Murder in the Crooked House

SCENE 1 The Salon

“Telegram!”

Hearing the voice in the entrance hall, Eiko got to her feet. Chief Inspector Ushikoshi immediately followed her out. He soon returned, a sheet of paper in his hand, pulled up a chair next to Sergeant Ozaki and showed him the telegram.

“You gonna let me take a look?” said Okuma moodily. Ozaki decided to read it out loud.

“This kind of… er… monstrous crime… requires the right kind of detective… no better in the whole of Japan… already on a flight… His name is Mita… um… how do you read this, Mitarai? What the hell? Shit! They really are sending some jumped-up Sherlock Holmes wannabe!”

“What? Is this Mita-whatsit person from Tokyo HQ?” asked Okuma.

Ozaki knew exactly who Mitarai was.

“He’s a fortune teller.”

Ushikoshi and Okuma sat there blinking in silence for a good few moments. Then Ushikoshi found his voice, albeit one of someone being choked.

“Is this some kind of joke? We’re not so desperate that we need to rely on a fortune teller or a psychic or something.”

Okuma began to laugh.

“Chief Inspector, that’s not much of a friend you have there in Tokyo! He’s taking the piss out of us. But if you think about it, this so-called fortune teller with his bunch of divining sticks might guess who the murderer is and earn quite a bit out of it. Our honour will be saved, and the Tokyo lot will seem as if they tried to help. It’s a good move for everybody. The best possible way. But they’d have been better off sending us a dog than some fortune teller. A police dog with a good nose would be better any day than a wizened old codger.”

“But Superintendent Nakamura isn’t so irresponsible… Ozaki, you know this Mitarai?” said Ushikoshi.

“Have you heard of the Umezawa family massacre?”

“Of course. It was a famous case.”

“That big murder that happened back when we were kids?” Okuma asked Ushikoshi. “The one that was finally solved three or four years back?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Well, one theory has it that Mitarai was the one who solved it,” said Ozaki.

“Wasn’t it some detective from HQ who solved it? At least that’s what I heard.”

“Yes, well, that’s probably what really happened. But the fortune teller has been going around bragging that he’s the one who did it.”

“There are plenty of old cranks like that,” said Okuma. “You can work your arse off solving a crime and the criminal turns out to be the same one they guessed, and they start thinking that they’re some kind of oracle.”

“No, this Mitarai isn’t an old guy. He’s still quite young. A real arrogant pain in the neck, by all accounts.”

“There must have been some sort of misunderstanding with Nakamura…” sighed Ushikoshi. “I’m not looking forward to this meeting at all.”

They would probably have been even more anxious if they had known what the eccentric Kiyoshi Mitarai was planning for that evening. Chief Inspector Saburo Ushikoshi would have done a lot more than sigh.

Kiyoshi and I weren’t going to be arriving at the Ice Floe Mansion until late, so we took dinner at a little local eatery before heading up there. It wasn’t snowing, but the whole landscape was wrapped in a kind of mist.

We were pretty sure that as far as the occupants of the Ice Floe Mansion were concerned (and especially the police detectives), we were uninvited guests, and we were soon given the opportunity to test that theory. Eiko and the three detectives came to answer the door, but no one thanked us for coming all that way to the far north, and we realized we weren’t going to be welcomed with open arms. But the detectives’ preconceived idea of Kiyoshi was nothing like the actual man. His friendly smile always managed to win people over—at first.

The detectives were confused as to how to deal with us so they announced to the eleven residents of the Ice Floe Mansion that we had come all the way from Tokyo to aid the investigation, and proceeded to introduce each of the residents to us. Some of them smiled in welcome, others looked very serious, and under their gaze I felt like a magician who had been hired to entertain the company. I wondered if they were waiting for me to produce a white handkerchief and start performing tricks.

But Kiyoshi wasn’t so self-effacing. The moment Chief Inspector Ushikoshi said, “This is Mr Mitarai”, he immediately began to address the assembled guests as if he were some kind of VIP.

“Good evening, everybody! So sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m Kiyoshi Mitarai. Consider the power of the human race… When human power fails it falls to the dolls, and then the dolls rise up instead. That is the theory of a lever or a seesaw. Jumping Jack, a one-act marionette. What a painful vision! I came all the way to this northern land to kneel and pay my respects before he is laid to rest.”

As Kiyoshi gave his cryptic speech, the affable expressions on the faces of the three detectives began to cloud over, and the meagre amount of goodwill they had harboured for him immediately melted away.

