The Inugami Curse

by Seishi Yokomizo

  “S-so you’re certain that body is Kiyo’s,” muttered Kindaichi, his teeth chattering. It was by no means the morning cold, but an extraordinary thought, that was making him shiver body and soul.

  “Yes, there’s no mistake. Matsuko says those pajamas are definitely his, and besides, he’s nowhere to be found.”

  “And Matsuko?” Kindaichi glanced around, for he did not see her anywhere either.

  “I tell you, that woman’s something else. She didn’t cry or bawl like her sisters even when she saw Kiyo like that. She simply said, ‘It’s her. She’s put the finishing touches on her revenge,’ and then shut herself up in her room. But maybe that just goes to show how deep her feelings of hatred are.”

  Kindaichi noticed Tamayo standing motionless at the edge of the observation deck, with the collar of her coat turned up high around her neck, staring down at the wretched corpse. What she might be thinking, he could not tell, for her elegant profile remained as expressionless as ever, sphinx-like in its inscrutability.

  “So, Chief, who first discovered the corpse?”

  “Monkey—who else?” Tachibana still spat out his words bitterly.

  “Monkey?” Kindaichi glanced at Tamayo and sighed. Whether she could hear their conversation or not, she remained as still as a statue.

  “And what was the cause of death? Surely he wasn’t plunged in there alive, was he?”

  “We won’t know until we dig out the corpse, but I wonder if maybe someone split his head open with an ax.”

  Kindaichi caught his breath. “I see. If Kiyo was the one killed, that means it has to be the ax this time. But if that’s the case, Chief, how come we don’t see blood anywhere?” There was not a spot of blood anywhere on the milky-white, frozen surface of the lake.

  “I know. I thought that was strange, too. Also, if the murderer did use an ax, he must have brought it from somewhere else because there isn’t an ax or comparable weapon anywhere in this house. After Matsuko’s confession of the other day, I had them get rid of anything that even remotely resembled an ax.”

  By this time, the team of detectives had finally managed to steer the boat close to the body, and two of them took hold of its legs.

  “Hey, be careful. Try not to damage the corpse,” called down Chief Tachibana from the observation deck.

  “Yes, sir. We know.”

  The third detective began breaking the ice around the corpse, which was submerged from head to waist. Soon, the ice had been broken into small pieces, and when the detectives shook the legs, the rest of the body shook as well.

  “Good, it should be okay now. Pull it up gently.”

  As the two detectives, each holding a leg, pulled the corpse straight up out of the water and ice, the people standing on the observation deck could not help but catch their breaths and clench their fists at the sight. Kiyo’s mask was gone, and emerging upside down from the ice was a most nightmarish face—a formless mass of flesh like an overripe pomegranate. Once, at the reading of Sahei’s will, Kindaichi had seen the just repatriated Kiyo pull his mask up to around his nose, but this was the first time he had looked squarely at that hideous countenance. Moreover, having been buried in ice overnight, it had deteriorated to a purplish color, so that its ghoulishness was amplified. Strangely, however, he could not see any head wound such as Chief Tachibana had predicted.

  After studying this gruesome face for some time, Kindaichi finally looked away, but as he did, his eyes were caught by the sight of Tamayo: she was staring intently at the face that even Kindaichi found too shocking to behold. What thoughts, he wondered, could be passing through her mind?

  As the detectives were making their way back to shore with the frozen body in their boat, Dr. Kusuda, the medical examiner, came running up to the observation deck. Seeming tired and disgusted by the continuing series of incidents, he hardly even bothered to greet Chief Tachibana.

  “Doctor, we need your help again. I know you can’t ascertain any details until you conduct the autopsy, but if you could just give us the cause of death and the time elapsed since death.”

  Kusuda nodded without a word and began descending from the observation deck, when suddenly Tamayo called, “Excuse me, Doctor.”

  Kusuda, his foot already on the first step down, stopped and looked back at her in surprise. “Yes? Did you want something, Miss?”

