Murder in the Crooked House

ENTR’ACTE

Because of the threatening letter he’d received, from the night of the 1st of January onwards, the decision was made that it was too dangerous for Kozaburo to sleep alone in his isolated room in the tower. Instead, he was to sleep in Room 12 with Sergeant Okuma and Constable Anan as his bodyguards. This was not a decision easily reached, but to write here in detail about all the fuss it caused would be too much trouble, so I’m leaving it at that.

The next day, the 2nd of January, there was no sign of any crime having been committed. The police officers spent the whole day unsuccessfully trying to put the rooms they’d pulled apart back to their original condition.

Kiyoshi and the detectives didn’t appear to be speaking to each other at all, but Chief Inspector Ushikoshi came to ask my opinion. Not being able to rely on Kiyoshi, I had given the case some thought and come up with four issues that had to be resolved.

The first was the strange twisted shape of Kazuya Ueda’s body with arms in the V-formation above his head.

Second, the knife in Eikichi Kikuoka’s back—the fact that it wasn’t in the left side where his heart was, but in the right. Was there any significance to that?

Third, the fact that Ueda and Kikuoka’s deaths were on consecutive nights. I found that extremely strange. The killer could have taken as much time as he or she needed, but it seemed as if he’d been in a rush. If he’d left an interval after murdering Ueda, he’d have been more likely to find a moment to catch the detectives off guard. Waiting for that moment would have been the more logical thing to do.

In fact, because a murder had just been committed, there had been four police officers staying the night at the mansion. If the murderer had waited two or three nights more, at least Constable Anan would have been gone. Why didn’t he wait? Why attack when the police were at their most vigilant? It was surely important to work out the reason the killer committed a crime at the most dangerous moment.

And then the final issue: number four. This house has a unique layout with two staircases—one in each of the east and west wings. In theory, if you wanted to get from Room 1 or 2 to Room 13 or 14, you’d have to go through the salon on the ground floor—but is that correct? Many people had escaped suspicion because of this theory. But were we missing something…?

These were the four topics I brought up in my conversation with Ushikoshi. I didn’t tell him, but there was one more outrageous theory going through my mind about the locked rooms. In the cases of Room 14 and Room 13, in particular, a murder seemed to have been ruled out. So instead, was it somehow possible that the victims had seen something through the hole in the wall, something that had terrified them enough to stick a knife in themselves—some kind of projected image—or perhaps they might even have heard a sound…

But this theory seemed hardly possible. The walls of the rooms had been torn apart and searched. There were no film projectors or speakers concealed inside. In fact, there was no kind of electronic or computerized device anywhere in the house.

On the 3rd of January, a team of five or six workmen arrived to fix the mess that the detectives had made of the walls and ceilings. The door of Room 10 had already been mended, but now the doors of 13 and 14 were also restored. This meant that Kiyoshi and I were finally permitted to move out of Room 10 and into Room 13.

It was almost midday on the 3rd. Uniformed police officers arrived with Golem’s head. The forensics lab had apparently completed their analysis. Kiyoshi took delivery of the head and carried it up to Room 3 to reunite it with its body. He even replaced the cowboy hat.

Okuma and Ushikoshi were anxious to hear the reports of the latest forensic investigations, but there was no good news. The hunting knives, the string, the cord were nothing special. Any of them could have been purchased at any shop anywhere in the country.

By the afternoon of the 3rd, the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse and heavy snow began to fall. By 2 p.m. it was so dark and gloomy inside the house that it felt like evening. Another blizzard was surely on its way. The murder mystery that was playing out at the eccentric mansion on the northern tip of Japan appeared to be heading towards its climactic scene.

Before we reach the climax, I should record two things. One is that around sunset on the 3rd, Kumi Aikura insisted that she could hear the sound of someone breathing somewhere in the ceiling of her room. And a half-crazed Hatsue Kanai reported seeing the vague outline of a dead body standing outside in the swirling snow.

Both of these occurrences could be explained the same way—the occupants of the Ice Floe Mansion had reached the limits of their terror and their patience.

And now a report of a more obviously tangible kind. At dinner on the evening of the 3rd, a very disturbing thing happened. From the beginning, everyone who gathered at the dining table looked a little green around the gills. No one had any appetite at all. The women left their knives and forks untouched on the table and sat there listening to the sound of the raging storm. Eiko placed her left hand over the right of Togai, her neighbour, and said quietly, “I’m scared.” Togai gently reached across and covered her left hand with his own.

Including the four police officers, all of the surviving occupants of the house were in attendance. But then a small puff of white smoke floated into the room from the direction of the staircase. Kiyoshi was the first to notice it.

“There’s a fire!” he shouted.

The police all dropped their forks and rushed up the stairs. Kozaburo, fearing for his precious collection, followed right behind.

In the end, the fire was extinguished before it could develop into anything serious. The source was Eiko’s bed in Room 2 which had been sprinkled with paraffin and set alight. But as always, no one had any idea why or by whom this fire had been set. I have already said it, but absolutely everybody had been sitting at the dining table when it happened.

At this point, everyone was convinced that besides the regular occupants there was someone else in the mansion. Some person or some other mysterious entity with homicidal intentions was clearly lurking. But no matter how many times they searched, the police continued to come up with nothing.

On this particular occasion, however, Room 2 hadn’t been locked, nor had the window on the east staircase landing, so for once this strange case of arson wasn’t in the realm of the impossible. But the who and the why still required a great deal of thought.

The storm grabbed hold of the window frames and shook them with all its might and the noise resounded through the mansion. The dozen or so helpless humans cowered in fear inside.

Everything was in place for the final act.

Before we get to that final act, there is one more thing I should write down. Perhaps the reader is already familiar with it, but those of you who are hearing this phrase for the first time might be confused. However, this writer cannot resist including these famous words.