It looks somewhat Elizabethan with its three-storey main building complete with pillars and white-painted walls. To the east of this is a cylindrical tower the spitting image of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The major difference between this tower and the one in Pisa is that all its surfaces are made from glass. And on this glass is a thin layer of aluminium, deposited by vacuum, or what is known as aluminium mirror-coating. Consequently, when the sun shines, everything that surrounds this tower is reflected in this glass cylinder.
On the edge of the high plain is a hill. Viewed from the summit of this hill, the giant cylindrical glass… or perhaps I should say mirror… anyway, this glass tower and Western-style house look like some kind of fairy-tale castle.
There’s not another house in any direction as far as the eye can see. Nothing but a vast plain of grass the colour of dead leaves, stirred up by the wind. The nearest settlement is a small village situated way past the mansion and down the slope from the plain, at least ten minutes by foot.
When the sun goes down, the north wind roars across the plain, and the glass tower turns golden in the sunset. Behind it stretches the northern sea.
Here, the cold north sea is a deep shade of indigo blue. If you were to run down the hill and dip your hand into its water, you’d expect to see your fingers emerge blue with dye. In front of this sea, the gold-tinted glass tower looks as solemn and imposing as any place of religious worship.
Just in front of the main, Western-style house is a large stone patio, dotted with sculptures, a small pond and a flight of stone steps. At the base of the tower is what appears to be a flower bed in the shape of a fan. I say “what appears to be” because it is quite overgrown, and clearly hasn’t been tended for a long while.
Neither the main house nor the tower is currently occupied. It’s been for sale for many years, but it will probably stay that way. It’s less the fault of the remote location; it’s far more likely the murder that keeps buyers away.
This particular murder case was a very mysterious one. It caused quite a stir among the crime buffs and murder enthusiasts of the day. So for all of you who have not yet heard it, I am going to tell you the tale of “Murder in the Crooked House”. I believe I’ve done all that’s necessary to set the scene for this strange mystery. The setting is of course a bleak, wintry plain, and that crooked house.
The history of the main building and tower that make up the Crooked House is rather less like that of Cheval’s palace, and a lot closer to Ludwig’s castle, in the sense that the man who built them was a kind of modern-day king—a millionaire with both fortune and influence. His name was Kozaburo Hamamoto, and he was the president of Hama Diesel Corporation. But unlike either Cheval or Ludwig, he didn’t have any crazy tendencies. He was simply a man of very particular tastes, and having money, he was able to indulge those tastes.
The boredom or the depression that plagued such a man who had reached the peak of his career might have been what turned him into something of a recluse. In a familiar story that we might hear from any corner of the world, it seemed that all the gold he had amassed weighed heavily on his mind.
There was nothing really unusual about the structure of the house and the tower. The interior resembled a maze in some ways, but it was nothing too complicated, and once you got your bearings it wasn’t likely that you would get lost more than a couple of times at most. There were no revolving wall panels, underground caves or descending ceilings. The feature that caught the attention was exactly what gave it its local nickname: that from the very beginning it had been built crooked, or rather, leaning at an angle. Thus the glass tower was literally a “Leaning Tower”.
The main house leans at an angle of about five or six degrees off the vertical, not really enough to be obvious from the outside. On the other hand, the inside is quite bewildering.
The building leans towards the south. The windows on the north and south sides are the perfectly normal kind that you’d find in any house, but the ones on the east and west sides are problematic. On these walls, the windows and their frames have been constructed to run parallel with the ground outside. Once your vision adjusts to the strange appearance of the rooms, you feel like a hard-boiled egg that has been dropped on the floor and is trying to roll uphill. It’s a feeling that’s difficult to imagine without having stayed at the mansion. The longer you stay, the more confused your mind becomes.
The lord of the manor, Kozaburo Hamamoto, was reputed to have had a lot of fun at his guests’ expense, watching them try to navigate his twisted home. Quite an expensive way to get some childish laughs.
I think that should be enough information for you to get an idea of the man behind the mansion and to set the scene for this tale.
My story begins when Kozaburo Hamamoto was almost seventy years old. His wife had already passed away, and he had left fame and reputation behind, retiring up here in the far north of Japan.
He would listen to his favourite classical music and loved reading mystery novels. His hobby was studying and collecting mechanical toys and dolls, particularly Western automata, or clockwork dolls. He had amassed a lot of capital through acquiring the stock of various small-and medium-sized companies, and he used the money to build up his collection. He stored his precious dolls and other toys in a room in the mansion known as the “Tengu Room”, so named because its walls were entirely covered with masks of that famous long-nosed demon of Japanese folklore.
This same room was also home to a certain life-sized doll known as either Golem or Jack. According to ancient European folklore, on a stormy night, this doll had the power to get up and walk around by itself. It ended up playing a leading role in the inexplicable events that unfolded that winter.
Despite having such eclectic tastes and hobbies, Kozaburo Hamamoto was not really eccentric at all. In order to offer a glimpse of the natural beauty of the different seasons of northern Hokkaido, he would invite guests to stay at his home—and he loved to talk. Probably he was searching for a kindred spirit; sadly, he never seemed to find one. The reason for this will be revealed as soon as the curtain rises on our story.
The incident took place at Christmas in 1983. Back then, the Crooked House—or to give it its proper name, the Ice Floe Mansion—was scrupulously cared for by its live-in staff, Kohei and Chikako Hayakawa. The garden and stone patio were carefully tended, and at that time of year covered by a thick layer of snow.
On that particular day, it was hard to imagine that a raging blizzard had left behind such a gentle coating of snow, with the dry brown grass sleeping peacefully beneath. The snow-dusted crooked house stood majestic on its carpet of pure white.
Night fell, and the Okhotsk Sea was full of drift ice, ice floes that jostled each other daily, as if trying to take over the whole surface. The sky turned a gloomy shade of grey, and the high and low moans of the northerly wind were a permanent soundtrack.
Presently, lights came on in the mansion, and soft flakes of snow began to fall. The scene was set, the mood slightly bittersweet.
Room 1: Kumi Aikura
Room 2: Eiko Hamamoto
Room 3: Display / Tengu Room
Room 4: Library
Room 5: Salon
Room 6: Haruo Kajiwara