Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (24 page)

siderable.

On top of the cake was a floral design executed in pink icing and liberally interspersed with small silver balls. These were silver-painted crystals of sugar - a common enough decoration on birthday cakes. In the struggle to secure helpings, moreover, flakes of icing, crumbs of cake, and a number of these silver balls came to be scattered all over the white tablecloth. Some of the guests gathered these stray particles between their fingers and put them on their plates. Others popped them straight into their mouths.

In time all returned to their seats and ate their portions of cake at their leisure, laughing. It was not a home-made cake, having been ordered by Mrs Sasaki from a certain high-class confectioner's, but the guests were unanimous in praising its excellence.

Mrs Sasaki was bathed in happiness. But suddenly, with a tinge of anxiety, she recalled the pearl she had abandoned on the table, and, rising from her chair as casually as she could, she moved across to look for it. At the spot where she was sure she had left it, the pearl was no longer to be seen.

Mrs Sasaki abhorred losing things, At once and without thinking, right in the middle of the party, she became wholly engrossed in her search, and the tension in her manner was so obvious that it attracted everyone's attention.

'Is there something the matter?' someone asked.

'No, not at all, just a moment...'

Mrs Sasaki's reply was ambiguous, but before she had time to decide to return to her chair, first one, then another, and finally every one of her guests had risen and was turning back the tablecloth or groping about on the floor.

Mrs Azuma, seeing this commotion, felt that the whole thing was just too deplorable for words. She was incensed at a hostess who could create such an impossible situation over the loss of a solitary pearl.

Mrs Azuma resolved to offer herself as a sacrifice and to save the day. With a heroic smile she declared: 'That's it then! It must have been a pearl I ate just now! A silver ball dropped on the tablecloth when I was given my cake, and I just picked it up and swallowed it without thinking. It
did
seem to stick in my throat a little. Had it been a diamond, now, I would naturally return it - by an operation, if necessary - but as it's a pearl I must simply beg your forgiveness.'

This announcement at once resolved the company's anxieties, and it was felt, above all, that it had saved the hostess from an embarrassing predicament. No one made any attempt to investi-gate the truth or falsity of Mrs Azuma's confession. Mrs. Sasaki took one of the remaining silver balls and put it in her mouth.

'Mm,' she said. 'Certainly tastes like a pearl, this one!'

Thus this small incident, too, was cast into the crucible of good-humoured teasing, and there - amid general laughter - it melted away.

When the
party
Was over Mrs Azuma drove off in her two-seater sports car, taking with her in the other seat her close friend and neighbour Mrs Kasuga. Before two minutes had passed Mrs Azuma said, 'Own up! It was you who swallowed the pearl, wasn't it? I covered up for you, and took the blame on myself.'

This unceremonious manner of speaking concealed deep 170

affection, but, however friendly the intention may have been, to Mrs Kasuga a wrongful accusation was a wrongful accusation.

She had no recollection whatsoever of having swallowed a pearl in mistake for a sugar ball. She was - as Mrs Azuma too must surely know - fastidious in her eating habits, and, if she so much as detected a single hair in her food, whatever she happened to be eating at the time immediately stuck in her gullet.

'Oh, really now!' protested the timid Mrs Kasuga, in a small voice, her eyes studying Mrs Azuma's face in some puzzlement.

'I just couldn't do a thing like that!'

'It's no good pretending. The moment I saw that green look on your face, I knew.'

The little disturbance at the party had seemed closed by Mrs Azuma's frank confession, but even now it had left behind this strange awkwardness. Mrs Kasuga, wondering how best to demonstrate her innocence, was at the same time seized by the fantasy that a solitary pearl was lodged somewhere in her intestines. It was unlikely, of course, that she should mistakenly swallow a pearl for a sugar ball, but in all that confusion of talk and laughter one had to admit that it was at least a possibility.

Though she thought back over the events of the party again and again, no moment in which she might have inserted a pearl into her mouth came to mind - but, after all, if it was an unconscious act one would not expect to remember it.

Mrs Kasuga blushed deeply as her imagination chanced upon one further aspect of the matter. It had occurred to her that when one accepted a pearl into one's system it almost certainly

- its lustre a trifle dimmed, perhaps, by gastric juices - re-emerged intact within a day or two.