  “Yes, actually…” Tamayo hesitated momentarily, glancing back and forth between Kusuda and Chief Tachibana, but before long, she seemed to make up her mind. “If you’re going to conduct an autopsy on that corpse, before you do, please get a hand print… the fingerprints of the right hand.”

  Her words hit Kindaichi like a bolt of lightning. “What, w-what did you say, Miss Tamayo?” He took a step forward, his breath coming in rapid bursts. “Are you questioning the identity of that corpse?”

  Tamayo did not answer but turned her gaze toward the lake and stood waiting silently. This was a woman who spoke if and when she wanted to and could not easily be made to talk by others. Her solitary life had given her a steely will.

  “But Miss Tamayo,” said Kindaichi, licking his lips again and again, overpowered by a feeling he could not pinpoint, “we got a hand print from Kiyo before, remember, and it was found to be identical to the votive hand print.” Kindaichi abruptly fell silent, for he had noticed a hint of scorn in Tamayo’s eyes.

  Tamayo, however, managed to extinguish the look immediately and said in a low, quiet tone, “Yes, but there’s no harm in making sure. Besides, taking a hand print is not that much trouble, is it?”

  Chief Tachibana, too, was staring at Tamayo’s face with a frown, but soon he nodded toward Kusuda. “Doctor, I’ll send a detective over later, then. Please plan to take fingerprints before you start the autopsy.”

  Kusuda nodded without a word and descended the stairs, while Tamayo, acknowledging the chief and Kindaichi with a nod, hurried down as well. Kindaichi left the observation deck with Chief Tachibana soon thereafter, but his gait betrayed his emotion: he staggered down the stairs as if intoxicated, for a storm had begun to rage in his mind.

  Why was Tamayo dwelling on Kiyo’s fingerprints? They had taken them once, and his identity had been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. But… but… that confident air she had had just now… what thoughts lay hidden in her mind? Perhaps, just perhaps, thought Kindaichi, he had overlooked something very important. Suddenly Kindaichi stood frozen in mid-step, for the scene he had witnessed when Kiyo’s hand print was compared with the one on the votive scroll had flashed before his mind’s eye. The instant the forensics officer Fujisaki had announced that the hand prints were identical, Tamayo had begun to say something, not just once, but twice. She must know something. She must be aware of something he had overlooked. What could it be?

  At the foot of the stairs, the two men parted company, Tachibana following Dr. Kusuda into the boathouse and Kindaichi trudging brooding toward the villa. There, Takeko, Umeko, and their husbands were gathered in a room in whispered conversation. When they saw Kindaichi passing by outside, Takeko opened the glass door to the veranda and called, “Mr. Kindaichi, may we speak with you?”

  Kindaichi approached the veranda. “Yes?”

  “I believe this is the button you were talking about.” Takeko gently opened a folded piece of tissue paper she held in her hand. Kindaichi grew wide-eyed, for indeed, there before him was the missing button from Tomo’s shirt.

  “Mrs. Takeko, where did you find this?”

  “I found Sayoko holding it this morning, but you know what condition she’s in right now—she couldn’t tell me anything, so I have no idea where she found it.”

  “Is she still… ill?”

  Takeko nodded grimly. “She doesn’t get agitated like before, but she’s still totally incoherent.”

  “Mr. Kindaichi.” Umeko spoke to him from inside the room. “That day, the day Tomo’s body was found, Sayoko went with you to the abandoned house in Toyohata Village. Could she possibly have found
it then?”

  “No, absolutely not. Miss Sayoko fainted as soon as she saw Mr. Tomo’s body, so she couldn’t possibly have had the time. I believe Mrs. Umeko’s husband is aware of that, too.”

  Kokichi nodded grimly.

  “How odd, then,” said Takeko, with hesitant eyes. “Sayoko hasn’t left the estate at all since you people brought her back here that day. Where on earth could she have found it?”

  “May I take a look?” Kindaichi took the packet from Takeko’s hand and studied the button closely. It was a gold, chrysanthemum-shaped button sprinkled with diamonds, but Kindaichi could see a tiny black stain, probably blood, on the chrysanthemum base. “Mrs. Umeko, are you certain that this button is from Mr. Tomo’s shirt?”

