The Red Locked Room Page 8

  ‘Oh, how unfortunate. Was there anything distinctive in his walk or the way he spoke?’

  ‘As I said, I really don’t remember.’

  ‘Was there nothing that left an impression on you? For example, perhaps he cried when you pulled his teeth?’

  The dentist did not seem to mind the persistent line of questioning.

  ‘He wasn’t a child anymore, and we have effective anaesthetics, so teeth are pulled while the patient’s asleep.’

  The dentist then seemed to recall something. He frowned and stared at the turntable with chemical bottles and then looked up again.

  ‘There’s one thing I do remember. After I pulled his teeth, he had a light fainting spell, so I loosened his tie and had him rest on the bed in the back there. After a sip of cognac, he redid his necktie and got up again. I think I saw a small blue spot on his neck then, like a bruise.’

  ‘A bruise, that sounds interesting. Do you remember the shape?’

  The dentist looked at the clock.

  ‘Your three minutes are up. To tell you the truth, I didn’t take a good look at it, because I thought it was not done to take advantage of someone who had fainted. Perhaps the nurse who helped him did.’

  He picked up some absorbent cotton with his tweezers. Kimiko prepared to take her leave, but still couldn’t help asking further.

  ‘Could I have a talk with her?’

  ‘She’s married now, living in Funabashi.’

  ‘Could you tell me her address?’

  Kimiko was still wearing her charming smile. The dentist took out his address book and told her the address of the nurse as well as her new, married name.

  It would be necessary for her to visit the nurse in Kaijinchō, Funabashi in order to clear up the matter of whether the patient had been Karasuda, as the dentist believed, or Okabe, as Kimiko believed.

  9

  The following day, Onitsura was paid a third visit by Kimiko. There had always been a sparkle in her eyes, but now they were shining even more brilliantly, accentuating her feminine charm. He offered a seat and waited patiently for what she had to tell him. He could make out the fire of victory in her eyes. The chief inspector could only listen humbly to how this young woman had unravelled a mystery which had baffled the authorities.

  Kimiko pulled out a yellow pearl container and offered him a cigarette, which he declined, but lit her cigarette for her. He realised that she was an inexperienced smoker, who was only smoking now to help calm her nerves. She coughed once to clear her throat and began in the same calm manner as always.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything today. I’ve discovered something you don’t know about yet. I believed Mr. Okabe was innocent of the murder, so I wanted to find evidence of that, no matter what. That’s why I went to Chigasaki on my own and sneaked inside Mr. Karasuda’s house to take a look around. My efforts were rewarded, and I found something of interest. What do you think it was?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘It was the empty can I had you test the day before yesterday.’

  Kimiko snapped the cover of her handbag open, took the can out and placed it on Onitsura’s desk.

  ‘You determined that Mr. Karasuda’s fingerprints were on this can, if you remember. When I found it in the kitchen, it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. Take a look at this.’

  She pointed at the printing on the cover of the can. It said 7305.

  ‘This code indicates that the can was produced on March 5th, 1957. If the body found in the cellar storage is Mr. Karasuda, don’t you find it strange that his fingerprints are found on a tin of sardines in tomato sauce produced after he died?’

  Kimiko spoke casually, but she was absolutely right. If Karasuda’s fingerprints were on this can, then that meant the body found in the cellar room was not that of Karasuda. Onitsura felt deeply embarrassed. When the skull had been determined to have been Karasuda’s, the authorities had become convinced the murderer was Okabe, and had focused on finding his fingerprints to the exclusion of everything else. It was an inexcusable mistake. It would have taken several days for the can to arrive at the local shops after production, so Karasuda had to have been in that house for a while after the murder occurred, after which he vanished.

  ‘I see your point, but what if the culprit had taken inspiration from detective novels and secured Mr. Karasuda’s fingerprint in advance before making a stamp of it? That way, he could place Karasuda’s fingerprint on the can after killing him, and leave it the kitchen for others to find. What do you think of that?’

  Kimiko’s lips contorted. She was probably sneering in her mind at the uninspired possibility Onitsura had just proposed.

