Pathway to Japanese Literature

Part One

“No, I know a thing or two about it.
“First off, that was an extraordinary incident in recent memory.
“The public’s been consumed by that rumor.
“But I doubt they’ve grasped it as thoroughly as you have.
“Care to compare notes?”

A young gentleman said this and brought a piece of meat dripping with bright red blood to his mouth.

“Well then, I suppose I’ll tell you the story.”
“Hey, Boy! Another beer over here!”

Despite his well-proportioned figure, the other young man—with his hair grown out in a ridiculously disheveled mess—began to speak as follows.

“The time—Taishō — Year, October 10th, 4 AM; the place—the outskirts of town, the railway tracks behind Dr. Tomita’s residence. This was the stage.”

“Imagine—in the winter (No—autumn, maybe. Ah, whatever)—the pre-dawn gloom still dim, the Upbound No. ○ Express train came charging through, shattering the silence.”

Then, for some reason, no sooner had a piercing whistle suddenly blared than the train came to an abrupt halt using its emergency brake. But just moments before it stopped completely, a woman was run over and killed.

“I saw the scene myself, you know.”

“It was my first experience of such a thing, and honestly, it left me feeling quite unsettled.”

That was none other than the Mrs. Tomita in question.
Due to the conductor’s emergency report, the proper authorities arrived.
Onlookers gathered.
Before long, someone notified the Tomita residence; the startled Dr. Tomita—the master of the house—and his servants came rushing out. Right in the midst of that commotion—as you know—I, who had gone out to town for leisure at the time, happened to pass by during my habitual early morning walk.
And so, the autopsy began.
A man who appeared to be a police doctor examined the wound.
Once the routine was completed, the corpse was promptly carried into Dr. Tomita’s residence.
To bystanders’ eyes, the matter seemed settled quite straightforwardly.

“That’s all I saw.”
“The rest combines newspaper reports with my own imagination, so bear that in mind as you listen.”
According to the police doctor’s findings, the cause of death was indeed being run over—specifically, her right thigh had been severed at the root.
As for why things reached this point, a decisive clue emerged from the deceased’s pocket: a suicide note addressed by Mrs. Tomita to her husband, Dr. Tomita. Its contents stated that after years of suffering from tuberculosis and burdening those around her, she could no longer endure it and had resolved to end her life here.
That was the essence of it—a thoroughly ordinary incident.
Had a certain detective not appeared on the scene, the story would have concluded there, reduced to a brief mention in some gossip column about “the scholar’s wife’s world-weary suicide.” But thanks to that detective, we gained a sensational tale indeed.

That was Kuroda Seitarō—the detective constable being lavishly praised in the newspapers—an eccentric man, the sort who would read even a single detective novel in his spare time.
“Well, I’d imagine that’s just an amateur’s conjecture.”
That man crawled on all fours like a dog, sniffing around the ground as though he were in some translated detective novel.
Then, after entering the Tomita residence, he asked Dr. Tomita and the servants all sorts of questions, peered into every nook and cranny of each room with a magnifying glass—well, you can imagine he carried out the latest detective techniques splendidly.
And then, the detective appeared before the chief and said, “Well, I suppose I must investigate this a bit further.”
At this, the group erupted into a commotion, and it was decided that an autopsy would be conducted immediately on the corpse.
When they performed an autopsy at the university hospital under the supervision of a certain Dr. X, it turned out that Detective Kuroda’s deduction had been correct.
There were traces suggesting she had already ingested a type of poison prior to being run over.
In other words, someone had poisoned Mrs. Tomita, transported her corpse to the railway tracks, made it appear to be a suicide, and thus committed a horrific murder.
The newspapers at the time vigorously fueled our curiosity with sensational headlines like “Who Is the Culprit?”
At this, the prosecutor summoned Detective Kuroda, marking a new phase in the evidence examination.

