The Decagon House Murders

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  And so the trap to catch the sinners was set.

  3

  The next day, 26th March, the six arrived.

  They didn’t suspect anything. They knew there would be no way to contact the mainland, no matter what happened on the island during the week. Even so, they showed no signs of anxiety and were all enjoying their adventure.

  That night, he retreated to his room early, saying he wasn’t feeling well because of a cold. This was the reason he had not been drinking any water.

  He knew that the symptoms of mild dehydration resembled that of a cold. He couldn’t have just faked an illness. That wouldn’t have fooled Poe, who was studying to be a doctor. On the other hand, any suspicion about him would disappear if Poe examined him and declared him to be ill.

  Leaving the cheerful chattering behind him, he changed into his wetsuit, put everything he needed in a knapsack and sneaked out of the window. He went down to the rocky area, set his boat up and went back over to J— Cape in the night. Then he raced his motorbike back to O— City, returning to his own room around eleven.

  He was exhausted of course, but the crucial part of the plan was only just beginning.

  He made a phone call to Kawaminami. He needed him as a witness to the fact he was in O— City.

  There was no reply, but if Kawaminami was going around investigating as planned, then he was sure to call on Morisu eventually. He might even have called for him several times already. If so, Kawaminami would probably ask where Morisu had been, but he had prepared an excuse for such an eventuality. The painting.

  He had prepared it to prove what he was doing on the mainland, while the six were on the island. The painting of the stone Buddhas. Or, to be precise, paintings, plural. He had made three paintings.

  One was a charcoal sketch that he had only started to colour. In another, he had applied colour to the whole painting with a palette knife. And the third was a finished article. The three paintings were all of the same scene, of course.

  It was a scene he had come across last autumn, when he had been wandering around with a broken heart and happened to arrive in the mountains of the Kunisaki Peninsula.

  From memory he prepared three paintings in different stages, changing the colours of the light and vegetation to those of early spring.

  He put the earliest stage of the painting on the easel as he looked at the letter he had sent to himself, waiting for Kawaminami’s call. If he didn’t manage to get in contact with Kawaminami, he would need to find a different “witness”. He tried to quell the restless anxiety lurking in his feverish mind.

  Near midnight, the phone finally rang.

  Kawaminami had taken the bait according to plan. He said he had gone to the home of Nakamura Kōjirō in Kannawa that day. Morisu had felt slightly uneasy about the appearance of Shimada Kiyoshi, however, the man Kawaminami had met in Kannawa.

  He decided that it would be better to have more witnesses. But he couldn’t have someone sticking their nose in too much. When they asked Morisu to join their little detective game, that was just what he had been hoping for.

  Fortunately the two were focusing on the past rather than the present, so at least he didn’t have to worry about them following the six to the island. To suggest as strongly as possible to the pair that he was part of the investigation, he used the phrase “armchair detective”, saying he would play that role in their group. After telling them that he would be going to Kunisaki the next day, he asked them to call again that night. His suggestion that they visit Yoshikawa Masako in Ajimu was designed to distract them from the current events on Tsunojima.

  After the two had left, he slept for a while. Before dawn he rode his motorbike back to J— Cape again and hurried to Tsunojima in the boat he had left tied up at the coast.

  Returning to the Decagon House, he made sure nobody was out in the main hall and arranged the plates on the table.

  What were those plates for?

  Did he wish for them to reflect on what it meant to become a “victim”? Was he bound to some sort of a weird sense of duty, thinking it would be unfair if he did not announce their “punishments” in advance? Or perhaps he simply relished the irony of these pretend detectives becoming real victims. The answer his twisted mind had come up with was a combination of those three reasons.

  The second night, he managed to retreat to his room even earlier than the night before. There was a tricky moment when Carr accused him of being behind the plates, just as he was leaving the hall, but he managed to get out of that.

  He was suffering badly from dehydration by now. Before he put on his wetsuit, he drank all of the water in the jug Agatha had given him to take with the medicine, leaving not a single drop. He was not planning to make any trips to the mainland after the third day, so he wouldn’t need any more excuses for going to bed early. He needed to rehydrate and restore his health as quickly as possible.

  The trip from Tsunojima to O— City was even harder than the night before. At many points he felt like giving up on his plan halfway through. Looking back, it was a mystery how all that energy could have been stored inside that dehydrated body.

  After returning to his room on the mainland, his first thought had been to rehydrate further. Even after Kawaminami and Shimada had arrived and started discussing the case, he still continued to drink several cups of tea.

  He had no intention of returning to O— City from the next day on, so, after performing his role of armchair detective, he acted dismissively towards their plans. He declared that he was withdrawing from their investigation, thus making sure they would not try to reach him again.

  The harsh words he had spewed against Shimada did, however, reflect his true feelings. He was truly angry when he discovered they were digging into the circumstances surrounding Chiori’s birth.

  Just as on the previous day, he returned to the island before dawn. He went back to his room in the Decagon House, where he calmed his anger in the darkness.