  ‘I paid a visit to Hanayama Dentists in Shinbashi, in order to question the dentist who claimed it was Mr. Karasuda’s skull, but he couldn’t remember the patient’s face. I kept pressing, and he finally remembered seeing something like a bruise on the patient’s neck. He gave me the address of the nurse that had seen him, and she told me it wasn’t a bruise. On his neck, right below the knot of his necktie, was a small tattoo of a blue rose. That was when I finally had confirmation that the patient had in fact been Mr. Okabe. He has a blue tattoo on his neck, which he got in Marseille long ago. I had brought a photograph of him from home and showed it to the nurse. She identified the patient as Mr. Okabe and said she would gladly testify when needed.’

  When she had finished, Kimiko looked Onitsura straight in the eye. The joy of victory, the feeling of pride and her contempt for the authorities had all come together, and her eyes shone even more brightly.

  Onitsura accepted his defeat, and started to think. If the patient had been Okabe, why had he used someone else’s name to get treated? As long as that remained unexplained, it was natural to assume that the person who got treated was the one registered: Kanichi Karasuda. It could simply be said that the nurse had been mistaken. Okabe had a tattoo on his neck, but Karasuda was also an artist, and it was possible that he, too, had once visited France and had the same tattoo done in Marseille.

  But he didn’t want to disillusion the young woman, so he kept his doubts to himself.

  Kimiko was beaming. Her well-shaped lips opened slightly, showing a glimpse of her white teeth. Her coloured cheeks were proof of her excitement.

  ‘Mr. Onitsura, as you now see, the culprit is Mr. Karasuda. You weren’t able to catch the murderer, because the investigation mistakenly assumed it was Mr. Okabe. The real person you’re after is Mr. Karasuda.’

  Kimiko seemed almost possessed as she repeated her accusation and recited all her efforts to get at the truth: what she learnt at Deidosha, what the concierges of the Kōryō Building had told her, what happened when she visited the artists who received the mysterious parcels, and of course how she had sneaked into Karasuda’s home.

  As she was speaking, the chief inspector’s gaze started to wander. He pretended to be listening, but he was actually thinking about another matter. When Kimiko noticed, she suddenly stood up with her handbag in her arms. It was only then that Onitsura realised how rude he had been and tried to stop her. Kimiko was outraged. She felt like accusing him of thinking about dinner instead of listening to her.

  ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time. Please make sure you catch Mr. Karasuda.’

  ‘Of course,’ replied the policeman confidently. And that while he’s only shown how incompetent he is, thought Kimiko.

  ‘I expect results.’

  ‘You can count on us. We will inform you the moment we’ve found him. It will all be due to your information.’

  Onitsura knew she was furious at him, but he didn’t mind.

  10

  Five days passed seemingly without any developments. Kimiko made sure not to miss the newspapers and the news on the radio, but there was nothing to indicate anything had happened. She assumed the police were still on the wrong trail, which frustrated her. But on the sixth day Onitsura called her to say that they had found Karasuda and that the case was now sol
ved. He invited her to come over.

  Kimiko was an aspiring actress, and had been watching a rehearsal of The Cherry Orchard performed by the senior actors in her group, but she quickly left the rehearsal hall and headed for the Metropolitan Police Department. She had a very low opinion of Onitsura, so she was surprised the chief inspector had actually succeeded in capturing Karasuda. She was not particularly pleased, however, and actually felt outdone by him.

  It was her fourth visit to the chief inspector’s office. There was a discoloured sheet of paper taped to the door which said Decapitated Body - Investigation HQ. Kimiko couldn’t help feeling all kinds of emotions as she read those words. Although she was fiercely competitive, she was also a very emotional person.

  Onitsura greeted her with a friendly smile and offered her a seat.

  ‘Where is Karasuda?’

  ‘Here. The case is solved, so you don’t need to worry anymore,’ said the chief inspector in his usual calm manner. Karasuda was probably being detained in one of the underground cells of this building, thought Kimiko, secretly laughing. How ironic: the case had started in an underground room and was now ending in one.

  ‘Last time, it was you who was telling me about the fingerprints on the can, so now it’s my turn.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  Kimiko was still a bit angry, which showed in the way she spoke.

