The Decagon House Murders (28 page)

Thankfully Ellery’s conclusion had been too simplistic and had gone off in the wrong direction. He thought the murderer was not among the three of them and that the murderer was someone else who came to the island by boat.

Ellery was thinking of Nakamura Seiji. He really believed that Seiji was still alive. Morisu had never thought that the “suggestion of Nakamura Seiji” would come around and protect him at such a crucial time.

His head cleared.

Ellery ran out of cigarettes and Poe passed his cigarette case to Ellery. Morisu decided that this was the perfect opportunity.

He quickly took a certain object out of his coat pocket. It was a small, thin box. Inside it was a single Lark cigarette which he had prepared with potassium cyanide. It was a weapon he had prepared from the start, planning to use it on Poe if the chance arose. 

He also said he wanted a cigarette and was passed the cigarette case. He made the switch underneath the table. He took out two cigarettes, put one of them in his mouth and put the other in his pocket. He placed the poisoned cigarette in the cigarette case.

Poe was a heavy smoker, so he would probably smoke another one the moment he got the cigarette case back. There was a chance he wouldn’t smoke and the cigarette case would be passed on again to Ellery, but it did not matter as long one of them died. He could work out some way to deal with the last person left.

It was Poe who smoked the poisoned cigarette.

6

And in the hall only two remained.

Even now that Poe had died, Ellery was still convinced that Seiji was the murderer. He showed no sign of suspicion towards Morisu at all.

It did not seem as though Morisu would need to finish the job quickly. He decided to await his opportunity calmly. For, if possible, he wanted the last person to commit “suicide” for him.

Foolish Eller
y….

Ellery helped him all the way until the end.

Ellery thought himself the great detective, but he was nothing more than a helpless clown. By chance, Morisu had actually predicted this outcome. “The Detective” and “The Murderer” were the final two survivors.

But Morisu had to admit he was impressed by Ellery’s last masterful reasoning, starting from the eleven-sided cup that led them to the eleventh room inside the Decagon House. He himself had been puzzled by the existence of that cup. He could never have dreamt that something like that was hidden behind it, even though he had been told about Nakamura Seiji’s love of gimmicks by Kawaminami on the mainland.

Even so, this development did not endanger his own position. The discovery of the hidden room rather proved to be the perfect thing to help solidify Ellery’s theory that Seiji was the murderer.

The two of them entered the underground room. Ellery started searching for a path leading outside. There they discovered that horrifying corpse.

It came to him the moment he saw the body. It was the body of the gardener who disappeared, Yoshikawa Sei’ichi.

Yoshikawa had been murdered six months ago. Attacked by the insane Seiji, he had fled from the Blue Mansion to this place, where he had died. Or perhaps Seiji himself had dragged the gardener here to kill him.

He told this to Ellery, who stood quietly in front of the body. Ellery nodded several times, his hand still covering his nose, saying:

‘Indeed. So that means that Seiji got his body double from somewhere else, in the incident last year.’

He continued.

‘Let’s go, Van. We need to see where this passage leads.’

They walked around the body and stepped deeper inside the passage. “I’ll just accompany you until the end then,” Morisu thought.

He also started to think that Ellery might actually be suspicious of him.

It was, for example, obvious from the dust lying on the floor, that nobody had entered this place for a long time. So perhaps Ellery was pretending to suspect nothing and waiting for a chance to take him down.

Morisu followed Ellery into the darkness, his right hand holding the knife in his pocket.

The passage ended in front of a door. They could hear the sound of waves nearby.

Ellery opened the door. The sound of waves become louder.

They were standing halfway down the cliff facing the inlet. Outside the door was a little ledge like a small terrace. Beneath it was only deep darkness. It was quite a distance to the water surface.

Ellery carefully watched his feet as he took a step outside and let the light of his flashlight check their surroundings. He turned round with a satisfied expression and said:

‘This door is at an angle that makes it hard to spot from either above on the cliff or below from the sea. And with a little effort, it’s possible to make one’s way to the stone steps running along the rock face. Seiji used this to get into the Decagon House.’

*

‘I’m sure Seiji will come again tonight,’ said Ellery as they returned to the hall. ‘And we found the secret passage. Whether he’ll come through that passage or the front door, we have nothing to fear as it’s two against one. Let’s try to capture him.’

Morisu nodded as he made coffee for two. He had secretly taken a number of sleeping tablets from the bottle the day Poe handed them out and he slipped several of those tablets into one of the cups, making sure Ellery didn’t notice.

With an innocent air, he placed the cup in front of Ellery. Without a hint of suspicion, Ellery drank all of it.

‘I’m a bit sleepy. Yes, with much of the tension gone now…Van, would you mind? I need to take a little nap. Just wake me if something happens.’

That was the last line spoken by the great detective before he left the stage.

Soon Ellery was lying with his face on the table, sleeping innocently. Morisu made sure Ellery was fast asleep and carried him to his room and laid him on the bed.

He had decided that Ellery would need to commit “suicide by burning” for him. The sleeping medicine might be discovered from Ellery’s corpse eventually, but he reckoned that the police would discover the corpse of Yoshikawa Sei’ichi and come to the conclusion that Nakamura Seiji’s death last year was suicide. The circumstances of that case were similar to this case, so that would no doubt also influence the police’s opinion.

The rain finally stopped. It didn’t seem as though it would start again soon.

He went down to the inlet and prepared his boat, then returned to the burn site to retrieve the kerosene from the underground storage. He dug up Orczy’s buried left hand, removed the ring and returned the hand to her room.