  Umeko nodded silently.

  “But perhaps there were some extra buttons lying around.”

  “No, that’s impossible. There were only those five buttons in that set, with no extras.”

  “Then it has to be the button that came off Mr. Tomo’s shirt that day. Mrs. Takeko, I wonder if you would let me borrow this button for a while. There’s something I’d like to ask the chief to check.”

  “Of course.”

  As Kindaichi was carefully rewrapping the button in the tissue paper, Chief Tachibana came rushing into the room.

  “Oh, Mr. Kindaichi, here you are.” The chief strode up to him. “This one’s rather odd. We thought that if there was another murder, naturally an ax would be used, but the culprit has outwitted us. Kiyo was strangled with a thin rope of some kind, like Tomo. The murderer seems to have then thrown the body into the ice upside down from the observation deck.”

  Kindaichi had been listening to the chief with an uninterested expression, and waiting for him to come to an end, he shook his head wanly.

  “No, Chief. It’s as it should be. There is an ax involved.”

  Chief Tachibana frowned. “But Mr. Kindaichi, we would know if there were an ax wound.”

  Kindaichi took out a notebook and fountain pen from his bosom. “Chief, that corpse is Kiyo, right? And since Kiyo was found upside down…” On a page of the notebook, Kindaichi wrote in large letters

  KI YO

  YO KI

  Chief Tachibana’s eyes looked like they might pop out. “Mr. Kindaichi!” He gasped loudly, opening and closing his fists.

  “Yes, Chief. It’s a childish riddle. The murderer has tried to use the victim’s body to suggest an ax, the yoki of yokikotokiku.”

  Kindaichi began to laugh in a high-pitched voice—a hollow laugh that sounded even hysterical. True to expectations, snowflakes started dancing down from the leaden sky.

  The Ill-Fated Mother and Son

  Night. Half past nine. The area around Lake Nasu looked swollen with the snow that had fallen since morning, as if the ground had dressed itself in padded winter clothes. The lake, the towns and villages along the shore, and the mountain ranges behind them, all sighed under the large, wet snowflakes that fell with dizzying intensity. There was no wind, only the soft, white flowers of winter flickering down ceaselessly from the dark sky. The stillness of the night penetrated the soul.

  As if that stillness had been gathered within the Inugami villa, Kindaichi, Chief Tachibana, and Furudate the lawyer sat in the drawing room, each lost in silence before the English-style fireplace. For a long time they had sat like that, without saying a word, staring at the blazing fireplace, from which they occasionally heard the thud of a piece of coal falling.

  The three men were waiting for the autopsy report and the results of Fujisaki’s comparison of the new hand print from Kiyo’s corpse with the votive hand print. Kindaichi sat buried in a big easy chair, his eyes quietly closed. Ideas were swirling in his mind and beginning to solidify into definite shape, a process until now prevented by a blind spot that had hindered his thought processes. Today, however, he had finally seen where that blind spot lay, and he had Tamayo to thank for it. Kindaichi shuddered slightly, opened his eyes, and looked around him as if he had awakened from a dream. The snow was falling faster. Soft, white flakes crossed the window pane without pause.

  Just then, the three men heard the faint sound of wheels on snow stopping outside the front entrance, followed by the loud peal of the doorbell. They looked at one another, and Tachibana began to rise, but before he could, footsteps from somewhere inside the house pattered toward the entrance. Insistent words were exchanged. Soon the same footsteps approached the drawing room, and the door opened. It was the maid.

  “Chief, there’s someone here who wants see you,” she said, an uncertain expression on her face.

  “Someone for me? Who?”

  “A woman. She says her name is Kikuno Aonuma.”

  The three men sprang out of their chairs.

  “Kikuno Aonuma!” Chief Tachibana swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Please, please show her in here immediately.”

  Soon after the maid left, there appeared at the door a diminutive woman wearing a dark overcoat, her head and face partly covered by an old-fashioned, reddish-brown veil. She must have come in a pedicab, for neither her coat nor veil was wet.

