Murder in the Crooked House

SCENE 1 The Ground Floor Landing of the West Wing Staircase, or By the Door of Room 12

Yoshihiko Hamamoto came down the stairs from Room 8, his bedroom.

Chief Inspector Ushikoshi was with Kiyoshi in Room 13 discussing something or other, but everyone else was in the salon. The wind was howling outside, and just like the night that Kikuoka was murdered, no one was in a hurry to go to their own room. If Yoshihiko looked straight ahead of him as he descended the stairs from Room 3 on the middle floor, all there was before him was a huge towering wall like a barricade. This was in fact the walls of Room 10 and Room 12, one above the other.

Because there were no windows or other openings in the wall besides the door to Room 12 down at the bottom, the wall was sheer and felt oppressive. There were of course the two ventilation holes, one for each room, and lined up vertically, but that was all. The lighting on the staircase was rather dim.

Yoshihiko had almost reached the ground floor when for some reason he glanced up. The vent to Room 10, the room in which Kazuya Ueda had been murdered, was way above him in the wall, facing the open space above the staircase.

Yoshihiko had no idea why he had happened to look up at the hole at this moment, but at the same time, he hadn’t just glanced up for no particular reason. He was standing right alongside this great cliff of a wall, and turned his gaze upwards. He caught his breath. Way above his head, a small square-shaped light had just gone out. The after-image stayed imprinted in Yoshihiko’s retinas.

He found himself frozen to the spot. For a moment it felt as if the wind, which had an eerie way of echoing in his head, had come blowing into the interior of the house and was now dancing wildly around the high ceiling space above.

He had the illusion that he was standing alone in the wilderness. The howls and screams of the wind became the moaning of the ghosts of all the people who had died in this house. Well, not only those three, but a whole multitude of spirits. All the souls who had been here in this northern land forever.

He came back to himself. And now he realized what he had seen. It was a reality that was hard to fathom. He knew that he ought to call someone right away, because as nobody was using Room 10 any more, there was no reason for anyone to be in there. Mitarai and Chief Inspector Ushikoshi were in Room 13 and everyone else in the salon. So why had there been a light shining from the vent in Room 10? He had definitely seen it. There was something or someone in there.

He ran to the salon and flung open the door.

“Could somebody come?” he shouted.

Everyone turned to look, and most jumped to their feet. Kozaburo, Eiko, Mr and Mrs Kanai, Togai, Kumi Aikura, Mr and Mrs Hayakawa, Kajiwara; also Inspector Okuma, Sergeant Ozaki and Constable Anan and myself—all of us moved towards Yoshihiko. He checked quickly—yes, everyone was there besides Mitarai and Ushikoshi.

“What’s up?” asked Ozaki.

“This way!”

Yoshihiko led everyone to the foot of the stairs and pointed up at the wall.

“I could see light coming from that vent in Room 10.”

There was general commotion.

“No way!” said Okuma.

“What’s going on?”

Ushikoshi and Kiyoshi had heard the commotion and came out into the corridor.

“Chief, were either of you in Room 10 just now?” asked Ozaki.

“Room 10?”

Ushikoshi was clearly surprised by the question.

“Why? No. We were both in Room 13 the whole time.”

It was clear from his tone and facial expression that he was telling the truth.

“Seems there was light coming from that ventilation hole just now.”

“Impossible! All sixteen of us are standing here right now,” said Ushikoshi.

“It was just for a moment. I’m sure I saw it—a light going out.”

“Has some sort of animal got in this damned house?” said Okuma. “An orang-utan or something?”

“You mean like ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’?” said Kozaburo.

Everyone looked dubious. But then the normally taciturn Kajiwara spoke up.

“Er, actually…”

“What? Go on.”

“The refrigerator… well, it seems there’s some ham missing.”

“Ham?”

More than a few people repeated the word.

“Yes. Some ham and a little bit of bread—”

“Has this happened before?” asked Okuma.

“Um, I don’t think so… Well, I don’t think it has…”

“You don’t think?”

“I’m not really sure. I’m sorry.”

There were a few moments of heavy silence.

“Anyway, let’s go and check it out, Room 10,” said Ozaki. “There’s no point in just standing around here.”

“No point in checking either,” said Kiyoshi, without enthusiasm. “There’ll be nothing there.”

Nevertheless, the police set out into the snow. Kiyoshi and I, the women, Kozaburo, as well as Kanai and Yoshihiko stayed where we were. After a while, a light came on behind the ventilation hole.

“Yes, that’s it! That’s the light I saw!” cried Yoshihiko.

But of course, the search was fruitless yet again. According to Ozaki’s report, the padlock was still on the door; in fact there was even fresh snow covering it, and the room itself was freezing cold inside with no signs of life. He concluded that Yoshihiko had seen some sort of illusion.

“How about the spare key to the padlock?” asked Ozaki.

“I’ve got it,” said Hayakawa. “I haven’t lent it to anyone else. But I did leave the padlock itself by the entrance to the kitchen for a while.”

“You mean while guests were staying in the room?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Just in case, the detectives proceeded to search the main building of the house, the garden shed and Kozaburo’s room at the top of the tower one more time. But there was nothing unusual anywhere.

“I don’t get it. What could have made that light?”

The detectives had drawn their usual blank.

About an hour after that incident, the door from the salon opened and Hatsue Kanai came out. She made her way towards the west wing stairs with the intention of fetching something from her room.

The wind was getting louder. As she climbed the stairs, Hatsue happened to glance over the banister down to the basement corridor. She normally bragged about having psychic powers, and what happened next might well have been because of her special abilities.

The basement corridor was poorly lit, and looking down felt like lifting a tombstone and peering down into a crypt. In one corner Hatsue could see a faint light, which gradually took on a human form.

All of the living human beings were currently in the salon. Hatsue knew because she had just left them there.

A numbing terror took hold of her, and her gaze fixed on the form as if held there by a powerful magnetic force. It was the hazy figure of a person (or what appeared to be a person) who made no sound, not even so much as the slight rustle of paper that falls to the floor, as it glided along the corridor. It was heading towards Room 14, where Kikuoka had been murdered, as if headed for a meeting of all the spirits of the house.

As if by some prearranged signal, the door to Room 14 opened, and the glowing figure continued inside. Right at that moment, it turned its head to the side. And the head continued to turn until it faced backwards, and Hatsue caught a glimpse of its face. For a moment her eyes and those of the mysterious being met. That face! It was definitely the smirking face of the Golem doll!

Hatsue felt her hair begin to stand on end and her whole body turned to goose pimples. She realized that she was screaming, but the voice didn’t seem like her own. Like the raging storm outside it went on and on, as if propelled by a will that wasn’t hers, gushing forth. Eventually out of fatigue and exhaustion, she fell into a faint. Her screams became distant to her own ears until finally they were merely an echo on a distant mountain.

The next thing Hatsue knew was that she was in her husband’s arms and surrounded by anxious faces. It seemed that not much time had passed. Everyone was there. Her husband’s normally feeble arms had for once proved sturdy.

For the next few minutes, Hatsue answered the questions thrown at her by the bystanders, and explained the terrifying scene she had just witnessed. In her own mind she felt that she was describing everything clearly, but it seemed that nobody around her could grasp what she was saying.

How can they all be so useless? she was cursing inside. That’s it, I’ve had enough of this house of horrors, as she babbled on like a deranged lunatic.

“Bring her some water!” somebody shouted. She didn’t want anything like that, but when it arrived and she put the glass to her lips, the sensation of the water on her throat was strangely soothing.

