by I. J. Parker
Akitada made his way through the standing and sitting humanity to the other side of the gate and took up a place at one of the thick, lacquered pillars where he could see the eastern highway stretching away through the bluish-grey watery haze toward the distant green mountains.
The scene was quite empty as far as his eye could see. No doubt his friend had sought shelter at one of the roadside inns and would not set out again until the rain let up. Akitada sighed and prepared to be patient. He had looked forward to this meeting. His mind dwelt with pleasure on the preparations at home, and he the reviewed plans for the coming days.
Gradually, his surroundings, the low hum of voices behind him, the wind-driven curtains of water outside, and the cascades rushing from the eaves above became a single web of sound and sight, a lulling background to his pleasurable thoughts.
It was reluctantly that he first took note of a discordant sound: the whispering sibilance alternating with a hoarser, grating sound punctuated by a dry cough. Such sounds would have been easily disguised by the rain except for their urgency, the note of excitement. Akitada guessed there had been a demand and a response, both fraught with meaning. But the first exchanges left Akitada with neither comprehension nor much curiosity. Then, during a lull, came the words: “But that’s murder! Ten pieces of silver to kill a woman?” The rest was washed away by more splashing of rain and the gusting of wind.
Murder? Akitada thought he must have misheard. Or perhaps he had been dreaming. No one would meet here in broad daylight, in a crowd of people and under the eyes of a constable to discuss, a murder for hire. He tried to recall the precise words, the sound and inflection of the voices. He could not guess the speakers’ ages or their profession. Detaching himself quietly from the pillar, he strolled around to see the other side.
There was no one there. At the nearest wall, a mendicant monk, like a bundle of dirty straw, sat asleep, his face sunken onto his chest and his straw hat resting on his shoulders. At the next pillar, two blue-robed officials stood studying a piece of paper. On the other side, a common laborer rummaged in his bundle for something to eat. The red-coated constable was watching a middle-aged man who was teetering on the top step at the far side and peering at the sky before braving the rain, impatient to get home.
Feeling thoroughly foolish, Akitada returned to his position. Soon the driving grey curtains of rain parted briefly, and he saw a group of travelers, with the litter bearers in front, their feet splashing along rapidly. He leaned forward, shading his eyes. Perhaps? Yes! His friend had arrived.
• • •
It was not until more than a month later, long after his friend had departed, that the memory of that half-heard conversation returned to haunt him. On the occasion, he was attending a trial of a murderer. All junior clerks of the Ministry of Justice were sent on periodic visits to one of the city’s two municipal courts. The minister liked to keep an eye on judicial procedures and current cases to assert the waning powers of the ministry against the police. Akitada usually volunteered and, if that did not work, went without permission.
It had seemed a straightforward case. A robber had entered the property of a minor official, had been discovered in the act by the owner, and had stabbed him to death. The robber had then made his escape, but was apprehended almost immediately trying to sell a costly woman’s robe. Due to a bit of very good police work—the minister had called it luck—the robe was identified as belonging to the household of the victim, and the robber had been charged with the murder.
On this occasion, the minister had sent Akitada for two reasons: there had been an abnormally long delay in the trial—the accused had been in custody for a month without confessing his crime—and the judge was Ienaga.
Ienaga had established a reputation as an unemotional and pitiless prosecutor of criminals. For years he had ignored all recommendations of clemency from the government. But he was almost seventy now, and the minister hoped to catch him in a judicial error and have him dismissed for senility.
When Akitada arrived, the trial had already started in the main hall of the municipal police headquarters. Only a handful of people were in attendance—a meager showing, but robbery had become a common occurrence in the capital and it was raining.
Black-robed and black-hatted, Ienaga sat stiffly on the dais, holding the baton of his office before him and glowering at the courtroom. Neither his posture nor his fierce expression could hide his age and frailty.
To either side of the judge, two scribes knelt over low desks, taking notes of the proceedings. Below the dais, to the right and left, stood constables in red coats and white trousers.
The defendant, chained hand and foot, knelt directly below the judge, flanked by two prison guards with whips and prongs. He was a rough-looking man, in his mid-thirties, incredibly hairy and dirty, but with powerful shoulders and muscular thighs and legs. Akitada was always sickened by the defendants in murder cases. Regardless of their crime, he found their abject hopelessness painful to watch. But his revulsion had never been as strong as on this occasion, and he searched for a reason. There was nothing appealing about the man. Neither was his crime negligible or defensible. A creature like this should have seemed no more than a ferocious animal gone on the attack, but this man gave the impression of a patient beast of burden submitting to human abuse.
Ienaga wound up a summation of the charges, rapped his baton sharply on the boards and called for the witnesses. Akitada prepared to listen and watch. Outside the steady rain drummed on the tiles of the roof.
Testimony of the Maid Servant
My name is Sumiko. I work in the house of Ishigake Takanobu. On the morning of the tenth day of the Rice-Sprouting Month I found my master dead in the mistress’s room. He was covered with blood on his chest and back and was lying in a puddle of blood. I screamed and ran for help to Otagi, the steward. That is all I know.
Testimony of the House Steward
My name is Otagi. I have been the house steward in the family of Ishigake Takanobu for ten years. When the maid Sumiko came to me, I went immediately to the mistress’s quarters and found my master dead. He had been stabbed in the throat and the weapon, my master’s own hunting knife, lay beside him. I also saw that a robbery had taken place, because the clothes chests were emptied and a silver mirror and other costly belongings were missing. I immediately reported the murder to the police. That is all I know.