  Nodding slightly to the three men, she turned away to take off her coat and veil and hand them to the maid, turned around again, and bowed politely. The sight of her face made them all stagger and gasp, fists clenched, as if the rug had been pulled out from under them.

  “You… you’re Kikuno Aonuma?”

  “Yes, I am.” The woman who answered quietly and raised her face was Kokin Miyakawa, the koto teacher.

  Kindaichi, who had been standing bolt upright without moving a muscle, suddenly began violently scratching his head. Furudate, on the other hand, began wiping his palms with a handkerchief.

  Kokin Miyakawa—the woman who had stepped forward to reveal her identity as Kikuno Aonuma—squinted her nearly blind eyes and quietly looked around at the faces of the three men. “I was in Tokyo today, when a student of mine told me about the article in the evening newspaper—the article about Mr. Kiyo. So I rushed here as soon as I could, because I felt I should no longer hide my identity.”

  The three men could not keep from exchanging glances. Indeed, if she had seen the early edition of the evening paper in Tokyo and had jumped on a train right away, it would be possible for her to arrive in Upper Nasu by this hour. However, could it not also be that by this statement, Kikuno Aonuma was trying to give herself an alibi? Suspicion flashed in Chief Tachibana’s eyes.

  “Then, you’ve just arrived?”

  “Yes.” Her face was flushed from having come suddenly into the warm room from the cold outdoors. She took out a handkerchief and quietly wiped the perspiration from her forehead.

  “Alone?”

  “No, one of my students was kind enough to accompany me, but I sent her on ahead to the inn. I myself went directly from the train station to the police station, but they told me you were here, Chief.”

  Chief Tachibana sighed lightly, as if disappointed. If a student had accompanied her, then Kikuno could not be lying.

  “Yes, well… please, come sit down here.” The chief pushed a chair toward her, while Kindaichi approached her and gently took her hand.

  “Oh, that’s alright, you don’t need to… well, thank you, then.”

  Guided to the chair by Kindaichi, Kikuno bowed politely and sat down. Kindaichi then went to the door, opened it and glanced around outside, and closed it tightly.

  “I had no idea you were Kikuno Aonuma,” said the chief. “Right under my nose, too. Mr. Furudate, didn’t you know?”

  “Not at all, what with all those records destroyed and people killed during the war. If we hadn’t had the war, I’m sure my investigations would have been more successful.”

  Kikuno smiled slightly and said, “It’s no wonder you didn’t find out. I made every effort to hide my former identity. Probably the only people who knew were my husband, who passed away seven years ago, and my relatives in Toyama, and those three are gone now, too.”r />
  “Who was your husband?” asked Kindaichi.

  “His name was Shofu Miyakawa, and he, too, was a koto teacher. I visited his house once while I was living with my relatives in Toyama, and we became close.”

  “And so you married.”

  “Well, actually…” Kikuno hesitated. “We were never legally married. At the time, his wife was still living.”

  Kikuno flushed and looked down, while Kindaichi’s sensitivity made him avert his eyes. Having started her young adult life as someone’s mistress, this woman had been fated to live again as a kept woman, unable to become a legal wife. Thinking of the unfortunate circumstances she had endured, Kindaichi could not help but feel compassion for her.

  Kikuno continued, still hesitantly, “Actually, his wife passed away three years after I placed myself in his care, and he proposed then that we wed, but I declined his offer. It would have been one thing if we had had children, but we didn’t, and I was afraid that if I applied to change my family register, my whereabouts would become known in my home town, and that the people in this house might find out about the child I had left in Toyama.”

  Kikuno gently held her handkerchief to her eyes. Kindaichi, Tachibana, and Furudate exchanged looks of sympathy. For this poor woman, the horrific memories of that frosty night could never be wiped away. Because the threats made by the three half-sisters had penetrated the very core of her being, she had tried to hide her child from them, even if it meant subjecting herself to a life forever in the shadows. No wonder Furudate’s investigations had been unsuccessful.