Содзи Симада - Murder in the Crooked House

“What time did you stick the hair on those doors?”

“Right after I told you that I was going to bed. So around a quarter past or twenty past 10.”

“Hm. And then?”

“I woke up once and went to check on those two rooms.”

“And what did you find?”

“The hair on Kikuoka’s door had come off. The door must have been opened at some point. But the one on the Kanais’ door…”

“Was?…”

“…Still there.”

“What?”

“The door hadn’t been opened.”

Ushikoshi looked down at floor. He seemed to be biting his lip. Then he raised his head and glared at Ozaki.

“Congratulations. You’ve just destroyed the last shred of hope in this case. Now I truly give up.”

The morning of the 28th of December dawned without further incident. It was a very minor victory for the detectives. Nothing had happened in the night, but they could hardly claim it was because of their presence…

The increasingly bitter occupants of the Ice Floe Mansion had begun to notice that the expert detectives with their airs didn’t seem to know any more about what was going on than they did. Of the three nights they had spent in the mansion since the evening of the Christmas party, there had been a murder committed on two, one of which the killer had impudently pulled off right under the noses of several police officers. And the bitter truth for these experts was that, beginning with the time of death, fingerprints and all the usual clues, all they’d managed to confirm was that there was absolutely nothing to go on.

Finally, the sun went down on what seemed to the guests a very long day, and to the detectives much too short. It was evening and both parties were called for dinner. They sat themselves without much enthusiasm around a table laden with the usual lavish food.

As the guests joined them, conversation began to dry up, which seemed to bother Kozaburo Hamamoto. He tried to keep up a jovial front, but everyone felt the absence of the gravelly voiced man with his exaggerated compliments.

“I’m so sorry that what was supposed to be a fun Christmas holiday has turned into something so dreadful,” said Kozaburo, after dinner was over. “I feel truly responsible,”

“No, please don’t feel that way, Mr President,” said Kanai from the next seat. “You have absolutely nothing to feel responsible for.”

“It’s true, Daddy. You really shouldn’t say things like that.”

Eiko’s normally shrill voice came out closer to a shriek. This was followed by a few moments of silence. It was Chief Inspector Ushikoshi who decided to pick up the conversation.

“We’re the ones who should accept responsibility.”

There was resignation in his voice. But Kozaburo continued speaking.

“There is one thing I am determined to avoid, and that is any kind of secret whispering among us about the identity of the killer. If amateurs like us get started on trying to solve these crimes, then the relationships between us will be destroyed.

“That said, the police do seem to be having a lot of trouble solving the crime, and we really do all hope for a swift conclusion to this awful matter. Is there no one here who has noticed something, or has some kind of wisdom that they can share with these detectives?”

Hearing this, the three detectives’ expressions turned sour and their body language became defensive. Perhaps it was the detectives’ behaviour, but nobody in the room took Kozaburo up on the idea. He decided a few more words might be appropriate.

“Sasaki, you’re usually very talented at solving this sort of riddle.”

“Well, I have come up with a few ideas.”

He’d clearly been waiting for this moment.

“How about it, gentlemen?” said Kozaburo.

“We’d like to hear them,” said Ushikoshi, without much enthusiasm.

“Well, first of all, the locked room in the murder of Kazuya Ueda, I think I can solve that mystery. It was the shot-put.”

There was no reaction from the detectives.

“That shot-put had string wrapped around it, with a wooden tag attached. The string had been extended, probably by the killer, and clearly for the purpose of creating that locked room. The latch—the type that moved up and down like a railway crossing gate—was propped up with that tag, stuck to the latch with Sellotape. Then the shot-put at the other end of the string was placed on the floor by the door, and when the killer closed the door behind him, because of the sloping floors in this mansion, the shot-put rolled away until the string was pulled tight and the wooden tag peeled away. And then of course the latch dropped and the door was locked.”

“Ah, of course!” said Kanai. Togai looked as if he had just swallowed something nasty. The detectives nodded wordlessly.

“Well, Sasaki, do you have anything else for us?” asked Kozaburo.

“I do have something, but I haven’t thought it all the way through yet. It’s the other locked room, Mr Kikuoka’s room. I don’t think it’s completely impossible to achieve, because it wasn’t really a completely locked room. There’s a hole for ventilation—small, but still an open space. The killer could have stabbed him with the knife, then balanced the coffee table on top of the sofa, securing it with a cord, and then attached it somehow to the en suite bathroom knob, and out through the vent hole. Then he’d have let it go from the corridor, and the table would fall off the sofa so that one of its legs pushed the button on the inside of the door—”

“Obviously, we’d already thought of that,” snapped Ozaki. “But there are no marks anywhere on the door frame or in the wall where a pin or staple or anything was used. And that method would require a huge amount of cord. There’s no kind of rope or cord like that anywhere in this house, or in anyone’s possession.

“What’s more, the suspect had absolutely no idea when the Hayakawas might come down to the basement. To set up a trick like that would take more than five minutes; probably ten. And anyway, the way you just described it includes setting three different locks. It would take even longer than that for sure.”

Sasaki didn’t respond. And this time the silence was much more uncomfortable than before. Kozaburo decided to try to break the tension.

“Eiko, let’s listen to some music. Put a record on.”

Eiko got up and soon the gloomy air of the salon was filled with the sound of Wagner’s Lohengrin.

By the afternoon of the 29th of December, the residents of the Ice Floe Mansion were sprawled around the salon, listless. It felt like the waiting room for condemned prisoners. Today’s sense of fatigue had been created by the previous days’ excess of nervous tension and fear. But boredom too was setting in.

Seeing the atmosphere in the room, Kozaburo proposed showing the Kanais and Kumi his collection of mechanical dolls and automata that he’d brought back from Europe. He’d already shown them to Michio Kanai and Kikuoka back in the summer, but Hatsue and Kumi were yet to see them. He’d intended to invite them to view everything much earlier, but all the fuss had distracted him from his plan.

Kozaburo had a lot of Western dolls in his collection, and he imagined that they would interest Kumi. Eiko and Yoshihiko were tired of seeing everything, so they chose to stay behind in the salon. This meant that Togai also decided to stay. Sasaki was interested in antiques, so although he’d also seen everything several times already, he decided to tag along.

A few days previously when Kumi had been on her way to be interviewed in the library, she had glanced through the window of the Tengu Room. It had given her a bad vibe, but today she reluctantly agreed to go anyway, ignoring the vaguely bad premonition she had as they set out.