After much fuss, obviously we wound up playing it. Asahina and Yutaka landed on the strip rock-paper-scissors square, but Asahina’s blank face made it clear she didn’t have the slightest idea what the terms meant, so I wound up playing in her stead. What followed was a parade of squares I can only assume were designed to exhaust me. An hour later, when Tsuruya finally reached the goal, I was about ready to collapse.
I’m sure Koizumi didn’t care about me a bit, but he raised his hand and spoke, as though he’d been looking forward to it.
“Your attention please, everybody. It is now four o’clock,” he announced like a timekeeper for a live broadcast. “It is now free time. Please assemble back here by four thirty. Also, if possible, please refrain from going outside. Of course, that only applies if you are not the murderer.”
“Well then, if you’ll excuse me,” said Yutaka Tamaru, smiling meaningfully as he stood. “I need to unpack the luggage in my room. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in five minutes.”
He left immediately thereafter, whereupon Haruhi announced, “I’m going to the kitchen,” and she did, taking Tsuruya with her, returning a few moments later bearing tea cakes and drinks. No one else left the table. Nobody wanted to be accused of being the murderer, after all—especially if it wasn’t true.
Incidentally, I should add that Yutaka did indeed return five minutes later.
It was just past four thirty in the afternoon.
Mori entered the common area and made an announcement.
“Mr. Keiichi is not answering the door.”
She pretended to look unsettled.
“I checked the shack, but there is no response, and the door has been locked.”
“It’s time!” Haruhi said, standing up gallantly. “We’ll need to check the scene of the crime first.”
Every inch the tour guide, Koizumi headed down the hallway, the rest of us trailing behind.
Upon opening the doors that led to the courtyard, we found outdoor shoes set out for us in advance. After putting them on and making our way down the path to the shack, we found Arakawa waiting beside the door.
“What’s the situation?” asked Haruhi.
“Just as Mori said, I’m sure. The door is locked from the inside, and Mr. Keiichi is the only one who has the key. Incidentally, there are no duplicates.”
“That’s how things are,” noted Koizumi. “However, there is no need to break the door down. Please simply assume that there are no duplicate keys. Arakawa, the key, please.”
Arakawa the butler extended his hand, which contained a key.
“This key does not really exist. Please act as though that were true.”
Koizumi opened the door, through which Haruhi immediately strode.
“Hi.”
Keiichi waved at us. Lying next to the futon, the elder Tamaru brother pointed to his chest.
“I’ve been stabbed again.”
A knife handle stuck out of his chest—a gag toy I’d seen before.
“Who stabbed you?” asked Haruhi.
“I can’t say. I’m dead, after all, and corpses don’t talk.”
With that, his hand flopped down onto the floor.
“Everyone, please,” began Koizumi, “take a careful look around the room. The key to the shack is here on the desk. This is, of course, the one that Keiichi brought with him. That means that the murderer did not leave through the door.”
Koizumi approached the window that faced the veranda.
“The window is closed, but it is not locked, which means that the killer escaped through it. Also, snow is piling up outside.”
Once Koizumi opened the window, we all peered out at the courtyard.
“Allow me to explain the killer’s escape route. We know that he or she did not leave through the door, but escaped through the window. While walking through the snow would of course leave footprints behind, none are visible. Look above the window—the eaves of this shack overhang all four corners, and directly beneath them, the layer of snow is very thin. The killer walked along the outside wall to get to the path that returns to the house.”
I looked down at the ground that Koizumi was pointing to, then back up to the sky. Snow was slowly falling.
“The falling snow has covered up the killer’s footprints. Based on this rate of snowfall… the footprints wouldn’t have disappeared in less than thirty minutes.”
Then, as if to confirm that everybody understood, he added, “This is the scenario. I ask for your cooperation. The corpse cannot talk, but as the game’s master, I will not deceive you.”
“Hmm.”
Haruhi looked back and forth from the snow to Koizumi, then frowned and folded her arms.
“Is that all?”
Koizumi only pointed to the futon. Something seemed to be moving around beneath the soft comforter. Could it be—?
It was Haruhi who pulled the comforter aside, to reveal—
“Shamisen?”
It was definitely our cat, narrowing his eyes at the sudden light.
We returned to the common area and sat around the table.
Mori and Arakawa quietly stood back, while Keiichi—his corpse duties concluded—was probably enjoying a nice cup of coffee somewhere.
“Let’s put the facts in order. Keiichi entered the shack at exactly two o’clock. His body was discovered just a moment ago, at four thirty. We know for sure that the crime was committed sometime during those two and a half hours. The doors were locked from the inside, and the key was inside the room. Let me reiterate that you must assume that there were no duplicate keys. The window that faced the veranda was unlocked, which means the killer escaped through that window.”
Koizumi explained the facts.
“It would be impossible to reach the path to the shack from the window without leaving footprints. The fact that there are no footprints means that the prints that were once there have been covered by the falling snow.”
He looked at the calico cat that my sister held.
“Moreover, Shamisen was present at the scene of the crime when the corpse was discovered. Now, let’s think back. Before discovering him with the body, when did we last see the cat?”
I’d seen him right after Koizumi told everyone to take a bathroom break. He’d been sleeping by the rucksack when Koizumi took Haruhi’s punishment board game out of it, I told everyone.