“Do you want to lie down on the sofa in the salon?” her husband asked, his voice full of concern. She nodded weakly.

However, as soon as she was safely on the sofa and began to explain again exactly what she had just seen, infuriatingly her husband returned to his usual obstinate, petty bureaucratic self.

“Dolls can’t walk.”

No one was surprised that this was Michio Kanai’s opinion.

“You must have dreamt it.”

And as she feared, this was his final conclusion.

“Those stairs aren’t normal,” she insisted. “There’s something there!”

“There’s definitely something wrong with you,” continued her husband, ignoring her protests.

“Now, now,” said the detectives, quickly inserting themselves between husband and wife. They suggested checking on the doll in Room 3 and the status of Room 14 right away, but it was clear from their attitudes that they didn’t believe a word of Hatsue’s story either.

Kozaburo opened the door to Room 3, and Ozaki flipped the light switch. Golem was sitting in his usual spot, leaning against the window-side wall, just by the south Tengu mask wall.

Ozaki marched briskly up to the feet of the doll.

“Was this the face you saw?”

Hatsue, who was hovering in the doorway, couldn’t bring herself to look at the doll. And anyway, there was no need for her to look.

“There is absolutely no doubt about it. It was him!”

“Please take a close look. Was it definitely this face?”

There was an almost sarcastic smile on Ozaki’s face.

“Absolutely, definitely!”

“But the doll is right here.”

“Don’t ask me how that’s possible!”

“Was it wearing that hat and those clothes?” asked Ushikoshi.

“Huh… I’m not sure about that. But it was that face. That sneering, grinning, creepy face. But now that you mention it… I don’t think he was wearing that hat.”

“He didn’t have the hat on?”

“No, I can’t say. I don’t remember that clearly.”

“That’s what I’m saying. There’s something wrong with you,” said Kanai again.

“You can shut up!” said Hatsue. “After going through what I’ve just been through, anybody would forget the minor details!”

The detectives didn’t interrupt. She had a point. But nobody had a clue what they ought to say next. That is, except for my friend.

“Well, I told you all so!”

Kiyoshi was absolutely elated. Ozaki and the other detectives immediately rolled their eyes.

“He’s the killer. He looks like a doll, but he’s been deceiving us all. He’s been perfectly capable of walking around by himself all this time. If he undoes his joints, he can get in and out through tiny openings. And he can kill without feeling remorse. He’s a brutal murderer. You were about to check Room 14, weren’t you? Go ahead. And when we get there, I’m going to tell you the whole story, all about his evil deeds. Officers, it’s better not to touch him, if you value your lives.”

Oozing confidence, Kiyoshi turned to face the detectives.

“Mr Kajiwara, you were just about to pour some tea, weren’t you? Please get Mr Hayakawa to help you to bring it to Room 14. I think that will be the ideal location for the big reveal.”

SCENE 2 Room 14

The clock on the wall of Room 14 showed exactly midnight. Kajiwara and Hayakawa had brought trays of tea and were currently circulating and making sure that everyone was served.

Kiyoshi grabbed two cups from the tray and handed one to me. He politely offered the other to Eiko beside him, after quickly grabbing a saucer and placing her cup on it first. Then he finally served himself. His behaviour was rather untypically gallant.

“The service is unusually good tonight,” I remarked to him.

“This way there will no grounds for complaint from her ladyship,” he replied.

“Hurry up and reveal the trick behind this bloody case. If you really can, that is,” said Togai, who was standing drinking his tea. He was expressing what everyone felt, and all eyes were immediately on Kiyoshi.

“The trick?” Kiyoshi looked puzzled. “There’s no trick here. Just as I’ve been saying all along, this is a series of murders committed by the doll Golem, who has been possessed by the vengeful ghosts of the dead.”

Kiyoshi’s performance was painful for me to watch. His habitual teasing tone was back and I was sure he wasn’t being honest.

“I have discovered from my own research that before this mansion was built, this area was a large, open plain. One evening long, long ago, a young Ainu man threw himself off the very cliff that this house is built on.”

That’s how Kiyoshi’s story began, but it was clear to me that he was making it up as he went along. I had no idea what his true intentions were. It felt to me as if he were trying to play for time.

“This Ainu boy had a young lover by the name of Pirika, who out of sorrow jumped off the cliff after him.”

Kiyoshi was clearly retelling some tale he’d heard somewhere or other.

“Every spring since then, on that very spot, a blood-red iris is said to bloom.”

I remembered that Pirika had been the name of the restaurant in the village where we’d eaten the day we arrived at the Ice Floe Mansion. There’d been a photograph of irises on the wall, and a printed poem about the flowers. Still, these irises had been the regular purple shade. I’d never seen or heard of a red iris.

“The young lovers had been kept apart by the selfishness of the other villagers. The son of the most powerful clan in the village wanted to marry Pirika himself. If Pirika agreed to marry him, the boy’s father had promised to give everyone in the village a wheelbarrow. Despairing of ever being free to be together, the lovers took their own lives. Since then, the grudge that the two lovers held against the rest of the village has been roaming this land. With the construction of this mansion their souls have found a kind of base from which to act. Their spirits—”

“Ah!”

He was interrupted by the voice of someone in distress. I realized it was Eiko, who had just sunk to her knees, her hand pressed to her forehead.

“Please… my cup…”

I reached out to grab her teacup right as she slumped to the floor. Togai and Kozaburo came rushing over.

“Get her to the bed!” said Ushikoshi.

“Looks like some kind of sleeping drug,” said Kiyoshi, as he examined her. “If we leave her to sleep, she’ll wake up just fine in the morning.”

“Are you sure it’s just sleeping pills?” Kozaburo asked him.

“I’m positive. Look how peacefully she’s breathing.”

“Who could have done this?” said Kozaburo, looking at the household staff.

“No idea.” The three of them shook their heads.

“The criminal is in this room!”

When angry, Kozaburo had the energy of a much a younger man.

“Anyway,” he continued, “it’s dangerous for Eiko to stay here. Let’s get her up to her room.”

His tone made it clear that there was no room for discussion. Right now it was easy to picture what he’d been like back in his youth.

“But the bed in Ms Hamamoto’s room got burnt,” said Ozaki.

Kozaburo looked for a moment as if he’d had an electric shock.

“If she’s been drugged, then I think we should let her sleep it off right here,” said Ushikoshi.

“All right then, but that hole! That hole needs to be blocked up!”

“But to do that we need to stand on the bed…”

“Then do it from the outside!”

“But truly, to start hammering right by the head of someone sleeping after a dose of pills like that, well, tomorrow morning she’s going to wake up with a terrible headache,” said Kiyoshi.

“But this room is dangerous!”

“Why? Room 10 or Room 13 are exactly the same as this one.”

Kiyoshi hadn’t said it, but in Room 13 where Sasaki had died, the ventilation hole had been completely blocked up. What would be the point of blocking Room 14’s vent too? Everyone was thinking the same thing.

Kozaburo stood still, his fists clenched and his head hanging down.

“If you’re worried about your daughter, I can have a guard put on this room all night. Of course, it’d be inappropriate to have him actually sleep in here with her, but we can lock the door and set a chair outside in the corridor. He can keep watch until morning. How does that sound?”

Ushikoshi turned to Constable Anan.

“Anan, how about it? If you think it would be too hard to stay awake, I can get Ozaki to take over halfway through the night.

“This room doesn’t have a spare key, does it?” he continued. “So I suggest that you keep hold of the key yourself, Mr Hamamoto.

