Free The Devil's Disciple by Shiro Hamao

other hand, Ōtera killed Seizō it would be a case of an adulterer killing the husband. And in such a case, even if he did not kill Michiko, he would certainly receive the death penalty.
    They say that Ōtera gave a complete confession. But what exactly did he say? The newspaper article I read to you earlier was obviously too sketchy an account. So I waited impatiently until the day when the details of the interrogation would be made available.
    I waited, but not of course idly. Instead I made use of the time to think through a few theories of my own. I’d like to share with you a few scenarios I was considering at the time.
    What if the defendant had insisted on his innocence? Was there no theory by which he might be proved not guilty?
    I was convinced that such a theory had to exist. Of course detective novelists like you could no doubt come up with all kinds of ideas. But let me tell you about one of mine.
    What do you think, for example, about the possibility that it was Oda Seizō himself who murdered his wife? What if we were to hypothesise that Oda Seizō discovered his wife’s adultery that night or perhaps he knew already but something that night drove his anger to such a pitch that he killed her?
    Let’s say that he had been suspicious of his wife’s behaviour for some time. On that evening something happened between the two of them and the husband confirmed his wife’s infidelity. Michiko shows no inclination to change her ways. Even worse, she sometimes behaves strangely with the two other men. Finally Seizō takes it into his head to kill his wife. But she has betrayed him and it won’t be enough just to kill her with a single blow. So he waits until she is asleep, pounces on her and ties her up. He wants to make her suffer as much as possible so he cuts her in the face and on her breast. At this point (Ōtera, perhaps having heard the commotion, comes bounding into the room. Of course Seizō is just as angry with Ōtera so he goes for him with the knife as well. But let’s say it’s Seizō who ends up getting hurt in the struggle. Might we not imagine such a circumstance? If that were the case Ōtera would not be guilty of murdering Michiko and it would be a case of manslaughter or he might even be let off for self-defence vis-à-vis Seizō. In any case, it would not be murder. It sounds a bit too much like a novel to be true, but for a while I considered it in all seriousness.
    There are, however, quite a few points that cannot be explained by this theory. First of all, the idea that someone would choose a night when a guest is in the house to murder and torture his wife is highly unlikely. Then there is the fact that Ōtera was sleeping in the room just below the couple’s bedroom. It would be hard enough in a western-style house, but even granting that the person downstairs were asleep could you actually take so much time to commit a murder in a Japanese house? Or rather would it ever occur to you that such a thing was possible? Even if we assume that Seizō was carried away by anger how likely is it that he would have decided to torture and murder Michiko on a night like this? Seizō murdering Michiko on the spur of the moment might be different, but one can be sure that he would not have committed such a brutal act without expecting that Ōtera would come upon the scene.
    Then there is the problem of (Ōtera’s arrival into the room at that time, when Michiko was already tied up and wounded. Now this is not impossible to explain if you assume that he ran into the room as soon as he heard Michiko scream. But Michiko must have started to scream from the moment she was tied up. Earlier, I neglected to mention another factor that worked in the favour of the defendant: namely, there was no evidence that Michiko’s mouth was gagged.
    So here again, we have to wonder what Michiko was doing.
    The idea that Seizō died from a wound