened to his footprints?”

“Beats me. But it wouldn’t have been all that difficult to lock the room from the inside.”

“I see,” said Ushikoshi, with interest. “I’d love to hear how.”

“May I?” asked Sasaki. The Detective Chief Inspector nodded.

“This whole thing is very simple. Room 10 is normally used as a storeroom, and has a padlock on the door. Whenever a guest stays there, the padlock is removed and the door then has only a simple latch that can be raised to open and clicked down to lock, like the door of a toilet stall. (See Fig. 4.) It was added so people could stay in that room, and it’s very rudimentary. All the killer needed to do to this simple lever was to prop it up with a snowball as he left the room. After a while, the heat of the room would melt the snow and the lever would drop into place, locking the door from the inside.”

There were cries of “Amazing! Incredible!” from the Kikuoka Bearings contingent. But Ushikoshi was not so easily impressed.

“We already thought of that,” he said. “But that metal bracket was attached to a wooden support, and it’s completely dry. Not even slightly damp. It’s highly unlikely that they tried that method.”

Sasaki was taken aback.

“That’s not how they did it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

There was a short silence.

“And yet, I feel the locked-room mystery won’t be too much of a challenge to solve. It’s not all that mystifying. No, it’s another matter altogether that has us stumped.”

“What’s that?”

“Yes, well, it looks like this one’s going to take some serious thought. I’d like to ask for everyone’s help to puzzle it out. Well, it can’t be helped—better to just be up front about it, I suppose. The murderer doesn’t seem to be among you.”

There was a slight ripple of laughter.

“I know it contradicts everything I’ve said up to now, but I can’t see any of you as the murderer. And that’s my problem. I’m talking about motive, of course. There are very few of you who were even acquainted with Kazuya Ueda before yesterday. With the exception of the people from Kikuoka Bearings, this was only the second time for most of you to meet him, following his visit here last summer. That would be Mr Kozaburo Hamamoto, Ms Eiko Hamamoto, Mr and Mrs Hayakawa, Mr Kajiwara, Mr Togai, Mr Sasaki and finally, Yoshihiko Hamamoto, is that right? And I’m sure you hardly spent any time with him, given what a taciturn type Mr Ueda was. I can’t imagine any of you having known him well enough to even think about murdering him.”

There was another outbreak of nervous laughter.

“Murder isn’t a profitable business. Someone with a good name and status in society, who lives in such a good house, if they commit murder they lose all that and are thrown in jail just like anyone else. I can’t imagine there being anyone so reckless among you. And Mr Kikuoka, Ms Aikura, Mr and Mrs Kanai are in practically the same situation. To put it bluntly, I don’t see anyone having any reason to kill Kazuya Ueda, a simple chauffeur. That’s my conundrum.”

That makes sense, thought Togai, Sasaki and also Eiko. Ueda had been the kind of man that nobody had given a second thought to. If he’d been a little more handsome, he might have had women troubles, or perhaps if he’d been outspoken or arrogant, he’d have been a more likely candidate for murder. But he was without money or status, or anything in his personality to cause someone to hold a grudge.

Detective Chief Inspector Saburo Ushikoshi watched the expressions on the faces of the assembled guests and wondered for a moment if there’d been a mix-up. Perhaps the murderer had mistaken Ueda for someone else, for someone he meant to kill? Perhaps Ueda was just an accidental victim?

But then again, Ueda had been given Room 10 from the outset, and everyone staying in the house that night knew it. There had been no switching of rooms at the last minute. Room 10 was a unique room because it could only be accessed from the outside of the building. It would be a mistake to think that someone had intended to enter Room 9, for example, but had accidentally ended up in Room 10.

He couldn’t figure it out. Still, this man, Kazuya Ueda, was the most unlikely victim ever. There was nothing for it but to assume that someone else had been the intended victim.

“If the murderer is indeed one of the people here in this room, then I fully expect you to try to do a runner tonight. So I’m going to speak more quickly.”

Ushikoshi didn’t sound entirely as if he were joking. Then, almost as if talking to himself,

“There is always a reason for everything, especially for murder. No one kills another human being for no reason. It seems that this investigation is going to hinge on discovering the motive. Before I begin to ask each of you uncomfortable questions, there is one more thing I want to put to everybody. Last night, around the time of the murder, did any of you see or hear anything unusual or odd? A cry or scream that might have come from the victim, or… well, anything at all, however small or insignificant? Did you notice something that was a little different from usual? Anything you glimpsed, even for a moment? Often this kind of thing can be vital to an investigation.”

There were a few moments of silence, and then Kumi Aikura spoke up.

“I did.”

She had hesitated because what she had to say did not exactly fit into the parameters suggested by the detective. Her previous night’s experience couldn’t possibly be classified as something she’d “glimpsed just for a moment”, or “small and insignificant”.

“Ms… er… Aikura, isn’t it? What is it?”

“Well, lots of things, actually.”

Kumi was excited to find someone who was ready to take her story seriously.

“Well I’ll be, love, what did you see?”

The local detective, Okuma, seemed mesmerized by Kumi’s adorable face.

“Well, saw and heard.”

“Could we have the details, please?”

Kumi needed no more encouragement. She wasn’t sure where to start though, and went with the less shocking part of her story.

“I heard a scream. In the middle of the night. It was… it could have been the dead man, Mr Ueda. I mean, it sounded like a man’s voice, it was like he was in pain, a kind of strangled roar.”

“I see.”

Ushikoshi nodded, apparently satisfied with Kumi’s story.

“And do you know what time that was?”

“Yes, I looked at my watch. So I know exactly what time it was. It was just after five past one.”

Suddenly everyone felt a little sorry for the detective.

“What do you mean, just after 1.05? Are you sure? You must be mistaken, surely?”

“I’m absolutely certain. Like I just told you, I checked my watch.”

“But…”

The detective turned around and his whole chair tilted sideways, looking as if it were going to fall over backwards. It was one of the optical illusions created by this mansion.

“But that’s absolutely ridiculous! Are you sure your watch isn’t broken?”

Kumi took off her watch. She was left-handed, so wore it on her right wrist.

“Here. I haven’t touched it since.”

Almost reverentially, Ushikoshi took the expensive ladies’ wristwatch from Kumi’s outstretched hand and compared it to his own cheap watch. They showed the exact same time.

“It’s supposed to lose less than a second a month.”

This was Kikuoka’s addition to the conversation. Of course, he was the one who had purchased the watch. Ushikoshi nodded his thanks and returned the expensive timepiece to Kumi.

“That’s fine. However… this creates a fresh problem. I think everyone is aware, so I really don’t need to repeat it, that Kazuya Ueda’s estimated time of death, or in other words, the hour that the crime was committed, is, as I told you earlier, between 12 and 12.30. If the scream that you heard was indeed the victim’s, then it was made more than thirty minutes after that time frame. This new information is about to cause us no end of trouble.

“So how about the rest of you? Did you hear this noise like a man screaming? Would anyone else who heard it mind raising your hand?”

Mr and Mrs Kanai, then Eiko, then Kozaburo, all raised their hands. Kumi glanced at Eiko and felt rather put out. What the hell? Now she was saying she’d heard it?