“Anan, I don’t know who the killer is, but he or she is probably one of us. Therefore, if someone comes, you don’t let them in. Even if it’s me or Okuma. Not until everyone has got up tomorrow morning and checked in. Is that acceptable to you, Mr Hamamoto?

“Right, everybody, you’ve heard the plan. As for me, I’m feeling a bit sleepy after listening to our learned fortune teller’s fascinating bit of folklore. I’m dying to hear the rest but I’m afraid it’s really going to send me to sleep. And it wouldn’t do to make too much noise while our lady hostess is trying to rest. So how about going to bed now, everybody? It’s already late. Let’s hear the rest tomorrow.”

Everyone seemed pretty much in agreement, except for Kozaburo. He couldn’t help thinking of how many people had already been murdered in completely locked rooms.

“I’m not completely comfortable with this,” he mumbled.

SCENE 3 The Tengu Room

Everyone had settled down to sleep. The dark corridors and spaces of the Ice Floe Mansion were deserted, and the only sound was the wind raging to itself.

The lock on the door of Room 3 made a faint noise as it turned, ever so gently, and the door very slowly opened. The pale light that filtered in from the corridor brushed the faces of the dolls, vaguely illuminating them. Among them, Golem’s grinning face.

Someone tiptoed into the room, as cautiously as if they’d been crossing a thin layer of ice, and approached Golem. When they reached the window, the light from the corridor revealed their face in profile.

It was Kozaburo Hamamoto. Well, he was, of course, the only person who had a key to that room.

Kozaburo never even glanced at Golem, sprawled in his usual position on the floor. Instead, he turned his attention to the southern wall of Tengu masks and began to do something quite mysterious. He set about removing the masks from the wall, one by one.

Each time he had gathered about ten or so in his arms, he would lay them down on the floor, and gradually, the gently sloping middle section of the room’s south wall was revealed for the first time.

But then something astounding happened. Golem’s feet twitched, and then his wooden joints began to creak as his legs were gradually pulled in towards his body. The painted grin on his face never changed.

The doll got slowly to its feet, and with the clumsy, jerky movements of a puppet, took a step towards Kozaburo.

Slowly, but steadily as the second hand on a clock, Golem lifted both his arms and drew his palms closer together in a circular formation as if to place them around Kozaburo’s neck.

Kozaburo, still absorbed in his work, had now cleared the major part of the south wall. Several masks still clutched in his hands, he took a couple of steps over to the corner of the room, to fetch some bricks that were lying there. He had turned his back and was bending down to pick up a brick when he sensed something. With the brick in his right hand he turned slowly around. And there was Golem, standing right behind him.

The shock sent Kozaburo’s body into convulsions and his face froze in an expression of terror. The wind howled, and at the same time he somehow managed to call out. The masks in his hands fell and scattered on the floor, and the brick followed with a dull thud.

Right then there was a flash of lightning and suddenly the room was lit with a fluorescent glow as bright as daylight. Automatically, Kozaburo looked towards the doorway. All the detectives stood there.

“Secure the scene!”

The voice didn’t belong to one of the detectives heading towards Golem, but came from Golem himself!

“Why are you taking the Tengu masks down from the wall, Mr Hamamoto?” Golem asked. “There can only be one explanation. You are the only person who knows that these Tengus killed Eikichi Kikuoka.”

Golem reached up and removed his hat, then put his hands up to his grinning face. As he lowered his hands again, the ghoulish grinning face disappeared and was replaced by Kiyoshi Mitarai’s.

“You forgot to erase the letters on his forehead, Mr Hamamoto,” said Kiyoshi. “How do you like my mask? It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

In his hands, he held a mask identical to the face of the Golem doll.

“Forgive my tricks. But they were all learnt from you.”

“Aha!” said Kozaburo. “So that’s why you dressed the doll. I see now! An excellent move. Nicely played, Mr Mitarai, I have to admit defeat. I’ve always believed in good sportsmanship. I give up. It was me. I killed Ueda and Kikuoka.”

SCENE 4 The Salon

“If you think about it…” said Kozaburo Hamamoto, taking a puff on his pipe. We were sitting around the dining table—Hamamoto, Ushikoshi, Okuma, Ozaki, Kiyoshi and myself.

“…this is the perfect night for me to make my bizarre confession. The person I’d prefer didn’t hear what I have to say is fast asleep under the influence of sleeping drugs.”

Sensing something was afoot, the other occupants of the Ice Floe Mansion began to turn up in the salon. Eventually everyone was assembled, except for Constable Anan and Eiko. The storm was still raging outside, and it seemed no one had been able to sleep. The grandfather clock in the corner read 2.50 in the morning.

“Would you prefer to have more privacy? We could move to a different location,” Kiyoshi suggested.

“No, it doesn’t matter. I’m in no position to make demands. All of these people have been living in fear because of me. They have a right to hear what I have to say. Could you just allow me one selfish request? Make sure my daughter…”

He faltered for a moment.

“We wouldn’t be able to wake Ms Hamamoto even if we wanted to,” said Kiyoshi. “The sleeping drugs she took are incredibly strong.”

“I get it now! It was you who drugged her, and you who set fire to her bed. How did you manage it? You were with us the whole time.”

“All in good time. I’m going to start at the beginning,” said Kiyoshi. “If I go wrong or leave anything out, let me know.”

Everyone began to gather at the table, hoping that the string of murders had finally come to an end and the case had been solved.

“Understood. I doubt, though, that it’ll be necessary.”

“I had a really hard time figuring out your motive for killing Ueda,” began Kiyoshi almost impatiently. He seemed to be in a hurry to get the story out.

“Well, actually that’s not quite accurate. To tell the truth I had a hard time figuring out the motive for the whole thing. But with Ueda in particular, you don’t seem to have any reason for killing him.

“However, I got it right away with the murder of Kikuoka. I realized the only person you actually wanted to kill was Kikuoka, at least at the beginning. For that reason you spent so much time and money building this eccentric mansion. Its sole purpose was for murdering Eikichi Kikuoka. But in the end you had the desire to kill both Ueda and Kikuoka. You’d refined and polished your plan, but Ueda got in the way. That was it, wasn’t it?”

“It was important that I was the one to kill Kikuoka. If I didn’t, I would have failed in my duty,” said Kozaburo. “The other day, I noticed something strange about Kohei and Chikako when they returned from their daughter’s funeral. I questioned them about it and they eventually broke down and confessed that they had hired Ueda to kill Kikuoka.

“I panicked. I told them I would pay them back the money they’d used, but they had to withdraw their request. I trusted them, and I’m sure Kohei did as I asked. But Ueda refused to stand down. He was stubborn but also had a streak of chivalry in him. He had his own intense personal hatred of Kikuoka. It seems that he had had some kind of run-in with the man too.”

It turned out that Kikuoka was almost universally despised.

“What kind of run-in?”

“To us, it may seem insignificant. Ueda took something that Kikuoka said as an insult to his mother. It seems there was a dispute between his mother and her neighbour over land. The neighbouring house had suffered a fire and the fence that divided the properties had been burnt. Ever since, the exact location of the boundary between the two properties had been unclear. Ueda’s mother let neighbourhood cars park on the disputed land for a fee, and her neighbour had taken her to court over it. His mother was obstinate too. She was involved in a fight that could only end by one side or the other moving out, and needed money for that. Kikuoka called her a ‘stubborn old bag’ and other pretty awful things, which really awoke Ueda’s fury. But I don’t suppose it’d have come to murder until Kohei Hayakawa offered to pay him to do it. Well, whatever, it’s not my place to make judgements on the motives of others…”

“And so you decided to kill Ueda. You thought if you were going to kill him anyway, why not use his murder as a kind of foreshadowing of the carefully prepared murder of Kikuoka? In a way that would cause so much confusion in the investigation. That’s what the string tied to the handle of the knife was about, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

I glanced at the Hayakawa couple. Chikako was staring down at the floor, and Kohei hadn’t taken his eyes off his employer.

