Ellery Queen's Japanese Golden Dozen. Ellery Queen

Nakamura's house is off the street a ways, some distance. I had no idea he'd be able to see me from his toilet window. He eats at our noodle shop.

      "Just like he said he would, Yamagishi had opened the door. I knew the teacher and his woman had gone to Kyushu three or four days ago. The teacher eats at the shop. He told me himself.

      "Before I went to the door, I went around behind the house. I hunted around and found a chunk of wood from the pile I knew was there. Nobody was home upstairs, either—I made sure. All the windows were shuttered. No sign of light anywhere through the cracks.

      "So I went to the door. I stepped into the hallway and called to Yamagishi. He came to meet me. There was a light in the other room. I held the hunk of wood behind me. It was shadowy.

      "'You know, it's late,' he said. But he was grinning and didn't seem upset. He was sure as the devil thinking about the two million. 'It's okay, though,' he said. 'C'mon, in.'

      "I tried to stall, thinking about the piece of wood. I said something about being sorry to disturb him so late, and all. Told him I'd managed to get together two million yen. I didn't want to leave it home for fear of thieves.

      "'C'mon, c'mon,' he said, moving into the next room. He pulled two seat cushions from a stack in the corner and put them by a table. I kept the wood behind me as I stepped up into the main part of the house from the hall. The second I sat on the cushion, I stuck it underneath, behind me, and said, 'I brought the money; how's for writing me a receipt?' I figured the subject of money would keep his attention. I let him see the fake newspaper-wrapped parcel I'd fixed, bulging from my front pocket. He figured it was the money, okay. He jumped up to go into the next room, probably for blank receipts.

      "I thought, this is it, and leaped up, too. In one move I smashed him on the back of his bald head with the chunk of wood. I gave it everything. He gave a hell of a yell and fell on his face. I bent down and smashed him three more times on the back of the head. He lay there on his face and didn't move. Then, to make it look like I'd been a thief and not a guest, I put the two cushions back on the pile in the corner.

      "Then I went into the next room to look for the cashbox. I found it in the cupboard. I wanted to take it out and tear up the notes like he'd made me suffer, but I didn't know the combination to the lock. I decided to take the box with me. After I left the house, I put the piece of wood on the pile in back. I don't remember exactly where. It was dark. It took maybe thirty minutes, all told.

      "The moon was coming up now. I went down the road a little ways, then walked off it into a clump of deep grass. I hunted around, found a large stone, and cracked the lock on the cashbox. I looked quickly through the promissory notes, took the ones with my name on them, along with five or six others. I put these in my pocket. It was hard to see, but I'd been able to make out the names in the pale moonlight. I tossed the box into the irrigation pond on my right. Then I went along to the playground of a life-insurance company, not far away, where I lit a match and burned the notes I'd been carrying in my pocket. I scuffed the ashes into the ground.

      "I was plenty surprised when the police told me they had recovered the cashbox from the pond, and that my notes were still there. It turned out that Yamagishi's account book had a customer with a name like mine: Tomio Inoki. The police claimed I must've been mistaken, thinking his notes were mine, in the dark. I'd destroyed the wrong ones. Inoki's notes were missing from the box. I was very excited at the time, so it could have been like that.

      "After I'd done all this, I went back to the Manpaiso, where my friends were still playing mahjong. I watched maybe ten minutes, till Nakada won the round. Then I took Shibata's place and played a round myself. None of them knew I'd just murdered a man. If I say so, I was very calm. I guess it was because I had no guilt feelings about having killed Yamagishi.

      "I slept well that night. I had burned the notes. Yamagishi had no heirs. The debts would be canceled. I felt happy and relieved.

      "The next day, the news of the death caused a big stir in the neighborhood. But there was no one to feel sorry about it. I felt fine when people said it was good he was gone, that he got what was coming to him.

      "Two days later, I was watching television in the shop, when two detectives came. They asked me to come to the station. They had a few things to ask me. At the time, I knew it might be the end. Maybe it was wrong to kill him. But he deserved it. I made up my mind to tell the police everything. Of course, if I could, I wanted to make it look like I wasn't guilty."

      Reading all this, Harajima got the impression that the case was indeed simple. It could arouse little interest in any lawyer, private or court-assigned: The best he could do would be to ask for clemency on the basis of extenuating circumstances. But as he went on with the case report, he was surprised. Ueki abruptly changed, and claimed to have nothing to do with the murder. He insisted the confession had been the result of psychological torment and leading questions, plus a promise of leniency on the part of police investigators. Of course, defendants like Ueki made this kind of claim often, especially in cases involving heavy punishment.

      Just the same, from the evidence in these documents, Harajima felt reasonably sure Ueki was guilty. The written confession sounded natural and unforced. It agreed with the results of the police investigation on the murder site and environs. It did not appear to have been made under police pressure, as Ueki claimed.

      Nonetheless, in front of the public prosecutor, Torao Ueki had issued another deposition containing the following information.

      3

      "It's true, as stated before, I was playing mahjong with Nakada, Maeda, and Nishikawa in the Manpaiso and that, after two games, Shibata took my place. It's true, I went over to the phone booth in front of the station, called Jin Yamagishi, and told him I had to talk about the securities involved in the loan. It's also true he told me he was up and waiting—and that I went to his house. The rest of the statement I made at the police station, it's untrue.

      "I didn't tell Yamagishi on the phone that I'd scraped together two million yen. I could never find that much money. God. But the police kept on insisting Yamagishi wouldn't get out of bed to see me 'less I'd brought money. They claimed, if I'd just told him I wanted to see him, he'd say to wait till the next day. They said I put something in my pocket that looked like a bundle of money, before going to the house. So I thought about what they said. On the basis of Yamagishi's personality, a third person would see eye-to-eye with the police. So I agreed they were right.

      "Actually, I simply told Yamagishi I wanted him to wait before taking possession of the securities. If I lost the land and shop, my whole family would have nothing to live on. I said I had an idea for a solution, and I wanted him to listen. He said possession of the securities wasn't really what he wanted—he'd only decided to take such a step because he didn't think there was any hope of my repaying the money. If I had some proposal, he'd consider it. He said I was to come, and that he'd leave the front door open.

      "So I walked close to his house, but couldn't go in. I didn't have any damned proposal to make. I was so damned worried about the loss of the land and shop, all I wanted to do was ask him to wait. But I knew this would only make him angrier than ever. I couldn't bring myself to confront him. I felt bad. I just wandered around the neighborhood for maybe thirty minutes, then started back.

      "I didn't feel like playing mahjong. I wandered around the playground of the life-insurance company, while thinking over my troubles. It's a country road. I didn't meet anybody. I must've wandered like that for an hour before I went back to the mahjong parlor. The game was nearly over. I took Shibata's place and played for a while. Since I'd done nothing wrong, I was calm. My friends testified to that. My wife says I slept well that night. After all, there was nothing on my conscience. This is really what happened that night. I'll say this about the false confession I gave earlier:

      "First off, I told the police I didn't kill Yamagishi. They wouldn't listen. One after the other, detectives came into the room. They said it'd do no good to lie. Said they had all the proof they needed. According to their side, the stolen cashbox had been recovered from one of the two irrigation ponds. The combination lock was smashed. Inside, they found twenty-two water-soaked promissory notes, including mine—for seven and a half million yen. God. They said