Morals of the Time

On a cold February morning on the shores of Lake Sagami, a favorite retreat for the residents of the capital, the body of a man is found, strangled with a hemp rope. The deceased turns out to be Takeo Doi, a publisher of a professional transport newspaper from Tokyo. Colleagues, business partners, and even competitors describe Doi as an honest and impartial journalist, who had no enemies or ill-wishers. The only clue remains the mysterious girl who was seen with Doi the night before. The stranger did not give her name, spoke little, kept a low profile, and later disappeared without a trace. Could it be that she strangled her companion and vanished under the cover of night? Or did she also become a victim of an unknown strangler? The sent inspector Kiichi Mihara, dispatched from Tokyo, has his own version of what happened...