The Masuda Affair (22 page)

‘He’s been dead a while, I think,’ Warden Takechi said again.

‘So has his bird.’ Tora went across the room and bent to pick up a large black crow by one stiff leg. ‘It had something wrong with its wing.’

The servant piped up from the doorway, ‘Master put on a splint.’

‘Well, somebody bounced it off the wall.’ Tora dropped the bird. ‘I hate bastards who do things like that to helpless creatures.’ He drifted off to inspect the rest of the room.

Akitada said, ‘The doctor died some time before yesterday, I think. The wound was caused by a single massive blow from behind. He fell forward, was probably dead before he hit the floor.’

The warden came closer and looked.

Akitada gestured at the wound from several angles. ‘See here? That cut is quite deep. Bone splinters protrude. It took great force to make that wound. And it slants. He was
hit with something heavy and round, a cudgel perhaps, and by someone a little taller than he is.’ ‘Why taller?’ asked the warden.

Akitada straightened up, his eyes searching the room. Tora was at the door, his eyes on the doctor’s staff. It was a long one, made of thick bamboo, and resembled those that itinerant monks carried. Theirs had metal rings at the top, which jingled as they walked, but this one was plain and lacquered black. When Tora picked it up and hefted it, the old servant said helpfully, ‘The master’s staff. Calls it his friend. Because he leans on it.’

‘Well, his friend turned on him,’ said Tora, holding it out to show what he meant. The servant backed away with a whimper. ‘At least the bastard that killed him is a neat fellow. Puts things back after using them.’

Warden Takechi took the staff. ‘He’s right,’ he said. ‘There’s blood and hair on it.’

Akitada nodded and turned to the body again. He lifted one shoulder to get a look at the dead man’s face. More fat flies rose from his nostrils and mouth and from the open, glazed eyes. Dr Inabe’s face had probably been narrow and scholarly and showed his age. Now it was puffy and one cheek was suffused with the blood which had gathered under the skin after death. There was a greenish tinge to it. Akitada sniffed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘As I thought. A noticeable smell.’ He lowered the body again. ‘I would say he’s been dead for at least a day and a night. The murder happened the day before yesterday, and most likely it was still daytime. The neighbors may have seen something. The killer was a tall man and strong, because it takes strength to kill another man with only one blow. You asked why I thought he was taller than his victim? The position of the wound shows that. He had to strike almost horizontally because the ceiling is too low to swing the staff downward.’

The warden, looking a little dazed, nodded and barked out orders. The two constables disappeared.

Akitada inspected the dead bird, then looked around the room. He turned to the servant. ‘I wonder,’ he asked, ‘if your master was likely to receive strangers in here?’

The old man shook his head. ‘Never. People ring the bell. I go and tell the master. He packs his medicines and goes with them.’

Akitada said to the warden, ‘You see what that means, don’t you?’

Warden Takechi blinked. ‘A thief? Someone climbing the wall to rob him? Yes, I guess that’s what happened.’

‘Not likely,’ said Tora.

The warden frowned. Tora grinned back impudently. ‘Can you see a common thief being tidy? Or taking the time to play kickball with a bird?’

‘Hmm,’ said Akitada. He turned to the warden. ‘The doctor’s servant can check if anything is missing, but I suspect that the doctor admitted his killer himself. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you until you get more information.’ He paused. ‘Now I would really like to go and visit the boy. Suppose we stop by your office later?’

Takechi looked unhappy, but nodded.

When they were outside, Akitada said to Tora, ‘You really should not volunteer your opinions. Even when you are right. The warden was getting irritated. Remember, he can still lock you up.’

Tora grinned. ‘Sorry.’

‘This murder is very inconvenient. Inabe must have been the coroner in Peony’s drowning.’

‘Hah! You think someone killed him because of her?’

‘No. I just wanted to speak to the man about that drowning, and now he is dead.’

Tora was not listening. ‘Murdered! Both of them! And that means … What does it mean?’

‘Nothing. Come on, let’s go and visit the boy.’

But Tora was not to be moved until he had thought it through. ‘Sadanori talks to Ishikawa, Ishikawa goes to Otsu, and Peony’s coroner dies. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Maybe Ishikawa was being a good boy and visiting his old mom, but what if he wasn’t? What if he bashed the doc instead?’ He clapped a hand to his head. ‘Amida! I told the bastard in Uji that you were in Otsu, and he dashed back to the capital to tell Sadanori. That’s it. That must be it.
That’s when Sadanori sent Ishikawa to kill the doctor. And that means the doctor knew something about Peony’s death.’