“That’s because in the subsequent murder of Mr Kikuoka, you were planning to use a knife with string attached, or rather you needed to attach string to the handle of that second knife to accomplish the crime. So you decided to foreshadow the crime by tying string to the knife used to murder Mr Ueda, when in fact there was no need for any string on it at all. But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why did you tie Ueda’s wrist to the bed with that piece of cord?”

“I’m not really sure myself. I was in quite a state and not thinking properly. I’d never killed anyone with a knife before. I couldn’t imagine what would happen. I suppose I was afraid that he might go wandering outside half dead or something.”

“How did you manage to take down a great big ex-military type like that all by yourself?” said Okuma.

“Yes, well, I had to employ some shameful tactics. I talked to him numerous times about the Self-Defence Forces so that he came to trust me, but still, no matter how much his guard might be down, there was no chance I’d overpower him in a fight. I’m sure he’d even had training to deal with that kind of sneak attack.

“There was a chance that I might bump into someone so I wore a jacket to hide any blood spatter. Part of my plan was to take it off to kill him and then put it back on to hide any blood that might have got on my sweater. The jacket had one more use too. When I went to his room—”

“How did you get in?” Ushikoshi asked.

“I just knocked on his door, announced myself, and he let me in. It was as simple as that. He had no reason to believe that I was going to murder him or Kikuoka. Kohei had never told him I had anything to do with his request not to kill Kikuoka after all.”

“Hmm. Go on.”

“I entered his room, took off my jacket and observed Ueda. If I could have done it, I would have stabbed him right there and then, but it wasn’t possible. He was too big, and I was particularly afraid of how strong his right arm looked. I really wasn’t thinking straight. I had the knife in my jacket pocket and all I could think was if I could just get his right wrist tied to the bed, it would be so much easier to do the job. And then after thinking about it for a while, I executed my plan.

“I held out my jacket telling him it was a little too big for me and if it happened to fit him I would let him have it. I told him to try it on. He put it on and fastened the buttons, but of course it was too small for him. While I was pretending to check the fit, I took the knife from the pocket and concealed it in the sleeve of my sweater, then announced that the jacket seemed too small for him after all. I undid the buttons and took hold of both sides of the collar, pulling it simultaneously downwards on both sides, as if to take it off for him. He stood quietly and let me do it. After getting the collar past his shoulders, I suddenly tugged downwards as hard as I could, and because the jacket was so small on him, it got stuck tight, temporarily disabling both his arms. Even then, he had no idea what I was up to. I pulled the knife out from my sleeve and plunged it as hard as I could into the left side of his chest. He must have thought the knife was going to come out through his back. Even now I can’t get his bewildered expression out of my head.

“Then I took my jacket off him and put it back on myself. My sweater was a dark colour so the blood spatter didn’t show up at all. I was lucky too that there wasn’t too much blood on my hands. I hid the sweater in the bottom of the wardrobe in my room. You detectives were very polite when you went through my room, and you stopped at digging through all my clothing. That saved me, but in fact, when I look at it now, there aren’t really any obvious traces of blood.

“After I’d committed the murder, my mind was a bit crazy, and when I came to, I realized that I was tying Ueda’s right wrist to the bed frame, even though he was already dead.”

There was a shocked reaction from the listeners at this.

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

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

“That’s right.”

Kiyoshi took up the story again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aha!” said Ushikoshi.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. He made it snow.”

“I see.”

“Next—”

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

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

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

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

“Aha!”

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

“Ah!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An icicle!?”

The detectives looked flabbergasted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was the same thing that I was wondering.

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

“Well, obviously by sliding it.”

“Sliding it where?”

“On what?”

Several people began clamouring at once.

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

“J… Just a minute!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Wow!”

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

Ushikoshi took over the questioning.

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

From here, Ushikoshi began to sound a little pained.

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

I realized what Ushikoshi was trying to say.

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

“But there is,” said Kiyoshi.

“Where?”

“The Tengu mask noses!”

“Oh!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But it’s the Tengu noses that surprised me the most,” said Kiyoshi. “I remember the discussion about the export of Tengu masks.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“In the past, Japan received an order from the United States for a large number of Tengu masks. The mask manufacturers made a huge profit from these sales. So they went on to manufacture great numbers of Okame and Hyottoko, the comic man and woman masks, and exported those too, but they failed to sell at all.”

“Why was that?”

“Apparently, Americans were using the Tengu masks to hang hats and other stuff on. Perhaps it’s only Japanese people who failed to see those noses as something useful.”

“But there was nothing to support the icicle between the stairs and the ventilation holes either,” Okuma pointed out.

“Yes, just outside the ventilation hole to Room 14. That’s true. But by that point it was travelling so fast there was no need for anything. Outside the ventilation hole into Room 3, there’s a decorative wall carving, part of which juts out at just the right level to support the icicle.

(On this point, the author feels he may have been unfair to the reader. However, he believes that it will not cause any lasting damage to those with a vivid imagination.)

“I see. After leaving the noses in the Tengu Room, the second staircase would take care of the rest,” I said.

“And that’s why there was such a narrow bed in Room 14 with feet that couldn’t be moved…”

This was the first time that Sergeant Ozaki had spoken since leaving the Tengu Room.

“It was so the victim’s heart would be in the right location,” continued Kiyoshi. “And that’s why he only had a thin electric blanket to cover him—so he could be killed while he was in bed. If he’d had a thick duvet or a blanket, it would have made it difficult for the knife to penetrate his body.

“But reality is stranger than fiction. At this point Mr Hamamoto had an unforeseen stroke of luck along with another similar piece of bad luck.”

“What was that?” asked Ushikoshi and Okuma in accidental unison.

“The brilliance of this whole trick was that the icicle would melt, leaving just the knife stuck in the corpse, so it would look like a stabbing. To add to the illusion, just one night earlier Kazuya Ueda had in fact been stabbed to death, making it even more likely that everyone would believe that the same method was used in both murders.”

“Yes, I see.”

“And to make sure that the ice did melt, Mr Hamamoto instructed that the heating that night be turned up. The good stroke of luck was that Mr Kikuoka was so warm that he had taken off the electric blanket, and was sleeping with nothing over him. And so the knife went straight into his body unimpeded. The bad luck was that he was sleeping on his stomach.

“This whole trick was devised to pierce the heart of someone sleeping face up on that bed. But it seems that Mr Kikuoka was in the habit of sleeping face down. And so the knife ended up going into the right side of his back.

“But then, ironically, that one piece of bad luck was followed by another unexpected stroke of good luck. Mr Kikuoka had—how should I say it—a cowardly side to his character. His chauffeur had just been murdered, and he was so terrified that he wasn’t satisfied with setting all three of the locks on the door; he had also dragged the sofa over to block it, and even put the coffee table on top of that. And that’s why when, severely injured and on the point of death, he wasn’t able to get out of the room and get help.

“As the knife hadn’t reached his heart, if he hadn’t built that barricade, he might have got out of his room and maybe even staggered up to the salon and got help. Instead, he ended up using his last ounce of strength to push over the table and sofa before collapsing. And so the crime scene ended up with another similarity to Mr Ueda’s, which Mr Hamamoto had never intended: traces of the murderer having been in the room.”

