There Are Three Wills

🕯 Three Readings

Two weeks after the death of the trader Tokiya Sozo, on the night of a spring storm, the heirs have been gathered at Tokiya Manor, the mansion on the cape. Three wills are read. All the shares to the eldest son; the whole of the house to the eldest daughter; all the artworks to the nephew. The contents collide head-on, yet the handwriting analysis declares every one of them genuine. If all three hands are real, does the lie lie in the dates, in the seals, or in the greed of those who read them? The deceased was a man with a habit of testing people. The road is blocked by fallen trees, and no one can leave the cape before dawn. When one will is thrown into the fireplace in the darkness of a blackout, the inheritance turns into a battle. You are not an heir. And yet all three wills contain the line "The cataloguer is to be present." No one in this house yet knows what that one line means. In the great hall the logs crackle in the fireplace, and the grandfather clock in the entrance hall keeps time tonight, as always, running three minutes fast.

Characters

• Mioguchi Sae (34): the secretary who served the deceased for nine years. She translates emotion into the language of business, and even on a night of chaos she records times and numbers precisely. At her breast, a sealed letter whose conditions for opening have not been met. Every time thunder rolls, she grips her pocket watch and counts.
• Kurumazaki Kyoichi (52): a private detective from Osaka who arrived with the storm. He throws the room off balance with his breezy Kansai drawl, and within three seconds of entering a room he has looked at everyone's hands. He never names his client. In contrast to the rain stains on his trench coat, his shoes alone are polished to a shine.

How to Play

You are the cataloguer who has been copying out the mansion's library and art collection. The paper stock of the three wills, the ink, the dates, the ornamental rules beside the signatures. Speak your observations aloud and the detective will build on them; cross-check the records and the secretary will act. When you grasp the meaning of the three wills bearing "the same date," and trace the continuation of the ornamental rule through your memory of the catalogue, the final question the deceased set will open. No murder occurs. What is fought over is paper, signatures, and the true intent of the dead man. Before the dawn bell rings, find what the three wills were trying to protect. Look, rather than suspect. Observation and record are the strongest weapons you have tonight.