“Now, the evidence that Detective Kuroda produced with such ceremony consisted of three items: first, a pair of shoes; second, a plaster cast of footprints; and third, several crumpled sheets of scrap paper—rather theatrical, don’t you think?”
“With these three pieces of evidence, this man claimed Mrs. Tomita hadn’t committed suicide at all—she’d been murdered.”
“And the murderer? None other than her own husband—Dr. Tomita himself.”
“That’s what he declared.”
“What do you say? Quite the tale, isn’t it?”

The storytelling youth flashed a sly smile and looked at the other man’s face.
Then, taking out a silver cigarette case from his inner pocket, he deftly picked up an Oxford cigarette and closed the lid with a snap.

“Right.”
The listening youth struck a match for the storyteller and said, “I already know most of that up to that point.
But how that man Kuroda discovered the murderer—that’s the part worth hearing.”

“What a splendid detective story, isn’t it?
“Detective Kuroda explained that suspicion of murder arose when the police doctor tilted his head quizzically at the deceased’s wound showing unexpectedly scant bleeding.”
“It all stemmed from that minuscule detail.”
“He cited an example from an old woman’s murder case in town—Taishō era, year-month-day unspecified.”
“‘Doubt everything doubtable, and investigate each suspicion exhaustively’—so goes the detective’s creed. This investigator had clearly embraced that philosophy, constructing his hypothesis accordingly.”
“An unknown assailant—man or woman—forced poison upon the wife.”
“They then carried her corpse to the railway tracks, awaiting the train’s wheels to obliterate all evidence.”
“Assuming this scenario, traces from transporting the body should linger near the tracks.”
“Thus he reasoned.”
“Providentially for the detective, rain had persisted until the night before the collision, leaving footprints crisply etched in the earth.”
“Only those imprinted between midnight’s last raindrops and approximately 4:10 AM—the incident’s timeframe—remained intact.”
“So began his canine-like investigation.”
“But let me sketch the scene here.”
Sōda Gorō—the narrator—produced a compact notebook from his pocket and dashed off a rudimentary diagram with his pencil.

“The railway tracks were slightly elevated above ground level, their slopes on both sides entirely covered with lawn grass. Between the tracks and the back entrance of Dr. Tomita’s residence lay a rather spacious area—yes, a vacant lot large enough to accommodate a tennis court—a gravel-strewn patch devoid of grass or vegetation. The footprints had been imprinted on that side, while across the tracks opposite Dr. Tomita’s residence stretched rice fields, presenting that familiar outskirts scenery with what appeared to be a factory chimney visible in the distance. Running east-west—since the western edge of town ended with Dr. Tomita’s residence and several other cultural village-style houses—you must imagine that along the row of residences, houses continued stretching nearly parallel to the railway tracks.

Now, what did Detective Kuroda—crawling on all fours—discover in that vacant lot between Dr. Tomita’s residence and the railway tracks? Over a dozen footprints intermingled there, clustered around the site of the fatal collision in such confusion that their significance must have been utterly perplexing at first glance. Yet after meticulously classifying each one, he determined there were several types of zori imprints, multiple varieties of geta tracks, and numerous shoe prints.

When they compared the number of people present at the scene with the footprint count, they found one surplus impression—in other words, an unidentified footprint had been discovered. Moreover, it was a shoe print. That early morning, those wearing shoes would naturally have been limited to official personnel involved in the case—yet since none of them had left the scene yet, this discrepancy seemed peculiar.

Upon closer examination, they ascertained that this questionable shoe print originated from Dr. Tomita’s residence.”

“You know an awful lot about this,” interjected Matsumura, the listening youth.

“Well, we owe much of this part to the tabloids,” replied Sōda Gorō. “When it comes to cases like this, they report at length, focusing on the sensational aspects—there are times when it proves useful.”

