Ellery Queen's Japanese Golden Dozen. Ellery Queen

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СКАЧАТЬ of the enthusiasm essential to a successful investigation. Sarcastic investigators said it bogged down because of rotten luck: the murder took place on Friday the 13th; there were thirteen suspects.

      Before the final closing of investigation headquarters, there was a meeting of Takahashi, Kono, and Kimura. Kimura was eager to close headquarters. There was much work in the department, many cases, and tying up too many men on a job that showed no signs of coming to a conclusion seemed a waste. "Calling it murder must've been a miscalculation," he said with regret. Takahashi and Kono were silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. But Takahashi looked wretched.

      Kono said, "I've no objections to closing headquarters. I don't think new facts will turn up. Still—I don't think we should give up, either. Let's simply reduce the scale of the operation. Put me in charge."

      "You mean, you still don't want to give it up?" Kimura asked.

      "Yeah. That's right."

      "Stubborn?"

      "Nope. I'm adopting a waiting policy. Let the other guy tip his hand. I think that's the way—"

      "Waiting policy?"

      "Yeah. Let me have Shibata and Kawanishi."

      "O.K.," Kimura said. "You've got it."

      Yumiko Murase, the typist with Sanei, gave notice six months after the murder. She said her mother had died and there was no one at home to look after her father, who had grown old.

      It was a fact; her mother had died. Further, the only person home with her father was a third son, who was a second-year student in high school. Under these circumstances, it was hard to block her request. But she was an excellent typist, and they would have liked her to remain. Yumiko persisted, and the company accepted her resignation.

      But she had said to a fellow worker, "I don't like the gloomy feeling around here. The murder isn't solved, and everybody suspects everybody else. I can't stand working in such an atmosphere." Maybe this was her true reason.

      The day of her resignation, with nothing but a suitcase, she left her apartment. She had given her stereo and TV to one of the girls in the office. She flagged a taxi, and told the driver to take her to the airport. When people from the office who had come to see her off heard this, they must have thought it strange. Yumiko's home town was a small village in the mountains, three hours by train and another two by bus.

      An hour later, she was on a plane. As she watched the city of F receding through the small, round window, she thought without regret, "Well, goodbye to that—"

      Yumiko's home town was so small she could not tolerate it even for a day. The city of F was only a provincial town, too, where rumors were always plentiful. The plane was headed for Tokyo. A vast city of twelve million. A cold city where a corpse might not be noticed for a year by neighbors in the next apartment. A good city to hide in. "Crime." A cool smile played over Yumiko's face. She smiled with pride at the thought of the perfect crime she had committed. She touched the case in her lap, the reward. There were a lot of zeros after the first figures in the four bank books in that case. They represented the triumph of the mind.

      She had come upon the notion for the crime about a year ago, at the time when there was talk of her marrying. She had begun thinking like a murder novel. Usami knew about Sand her abortion. Suppose he should demand money for keeping her secret? Yumiko knew she would probably make the utmost efforts to get that money.

      When the marriage fell through, Yumiko expanded the idea. "Now—look at this. . . ." Usami was a money tree. He was just full of private secrets. For one like Usami, who would never get ahead-maybe even precisely because he wouldn't—it would be wonderful to turn all these confessions into money. Next, Yumiko thought, "If he won't do it, why don't I turn them into money myself?"

      For a year she made preparations. The most difficult thing was copying Usami's strange right-slanted handwriting. It took a year to do that. The next thing was knowing how much to ask each person for. Finally, she decided to ask for more in the upper echelons of the company. This seemed in keeping with principles of social justice and with ideas of the chivalrous bandit. She would keep the text as simple as possible—and be suggestive. . . .

      "A need for money has come up. Please transfer ___yen to general account 821-5613 at the S bank no later than December eleventh." She signed Taro Usami. Taking up her pen, in the letter to Kenzo Yokomizo, she wrote "five million yen." Stopping, she asked herself if this might be too much. Then, with a toss of her head, tightening her abdomen, she said, "Nope. It's a gamble. With gambling, courage is necessary."

      Although she knew little about business, lately she had noticed something suspicious about Yokomizo. She did not know what it was, but she felt certain he was up to something. If it were a business secret, he would be willing to pay that much.

      Finally, intelligently, she wrote a blackmail letter to herself as a coverup. She wrote in figures for one hundred thousand yen.

      Total: thirty-two million one hundred and seventy thousand yen.

      On the twelfth of December, she went to the bank to check the account in the name of Taro Usami. All thirteen people—including herself—had paid in the amount she counted on. With the automatic disbursement machine, it was a simple matter to draw the money out.

      "A pity about Taro Usami," Yumiko thought. But to make her crime perfect, he must die. When the end-of-year party was a little noisy, taking care to leave no fingerprints, Yumiko set a highball containing potassium cyanide on the table before Usami.

      But as the plane swung over Tokyo International Airport, Yumiko murmured, "Stop thinking about the past. The future is ahead of you."

      * * *

      Inspector Kono was listening to a report by Detective Shibata in an official phone call from Tokyo. Shibata's voice was clearly excited.

      "Yumiko Murase's activities since arriving in Tokyo. At a real estate office, she sublet an apartment—two rooms and a dining-kitchen. The building's in Shinjuku Ward, fifteen minutes from the Kabuki-cho entertainment district. She paid deposits and a year's rent, totaling five hundred thousand yen. Next, she negotiated to purchase the management rights and equipment of a nearby coffee shop. Total expenditure was fifteen million yen.

      "When she left Sanei, because of outstanding debts, her retirement fund came to only three million yen. Looks as if you're absolutely right. Yumiko Murase is the murderer. The waiting policy has paid off. Still, somehow I feel extra sorry for Taro Usami. I guess he just knew too much about too many people."

      "That's real nice," Kono said.

      SEICHO MATSUMOTO

      The Cooperative

       Defendant

      Seicho Matsumoto was the first chairman of the Association of Mystery Writers of Japan. He ushered in the second period in the history of the modern Japanese detective story. His novels epitomize the contemporary themes of social problems, with emphasis on realism in the characters and in their motivations. He was the first to establish this social-detective-story genre in Japan, and his books are consistently among the best sellers of the country. He won the Detective Story Writers' Club Prize for his work titled The Face and Other Stories.

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