  ‘You see, we only arrived at the true conclusion of this case because the key to solving the mystery had been hidden in something you told me.’

  ‘Oh, and what was that?’

  ‘Just a small matter. You told me that you’d visited the concierges’ room in the Kōryō Building to talk with the men there. Your conversation with them held a vital hint. It was a truly trivial matter, so it was no wonder you overlooked it.’

  Kimiko looked at the chief inspector in bewilderment. The case should have been solved the moment they found Karasuda and arrested him. Did that mean that it was her talk with the concierges of the Kōryō Building that had led to the arrest of Karasuda? She tried to replay the conversation in her mind, but she couldn’t recall anything significant.

  ‘You don’t remember?’ asked Onitsura. Although she didn’t like admitting it, Kimiko shook her head.

  ‘No, please explain.’

  ‘You told me that the two of them had carried something into one of the storage rooms, not knowing that there was a dead body in the room next door. They hadn’t gone there since, because they felt it was too creepy to go down alone. As I listened to you, I wondered what they could have carried down. Because they said they hadn’t been down there since, it meant that nothing had been added or removed from the storage rooms and so the item they had carried down was still there. But we only found a chair and a wooden screen in the other storage room, which meant that one of those two items had been carried in by them. Obviously, it wouldn’t have taken the strength of two adult men to carry that light chair down, so it must have been the screen, which would have been much too heavy for one person.’

  Kimiko could follow Onitsura’s reasoning, but had no idea what it meant. She had previously thought very little of the man, but now he seemed to be going through a whole chain of deduction. Surprised by this side of him, she couldn’t help staring.

  ‘The crime had occurred in the farthest storage room down the corridor, as reported in the newspapers. The culprit shot the revolver twice there. One bullet penetrated the victim’s body, passed through the window in the dividing wall to enter the room next door, and made a hole in the screen. But consider this: if the body was already lying in the room next door when those men carried the screen downstairs, then why was there a bullet hole in the screen? You have to agree that it’s awfully curious that a screen which wasn’t there at the time of the murder, still managed to be damaged by the bullet.’

  ‘Couldn’t he have returned a few days later to the crime scene for some reason, and shot the screen on purpose?’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Hm…’

  It annoyed Kimiko that she wasn’t able to come up with an answer. It was embarrassing.

  ‘I decided to pursue that line of thought, so after you left my office the other day, I made a phone call to the Kōryō Building to see if my deductions could be confirmed.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘I learned that it had indeed been the screen that they had carried there. I asked them what day that was, and the reply was around noon of the third of March. It was a Sunday, and Doll’s Day, so they were sure about that date. But now you have to listen carefully. The murder must have occurred after they carried the screen into the storage room. The bullet hole in the screen could only have been made if the crime happened after it had been carried there. That meant the victim was shot after noon on the third of March, which turned the whole case upside down.’

  Kimiko fully understood Onitsura’s explanation, but she wasn’t able to fully grasp how the case was turned upside down by it. But the attractive, obstinate woman didn’t want Onitsura to know, so she pretended to have understood everything.

  ‘It was truly unfortunate for the killer to have shot the screen, and truly fortunate that we realised that trivial fact. Once we did, counting backwards then provided the answers we sought. Simple arithmetic even a first grader in elementary school can do. One minus one equals zero. Only the person who received the revolver in a parcel on the third of March, and presented it to the police the following day, could have committed the murder.’

  ‘… But that means Ms. Ui is the culprit.’

  ‘Exactly. Utako Ui is the murderer of Otsugorō Okabe.’

  Having once been convinced that Karasuda was the murderer, Kimiko could only gasp in surprise when she learned the truth. But once the initial shock had worn off, she could feel her hate towards the murderer well up inside.

  ‘Why… why did she kill him?’

  ‘Her motive was jealousy, because he had dumped her for another woman. Let me repeat: the perpetrator of that horrendous crime was a woman, and her motive was revenge born out of jealousy. Soon after the crime was discovered, I myself had visited Ms. Ui. She told me she had been the one to have had enough of Mr. Okabe and that she had thrown him out of her house. In fact, the opposite was true, and he had dumped her because he had fallen in love with you.’

