“As a matter of fact, no, they can’t. The west stairs only go up to Room 8 and 9 in the west wing. The occupants of Room 1 and 2 have to use the east stairs. On the top floor, there’s no corridor at all joining the east and west wings. And so the occupants of Rooms 8 and 9 have no way of going and visiting the occupants of Rooms 1 and 2. They’d have to go all the way down to the ground floor, walk through the salon and climb up again.”
“What a pain!”
“That’s what I mean when I say this place is a nuthouse. It’s a proper maze. I tried to go and check out Room 1, where Kumi Aikura says she saw the freaky man, but I took the west stairs. I got completely confused and had to come back down to the salon to ask the way.”
“I suppose you would have.”
“This bloke, Kozaburo Hamamoto, seems to love watching people being shocked or confused. I reckon that’s why he had all the floors made on a slope like this. I’m sure people keep falling over until they’ve got used to it. Once you’re used to it, you can use the windows on the east and west sides for reference, but you end up guessing wrongly which way is uphill and which is down.”
“Yes, the windows look like they’re leaning at an angle. They have me defeated. Somehow the side of the window frame that’s farthest from the floor is the uphill side.”
“But the floorboards are lying in the direction of the slope.”
“I don’t get it at all—it’s like one of those house-of-mirror things you get at funfairs. Anyway, can you get from the north side rooms to the south? For example, if you’re in Room 8 can you get to Room 9 next door to it?”
“That’s possible. They’re at the top of the same staircase. And then another thing about these stairs. The way they’re arranged, they bypass the two rooms at the west end on the middle floor completely. The west staircase is just like the east one in that way. Room 10 where the murder was committed and the table tennis room, Room 11, next to it can’t be accessed at all from inside the mansion.”
“Hmm… Yes… That’s right.”
Ushikoshi was checking the diagram as he answered. It wasn’t easy to make out.
“But as these two rooms are just a games room and a sports storeroom, I suppose it doesn’t really matter if you can only access them from the outside.”
“I get it now. It’s pretty well thought out.”
“To get into these two rooms you have to use the steps on the exterior west wall of the house. So whoever got assigned this room to sleep in must have found it tough in this season having to go around the outside of the house to get to his room. Well, I suppose they thought he’s just the chauffeur, so he’d have to put up with it.”
“It’s a hard life when you’re a lowly employee.”
“Since they began to use Room 10 for guests, they had to store all the dirtiest stuff elsewhere, like gardening equipment, brooms, an axe and a scythe, and all the other odds and ends; so they built a shed at the bottom of the garden. The Hayakawas look after all that.
“And so Eiko allocated the guests their rooms, taking into consideration the unique layout of the house. First of all, there’s Kumi Aikura, the woman with the face that all the men fall for. This morning, Tokyo HQ got right on the case. They’ve dug up plenty of information for us. It’s an open secret at Kikuoka Bearings headquarters in Otemachi in Chiyoda Ward that Kumi Aikura is Kikuoka’s mistress. And so to avoid anything going on at night, Eiko placed them at the very opposite ends of the house: Aikura in Room 1 on the east wing’s top floor, and Kikuoka in Room 14 in the basement of the west wing.
“It seems that it was planned well in advance that Kikuoka would be in Room 14. That’s normally Kozaburo Hamamoto’s study. He keeps personal items—important books and stuff like that in there. The wall decorations and light fixtures are imported from England, and there’s a priceless Persian rug on the floor. A lot of money has been spent on that room. Normally, people don’t sleep in there—the bed is very narrow. Well, it’s more of a couch really, but the cushions are supposed to be very comfortable.
“Kikuoka is the guest of honour in the party, so it follows that he was put in the most expensive room. And why did Hamamoto choose that room to use as a study? It seems that out of all the rooms in the main building, it’s the warmest due to being in the basement. All the other rooms, despite being double paned, are rather cold through the windows’ contact with the outside air. But Hamamoto seems to go backwards and forwards on his feelings about there being no windows. When he feels like it, he heads back up to his bedroom in the tower and enjoys a perfectly unobstructed 360-degree view.
“And it also looks like Eiko put Kumi Aikura in Room 1, next door to her own bedroom, Room 2, so that she could keep an eye on her. And for the very same reason, she put Yoshihiko Hamamoto in Room 8 on the top floor. As I mentioned before, there was no way to come and go between Room 1 and Room 8, even though they’re physically so close. I reckon Eiko was worried that Aikura might use her charms to tempt the young lad.
“Next we come to Rooms 3, 4 and 5—as I’ve already said, they can’t be used as guest rooms. Room 6 in the basement belongs to the chef, Kajiwara. Room 7 is also occupied by staff—the Hayakawas. I’d say, no matter how warm the rooms, might be, I can’t see how staying in a room with no windows would be appealing to short-term guests. Ever since the house was built, those two east-wing basement rooms have been reserved for the staff.
“Now, moving over to the west wing and starting from the top, Room 8 was Yoshihiko Hamamoto, Room 9, Mr and Mrs Kanai. The middle floor had Ueda in Room 10, of course. On the ground floor in Room 12 was Togai, and next to him in Room 13, Sasaki. Room 14 in the basement was occupied by Kikuoka, and Room 15 next to him was empty. And that’s everybody.”
“Way too complicated to take in in one go. For a start you’re saying that Kumi Aikura in Room 1 and Hamamoto’s daughter in Room 2 wouldn’t be able to slip downstairs and remove that doll from the Room 3 display room? There are no stairs between the top and middle floors in the east wing at all?”
“That’s right. While you could come down one flight of stairs from Room 8 or 9 in the west wing and be right in front of that display room, from 1 and 2 you’d have to take a long detour down to the salon and back up the west stairs. Even though the room is right underneath you.”
“Just like the way you can’t get down from Room 8 or 9 to the scene of the murder in Room 10. This place really is a damn maze. No exaggeration. Anything else we need to know?”
“Room 3, right there next door to us, seems to be known by the other occupants of the mansion as the ‘Tengu Room’. If you look inside it you’ll understand why. It’s full of all this junk that Kozaburo Hamamoto spent a fortune on when he was travelling around Europe, and the walls are decorated with masks of Tengu, the red-faced, long-nosed goblin.”
“Whoa!”
“The south side wall is completely red from floor to ceiling with Tengu faces. And the east wall is pretty much covered too. That room doesn’t have any windows facing the exterior of the building, so the surfaces of those two walls have completely uninterrupted surfaces. Plenty of room to hang all his masks.
“The wall on the west side has a large window facing the interior corridor. The north wall slants inwards and overhangs the room, so no masks can be hung on the north and west walls.”
“Why does he have so many?”
“Tokyo police visited the headquarters of Hama Diesel in Chuo Ward to ask about that. The story goes that when he was a kid, the thing he was most afraid of were Tengu masks. Apparently, he wrote about it somewhere. For his fortieth birthday, as some kind of joke, his older brother gave him a mask, and so Hamamoto made up his mind to collect them. Went all out and hunted down some of the most unusual Tengus in Japan.