“Four of you. Hmm. Five, including Ms Aikura. Mr Togai? Didn’t you hear it too? You were sleeping in the room directly beneath Room 10.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Mr Sasaki?”

“Me neither.”

“Mr Kanai, you were staying in Room 9 on the top floor, weren’t you? Not necessarily that close to Room 10… Did any of you happen to check the time?”

“I didn’t look at my watch,” said Kozaburo. I heard Ms Aikura screaming and rushed over right away to see what was wrong.”

“Mr Kanai, how about you?”

“Let me think, it was…”

“It was just after five past one,” Hatsue Kanai interjected. “Six minutes past, to be precise.”

“I see.” Ushikoshi sounded perplexed. “This is a very worrying problem. Anyway, is there anyone else who saw or heard anything else strange last night?”

“Just a minute. I haven’t finished yet,” said Kumi.

“There’s more?” asked Ushikoshi warily.

Kumi felt a bit sorry for the policeman. If he’d got so upset over the scream, how was he going to react to the next part of her story? However, she decided not to pull any punches and recounted the whole story exactly as it had happened. As she’d expected, Ushikoshi listened open-mouthed.

“Did you think I’d have screamed just because I heard a man’s voice?” asked Kumi.

“Is this for real? But, but, it can’t possibly…”

“Wasn’t it just a nightmare?”

The two detectives spoke at once.

“Everyone kept saying the same thing to me. But I am absolutely sure. Being here now feels more like a dream than what happened in the night.”

“Is there anyone living around here who looks like that? I mean with dark skin and burn scars on his cheeks?”

“And something of a sleepwalker to boot.”

It was Okuma who’d decided to throw this in.

“A monster who decides to go for a walk in the snow by the light of the moon,” he elaborated.

“There are definitely no such people around here!”

Eiko spoke as if it were her own honour that was being impugned.

“And of course, there’s nobody fitting that description within the mansion?”

Ushikoshi’s question managed to offend Eiko even more. She laughed scornfully.

“Obviously not!”

From then on, she sat there in annoyed silence.

“And the residents of this mansion are: Mr Kozaburo and Ms Eiko Hamamoto, Mr and Mrs Hayakawa and Haruo Kajiwara. There’s no one else?”

Kozaburo shook his head.

“Well, this is very depressing news. Ms Aikura, I believe you were sleeping on the top floor? Specifically… let’s see… Room 1. Now, there are no footholds beneath the window of Room 1, nor were there any footprints in the snow below. So this monster somehow came floating through the air and peered in through your window?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how he did it. And I never said it was a monster!”

“Tell you what, it’d be a lot more bloody helpful if you could make up your mind whether you heard a scream or saw some creepy bloke.”

It was Okuma again, unable to resist commenting.

Kumi flashed him a look that said she wasn’t prepared to say any more if he insisted on making disparaging remarks.

“Right, then… Is there anyone else who would like to throw a spanner into our investigation?”

Everyone looked as if they were trying to think of something. At that moment, one of the uniformed police officers standing guard outside hurried into the salon and began to whisper something into the ear of Chief Inspector Ushikoshi. The lead detective got up and approached Kozaburo.

“Mr Hamamoto, it seems we’ve found what appears to be the missing head from your doll. It’s out in the snow, quite a distance from Room 10.”

Kozaburo jumped to his feet.

“Oh, that’s wonderful news!”

“Please go with this officer. For now we may be keeping it for forensics, but what will you do with it when you get it back?”

“Well, obviously I’m going to reattach it to its body, and return it to Room 3—my display room.”

“Understood. You’re free to go.”

Kozaburo and the police officer left the room.

“So, is there no one else who observed anything odd? Mr Togai, you were right below Mr Ueda’s room?”

“No, nothing. I went to bed around 10.30.”

“Nothing unusual happening outside your window?”

“My curtains were shut. And the window’s double glazed.”

“And yet, the killer took that massive doll from Room 3—for what purpose I have no idea—and carried it into the back garden. And after that, he carefully took it apart, tossing only the head farther away from the other parts. The head section that we found was buried in the snow, at such a distance from the rest of the body that it suggests someone flung it with all their might. It’s quite deep, and there are no footprints around it.

“The snow stopped falling around 11.30 last night. From the state of the doll’s body, we can guess that the killer arrived shortly before then. Right outside Mr Togai’s window. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything at all?”

“I’m sorry. I was already asleep soon after 10.30. I didn’t even hear Mr Ueda scream.”

“Everyone seems to have gone to bed surprisingly early.”

“Yes. We tend to get up early here.”

“Ah!”

Sasaki suddenly cried out.

“What is it?” asked Ushikoshi, who looked as if nothing could shock him any more.

“The stakes! The stakes sticking out of the snow. Two of them. It must have been a few hours before the murder!”

“What do you mean? Could you explain more clearly?”

Sasaki explained how, looking out of the salon window the evening before, he’d spotted two wooden stakes sticking out of the snow.

“And what time was that?”

“It was after we’d eaten, right after we finished drinking tea. So I reckon about 8 o’clock, or maybe half past.”

“Um, Mr Kajiwara, 8 o’clock-ish, would that be about the time people finished drinking their tea?”

“Yes, I think that would be about right.”

“Did anyone else besides Mr Sasaki notice these two stakes?”

Everyone shook their head. Sasaki remembered the moment he’d spotted them. He really should have called somebody else over to take a look.

“Was it snowing at the time?”

“Yes, it was.”

“And then in the morning, when you went out to wake Mr Ueda, how was it then?”

“You mean the stakes? Now that you mention it, this morning they were gone.”

“How about a trace or mark where they’d been?”

“Ah, I’m not sure. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I don’t think there was anything. One was near the area we found the doll’s parts, so I guess I was even standing around that spot this morning… Oh, do you think the killer put those stakes there?”

“No idea, but I have to say it’s yet another mysterious story. Mr Hayakawa, did you not notice these stakes?”

“We hardly went out into the garden yesterday. I’m afraid I didn’t notice anything.”

“These stakes, were they standing completely upright?”

“Yes.”

“So, perpendicular to the ground?”

“Yes, pretty much.”

“Do you think they were stuck all the way into the ground?”

“No, that would be impossible. There’s stone underneath the snow in both spots.”

“Meaning?”

“I mean that part of the back garden is covered with a kind of paving stone.”

“Hmm. Do you think you could show me whereabouts these stakes were?”

Ushikoshi handed Sasaki a pen and paper, and the younger man drew him a sketch of the back garden. As soon as he’d finished, Okuma came over to look. (See Fig. 5.)

“Aha! Now it’s getting interesting!”

“How far away from the building were the stakes?” asked Ushikoshi.

“About two metres, I think.”

“And the doll, was it about the same distance away?”

“Probably.”

“So a line drawn between the two stakes would be about two metres away from, and parallel with the wall of this building?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Hmm.”

“But say they were connected to the crime, what on earth would they be used for?” asked Sasaki.

“Never mind that for now. We’ll think about it later. It could very well be a completely unrelated matter. By the way, last night, who was the last person to go to bed?”

“That would be me,” said Kohei Hayakawa. “Every night I lock up before going to bed.”

“What time last night?”

“After half 10… I don’t think it was as late as 11.”

“And did you notice anything unusual?”

“Everything seemed the same way it always is.”

