The Moai Island Puzzle Read online

  There is another reason for Arisugawa’s use of this latter type of detective. The Ellery we follow in Ellery Queen’s novels isn’t an eccentric character either. But what is extremely important is that Ellery has no need for a Watson. The reason why so many detectives need a Watson is because they need to be heroes. The Watson character emphasizes his own normality, while expressing surprise at Holmes’ genius. Each time Watson is astonished and praises Holmes, he makes Holmes more and more of a hero.

  As for the path Alice Arisugawa chose as a follower of Ellery Queen, it appears to me he has gone for similar methods to those of his mentor. One should consider his detective, Jirō Egami, a character who is simply tasked with laying out an impressive chain of logical reasoning. But Egami has one big, but clearly defined difference with Ellery. That is the existence of Alice, the narrator of the story and Egami’s Watson. Like his mentor Ellery, Alice Arisugawa has a character sharing his own pen name appear in the story, but unlike the mentor, who gave his name to the detective, the student-writer Arisugawa decided to give his name to the Watson character. One can sense Arisugawa’s reserved personality here. Even though Arisugawa uses the same methods as Ellery Queen, one could even make the guess that somewhere, he also secretly wishes his detective could act more like a hero. If my reading is correct, Egami might become more like a hero-detective in the stories that follow The Moai Island Puzzle. Or perhaps, this was a way for Arisugawa to graduate from his mentor’s methods.

  Dedicated to my New York friend John Pugmire.

  Sōji Shimada

  Tokyo, 2016

  Dramatis Personae

  Maria Arima – Second year student of Eito University.

  Tetsunosuke Arima – Maria’s grandfather.

  Ryūichi Arima – Maria’s uncle.

  Hideto Arima – Ryūichi’s eldest son.

  Reiko Arima – Ryūichi’s adopted daughter.

  Kazuto Arima – Ryūichi second son.

  Kango Makihara – Ryūichi’s brother-in-law.

  Sumako Makihara – Kango’s daughter.

  Junji Makihara – Sumako’s husband.

  Toshiyuki Inukai – Ryūichi’s half-brother (same father).

  Satomi Inukai – Toshiyuki’s wife.

  Yūsaku Sonobe – Doctor.

  Itaru Hirakawa – Painter.

  Jirō Egami – Fourth year student of Eito University.

  Alice Arisugawa – Second year student of Eito University

  Names follow western convention: given name followed by family name. N.B. Alice here is a male.

  PROLOGUE: PUZZLER

  Obligation Law, my second period class, had ended. Hungry students quickly crowded in front of the exit in an effort to make their way to the cafeteria, making it impossible for anyone to leave. Patient as I am, I decided to sit down on a seat near the exit and wait until the congestion was over.

  ‘You always do everything at your own pace, don’t you, Alice?’ said a voice that came from above my head. I turned—my head still resting on the table—to see a pair of cute, round knees peeking out from a dark check-patterned mini-skirt. I raised my head to look at a familiar face.

  ‘Maria? Perfect timing.’

  It’s only the start of the story, but already two curious names have popped up, but please read on. Don’t get exasperated.

  My name is Alice Arisugawa. I’m a second year law student at Eito University. I’m Japanese and I’m male. The girl with semi-long russet hair looking down at me is Maria Arima. She’s also a second year law student at the same university. Maria is also Japanese, but, unlike me, she’s female.

  Eito University, where this conversation was taking place, is, as you would expect, located in Japan. In Kyōto to be exact, the ancient capital boasting a 1,200 year history. The campus is located across from the Imperial Palace. So how did two people bearing such exotic names come to meet in this age-old city? It must have been a prank of the gods.

  ‘Remember Mr. Egami and the others said they had no classes in the morning today? They’re probably already waiting for us. We should go.’

  Egged on by Maria, I got up from my seat. She always claimed her speciality was making her way quickly through crowds, and she did indeed wriggle skilfully through the waves of people. I yelled for her to wait for me, as I tried to follow her by elbowing my way through.