“It’s true. I was very lucky. There was only the one bit of bad luck—that a talented investigator like you came along to solve the crime.”

Kozaburo Hamamoto didn’t seem particularly upset by his misfortune.

“Hang on! I just remembered!” cried Ushikoshi. “Right at 11 o’clock, the time of Mr Kikuoka’s death, when we were drinking cognac together in the tower, you played that piece of music. It was—”

“It was ‘Chanson de l’adieu’—Farewell.”

“Yes, of course. That’s what it was.”

“I told you my daughter hated it, but for me it was the very first piece by Chopin that I ever heard.”

“Me too,” said Ushikoshi. “But in my case, I still don’t know anything else of his.”

“Because that one’s in the school textbook,” offered Okuma.

“If only I’d remembered its title that night,” said Ushikoshi regretfully.

But I couldn’t help thinking that if Chief Inspector Ushikoshi had guessed the truth that night from the title of a tune, the outcome would have been so much less satisfying.

“I guessed the truth,” said Kiyoshi, getting to his feet, “when I heard that Golem had peeped in through Ms Aikura’s window; I guessed immediately that it had to be the work of someone used to passing to and fro across that drawbridge. Nobody else would have come up with a plan that involved leaving the door to the drawbridge open—to what was essentially Mr Hamamoto’s domain.

“But when I thought about it, the only way of establishing proof of the crime was to establish proof of the identity of the criminal. By experimenting, I could easily explain how the killer had managed to commit the crimes, but as to the who—well, there were other people besides Kozaburo Hamamoto who could have done it.”

Everyone pondered the meaning of his words.

“To cut a long story short, the occupants of Rooms 1 and 2 could have done it, and if Chikako Hayakawa had been in the room in the tower around the time of death, she could have done it too.

“Right then, the hypothesis was that the icicle was sent all the way down the slide from the very top. But imagine the point on the slide just beyond Room 3, in other words, the staircase that you have to climb to get up to Room 3 from the ground floor. I couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that someone quite different might have sent the icicle from that much lower point with a very strong push. As long as the motive for this murder remained so vague, I had to assume that anyone could have prepared a similar icicle under the eaves outside their own bedroom window. Outdoors is the perfect freezer.

“So I decided that the only way to be sure was to hear an explanation from the killer himself. In other words, to corner him so that he would be encouraged to confess everything in his own words. I’m not personally into tying someone up and forcing it out of them. That’s not the way I work.”

Kiyoshi threw Sergeant Ozaki a sideways glance.

“Obviously, I had already guessed the identity of the killer, but the method I devised to flush him out was by using the thing most beloved to him, that is, the life of his daughter. I made him fear that someone was planning to kill her in the exact same manner as Mr Kikuoka had been murdered. The only way to do that was to have her sleep on the bed in Room 14.

“But her father wasn’t able to confide in the police why he was anxious for her life without explaining his own part in Kikuoka’s murder, so he made up his mind to protect her by himself. He was a murderer himself. And the conditions were perfect—there was a blizzard outside. Oh… it seems to have stopped.”

It was true—the noise of the wind had become much softer.

“For Kikuoka’s murder there needed to be something loud like that storm. The icicle made quite a noise at it slid down the stairs.”

“I see. So that’s why Kikuoka’s murder came so close after Ueda’s!” I said.

“That’s right. He couldn’t squander the chance of using a stormy night like that one. There was no way of knowing when the next blizzard would blow in. However, anyone with their ear close to a door frame or a pillar could hear the sound of the icicle slithering down the stairs. That was—”

“The snake!”

“The sound like a woman sobbing!”

“And as it was an icicle the conditions needed to be full-on winter. But in my case, it wouldn’t matter if the night outside was silent as a cemetery, I planned to go ahead with the trick I was going to play on Mr Hamamoto. I had everything set up.

“Of course Mr Hamamoto didn’t know for sure that someone planned to kill his daughter. And he couldn’t confide in anyone. But he knew the exact way Mr Kikuoka had been murdered, and feared that someone was going to try to take their revenge the same way. Perhaps he thought that Kikuoka’s employee was the one who was going to do it.

“This is what he decided. If the door to the drawbridge was shut, it would be practically impossible for whoever it was to open it and lower the bridge without making a lot of noise. So he figured the theoretical killer would probably push the icicle from the point on the east wing staircase just below the drawbridge.

“It was more difficult for me to imagine what he would decide next. What would be his next course of action? I couldn’t read him with a hundred per cent accuracy. Would he go to the east wing staircase? That would mean coming face to face with the person planning to kill his daughter. Would Kozaburo Hamamoto choose this route? Or would he go to the west wing staircase and try his best to stop the icicle as it came sliding down? No, that would be difficult to achieve. There were several courses of action he might have taken. He could have placed bricks on the west staircase and then headed up to the east one. But in the end I was convinced that he was going to try something completely different. And that was to go to Room 3 and take down the Tengu masks from the wall.”

For the umpteenth time that evening, the “aahs” could be heard around the room.

“Obviously I couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure about that either. He might have left the masks intact and used another method to stop the icicle. It was a gamble, but a good one. There was a long time until morning, and Mr Hamamoto had no idea what time the killer would strike. It was better for him not to be seen. Putting bricks on the stairs might not succeed in stopping the icicle, and he really didn’t want to hang out on the stairs all night waiting for the killer to arrive.

“But the position of the Tengu masks was crucial. If he took some down, burned them or just bent the noses of a few of them, the attack from the east wing was almost sure to be blocked. I believed he’d go for it.

“Thus I figured that if Mr Hamamoto could be caught red-handed removing the masks from the wall, then he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of it. By this point I was sure that Mr Hamamoto was the killer. His own daughter was in danger, but he didn’t ask the police for help, because this would have revealed his knowledge of the method used to kill Kikuoka.

“But how to catch him red-handed? That was still a major problem. Hide in the library next door and wait for him? But what if Mr Hamamoto checked the library before going into Room 3?

“Anyway, as the house’s designer he would know all the places that I could possibly find to hide. I was bound to lose if I tried that kind of game with him. And if I were simply to go up there shortly after Mr Hamamoto and catch him with the masks in his hand, well, that wouldn’t have much impact. He could have just claimed he was unable to sleep, came to check out the room, and found that someone had broken in and destroyed his Tengu mask display. He would be intelligent enough to use the policemen who had come running with me; he’d have quickly regrouped and gone with that strategy.

“So I had to catch him in the process of removing the masks from the wall. And in addition, to avoid any kind of confusion afterwards, make it crystal clear to him that he had been seen. In order to do that I had to find the perfect place to conceal myself. And as you know, Mr Hamamoto, I found myself the best seat in the house.”

“Brilliant! A truly excellent plan.”

Kozaburo was full of genuine admiration.

“But how did you make that mask of Golem’s face? And in such a short time? How on earth did you manage that?”

“I did it when I took his head to the forensics lab. I got in touch with an artist friend of mine and had him make it.”

“Could I take a look?”

Kiyoshi handed Kozaburo the mask.

“Ah! Excellent workmanship. I’m surprised to hear of such a craftsman living in Hokkaido.”

“Actually, I don’t think there are any outside Kyoto. This was done by a mutual friend of mine and Kazumi’s. He’s quite a famous doll maker in Kyoto.”

“Oh!”

I was surprised to hear of my friend’s involvement.

“Did you go all the way to Kyoto in that short time?”

“I set out the evening of the 31st and called him from a phone in the village. He told me he could have it ready by the morning of the 3rd. That was why the conclusion of this case had to take place tonight, the night of the 3rd.”