“So you noticed nothing in particular.”

“No.”

“When you say lock up, that includes the door from the salon to the garden, the front door and the kitchen door? Can all of these be opened again easily from the inside?”

“Yes, they can. If it’s from the inside…”

“The room that normally houses the doll that was in pieces at the corner of the main building, is that door kept locked?”

Ushikoshi turned to Eiko.

“Ms Hamamoto?”

“Yes, it is. But there’s a large window facing the corridor and that isn’t kept locked. If you wanted, you could get something out that way. And the doll was kept in the corner by the window.”

“A window facing the corridor?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! I see, I see. Well, that will be all for now. Next I’d like to ask each of you a few questions privately. And then we police need to have a meeting. It doesn’t need to be a very big room, but do you happen to have a place we could use?”

“You’re welcome to use our library,” said Eiko. “I’ll show you the way.”

“Much obliged. It looks as if we still have enough time today. So shortly we’ll begin calling people one by one. When you hear your name, please make your way to the library.”

SCENE 6 The Library

As soon as the butler, Kohei Hayakawa, had shown them to the library, Sergeant Ozaki lost it.

“I can’t believe what kind of shit people are into! Just for the hell of it, building a mansion with crazy sloping floors. I don’t even own a decent house of my own. This guy’s a total whack-job, if you ask me. The hobbies of the filthy rich. It really pisses me off.”

Outside, the wind had begun to howl. The sun was already going down.

“Forget it,” said Chief Inspector Ushikoshi, trying to calm down his colleague. “The rich have their hobbies, while we regular people struggle to get by. It’s the way of the world. Just ignore him.”

Ushikoshi pushed one of the chairs with its filed-off legs towards Ozaki.

“If everyone in the world was exactly alike, then it would be a very boring place. There’s the rich lot like him, and poor coppers like us, and I think that’s all right. Money doesn’t necessarily make you happy, you know.”

“Talking of coppers, what do you want me to do with my lot?” asked Inspector Okuma.

“I think you can let them go now,” said Ushikoshi, and Okuma left the room to go and tell his local officers they could leave.

“But like I was saying, the layout of this house is completely insane, it’s a total nuthouse. I was checking it out earlier.”

Ozaki clearly wasn’t ready to drop the subject.

“I tried to make a drawing of the place as I went around. Take a look.” (See Fig. 1) “It’s like a real mansion you’d find in a European country, and they’ve even given it a fancy name: the Ice Floe Mansion. It’s made up of the main building here which has one underground floor and three above ground, and that Leaning Tower of Pisa-thing next to it. The thing that makes this tower different from the Pisa one is that, except for Kozaburo Hamamoto’s own room at the top, there are no rooms whatsoever in the whole tower. There’s not even a staircase. Which means there are no doors or other entrances anywhere. You can’t even enter the bloody thing at ground level and climb up.

“So how, you ask, does Hamamoto get to his own bedroom? He lowers a drawbridge complete with chains and everything from this main building and climbs across to go to sleep. When he gets to the tower he pulls the chains and raises the bridge again. Like I said before, he’s a complete whack-job.

“And then this main building’s got fifteen rooms, and they’re all numbered, starting from the top on the east side, the side next to the tower, and working down. Okay, now look at this drawing. This is Room 3, the one that had the doll in it, a kind of display room. And next to it, Room 4, is the library—where we are now. Underneath us is Room 5, the salon we were in before, and the kitchen. And then over to the west side, there’s Room 10 where the murder took place, which is normally a storeroom for sports equipment. They don’t usually put guests up in that room. Room 11 next door is set up for table tennis only.

“The reason I’m telling you all this is that apart from the six rooms I’ve just mentioned, every room has its own en suite bath and toilet. The place is like a five-star hotel. Ten guest bedrooms, all sorts of leisure activity rooms—it’s a fully equipped non-paying hotel.”

“Hmm. Hmm. I see.”

At this point Inspector Okuma returned and joined in the conversation.

“So that means that Ueda didn’t get put in one of those rooms with its own bathroom. He got stuck in a storeroom, right?”

“That’s right. When they have a large number of guests they sometimes run out of rooms, they said. So they move a folding bed into Room 10.”

“Which means that there weren’t enough guest rooms last night?”

“No, in fact there were enough. Room 15 was empty. In other words—”

“In other words, someone thought the humble chauffeur deserved to sleep in a storeroom. Who was in charge of allocating the rooms?”

“That would be the daughter, Eiko.”

“Of course.”

“There are four storeys, including the basement. The building is divided up into an east and a west wing, so there are eight mini-floors in total. Each of these floors is divided again into north and south, so sixteen rooms. Except that the salon is extra-large, two rooms in one, with an adjoining kitchen. I’ve labelled the kitchen Room 16 on the plan.

“Then, I noticed that all the rooms on the north side are larger than the ones on the south. The staircases are all on the south, and that takes a little space from the rooms on that side.”

“I see.”

“That’s why both of the couples were given rooms on the north side. Mr and Mrs Kanai and the house staff, Mr and Mrs Hayakawa. The Kanais were on the top floor in Room 9, and the Hayakawas in the basement room number 7. Of course the Hayakawas have been living in that room since the mansion was built.

“Now about the staircases—this is totally bizarre. There are two, one in each of the east and west wings. The east staircase leads up from the ground-floor salon. You’d take this one if you were going to Rooms 1 and 2 or to Kozaburo Hamamoto’s room in the tower. But for some reason those are the only places you can get to that way. It completely skips Rooms 3 and 4 on the middle floor. You can’t get to the middle floor at all by those stairs.”

“Really?”

“I couldn’t work out why anybody would have created something so weird. Why would you want to go upstairs from the salon directly to the top floor, skipping the middle? And on top of that, the east wing doesn’t have any stairs down to the basement at all. It’s like a bloody maze—the more you walk around the more irritated you get.”

“So what you’re saying is if you want to go up to the middle floor or down to the basement, you have to use the stairs in the west wing that we used to get here? But I thought that staircase went beyond the middle floor. It looked like there were steps leading farther up.”

“That’s right. To get to the middle floor and the basement you have to use these west wing stairs. As the east wing stairs go up to the top floor, you’d think there was no need for the west stairs to go any farther than the middle floor, but they do go all the way up to the top.”

“So anyone staying on the top floor can choose either of the staircases?”

“As a matter of fact, no, they can’t. The west stairs only go up to Room 8 and 9 in the west wing. The occupants of Room 1 and 2 have to use the east stairs. On the top floor, there’s no corridor at all joining the east and west wings. And so the occupants of Rooms 8 and 9 have no way of going and visiting the occupants of Rooms 1 and 2. They’d have to go all the way down to the ground floor, walk through the salon and climb up again.”

“What a pain!”

“That’s what I mean when I say this place is a nuthouse. It’s a proper maze. I tried to go and check out Room 1, where Kumi Aikura says she saw the freaky man, but I took the west stairs. I got completely confused and had to come back down to the salon to ask the way.”

“I suppose you would have.”

“This bloke, Kozaburo Hamamoto, seems to love watching people being shocked or confused. I reckon that’s why he had all the floors made on a slope like this. I’m sure people keep falling over until they’ve got used to it. Once you’re used to it, you can use the windows on the east and west sides for reference, but you end up guessing wrongly which way is uphill and which is down.”