“What? Really?”
Haruhi pushed on her forehead with her finger.
“Now that you mention it, I don’t have any memory of seeing the cat for the last three hours. Was he really there?”
“I think he was there…” said Asahina without much confidence. “I, um, saw him a few times when we were playing fukuwarai. He was sleeping on the cushion.”
“That was the last I saw of him too!” said Tsuruya. “Right when I stood up to head to the bathroom, I saw the kitty cat all curled up there. I think he was there when we were board-gamin’ it up too.”
It seemed that based on witness testimony, I was the last one to have seen him. Which meant that Shamisen had no alibi from three to four o’clock.
Sometime during the time we were absorbed with the game, he’d woken up and wandered off somewhere. Eventually he’d found his way into Keiichi’s room, then snuck into the futon…
Wait—that can’t be right.
“There’s no way the cat would decide to go into the shack of his own volition,” I said. “He hated the cold so much he freaked out just by being outside for a bit. He flinched away from the snow, and he couldn’t have opened the door from the main house to the courtyard by himself.”
“True.”
Koizumi voiced his mild agreement.
“It stands to reason that someone must have taken him there. Either Keiichi or the killer.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been Keiichi.”
Haruhi butted in.
“He said he was allergic to cats. That was foreshadowing, although it was kinda fake.”
“Of course, that was part of the setup for the mystery. It would have been a bit problematic otherwise. So whoever brought the cat into the room must be the killer. This seems to be a hint.”
Haruhi raised her hand at Koizumi’s declaration.
“Now wait just a minute. So that means Shamisen was with us until three, whereupon he went missing. The killer had to leave the shack no later than four thirty. It took half an hour for the snow to cover the tracks, so that narrows it down to four. That means that the killer took Shamisen—and killed Keiichi—sometime between three and four.”
That sounded right, I said.
“The hell it does!” Haruhi said. “Something’s wrong. The only ones who left the room at four were Tsuruya, Yutaka, and me. But I was with Tsuruya the whole time, so that means she’s not the killer. Yutaka’s suspicious, but if it took at least half an hour for the snow to cover the tracks, he couldn’t have done it either.”
Good point, I said.
“It’s no point at all! It means everyone here has an alibi! We were all here during that hour.”
Eight of us played the board game starting at three—Haruhi, Asahina, Nagato, Koizumi, my little sister, Tsuruya, Yutaka Tamaru, and me. Since the break at three until the beginning of free activity time at four, not a single one of us had left the common area—except for the cat.
“Could it have been Arakawa or Mori?” Haruhi wondered.
The two servants were immediately brought in for interrogation. Haruhi sounded like a police detective as she questioned them.
“Well then, Mr. Arakawa, let’s hear your alibi, starting from three o’clock.”
Arakawa the butler gave a polite bow.
“I’ve been in the kitchen since two o’clock, cleaning up after lunch and preparing for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.”
“Do you have anyone who will vouch for that?”
“If I may,” said Mori, her smile as pure as her maid uniform, “I was with Mr. Arakawa the entire time, helping him prepare. He didn’t leave my sight until I went to wake up Mr. Keiichi.”
“Likewise,” said Arakawa. “At the very least, I can state with confidence that Miss Mori did not leave the kitchen between three and four o’clock.”
“Which means you’re testimony for each other.”
Haruhi nodded thoughtfully.
“But that means you could have conspired to commit the crime together—or that one of you is covering for the other. Am I wrong?”
Haruhi’s shining eyes turned to Koizumi, seeking an explanation.
“That is not the case. This mystery is predicated on a single perpetrator, and neither Arakawa nor Mori will give false testimony. I’ll just come right out and say it—neither of these two is the killer,” said Koizumi.
“Well, then who is it?” said Haruhi happily. “Everyone’s alibi is perfect, which means none of us could have killed Keiichi!”
Koizumi seemed slightly pleased. Haruhi seemed to have hit upon the point he wanted her to hit. With a smile, he replied:
“That is precisely what I want you to think about and solve. There’d be no game otherwise.”
“The first thing we need to think about is why the killer needed Shamisen.”
Having appointed herself chair of the investigation, Haruhi poked at the nose of the calico cat my sister held.
“Otherwise, what’s the point? What was the killer doing that they needed a cat for?”
If the stupid cat would just talk, he could’ve provided crucial testimony—he was a witness, after all.
“What I think is that the killer needed Shamisen to be there for some reason,” said Haruhi.
Even I knew that much. The question was, what was that reason?
“Kitty, kitty cat… hmm…” Asahina muttered charmingly under her breath, her hand touching her chin as she mulled it over. “Cat. Calico cat. Calico. Hmm… kitty… kitty food…”
She didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, though.
Tsuruya always seemed to have pretty sharp eyes; she stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes back as she thought. I guessed that was just how she looked when she was thinking hard. She silently folded her arms, maintaining her funny expression.
Speaking of silence, there was Nagato. Although at the moment, it was probably best for her to stay silent. I’d bet with a fair amount of confidence that Nagato had seen through whatever trick Koizumi was playing. Maybe I’d get her to tell us who the culprit was once everyone else had given up, I thought.
“Shamisen’s alibi is the key. If only he hadn’t shown himself the whole time… a locked room trick? A locked room using snow to impose a time limit… hmm?”