Now, when examining the footprints between Dr. Tomita’s residence and the site of the fatal collision, they found four types: first were the unidentified shoe prints mentioned earlier; second were Dr. Tomita’s zori prints found at the scene; third and fourth belonged to the servants—yet despite all these, there remained no trace suggesting the victim had walked to the railway tracks herself.

Those should have been small barefoot prints with tabi socks, yet none were found anywhere.

“So did she come wearing men’s shoes?” Sōda continued rhetorically. “If not, then someone matching these shoe prints must have carried Mrs. Tomita there—those are our only options.”

“Of course, the first possibility makes no sense,” he dismissed.

“The latter assumption holds water because those shoe prints bore one peculiar trait: their heels sank unusually deep into the ground.”

Every print shared this characteristic—clear evidence someone had walked while bearing heavy weight.

“The luggage’s burden forced their heels deeper,” Detective Kuroda had concluded.

Regarding this point, Kuroda boasted grandiosely in the tabloids: “Human footprints reveal countless truths! This type indicates lameness, that one blindness, another pregnancy!”—so he lectured endlessly on his footprint detection methods.

“If you’re curious,” Sōda added dryly, “just read yesterday’s rags.”

“To keep this from dragging on, I’ll skip the finer details,” Sōda continued, “but through those footprints, Detective Kuroda painstakingly investigated and discovered a pair of shoes beneath the veranda of Dr. Tomita’s main house that matched the prints in question.”
“Unfortunately,” he added, “the servants confirmed those were shoes the renowned scholar always wore.”
“There were various other pieces of evidence,” Sōda went on. “The considerable distance between the servants’ quarters and the couple’s rooms; the fact that the two maids had been sound asleep that night, only waking to the morning commotion; Dr. Tomita’s unusual presence at home that evening; and above all, certain domestic circumstances within his household that supported the footprint evidence.”
“As for those circumstances—you probably know this—Dr. Tomita was the son-in-law of the late Dr. Tomita Senior.”
“Meaning Mrs. Tomita was a spoiled heiress with chronic tuberculosis, plain features, and severe hysteria to boot.”
“Anyone could imagine an unpleasant marital dynamic festering there.”
“In fact,” Sōda’s tone sharpened, “Dr. Tomita had secretly set up a mistress’s residence and was utterly infatuated with some former geisha.”
“Though I don’t think such affairs diminish his academic merits one bit.”
“Now,” he leaned forward, “hysteria typically drives husbands to madness.”
“In this case, those mounting tensions likely precipitated the tragedy.”
“At least,” Sōda concluded dryly, “that’s the logically coherent theory.”

However, there remained one difficult problem here.
This referred to the suicide note found in the deceased’s pocket that I had mentioned initially.
“After thorough investigation, it was confirmed to be Mrs. Tomita’s handwriting—but how could she have written a suicide note she never truly meant?”
This became a critical obstacle for Detective Kuroda.
“The detective reportedly struggled mightily with this,”
“but after considerable struggling, what he discovered were several crumpled sheets of scrap paper.”
“This was practice paper—Dr. Tomita had been imitating his wife’s handwriting on discarded sheets.”
Among them was a letter Mrs. Tomita had sent to the doctor during his travels, which the culprit had used as a model to practice replicating his own wife’s penmanship.
“She certainly devised an elaborate scheme.”
The detective allegedly discovered this in the wastebasket of Dr. Tomita’s study.

“And so, this is how they concluded it,” Sōda continued. “To eliminate Mrs. Tomita—a thorn in his side, an obstacle to his love, and an uncontrollable madwoman. Having meticulously plotted a method that would preserve his scholarly reputation, Dr. Tomita allegedly made his wife drink poison under the pretense of medicine, then shouldered her lifeless body while wearing those very shoes, carrying her through the back gate to the conveniently nearby railway tracks. He placed the carefully forged suicide note in her pocket. When they discovered her mangled body, the audacious criminal rushed to the scene wearing a mask of shock. That’s their official version of events.”