“Yes, the windows look like they’re leaning at an angle. They have me defeated. Somehow the side of the window frame that’s farthest from the floor is the uphill side.”

“But the floorboards are lying in the direction of the slope.”

“I don’t get it at all—it’s like one of those house-of-mirror things you get at funfairs. Anyway, can you get from the north side rooms to the south? For example, if you’re in Room 8 can you get to Room 9 next door to it?”

“That’s possible. They’re at the top of the same staircase. And then another thing about these stairs. The way they’re arranged, they bypass the two rooms at the west end on the middle floor completely. The west staircase is just like the east one in that way. Room 10 where the murder was committed and the table tennis room, Room 11, next to it can’t be accessed at all from inside the mansion.”

“Hmm… Yes… That’s right.”

Ushikoshi was checking the diagram as he answered. It wasn’t easy to make out.

“But as these two rooms are just a games room and a sports storeroom, I suppose it doesn’t really matter if you can only access them from the outside.”

“I get it now. It’s pretty well thought out.”

“To get into these two rooms you have to use the steps on the exterior west wall of the house. So whoever got assigned this room to sleep in must have found it tough in this season having to go around the outside of the house to get to his room. Well, I suppose they thought he’s just the chauffeur, so he’d have to put up with it.”

“It’s a hard life when you’re a lowly employee.”

“Since they began to use Room 10 for guests, they had to store all the dirtiest stuff elsewhere, like gardening equipment, brooms, an axe and a scythe, and all the other odds and ends; so they built a shed at the bottom of the garden. The Hayakawas look after all that.

“And so Eiko allocated the guests their rooms, taking into consideration the unique layout of the house. First of all, there’s Kumi Aikura, the woman with the face that all the men fall for. This morning, Tokyo HQ got right on the case. They’ve dug up plenty of information for us. It’s an open secret at Kikuoka Bearings headquarters in Otemachi in Chiyoda Ward that Kumi Aikura is Kikuoka’s mistress. And so to avoid anything going on at night, Eiko placed them at the very opposite ends of the house: Aikura in Room 1 on the east wing’s top floor, and Kikuoka in Room 14 in the basement of the west wing.

“It seems that it was planned well in advance that Kikuoka would be in Room 14. That’s normally Kozaburo Hamamoto’s study. He keeps personal items—important books and stuff like that in there. The wall decorations and light fixtures are imported from England, and there’s a priceless Persian rug on the floor. A lot of money has been spent on that room. Normally, people don’t sleep in there—the bed is very narrow. Well, it’s more of a couch really, but the cushions are supposed to be very comfortable.

“Kikuoka is the guest of honour in the party, so it follows that he was put in the most expensive room. And why did Hamamoto choose that room to use as a study? It seems that out of all the rooms in the main building, it’s the warmest due to being in the basement. All the other rooms, despite being double paned, are rather cold through the windows’ contact with the outside air. But Hamamoto seems to go backwards and forwards on his feelings about there being no windows. When he feels like it, he heads back up to his bedroom in the tower and enjoys a perfectly unobstructed 360-degree view.

“And it also looks like Eiko put Kumi Aikura in Room 1, next door to her own bedroom, Room 2, so that she could keep an eye on her. And for the very same reason, she put Yoshihiko Hamamoto in Room 8 on the top floor. As I mentioned before, there was no way to come and go between Room 1 and Room 8, even though they’re physically so close. I reckon Eiko was worried that Aikura might use her charms to tempt the young lad.

“Next we come to Rooms 3, 4 and 5—as I’ve already said, they can’t be used as guest rooms. Room 6 in the basement belongs to the chef, Kajiwara. Room 7 is also occupied by staff—the Hayakawas. I’d say, no matter how warm the rooms, might be, I can’t see how staying in a room with no windows would be appealing to short-term guests. Ever since the house was built, those two east-wing basement rooms have been reserved for the staff.

“Now, moving over to the west wing and starting from the top, Room 8 was Yoshihiko Hamamoto, Room 9, Mr and Mrs Kanai. The middle floor had Ueda in Room 10, of course. On the ground floor in Room 12 was Togai, and next to him in Room 13, Sasaki. Room 14 in the basement was occupied by Kikuoka, and Room 15 next to him was empty. And that’s everybody.”

“Way too complicated to take in in one go. For a start you’re saying that Kumi Aikura in Room 1 and Hamamoto’s daughter in Room 2 wouldn’t be able to slip downstairs and remove that doll from the Room 3 display room? There are no stairs between the top and middle floors in the east wing at all?”

“That’s right. While you could come down one flight of stairs from Room 8 or 9 in the west wing and be right in front of that display room, from 1 and 2 you’d have to take a long detour down to the salon and back up the west stairs. Even though the room is right underneath you.”

“Just like the way you can’t get down from Room 8 or 9 to the scene of the murder in Room 10. This place really is a damn maze. No exaggeration. Anything else we need to know?”

“Room 3, right there next door to us, seems to be known by the other occupants of the mansion as the ‘Tengu Room’. If you look inside it you’ll understand why. It’s full of all this junk that Kozaburo Hamamoto spent a fortune on when he was travelling around Europe, and the walls are decorated with masks of Tengu, the red-faced, long-nosed goblin.”

“Whoa!”

“The south side wall is completely red from floor to ceiling with Tengu faces. And the east wall is pretty much covered too. That room doesn’t have any windows facing the exterior of the building, so the surfaces of those two walls have completely uninterrupted surfaces. Plenty of room to hang all his masks.

“The wall on the west side has a large window facing the interior corridor. The north wall slants inwards and overhangs the room, so no masks can be hung on the north and west walls.”

“Why does he have so many?”

“Tokyo police visited the headquarters of Hama Diesel in Chuo Ward to ask about that. The story goes that when he was a kid, the thing he was most afraid of were Tengu masks. Apparently, he wrote about it somewhere. For his fortieth birthday, as some kind of joke, his older brother gave him a mask, and so Hamamoto made up his mind to collect them. Went all out and hunted down some of the most unusual Tengus in Japan.

“Hamamoto was already quite the celebrity, so when people heard about it they fell over themselves to be the first one to send him an interesting mask, and before he knew it he ended up with all those. The story has been published several times in trade magazines. Anyone who knows Hamamoto has heard about it.”

“Hmm… And what’s happened to that doll that got taken to pieces?”

“Forensics have taken it for the time being, but it looks as if they’ll be able to return it soon.”

“And when they do give it back, can it be restored to its original condition? The head and the limbs?”

“Yep.”

“So it was made to be taken apart easily?”

“Looks like it.”

“So it wasn’t damaged… What sort of doll was it?”

“Something that Hamamoto bought at a specialist shop in Europe. Apparently, it was made in the eighteenth century. I don’t know any more than that. Should I ask Hamamoto directly about it?”

“Why would the suspect want to remove that doll from the display room? Was it one of Hamamoto’s most expensive antiques?”

“Not particularly. There were plenty of items in that room that were worth a lot more.”

