All well and good as far as it went, but I never intended to become a murderess. I detest such things, and getting into the position where I had to kill Suwa Yatabe was my big mistake—in the case of Toyoko Munekata, I had no intention of killing her, and indeed she survived the gassing. I just wanted to punish her for her overwhelming pride, and saw my opportunity when she descended on me the day before, berating me in her usual haughty manner because her fanlight window wouldn’t shut. So I knew perfectly well that if I turned off the gas from outside and then turned it on again, I could teach her a good lesson but without fatal consequences.
I pretended not to notice when Yoneko Kimura switched the master key, and I think my plans there went off very well. You see, Miss Kimura stood apart from all the others, being much more intelligent than the average and also possessed of abundant common sense. A person just like me, in fact, and so it was very easy for me to foresee how she would react to any given occurrence and make my dispositions accordingly. So I made sure that by one means or another she got to know everything that I knew about Chikako Ueda. For instance, I had witnessed the burial in the bathroom, but could by no means impart that directly, so instead I just wrote that elegy and left it in Chikako Ueda’s room for Yoneko to read. Then I made sure she would hear the right things from the medium, and that she would get the chance to see the register of overnight visitors… I led her, by these three clues and by other means, along a process of deductions which culminated in the understanding I wished her to have. I felt just as if I was the director, and got great pleasure out of seeing my actress perform her role exactly as I wished.
But my masterpiece as far as she was concerned (and I’m sorry to keep harping on my own brilliance, but that, after all, is the theme of this document)—the high point of my direction—was young Kurokawa. You remember, of course? He was the former playmate of George’s who wrote an essay titled ‘My little foreign friend’ for his teacher, Chikako Ueda. Yes, well, that was my doing, too.
It was like this. After witnessing the burial in the bathroom, I passed many a day seated at my desk wondering what was the connection between Chikako Ueda and George. I worked out all sorts of possible theories, but they were all too far-fetched for me to believe in with any conviction. So I bought and read everything that had been published about the kidnapping—quite a pile of newspapers and magazines, but standing, as it were, on top of that pile I could see over the wall and discover the connection. And what caught my eye was a remark made by the maid in Major Kraft’s household. ‘My son was very close to George, and they used to play together.’ It was like playing three-cushion billiards; there was no direct link between Chikako and George, so I had to make an indirect connection. I worked on the supposition that the maid’s child had been a pupil of Chikako’s. If that were the case, then it might well have been that he mentioned George to his school teacher. Or, to carry it further, he might have written an essay about his little foreign friend. And that essay could have planted the dreadful idea of the kidnapping in Chikako’s mind. This sort of set of circumstances would at least provide a firm linkage between Chikako and George.
But I did not even have to ascertain whether this was true or not. After all, I was by then using Miss Kimura to carry out the investigation without her knowing that I was manipulating her behind the scenes. It would be quite enough to plant in her mind the idea that such an essay might have been written.
My brother, the little vestal and I went to great pains to ensure that everything was adequately prepared for the great prophecy which would reveal the child’s tomb. For example, we timed the revelations one by one against the schedule of works for the moving of the building. In this case, we hired a detective agency to report on Keiko Kawauchi. My brother carried out this part of the plan very well. When we learned that Keiko used to visit the neighbourhood of her old home in Denenchofu every day, I decided to pull young Kurokawa out of my conjuror’s hat.
I timed that, too. I kept a close eye on Yoneko Kimura’s progress through the register of her former pupils, and it was only when I knew that she was about to write to Keiko that I produced young Kurokawa. My brother, by dint of his persuasive tongue plus a thousand-yen note, was able to hire a student of the right age to perform the role. He did it quite well enough to convince Keiko that such an essay had been written.
As I used this device to draw together Keiko and Yoneko Kimura, who had been as it were ‘in another part of the forest’, I felt just like a theatrical director using the revolving stage to bring his characters together. And the roots, deep as they were, of these plans went back beyond the reappearance of my brother, right back, indeed, to the time George had been kidnapped. They went back seven years to the time when Yoneko Kimura had stood in the porch reading the evening paper, and looked up and told me ‘The mother of this child who has been kidnapped was a former pupil of mine’. I paid no particular heed at the time, but looking back, it must have been that my subconscious mind was already linking and drawing together Keiko Kawauchi, Yoneko Kimura and Chikako Ueda.
So many years spent in a gloomy office, thinking and plotting, and to what avail? Fate made a fool of me in the end, after all.
Yoneko and I were both made the puppets of mocking fate. You see, when Yoneko rushed down to the bathroom, she got the workmen to dig up the bath, and indeed there was a child buried there, so they called the police.
But after the autopsy, it became hideously clear that we had been deceived. When I think of it, I still beat my head in disgust. Can anyone disagree with me when I say that both Yoneko and I were like children building magnificent sandcastles only to see them washed away by the tides of fate? Why did my three positive facts turn out to be the foundations for a sandcastle?
The papers and magazines have speculated quite enough on how it came about that Chikako Ueda had given birth to a child, and what abnormality it was which caused her to kill it. I will not touch any further upon the matter, particularly as it is distasteful to me. It drains the blood from my veins even to consider that the child I saw being buried was Chikako’s own son.
All I want to know is, whatever happened to the child who was kidnapped? I’m prepared to lose everything which remains to me in return for knowing that. After all, what is left to me? My brother has gone. Haru Santo can no longer peep into Chikako Ueda’s room, for she is no more. Life is just a passing dream, and we are the toys of mocking fate.
Perhaps, after all, there is a God who watches over our doings and who has punished me by changing the body I saw buried for another body. Well, I’d feel happier if I could think it was so. At least, it would give me some comfort to think that I was the victim of a sentient being and not of blind fate.
But my destiny is now clear. I must pass the remaining years of my life, seated at this lonely desk with no one to talk to. All I can do is write this record and then puzzle, and puzzle… all to no avail.
I rack my brains trying to work out what became of the kidnapped child, even though I realise there is no way of knowing.
That way lies madness.
EPILOGUE
In a pleasant suburb of Los Angeles, Major D. Kraft (US Army, Retired) lay back in a deckchair on the lawn of his garden. He puffed at a pipe as he scanned the newspaper, and then he saw, tucked away in the corner of an obscure page of foreign news, a small item concerning Japan.