“The new year is almost upon us, ladies and gentlemen. Right now in the capital it is the season of the bargain sale. As we speak, ladies clutching paper carrier bags are fighting tooth and nail. But up here it is another world. Quiet. But how unfortunate! By the time the 4th of January rolls around, everyone will have to head back to the front line. But at least you’ll all be taking a great tale back home with you; the story of how I solved the case of the last few days will be quite an unusual one, I believe.

“But two dead bodies are surely enough. Fear not. Now that I have arrived, not a single one of you here will be joining the ranks of cold corpses. And why, you ask? Because I have already worked out who the murderer is!”

There was quite a commotion in the room. Even I, standing up there with Kiyoshi, was taken by surprise. Needless to say, the detectives too. But they kept silent.

“Who is it, then?” called Sasaki from the audience.

“Well, it goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

Everyone present held their breath.

“The one known as Golem!”

There were snorts and snickers around the audience as they realized it was a joke, but no one looked quite as relieved as the three detectives.

“After partaking of a cup of hot tea to warm myself up after trudging here through the snow, I hope to climb the stairs and make his acquaintance.”

At this point the police officers frowned.

“But there’s no need to hurry. I don’t imagine he’s going to try to escape.”

Well, that’s true, I overheard Togai saying to Eiko. Other people were murmuring things like, What the hell’s this? A comedy duo?

“Everyone here is connected to this fascinating case. I think you’ve already been grilled for any knowledge or information. But if any of you believes that the doll just sits there all year round in Room 3 like a wooden dummy, then I think you’d better get yourself a new pair of glasses. That’s no mere lump of wood. He’s a two-hundred-year-old European. He’s passed through two hundred years of history and is now resident in this very house. You should all feel very honoured and privileged. A two-hundred-year-old Czech. He’s a miracle. He braves blizzards to dance in the sky, peers in through glass windows, drives knives into people’s hearts, right under our very noses as easily as we reach for our teacups now. By the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, he has awoken from a thousand years of slumber and has been gifted with life in order to perform in this one act. This play in which he has been cast in the leading role.

“The brilliance of the dancing doll. Only on a stormy night does he arise from his dark throne, his puppet strings gleaming white against the jet-black sky, and dance the dance of a thousand years ago. The dance of the dead. What a vivid moment! That first dead body, he was bewitched too, dancing on a string like a marionette.

“History repeats itself. Things are the same as they were a thousand years ago. Time is stuck like a broken-down bus. Without doubt, that moment he was waiting for was over in the blink of an eye.

“Progress is an illusion. We just started running faster. This morning I was in Ginza, and now I’m shivering here at the northern tip of Japan. But can we use this extra time freely? No, we most certainly cannot.”

Kiyoshi seemed intoxicated by his own words, but eventually the snorts of derision from the audience began to turn into full-on laughter. The detectives, for their part, were itching to put an end to this ludicrous performance.

“Do machines really make life easier? I think we know the truth of that. By comparison, the false advertising of the real estate agent—three minutes from the station, thirty minutes from the city centre, an ideal location with lots of green space—is far more trustworthy. We should never feel a sense of superiority towards our creations. We get machines to do our everyday chores; it also becomes possible to reach Hokkaido from Tokyo in just one hour. I can be asked one morning to come up to Hokkaido the same night even though I had other work to do. It used to take three days to get to Hokkaido but these days I have become much busier. There’s no time any more even to read a book. What a swindle! Before long policemen are going to be able to purchase their criminals from vending machines. But at the same time, those criminals will be able to drop in their own coins and buy themselves a corpse—”

“Mr Mitarai?”

The spiel was finally interrupted by Ushikoshi.

“I think that’s enough for preliminary greetings. If you’ve nothing more specific to say, it seems the tea is ready.”

“Ah, is it? Then I must introduce my companion here. This is my friend, Kazumi Ishioka.”

Just the simplest of introductions for me.

SCENE 2 The Tengu Room

After tea the indefatigable Kiyoshi Mitarai asked, “So where’s Golem?”

“Do you intend to arrest him?” asked Ushikoshi.

“No, there’s no need for that this evening,” replied Kiyoshi, in complete earnest. “I just want to examine whether or not he’s the homicidal maniac that I imagine.”

“Do you really?” said Okuma, who seemed to be very impressed.

“Then please allow me to show you the way,” said Kozaburo Hamamoto, getting to his feet.

When Kozaburo opened the door to the Tengu Room, we were greeted by the giant clown. This particular doll was mounted on a stand, so there was no way it could move.

“Whoa! This is the clown from Sleuth!” said Kiyoshi as soon as he saw it.

“Oh, you’ve seen that film?” said Kozaburo, clearly delighted.

“Three times. I think the critics were right about it being a B-movie, but I liked it.”