“Hmm… I don’t get it… There are too many strange things about this case. For a start, if someone held a grudge against Hamamoto, then why do away with Kikuoka’s chauffeur?…”

“I have a theory about how it might have been done. Although Room 10 was a locked room, on the corner of the east wall there’s that small ventilation hole, twenty centimetres square. It faces the west wing staircase, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I wonder if it could have been used in some way?”

“It doesn’t look possible. If you look you see that the staircase on the middle floor goes to the opposite side from Room 10. If you look up from the corridor in front of Room 12, directly below it on the ground floor, you’ll see that the ventilation hole in Room 10’s wall is really high up in the wall and far away from anything. So if you tried to reach up there, you’d have to scale the full height of Room 12’s wall and then the whole of Room 10’s. It’s about the height of a prison fence. I can’t see anyone being able to do it.”

“That vent is in all the rooms of the house?”

“Almost every one. It looks as if they planned to put a fan in every room, but didn’t get around to it yet. Every room has the same kind of hole facing onto the nearest stairwell.

“There’s one more thing I should mention about these vents. The way the house is constructed, the west wing rooms 8, 10, 12 and 14 are identical, piled on top of one another like building blocks, so that the vent is in the identical spot—in the far south-east corner of the east wall. However, Rooms 9, 11, 13 and 15 are also identical and built directly on top of one another, but in their case, in order for the vent to face out into the space of the stairwell, their ventilation hole is up near the ceiling in the middle of the south wall, slightly towards the east side.

“Then if you go over to the east wing, Rooms 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the top and middle floors match up with their counterparts in the west wing. So 1 and 3 have the vents in the south corner of the east wall like 8, 10, 12 and 14. Rooms 2 and 4 in the middle of the south wall like 9, 11, 13 and 15.

“Rooms 6 and 7 in the basement are different though. Room 7’s vent is the same as Rooms 2 and 4 above on the south wall, but over to the west side. Room 6 is the one that’s different from the rest. It’s the only room in the entire building that has its ventilation hole in the southern corner of its west-facing wall. Room 5 is, of course, the salon, and I imagine if it were to have a ventilation hole facing the stairwell, it would have been in the same west wall as Room 6 below, but in fact the salon doesn’t have a vent. And that’s all the rooms. I don’t suppose any of it is really relevant to our investigation though.

“But while I’m on the subject, I’ll go on to the windows. None of the walls that contain a ventilation hole has a window. Besides Room 3, all the rooms have exterior-facing windows. In other words, windows you can open to let in fresh air. The vent holes and the doors face the interior of the building, the windows face the exterior. Anyway, that appears to be the basic concept of the mansion’s layout.

“If you imagine the rule as being that all the exterior walls have a window in them, and all the interior walls facing a stairwell have a ventilation hole and a door, you’ve got the idea. Then we move onto the floors, ceilings and walls shared with the next room. Obviously, nobody would think about making holes in any of those.

“Take this library, for example, there’s something slightly strange about the position of the door in relation to the corridor. There’s something slightly off about it, but it still follows the general rule. Right where the east wing stairwell should be, in the south-facing wall, in the corner towards the east—look, there’s the ventilation hole. But there’s no window, because this wall is facing an interior space. And as you can see, the windows are on the north and east sides, which both are exterior-facing walls. The position of the door, as I just mentioned, is not quite the same as Room 2 above us or 7 below us; or even 9, 11, 13 and 15 in the west wing. You can see it’s at the westerly edge of the south wall. It’s because of the construction of the corridor outside, but you can see that the rule that there is always a door in the wall with the ventilation hole has not changed.”

“Huh? This is getting too complicated. I don’t follow.”

“But there is an exception—Room 3. That’s the only room in the building without a window in the south-facing exterior wall. Instead, it has a large window in the interior-facing west wall. In addition, in that same wall, there’s a door. The ventilation hole is in the opposite wall, on the east. Hamamoto probably set it up that way to protect his valuable antiques from direct sunlight. And so he needed to put in an extra-large window for ventilation.”

“All right, all right. That’s quite enough. You’ve definitely done your homework. You could become an architect after all this is over. I’m really not getting half of it, but do you think it’s relevant to this case?”

“Probably not.”

“I hope you’re wrong, because otherwise this is getting too complicated for no reason. We’re brand-new students of this house of mirrors, and right now we don’t understand a thing. The guests are mostly way ahead of us. This winter isn’t their first visit, is it?”

“No, but in fact there are some first-timers amongst them—Kumi Aikura and Kanai’s wife, Hatsue. Kikuoka and Mr Kanai were here in the summer.”

“Hmm. But still, the majority of the folks here are used to this cursed jack-in-a-box of a place. They might have even worked out a clever way of using this cockeyed construction to do away with someone. Personally, I’m still suspicious of that air vent in Room 10.”

Ushikoshi fell silent, and spent a few moments gathering his thoughts.

“Just now, you said that the hole is far away from everything else, high up in the wall. You said you were looking up from the corridor on the ground floor in front of… let’s see… er, Room 12?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Incidentally, the staircase we took to get here was made of metal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“The section that leads up from the salon to the middle-floor landing is made of wood. It’s covered with a red carpet—a good quality one. But all the rest of the stairs are made of metal. Now why would that be? Even the stairs back at Sapporo police HQ are better than that. These ones—they’re new but made of the kind of cheap stuff you find in a public building. If you’re not careful and walk too heavily, they make a terrible clanging noise. Rather out of place in a medieval European-style mansion, don’t you think?”

“You’re right. But the angle is pretty steep, so I guess they needed to make it from something durable and safe.”

“I suppose… they certainly are steep. Maybe that’s it. And the landings—I guess I should say corridors—the corridors on every floor seem to be metallic too.”

“Yes.”

“This floor’s different, but with the ground floor of the west wing and the top floor too, all the corridors seem to be L-shaped.”

“They are. The top floor in the east wing here is the same. This floor is the only one constructed differently.”

“The tips of the L—in other words the ends of the corridors, look as if there was some kind of design flaw or something. I don’t know why, but they’re not joined completely up to the walls. There’s about a twenty-centimetre gap there at each end.”

“Whoa! That’s a bit creepy if you ask me. I suppose someone could lean over and press their head against the wall and see all the way down to the bottom of the house. For example if you stood by the gap at the end of the corridor in front of Room 8 on the top floor, with a gap on every floor you could see all the way down to the corridor in the basement. Even though there’s a handrail, it’d give me the creeps.”

“So what I’m thinking is that you could use that gap, push a rope or a wire through the ventilation hole and manage to pull off some sort of clever trick. At any rate, the ventilation hole in Room 10 is directly under the gap on the top floor, right?”

“Yes, I thought of that too. I tried getting right up against the wall at the very end of the corridor by Room 8, but the ventilation hole to Room 10 is far below, way out of reach. It’s at least a metre down. I guess you could possibly work out some kind of plan with two people working together, but it would be very difficult.”

“You can’t see into Room 10 through the hole, then?”

“No, definitely not.”

“Pity. Anyway, I suppose that a twenty-centimetre-square hole is too small for anything like that.”

“Yes, too difficult to pull anything off through that kind of space.”

And with that, Detective Sergeant Ozaki’s lecture on the nuthouse mansion was complete.

Ushikoshi turned to the local detective, who had sat there throughout the discussion in a kind of stunned silence.

“Inspector Okuma, is there anything you’d like to add?”