“A full two days’ work…” said Kozaburo, deeply impressed. “You’ve got a great friend there.”

“Did you get one of the police officers to fetch it from Kyoto?” I asked.

“No. It’s not my place to get the police running errands for me.”

“But I never noticed you getting any delivery of a Golem mask.”

“Who cares how some mask was delivered?” said Okuma irritably. “I want to hear about the murder of Sasaki in Room 13!”

Personally, I had no objection to moving on.

“But, Mr Hamamoto, there’s still one thing I don’t understand,” said Kiyoshi. “It’s the motive. It’s the one thing I can’t work out. I can’t imagine someone of your standing killing someone just for fun. I can’t see any reason for you to kill Eikichi Kikuoka, who you don’t even really know that well. I’d like to hear it from your own mouth.”

“Hey, before that can we please hear about the other locked-room murder?” I begged. “There’s so much more that we still need an explanation for.”

“There’s no need for any explanation!” Kiyoshi rudely interrupted me.

“I’ll explain,” said Kozaburo in a much calmer voice.

“Then should I call the other person who deserves to hear this?” asked Kiyoshi.

“You mean Anan?” said Okuma. “Right, I’ll go get him.”

Okuma got up and started to head off to Room 14.

“Mr Okuma?” called Kiyoshi. “If you don’t mind, could you also, er…”

The Inspector stopped and turned around.

“Could you also fetch Mr Sasaki from Room 13?”

Gobsmacked would not be strong enough a word to describe the look on Okuma’s face at that moment. Even if a UFO had landed right in front of him and a two-headed alien had stepped out, he could not have been more stunned.

But nobody was laughing at him. Myself included, everyone at the dining table wore pretty much the identical expression.

When Sasaki arrived in the salon along with Constable Anan, everybody was so delighted by the one single piece of good news among all the depressing events of the past few days that a small cheer went up.

“Here’s Mr Sasaki returned from Heaven,” announced Kiyoshi.

“So he’s the one who went to Kyoto for you,” I cried. “And the Golem ghost that Mrs Kanai saw, and the person who set fire to Ms Hamamoto’s bed.”

“He’s also the one who ate the bread and ham,” said Kiyoshi with a grin. “He was the perfect person to play the role of a dying man. As he was a real medical student, we didn’t need to use ketchup for blood. And he knew the exact amount that would have resulted from the injury.”

“I’ve been pretty much fasting these past few days, hiding away in Room 10 or hanging around outside. For a while I was hiding in the large wardrobe in Room 1. I almost became a real corpse!”

Sasaki seemed rather cheerful about it. It was easy to imagine why Kiyoshi had picked him for this important role.

“I see now. The most inexplicable locked-room murder was inexplicable because it never happened,” I said.

“You have to trust logic,” said Kiyoshi.

“But I could have gone to Kyoto for you,” I said.

“That’s very true. But to be perfectly honest, you’re not a very good actor. You’d probably not convince anyone the knife was really in your heart. Someone would have told you to get up and stop pretending. It was important for Mr Hamamoto to feel the pressure of one of his guests being murdered.”

It seemed to me as if Kozaburo had felt greater pressure when he thought his daughter was in danger.

“Did you write that threatening letter too?” Ushikoshi asked. “It’s a good thing I didn’t decide to run an analysis of everyone’s handwriting.”

“This one is about to tell me he’d have liked to write that for me too,” said Kiyoshi, slapping me on the shoulder.

“You didn’t need to trick us too,” said Ozaki, clearly annoyed.

“Really? So if I’d confided my plan to you, you’d have agreed at once to go along with it?”

“It looks like you got the straight-laced lot back at my station to play along,” said Okuma, with a touch of admiration.

“Yes, I have to admit that was the most difficult part of this whole case.”

“Must’ve been.”

“But I got Superintendent Nakamura from Tokyo HQ to keep on at them until they gave in.”

“That Nakamura has a discerning eye all right,” murmured Ushikoshi, loud enough only for me to overhear.

“Right, I don’t think there’s any more to add about that. Now—”

He was cut off by Ushikoshi.

“I just realized! That’s why that night you insisted so strongly that Yoshihiko and Eiko stay all night at the billiard table. You wanted them to be with a police officer to give them the perfect alibi for Mr Kikuoka’s murder.”

Kozaburo nodded. A father’s love for his daughter—the fatal weakness that had caused him to fall into the trap set by my friend.

“Chief Inspector Ushikoshi, had you heard from this man any part of what he planned to do?” said Ozaki quietly.

“Yes. The name of the suspect and the general outline. I told him to do as he liked.”

“And you kept quiet about it?”

“Well, yes. But do you think that was the wrong decision? He’s got an extraordinary mind, that one.”

“Has he? I’m not so sure about that, personally. Seems all swagger to me.”

Ozaki was venting his frustration.

“He behaves differently depending who he’s with.”

“Oh… I just remembered—the hair I put on the door of Room 14. When you went with Mr Hamamoto, and rattled the doorknob, you must have knocked it off then.”

“Ah, yes, I suppose so… And I’ve just realized myself about the blood on the string when Ueda was killed. The string had absorbed some of the red blood then, but in the case of Kikuoka there was nothing. Even though in both cases the string ought to have touched the blood. I should have noticed.”

“Right, then. If there are no more points that need explaining, let’s get to the thing I want to hear the most. I’m ready to ask the big question.”

I felt that Kiyoshi’s emotionless, businesslike way of talking was particularly cruel right now. It felt like a punch to the guts. This was his usual way of doing things. Except that, unlike the police, he never seemed to look down on the criminals that he caught. Kozaburo Hamamoto had been a worthy opponent, and he had treated him with respect to the very end.

“Yes, of course. Where to begin…?”

Kozaburo seemed to find it hard to speak. It was clear he had a heavy heart.

“Everyone is no doubt wondering why I wanted to kill Eikichi Kikuoka, a man with whom I had no close relationship. Well, that’s a reasonable question. We hadn’t grown up together, we hadn’t even met when we were young men. I had absolutely no personal grudge against him. But I feel no remorse—I had a perfectly good reason to kill him. My only regret is that I killed Mr Ueda. I really didn’t need to. That was my own selfishness.

“I’ll tell you the story of why I had to kill Kikuoka. It won’t be moving, or beautiful, or just, nor for some admirable cause. It was the atonement for a mistake that I made back in my youth.”

He broke off there, as if trying to deal with some unbearable pain. It was the face of a man tortured by his own conscience.

“The story begins almost forty years ago, when Hama Diesel was still Murata Engines. I’ll keep it short. Back then Murata Engines was just a simple office—nothing but a row of desks in the dirt-floor entrance way of a hut hastily constructed in the ruins of burnt-out Tokyo. Nothing but a backstreet workshop, really. Anyway, I had confidence in my own abilities and was promoted from apprentice up to head clerk. The boss had great trust in me, and although I say so myself, the company wouldn’t have run as smoothly without me.

“The company president had a daughter—his only child. He’d once had a son too, but the young man was killed in the war. This daughter and I got on very well. Back in those days I couldn’t say we were going out together, but she made it clear that she liked me and it seemed that I had her father’s approval. I can’t deny that I had ambitions to marry the boss’s daughter and inherit the business, but my intentions towards her were always pure. While I’d been away fighting, my parents had been killed in an air raid, so there would be no objections from my family to taking my wife’s name.

“And then a man by the name of Yamada turned up. He was the second son of a certain politician, and had been at school with Tomiko. (That was the name of my boss’s daughter.) It seemed that he’d had an eye for Tomiko for a while.