  Café Lilac was located slightly north of the intersection of Imadegawa-dōri and Shinmachi-dōri. For a café in this student town, Lilac was certainly nothing outstanding, except for their delicious tarako spaghetti. That, and the fact that we could hang around there for hours, was what gave the place its charm and why it had become our usual hang-out place. It was our very own Villa Lilac[i].

  ‘See, they’re already eating.’

  As soon as she’d entered, Maria had spotted our friends and walked straight over to the table next to them.

  Our three seniors were already wolfing down their tarako spaghetti, a dish which never seemed to bore them.

  ‘They’re here, they’re here,’ said Oda, with his mouth full. ‘We’ve been waiting.’

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ said Maria, pulling a chair from an adjacent table and sitting down. I grabbed the empty seat next to Egami.

  ‘Have something to eat first.’ Mochizuki, who was sitting opposite me, raised his hand and hailed the waiter.

  The five people gathered there all read mystery fiction as a hobby, and love the genre more than anything in the world. The same five people also make up the complete member list of the Eito University Mystery Club. The “elderly” man sitting next to me was club president Jirō Egami, a fourth year philosophy student. Because he was our senior, Maria and I addressed him as “Mr.” He’d been enrolled at Eito University for seven years already. His long, wavy hair touched his shoulders as he silently but expertly moved his fork. Across from him sat Kōjirō Oda. He was a third year economics student and always had his motorcycle and hard-boiled crime fiction on his mind. He had a refreshingly short haircut. The person with the silver-rimmed pair of glasses next to Oda was Shūhei Mochizuki. He too was a third year student of economics, forming a dynamic duo there with Oda. Mochizuki, however, was an Ellery Queen freak, only interested in classic detective fiction.

  Until last spring, the club had consisted of just four men—those three seniors plus yours truly, Alice Arisugawa—but then Maria had joined. Our family names are Arima and Arisugawa, so we have consecutive student ID numbers. We were also in the same language classes and she was actually the first girl to talk to me here at the university. But I hadn’t realised she was such a passionate mystery fiction fan until we’d known each other for more than a year.

  I’d been chatting with the seniors in the student hall lounge one day, when Maria had come by to borrow my notebook. We were just in the middle of a conversation about Dorothy L. Sayers, and Mochizuki had been wailing that he badly wanted to read Sayers’ out-of-print masterpiece The Nine Tailors, when Maria asked him simply: ‘Would you like to borrow my copy?’

  He’d reached out with his right hand, crying ‘Please!’ and fallen off his chair.

  So that’s how the Mystery Club gained its first female member. Maria hadn’t known I was a member—in fact, she hadn’t even known of its existence. Naturally, we men all welcomed her wholeheartedly. Spring had finally arrived at the Mystery Club.

  ‘Anyway, Mr. Egami and Alice sure are lucky guys...,’ said Oda, as he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘A week-long holiday on an island in the south. Wish I could’ve gone instead of staying here.’

  ‘Me too,’ added Mochizuki. ‘Maria, why didn’t you tell us a bit earlier? If you’d been planning to ask us anyway….’

  The “plan” was an invitation to a villa owned by Maria’s uncle Ryūichi Arima, located on an island fifty kilometres to the south of Amami Ōshima. As if a summer holiday on an island wasn’t perfect enough, there was also to be a fantastic event.

  ‘Too bad for you both,’ I said with sympathy. ‘
But, Nobunaga, you can’t possibly skip out on your sister’s wedding. And Mochi, you already paid 200,000 yen for your driving school.’

  Nobunaga was Oda’s nickname, after the famous warlord Nobunaga Oda.

  ‘Can you believe my sister? Holding a wedding in the middle of summer, just because she’s having a baby….’

  Mochizuki complained as well:

  ‘What about me? I’ve been planning to go home and get my driver’s licence for over a year now, so I can’t make the trip. Talk about bad timing!’

  He slammed the table, and the waiter bringing Maria’s and my tarako spaghettis raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I don’t even care that much for an island holiday. Save some dough and you can go anytime,’ said Oda as he leant over the table. ‘But a treasure hunt is something else.’