Akitada said sourly, ‘A brilliant deduction. You have solved all of our problems, along with the warden’s case.’

‘Well, nothing else explains it.’

On the contrary. There could be a thousand different explanations for what happened. Yours is a wild tale based on wishful thinking because you hate Sadanori. At this point we don’t even know that Peony was murdered, let alone by whom.’

Tora flushed. ‘How can you say that with Sadanori’s reputation? If you won’t believe it, then I’ll find the proof myself. They’re devils. And we’ve got stop them.’

Akitada had no particular feelings about Fujiwara Sadanori, but accusing a man of his rank of abduction, rape, and now murder was going a little too far. Tora had always disliked the ruling class, and the incident with Hanae had apparently stirred up all the old loathing. He said, ‘Your sort of thinking creates trumped up charges against the innocent.’

‘Innocent? Crap! Ishikawa’s always been a crook. And that bastard Sadanori. Men like him live above the clouds and think they’re above the law. They know they can get away with anything. And when it comes to our women, they don’t even believe in common decency.’ He glowered and kicked a clod of dirt into a patch of weeds. A rabbit erupted with a high-pitched squeal and shot across the road. Tora chortled, his good mood restored. After a moment, he said more calmly, ‘So what do you think?’

Akitada was a little shaken by that outburst. Tora’s theory was not without some logic. He also distrusted both Ishikawa and recent events. Perhaps Ishikawa had come to Otsu on Sadanori’s instruction. And Sadanori was implicated in at least two prior abductions of women from the amusement quarter. He was also linked to Peony, if she was the same woman who had once lived in the house they had visited. But until there was proof, neither her death nor the murder of the doctor could be laid at his door, nor Ishikawa’s.

He sighed. The scene at Inabe’s house had depressed him
for purely personal reasons. ‘I don’t know what to think, Tora. We’ll question Peony’s neighbors, but I want to go see the child first,’ he said.

Akitada stopped in the market to purchase a bright-red wooden top and tucked it in his sleeve. ‘A small gift,’ he said, a little embarrassed. ‘He has no toys.’

Tora grinned.

The Yozaemons lived in a poor little house near the market. Mrs Yozaemon, as round and neat as a brown hen, was hanging her washing over the brush fence. There were small shirts and diminutive pants among the larger clothes, but the boy was nowhere to be seen.

She saw them and her round face broke into a wide smile. Wiping her hands down her sides, she bustled to open the gate. ‘Welcome, welcome.’ She bobbed a bow with each ‘welcome’.

‘Thank you.’ Akitada scanned the yard. ‘Is the boy here?’

She laughed. ‘A little boy likes to hide.’ She cried, ‘Nori.’

‘Nori?’ Akitada asked, astonished. And then: ‘Can he hear you?’

‘Of course he can hear.’

It was good news. ‘How do you know his name? Has he found his voice?’

‘No, not that. Manjiro and I kept calling out names and that one made him look up. So that’s what we call him. He answers to it.’

How simple it had been for this woman and her son to name the child, while he had cast about in vain and called him ‘boy’ or ‘child’. Nori? He recalled how he had stopped in the dark woods and thought the small pale figure was the ghost of his dead son. He had called, ‘Yori,’ and the boy had come to him.

Mrs Yozaemon raised her voice again. ‘Nori? Come here. You have visitors.’

And there he was. Or rather, there was his head, peering around the corner of the house. A moment later he came towards them, slowly and with a solemn face. Akitada was disappointed. He had imagined a gleeful dash into his arms. There was not even a smile. Was he afraid? No, not that.
But he was distant, reserved, if a child that age could be reserved.

They had trimmed his hair and tied it above each ear. Just so had Yori worn his hair, and this boy, though he was probably a little older, was small for his age and looked a little like Yori. The sharp pain of Akitada’s loss was back, made sharper by this child’s new coolness towards him.

Nori stopped beside Mrs Yozaemon. He remembered them, Akitada was certain of it, but apparently he no longer considered them friends. Heartsick, Akitada crouched and opened his arms, but the boy shook his head, his eyes distrustful.