“I can attest that this man was a fully fledged member of the yakuza. At that time he was already living with a woman of dodgy repute. All I wanted was for Tomiko to be happy, and if he’d been a good man, I would have been able to deal with the rejection. If by marrying this man from a good family, the small company could have profited and done well, then I would have been happy to step aside. But this Yamada was just a worthless punk, and totally unworthy of Tomiko. Unfortunately, her father was into the idea of his daughter marrying a politician’s son.

“I couldn’t understand my boss’s attitude at all, and worried day and night. But now that I’m a father myself, I understand him much better. A father doesn’t want his daughter to marry purely from love. There are other considerations.

“Anyway, I wanted to save Tomiko from the misery of becoming this man’s wife. I swear that I didn’t only have the ulterior motive of making her my own. Back then, it never even occurred to me.

“Around that time I bumped into an old childhood friend of mine by the name of Noma. I’d thought he’d been killed on the front line in Burma. It was a joyous reunion, we went out drinking and caught up. Noma was in a bad way—nothing but skin and bones, sick and weak.

“I’ll get to the point. Noma had turned up in Tokyo at that time because he was hunting down a man. This man was a few years younger than him, but had been his commanding officer in the army—an unspeakably cruel man. Noma had managed to survive but he couldn’t forget the suffering he had endured at the hands of this officer.

“I heard the story of what happened to him many times over. But what was slightly different in his case was that to him this officer was a double murderer—he’d been directly responsible for the death of one of Noma’s comrades-in-arms and also the woman Noma loved. In time of war, this officer had got kicks out of inflicting private punishment on his subordinates. It was an everyday occurrence with him. In fact, there were some of Noma’s fellow soldiers who ended up permanently scarred from his cruelty.

“Noma had become involved with a local Burmese girl, an extremely beautiful young woman. He’d decided that once the war was ended, if he managed to survive, he would marry her and remain in Burma.

“But with the misfortune that comes in wartime, his commanding officer captured this woman, accusing her of being a spy. Noma knew it wasn’t true, desperately tried to stop him, but the officer merely replied that ‘All beautiful women are spies.’ Utterly ridiculous reasoning. He made her a prisoner of war, and proceeded to subject her to worse abuse than any human being could possibly imagine.

“Finally, when the order to retreat came, the officer ordered all of the prisoners to be shot. And later, when Japan surrendered, he threatened all of his men to keep quiet about it—I mean the fact that he had had all the prisoners of war killed. As a result, one of Noma’s fellow soldiers ended up being executed for having carried out those orders, while the officer, after a brief detainment, went scot-free.

“Noma was an academic type, not physically strong at all. The way he was living his life, constantly plotting revenge on his commanding officer, was destroying him. He had started coughing up blood. It was clear to me that he didn’t have long to live. Noma told me he wasn’t afraid to die, but that if he did he would die with regret in his heart, because just a few days earlier he had finally managed to find that commanding officer.

“Noma used to carry a concealed pistol around with him at all times. But it only contained one bullet. He used to say that it was impossible to get bullets any more, but he was ready for the day when he faced off with his enemy. He wouldn’t hesitate.

“After being demobilized, this commanding officer had apparently lost everything he ever owned, and spent his days drinking. He used to hold his bottle of cheap sake and look Noma in the eyes, telling him, ‘Oh, it’s you. Make sure you shoot me right in the heart.’ If Noma hesitated, he’d say, ‘I’ve got nothing left to lose. I don’t care if I die. Death would be a release.’

“Noma used to tell me, with tears pouring down his face, that because of all the pain this man had inflicted on him, his fellow soldiers and the woman he’d loved, he didn’t want to give him such an easy death.

“There are probably many stories like this one, but this is one of the worst I’ve ever heard. I was furious, and even thought of getting revenge on his behalf. Noma then asked how I was doing and I told him about my own troubles, all the while aware that mine were nothing in comparison to his.

“I finished talking, Noma’s eyes were glistening. ‘Let me use my final bullet on this Yamada,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll be able to marry that woman. I don’t have long on this earth, but in return, promise me that when that bastard finally has something worth losing, you will get rid of him for me.’ It was a heartbreaking appeal from a close friend.

“I didn’t know what to do. If I got rid of Yamada, then I would be free to marry Tomiko and eventually take over Murata Engines. And however I looked at it, it wouldn’t only be beneficial to me, but to my boss and to Tomiko too. I was young and hard-working, and I believed I had a lot of talent. I thought it would be crazy for me not to be given the opportunity to work the way I knew I could. I was sure I could expand the company—I had already developed concrete plans as to how I would achieve this.

“It would get tedious for me to describe every single bit of my thought processes back then. Suffice it to say, Yamada died, and together with my beloved Tomiko, I was eventually able to run Murata Engines.

“It was a time where demobilized soldiers wandered around in the ashes of post-war Japan, where children starved to death every day, and often no one could help.

“I worked like a dog to build up the little backstreet workshop into the Hama Diesel you know today. And I’m very proud of all the work I’ve done. But in the breast pocket of every jacket I’ve ever worn, I’ve kept the old photo that Noma gave me of his commanding officer, along with his address on a scrap of paper. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the officer in question was Eikichi Kikuoka.”

Kozaburo stopped for a while. I stole a glance at Kumi Aikura. Her expression didn’t reveal anything.

“I heard through the grapevine that Kikuoka’s company’s fortunes were improving, but I had no intention of contacting him. My own company was doing really well, my overseas investments were succeeding and the time spent with Noma back in my youth began to feel like a distant bad dream. I wore expensive clothes and sat in my president’s office, and the path I walked, the chair I sat in, were so different from back when I was poor that I felt as if I now lived in a completely different world. I never wanted to go back to having nothing. I almost got away with telling myself that my current status had been earned by my hard work alone. But the truth is, if Yamada hadn’t died, Murata Engines would still be a backstreet workshop, and I would still be a humble factory worker. It took the death of my wife for me to admit this to myself.

“But bad things do happen to those who do bad things. My wife didn’t die of old age… She died of an illness, much too young. The cause remains unclear. But with her death I felt Noma’s demand that I should hurry up and keep my promise.

At that time, Kikuoka’s company was doing rather well. I got in contact with him in a perfectly normal way. For him, to hear from me must have felt like a sudden windfall.

“And after that I think you all know what happened. I retired, and built this eccentric mansion. I suppose you all thought that it was the whim of a crazy old man, but in fact I designed it with a very specific purpose.

“I committed a crime, but something good came out of it. I realized yesterday when I was listening to Wagner. I’ve spent my whole life keeping that secret inside, while around me the lies have been building up and hardening until it was as if I’d been fixed in cement. There have been ‘yes-men’ jostling for position around me, and all the flattery they’ve heaped on me has set my teeth on edge. But now I’ve managed to smash through that false protective layer I’d built up, and I’m feeling like I did back in my youth—finally, truth and honesty have returned to me. You said something about Jumping Jack the other day?”

“Yes, the doll,” said Kiyoshi.

“That’s not Golem. It’s me. The last twenty years of my life I’ve been nothing but a kind of doll. I was only creative right in the beginning, after that I was nothing but a snowman. Long ago people were impressed by my work, but I haven’t done anything creative for years.

“Just for a moment, I believed I could be my old self again. Pure-hearted, honest, with close friends, that brilliant young man of long ago. That’s why I kept my promise. It was a promise made forty years ago, by a version of me that I admired.”

Nobody spoke. Perhaps they were contemplating the true meaning of success.

“If it were me, I wouldn’t have done it.”