“As for why Dr. Tomita chose this perilous path rather than resorting to divorce—though this was likely the newspaper reporter’s own conjecture—one paper offered the following explanation: first，out of respect for the late Dr. Tomita Senior，he feared public censure；and second—though this may have been the primary motive for Dr．Tomita，capable of such cruelty—that Mrs．Tomita had inherited a modest fortune from her parents．”

Thus came Dr. Tomita’s arrest, Detective Kuroda Kiyotaro’s rise to fame, an unexpected boon for newspaper reporters, and a major scandal for academia—and as you say, society was now abuzz with these rumors.
“It’s certainly a rather dramatic incident, I must say.”

Sōda drained the glass in front of him in one gulp after finishing his account.

“Even if you had an interest in seeing the scene, you investigated it in such detail.”
“But that Detective Kuroda is an uncharacteristically intelligent man for a police officer, isn’t he?”

“Well, he’s a kind of novelist.”

“Huh? Oh, exactly!”
“He’s nothing short of a novelist.”
“One might say he crafted a narrative more gripping than any novel.”

“But I think he’s nothing beyond a novelist.”

With one hand in his vest pocket and groping for something, Sōda formed an ironic smile.

“What do you mean by that?”

Matsumura blinked through the cigarette smoke and countered.

“Mr. Kuroda might be a novelist, but he’s no detective.”

“Why?”

Matsumura seemed startled.
As if anticipating something splendid—that unattainable thing—he looked into the other’s eyes.
Sōda took out a small paper slip from his vest pocket and placed it on the table.
And then,

“Do you know what this is?”

he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t this just a P.L. Company receipt ticket?”

Matsumura made a puzzled face and asked again.

“That’s right.”
“It’s a receipt ticket for a forty-sen rental pillow fee from a third-class express train.”
“This is something I unexpectedly picked up at the scene of the death-by-train incident, but you see, I intend to use this to assert Dr. Tomita’s innocence.”

“Don’t talk nonsense! You’re joking!”

Matsumura spoke in a tone that was not entirely dismissive, half-convinced and half-doubting.

“Fundamentally, Dr. Tomita should be found innocent regardless of evidence.”
“To think that a scholar of Dr. Tomita’s stature could be erased from this world—yes, he’s a man of international renown—for the sake of merely one hysterical woman’s life!”
“A man counted among the world’s rarest minds—what idiot would think to bury such a man from this world?”
“Matsumura, actually, I plan to visit Dr. Tomita’s unoccupied house on the 1:30 train today.”
“And there are a few things I want to ask the caretaker.”

After saying this, Sōda glanced briefly at his wristwatch, took the napkin, and stood up.

“Dr. Tomita will likely defend himself.”
“Lawyers sympathetic to Dr. Tomita will defend him too.”
“But this piece of evidence I hold—no one else has it.”
“You want me to explain now?”
“Wait. I can’t conclude without further investigation.”
“There’s still a small hole in my reasoning.”
“To plug that hole, I’ll take my leave and go investigate.”
“Boy.”
“Have a car called.”
“Let’s meet again tomorrow.”

***

The following day—in the evening edition of a newspaper reputed to have the largest circulation in — City—a lengthy contribution spanning five columns in single characters, as shown below, was published.
The headline read "Proving Dr. Tomita’s Innocence," and it was signed by Sōda Gorō.

I submitted a document containing the same content as this contribution to the preliminary judge—Mr.—who was tasked with interrogating Dr. Tomita.
I believed what I had submitted might suffice, but in case my statement—that of a mere student—were buried in obscurity due to Mr.—’s misunderstanding or other reasons, and further, even if my account contradicting the facts proven by the influential authorities’ detective were accepted, I could not trust that the authorities would subsequently announce to society with sufficient clarity the false charge against my revered Dr. Tomita. Thus, I contributed this text here to arouse public opinion for that purpose.

