4
‘…Due to a low pressure trough, the sky will become cloudy over a large region, starting tonight and lasting until tomorrow night, but it will stay dry. The weather will recover, starting the day after tomorrow. And now, the weather forecast for each area in Kyūshū.…’
Eventually, the voice coming out of Leroux’s radio cassette player was drowned out by a loud female DJ.
‘I’ve had enough. Switch it off, Leroux, I don’t want to listen to it anymore,’ said Agatha irritably. Leroux hastened to turn the radio off.
Their simple dinner had been conducted in a heavy silence, illuminated by the oil lamp. The six were sitting around the table, all avoiding the spot directly across from the door of Orczy’s room. The plate with “The First Victim” was still on the door. It appeared to have been stuck there with strong glue, and they couldn’t get it off.
Agatha said in a deliberately cheery voice: ‘Hey Ellery, show us another of your magic tricks.’
‘Hmm? Oh, sure.’
Ellery, who had been playing with his cards in silence, did a riffle shuffle, gathered the cards into a case and put the deck in his coat pocket.
‘Why are you putting them away when I ask you to show me a trick?’
‘You’re wrong, Agatha. I put them in my pocket because you want to see a magic trick.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a magic trick that starts like this.’
Ellery coughed softly, and then peered into Agatha’s eyes.
‘Okay, ready, Agatha? Think of any of the fifty-two cards, any one you want, except for the joker.’
‘Just think of it?’
‘Yes. Don’t say it out loud—done?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then—.’
Ellery took the case from his coat pocket again and put it on table. It was the blue bicycle card deck.
‘Take a good look at this case. And then think hard of the card you chose and repeat the name of the card in your head.’
‘Okay. Just think of it hard, right?’
‘Yes. And that’s enough.’
Ellery picked up the card case with his left hand.
‘Now Agatha, what card did you think of and did you project onto this case?’
‘I can tell you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Queen of Diamonds.’
‘Heh. Let’s take a look at the case then.’
Ellery opened the lid of the case and took the cards out face up. He slowly fanned them out between his hands.
‘Queen of Diamonds, right? Oh!’
Ellery stopped fanning out the cards and directed Agatha’s attention to one of them with his eyes. One single card was facing the other way round.
‘One card is the other way round, you see.’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you take it out and show us the face?’
‘Yes—but it can’t be.…’
With a doubtful look, Agatha took out the card and placed it on the table face up. It was, without any question, the Queen of Diamonds.
‘Unbelievable!’
Agatha was surprised.
‘Neat trick, don’t you think?’ Ellery smiled, put the cards back in the case and the case in his pocket.
‘Ellery, that was really an impressive trick.’
‘Hadn’t I shown it to you before, Leroux?’
‘First time I saw it.’
‘This is one of my best card guessing tricks.’
‘Agatha wasn’t in on this, right?’
‘I wasn’t, Leroux.’
‘Really?’
‘There was no set-up here. And I’ll also tell you that this wasn’t a probability trick, betting on the 52 to 1 chance that Agatha would choose the Queen of Diamonds.’
Ellery lit a Salem cigarette and took a slow drag.
‘Let’s do a little riddle now. I need to raise my voice here. WHAT’S BOTH TOP AND FINAL?’
‘What?’ Leroux asked and Ellery repeated the question.
‘Got it.’
Agatha clapped her hands together.
‘A horizontal line! Of the T and L?’
‘We’ve got a winner.’
‘Oh, I get it, the horizontal line of the letters T and L when you write the words TOP and FINAL in capitals[x].’
‘Next. How do you read the following combination of letters: THNQ?’
‘What is that?’
‘I think I saw it in a magazine once.’
‘Oh, I saw it at the university lab a while back,’ said Poe, as he put a new packet of Lark cigarettes into his birch wood case.
‘There’s no vowel there, but you have to read the letters like you pronounce them. Thenkyu[xi].’
‘“Thank you?”’
‘Precisely.’
‘Wow, that’s sort of forced.’
‘It’s basically a secret code.’
‘Speaking of codes, they say that the first book featuring a secret code is the Old Testament. I think it was the Book of Daniel.’
‘That long ago?’
‘Even here in Japan we’ve been using secret codes for quite a long time, you know. There’s that famous question-and-answer poem between Yoshida Kenkō and Ton’a in the Shoku Sōanshū[xii]. Didn’t you learn about it in high school?’
‘No, what kind of code is it?’ Agatha replied.
‘Kenkō’s poem to Ton’a went:
“The night is cool / Oh, the harvested rice ears when I wake / My hand pillow / Even both my sleeves in autumn / Blow in the unrelenting wind.”
‘Take the first letters of each line of the original text and it says yonetamahe, or “Rice please.” He was asking for food. And if you take the last letters of each line and read them the other way around, you get zenimohoshi, or “Also need money.”’
‘That’s a miserable story.’
‘And the Buddhist priest Ton’a replied:
“Night is depressing / My dear friend / You did not come / But something will work out / So come around for a while.”
‘Take the first and last letters again, and you get the message yonewanashi, zenisukoshi: “No rice. Little money.”’
‘They must have spent quite a bit of time thinking that up.’
‘I think there was another famous secret code in a question-and-answer poem in the Tsurezuregusa[xiii]. What was it again, Orczy?’
None of them had been paying much attention, but at the sound of the name they all caught their breath and each of them froze.
‘I—I’m sorry. Slipped out of my mouth.’
So even Ellery could lose his head. Such a mistake was unlike him.
There had been a tacit understanding between them since dinner that they would not mention what happened to Orczy, but Ellery’s slip immediately brought them all back to the inescapable reality. An oppressive silence filled the room.
‘Ellery, don’t you have any other stories?’
Leroux tried to help Ellery, who was at a loss for words.
‘Ah, yes.…’
Making fun of Ellery, who was trying his best to conjure up his usual smile, Carr hit the table.
‘Agatha, go make some coffee.’
A brazen grin appeared in the corner of Carr’s mouth as he gave Ellery a scornful look. Ellery started to say something, but Agatha immediately cut him off.
‘I’ll make some coffee. Everyone wants some, I think.’
She stood up hurriedly and went to the kitchen alone.
‘Hey.’
Carr glared at the faces of the remaining four in turn.
‘We’re holding a wake for poor Orczy tonight, right? So stop pretending nothing has happened and let’s all be nice to each other.’