A newly married couple retires on their wedding night to the guest house of the Ichiyanagi mansion, a honjin or inn for upper class travelers. In the darkness of the night, horrible screams break the silence and the boyfriends appear murdered. The house is surrounded by a blanket of snow intact, so the murder seems impossible: is it the perfect crime or a supernatural mystery? Upon his arrival at the mansion, Detective Kosuke Kindaichi finds only two clues: the family koto and a golden screen with the bloodstained imprint of a hand with only three fingers. This intricate case supposes the debut in the fiction of Kosuke Kindaichi, the favorite detective of the Japanese. In The Enchanted Koto Murder, Why did the pulley gnash in the well? and The case of the black cat, this eccentric investigator will face three complex murders in which he will demonstrate all his instinct and sagacity. This book with Gokumon-Tō. The island of the gates of hell (also in this collection) have been chosen by Japanese readers among the ten best mystery novels of all time.