  4

  There were several reasons for choosing Orczy as his first victim.

  First of all, it was something like an act of mercy. If she died early, she would be spared the subsequent fear and panic that would affect the other five.

  Orczy had been good friends with Chiori. There was something about that girl, always looking away, that resembled his love. Orczy had also probably not actively contributed to the murder of Chiori. She had been a mere onlooker. But even so, that didn’t mean he would exclude her from his revenge.

  Another important reason was the golden ring he had seen on the middle finger of Orczy’s left hand.

  He had never before seen Orczy wear a ring on her finger. That is why he had noticed it. It was the ring he had once given Chiori for her birthday.

  He remembered Orczy’s tear-filled eyes at Chiori’s funeral. She had probably been given the ring as a memento.

  If she had been such close friends with Chiori, she might also know that Tsunojima was Chiori’s home. She might even have known about his and Chiori’s relationship.

  His initials and Chiori’s had been carved on the inside of the ring. “MK & NC”. Even if Chiori hadn’t told Orczy about it, she might have noticed the engraving in the ring after Chiori’s death. Once the murders on the island had actually started, there was a good chance she would figure out the motive and the identity of the murderer.

  That’s why he killed Orczy first. He had no other choice.

  He sneaked out into the hall and went straight to Orczy’s room. He’d kept it a secret from the others, but his uncle had given him the master key to all the doors in the Decagon House. He used that to get inside her room. Being careful not to wake her, he quickly wrapped the cord around her neck and pulled it with all his strength.

  Orczy’s eyes opened wide and seemed about to pop out of her skull. Her mouth contorted. Her
face lost colour before his eyes, her strength to fight back ebbed away. And finally she breathed her last. He arranged her body neatly simply because he felt sorry for her.

  He tried to remove the ring from her finger. He wanted to keep it as a memento of Chiori, of course, but he was also afraid someone might notice the initials on the ring. But Orczy’s fingers were swollen, perhaps because of the island’s new environment she wasn’t used to, and he could not get the ring off.

  As long as the ring stayed on Orczy’s finger, the initials weren’t visible. But he couldn’t just leave behind this precious memory he shared with Chiori.

  He decided to use brute force and take the whole hand.

  If he only cut off the middle finger, he’d be calling attention to the ring that had been there. Also, the act of cutting off the left hand would serve as an allusion to what happened in the Blue Mansion the year before. He thought that this connection might lead to interesting reactions. In the words of Shimada Kiyoshi, it would suggest the idea of Nakamura Seiji to the gang on the island.

  Using the knife he’d prepared as one of his murder weapons, he managed, after a struggle, to cut off the hand from the body. He buried it behind the building for the moment. He would dig it up and take off the ring after everything was over.

  To suggest the possibility that an outsider had done it, he unlocked both Orczy’s window and her door. And then, the final touch. He took out the plate with ‘The First Victim’ from the cupboard drawer in the kitchen and glued it to the door.

  He’d smeared prussic acid on Agatha’s lipstick the day before, in the afternoon of the second day, the 27th. The plates had already made their appearance on the stage, but nobody was acting very cautiously yet and he found a chance to sneak into her room.

  He’d imagined his trap would yield results around the same time that Orczy’s body was discovered. But he was in a hurry and he could only smear the poison on the one lipstick he found. His “time bomb” took much longer to go off than he’d expected.

  The eleven-sided cup was next in line.

  He’d discovered the existence of the strange cup the night everyone arrived on the island. He was handed it by chance, and realized he could use it.

  On the morning of the second day, after arranging the plastic plates, he had taken the cup with him to his room. There were extra cups in the cupboard, so he took one out to replace the one with eleven sides.

  The poison he had brought with him had been stolen from a laboratory at the science faculty. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and arsenous acid. The poison he smeared on the cup was the odourless arsenous acid. At some time before dinner on the third day, he managed to switch the poisoned cup with one of the six cups set on the kitchen counter, unseen by the others, who were all still in shock.

  There was a one-in-six probability he would end up with the eleven-sided cup, but he would simply not drink from it if that happened. It turned out there was no need for that and Carr became “the Second Victim”.

  Carr died of poisoning in front of his very eyes. That was more visceral, more horrible than Orczy’s death. He was committing a terrible crime. This realization made his heart ache. But there was no turning back now. He would need to set body and soul to it and cold-bloodedly and daringly complete his revenge.

  The group finally split up before dawn. He waited until everyone had fallen asleep to sneak into Carr’s room, cut off the left hand of the corpse and throw it in the bathtub. This was to stay consistent with his “allusion” and to camouflage the real reason for cutting off Orczy’s hand. He then picked the plastic plate with “The Second Victim” from his own spare set and glued it to the door.

  Then he went to the ruins of the Blue Mansion.

  He could still hear the words Ellery had spoken just before Carr collapsed: There might be an underground room there.