“It’s one of my favourites. I saw the play in England too. I think it’s well done. That’s partly where my interest in collecting all this junk came from. It was so colourful, and the music of Cole Porter was a perfect match. I’m so glad to know you’re familiar with that film.”

“Does this clown laugh and clap its hands like the one in the film?”

“Unfortunately, to borrow your words, it’s just a wooden dummy. I searched all over Europe, but I couldn’t find one like that. I think it must have been constructed especially for the film. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the camera.”

“That’s a pity… So, where is he?”

Without waiting for a reply, Kiyoshi dashed off farther into the room. Kozaburo set off after him and pointed to the corner.

“There he is… Oh, he… Well, that’s shocking.”

Kiyoshi’s loud voice surprised everyone. (Most of the people from the salon had followed us up to Room 3.)

“That’s no good at all. No you can’t do that. He’s naked. That can’t be permitted, Mr Hamamoto!”

Kiyoshi was getting quite worked up.

“Why’s that?”

“This doll is the very embodiment of warped hatred. And it’s had two hundred years to accumulate. But no—it’s more. He’s the very incarnation of all the grudges held by the Jewish people as they’ve suffered persecution after persecution. To display him naked like this is an insult, humiliation. You can’t do this. It’s extremely dangerous. This is the cause of every tragedy that has ever occurred in this house. You have to do something. Mr Hamamoto, I can hardly believe that a man of your knowledge can have overlooked something like this!”

“B-but what can I do?”

Mr Hamamoto looked at a complete loss.

“Obviously, you have to put clothes on him. Kazumi! What about those jeans and that jacket you were saying you hardly ever wear any more? Go and fetch them!”

“Kiyoshi!”

I’d had enough of this bad joke, and was desperate to make him stop.

“I know you’ve got an old sweater in your bag too. Bring that too.”

I wanted to try and warn him to stop, and opened my mouth to say something, but he urged me again to hurry. Reluctantly, I made my way back to the salon.

When I returned with the clothes, he gleefully dressed the doll in the jeans and the sweater. By the time he put the jeans jacket over the top, he was humming a cheerful tune. By contrast, the graduates of the police academy looked as if they were sucking on lemons as they watched my friend at work. With admirable patience, they managed not to utter a word.

“So is he the murderer?”

It was Sasaki who addressed Kiyoshi.

“No doubt about it. He’s a brute.”

Kiyoshi was about done dressing Golem at this point. With clothes, the doll was even creepier looking. It looked as if some kind of vagrant had sneaked into the house.

“So you’re telling me,” said Kozaburo, “that this doll murdered two people because I left it lying here naked?”

“We’ll be lucky if we end up with only two dead,” said Kiyoshi. Then he quickly added, “This won’t do. There’s something missing.”

He folded his arms.

“He’s got a jacket and a sweater, but I still don’t think it’s enough… A hat! He needs a hat. He needs to cover that head. It really shouldn’t be left exposed. But I didn’t bring a hat with me… Has anyone here got a hat? Any kind’ll be fine. I’d like to borrow one. I promise I’ll return it.”

Kiyoshi looked over at the assembled guests. It was the chef, Haruo Kajiwara, who responded.

“Er… I’ve got one,” he said haltingly. “It’s a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Like you see in Westerns.”

“A cowboy hat!?”

Kiyoshi practically screamed it. The guests had absolutely no idea what had set off the lunatic this time. They waited on tenterhooks for his next words.

“There’s nothing better to protect us from violence. It’s like a blessing from the gods. Quick! Go fetch it!”

“Okay, then…”

Shaking his head in wonder, Kajiwara left the room and headed down the stairs. A short while later he returned with the cowboy hat.

Kiyoshi positively radiated joy from head to toe. Taking the hat, he placed it with a flourish on the doll’s head.

“Perfect! Now we’ll be safe. Thank you, Mr Kajiwara. You have done great service to this case. I can’t imagine a better hat than this for the job.”

Kiyoshi was rubbing his hands together in glee, but to me Golem looked more ghoulish than ever. Now it looked as if a real person were sitting there on the floor.

There was still a piece of string tied around his wrist. Kiyoshi examined it, announced that they ought to remove it, and immediately snapped it off. I overheard Chief Inspector Ushikoshi mutter “Stop” but it was too late.

Everyone returned to the salon and Kiyoshi chatted with Kozaburo and the rest of the guests. He seemed to get along best with Sasaki, and they talked together late into the night on the topic of mental disorders. Viewed from afar, the two men seemed to be having a friendly heart-to-heart, but I couldn’t help feeling that the medical student was interested in Kiyoshi more as a patient than a conversation partner. Still, the discussion between the psychiatrist and his patient was very calm.