It was Michio Kanai who spoke. I saw his wife poke him in the ribs to try to make him stop, but he ignored her. Perhaps he thought this was his opportunity to show what he was made of.

“I don’t think I would have been so faithful to my old friend. Society is full of deceit. I mean that people deceive each other all the time. I don’t mean this entirely in a bad way. Cheating is a kind of art, particularly in the working world. A salaryman has to spend half his working life lying. I mean this in all seriousness.

“Take, for example, a doctor. He has a patient with stomach cancer, but he tells him that it’s an ulcer. Can you blame him? The patient will die in the end, but he’ll believe it’s because the ulcer got worse. He’ll die relieved that he never was unlucky enough to suffer from a terrifying cancer.

“It was the same with Mr Hamamoto’s friend. He was able to believe that his good friend would destroy the evil brute for him, and so he died a peaceful death. What’s the difference between Mr Noma and the cancer patient? Mr Hamamoto had to become the president of Hama Diesel and so he did. There were no losers in this scenario.

“I was forced to show respect to Kikuoka. How many times did I dream of strangling that dirty, lecherous old man? But, as I said before, society is full of deceit. And in Kikuoka’s case, I planned to use him, profit from him, suck him dry before he died. That was to my benefit. That’s what you should have done. Anyway, that’s my opinion.”

“Mr Kanai,” Kozaburo replied, “this evening, I am sensing everyone is… how should I put it…? Lacking in outrage. In fact, sympathetic to me. It’s something I never used to feel back there in my company president’s office. You may well be right. However, I should emphasize that Noma didn’t pass away peacefully in hospital. He died in a prison cell, wrapped in a flimsy blanket. When I think of that, I can’t bear the thought of spending the rest of my life sleeping alone in a luxurious bed.”

Night had somehow slipped away and the sun was already up. The wind had died down and outside was completely quiet. There were no more snowflakes tumbling from the sky, and the section of deep blue sky outside the salon window hadn’t a single cloud.

The guests sat for a while, then gradually, in groups of two and three, got to their feet, bowed to Kozaburo, and went off to their various rooms to prepare to put an end to this extraordinary winter holiday.

“Mr Mitarai, I just remembered,” said Kozaburo.

“Hmm?” said Kiyoshi, in his habitual flat tone.

“Did you work that one out too? The flower bed puzzle I set for Togai and the others? Did they tell you about it?”

“Oh, yes, that.”

“Did you solve it?”

Kiyoshi folded his arms.

“That one… No, I didn’t get it.”

“Oh, that’s not like you! Well, if you didn’t work that one out, then I wasn’t totally defeated after all.”

“Isn’t it better that way?”

“If it’s just some misplaced sense of sympathy on your part though, I’m not at all impressed. That wouldn’t bring me any satisfaction at all.”

“All right, then. Would you detectives be up for a little morning stroll to the top of the hill?”

Kozaburo chuckled.

“I see. It’s just as I suspected. I’m very glad to have met someone like you. I don’t feel as if I lost. I wish I’d met you a little earlier. Life would have been far less tedious. It’s really too bad.”

SCENE 5 The Hill

We reached the top of the hill, exhaling white clouds into the frigid air, just as the morning sunshine reached the ice floes out on the northern sea. The house we had been staying in was wrapped in a cottony blanket of morning mist.

Everyone turned to the north to face the Ice Floe Mansion and its tower, which from this direction stood to the right of the main building. The glass at the top of the tower picked up the rising sun and for a moment shone with a dazzling, yellow light. Kiyoshi shaded his eyes with both hands, stood and watched the spectacle. I thought he was appreciating the aesthetics, but I was wrong. He was waiting for the sun to move off the glass. Finally, the moment arrived and he opened his mouth to speak.

“Is that a chrysanthemum?”

“Yes, it is,” said Kozaburo. “A chrysanthemum with its head hanging down.”

I had no idea what they were talking about.

“Where?” I asked.

“That glass tower. The chrysanthemum’s wilted, right?”

I finally saw it. And then there was a murmur of recognition from the three detectives.

In the glass cylinder of the tower, there was a chrysanthemum with a hanging neck. The effect was like a magnificent painted scroll. The curiously shaped flower bed around the base of the tower was reflected in the cylinder, and the whole thing was the exact image of a chrysanthemum. A colourless chrysanthemum.

“If we were in a flat place, we’d have to use a helicopter to be able to enjoy that view. If you look up at the tower from the middle of the flower bed itself, you can’t see the reflection. You have to be at a distance and diagonally above to be able to see it.”

“It was extremely fortuitous that this hill happened to be here, wasn’t it?” said Kiyoshi. “But I can see that as you were building you realized that even the very top of this hill wasn’t high enough. And so you constructed the tower so it leant very slightly in this direction. And now we can see it perfectly. That’s the real reason you built that tower at an angle, isn’t it?”

Kozaburo nodded. And in that moment the solution to the puzzle was clear even to me.

“I see! The chrysanthemum is Kikuoka! The hanging flower head is your vow to kill him.”

“I never meant to break that promise. I always intended to end up in jail one day. I hated leading that false life. But I always hoped that someone just once would be clever enough to see through that layer that surrounded me, through to the guilt of my past. So I built this tower that reflected my thoughts.

“There’s another meaning behind this design. Noma’s parents ran a flower shop. His father was famous for cultivating chrysanthemums. Before the war, he used to display dolls made entirely from chrysanthemum blooms. Noma’s plan after returning from the war was to take over from his father and grow chrysanthemums. As you know, to people of our generation the chrysanthemum was a flower that symbolized so much. At the very least this is a tribute to my friend.

“I suppose if I’m honest I would have liked to forget my promise to Noma. Perhaps if I’d been surrounded by a different kind of people, I would have been able to…”

Kozaburo broke off and gave a bitter laugh.

“Mr Mitarai, I’d like to ask you one last question. Why did you always pretend to clown around so much?”

Kiyoshi looked puzzled.

“I wasn’t pretending. That’s just my personality.”

I nodded my agreement.

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Kozaburo. “I think you were trying to get me to let my guard down. If you’d revealed right away what a sharp mind you have, I’d have been much more cautious and you’d never have been able to fool me.

“I did have a slight suspicion about you last night when Eiko began to get sleepy. I wondered for a moment whether you’d set some kind of trap. I know it sounds as if I’m talking with the benefit of hindsight, but I was suspicious. But just in case Eiko was in real danger, I couldn’t assume anything at the time.”

Kozaburo Hamamoto stopped and regarded Kiyoshi quietly.

“By the way, what do you think of my daughter, Eiko?”

Kiyoshi considered for a moment.

“She’s a great pianist; a very well-educated young lady,” he said carefully.

“Hmm. And…?”

“She’s also very self-centred and egotistical. Rather too much like me, I’m afraid.”

Kozaburo looked away from Kiyoshi.

“Well, you and I do have a lot in common,” he said with a wry smile. “But in some ways we are completely different. And as I see it now, your way is probably right. Mr Mitarai, I am very glad to have met you. I had hoped to ask you to explain the current situation to my daughter for me, but I won’t be so selfish as to insist.”

He held out his right hand.

“There will be a much better person for her,” said Kiyoshi, shaking Kozaburo’s hand.

“You mean someone who loves money more than you do?”

“Maybe someone who will put it to a better purpose. You were one such person too, I believe?”

The brief handshake done, the two men stepped apart, never to come together again.

“You have a very soft hand. You’ve never done much in the way of hard work?”

Kiyoshi grinned.

“If you have no money to hold on to, your palm never gets rough.”