And with this thought the design of Mrs Azuma, too, seemed to have become transparently clear. Undoubtedly Mrs Azuma had viewed this same prospect with embarrassment and shame, and had therefore cast her responsibility on to another, making it appear that she had considerately taken the blame to protect a friend.

Meanwhile Mrs Yamamoto and Mrs Matsumura, whose homes lay in a similar direction, were returning together in a 171

taxi. Soon after the taxi had started Mrs Matsumura opened her handbag to make a few adjustments to her make-up. She remembered that she had done nothing to her face since all that commotion at the party.

As she was removing the powder compact her attention was caught by a sudden dull gleam as something tumbled to the bottom of the bag. Groping about with the tips of her fingers, Mrs Matsumura retrieved the object, and saw to her amazement that it was a pearl.

Mrs Matsumura stifled an exclamation of surprise. Recently her relationship with Mrs Yamamoto had been far from cordial, and she had no wish to share with that lady a discovery with such awkward implications for herself.

Fortunately Mrs Yamamoto was gazing out of the window and did not appear to have noticed her companion's momentary start of surprise.

Caught off balance by this sudden turn of events, Mrs Matsumura did not pause to consider how the pearl had found its way into her bag, but immediately became a prisoner of her own private brand of school-captain morality. It was unlikely -

she thought - that she would do a thing like this, even in a moment of abstraction. But since, by some chance, the object had found its way into her handbag, the proper course was to return it at once. If she failed to do so, it would weigh heavily upon her conscience. The fact that it was a pearl, too - an article you could neither call all that expensive nor yet all that cheap - only made her position more ambiguous.

At any rate, she was determined that her companion, Mrs Yamamoto, should know nothing of this incomprehensible development - especially when the affair had been so nicely rounded off, thanks to the selflessness of Mrs Azuma. Mrs Matsumura felt she could remain in the taxi not a moment longer, and, on the pretext of remembering a promise to visit a sick relative on her way back, she made the driver set her down at once, in the middle of a quiet residential district.

Mrs Yamamoto, left alone in the taxi, was a little surprised that her practical joke should have moved Mrs. Matsumura to such abrupt action. Having watched Mrs Matsumura's 172

reflection in the window just now, she had clearly seen her draw the pearl from her bag.

At the party Mrs Yamamoto had been the very first to receive a slice of cake. Adding to her plate a silver ball which had spilled on to the table, she had returned to her seat - again before any of the others - and there had noticed that the silver ball was a pearl. At this discovery she had at once conceived a malicious plan. While all the others were preoccupied with the cake, she had quickly slipped the pearl into the handbag left on the next chair by that insufferable hypocrite Mrs Matsumura.

Stranded in the middle of a residential district where there was little prospect of a taxi, Mrs Matsumura fretfully gave her mind to a number of reflections on her position.

First, no matter how necessary it might be for the relief of her own conscience, it would be a shame indeed, when people had gone to such lengths to settle the affairs satisfactorily, to go and stir up things all over again; and it would be even worse if in the process - because of the inexplicable nature of the circumstances - she were to direct unjust suspicions upon herself.

Secondly - notwithstanding these considerations - if she did not make haste to return the pearl now, she would forfeit her opportunity for ever. Left till tomorrow (at the thought Mrs Matsumura blushed) the returned pearl would be an object of rather disgusting speculation and doubt. Concerning this possibility Mrs Azuma herself had dropped a hint.

It was at this point that there occurred to Mrs Matsumura, greatly to her joy, a master scheme which would both salve her conscience and at the same time involve no risk of exposing her character to any unjust suspicion. Quickening her step, she emerged at length on to a comparatively busy thoroughfare, where she hailed a taxi and told the driver to take her quickly to a certain celebrated pearl shop on the Ginza. There she took the pearl from her bag and showed it to the attendant, asking to see a pearl of slightly larger size and clearly superior quality.

Having made her purchase, she proceeded once more, by taxi, to Mrs Sasaki's house.