“Nah, nothing special,” he replied automatically. His expression suggested he was relieved not to be responsible for such a complicated case.

“Reckon there’ll be a blizzard tonight,” he added.

“You may be right. The wind’s really getting up,” said Ushikoshi. “But then again this is a pretty desolate location. There’s no other human habitation for miles around. You know, I can’t imagine wanting to live out here. It’s just the kind of place you’d expect murders to happen.”

“No kidding.”

“I don’t understand how anyone can live in a place like this,” said Sergeant Ozaki.

“I guess if you’re filthy rich, you’re always surrounded by hangers-on, people sucking up to you, after your money. Anyone would be about ready to escape a life like that.”

For someone from such meagre circumstances, Ushikoshi seemed to have a pretty good handle on the way the rich thought.

“So, who shall we call first?”

“Well, I’m most interested in the three staff members. I’d like to have a go at getting them to talk,” said Ozaki. “I bet you with that kind of employer they’ve got a whole bunch of grievances to get out of their system. In a big group they’d keep a lid on it, but get them alone and it’ll all come pouring out. They’re probably total wimps when it comes down to it, just shake them up a bit and they’ll spill.”

“Do Kohei and Chikako Hayakawa have children?”

“It seems they had a child who died. We haven’t found out the details yet.”

“So they don’t have any kids at all?”

“Seems not.”

“And Kajiwara?”

“He’s single. Still young—only twenty-seven. Who do you want me to call first?”

“You know, I don’t think we ought to call the staff first. Let’s call that medical student, Sasaki. Would you mind?…”

The police officers arranged themselves in a row like the three judges of the underworld, forcing each witness to sit across the table from them. As Sasaki took his seat he joked that it felt like a job interview.

“Please don’t include any unnecessary chat. Just answer the questions as we ask them,” said Ozaki sternly.

Ushikoshi opened the questioning.

“You’re staying here to check Kozaburo Hamamoto’s health. Is that correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“We have three main questions for you. First, what relationship did you have to the murdered man, Kazuya Ueda? How close were you to him? I promise you that we can easily discover whether you are lying or not, so to save time all around, please don’t try to hide anything. Just tell the truth.

“The second question concerns your alibi. I know it’s probably difficult, but as long as you weren’t in Room 10 between the hours of 12 and half past, in other words, if you have proof you were elsewhere, we’d like to hear it.

“Our third question is the most important one: just like the information you gave us earlier about the stakes in the garden, we’d like to hear of anything strange you noticed last night. And also, of any strange behaviour on the part of anyone. We know that in matters like this, it can be hard to speak up in front of everyone. Of course, we won’t reveal from whom we got any of the information, so please let us know if there is something you think we ought to know. That’s all, thank you.”

“I understand. First, question number one: I think I can answer that with perfect accuracy. I only ever had two interactions with Mr Ueda in my life. That was ‘Where is Mr Kikuoka?’ And one more that I’ve forgotten the details of. But that kind of thing. Apart from that, I’ve never met the man, not back in Tokyo—I’ve never had the occasion to. In other words, he was a complete stranger to me. I think I could even say I have a closer relationship with you three detectives than I had with him.

“As for an alibi, that’s a bit difficult. I went up to my room around 9.00 p.m. I’m due to take the National Medical Examination to get my licence very soon, so I was reading some reference books. I never left my room again after that, so I don’t have anything to say in response to your third question either.”

“So you’re saying that after you went up to your room you never even went out into the corridor again?”

“That’s right. There are bathrooms attached to every room. There’s no need to go outside.”

“You were staying in Room 13? You didn’t pay a visit to Togai next door in Room 12?”

“I have done in the past, but last night he was wrapped up in something else, and I was studying for my exams, so at least last night we didn’t see each other.”

“What do you mean by he was wrapped up in something else?”

Sasaki related the story of Kozaburo and the flower bed puzzle.

“I see,” said Ushikoshi. Ozaki snorted scornfully.

“And from your room you didn’t hear any strange noises?”

“No… The window is double-paned.”

“How about sounds from the corridor or the stairs? The killer managed to remove that huge doll from Room 3. He must have passed very close to Room 13.”

“I didn’t hear anything. I never had any idea that there had been a murder. Of course I’ll be paying more attention tonight.”

“About what time did you go to sleep?”

“Around 10.30, I think.”

They hadn’t got much out of Sasaki, and Togai wasn’t any more helpful. The only difference was that he was able to be even clearer about his relationship with Ueda—he’d never spoken to him in his life.

“That was the son of Shunsaku Togai, the politician,” said Ozaki, when Togai had left.

“Whoa! That Togai!”

“A Tokyo University student? Must have brains, that one,” said Okuma.

“Those two, Sasaki and Togai, are both after Eiko Hamamoto.”

“As I see it, Togai’s only advantage is that he’s from a famous family.”

“Sad to say, but I agree.”

“Call the Kikuoka Bearings group next. Now is there anything I should be aware of before we begin?”

“Well, we already know that Kikuoka is having an affair with his secretary, Kumi Aikura. Apart from that, Kanai has been Kikuoka’s personal doormat and brown-noser for the past decade and more, and has only recently been promoted to a managerial position.”

“What’s the relationship between Kikuoka Bearings and Hama Diesel?”

“Back in 1958 when Kikuoka Bearings was just a fledgling company, Kikuoka managed to get into bed with Hama Diesel. His company owes everything to Hamamoto. Around half of all the ball bearings used in Hama Diesel’s tractor-trailers are made by Kikuoka Bearings.”

“So the two companies are affiliated?”

“Right. Anyway, that’s why they were invited.”

“Have they had any kind of dispute or falling-out recently?”

“Nothing at all like that. Both companies are doing extremely well, particularly their export business.”

“Got it. And there was nothing going on between Kumi Aikura and Ueda, the chauffeur?”

“Nothing at all that we can find. Ueda seems to have been the most quiet, unassuming man. Kikuoka’s the nosy type, and jealous to boot. A gold-digger mistress like that one is hardly going to risk it all for someone like Ueda.”

But there turned out to be little difference between the Kikuoka Bearings contingent and Sasaki or Togai. Kumi Aikura had encountered Ueda through work, but they’d had next to no direct contact and almost no conversation. The detectives were able to check this information in a casual way with the others and decided it was most likely the truth.

Mr and Mrs Kanai had had the same experience as Kumi. The biggest surprise for the officers was that Eikichi Kikuoka himself made the same claim. The only things he seemed to know about Ueda were that he was unmarried, rarely spoke, had no brothers or sisters, and his father was deceased. In other words, he was the only child of a single mother from Moriguchi near Osaka. And that was about it. Kikuoka had invited Ueda to have a drink with him a couple of times, but they had no kind of relationship to speak of.

Besides the three questions they’d asked Sasaki and Togai, the police had added an extra one—Who do you think might have wanted to kill Ueda?—but it was hopeless. They all said the same thing: they had no idea.

“Mr Kanai, what time was it when you went running to Room 1?”

“I heard Ms Aikura screaming just after 1.05 a.m. and stayed in bed for about ten minutes I think, not sure what to do.”

“Did you hear a man’s voice scream too?”

“Yes, well…”

“Did you look out of the window at all?”

“No.”