I bear neither personal enmity nor obligation toward Dr. Tomita; I am simply one who has come to revere his intellect through his writings. However, concerning this incident, I have taken this course as my natural duty, for I firmly believe that none but myself—who chanced to be present at the scene and obtained a minor piece of evidence—can rescue this elder statesman of our academic world from condemnation through patently erroneous deductions. I earnestly hope no misunderstanding shall arise regarding this matter.

Now, as for the reasons why I believe in Dr. Tomita’s innocence—to put it succinctly—the crime inferred by the judicial authorities through Detective Kuroda Kiyotarō’s investigation is far too amateurish. It reeks of childish theatricality. When we compare the intellect of a scholar so meticulous that not a single particle escapes his scrutiny with these so-called facts of the crime, what are we to think? Confronted with reasoning so utterly divorced from reality, can one help but offer a bitter smile? Do the authorities truly mean to suggest that Dr. Tomita’s mind has deteriorated to such senility—leaving clumsy shoe prints, scraps of forged handwriting practice, even a poison cup—all to grant some fame to a certain Mr. Kuroda? Or perhaps they claim that this erudite suspect failed to foresee poison traces remaining on the corpse? I maintain Dr. Tomita should be declared innocent without my needing to present a single piece of evidence. That said, I am not so rash as to make this statement based solely on the conjectures outlined above.

Detective Kuroda Kiyotarō now basked in the glow of his brilliant achievements.
The public even praised him as the Japanese Sherlock Holmes.
To cast him down from the pinnacle of his success into the abyss here did not sit entirely well with me either.
In truth, I believed Mr. Kuroda was the most skilled investigator among our country’s police force.
This recent failure had been a calamity brought about by his being more intelligent than others.
His deductive method had not been flawed.
However, there had been a deficiency in his observation of the materials involved.
That is to say, I deeply regretted on Mr. Kuroda’s behalf that in terms of meticulousness and thoroughness, he had proven inferior to a mere student like myself.

Setting that aside, the pieces of evidence I intended to present were the following two extremely trivial items.

1. A single PL Company receipt ticket (for payment of a pillow provided on a third-class express train) that I obtained at the scene.

2. The laces of Dr. Tomita’s shoes that are kept as evidence by the authorities.
There are just these two items.

I fear these may appear utterly worthless to you, dear readers. Yet those versed in such matters know full well that even a single strand of hair can stand as decisive evidence in grave crimes.

To tell the truth, my investigation began with a chance discovery.
On the day of the incident, while present at the scene observing the medical examiners at work, I suddenly noticed the edge of a white paper scrap peeking out from beneath a stone block where I had been sitting.
Had I not seen the date stamped on that fragment, no suspicion would have arisen—but fortunately for Dr. Tomita, that imprint burned into my vision like divine revelation:
Taishō ―― Year, October 9th—the date stamp from the very day before the incident.

I removed the stone block—which must have weighed a good 18 to 22 kilograms—and picked up the scrap of paper that had been torn by the rain. It was a receipt ticket from the PL Company. And that piqued my curiosity.

Now, there were three points Detective Kuroda overlooked at the scene.

Of these, one was the PL Company receipt ticket that fortuitously came into my possession; even excluding this, it remained certain there were at least two oversights. Yet even regarding this receipt ticket—had Mr. Kuroda exercised more meticulous attention—he might have discovered it through deliberate means rather than chance. For the stone weighing down the ticket was unmistakably one of the many blocks lying beside the half-completed sewer ditch behind Dr. Tomita’s residence—a fact which, combined with this particular stone’s solitary placement near the railway tracks, might have conveyed significance to an observer more attentive than Mr. Kuroda.

Moreover, I showed the ticket to one of the inspecting officers at the time. The very officer who dismissed me without a glance and barked at me to move aside—I could still identify that individual among the inspectors even now.

