The Decagon House Murders (6 page)

‘Even in India?’

‘The Sanskrit word for “moon” is
“ś
aśin,” which translates to “having the markings of a hare.”’

‘Wow.’

As he reached out for his cigarette case on the table, Poe looked up at the skylight once again. The bright yellow moon floated in the sky.

Tsunojima, the Decagon House.

The shadows of those present were cast on the surrounding walls by the dim light of the lamp.

Slowly, the night advanced.

CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST DAY ON THE MAINLAND

1

My daughter Chiori was murdered by all of you.

Kawaminami Taka’aki frowned as he lay sprawled on the bed in the middle of his small room. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. He had found the letter in his mailbox just now on his return home.

He had stayed out all night playing
mahjong
at a friend’s place. As always, the loud noise of the tiles had been reverberating in his drowsy mind, but the letter had awoken him immediately.

‘Wha—what’s this?’

Rubbing his eyes, he picked up the envelope that held the letter and took another good look at it. It was an ordinary brown envelope, postmarked yesterday—March 25th. It had been posted from within O—City. The only thing peculiar about it was that everything on it had been written with a word processor.

There was no address of the sender. The back of the envelope only said “Nakamura Seiji.”

‘Nakamura Seiji.’

He muttered the name. Never heard of him. No, wait, he had heard of the name.

He sat up, legs crossed, and looked again at the letter. It had also been written with a word processor. The paper was a high-grade B5.

“My daughter Chiori was
murdered
by all of you.”

He remembered the name Chiori. The letter probably referred to Nakamura Chiori. And this Nakamura Seiji would be her father.

It had happened over a year ago, in January last year at the New Year’s party of the K—University Mystery Club, of which Kawaminami had been a member. Nakamura Chiori was his junior, one year below him, so she was a first-year student. Kawaminami was a third year now. He would become a fourth-year starting in April, but he had quit the Mystery Club in spring last year.

Because at the New Year’s after-after-party, Nakamura Chiori had died.

Kawaminami had left the party early because of an appointment. The “accident” had happened after his departure. Acute alcohol poisoning, coupled with a chronic disease had led to a heart attack. It had been too late by the time the ambulance had brought her to the hospital.

Kawaminami had also attended the funeral.

Chiori had been living in O—City with her grandfather on her mother’s side. It was there the ceremony had been held. But the name of the chief mourner wasn’t Seiji. It was a much more old-fashioned name. It wasn’t her father, but her grandfather. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen anybody that could have been Chiori’s father there.

But why had someone calling himself Chiori’s father sent him this letter; someone he had never seen or spoken to?

“Seiji” claimed in his letter that Chiori had been murdered. His daughter had died because of the alcohol she had been made to drink at the party. Kawaminami could understand that, in his eyes, his daughter had been killed. But what was he thinking about, writing this letter over a year after it happened?

Kawaminami straightened up suddenly.

Nakamura Seiji… Aha!

He had found the correct thread amongst his memories.

He jumped up, went over to the steel rack leaning against the wall and pulled some folders out. They were full of interesting newspaper clippings he had collected.

I think it was around September last year….

After searching for a while he found the article.

The Blue Mansion on Tsunojima in Flames. A Mysterious Quadruple Murder!?

Kawaminami sat down on the floor and opened the folder. He tapped his fingers on the big letters of the headline.

‘An accusation made by a dead man?’

*

‘Excuse me, is this the Higashi residence? My name is Kawaminami of K—University. Is Hajime there?’

‘Kawaminami, you say?’

The woman answering the call was probably the mother.

‘Hajime left on a trip this morning. With some friends in his club.’

‘The Mystery Club?’

‘Yes. He said he was going to an uninhabited island.’

‘An uninhabited island? Do you happen to know the name?’

‘Err, I think it was Tsunojima. Somewhere near S—Town.’

‘Tsunojima.…’

Kawaminami felt his breath stop and he grasped the receiver tightly.

‘Did Hajime get a letter, by any chance?’

‘A letter?’

‘A letter from someone called Nakamura Seiji.’

‘I don’t—.’

She hesitated for a while, but she seemed to sense the urgency in Kawaminami’s voice. She asked him to wait and left the receiver. The sound of organ music reached his ears. After a while she returned and said, somewhat anxiously:

‘Yes, such a letter has been delivered. Is there something wrong?’

‘It’s there? It’s really there?’

‘Yes.’

He suddenly felt his strength draining out of him. His shoulders sagged and he was not sure what to do.

‘Oh, yes, thank you—it’s nothing. Sorry for having taken your time.’

Kawaminami replaced the receiver and leant against the wall. It was an old building and the walls would creak if you put too much weight on them. Through the badly-made window he could hear the droning of an almost broken washing machine.

A letter by Nakamura Seiji was also delivered to Higashi’s place
.

He blinked several times with blood-shot eyes.

Could it be just a prank?

He looked up the club’s address list, made a note of all the members who had been at the after-after-party and made several calls. They had all gone away and, because most of them had been boarding students, he was unable to get any questions answered. However…they were now all on a trip. To Tsunojima of all places, where that incident had happened. Was it just a coincidence?

After a moment of reflection, he picked up the address list again and looked up the phone number of the deceased Nakamura Chiori.

2

O—City was a thirty-minute bus ride and another forty-minute train trip away from S—Town, from where the Mystery Club members had left for Tsunojima. The distance between the towns was less than forty kilometres as the crow flies. Kawaminami got out of the train at Kamegawa, four stations after O—City and walked briskly up the road leading to the mountains.