The room allocated to Kiyoshi and me was the room in which Kazuya Ueda had been murdered—Room 10. I felt this made it very clear how our female host felt about us. Kohei Hayakawa was told to bring us an extra folding bed (the one in Room 10 was only a single). There was no toilet or bathroom in that room, so I used the shower in the detectives’ room to try to relax after the long day’s journey.

Still, to sleep in a room where a murder had been committed was a uniquely valuable experience. It wasn’t something you could get on your average sightseeing tour.

I was still trying to get to sleep in that uncomfortable bed when Kiyoshi came in, just after midnight.

SCENE 3 Room 15, The Detectives’ Bedroom

“What kind of mental hospital did that one escape from?”

The young Sergeant Ozaki was unable to control his anger any longer.

“I mean, what could have possessed them to send that complete idiot for us to babysit?”

That night, the detectives had assembled in Room 15. Constable Anan was there too.

“Never mind, Ozaki,” said Ushikoshi soothingly. “The man is definitely not normal, but that is who Superintendent Nakamura at Tokyo HQ trusted enough to send. Let’s take this opportunity to observe his skills a while.”

“His skills? We’ve seen them already. The ability to put a pair of trousers on a doll!”

“Our job’d be a whole lot easier if we could catch a suspect by dressing up a doll,” Okuma remarked.

“I’ve never seen such a complete and utter moron in my whole life,” said Ozaki. “Letting that one loose on this case is not going to help the investigation one iota. He’s going to screw the whole thing up.”

“But you can’t claim that putting trousers on the doll has hindered the investigation in any way, can you?”

“Right now he is so pleased with himself playing around with that doll that if there’s another murder, he’ll probably start spraying ketchup on the body.”

Ushikoshi sat there lost in thought. Privately he also believed that Mitarai was capable of doing something that crazy.

“Anan, what do you think about that man?” he asked.

“Hmm… I don’t really…”

“Have you given up billiards already?” said Ozaki.

“That other man he brought with him, what’s he up to right now?”

“Taking a shower in Room 12.”

“He seems like a normal bloke.”

“He’s some kind of chaperon for the lunatic, I reckon.”

“Anyway, don’t you think we should probably ask them to leave?” said Okuma.

“Yes. But let’s wait and see how it goes for now. If they start getting in the way of our work, I’ll ask them.”

“An old man with divining sticks would have been a whole lot better than this. With his bad back he’d just have been forced to sit there quietly. It’s hard to handle someone so young. That was like some kind of rain dance he was doing—taking that doll and performing his little psychic dance to proclaim it the killer. Next he’s going to try and get us to light the fire for him to dance around.”

SCENE 4 The Salon

The next morning was relatively clear and sunny. There was the sound of hammering coming from somewhere. The three detectives were back in their sofa cluster.

“What’s that hammering noise?”

“The two women guests asked to have the ventilation holes in their rooms blocked up. They said they made them too nervous, so Togai and Sasaki are playing the knights in shining armour with hammers. Sasaki said he was going to block up the one in his own room while he was at it.”

“Well, I agree it would make you feel safer. But that damned hammering is driving me crazy. Not exactly a New Year’s Eve atmosphere.”

“It’s frantic around here.”

But at that moment an even more frantic man came rushing in. Kiyoshi Mitarai was babbling something that sounded vaguely like a children’s comic-book character.

“Mr Banana!”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the salon, as nobody quite knew how to respond. Kiyoshi looked puzzled, but then the young police constable stood up, sensing that the man might be trying to say his name. I was impressed that he could work that out.

“The name’s Anan…”

“Sorry. Could you tell me the way to Wakkanai Police Station?”

“Yes, of course.”

Kiyoshi was the kind of man who always recalled someone’s date of birth, but never really made an effort to learn anyone’s name. He just used whatever name occurred to him at the time. And then, he would just keep using that made-up name forever.

Right now, he rushed out of the salon again and was immediately replaced by the arrival of Kozaburo Hamamoto, smoking his pipe. He took a seat next to Inspector Okuma.

“Where’s our famous investigator off to?” Ushikoshi asked him.

“He’s a bit strange, that one, isn’t he?”

“He’s extremely strange. A complete nut job.”

“He’s removed Golem’s head and said he wants to take it back to forensics for another look. He says there’s something suspicious about it.”

“Not again!”

“At this rate he’ll be removing all our heads,” said Okuma.

“We’d be better off with a department store security guard.”

“I’ve got no intention of going down along with that moron,” said Ozaki curtly.

“Looks like we’re about to get the psychic dance that you predicted. When he gets back it’s all going to get started.”

“I’ll get ready to light the fire.”

“This is not the time to be making jokes,” said Ozaki. He turned to Kozaburo Hamamoto, a serious expression on his face. “Did he give a reason for taking Golem’s head off?”