“When did you finally get back to your room?”

“Just before 2 a.m.”

“And you had to make a round trip through the salon to do that?”

“Yes, of course.”

“On your way there or back did you meet anyone, or see anything strange?”

“No, nothing.”

And so they only got one single piece of useful information—namely that if Kanai was telling the truth, around 1.15 a.m., and again around 1.50 a.m., there were no suspicious characters along the route connecting Room 9 with Room 1.

At any rate, none of the people interviewed had anything that constituted a solid alibi. All of them had retired to their respective rooms around 9.30, changed into pyjamas, and then never once after that ventured out into the corridor (with the exception of Michio Kanai, of course). After dinner, all of the guests seemed to have shut themselves away in their rooms like bears preparing to hibernate for the winter.

With each room in the mansion having its own en suite bathroom, this behaviour was no different from that of guests at a hotel, but to the three police officers who hadn’t been brought up in a life of luxury, it was a little hard to imagine. At night, back at the hall of residence at the police academy, there were more people hanging out in the corridors than in their own rooms. They decided to ask the next person, Yoshihiko Hamamoto, the reason for this.

“You said the same things as everyone else: no one seems to have ever exchanged words with Mr Ueda; no one set foot outside their rooms after dinner; no one heard anything; no one saw anything. Therefore, nobody has an alibi. Why did everyone shut themselves away and never come out again?”

“I think… maybe it was because everyone brought pyjamas with them but…”

“Yes? Go on.”

“There weren’t any robes or dressing gowns.”

The detectives all nodded knowingly, but in fact they didn’t get anything from Yoshihiko’s reply other than to wonder what kind of a house they had found themselves in.

And what on earth were they going to do that night without so much as a pair of pyjamas?

The next person they called was Eiko Hamamoto. Ushikoshi repeated their three questions.

“I’m sorry but I don’t have an alibi. If you want to know where I was between just after 1 and just before 2 in the morning, then I was in Room 1 with my father, Kumi Aikura and Mr Kanai. I’m afraid I can’t answer for the half-hour after midnight.”

“Hmm. But finally we’ve found someone besides Mr Kanai who actually left their room. It looks like you had a dressing gown.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry, private joke. Were you close to Kazuya Ueda?”

“I hardly spoke to him.”

“Of course not. You wouldn’t have.”

“Remind me of your other question.”

“Did you see anyone behaving suspiciously or hear anything strange?”

“No, I didn’t see anything.”

“Hmm. So once you went to bed you never left your room until you heard Kumi Aikura’s screams and went to the next room?”

“No… Actually, yes, to be accurate I did leave my room one other time.”

“Oh, yes?”

“It was so cold I woke up. I opened my door to check if the drawbridge was completely up or not.”

“And was it?”

“No. As I’d guessed, it wasn’t properly shut.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Yes, occasionally. Sometimes it’s difficult to close from the tower side.”

“And so you closed it?”

“Yes.”

“What time was that?”

“I’m not sure… Maybe about twenty or thirty minutes before I heard Ms Aikura scream… I didn’t check my watch.”

“So it was around 12.30?”

“Yes, I suppose it was. But it might have been later.”

“Could you tell us exactly what happened when you heard Ms Aikura screaming?”

“I was in bed but awake for the reason I just explained. Then I heard screaming. Really loud screaming. So, wondering what was going on, I tried to listen, and then I heard what sounded like a man’s yell. Then I got out of bed, opened my window and looked outside.”

“Did you see anyone, or anything?”

“No. The moon was out and reflecting off the snow, so I could see quite well, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. And then I heard her screaming again, so I went and knocked on the door of Room 1.”

“Hmm. And then your father appeared?”

“That’s right. And finally, Mr Kanai.”

“And what do you believe it was that Ms Aikura had seen?”

“I’m sure she had a nightmare.”

Her tone was emphatic.

Next was Kozaburo Hamamoto. He listened to Ushikoshi’s three questions, then surprised them all with his first response.

“I’ve had several conversations with Ueda.”

“Oh?… And why was that?”

Both Ushikoshi and Okuma looked suspicious.

“Why? Now that’s a difficult question to answer. Was it wrong to want to get to know Ueda?”

Ushikoshi forced a laugh.

“No, no, of course not. But when I hear that the celebrated Mr Kozaburo Hamamoto, a person so famous that there could well be a statue made of him one day, made the effort to get to know a humble chauffeur, it just seems very odd to me.”

“Ha! Well, it seems just as odd to me to hear an opinion like that from a member of the police force, who are supposed to be the keepers of peace and public order. If I desire intellectual stimulation, I’ll happily strike up a conversation with whomever I like. I don’t discriminate. I liked to talk to Ueda because he had been in the military. I wanted to hear first-hand all about the current state of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces.”

“I see. But your relationship with Mr Ueda was only at this mansion, right?”

“Yes, naturally. There was no other place I could have met him, seeing as I never leave this house. But I only finished construction a year ago. Before that, I used to live in Kokura City. I noticed Ueda was Mr Kikuoka’s chauffeur back then when he used to visit my home, but we never exchanged any words at that time.”

“Would I be right in thinking Mr Kikuoka and Mr Ueda have only visited you here at this house twice—once in the summer, and this current visit?”

“Right.”

“How long did they stay in the summer?”

“A week.”

“I see.”

“And then, as for your second question, I went up to my room around 10.30. I’m sorry but I can’t provide an alibi.”

“10.30? That was rather late, wasn’t it?”

“I was chatting with Eiko. However, I don’t know if this information is enough to be my alibi, but as you know, my room is at the top of the tower, and the only way for me to get back to the main building is by a staircase in the form of a drawbridge. Whenever I lower or raise that bridge, it makes a noise that echoes throughout the whole of the main building. It’s winter now so I don’t leave it down for any period of time, because while it’s in the down position it means that the door to the main building is left open, and it’s much too cold for that. Therefore, if you hear the drawbridge being lowered and then raised at night, and you don’t hear that sound again until the next morning you can be sure that I haven’t left my room in the tower.”

“Aha, I understand. But of course, Mr Hamamoto, you aren’t under suspicion. It’s hard to imagine any reason that a man of your social standing and prestige would destroy everything he had by murdering a simple chauffeur. What time did you lower the drawbridge this morning?”

“Around 8.30, I believe. If I get up any earlier my daughter complains that the noise of the bridge wakes her up. By the way, you do realize that the murderer isn’t in this house?”

“Well, if the murderer isn’t in this house, then Mr Ueda must have killed himself. But in our experience we’ve never seen anything like that manner of suicide. If it does indeed turn out to be murder, then I regret to say the murderer must be here in your house.”

“But it doesn’t appear that he or she is.”

“You are quite right. But we have our colleagues in Tokyo working on this case too, and I’m confident they will discover the hidden motive for this crime. By the way, regarding this noise that the drawbridge makes, can it be heard by anybody anywhere in the main building?”

“I’m pretty sure you can hear it anywhere. It’s very loud. But I couldn’t swear that you can hear it down in the basement. In that sense, it makes Room 14 where Mr Kikuoka is staying such a special room. The people in Room 1 or 2 would definitely be able to hear it.”

“And how about question number three?”

