FILE No.11Unsolved
Kuze, an antique dealer, told Okabe, a client who loved visiting shrines (a man who always put a coin in the offering box and prayed at every shrine), about "a shrine at a mountain pass that no one visits any more." Okabe was delighted and said he would go the following Sunday.
The shrine stands at the top of more than forty stone steps. An old metal handrail runs up the middle of the steps to the top, and a single offering box sits in front of the shrine. For several years almost no worshippers have come. The steps were dry, and there was no spot near the top where anyone would slip.
On Sunday evening a resident walking his dog found Okabe lying at the foot of the steps. He had hit his head hard and was already dead. It looked like an accident: he had simply slipped.
But after examining the scene, the police told Kuze, "This was not an accident. It was murder."
What was the decisive reason the police judged it murder?
If you get stuck, open the hints one at a time, in order.
Do the fingerprints on the handrail show Okabe going up or going down?
If it were an accident, Okabe fell on the way down. What would a shrine lover always do before that?
Was there any new coin in the offering box?
What was the decisive reason the police judged it murder?
Choose the answer closest to the truth.
The fingerprints on the handrail continue to the top, but the offering box held none of Okabe’s coins, so he fell without praying
The answer is: the fingerprints on the handrail continue to the top, but the offering box held none of Okabe’s coins, so he fell without praying.
Okabe climbed all the way up, gripping the handrail. If it had been an accident, the steps were dry with no place to slip, so he could only have fallen on the way down, after worshipping. Okabe always put in a coin and prayed at every shrine. Yet the box held no new coins, and the change in his wallet had not decreased.
So Okabe was pushed right after reaching the top, before he could pray. Kuze had not thought through that "in an accident he would fall on the way down." He went ahead, waited at the top and pushed Okabe off.
Hearing that someone fell at a shrine, the natural reading is a slip. And Okabe’s love of shrines explains perfectly why he was there, which takes away the chance to ask when he fell.
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