  His uncle had told him about the underground room. The plastic tanks full of kerosene that he had transported to the island along with the other supplies on the fisherman’s boat had been hidden there among the rubbish.

  Ellery seemed to suspect someone was hiding down there. It was obvious he would go to look around.

  Morisu wiped the floor with pine needles and left traces to suggest that someone had been living there. Next, he took some line from Poe’s fishing gear and strung it across the staircase. As he had expected, Ellery got caught in his trap the following day.

  Oh, foolish Ellery.

  Ellery did indeed have an extremely sharp mind. But he was also unbelievably careless and stupid. Nobody who would cheerfully dive into a suspicious underground room without taking any precautions deserved the glorious title of “detective”. Ellery got away without any serious injury, just a sprained ankle. But even if Morisu had silently hoped for a deadlier outcome, he had not seriously been expecting that adding to the body count would be such child’s play.

  One thing he had not anticipated was the situation with Agatha’s lipstick. Watching her closely, he’d realized that the lipstick she was using was of a different colour from the one he had smeared poison on. If she was still unharmed by the following day, he would need to think about taking other measures.

  He became slightly anxious when Poe suggested they search all the rooms.

  He had, of course, reckoned on such a possibility. The plates, glue and knife were hidden among the trees outside and he had buried the clothes that had been covered in blood when he cut off the hands. The tanks of kerosene were in the underground room and he was carrying the poison on his body. It was unlikely they would do a body search. The only thing left in his room was his wetsuit, but even if they saw that, he could just make up an excuse for it.

  But he definitely did not want the others to know about the state of his room. He could just have said that he took the worst room because it was his responsibility as the one who arranged everything, but it would be better if they didn’t find out. That’s why he objected to Poe’s suggestion at the time.

  And that night, due to Agatha’s hysterics, everyone went back to their rooms unexpectedly early. He had not planned to leave the island that night, but there was no reason for him to spend one whole night doing nothing. If he could go back to O— City and meet up with Kawaminami, he could make sure his alibi was airtight.

  He was feeling really ill. The cloudy sky worried him, but the weather forecast on the radio said there was little chance it would rain and that the waves were peaceful. He made up his mind to make his way to O— City as he had done the previous two nights. First he went back to his own room. Then he set his canvas holder on his motorbike to make it appear he was on his way back from Kunisaki and only then headed over to Kawaminami’s place.

  5

  A light rain fell during the night, but it did not interfere with his plans and on the morning of the fifth day, 30th March, he managed to return to the island safely around the time the sky started to lighten.

  He stopped the motor as he approached the rocky area and paddled to the coast. He had just tied the boat to a rock and was pulling it on to the shore when it happened. An unforeseen incident.

  He heard a short cry and felt someone’s eyes on his back. He looked up. Standing in the middle of the staircase, looking down at him with an alarmed expression, was Leroux.

  I have been seen! I must kill him, Morisu thought instantly.

  There was no time to think calmly about what the timid Leroux was doing there alone at that time of day. He might have seen the rope tied around the rock at some point, and now, thinking it suspicious, have come back to investigate. Anyway, Leroux had seen him. He probably hadn’t figured it all out, but now he knew more than enough to work out what was going on.

  Morisu picked up a stone from the ground and ran after Leroux as fast as he could.

  He was in a panic, but Leroux was panicking even more. He stumbled over his own
feet as he tried to run away and the distance between the two quickly shortened. Leroux cried out loudly for help from the Decagon House. Morisu had almost caught up with him by then and threw the rock at the back of Leroux’s head. It hit its target with a dull sound and Leroux fell forward. Morisu picked the rock up once more and aimed for the crack in Leroux’s head again and again…

  After making sure Leroux was dead, he hurried back to the rocky area. He had noticed the footprints, but he was in too much of a panic to handle that problem coolly. Someone might have heard Leroux’s cries and be on their way over already, he feared.

  He swiftly checked whether the footprints had any distinguishing characteristics. He saw nothing that could connect the footprints to any particular individual. They would only be inspected by amateurs, not the police, so leaving footprints like these should be fine. With that conclusion, he forgot about the problem of the footprints.

  What he feared the most was that someone would come running down from the house. If his boat were seen, all would be over.

  He first moved the boat away from the rocky area towards the inlet. There was plenty of room under the pier and the water surface, so he manoeuvred the boat there for the moment, then waited out of sight, listening. Nobody was up. He had been lucky.

  He climbed onto the pier, folded the boat up and hid it in the boathouse. It was risky, but it would be even more risky to return to the rocky area.

  He sneaked into the Decagon House and glued the plate with “The Third Victim” on the door of Leroux’s room. After that he finally managed to slip inside his sleeping bag.

  His excited nerves only allowed him a light sleep. His whole body felt numb and tired. He felt sick to his stomach. Awoken by the alarm of his wristwatch, he left his room to drink some water and discovered Agatha’s body. She had changed lipstick colours that morning.