“You mean whether I noticed anything suspicious? Well, my room is up in the tower, far away from everyone else, so I have no idea whatsoever. That said, I did hear that man’s voice and Ms Aikura screaming. Apart from that I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”

“Hmm. And what do you think it was that Ms Aikura saw, Mr Hamamoto?”

“Well, that’s quite a mystery. I can’t imagine it being anything besides a nightmare.”

“But you definitely heard a man’s scream?”

“Yes, I heard it. But it was very faint. At the time I thought it came from somewhere far beyond this house—a drunk yelling or something.”

“I see. And then I’d like to ask you why someone took—what’s its name again?—from Room 3?”

“You mean Golem?”

“That’s it. Do you think someone deliberately carried it out?”

“I really don’t know. It was right by the window, and therefore quite easy to remove from the room.”

“If someone wanted to make you suffer, would taking that doll and dumping it in the snow be a good way to do it?”

“Not at all, really. There are other smaller, lighter and more valuable items that I truly care about. And if they really wanted to upset me, rather than taking it apart, they could have smashed it to pieces. And they could have done that inside Room 3. There was no need to take it outside.”

“So it isn’t something you really care about?”

“Not at all. It was something I just picked up on a whim.”

“Why do you call it—er… Golem?

“It was a doll shop in Prague. That’s what they called him. There’s a bit of an odd story behind the name. Surely you don’t need me to tell that story to the police?”

“What kind of story?”

“There’s a belief that he can walk by himself and always heads towards water.”

“What the…!”

Hamamoto laughed.

“You don’t believe me! But in medieval Europe there was a great folklore tradition, and they believed in all sorts of myths.”

“It’s a grotesque-looking doll. Why did you want to buy something like that?”

“Why did I buy it…? Hmm… I suppose it’s because I just don’t feel the appeal of those cute French dolls.”

“That reminds me, this is quite an unusual residence, isn’t it? I’d like to ask you about it. The stairs and the corridors—or perhaps the right word is landings—on every floor are made of metal. Even the handrails are metal.

“And then, at the far end of every L-shaped corridor, the floor doesn’t quite reach as far as the wall. There’s an open gap, and that has a handrail too. What was your reason for making it like that?”

“That gap was a mistake. A young architect placed an order for metal floorboards and the wrong size was delivered. He said he’d redo it but I told them it would be all right. Actually, I preferred it that way. It makes them look like a kind of aerial walkaway. But I asked them to put in the guard rail. My staircases and passageways are all metallic, and I’ve gone overboard and put in metal handrails too. And then my stairs are steep, and look as if they’re getting rusty. I kind of like that grim, gloomy effect.

“Ever since I was a university student, I’ve loved the copper-plate prints of the Italian artist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Piranesi left many sombre prints of prisons. He was a portrayer of imaginary prisons. Floor upon floor of high ceilings and dark metal staircases, and also towers and aerial walkways. And of course metal drawbridges. His prints were full of those kinds of things. I wanted to build this house in that image. I even thought about calling it ‘Piranesi Mansion’.”

“I see. That’s fine,” said Ushikoshi, but Kozaburo didn’t notice. He was passionately caught up in his story.

Next Hamamoto’s members of staff were called. Haruo Kajiwara turned out to have no other interests besides cooking and watching TV in his own room. He’d never spoken to Ueda, nor seen anything unusual the night before.

Chikako Hayakawa was the same, but her husband, Kohei, left a different impression. He was around fifty but came across as a rather timid character who looked much older than he was. Kohei Hayakawa’s replies were exactly like those of a politician denying a scandal. It sounded as if everything he said was a lie. The detectives had a hunch he was hiding something.

Sergeant Ozaki raised his voice. Up to now, everyone’s answers had been so pedestrian and conventional, his irritation had been building.

“So you didn’t even exchange a single word with the victim, Ueda; you went to your room around 10.30 and never came out again, and therefore you have no alibi; and finally you saw nothing suspicious. Is that what you’re claiming?”

Hayakawa looked startled, then stared down at his feet. The veteran detectives recognized that this was a person who, given one more push, would spill the beans. Outside, the wind was getting louder, the prelude to a heavy blizzard.

Chief Inspector Ushikoshi and Sergeant Ozaki began to wonder which of the three questions Kohei Hayakawa had answered untruthfully. If they could discover that, the extra push would be much more effective. If they guessed wrong, then the suspect might clam up for good. Ushikoshi took a gamble.

“We won’t repeat anything you tell us in this room,” said Ushikoshi, making his choice. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything at all suspicious?”

And just as Hayakawa seemed about to crumble, he lifted his head and said, “Absolutely nothing.”

From that point on, no matter what the detectives asked him, he gave no concrete response. Ushikoshi realized he’d gambled and lost, and quickly changed the line of questioning.

“So tell us, Mr Hayakawa, do you believe that somehow last night a stranger managed to break into this mansion?”

“Reckon that’d be impossible. Kaji’s always right by the service entrance to the kitchen, and everyone else was near the glass doors in the salon. I go around and lock all the doors in the house before everyone goes to bed.”

“The ground-floor toilet window too?”

“That toilet window’s always locked. Got iron bars on it too.”

“Hmm. And you’re in charge of the windows in all the guest rooms?”

“If there’s a guest staying, I’ve been told not to go into their room unless they ask me. But of course Ms Hamamoto is always telling the guests to call me if they need anything.”

“Hmm, I see,” said Ushikoshi but the question itself was a little off-point. Asking whether a stranger could have broken into the Ice Floe Mansion with the intention of murdering Kazuya Ueda was irrelevant really. Room 10 was in the perfect location for someone to enter directly from the outside. There was no need whatsoever to sneak into the main building.

So what was the business with the Golem doll all about? Ushikoshi decided that he had better confirm one more time with Kozaburo Hamamoto that it had really been in Room 3 in the daytime yesterday.

“Thank you.”

And with that, Ushikoshi set Kohei Hayakawa free.

“What a pain in the arse,” said Ozaki, staring out at the whirling snow. “It’s going to be a real storm. I don’t think we can get back tonight.”

“The Snow Queen says she’s not letting you go home.”

Another unfunny joke from Inspector Okuma.

“Yes, that’s what I’m hearing,” said Ushikoshi. He was distracted, thinking back over the completely fruitless investigation.

What they had learnt was this: Ueda was not the kind of man who someone would want to kill; when Eiko Hamamoto had gone to close the door to the bridge around 12.30 or 12.40, she hadn’t seen anyone or anything—in other words, there was nobody hanging around Room 1 or 2 at that time of night; at 1.15 a.m. and again at 1.50 a.m. when Michio Kanai had been taking the circuitous route between Room 9 and Room 1, he hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. So probably by that time the killer had completed his task and had already returned to his room. Or had the killer heard the sound of footsteps and hidden himself away somewhere? Well, that was if the murderer was even one of the guests staying at the mansion.

“Chief Inspector, you never know what might happen. I reckon I’d better call up at least one of our young toughs. If we stay the night we may end up making an arrest.”

No objections to that, thought Ushikoshi to himself.

“We’ve got one real bruiser I can think of. I’ll put him on night duty, okay?”

“Yes, please, Inspector Okuma. If you’ve got someone right for the job, let’s do it.”

“Yes, better safe than sorry.”