“Not really…”

“I don’t imagine there’s any reason at all for it.”

“It’ll get in the way when he’s dancing,” Okuma threw in.

“Personally,” said Kozaburo, “I’m not particularly thrilled that he’s taken the head off again. Well, I suppose he can if he wants. Maybe he’s looking for fingerprints?”

“Does he even have the wits to think of something like that?” said Okuma.

It felt a little like the pot calling the kettle black.

“We checked thoroughly for fingerprints already,” said Ushikoshi.

“And what did you find?” Kozaburo asked.

“Nowadays, no criminal with any kind of knowledge about police investigative techniques leaves anything like a fingerprint behind. People watch TV programmes. And if the criminal is one of the people in this house, it’ll be difficult to prove anything. It’d be perfectly normal for any of them to touch anything in the house.”

“I suppose so.”

It was well into the afternoon before Kiyoshi returned to the Ice Floe Mansion. His mood was buoyant as usual as he crossed the salon to sit by me.

“The forensic pathologist gave me a lift back. He said he was on his way here anyway.”

“Really?”

“So I asked him to drop in and have a cup of tea.”

Kiyoshi spoke as if he’d invited someone over to his own home. There was indeed a man in a white coat standing by the front door. Kiyoshi raised his voice.

“Mr Banana! Would you get Mr Kajiwara for me?”

For whatever reason, Kiyoshi had happened to remember Kajiwara’s name correctly. Constable Anan, who was leaning on the wall by the kitchen, made no protest and simply disappeared to fetch Kajiwara. He’d apparently decided to answer to his new name.

As they sipped their tea, the grandfather clock in the salon struck three. I can specify that the people in the room right then were Kiyoshi and myself, the three detectives with Constable Anan, Kozaburo Hamamoto, Mr and Mrs Kanai, Yoshihiko Hamamoto, Mr and Mrs Hayakawa. And I caught glimpses of Kajiwara too in the kitchen. In other words, the people who weren’t with us in the salon were Eiko, Kumi, Togai and Sasaki—those four. The forensic pathologist, Dr Sano, was also with us at that time.

Suddenly we heard a howl, a man’s voice, from somewhere far away. It was more than just a scream. I’d have described it as the cry someone would make when they came face to face with unimaginable horror.

Kiyoshi kicked his chair backwards, leapt to his feet and ran in the direction of Room 12. Reflexively, I glanced up at the grandfather clock. It wasn’t even five past three: 3.04 and 30 seconds.

The three policemen rushed out shouting. They hesitated, not really knowing where they were running to, and it was annoying having to chase after Kiyoshi, so only Ushikoshi and Anan actually followed him. Ozaki and Okuma went a different way.

Everyone assumed the howl had come from either Togai or Sasaki, as they were the only men missing—the other two not present being women. But it was impossible to know which one. However, Kiyoshi had no doubt. He headed straight for Room 13 and banged on the door.

“Sasaki! Sasaki!”

He pulled out a handkerchief and turned the doorknob. But it kept sticking.

“It’s locked! Mr Hamamoto, is there a spare key?”

“Kohei, quickly, go and get Eiko! She’s got the spare.”

Hayakawa rushed off.

“Okay, get out of the way!”

Ozaki had just arrived. He too began to bang on the door. But the result was the same.

“Should I break it down?”

“No, let’s wait for the spare key,” said Ushikoshi as Eiko came running. “Is this it? Let me have it.”

He put the key in the lock and turned it. There was the click of a lock releasing, but when Ozaki tried to turn the knob, the door still refused to open.

“Oh, the other lock is on,” said Kozaburo.

Besides the push-button lock in the centre of the doorknob, each room had a second oval-shaped lock underneath, which, if you turned it 180 degrees, would send a bar bolt across. This bolt could only be turned from inside the room.

“Break it.”

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

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

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

“He’s still alive!” cried Kiyoshi.

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

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

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

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

“What the hell?”

Ozaki was immediately riled up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sasaki! Don’t die!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m afraid not.”

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

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

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

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

“A snake!”

The detectives almost jumped out of their skins.

“What time was that?”

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

“Right when he was killed.”

“Did anyone else hear it?”

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

“Tell us more about the sound.”

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

“A woman sobbing?!”

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

“And when Ueda was killed?”

“I didn’t hear anything. I’m sorry.”

“So you only heard it with Kikuoka?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

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

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

“I’m at my wits’ end too.”

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

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

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

Okuma continued the thought.

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

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

Okuma groaned.

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

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

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

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

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

SCENE 5 The Library

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

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

“Omedeto!” I said to Kiyoshi.

“Yeah,” he replied, distracted.