The second point was that while the so-called criminal’s footprints had departed from the back door of Dr. Tomita’s residence and reached the railway tracks, there were no traces of them returning from the tracks back to the residence.
How Detective Kuroda interpreted this point—since the merciless newspaper reporters failed to report anything about this critical matter—I cannot say, but he likely concluded that after placing the victim’s body on the tracks, the criminal had for some reason taken a detour along the railway line to return.
——Indeed, there were locations where one could return to Dr. Tomita’s residence without leaving footprints by making a slight detour——and given that the shoes matching the footprints had been discovered inside Dr. Tomita’s residence, it was perhaps reasoned that even without return tracks, sufficient evidence existed to confirm someone had returned.
This seems reasonable at first glance—but does it not contain some unnatural element?

The third point was something that would escape most people’s attention—the sort of detail even those who witnessed it would dismiss—but it concerned a dog’s footprints left all around the area, particularly running parallel to the so-called criminal’s tracks.
What drew my notice was this: in a situation involving a train fatality, a dog that had been nearby—its footprints leading back to the rear entrance of Dr. Tomita’s residence—yet this animal, presumably the victim’s beloved pet, showed no inclination to approach the gathered crowd struck me as deeply incongruous.

Herein, I have enumerated in full what I call my evidence.

Astute readers will have largely inferred what I am about to explain.
To those individuals, this may be superfluous, but I must state my conclusion regardless.

When I returned home that day, I still held no opinions whatsoever.
Regarding the three points mentioned earlier, I had not given them any particular deep consideration either.
I had deliberately described these matters with such clarity here solely to capture readers' attention—it was not that I had contemplated precisely these points while at the scene that day. However, upon learning through successive morning newspapers the following day and thereafter that Dr. Tomita himself, whom I revered, had been detained as a suspect, and upon reading accounts of Detective Kuroda's investigative efforts, I became convinced—through the commonsense reasoning stated at this testimony's outset—that some error must exist in Mr. Kuroda's investigation. By combining various points I had witnessed that day with lingering doubts addressed through inquiries made today at Dr. Tomita's residence with the caretakers, I ultimately succeeded in grasping the incident's truth.

Therefore, I shall now systematically record the progression of my reasoning below.

As I previously stated, the starting point was the PL Company receipt ticket.
This ticket had presumably been dropped from an express train window on the night before the incident—likely in the late hours. Why then was it found pinned beneath a stone block weighing approximately 18 to 22 kilograms?
This formed my initial focal point.
The only logical conclusion was that someone had brought that stone block there after the train bearing the PL Company ticket had passed through the previous night.—That it had not fallen from the railway tracks or tumbled from an open freight car carrying stones was evident from its location.
—So where could this stone have originated? Given its substantial weight, it must have come from nearby.
Ultimately, its wedge-shaped form alone confirmed it as one of the many stone blocks placed behind Dr. Tomita’s residence for sewer construction.

In other words, between late last night and the morning when the fatality was discovered, someone had carried that stone from Dr. Tomita’s residence to the site of the incident.
Then, those footprints should have remained.
The rain had lightened the previous night and stopped around midnight, so the footprints should not have been washed away.
However, regarding the footprints—as the astute Mr. Kuroda had investigated—there existed only those belonging to people present at the scene that morning and the "criminal’s footprints."
There was only one set.
Thus, the one who transported the stones was none other than the "criminal."
It could only be that person.
Having reached this peculiar conclusion, I wrestled with how to substantiate the possibility that the "criminal" had transported the stones.
And there, upon discovering that an exceedingly clever trick had been employed, I was utterly astonished.