The remaining plates, clothes with bloodstains, the poison, the knife: everything he needed to destroy, he moved to Ellery’s room. He opened the window and doused the room in kerosene. After covering the other rooms with kerosene, too, he carried the propane gas tank to the hall and opened the valve. He went outside, went to the open window, doused Ellery with the remaining kerosene and threw the kerosene tank inside.

It seemed to rouse Ellery. But by that time Morisu had already thrown an oil lighter at the kerosene-soaked bed.

He jumped several steps back and closed his eyes.

The after-image of the fire on the back of his eyelids danced and swirled violently.

*

The next morning, after a long, almost eternal, sleep he was awakened by a phone call from his uncle telling him about the incident. He called Kawaminami and went to S—Town.

First he went to his uncle’s house and borrowed his car, saying he was going to J—Cape to see what was happening on the island. He hurried there, as he said, and put the boat and gas capsule he had hidden there in the trunk. At that time, everyone had their eyes on Tsunojima, not on J—Cape.

After returning the car to his uncle, he put the boat back in the storage in the back of the garage. Having finished everything, he went to the harbour to meet with Kawaminami and Shimada.

7

After the meeting in the box room of the K—University Mystery Club had ended, Morisu Kyōichi quickly hurried home alone.

Ellery, or Matsu’ura Junya, had killed his five friends and committed suicide by burning, because of some unknown motive or possibly insanity. It appeared that the police had settled on that. A definite motive had not come up in that day’s meeting, but several suggestive tales about the kind of person Ellery was, seemed to have caught the interest of Inspector Shimada.

Everything had gone even better than he had hoped.

He had already got rid of two of the paintings he had made to prove his alibi on the mainland. He had done everything that needed to be done. He had nothing to fear anymore.

Everything was over now, Morisu thought.

It was finally over. His revenge was complete.

EPILOGUE

The sea at dusk. A time of quietude.

The waves shining red in the setting sun came from far away to wash against the shore and retreat back from whence they came.

Just as once before, he was sitting alone on the breakwater, staring at the sea at sunset.

Chiori….

He had been repeating her name in his mind for a while.

Chiori, Chiori
…
.

He closed his eyes and the fire of that night came back vividly alive. A giant fire of remembrance, which enveloped the decagonal trap that caught his prey and burnt through the night.

Her image joined that sight in his mind. He tried calling out to her. But she was looking away and did not answer him.

What’s wrong, Chiori
?

The flames danced more furiously and burnt brighter. The image of his love was caught in the fire, until its contour was swallowed completely and she disappeared.

Silently he stood up.

Several children were playing in the water. He stood there, staring at that scenery with narrowed eyes.

‘Chiori.’

He muttered her name once again, this time out loud. But she did not appear anymore, whether he closed his eyes or looked up at the sky. A fathomless sense of emptiness tortured him, as if something had been ripped away from his heart.

The sea was about to blend in with the night. The waves carrying the last light of the setting sun resonated silently.

Suddenly, he sensed a tap on the shoulder. He turned around in surprise.

‘Hey, it’s been a while.’

A tall, lean man with a friendly smile was standing there.

‘I asked the caretaker of your apartment building and he told me you often come down here to the shore.’

‘Oh.’

‘You look down. I’ve been watching you for a while, but you looked as though you were thinking about something.’

‘Not really. But why did you come looking for me?’

‘Oh, nothing important.’ The man sat down next to where he was standing. He put a cigarette in his mouth as he muttered: ‘One a day.’

‘It’s been a while since all of that happened. The police seem to be all done with their investigation. What do you think?’

‘What do I think? Ellery did it.’

‘No, no, I am asking you whether you think there might be a different truth behind it all.’

What is this man trying to tell me?

He looked out to the sea in silence. The man looked up at him as he lit his “one a day.”

‘I told you once I thought that Kō might be the murderer, but as I have an abundance of spare time, I tried casting the nets of my imagination wider and I caught an interesting idea. And I’d like you to listen to it.’

Could he have seen through everything
?

He didn’t answer and turned away from the man’s eyes.

This man…Impossible
.

‘Don’t be so cold and please listen to me for a while. It’s a rather incredible idea and you might even laugh at it. You might even scold me again, but just consider it simply a product of my imagination.’

‘Please keep your ideas to yourself,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Mr. Shimada, it’s a thing of the past now.’

He turned around, ignoring the man’s calls, and went down to where the children were playing.

He thought it pitiful how disconcerted he felt.

Impossible
.

He shook his head heavily and tried to calm himself.

Impossible. He could not have noticed it. Even if that man’s fertile imagination has by chance brought him to the truth, so what? There was no evidence. There was nothing he could do now.

Right, Chiori
?

He asked his girlfriend. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t even show herself.

Why?

His anxiety turned in an instant into a tsunami. The heavy, wet sand clung to his feet. And then, there at his feet, he saw something glistening.

This is….

He crouched down with a stunned expression on his face. His mouth twitched and he let out a deep sigh.

It was a small green glass bottle. It had been half buried in the sand at the water’s edge. There were several pieces of folded paper inside.

Oh
.

He picked the bottle up with a faint, bitter smile. He turned round to the man who was still sitting on the breakwater looking at him.

So this is to be my judgment
?

The children were about to go home. He slowly walked to them with the bottle in his hand.

‘Hey, kid.’

He stopped one of the boys.

‘Could you do me a favour?’

The boy looked up at him with puzzled eyes. Smiling as calmly as the sea in the evening, he gave the bottle to the boy.

‘Could you give this to that man over there?’

THE END