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

He finally looked up at me.

“For what?” he said with obvious irritation.

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

He groaned.

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

Kiyoshi laughed scornfully.

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

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

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

“Of course not.”

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

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

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

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

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

His voice sounded hoarse.

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

Kiyoshi turned and looked very seriously into my eyes.

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

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

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

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

“What are you talking about?”

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

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

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

“In this room?”

“Yes. The answer is in here.”

I looked around. The room was filled with bookshelves.

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

“That couldn’t be helped!”

Kiyoshi sounded distraught.

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

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

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

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

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

His shoulders sagged.

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

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

I suddenly felt angry.

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

“I’m tired. I need to rest.”

“Then please just listen to my thoughts.”

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

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

“Meaning?”

“That message was really poorly written, right?”

“You think?”

“And you don’t?”

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

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

“For example?”

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

“Well, that’s poetic.”

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

“Okay, I get it. What’s your point?”

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

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

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

“Right. They’re not.”

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

“No, nobody.”

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

“I agree.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eiko’s condescending attitude never faltered.

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

I held my breath.

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

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

“So you refuse to answer my question?”

“I’m the one asking you a question.”

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

Kumi couldn’t come up with a response right away. There was a moment of chilling silence.

“What the hell do you mean by you can’t forgive me for Sasaki?”

Kumi’s composure was gone. She didn’t have the energy any more to feign politeness.

“Oh, I think you know.” Eiko’s voice turned dangerously soft. “How you employed that professional box of tricks of yours to seduce that innocent young man.”

“Just a minute! ‘Professional box of tricks’?”

“Isn’t sleeping with men your profession?”

Kumi was sensible enough not to lose it at this point. She was clearly fighting back the urge to yell something. Instead, she laughed defiantly.

“Now you mention it, I did notice you throwing yourself at Sasaki’s stretcher. Kind of embarrassing, really. Reminded me of a bar girl fawning all over her patron. Very impressive.”

It was Eiko’s turn to be lost for words.

“But that’s the irony, isn’t it? You forbid other women to go near your darling Sasaki, but you never even slept with him? What century are you from? You’ll never get anywhere with that kind of thinking. If you thought of him as your man, why didn’t you just put a leash on him?”

Both women were on the point of exploding in fury. Kiyoshi and I felt in physical danger. We were on the point of getting up and running for our lives, but Eiko’s pride stopped her from going too far.

“It’s impossible to keep my dignity around someone like you.”

Kumi laughed scornfully.

“You call yourself dignified? Try losing a bit of weight. That’d give you more dignity.”

Eiko took her time before responding.

“I’m going to ask you straight. Was it you who killed Sasaki?”

Kumi was dumbfounded.

“What the…?”

The two women glared at each other.

“Are you crazy? How could I have killed Sasaki? What motive could I have had?”

“I don’t know how, but I know you had a motive.”

“What?”

“To stop me getting him.”

Kumi laughed again, this time more shrilly. But her eyes didn’t join in. They stayed fully focused on Eiko’s face and showed no sign of amusement.

“Please stop making me laugh! Why would you imagine I’d need to kill Sasaki? I liked him, but he was madly in love with you? Is that it? Oh, that’s priceless! I didn’t care about him at all, and he didn’t care about you at all either. Why would I want to kill him? In fact, the one who might want to kill him is you! Isn’t that right? Because he was attracted to me.”

“Don’t talk rubbish.”

Finally, the situation had reached its most frightening point.

“I can’t believe a dirty whore like you would even dare to set foot in this house. Get out! Get out of my house now!”

“Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like better. If only I could get permission from the police to leave. I’ve had more than enough of this house with its serial murders and a woman constantly stomping around like a sumo wrestler. And that hideous piercing voice.”

For quite a time after that the two women exchanged a barrage of insults that I couldn’t possibly write down here. Kiyoshi and I kept perfectly still and tried to merge into the scenery.

Eventually, the door was slammed so hard the whole wall shook, and Eiko was left alone. For a while she stood there shell-shocked, but then finally summoned the presence of mind to scan the room. And, of course, her eye fell upon the two accidental spectators. The blood drained from her face and her lips began to tremble.

“Good afternoon,” said Kiyoshi boldly.

“Have you been there the whole time?”

She seemed to be feigning calm, even as she knew the answer to her question. Or perhaps she really did think that we had somehow crept in through the window while she’d been engaged in her battle.

“Could you not have let me know you were there?”

“Well, we… we were too afraid to say anything.”

This was not the sensible thing to say on the part of Kiyoshi, but we were lucky. Eiko barely seemed to lose her cool at all. It was almost as if she hadn’t understood Kiyoshi’s meaning.

