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SuspicionAuthor: Edogawa Ranpo
| Original Title | 疑惑 |
|---|---|
| Author | 江戸川 乱歩 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A fractured family reels after their tyrannical father is found dead in their garden, his skull shattered. Long oppressed by his drunken cruelty, his children and wife harbor no grief—only simmering resentment and uneasy relief. As police name external suspects, darker doubts fester within the household: a brother’s concealed handkerchief at the scene, a sister’s furtive burial of the murder weapon, a mother’s haunted silence. The narrator, once certain of an outsider’s guilt, spirals into paranoia, tracing half-remembered details—a midnight stair creak, a bloodied comb—that implicate those closest to him. Freudian undercurrents whisper of repressed desires as forgotten acts resurface: an axe left years earlier in a pine tree’s fork, poised to fall. Suspicion becomes a mirror, reflecting each family member’s capacity for violence. In this suffocating dance of accusation, truth blurs with unconscious intent, leaving one question: Can guilt exist without malice? |
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