That chance remark led Torigai to make three deductions:
From the woman's speech, he concluded that she was not from the area. She was not from Fukuoka and very likely not even from Kyushu.
As the words indicated, the place must have been unfamiliar to her.
Therefore, she was not asking the man to agree; it sounded, on the contrary, as if she were giving her impression of the place to someone who had been there before. The fact that the man did not answer, that he continued to walk rapidly, supported this view.
In short, the man must have been familiar with the area, whereas the woman was seeing it for the first time. She had a Tokyo accent, and the scene occurred shortly before the suicides were believed to have taken place Torigai believed he could safely assume that the two people the storekeeper had noticed were the same two who had passed the young man on the road.
Of course, on second thought, he had no proof. In Fukuoka alone were thousands of visitors from Tokyo, and the fact that a couple was seen walking in the Kashii area at that hour of the night could be purely accidental and have no connection with the double suicide But Torigai refused to entertain these doubts. He believed they were the two people who had committed suicide.
A cold wind was blowing. The stars were unusually bright in a very black sky.
Jūtarō Torigai returned to the railway station. Pausing at the entrance, he looked at his watch. It was an old timepiece but kept excellent time. He then started walking as if he had a stopwatch in his hand. He walked briskly, stooping slightly, his hands in his pockets. He was once again heading for the private railway station. The wind whipped the edges of his overcoat.
Coming to the brightly lighted station he looked at his watch. It has taken him less than six minutes. It took less than six minutes, he noted, to walk from one station to the other.
Torigai repeated the experiment. Again timing his walk, he turned around and headed back towards the national railway station. He could almost judge his speed from the sound of his footsteps. Arriving at the station, he checked his time. A little over six minutes!
For the third time, he started back on the same road. He deliberately slowed his steps. He studied the houses on either side of the road, as if taking a leisurely stroll. When he reached the private railway station he looked at his watch. Eight minutes!
The exercise had proved that it took six to seven minutes to walk, at a normal pace, from the Kashii national railway station to the Kashii Nishitetsu Station.
The couple the storekeeper had noticed coming out of the railway station were passengers on the 9:24. The couple the young man saw at the Nishitetsu station was among the passengers who had arrived on the 9:35. Thus, there was a time lapse of eleven minutes. If it was the same couple in both instances, it had taken them eleven minutes to walk from the one station to the other.
What does this mean, Torigai asked himself. No matter how slow the pace, it had taken him only about eight minutes to cover the distance. How could they have taken eleven minutes? He remembered the young man telling him that the couple had passed him walking rapidly. If true, if they had walked fast, it shouldn't have taken them more than five minutes. How to explain the eleven minutes? Two alternatives came to Torigai's mind: 1. they stopped along the way for some reason, a purchase, for instance; 2. the couple seen by the storekeeper and the couple seen by the young man were not the same people. They were different couples.
Either alternative was possible. The first was probable enough while the second, equally acceptable, would account for the time lag of eleven minutes. Torigai had to admit there was no proof that it was the same couple seen in both places. The identification rested on the fact that in both instances the man wore an overcoat and the woman a kimono. No one had observed their faces or noticed the pattern of the kimono.
If there were two couples, then the one seen by the young man at the private railway station was very likely Sayama and Otoki.
The woman's exclamation had deeply impressed Torigai. On the other hand, he could not be certain that the couple seen at the railway station was not the pair in question. They could very well have stopped along the way. Torigai was not ready to give up the idea that the two couples were the same.
In the end, still undecided, he returned to his home in Hakata and went to bed.
Reporting to work the following morning he found two telegrams on his desk. He opened one: "Kenichi traveled often to Hakata on business. [Signed] Sayama." He took up the other one: "Hideko had never visited Hakata."
These were replies to the telegrams he had sent from Kashii Station the day before. The first was from Kenichi Sayama's brother, the branch bank manager; the other, from Mrs. Kuwayama, Otoki's mother. The implication was quite clear: Kenichi Sayama had made many trips to Hakata on business; therefore he knew the locality well. Otoki, on the other hand, had not been in Hakata before.
Torigai recalled the scene of a woman exclaiming, "What a lonely place," and of a man walking rapidly towards the beach without making a reply.
Torigai accomplished one task in the course of the morning. Leaving the police station, he took a streetcar to Hakozaki and from there walked to the Keirinjo-mae station on the Nishitetsu line. This line continues on to Tsuyazaki, a port on the north coast of Kyushu, passing through Kashii. It was a bright and unusually warm day for winter.
Torigai presented his card to the station master.
"What brings you here?" asked the stout, ruddy-faced man in uniform from behind his desk.
"On the night of the twentieth a train on this line arrived at Kashii station at 9:35. What time did it leave here?" Torigai inquired.
"Nine twenty-seven," the station master replied promptly.
"I have some questions I'd like to ask the man who was on the gate that night. Is he around?"
"Let me see." The station master ordered his assistant to check. The name was on the office record and the man was found to be on duty. The assistant went to fetch him.
"Has anything happened?" the station master asked while they waited.
"Yes, an incident." Torigai took a sip of the tea that had been offered to him.
"You have a tough job," the station master commented.
A station employee entered the office, approached the desk and saluted. "This is the man who was on duty that night," said the station master.
Torigai turned to address him. "I'm sorry to trouble you, young man. Were you on duty at the gate when the 9:27 train left on the night of the twentieth?"
"Yes, sir, I was."
"Among the passengers did you by chance see a man, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing an overcoat, accompanied by a woman, around twenty-three or twenty-four, in kimono?"
"Let me think." The young man blinked his eyes. "There were many men wearing overcoats. Can you give me the color of their clothing?"
"The overcoat was a dark navy blue and he was wearing brown trousers. The women's coat was gray and under it she wore a brick-red kimono." Torigai was describing the clothes found on the two bodies on the beach. The young man tried to concentrate, his eyes looking into space.
"I'm afraid I don't remember. You see, most of the time we notice only the hands when we punch the tickets. Unless something unusual happens we seldom look at the faces of passengers. And anyway, since this is the start of the line, as soon as the gate opens passengers crowd through the wickets."
"But surely there was no crowd at that hour of the night?" Tongai remarked.
'There might have been thirty or forty passengers; that's about average."
"It's more usual for women to dress in western style these days, it seems to me. Not many wear kimono. Do think again; see if you can't remember."
"I'm afraid I can't."
Torigai was not easily put off. He insisted, but the station employee kept shaking his head and repeating that he could not remember. Jūtarō suddenly had another thought.