Arriving at the tower ahead of the rest, Kozaburo locked the end of the drawbridge firmly in place. The walkway at the top of the tower was maybe a little over a metre wide, and circled the whole tower; the eaves didn’t completely protect it from the snow, which had piled up all around.
Right at the point where the drawbridge made contact with the tower there was a window, and about two metres to the right, a doorway. There was no light coming from inside, so Kozaburo slipped in through the door to turn on the room lamp, and came back out. The glow that shone from the window onto the walkway was enough for everyone to see where to put their feet. Kozaburo began to move in an anti-clockwise direction around the windswept walkway, past the window and the door. The guests filed along behind him, taking care not to tread in the heaps of snow.
“My challenge is for you to tell me the significance of the design of the flower bed at the foot of this tower. That’s really all there is to it. Because of its size, when you’re down on the ground, standing in the middle of the plants, its shape is impossible to make out. And so I’ve brought you up here for a bird’s-eye view.”
Kozaburo stopped walking and leant over the railing.
“This is the perfect spot to get the full effect,” he announced, tapping the railing. The rest of the party lined up next to him and looked gingerly down in the direction of their own feet. Around three floors below them there was indeed a flower bed. It wasn’t difficult to make out, illuminated as it was by three sources of light—the regular garden lighting, the bulbs on the Christmas tree, and what spilt out from the salon window. As Kozaburo had promised, the full effect was clearly visible from where they stood. Covered in a layer of white snow, it looked like a decorated Christmas cake. The raised pattern stood out in clear relief against the darker shadows. (See Fig. 2.)
Sasaki clung to the railing as he leant out for a better look.
“Oh, that’s what it looks like!”
His voice shivered from the cold and its battle with the noise of the wind.
“Whoa! Splendid!” cried Kikuoka in his usual booming voice.
“Right now, it’s covered in snow so we can’t enjoy the colourful leaves and flowers, but the parts where they’re planted are raised above the ground, so actually the basic design is much easier to make out than usual. There aren’t any distracting features to detract from the lines.”
“It’s a fan,” declared Kikuoka.
“Yes. It’s shaped a bit like a folding fan. But I don’t think it’s enough to say it’s fan-shaped,” said Sasaki.
“Right. It’s not supposed to be a fan,” said Kozaburo.
“You designed it to surround the tower, and so it ended up being that general shape,” said Sasaki.
“You’re exactly right.”
“There aren’t any straight lines.”
“Hmm. Yet again, Mr Sasaki, you’re on the right track. There’s an important point in there.”
Kozaburo looked along the row until he found Haruo Kajiwara, the chef.
“What do you think, Mr Kajiwara? Can you solve a riddle like this one?”
Kajiwara looked as if he hadn’t really thought about it at all.
“No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Well, then… What kind of object is it? What are its properties? Any ideas? But there is one more thing I need to tell you. The location of this strange and unusual flower bed within the Ice Floe Mansion is of great significance. It has to be in that exact spot. I want you to think of it as part of the mansion itself. The reason this building is leaning slightly is because of the design of that flower bed. I want you to think hard about the connection.”
Sasaki looked astonished.
“It’s because of that flower bed that this building leans?”
Kozaburo nodded.
That strange flower bed and the slant of this building… pondered Sasaki, as he watched the falling snow that seemed to be sucked down by the flower bed below. As he stared down at the white walls that showed the strange design in relief, he thought how the snow was like a multitude of little darts flying towards their target. And slowly he began to lose his sense of balance, and fear that he too was going to fall. He guessed it was probably because the main building, as well as this tower, both leant in the direction of the flower bed as if they were about to topple right into it.
Just a minute… Sasaki thought. He believed he had just made a connection. Was that it? The slant of the tower and the feeling you were about to fall, the unease, all those kinds of sensations, did they have something to do with the puzzle?
Human emotions? But if that were the case this was a supremely difficult puzzle to solve. Vague, abstract ideas, but how did they connect? It was like some kind of Zen-style conundrum.
A fan… a classic Japanese symbol. One that when you look down at it from a tall tower, you get the weird sensation you’re falling. That’s because the tower leans… Now what school of thought does a tower represent…? Was it that kind of a riddle, perhaps…?
No, probably not after all, Sasaki decided. Kozaburo Hamamoto was more Western in his style and way of thinking. This wasn’t going to be a spiritual or philosophical problem. He definitely preferred the kind of puzzle that had a clear-cut answer, which when revealed, would be immensely satisfying and cause everyone to say, “Of course!” Which meant that there was a more concrete solution. It was a clever puzzle for sure.
Sasaki continued to ponder.
Togai, however, was even more enthusiastic than his friend.
“I’d like to sketch the shape of the flower bed,” he said.
“Of course you may,” replied Kozaburo. “But you don’t have a pen and paper with you right now, I’m sure.”
“It’s cold.”
Eiko spoke on behalf of the rest of the guests who were all starting to shiver.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen, if we stay out here much longer we’re all going to catch cold. Mr Togai, I’m going to leave the bridge in place, so feel free to come up here and draw your sketch whenever you’d like. I’d love to invite you all to visit my room here in the tower, but with so many people it’d be terribly cramped. Let’s go back to the salon and ask Mr Kajiwara to serve us a cup of steaming hot coffee.”
There were no objections to that plan. Kicking the snow out of their path as they walked, they set off to finish their tour of the walkway, back to where the drawbridge waited.
As they made their way back across towards the main building, it was as if they were re-entering the real world, and there was a general sense of relief. Outside, at least for now, the snow continued to fall.
SCENE 4
Room 1
The snow had finally stopped falling and the moon was out. There’d been no sign of it when they’d been up on the tower, but now its pale whitish glow shone through the curtains. The whole world was silent.
Kumi Aikawa had been lying in bed for what seemed like hours, but she couldn’t sleep. One of the main reasons was that she couldn’t stop thinking about Eiko Hamamoto. And when she thought about that woman her stomach lurched. She felt like a jouster waiting for tomorrow’s tournament.