He crushed out his cigaret. “Point three is just as inconclusive by itself and just as significant when you add it to its big brothers.” He went over to little Kinumé, crouched in a corner confused by all this talk. “Kinumé, you remember the scissors — in the shape of a bird? The thing that cuts?”
“Oi! Missie Esther bring from Japan. It always broke. In case.”
“And it was kept always in the attic-room, was it not?”
Kinumé nodded. “Last time I seeing is when I clean attic.”
“So you did clean it,” muttered the Inspector.
“And when was that?”
“Sunday.”
“The day before Karen’s death,” said Ellery with satisfaction. “It fits! The Japanese scissors were kept in the attic, they belonged to Esther, they were never in Karen’s bedroom downstairs. Yet we find them in Karen’s bedroom after the crime. Who could have brought them down from the attic? Not Esther — Kinumé saw them there Sunday, and Esther was dead in Philadelphia Saturday night. Then the probabilities point to Karen as having fetched those scissors from the attic herself. Even if she didn’t — even if she asked Kinumé to fetch them for her (which is a distinction of no importance) — why? Certainly not to provide a convenient weapon for some murderer. Certainly not as scissors — they were broken and had no utility as scissors. I say that Karen’s deliberate fetching of that unusual implement to the scene of her death before the bolt got stuck, which was shortly before her death, indicates psychologically that she intended to use it for the purpose of taking her own life.”
“But why such a queer thing?” demanded the Inspector.
“There’s a reason for that, too,” said Ellery, “which I’ll get to in a moment.
“But let me go on to point number four, the first really powerful indication of suicide. Kinumé told me over the telephone a few minutes ago that when she left the bedroom just before Karen’s death, the Loo-choo jay — that bird that dislikes me so vociferously — was hanging in its cage beside Karen’s bed.”
“It was?” said the old man slowly.
“It was. We never thought of asking her that specific question before, and Kinumé isn’t the sort that volunteers information when she has been trained for years to keep her mouth shut. But the bird was hanging in its cage in the bedroom just before the crime, and when Eva entered the room a half-hour later, the cage was empty. This is confirmed by Terry. Let me ask you: Who released that bird during the half-hour interval?”
“Karen was the only one who could have,” muttered the doctor.
“Exactly. Only Karen. Karen released her beloved pet from its bondage.”
“But how did it get out of the room?” demanded Terry.
“Very simply. Since it couldn’t have opened the cage itself then Karen — alone in the room — must have opened the cage for it. This suggests that she took out the bird, carried it to the window, and passed it out through two of the iron bars. A human being couldn’t get out through those bars,” said Ellery casually, “but a bird could.”
He frowned. “Karen loved that cursed jay — all sorts of testimony to that effect. The bird was never allowed out of its cage. The only times it had got loose within the memory of man was when Miss O’Mara” — the Irish girl looked even more sullen — “in feeding it during an illness of Kinumé’s some weeks ago let it get away from her and it escaped into the garden. Will you tell us again, as you told us Wednesday, what happened on that occasion, Miss O’Mara?”
“I don’t know what for,” snapped the girl. “She all but tore my head off. Miss Leith, I mean; wanted to fire me. Let me go, will you? I want to get out of here.”
But Ellery said: “You see? Now we have logical reason to believe that a few minutes before she died, Karen Leith, who had always jealously kept her bird caged, herself took it from its cage and sent it off through the barred window. She gave it its freedom. Why? Why do people free well-beloved pets? Because their thralldom to an individual is over. Because their thralldom ends with the individual’s end. Because Karen Leith meant to commit suicide.”
The Inspector bit his fingernails.
“And so we come to the fifth, really the most conclusive point of all. It is compounded of an Occidental mind turned Oriental, of a kimono, of a little raised step, of a jeweled dagger, of a wound in the throat. It is compounded of everything Karen Leith’s warped soul was, and of everything Karen Leith’s tired body did. And if this point had stood alone, it would have told me Karen Leith committed suicide.”
“Will you explain?” said the Inspector fretfully.
“It’s a nice point — really beautiful; perfect symmetry. What was Karen Leith? Well, her skin was white, but its underside had turned yellow. She had lived so long in Japan, loved so deeply things Japanese, that she had become more than half Japanese. Consider how she lived in Washington Square — in quarters nostalgic for Japan, Japanese furniture, art, decorations; even her garden was Japanese. At every opportunity she wore Japanese dress. She loved Japanese customs — do you remember that ceremonious tea? She had been brought up in a semi-Japanese home, had associated with Japanese friends, with Japanese servants, had taught Japanese students at the Imperial University after her father’s death. In a sense, she was a convert to the spirit of Japan — it isn’t difficult to think of her as mentally and psychologically more Japanese than Occidental. As a matter of fact, there have been numerous instances of Westerners becoming converted to Japan — do you remember Lafcadio Hearn, for instance?
“Now if you consider Karen Leith in this light, what is suggested by the specific conditions of her death: dressed in a Japanese kimono, her throat cut, the weapon a thing of steel and crusted with gems? Eh? Why, a half-hour or so before her death, did she change from ordinary Western dress — as Kinumé will tell you — to the kimono? How explain the rather delicately grim choice of death — a cutting of the throat? Why that specific weapon — half of a begemmed Japanese scissors, which in the absence of a ‘jeweled dagger’ can easily be visualized as such? I’ll tell you why.” Ellery waved his pince-nez. “Because these three elements — jeweled dagger, cut throat, and kimono — are mandatory in the age-old Japanese ceremony of hara-kiri. And hara-kiri is the age-old Japanese ceremony of suicide.”
“No,” said the Inspector stubbornly after a moment. “No! That’s not so. I don’t know a lot about it, but I do know that this hara-kiri business isn’t throat-cutting. I heard of a case of a Jap a few years ago who did it by disembowelment. I looked it up then. They always slash their abdomens.”
“This Japanese was a man?” demanded Ellery.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t look into it deeply enough. I did. Male Japanese suicides cut their abdomens open. Females their throats.”
“Oh,” said the Inspector.
“But that isn’t all. Hara-kiri isn’t promiscuous; it must have narrow and specific motivation. It’s all neatly tied up with honor. You do not take your life by hara-kiri lightly in Japan. It’s only when you’ve committed a dishonorable act. This ritual form of suicide wipes out the dishonor — at least, that’s the aesthetics of it. But how about Karen Leith? Didn’t she have a dishonor to wipe out — the theft of her sister’s genius? And didn’t she die on a little step — the edge of the dais before the oriel windows — which makes it easy to visualize her as kneeling? But that’s another requirement in hara-kiri, you see.