“It’s quite unforgivable that you didn’t say a thing. So you just sat there and listened?”

Kiyoshi glanced at me as if to say, Don’t just sit there. Help me out.

“We didn’t mean to listen,” he said.

“But we were worried,” I said, ignoring Kiyoshi.

“Yes, about the outcome,” Kiyoshi quickly added.

“The outcome? What did you think might happen?” she snapped.

My shoulders began to tremble.

“Why were you lurking there listening to our conversation?”

Privately I objected to the word “conversation”.

But Eiko’s voice was getting shriller. I was frantically preparing a pretty good excuse that I hoped might help to improve the atmosphere in the room. I felt confident that I could do something. Had I been alone, I might have succeeded.

But it’s no good when your friend has no common sense whatsoever. Right then the man sitting next to me decided to say the most inappropriate thing that any human being could possibly have come up with, negating all of the effort that I’d made up to that point.

“So… which one of you do you think won?”

Eiko’s shoulders immediately stopped trembling, and she summoned up a deep voice from deep in her belly.

“You despicable man! You’ve no manners at all.”

“Yes, I’m very used to being called that,” said Kiyoshi with a smile. “And my manners are so lacking that until just now I was under the impression that a library was a place to read books.”

I elbowed him in the ribs and whispered urgently to him to shut up. But it was too late and things could not have got any worse. Eiko didn’t speak another word—she just glared at Kiyoshi, then headed towards the door. As she opened it, she turned to face us as if she were searching for the wickedest curse to put on us. But then, as if she had been unable to find the words, she left, closing the door behind her.

I let out a long groan. It was a while before I could speak.

“You’re outrageous, you know that? You have absolutely no common sense whatsoever.”

“I’ve heard it a thousand times.”

“And I’m sick of saying it! What a great New Year this is turning out to be.”

“It’s okay to be outrageous once in a while, don’t you think?”

“Once in a while?! So you’re saying that I just happen always to be with you on those ‘once in a while’ occasions? Are there any times you leave the house and don’t cause trouble? I don’t think I can think of a single one! Just put yourself in my shoes for once. Imagine how I feel. Every time I try my hardest to keep a situation from getting out of hand, you manage to wreck everything, just for fun, for your own amusement.”

“Understood. I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Next time? Ha! Next time! If it happens again, I know what I’m going to do.”

“What’s that?”

“It’ll be the end of our friendship.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. But then I decided we’d better focus on the case again.

“Anyway, forget about that for now. How about this case? Are you going to solve it?”

“About that…” he murmured.

“Pull it together!” I said. “And if you decide to do a runner in the night, I’m not going with you. I don’t want to freeze to death. But anyway, we’ve found out something this afternoon. We can more or less rule out those two women.”

The hammering downstairs had stopped by now.

“There’s one more thing that’s perfectly clear to me now,” said Kiyoshi.

“What?” I asked, hopefully.

“It’s going to be a while before our hostess lets us move out of that freezing cold storeroom of a bedroom.”

I couldn’t help wishing he’d thought of that before opening his mouth.

SCENE 6 The Salon

That evening, despite my doubts, we were provided with dinner.

The guests had now been cooped up in the Ice Floe Mansion for a whole week, and they couldn’t hide any longer how exhausted they were. What’s more, among them (or in someone’s case, inside themself) was a homicidal maniac, and they were constantly living with the fear that the knife with the white string attached might end up in their own heart next.

Tonight, however, it was the police officers who were having the hardest time hiding their exhaustion. They looked at least ten times more haggard than even Kiyoshi had predicted, and anyone seeing the way their shoulders sagged couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. All the way through dinner, and even when it was over, not one of them spoke a word. If any one of them had opened his mouth to speak, doubtless he would have simply repeated the same phrases that they had said a hundred times already. I had to be constantly vigilant to make sure that Kiyoshi didn’t turn to them and ask them if they’d found so much as a rat’s nest in their search.

“What in God’s name is going on in this place?” said Okuma, making it one hundred and one times.

Nobody had a response. Ozaki and the others had put so much into the search that they could barely lift a hand to drink their tea. If Ozaki had opened his mouth right then, nothing good would have come out.

“We know nothing,” said Ushikoshi, his voice barely a whisper. “We have to accept it. Why was there a metre of string attached to those hunting knives? Why were there two stakes out in the snow the night of the first murder? As for the three locked rooms, especially the second two, we have no idea how it was done. And they only get more impossible as the murders go on. It’s just not feasible to commit a murder in such a perfectly impenetrable room! It’s impossible! So we stripped away the walls, the ceilings and the floors. And found nothing! Even the heating pipes were untouched.

