“I can’t find his head!”
Kozaburo sounded desperate. Everyone else immediately began to search for the doll’s head, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t anywhere around.
The imprints left after removing Golem’s arms, legs and torso from the snow were rather deep, and so it could be assumed they had been scattered there while it was still snowing.
Kozaburo announced he was going to take Golem back to the salon and set off in that direction. To him, the doll was a precious collector’s piece.
The rest of the group decided not to wait for the lord of the manor’s return, and headed for the concrete steps that led up to the middle floor, right between the outward-facing doors of Rooms 10 and 11. There was snow on the steps, but again only Sasaki’s footprints were visible.
After climbing the stairs up to Room 10, Kikuoka banged loudly on the door.
“Ueda! Hey, it’s me! Ueda?”
But there was no reply.
Next they tried to look in through the window, but it was made of frosted glass with wire mesh running through it, and they could see nothing at all of the interior of the room. Not to mention that the curtains were apparently closed. On top of that, there were solid iron bars protecting the window on the outside. Kikuoka slid a hand through the bars and tried to open the window, but it was securely locked from the inside.
“Break in if you need to.” They turned around to see Kozaburo standing behind them.
“That door opens outwards! You’ve gotta be kidding me!” boomed Kikuoka.
“It does, but it’s not all that sturdy. Perhaps we could try to break it down.”
Kikuoka threw his huge frame against the door several times, but it didn’t budge.
“Hoy, Kanai, you give it a try.”
Kanai shrunk back in fear.
“Me? I don’t think I’ve got a chance. I’m just a lightweight.”
Ironically, the man most suited to this kind of a challenge was the one on the other side of the door.
“Come on, boys,” said Eiko firmly. “One of you give it a try!”
Realizing it was his moment to impress his queen, Togai hurled himself against the door with all his might, but the only thing that went flying was his glasses.
The next to try was Sasaki, then Kajiwara, the chef, but strangely not one of the men thought to pair up for the task. However, when Eiko and Hatsue simultaneously threw themselves against the door, there was a cracking sound and the top bent slightly inwards. After a few further shoves, it broke completely.
With Hatsue in the lead, the whole party rushed into the room, to be met by the very sight they had begun to dread. Kazuya Ueda lay there in his pyjamas, the handle of a hunting knife protruding from his chest, the dark stain on his pyjama top already partially dried.
Kumi screamed, and clung to Kikuoka. Eiko and Hatsue stood there in stunned silence. Kozaburo was the only one among the men to gasp out loud. It was the bizarre positioning of Ueda’s body…
Ueda wasn’t in his bed. He was lying on his back on the linoleum flooring at the foot of the bed, his right wrist bound with white cord. The other end was tied around the nearest foot of the metal bed frame, so that he appeared to be raising his right arm over his head. The bed didn’t look as if it had been moved from its normal position by the window.
Ueda’s left hand was unbound, but it too was high above his head. In other words, one hand was tied up, the other not, but both stretched out above his head, almost like a gesture of victory.
But even stranger than the placing of his arms, was that of his legs. He lay twisted to the side at the waist, both legs straight out to his right side, almost as if he were dancing. To be more precise, while the right leg was bent at approximately 90 degrees to his body, the left was placed slightly behind it and lower, at what must be around 110 or 120 degrees.
Just behind his back—to his left, there was a dark reddish-brown spot about five centimetres in diameter, drawn on the linoleum. As all four fingers of his free left hand were smeared in blood and a layer of grey dust, presumably he had drawn it himself. Which would mean that after tracing the circle he had, of his own free will, raised his left hand above his head…
But the thing that caught everyone’s attention was the hunting knife in Ueda’s chest. Attached to its handle was a metre-long piece of white string. The part about ten centimetres from the hilt was trailing slightly into the bloodstain on Ueda’s pyjamas, and was tinged faintly brown. However, the blood had already stopped flowing. From the expression on his face, it was clear he was no longer in pain. (See Fig. 3.)
It was obvious that Ueda was dead; nevertheless Sasaki, the medical student, got down on the floor and checked the body.
“We’d better call the police.”
Kohei Hayakawa, the butler, set off immediately by car for the general store in the village at the foot of the hill, where there would be a telephone.
It wasn’t long before uniformed police turned up in full force, roping off Room 10 and drawing a chalk outline on the floor. The body of Ueda was long-since cold, but due perhaps to some misunderstanding, an ambulance also came tearing up the hill, snow chains around its tyres. The white clothing of the paramedics became jumbled in with the crowd of dark police uniforms, and what was once a peaceful hermit’s retreat buzzed with activity.
Guests, staff, hosts alike were confined to the salon, listening anxiously to the disturbance that filled the Ice Floe Mansion. It was still early in the morning, and for most of the guests this was only the beginning of the second day of their stay. Kikuoka and the Kanais had arrived barely more than twelve hours ago. Already something like this happening—what on earth could be next? They’d enjoyed just one dinner and now it looked as if they were to spend the rest of their stay surrounded by police officers. Perhaps they would be released and allowed to go home as scheduled, but if they were unlucky, they couldn’t help wondering whether they’d end up under house arrest indefinitely.
A plainclothes police officer appeared in the salon. He was ruddy-cheeked and well built, with an air of importance about him—most likely a homicide detective. In a superior tone he introduced himself as Detective Inspector Okuma from the nearby Wakkanai Police Station, seated himself at the table and proceeded to question everyone present. However, there didn’t seem to be any obvious pattern to his questioning—he just seemed to be asking whatever occurred to him in the moment, and there was a lot of confusion.
When eventually he seemed to be done with his vague line of questioning, Okuma had one more.
“So where’s this doll you’re talking about?”
Kozaburo had put Golem back together again, minus his missing head, and he was still there with them in the salon.
“What the… Is this it? Huh! Where’s it normally kept?”
Kozaburo picked up Golem and led Okuma up to the antiques display room, Room 3. When they returned, Okuma seemed amazed, chatting in simple layman’s terms about all the precious items in Kozaburo’s collection, but after a while he fell silent and seemed to be thinking something over. For a short while he managed to give off the air of a competent detective. Eventually, he brought his hand to his mouth and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Would you agree that what we have here is a classic locked-room murder mystery?”
That had been pretty much obvious from the start.
Detective Inspector Okuma was such a bumbling yokel that nobody really felt that this was a serious murder investigation until around four o’clock that afternoon when Detective Chief Inspector Saburo Ushikoshi from the Sapporo City Police Headquarters turned up. He was accompanied by a younger detective named Ozaki.