  Kimiko’s face turned pale and her whole body trembled. When she had believed the culprit to be a man, she hadn’t thought much of it, but she had to shudder at the thought of how that woman had committed the murder in that dark underground room.

  ‘She’s like a witch from the Middle Ages, killing the man she once lived with and cutting his head off. But what was the meaning of that business with the parcels, then?’

  ‘It’s quite simple once you know the trick. Let me explain it to you in order. Once she had decided to commit murder, it became necessary to take measures to avoid suspicion. Any clever murderer would do that, but the exceptionally intelligent Ms. Ui devised a particularly ingenious plan. She would make it appear as if the victim himself was the culprit. The idea was that the police would go around desperately looking for a dead person, which would make it impossible for them to catch the killer.’

  Kimiko nodded silently, and Onitsura continued.

  ‘In her confession, Ms. Ui stated she had come across that underground room by accident. She had lowered the victim’s guard by getting him drunk, and then led him to the storage room, where she shot him once. But he got up again, so she quickly fired a second shot. The she dragged him to the sofa, still alive, and strangled him. Afterwards she decapitated him and burned his fingerprints off.’

  Utako Ui had stated she had lured Okabe to the crime scene by saying Kimiko was waiting for him. He had been heavily intoxicated, but upon hearing the name of the woman he loved, he went down into the cellar unsuspectingly. The name Kimiko had been as effective on him as Ali Baba’s magical phrase, a fact which only served to strengthen Utako’s fury.

  O
nitsura’s account of the murder had intentionally been brief to minimise the pain on Kimiko, which was also why he avoided naming Okabe and merely referred to him as the victim. But when he began to describe the actual murder, it seemed his considerations had been in vain. Kimiko’s mouth was contorted as she listened in pain. But being the strong-willed woman she was, she never told him to stop. She was prepared to listen to how her lover had been beheaded.

  ‘The purpose of the decapitation was, of course, to make it impossible to identify the victim. It was necessary to cut the head off starting at the base of the neck, due to the tattoo. It was quite difficult, she said.’

  ‘How horrid, strangling a living person to death. Why didn’t she just kill him with the revolver?’

  ‘I’ll explain that in a minute, but first let me determine when the crime actually occurred. She presented the revolver at her local police box on the fourth of March. Given that the screen had been moved downstairs around noon of the third, it became obvious the murder had been committed sometime between the evening of the third and the early hours of the fourth. We, however, had erroneously assumed the crime had already been committed by the time the revolver was delivered in a parcel to Ms. Ui. In fact, that strange parcel was actually a prop, to make us believe the murder had already occurred, to imply that Ms. Ui herself was not the murderer, and to suggest that Mr. Okabe was the culprit. We were completely fooled and became convinced that Mr. Okabe was indeed the murderer. I’m terribly sorry,’ said Onitsura, from the depths of his heart.

  ‘How did the parcel suggest he was the killer?’

  ‘Let me go through it from the beginning. On the first of March, Mr. Okabe was invited by Ms. Ui to her atelier in Hayashichō. They were about to go their separate ways, but since they had lived together for so long, she hoped they could at least spend their last days together in a nice way. He was touched by this gentle side of her, and he also felt pity for her, so he agreed. On the second of March he went to Deidosha to buy some frames because she had asked him to. I don’t know whether Ms. Ui is skilled at controlling men in general, or whether she had learned how to get on his good side by living together for two or three years, but he did what she asked of him. And that was handy in making him appear as the murderer. She had made the face of the victim unrecognizable, but she had left his clothes and other possessions untouched. This contradiction was her first misdirection, and it led us to jump to the conclusion that Mr. Okabe might not have been the victim, but was instead the murderer. The second misdirection was when she viewed the body of the victim at the Medical Examiner's Office and lied about it not being that of Mr. Okabe. The third was when she had Mr. Okabe visit Deidosha on the second of March. And, finally, because the parcel with the gun had been posted on the second of March, it was assumed that the crime had been committed in the early hours of that day. That was the fourth misdirection. They were all pitfalls that Ms. Ui had dug for us, and we fell into every one of them. We truly believed that Mr. Okabe was the murderer, exactly as she had planned.’