Death of a Clown

"X marks the spot."
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

This book was released with a new cover in 2024, and the art is really great! So do try to get this one if you're interested in the book.

One evening, wheelchair-bound Takemiya Kaori and her father Munehiko are talking in her room, when they hear a loud cry. Carrying his daughter out of the room, the father and daughter see how a woman runs across the cross-shaped corridor, barges through the balcony doors at one of the far ends and flings herself out from the balcony down to the cliffs below: the funeral of Kaori's mother Yoriko followed soon after. Mizuho, Kaori's cousin, is asked by her mother to go visit the Cross Mansion to learn more about the death of her aunt Yoriko. Three generations of Takemiyas live at the Cross Mansion, named so after the characteristic cross-shape of the main hallway. Takemiya Shizuka is the matriarch of the family, having lost her husband recently. Yoriko had become the CEO of Takemiya Industries, but now her husband Munehiko has taken over her position. Besides Kaori, there's also a college student Jinichi living in the house, the son of a family friend studying at a nearby university.  Also visiting are Yoriki's cousin (who also works at the company) and Shizuka's personal hairdresser and family friend. Upon arrival at the Cross Mansion, Mizuho learns that the family had recently acquired a clown doll, which for some reason had been put on a display shelf on the night Yoriko flung herself from the balcony. The first night, Mizuho wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, when she notices a button lying on the floor. She figures someone must have lost it, and places it in a visible place. The following day however, the dead bodies of Munehiko and his secretary/affair partner are found in the music room, having been stabbed. Everyone's surprised, not just by the murder, but also by the fact the secretary is in the house in the first place, as she left after dinner last night and it doesn't seem likely the two would be that daring to continue their affair in the Takemiya manor. Mizuho however is very shocked when she learns a button has been found outside the house, seemingly indicating the murderer left the house and dropped the button there.... but because Mizuho knows the button had initially been dropped inside the house, on the first floor cross-shaped hallway to which all the bedrooms are connected, she realizes someone inside the house must have placed that button outside after she had found it, suggesting the double murder was an inside job.

The day of the murder, the monk Gojou Shinnosuke presents himself at the house, claiming he is looking for the clown doll: it is supposed to be cursed, having brought all of its previous owners a premature death and he needs to purify it. It turns out the clown doll had been placed inside the music room, meaning it is evidence for now, so Gojou sticks around, hoping to retrieve the doll once the investigation is over. However, what nobody in the house knows is... is that the clown doll actually has a mind of its own. While it can't move or commnicate, it has been a silent witness to everything that has been happening in this house, from the death of Yoriko to the double murder in the music room, and he knews who the murderer is in Higashino Keigo's Juujiyashiki no Pierrot ("The Clown of Cross Mansion", 1988). 

Some might remember I mentioned this book in my review of ("How to Make A Crime Scene"), where it is discussed as one of its case studies, especially in regards whether the house was designed well enough keeping in mind one of its inhabitants (Kaori) is bound to her wheelchair.

 Juujiyashiki no Pierrot is one of Higashino's earlier mystery novels, back when he was still writing more classical detectives rather than the human-drama-focused mystery novels he writes nowadays. And I guess that is clear right from the start due to its unique premise: here we have a house with a unique layout (a cross layout), and there's the matter of the clown: each chapter is bookended by a monologue of the clown doll: it is a silent and truthful witness who has seen the murders happening right in front of him, even seeing the actual murderers doing their jobs, but they can not actually communicate with the other people, so they are basically a "seperate narrative" within the story. Surprisingly, this is actually used in a clever way to make the mystery much more interesting, even though the clown actually knows what is happening and there's not much of a mystery going on in their eyes: however, certain discrepencies between what the clown has seen and what we learn via the police and Mizuho's investigation of the crimes really help flesh out the mystery, creating a few "Aha!" moments that only work because we have testimony from a detached, otherwordly witness who can't interact otherwise with the world. 

And if you're mostly familiar with Higashino's modern-day writing, it might surprise you how very much not human-drama this mystery is, and a lot of the mystery-solving is very much evidence-based: Mizuho's whole reason for suspecting the murderer is in the house, is based on a deduction based on the button and the fact she knew at what time she found it, and at what time the button was later found outside the house. There are more of these "phsyical evidence-based" deductions in this book, which combined with the curious layout of the house, as if it were a Ayatsuji novel, really make this feel very different from what you'd expect of a Higashino novel nowadays. In fact, a lot of the characters are decidedly not very engaging nor nice in this book, not in a 'but it's human' kind of way, but almost comically so. The live-in student Jinichi for example is one, who constantly hits on Kaori and keeps saying he'll be the one who'll marry her... even though Kaori never ever shows any sign of thinking that much of the young man. 

While more deaths follow, the main mystery revolve around the double murder of Munehiko and his secretary in the music room, which is located on the ground floor of the Cross Mansion: interestingly enough, the living quarters of the house are all set on the first floor of the building, while the ground floor only holds the music room and a storeroom. While some clues seem to indicate the murderer might have stabbed the two, and then fled through the backdoor, the earlier button-deduction tells Mizuho the murderer was in the house, and the clown testimony tells the reader too the murderer was one of the people in the house, but who was it? A lot of Mizuho's investigation delves into the exact times everything happened, and also the mystery of why the secretary was in the house: she most definitely left by car to go home after dinner, so for what reason did she return to the Cross Mansion? While the bulk of the book is dedicated to solving the mystery, I have to admit developments felt a bit slow at time (even though this is a very short book), and moreover, the murderer's plan really involved very risky stuff for... like some benefits I guess, but was it really worth risking that just on the off-chance things would go as they hoped it'd go? Large parts of the mystery just feel more aimed at the reader, rather than it being the safest plan for the murderer (and in fact, luck does play a large part), so that feels a bit unsatisfying. It's not bad per se, but I can't help but shrug at it because it feels complicated for the sake of being complicated, and not for the sake of accomplishing the murderer's goals in a safe and sure manner.

A murder that is focused on much later in the story is more memorable, and makes better use of its props to present a more convincing mystery, though I admit it's rather simple in design, and I am going to guess a lot of people are able to guess what's going on here very early on. Saying more would perhaps already point too much to it, but I do want to make a special mention of the very clever use of the clown doll in this part of the mystery: it's not outrageously clever taken on its own, but by using the clown prop, a propr that actually can "testify" to the reader alone about what it sees, Higashino does manage to give this part of the mystery more flair than if he had just used the concept 'as is'.

Overall, Juujiyashiki no Pierrot is fairly light reading, so it's not a book I would go out of my way of recommending because it's not really making a huge impression, even if it's pretty decent. It is very, very different from what you'd expect of Higashino Keigo now though (especially considering what part of his output is available in English), so if you're interested in his earlier works, that are much closer to formal orthodox mystery fiction, this book is a fairly good example, similar to Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masquerade Mountain Villa Murder Case") and the Great Detective Tenkaichi series.

Original Japanese title(s): 東野圭吾『十字屋敷のピエロ』