  Precisely. The treasure hunt was the fantastic event included in the trip.

  ‘You two said you’d at least like to take a look at the map, so I brought it with me. But I don’t think you can deduce anything with only the ma—’

  ‘You never know. Show us, show us,’ pleaded Mochizuki.

  Even though our spaghettis had finally arrived, Mochizuki didn’t even give Maria time to pick up her fork. I was tempted to remark how different his behaviour was from just moments before, when he’d kindly called the waiter over for us, but I guess it can’t be helped. Holding a treasure map in front of a mystery fan is like holding out a red rag to a bull.

  Maria, too, gave up on any attempts at resistance, undid the fastener of her shoulder bag and pulled out a map neatly folded in four.

  Not only Mochizuki and Oda, but even Egami leant forward over the table. This was also the first time I’d had a chance to see the map myself. Our four heads were all clustered at the centre of the table.

  ‘But that’s…,’ I muttered in surprise.

  Kashikijima Island looked like a horseshoe, or perhaps the horns of a bull, almost enclosing a small bay. There were capes on the left and right sides of the bay, and on each of them a picture of a house had been drawn. The two houses were connected by a single road which followed the shape of the island. Judging by the map, I imagined that travelling between them had to be extremely inconvenient. There was no other obvious residence on the island, but there were several strange marks scattered here and there on the map.

  ‘The house on the left—or to the west,’ said Maria, ‘is where we’ll be staying: Panorama Villa. Across the bay, on the eastern side of the island, is Itaru Hirakawa’s Happy Fish Villa. There are no other houses on the island.’

  She began to explain what else was on the island, but Mochizuki cut in.

  ‘Wait a sec! I’m more interested in these marks here. I assume they represent the famous moai statues?’

  The look of resignation on Maria’s face meant she knew she wouldn’t be able to start her long-awaited lunch for the time being. She put her hands on her knees and cleared her throat.

  ‘Yes. But even though we call them moai statues, they’re actually quite different from the stone ones on Easter Island. These are made of wood.’

  ‘Are they big?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really. About as wide as a telegraph pole, and measured from the ground up, they’re about one metre high. Faces resembling those of the Easter Island moai statues have been carved in the wood, but not very accurately. They look more like one of those Enkū statues[ii].’

  ‘Enkū’s moai?’ Egami laughed as he lit his Cabin cigarette. ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘Twenty-five in total. I heard that most of the statues on Easter Island are facing away from the ocean, but these wooden moais are all looking in different directions. I suspect it has something do with the mystery. They might be the key to unlocking the secret.’

  Four pairs of male eyes were fixed on the map on the table. While we were all lost in thought, Maria quickly started wolfing down her tarako spaghetti as if she was slurping soba noodles at a street stand, and I quickly followed suit.

  ‘There’s not much we can say with nothing but this map here, but it certainly looks like an interesting puzzle.’ Club president Egami’s interest was also aroused, it appeared. ‘I guess your grandfather was quite a character, Maria.’

  Maria nodded rapidly, a long strand of spaghetti dangling from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Yes, he was a bit strange. He was quite a puzzle fanatic. He was especially fond of the ones by Sam Loyd and Lewis Carroll, and was an avid collector of the originals. He had a busy life as a businessman and puzzles were how he relaxed.’

  Maria’s grandfather, Tetsunosuke Arima, was the founder of ARIMA, a medium-sized stationery manufacturer. The company had started out in Ōsaka, but had moved to Tōkyō in the 1950s. They’d begun with paper materials, but nowadays the company had grown so large they handled all kinds of office automation machinery. Tetsunosuke had retired from his position as president when he’d turned seventy, leaving the management of the company to his three sons. He’d passed away five years ago and ARIMA’s current president was now his eldest son, Ryūichi. His second son, Ryūji, was vice-president and the third son (Maria’s father) Ryūzō was senior managing director. In other words, the stereotypical family firm.

  Maria had been born and raised in Tōkyō, but she’d failed all of her entrance exams for universities in the Tōkyō Metropolitan Area. Eito University was the only place to have sent her an acceptance letter, even though she’d only taken the exam by chance, combining the exam with a short holiday in Kyōto. She’d somehow managed to persuade her anxious parents to send her to study in the ancient capital.