Forcing a smile, Akitada said, ‘I see you blame me for leaving you. I could not help it, but I didn’t forget you. Not for a moment.’

The boy said nothing. He seemed to wait patiently for his dismissal.

Akitada produced the top and held it out. The child promptly put his hands behind his back and glanced away.

Mrs Yozaemon cried, Oh, go on, Nori, take it! The gentleman brought you the pretty toy. And he’s come a long way to visit you.’

There was no reaction, and Akitada stood up, helpless in the face of such rejection.

Tora scooped up the child and said, ‘Hey, Nori, what’s the matter? Let’s have a smile. Look, the sun’s shining and there’s a nice wind. Suppose we go buy a kite and fly it this afternoon?’

But Nori struggled, and Tora put him down with a sigh. Akitada said, ‘Never mind. He’s not used to kindness, poor little fellow.’ He hid his disappointment, reminding himself that he had come to make sure the child was well taken care of and he had now done so. Nori was clean and looked much healthier. He stood clutching Mrs Yozaemon’s skirt, waiting for them to leave. Akitada thanked his caretaker and gave her the red top. Still smarting from the rejection, he said, ‘We’ll try to find his family so he won’t have to return to the Mimuras. If that fails, I’ll pay them to let me raise him.’

She clapped her hands. ‘What a lucky boy! You’ll like living in the capital, Nori, won’t you?’

The boy looked at her, but gave no sign that he had understood.

Akitada left, feeling lonelier than before. To shake off this mood, he tried to think about the warden’s murder case as they walked back to the lake, but his disappointment about the child was stronger than his sense of justice. It seemed a betrayal of the dead man, and he brooded on this.

Tora glanced at him from time to time, but did not speak. At the dead courtesan’s villa, Akitada sent Tora to talk to the neighbors while he pushed through the wilderness to the dilapidated house. The scene was even more depressing by daylight. He looked around for the cat, but did not see it.

Down by the water, he disturbed a pair of ducks in the reeds near a broken boat dock and watched them paddle away, the male protectively herding the female. Ducks were faithful to their mate, a pair for life and a symbol of harmony between a man and woman. Such harmony had not been possible for him and Tamako, and apparently not for Peony and her lover either. The night watchman had claimed that the man had deserted her.

Akitada looked across the sparkling water. Boats of all sizes bobbed and moved across it – carrying other lives and, no doubt, happier ones. Suddenly, in broad daylight and sunny weather, Akitada felt again that cold shiver, that sense of lurking death.

He turned away abruptly, irritated by his morbid fancies.

They walked up and down the street, knocking on gates and talking to servants, but the results were disappointing. It became clear that Peony, or her protector, had taken measures to keep the curious away. She had rarely appeared in public, and then only deeply veiled. Her servants, a maid and a porter, had been from the capital and had rarely spoken to other servants. Her death had surprised them because they had believed the house empty at the time.

Tora pounced on certain rumors that started after Peony’s
death. She had been heard weeping because her child had died, her lover had left her, her lover had died, she had contracted smallpox and lost her beauty – all these, separately or in combination, were in people’s minds reasons for her suicide, and so her vengeful ghost was born. Tora, of course, rejected the suicide theory. He was still convinced that Sadanori had murdered Peony, and he proposed they return to the capital and confront her killer.

Akitada grumbled, ‘Nothing but rumors. We’re a long way from being done here. We still have no proof that the boy was hers or that she was murdered. And we still do not know that she is the woman from the capital.’

Tora protested, ‘It’s the same name. And the time fits. The neighbors called her a courtesan, and they mentioned a child.’

‘A child that died. I wonder what happened to her servants.’

‘They left before she died. The neighbors thought the house was empty. Why did they leave? And who reported her death?’

Akitada stopped. ‘Yes. Someone had to find her in the water and get the warden. A neighbor? If we assume that Peony was kept by the Masuda heir, the family’s role in all of this is, to say the least, suspicious.’ He glanced up at the green hillside above the town where the many curved roofs of the Masuda mansion glistened in the sun. ‘We’d better ask Warden Takechi.’

But when they reached the warden’s office, Akitada had second thoughts about Tora’s presence. ‘Let me do the talking,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to have you locked up.’

The warden was looking glum, but he brightened when he saw them. ‘Thank heaven you’re back, sir. This is a very difficult case. Would you believe it, nobody has seen anything.’