“We know absolutely nothing. We’ve gained nothing. I’m left believing it was all done by some sort of evil spirit. My daily reports to HQ are torture for me to make. If there is anyone at all who thinks they can give me any sort of explanation that makes any sense at all of this freak case, then I will bow deeply and listen to whatever he has to say. If such a person exists.”

“I don’t think they do,” said Ozaki, massaging his own right shoulder.

And those were the only words he spoke all evening.

Kiyoshi and I were in conversation with Kozaburo. In the very short time that we had been guests at the Ice Floe Mansion, Kozaburo Hamamoto appeared to have aged about ten years. He wasn’t usually very talkative, but he did enjoy talking about music and art, and on these topics he seemed to have regained a little of his vitality. Kiyoshi must have taken note of my earlier complaints, or perhaps it was because of his own loss of confidence, but he had stopped baiting the detectives and was relatively subdued.

When it came to music it seemed that Kiyoshi and Kozaburo had surprisingly similar tastes. They’d been discussing Richard Wagner’s brash theatricality for close on an hour.

“Wagner was really ahead of his time. His music broke through the norms of the age, upset its harmony,” said Kozaburo. “A true revolutionary.”

“Right, right. At the time his music was considered truly avant-garde in England and other European countries. Even now he’s treated as something modern.”

“I agree. But he could only make it because he was under the patronage of Ludwig II.”

“I suppose you could see it that way. Wagner was demanding impressive sums of money from him. Without Ludwig II as a patron, after The Ring none of his greatest masterpieces would have been possible. He was deeply in debt, constantly being forced to flee different countries. If he hadn’t been rescued by Ludwig, he would probably have rotted away in some village in the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, that’s possible, I admit. But he still would have written his scores.”

“Just now you said something about harmony?…” Kiyoshi asked.

“The situation at that time in European cities just before the appearance of Ludwig II or Wagner, had reached a certain state of harmony, I believe. For example, the perfect architectural balance between the use of stone and glass and wood.”

“Aha. I see.”

“The layout and concept of the ideal cities of the day resembled a giant stage setting. In other words, a city was like a theatre, in which the common people were to go about their daily lives as if it were one great performance.”

“Huh.”

“In that environment, the technological development of glass as a new building material was the most important facet of this theatrical construction and one that added to its beauty. But you couldn’t make anything substantial with it. The leaning tower that I’ve built here couldn’t have been made in those days. And wouldn’t have been. Not only the architects and city planners, but also painters and musicians created their work with an implicit understanding of preserving harmony.

“And then, along came technological advancements that included the construction of strong steel frames and huge plates of glass, as well as the invention of trains. And that was when the giant that was Wagner made his appearance in Bavaria.”

“Interesting. You say he arrived to destroy the perfection of the Gothic period.”

“Right. And ever since, Europe has been racked with troubles. They’re still suffering today.”

“And what was the role of Ludwig II, the pure-hearted boy king, in all this? He copied King Louis of France and he took Wagner in. Was he just a frivolous airhead?”

“No, I think it was just the tendency of Bavarian people at the time. Society wanted to make Ludwig II appear a lunatic so they changed the definition of normal. It wasn’t only Ludwig II who liked to mimic France. Ludwig I had already created his own version of the Arc de Triomphe in Munich.”

“But what interests me most right now is you, Mr Hamamoto.”

“Me?”

“You don’t seem like Ludwig II. This mansion is no Herrenchiemsee Castle. A man of your intelligence doesn’t build a house on the farthest tip of the northernmost island of Japan for no reason whatsoever.”

“Aren’t you overestimating me? Or perhaps you are overestimating Japanese people in general. There are monstrosities like Herrenchiemsee Castle in Tokyo. How about the State Guest House—Akasaka Palace?”

“Are you saying this mansion is a kind of Akasaka Palace?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like it to me.”

“I guess that it’s the same way that you don’t look like a frivolous airhead to me.”

The two men lapsed into silence for a while. Eventually Kozaburo spoke.

“Mr Mitarai, you’re a mysterious man. I have absolutely no idea what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, really? Well, I suppose I am a little more difficult to comprehend than those police officers over there.”

“Do you think the police have comprehended anything?”

“Their minds haven’t changed since they arrived at this mansion. They’re like a Gothic façade. The house won’t collapse without them.”

“And how about you?”

“How about me in what way?”

“Have you seen the truth of this case? Do you know the name of the killer?”

“The killer’s identity is quite plain for all to see.”

“Oh! And who is it?”

“Didn’t I already say? It’s the doll.”

“I can’t believe that you mean that seriously.”

“Ah, you too? At any rate, this is a very elaborate crime. And it seems that the game is already underway. To bring it to anything but an extraordinary climax would be insulting to the artist who created it.”