Keigo Higashino: Malice

“That’s true.” He reached out for his coffee cup, noticed it was empty, and left the empty cup sitting there. “But why didn’t she go out the front door?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want people to see her? Perhaps it was a psychological thing. Of course, if she has an alibi anyway, this is all just fanciful conjecture.”

“True enough. She does have an alibi, which would indeed make the story you just told entirely fanciful conjecture.”

Something about the deliberate way he repeated my own words struck me as odd. “You can go ahead and forget it then.”

“Still, it was an interesting scenario. I was wondering if you could make another guess for me.”

“I’m not terribly good at this, but sure. Fire away.”

“Why did the killer turn off the lights in the room before leaving?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I said after a moment’s thought. “She wanted people to think no one was home. That way, even if anyone happened by, they would just leave. It would delay the discovery of the body. Which is, in fact, what did happen.”

“So the killer wanted to delay the discovery of the body?”

“Don’t all killers want to do that?”

“Maybe,” he said. “If that was the plan, then why was the computer left on?”

“The computer?”

“Yes. When you came into the room, the screen was on. It was in your account.”

“That’s true. Maybe she didn’t care whether the computer was on or not.”

“I tried a simple experiment after leaving you the other day. We turned off all the lights in the room and left on the computer monitor. It turns out it’s quite bright. You can see it dimly through the curtains even standing outside the room. If she really wanted to make it look like no one was home, she would’ve turned off the computer.”

“Maybe she couldn’t find the switch. People who aren’t familiar with computers don’t know about those kinds of things.”

“She could’ve at least turned off the monitor. The switch is right there on the front. And if she didn’t understand that, she could’ve pulled the cord.”

“I guess she forgot.”

Detective Kaga stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “That’s probably it. She probably forgot.”

Having nothing else to say to that, I remained silent.

He stood, thanking me again for my time. “Will you be writing about today in your account as well?”

“I expect I will.”

“Then I’ll be able to read it?”

“Fine by me.”

He headed toward the cash register, then stopped midway. “Did you really think I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher?”

I remembered writing something along those lines in my account. “That’s just my opinion.”

He looked down again, gave a brief sigh, and walked out.

I wondered what Kaga was thinking.

If he’d already figured out something about the case, I wondered why he didn’t just tell me.

One of the things I took particular note of was the use of a paperweight as the murder weapon. I need hardly mention that the paperweight belonged to the late author and thus was in the office prior to the killing. This suggests that the killer didn’t come to the house with the intent of killing Kunihiko Hidaka.

Had the murder been planned from the beginning, the murderer would have come prepared with a weapon. It’s possible that such preparations had been made, but then unforeseen circumstances necessitated a change in plans, making a blow to the back of the head with the paperweight the next-best option. However, that seems rather poorly premeditated. It makes most sense that the murder was an impulsive act, done in the heat of the moment, with whatever implement was at hand.

This makes me wonder about the locked doors. According to the statements of the two who discovered the body, both the front door to the house and Kunihiko Hidaka’s home office door were locked.

Rie Hidaka had this to say:

“When I left the house just after five o’clock, I locked the front door. I was worried that, since he was in his office, my husband might not hear it if somebody walked in. Of course, I never imagined anyone actually would.”

According to forensics, only the Hidakas’ fingerprints were found on the front doorknob. There were no signs of gloves having been used, or fingerprints being wiped off. I think it’s safe to assume that the door was locked by Rie Hidaka when she left and it remained so until she opened it upon her return.

However, there’s a high probability that the murderer locked the door to Mr. Hidaka’s home office from the inside. Unlike the front door, the office-door handle showed clear signs of having been wiped clean.

This leads me to believe that the murderer did, in fact, come in through the office window. However, this would seem to create a contradiction. If the murder wasn’t premeditated, why come in through the window? It’s highly unlikely that the intruder intended to steal anything. Even a thief seeing the house for the first time would soon realize there was nothing left worth stealing.

However, one line of conjecture resolves this contradiction. What if we assume that the killer visited the Hidaka household twice in the same day? The first time, the killer came in the front door as a guest. Then, after leaving the house (or, rather, pretending to leave), the killer returned, this time entering through the window with a single purpose in mind. That purpose, I need hardly say, was to kill Kunihiko Hidaka. It makes the most sense to assume that this impulse to murder stemmed from something that happened during the killer’s first visit.

Now we must consider who visited the Hidaka household on the day of the murder. At present, we know of two people: Miyako Fujio and Osamu Nonoguchi.

At the beginning of our investigation, we focused on these two as the prime suspects. We were somewhat astonished to find that both of them had alibis.

Miyako Fujio had returned to her home by six o’clock the evening of the day in question. We have two witnesses corroborating this: her fiancé, Tadao Nakazuka, and a man who was going to assist with their wedding, Kikuo Ueda. They were meeting to discuss the couple’s nuptials, to be held next month. Ueda is Nakazuka’s boss at work, with no direct personal connection to Miyako Fujio. It is difficult to imagine that he would falsify his account to cover for his subordinate’s fiancée. Furthermore, according to Rie Hidaka, Miyako Fujio left the Hidaka household a little after five o’clock, which, considering the transportation routes and distance between the Hidaka and Fujio houses means an arrival time of six o’clock makes perfect sense. We have to conclude that her alibi is sound.

Now, for Osamu Nonoguchi.

I can’t deny that I have some personal feelings concerning this individual. He was a colleague at my former position, and as such he knew me during those less-than-happy days.

Were our personal connection to cast a shadow on my investigation in any way, I’d be obliged to remove myself from the case. However, I’m determined to view our shared history as objectively as possible while continuing to pursue this case. Note that I don’t intend to forget said history. For I believe that history could prove an important weapon going forward.

The following is Mr. Nonoguchi’s alibi for the day in question:

Having been visiting at the Hidakas’, he left around four thirty in the afternoon shortly after Miyako Fujio arrived. He went straight home and worked until around six o’clock. At that time, his editor from Dojisha Publishing, a Mr. Yukio Oshima, arrived and they began their meeting. Soon after, a call came from Kunihiko Hidaka, saying he wanted to talk about something, and asking Mr. Nonoguchi to come to his house at eight o’clock.