Footprints left by someone carrying a human body and those left by someone carrying stones—there could be no doubt they resembled each other closely enough to deceive even a seasoned detective’s eye.
I had uncovered this astonishing trick.
There was no interpretation possible except this: someone wishing to cast murder suspicion upon Dr. Tomita had worn his shoes, carried stone blocks instead of his wife’s body, and left footprints stretching all the way to the railway tracks.
Yet if we accept that the architect of this vile trick left those footprints, we face an irreconcilable gap—how did Dr. Tomita’s wife herself, the victim crushed by the train, reach the tracks? Her footprints would be conspicuously absent.
As the inexorable conclusion of this reasoning, I must reluctantly affirm that Dr. Tomita’s wife herself was the terrifying demon who cursed her husband—a genius of crime who chills the blood. I envisioned a shadowed woman driven mad by jealousy, stricken with tuberculosis—that disease which paradoxically sharpens the mind to pathological clarity—an incurable malady festering within her.
All was darkness.
All was dampness.
Within that darkness and dampness—a pallid woman’s phantasm with eyes blazing horribly, illusions spanning countless days and nights, those illusions made flesh—I found myself shuddering involuntarily.

Putting that aside, next is the second question: regarding the absence of footprints returning to Dr. Tomita’s residence—how does one account for this?
At first glance, it might seem natural that no returning footprints existed—after all, they were made by the shoes worn by the victim when departing.
Yet I believe deeper consideration is necessary here.
Why would Dr. Tomita’s wife—possessor of such criminal genius—have neglected to leave footprints returning from the railway tracks to the residence?
And had that PL Company ticket not fortuitously fallen from the train window, she would have left behind that crude trace which might have stood as the sole clue.

The key that resolved this question was none other than the dog’s footprints—the third point of doubt I had raised.
I couldn’t help but smile as I connected the dog’s footprints with this sole oversight on Dr. Tomita’s wife’s part.
Undoubtedly, Mrs. Tomita had planned to wear Dr. Tomita’s shoes and make a round trip to the railway tracks.
No doubt she had intended to choose a new path—one that would leave no footprints—to reach the railway tracks.
But comically, a single hindrance arose here.
The reason being that Mrs. Tomita’s beloved dog, John—the name “John” being something I learned today from a servant of the household, XX—
—had noticed Mrs. Tomita’s unusual behavior, come to her side, and begun barking furiously.
Mrs. Tomita feared that the dog’s barking would rouse the family members and lead to her discovery.
She couldn’t afford to dawdle.
Even if the family members didn’t wake up, if the neighborhood dogs came swarming over due to John’s barking, it would be disastrous.
Thereupon, Mrs. Tomita instantly conceived an ingenious method—turning this predicament to her advantage to both make John leave and simultaneously carry out her own plan.

According to my investigation today, the dog named John had been trained through daily practice to carry small items for deliveries.
For the most part, he had been accustomed to delivering objects from places such as when accompanying his master during outings back to the residence.
In such cases, John had the habit of always placing the items he brought back in the inner sitting room.
Another discovery from my visit to Dr. Tomita’s residence was that to reach the veranda of the inner sitting room from the back entrance, one had no path other than passing through the wooden gate in the plank fence surrounding the inner garden—a gate constructed with a spring mechanism like those on Western-style doors, opening only inward.

Dr. Tomita’s wife skillfully utilized these two points.
Those familiar with dogs would not deny that in such situations, merely chasing them away verbally would not make them leave; but if you give them a task—such as throwing a piece of wood into the distance and having them retrieve it—the animal will invariably obey.
By leveraging this canine psychology, Mrs. Tomita had John take the shoes away from the scene.
And she had hoped that at the very least, the shoes would be placed beside the veranda of the inner sitting room—though at that time, the storm shutters on the veranda were likely closed, so John could not have gone there as per his usual habit—and that the gate, which could not be opened from the inside even if pushed, would prevent the dog from returning to that spot.

All of the above—the absence of returning footprints, the dog’s footprints and other circumstances, and Dr. Tomita’s wife’s criminal genius—were matters I had merely pieced together through conjecture.
I fear some may criticize this as overinterpretation.
Rather, it might be more accurate to consider that the missing return footprints were Mrs. Tomita’s oversight, while the dog’s tracks from the outset revealed her scheme for disposing of the shoes.
Yet whichever proves true, my core assertion of "Mrs. Tomita’s crime" remains unshaken.