  ‘Did your grandfather also make his own puzzles?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he was simply a fan of solving them. Crossword puzzles, mathematical puzzles, mazes, you name it. Oh, and jigsaw puzzles, too. My late grandmother used to say that he’d often stay up all night struggling with a puzzle. This moai puzzle is the only one he ever devised himself. But we only found out about the map after he’d passed away; it was enclosed with his last will.’

  So it was a parting puzzle entrusted to his lawyer. Tetsunosuke Arima had certainly been fond of jokes. Not surprisingly, he was also the one who gave his granddaughter her name. Officially, Maria is named after Saint Mary, because they share the same birth date, September 8th. But the real reason for the choice of name is that Maria Arima is a palindrome in the Japanese syllable alphabet: ma-ri-a a-ri-ma. Her jokester of a grandfather had certainly made life hard for her.

  Mochizuki stared at the map with his arms crossed, wearing a puzzled expression. Then a thought appeared to occur to him and he asked Maria: ‘By the way, what kind of treasure is it? Jewels or suchlike buried somewhere?’

  ‘Jewels,’ replied Maria. ‘Grandfather loved his birthstone, diamonds. Grandmother was born in April, so my grandfather gave her diamond jewellery for wedding anniversaries, birthdays, anything. When she passed away he took most of the collection and hid it somewhere. He told the family he’d tell us where he’d hidden it before he passed away, but he died suddenly of a stroke five years ago without having told anyone about the hiding place. Even at a low estimate, the diamonds he hid are worth five hundred million yen, so that had us very worried for a while, but then this treasure map appeared. He’d entrusted it, together with his last will, to the family lawyer.’

  ‘All of you were probably surprised, eh?’ said Oda.

  ‘You bet! Grandfather had said he’d hidden the diamonds, but we thought he’d placed them in a safe-deposit box at some bank or other. Imagine our surprise when we found out he’d childishly buried them somewhere on the same island as our holiday villa! Building a villa on a deserted island is already a bit odd to begin with, but I guess it was done out of admiration for Treasure Island, which had been such an influence on his life. There are coconut and fan palms planted around the other family mansion in Seijō back in Tōkyō as well, giving it a tropical island feel.’

  ‘So you’ve already hunted high and low and couldn�
�t find it,’ said Mochizuki, ‘and now it’s up to the great minds of us Mystery Club members to take up the challenge and solve the mystery.’

  ‘Well, the minds of the best members of the Eito University Mystery Club, anyway,’ I added, to which Mochizuki responded with a growl:

  ‘What are you saying? You just have more free time than me and Nobunaga. Damn, the likes of Alice chosen over me. Hah, I don’t even need to set foot on the island. I’ll figure out the location of the treasure with just this map here.’

  No, no, Maria gestured as she shook her head lightly. ‘I think that’d be impossible, Mochi. The locations of the moais are marked with an X on the map, but the directions the statues are facing are all slightly different. And that seems to be significant. I suspect you’d need to know which way they’re facing in order to solve the mystery. Actually, he said precisely that….’

  She suddenly closed her mouth. Since that seemed rather unnatural, Egami asked her what was wrong.

  ‘Actually…my cousin Hideto did his best to find the treasure, in the summer three years ago. I was also staying on the island at the time. He was very close to solving the mystery. I still remember he came to me very excited, five days after he’d begun his search. “I went around to check which way the moais were facing. Maria, I think I’m onto something,” he told me. My cousin didn’t mention anything more than that, but when he told me this, I remembered my grandfather had brought a surveying engineer with him when he’d had the statues installed.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mochizuki, ‘but your cousin didn’t find it either, right? So he was on the wrong trail, too.’

  Maria lowered her voice.

  ‘Actually, he died. The day after he talked to me with such confidence….’

  ‘He died? That’s awful. But how?’

  ‘He drowned at sea. He was a very good swimmer, so I couldn’t believe it. It was a real shock.’