He had called the home of Nakamura Chiori’s grandfather. A friendly middle-aged woman, probably the housekeeper, had answered the phone and Kawaminami had introduced himself as a friend of Chiori from university.

Needless to say, it would have been awkward for him just to have started asking questions but, with tact and patience, he had managed to get confirmation that Chiori’s father was indeed the Nakamura Seiji of the Tsunojima incident, and had also managed to obtain the address of Nakamura Kōjirō, Seiji’s younger brother. He’d learned of the existence of Kōjirō while going through the newspaper articles.

Kōjirō was living in the Kannawa district in Beppu. He was a teacher at a high school there and, because it was spring holiday, he would probably be at home
[v]
.

Kawaminami’s family home also used to be in Beppu. He could easily find his way there, he thought, as his curiosity grew.

He didn’t even consider making a phone call first, but decided to head for Kōjirō’s house immediately.

Kannawa is known for housing several of the eight stops in Beppu’s famous “Hell Tour of Hot Springs.” In the wide clear sky he could see white plumes of steam rising from the rows of houses and the gutters of the sloping roads. To the left he could see the black slopes of Mount Tsurumi.

Once past a small shopping area, the streets quickly became silent. The neighbourhood was full of inns, hostels and rental villas for both short and long term visitors who came to the hot springs for medical purposes. As he had been given the exact address on the phone, he managed to find his destination without any trouble.

It was a nice one-storey house. On the other side of a low hedge, flowers like yellow broom, white meadowsweet and pink quince were already taking on the colours of spring.

Kawaminami went through the lattice-windowed gate and followed the stone steps through the front garden. He took a deep breath and pushed the doorbell. Moments later, a round baritone voice came from the other side of the door.

‘Who is it?’

The man who appeared did not fit this traditional Japanese house at all. He wore a white open-necked shirt under a brown cardigan and charcoal grey trousers. His hair had been brushed back casually and was streaked with grey.

‘Excuse me, are you Nakamura Kōjirō?’

‘Yes.’

‘Er…My name is Kawaminami. I was in the same college club as Nakamura Chiori. I’m sorry for coming here like this out of the blue.’

Behind his horn-rimmed glasses, the look on Kōjirō’s clean-cut face softened.

‘A member of K—University’s Mystery Club? And you’re here because…?’

‘I received this curious letter today.’

Kōjirō took the letter and, after scanning the orderly row of letters that spelled the sender’s name, his eyebrows shot up and he took another look at Kawaminami.

‘By all means come inside. A friend is here, but don’t mind him. But, since I live here alone, I can’t serve you very much.’

*

Kawaminami was led to a traditional
tatami
[vi]
mat room towards the rear of the house. The room was L-shaped, consisting of two six-
tatami
rooms joined together. The paper wall panels that had originally separated the rooms had been removed to form a twelve-
tatami
room. The part in front was used as a living room and reception area. On top of a dark-green carpet stood a sofa set of the same colour. The part in the back overlooked a garden to the right and was being used as a study. Kawaminami could see several bookcases reaching to the ceiling and a big desk. The rooms were so tidy it was hard to believe a single man lived there.

‘Shimada, we have a guest.’

The friend Kōjirō addressed was sitting on a rattan rocking chair in the front room, on a veranda facing the garden.

‘This is Kawaminami from K—U.’s detective fiction club. And this is my friend Shimada Kiyoshi.’

‘Detective fiction?’ Shimada asked and he jumped up from his seat. In the process the rocking chair struck his legs and, groaning softly, he fell back into it.

‘Er, I actually quit the club last year.’

‘Hmm.’

Shimada rubbed his legs with a grimace and said:

‘So what brings you here to dear old Kō?’

‘This,’ said Kōjirō and he passed Kawaminami’s letter to Shimada, who stopped rubbing his legs when he saw the name of the sender and took a hard look at Kawaminami.

‘Mind if I read it?’

‘Not at all.’

‘To tell you the truth,’ Kōjirō said, ‘I’ve received the same letter.’

‘What!?’

Kōjirō walked to the study desk in the back, picked up a letter lying on top of a red-brown desk mat and passed it to Kawaminami.

Kawaminami studied the front and back of the envelope. The same envelope, the same postmark, the same typed letters as on the one he had received. And the sender was “Nakamura Seiji” as well.

‘Can I look inside?’

Kōjirō nodded in silence.

Chiori was murdered.

That was all. Although the text was different, it had also been typed using a word processor on high-grade B5-sized paper.

Kawaminami, his eyes fixed on the letter, was at a loss for words. A mysterious letter from the dead. He had guessed that every member who had been present at last year’s after-after-party had been sent the same letter, but even this man, Nakamura Kōjirō, had received one.

‘What could it mean?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Kōjirō replied. ‘I’m as shocked as you are. I was just saying to Shimada that it must be a prank in very bad taste, and how some people have too much time on their hands. And then you turn up.’

‘It’s not just me. Other club members also got the letter.’

‘Well, well.’

‘Is it possible that this Nakamura Seiji, excuse me, your brother is still alive?’

‘Impossible.’ Kōjirō shook his head decisively.

‘As you know, my brother died last autumn. I was the one who had to identify the body. It was horrible—sorry, but I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘So does that mean that this letter is really just a prank?’

‘I can’t think of any other explanation. My brother died six months ago. That’s the honest truth. And I’m afraid I don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘What do you think about the contents of the letter?’