Now, here arises one question.
The question is how a single dog could have carried a pair—that is, two shoes—at once.
The answer lies in one of the two pieces of evidence mentioned earlier—the "shoelaces from Dr. Tomita’s shoes kept as evidence by the authorities"—which I had not yet explained.
Through the same servant XX’s recollection, I painstakingly uncovered that when the shoes were confiscated, they had been tied together with their laces like a theater cloakroom attendant would do.
Did Detective Kuroda pay attention to this detail?
In his excitement over discovering the crucial evidence—or perhaps it was simply overlooked.
Even if not overlooked, would he have been content with mere conjecture that the criminal had tied these laces together and hidden them beneath the veranda for some reason?
Had that been otherwise, Detective Kuroda’s conclusion could never have been reached.

And thus, the dreadful cursed woman—having ingested the prepared poison, lain upon the railway tracks, and been cast down from the pinnacle of honor to the abyss of disgrace—awaited the express train's wheels with a terrifying smile, her mind fixed on visions of her husband groaning in prison.
Regarding the poison container, I have no knowledge.
However, should any curious readers thoroughly search the vicinity of those railway tracks, they would likely discover something within the mud of the rice paddies.

I had yet to mention a single word regarding the suicide note said to have been discovered in his wife’s pocket, but this too was—needless to say—fabricated evidence prepared by Mrs. Tomita, just like the footprints and other elements.
Since I had not seen the suicide note myself, this remains mere speculation; however, were one to request a professional handwriting expert’s analysis, it would undoubtedly reveal that Mrs. Tomita had imitated her own writing quirks and that the phrases written there were in fact truthful.
As for other minor points, I will avoid belaboring explanations or raising counterarguments one by one.
That should become naturally apparent to you, esteemed readers, through these statements.

Finally，as for the reason behind Mrs．Tomita’s suicide—as you esteemed readers may have already surmised—it was exceedingly straightforward．According to what I heard from Dr．Tomita’s servant Ms．X X—as was noted in his written record—Mrs．Tomita was indeed suffering from severe tuberculosis．Did this not speak to the cause of Mrs．Tomita’s suicide？In other words，Mrs．Tomita sought through her single death—with avaricious calculation—to achieve dual purposes：a world-weary suicide and romantic vengeance．

With this, my statement is concluded.
Now, I can only pray that the investigating judge—Mr.—will summon me at the earliest possible date.

At the same table in the same restaurant as the previous day, Sōda and Matsumura sat facing each other.

“You’ve suddenly become a star performer, haven’t you?”

Matsumura said in a manner of praising his friend.

“Just that I’m pleased to have been able to contribute modestly to academia, you know. If Dr. Tomita ever publishes a work that astonishes the global academic world in the future, I suppose it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to demand he add ‘Co-Authored by Sōda Gorō’ in gold lettering beside his signature.”

Having said this, Sōda spread his fingers like a comb and thrust them into his long, tangled hair.

“However, I never imagined you were such an outstanding detective.”

“Kindly correct that ‘detective’ to ‘visionary’. In truth, I have no idea how far my imagination might run. For example, had that suspect not been the great scholar I revere, I might have even imagined Dr. Tomita himself as the criminal who killed his wife. I might have ended up refuting, one after another, the very evidence I myself presented as most crucial. You understand this, don’t you? All the evidence I solemnly laid out—if you examine it closely—isn’t definitive at all. Every piece could be interpreted differently, allowing alternate scenarios to be imagined. The only certainty lies with that P.L. Company ticket—but even then, what if it wasn’t picked up from beneath the stone in question, but from beside it?”

Sōda Gorō gazed at his companion’s seemingly uncomprehending face and smirked meaningfully.