Mrs Matsumura's plan was to present this newly purchased 173

pearl to Mrs Sasaki, saying that she had found it in her jacket pocket. Mrs Sasaki would accept it and later attempt to fit it into the ring. However, being a pearl of a different size, it would not fit into the ring, and Mrs Sasaki - puzzled - would try to return it to Mrs Matsumura, but Mrs Matsumura would refuse to have it returned. Thereupon Mrs Sasaki would have no choice but to reflect as follows: The woman has behaved in this way in order to protect someone else. Such being the case, it is perhaps safest simply to accept the pearl and forget the matter.

Mrs Matsumura has doubtless observed one of the three ladies in the act of stealing the pearl. But at least, of my four guests, I can now be sure that Mrs Matsumura, if no one else, is completely without guilt. Whoever heard of a thief stealing something and then replacing it with a similar article of greater value?

By this device Mrs Matsumura proposed to escape for ever the infamy of suspicion, and equally - by a small outlay of cash

- the pricks of an uneasy conscience.

To return to the other ladies. After reaching home, Mrs Kasuga continued to feel painfully upset by Mrs Azuma's cruel teasing. To clear herself of even a ridiculous charge like this -

she knew - she must act before tomorrow or it would be too late.

That is to say, in order to offer positive proof that she had not eaten the pearl it was above all necessary for the pearl itself to be somehow produced. And, briefly, if she could show the pearl to Mrs Azuma immediately, her innocence on the gastronomic count (if not on any other) would be firmly established. But if she waited until tomorrow, even though she managed to produce the pearl, the shameful and hardly mentionable suspicion would inevitably have intervened.

The normally timid Mrs Kasuga, inspired with the courage of impetuous action, burst from the house to which she had so recently returned, sped to a pearl shop in the Ginza, and selected and bought a pearl which, to her eye, seemed of roughly the same size as those silver balls on the cake. She then telephoned Mrs Azuma. On returning home, she explained, she had discovered in the folds of the bow of her sash the pearl which Mrs 174

Sasaki had lost, but, since she felt too ashamed to return it by herself, she wondered if Mrs Azuma would be so kind as to go with her, as soon as possible. Inwardly Mrs Azuma considered the story a little unlikely, but since it was the request of a good Mend she agreed to go.

Mrs Sasaki accepted the pearl brought to her by Mrs Matsumura and, puzzled at its failure to fit the ring, fell obligingly into that very train of thought for which Mrs Matsumura had prayed; but it was a surprise to her when Mrs Kasuga arrived about an hour later, accompanied by Mrs Azuma, and returned another pearl.

Mrs Sasaki hovered perilously on the brink of discussing Mrs Matsumura's prior visit, but checked herself at the last moment and accepted the second pearl as unconcernedly as she could.

She felt sure that this one at any rate would fit, and as soon as the two visitors had taken their leave she hurried to try it in the ring. But it was too small, and wobbled loosely in the socket. At this discovery Mrs Sasaki was not so much surprised as dumbfounded.

On the way back in the car both ladies found it impossible to guess what the other might be thinking, and, though normally relaxed and loquacious in each other's company, they now lapsed into a long silence.

Mrs Azuma, who believed she could do nothing without her own full knowledge, knew for certain that she had not swal*

lowed the pearl herself. It was simply to save everyone from embarrassment that she had cast shame aside and made that declaration at the party - more particularly it was to save the situation for her friend, who had been fidgeting about and looking conspicuously guilty. But what was she to think now? Be*

neath the peculiarity of Mrs Kasuga's whole attitude, and beneath this elaborate procedure of having herself accompany her as she returned the pearl, she sensed that there lay something much deeper. Could it be that Mrs Azuma's intuition had touched upon a weakness in her friend's make-up which it was forbidden to touch upon, and that by thus driving her friend into a corner she had transformed an unconscious, impulsive 175

kleptomania into a deep mental derangement beyond all cure?

Mrs Kasuga, for her part, still retained the suspicion that Mrs Azuma had genuinely swallowed the pearl and that her confession at the party had been the truth. If that was so, it had been unforgivable of Mrs Azuma, when everything was smoothly settled, to tease her so cruelly on the way back from the party, shifting the guilt on to herself. As a result, timid creature that she was, she had been panic-stricken, and besides spending good money had felt obliged to act out that little play