“You’re right. But the angle is pretty steep, so I guess they needed to make it from something durable and safe.”
“I suppose… they certainly are steep. Maybe that’s it. And the landings—I guess I should say corridors—the corridors on every floor seem to be metallic too.”
“Yes.”
“This floor’s different, but with the ground floor of the west wing and the top floor too, all the corridors seem to be L-shaped.”
“They are. The top floor in the east wing here is the same. This floor is the only one constructed differently.”
“The tips of the L—in other words the ends of the corridors, look as if there was some kind of design flaw or something. I don’t know why, but they’re not joined completely up to the walls. There’s about a twenty-centimetre gap there at each end.”
“Whoa! That’s a bit creepy if you ask me. I suppose someone could lean over and press their head against the wall and see all the way down to the bottom of the house. For example if you stood by the gap at the end of the corridor in front of Room 8 on the top floor, with a gap on every floor you could see all the way down to the corridor in the basement. Even though there’s a handrail, it’d give me the creeps.”
“So what I’m thinking is that you could use that gap, push a rope or a wire through the ventilation hole and manage to pull off some sort of clever trick. At any rate, the ventilation hole in Room 10 is directly under the gap on the top floor, right?”
“Yes, I thought of that too. I tried getting right up against the wall at the very end of the corridor by Room 8, but the ventilation hole to Room 10 is far below, way out of reach. It’s at least a metre down. I guess you could possibly work out some kind of plan with two people working together, but it would be very difficult.”
“You can’t see into Room 10 through the hole, then?”
“No, definitely not.”
“Pity. Anyway, I suppose that a twenty-centimetre-square hole is too small for anything like that.”
“Yes, too difficult to pull anything off through that kind of space.”
And with that, Detective Sergeant Ozaki’s lecture on the nuthouse mansion was complete.
Ushikoshi turned to the local detective, who had sat there throughout the discussion in a kind of stunned silence.
“Inspector Okuma, is there anything you’d like to add?”
“Nah, nothing special,” he replied automatically. His expression suggested he was relieved not to be responsible for such a complicated case.
“Reckon there’ll be a blizzard tonight,” he added.
“You may be right. The wind’s really getting up,” said Ushikoshi. “But then again this is a pretty desolate location. There’s no other human habitation for miles around. You know, I can’t imagine wanting to live out here. It’s just the kind of place you’d expect murders to happen.”
“No kidding.”
“I don’t understand how anyone can live in a place like this,” said Sergeant Ozaki.
“I guess if you’re filthy rich, you’re always surrounded by hangers-on, people sucking up to you, after your money. Anyone would be about ready to escape a life like that.”
For someone from such meagre circumstances, Ushikoshi seemed to have a pretty good handle on the way the rich thought.
“So, who shall we call first?”
“Well, I’m most interested in the three staff members. I’d like to have a go at getting them to talk,” said Ozaki. “I bet you with that kind of employer they’ve got a whole bunch of grievances to get out of their system. In a big group they’d keep a lid on it, but get them alone and it’ll all come pouring out. They’re probably total wimps when it comes down to it, just shake them up a bit and they’ll spill.”
“Do Kohei and Chikako Hayakawa have children?”
“It seems they had a child who died. We haven’t found out the details yet.”
“So they don’t have any kids at all?”
“Seems not.”
“And Kajiwara?”
“He’s single. Still young—only twenty-seven. Who do you want me to call first?”
“You know, I don’t think we ought to call the staff first. Let’s call that medical student, Sasaki. Would you mind?…”
The police officers arranged themselves in a row like the three judges of the underworld, forcing each witness to sit across the table from them. As Sasaki took his seat he joked that it felt like a job interview.
“Please don’t include any unnecessary chat. Just answer the questions as we ask them,” said Ozaki sternly.
Ushikoshi opened the questioning.
“You’re staying here to check Kozaburo Hamamoto’s health. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“We have three main questions for you. First, what relationship did you have to the murdered man, Kazuya Ueda? How close were you to him? I promise you that we can easily discover whether you are lying or not, so to save time all around, please don’t try to hide anything. Just tell the truth.
“The second question concerns your alibi. I know it’s probably difficult, but as long as you weren’t in Room 10 between the hours of 12 and half past, in other words, if you have proof you were elsewhere, we’d like to hear it.
“Our third question is the most important one: just like the information you gave us earlier about the stakes in the garden, we’d like to hear of anything strange you noticed last night. And also, of any strange behaviour on the part of anyone. We know that in matters like this, it can be hard to speak up in front of everyone. Of course, we won’t reveal from whom we got any of the information, so please let us know if there is something you think we ought to know. That’s all, thank you.”
“I understand. First, question number one: I think I can answer that with perfect accuracy. I only ever had two interactions with Mr Ueda in my life. That was ‘Where is Mr Kikuoka?’ And one more that I’ve forgotten the details of. But that kind of thing. Apart from that, I’ve never met the man, not back in Tokyo—I’ve never had the occasion to. In other words, he was a complete stranger to me. I think I could even say I have a closer relationship with you three detectives than I had with him.
“As for an alibi, that’s a bit difficult. I went up to my room around 9.00 p.m. I’m due to take the National Medical Examination to get my licence very soon, so I was reading some reference books. I never left my room again after that, so I don’t have anything to say in response to your third question either.”
“So you’re saying that after you went up to your room you never even went out into the corridor again?”
“That’s right. There are bathrooms attached to every room. There’s no need to go outside.”
“You were staying in Room 13? You didn’t pay a visit to Togai next door in Room 12?”
“I have done in the past, but last night he was wrapped up in something else, and I was studying for my exams, so at least last night we didn’t see each other.”
“What do you mean by he was wrapped up in something else?”
Sasaki related the story of Kozaburo and the flower bed puzzle.
“I see,” said Ushikoshi. Ozaki snorted scornfully.
“And from your room you didn’t hear any strange noises?”
“No… The window is double-paned.”
“How about sounds from the corridor or the stairs? The killer managed to remove that huge doll from Room 3. He must have passed very close to Room 13.”
“I didn’t hear anything. I never had any idea that there had been a murder. Of course I’ll be paying more attention tonight.”