The Silence of Gears
The clocks had stopped, of course. That was how she found him.
Ms. Ishikawa, whose floral arrangements graced the lobby of the Seishin Municipal Police Station and whose skill at deduction had quietly resolved more than one perplexing case, stood in the late Mr. Horiguchi’s workshop and catalogued the extent of the silence. It was unnerving. Mr. Horiguchi had dedicated his life to the art of time, and now time had apparently retaliated.
Grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, wristwatches scattered across workbenches like metallic confetti – each frozen at a different, arbitrary moment. It was a cacophony of stillness.
“Cause of death?” Ms. Ishikawa asked, turning to Detective Takada, who looked overwhelmed by the sheer volume of ticking mechanisms, or rather, the lack thereof.
“Blunt force trauma to the head,” Takada said, consulting his notes. “Looks like he was struck from behind. No sign of forced entry.”
Ms. Ishikawa surveyed the room again. The workshop was cramped, overflowing with tools and spare parts. Sunlight streamed through the grimy window, illuminating motes of dust dancing in the air. A faint aroma of oil and metal hung in the air, mingling with the more acrid scent of something else… something metallic, sharp. Blood.
She noticed a playing card resting against the broken face of a grandfather clock. The Queen of Spades. It seemed out of place amidst the intricate gears and springs.
“The card,” she said, pointing. “Was it here when you arrived?”
“Yes,” Takada confirmed. “Our forensic team is examining it, but there’s nothing obvious. No fingerprints besides the victim’s, and standard printing ink.”
Ms. Ishikawa approached the clock. The glass was shattered, the hands bent at unnatural angles. The card was tucked carelessly within the wreckage.
“Interesting,” she murmured, more to herself than to Takada. “A clockmaker, surrounded by clocks, and yet his time was called by a playing card.”
Ms. Ishikawa examined the rest of the room. It was typical of a craftsman – tools neatly arranged, scraps of metal sorted by type, notebooks filled with meticulous drawings and calculations. Nothing seemed obviously amiss, except for its unnatural quietude.
She picked up a small, ornate pocket watch from a workbench. Its hands were frozen at 3:17. She wound it gently. Nothing.
“Did Mr. Horiguchi have any… enemies?” she asked Takada.
Takada sighed. “As far as we know, no. He was well-respected in the community. Quiet, kept to himself. People brought him clocks from all over the prefecture.”
“Lovers?”
Takada's face flushed slightly. "He was a bachelor, Ishikawa-san. In his seventies."
Ms. Ishikawa merely raised an eyebrow. "Desire respects neither age nor social convention, Detective. It simply is."
Takada cleared his throat. "We're looking into his personal life, of course."
Ms. Ishikawa placed the pocket watch back on the bench. She noticed a small, almost imperceptible smudge of oil on the face, near the three.
Later, at the Seishin Municipal Police Station, Ms. Ishikawa examined the photographs of the crime scene. The Queen of Spades, looming large and ominous. The broken grandfather clock. The stopped watches.
She thought about the peculiar silence and the single playing card. It felt deliberate, theatrical even. A message, perhaps? But what message?
She focused on the grandfather clock. It was an antique, Takada had told her, a family heirloom Mr. Horiguchi had been repairing for a wealthy client from Kyoto. The client was, naturally, inconsolable.
Ms. Ishikawa zoomed in on the image of the clock face. The hands were bent, distorted. She estimated the time at which it had stopped: approximately 10:42. A different time than the pocket watch, of course. And all the others.
She looked again at the photograph of the playing card. The Queen of Spades. A symbol of misfortune, of ill omen. But also, simply, a card.
Ms. Ishikawa visited the Suzuki Inn. It was raining, a fine, persistent drizzle that clung to the pines surrounding the building. The inn was quiet, only a few guests braving the weather. She ordered a pot of green tea and sat by the window, watching the rain fall. The tea arrived lukewarm. She drank it anyway.
The innkeeper, an elderly woman with a kind face, brought her a small plate of rice crackers.
“Terrible about Mr. Horiguchi,” she said, shaking her head. “Such a kind man. Always fixing our clocks, never charged us a thing.”
“He repaired clocks for the Suzuki Inn?” Ms. Ishikawa asked, feigning surprise.
“Oh, yes,” the innkeeper said. “He was a master craftsman. We have a beautiful cuckoo clock in the lobby, he restored it for us years ago. Such a tragedy.”
Ms. Ishikawa sipped her tea, her mind racing. The Suzuki Inn. The cuckoo clock. The oil smudge on the pocket watch. The Queen of Spades.
The pieces were beginning to fall into place.
Ms. Ishikawa returned to the police station. She found Takada poring over witness statements, looking increasingly frustrated.
“I think I know who killed Mr. Horiguchi,” she said, placing a photograph of the cuckoo clock from The Suzuki Inn in front of him.
Takada stared at her, bewildered. “The cuckoo clock? What does this have to do with anything?”
“Everything, Detective,” Ms. Ishikawa said, her voice calm and steady. “Consider the times. The pocket watch stopped at 3:17. The grandfather clock at 10:42. Random, seemingly unrelated times.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what if they aren’t random?” Ms. Ishikawa interrupted. “What if they are clues? The pocket watch was found near the workbench, the grandfather clock was being repaired for an important client, and the Queen of Spades was left as a kind of signature.”
She paused, letting her words sink in.
“Think about it, Takada-san. The oil smudge on the pocket watch, near the number three. The cuckoo clock chimes every hour, on the hour. What if someone set the mechanism wrong on purpose, so that at 3:17, it sounded 17 times instead of 3? The clock being repaired: 10:42… ten minutes to eleven.”
Takada looked at her, his eyes widening. “The innkeeper,” he whispered. “She said he restored the cuckoo clock years ago. If the chime was wrong, he would have known it!”
“Exactly,” Ms. Ishikawa said. “Perhaps he threatened to expose her mistake which might indirectly cause her to lose her job, damage the inn's reputation, even bankrupt it. The Queen of Spades? A reference to the proverb about inviting misfortune and also to a specific card game she might have been playing at that specific time.”
Takada nodded slowly, understanding dawning on his face. “And the broken clocks? A deliberate attempt to create confusion, to obscure the true order of events.”
The innkeeper confessed readily. She had been horrified when Mr. Horiguchi had discovered her error, terrified of the consequences. In a moment of blind panic, she had struck him with a heavy clock weight.
Ms. Ishikawa sat alone in her apartment, staring out at the city lights. Justice had been served, but it felt hollow. Another life extinguished, another secret revealed. She made herself a cup of tea. It was, inevitably, too cold.