Testimony of the Police Sergeant
My name is Kishida. I am a sergeant of the municipal police. On the tenth day of the Rice-Sprouting Month I was called to the residence of the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Palace Repairs, Ishigake Takanobu. I found that the assistant secretary had been killed by having his throat cut with a hunting knife and that a robbery had occurred. After interviewing the staff, I prepared a list of stolen articles and determined that Ishigake had surprised the robber and that the criminal had then killed the secretary and made his escape with the goods.
Testimony of the Constable
My name is Constable Yojibei. On the tenth day of the Rice-Sprouting Month, around the time of the noon rice, I observed the defendant Hajimaro offering a woman’s robe for sale in the market. When he could not account for the robe, I arrested him on suspicion of theft. My sergeant sent me to the house of the murdered Ishigake Takanobu to show the woman’s robe to the maid. The maid identified the robe as one stolen by the murderer. That is all I know.
Testimony of the Defendant
My name is Hajimaro. I am a poor soldier out of work. On the tenth day of the Rice-Sprouting Month early in the morning I was walking down Nishiki Road towards Takakura Street, when I passed an open gate. I had not eaten for two days and decided to beg some rice. I saw no one in the courtyard and entered the house. Inside I found a dead man covered with blood. I was frightened, but my hunger was greater than my fear. In my desperation I stole a woman’s robe from a clothes rack. Then I heard someone coming and left. When I tried to sell the robe the next day, I was
arrested. That is all I know.
Akitada found plenty to criticize in the way Judge Ienaga conducted the hearing. He had heard the witnesses in quick succession and without comment or question. Indeed, their testimony had been so brief and concise that Akitada suspected that they had told their stories several times already. Much time had passed, and the judge should have probed their recollections more thoroughly. Worse, there were some glaring omissions. What had happened to the other stolen articles? Why had the victim carried a hunting knife into his wife’s room? And where, for that matter, was that wife’s testimony?
But something far more startling had happened during the testimony. The constable had a speech impediment which caused him to lisp. In itself such a thing would not have meant much to Akitada, but the combination of the hissing sounds with the rain on the roof, and the man’s red uniform had caused a sharp memory to flash through his mind: the conversation overheard in Rashomon more than six weeks ago. He then recognized the constable as the one who had been standing guard that rainy afternoon, and the man lisped much like one of the speakers Akitada had overheard, the one who was to kill an unknown woman.
But even if this representative of the law was indeed involved in a murder plot, it could not have anything to do with the case on hand. The victim here had been male.
Akitada put the matter from his mind when the judge pronounced sentence. Ienaga found the defendant guilty of robbery and decreed a punishment of one hundred lashes with bamboo whips. Such an ordeal was harsh, but Ienaga did not confine himself to a mere hundred lashes. He ordered additional beatings to be administered until a murder confession could be extracted from the defendant.
Summary justice! Akitada sighed and was making his way out of the courtroom, wondering what he should do about the lisping constable, when a disturbance caused him to turn around. The judge was listening with evident impatience to an elderly couple. He was leaning forward, his hand raised to his ear to hear better.
Could Ienaga be deaf? If so, he should have disqualified himself. Perhaps the preceding hearing had been a carefully rehearsed farce. Akitada drew nearer.
“What? What?” shouted Ienaga, waving his baton. “Speak up! I can’t hear you. You say you lost your daughter?”
The elderly man shouted, “Yes, Your Honor! She has not been seen since …”
Ienaga interrupted him, “Why are you bothering me with this? I know nothing of the matter. Report it to the police. Court closed!” He rapped his baton and was helped up by his clerks who rushed over to assist him out of the room.
The two elderly people stood helplessly as the hall emptied, keeping close together, and after a while the wife began to cry. Her husband put an arm around her shoulders and murmured something. She nodded and together they turned and walked away slowly.
Akitada was becoming very angry with Ienaga. Even if the case against the robber appeared justified, it had been handled too quickly and too carelessly. And if Ienaga was indeed deaf, he must be dismissed from his office. He decided to follow the old couple.
They were making their way through the rain toward Suzaku Avenue, walking side by side with the slow, dejected gait of people who have given up hope.
Catching up, Akitada pulled them under the eaves of a building and introduced himself.
“You work in the ministry of justice, Sir?” asked the man, bowing deeply, his face suddenly hopeful.
The wife fell to her knees in the mud of the street and cried, “Oh, please, sir, in the name of Holy Amida, tell us what to do? If you have a child, sir, have pity on us.”
“Please get up, madam,” said Akitada, deeply moved, “and tell me what happened.”
She got up, but it was her husband who told him about his daughter—the wife of the murdered secretary—who seemed to have vanished into thin air.
“When we heard of the murder,” he said, “I went immediately to offer my condolences to the Ishigake family. To my horror, the son turned me away, saying that my daughter had left the household. When I asked him when and why, he said only that his father had divorced her and sent her away shortly before his death. I don’t believe him, because Chiyo did not come home. She did not even send us a message.”
A divorce would certainly explain why no reference was made to the widow during the hearing. And if the husband had sent her away in anger, she might well have left her finery behind. But what had he been doing in her empty apartments? With a knife. And, again, Akitada thought of the lisping constable and the meeting at Rashomon. He asked, “Were you close to your daughter?”
Husband and wife exchanged glances. The mother said defensively, “Chiyo did not see us after she married. And we did not visit because we were afraid her new family might take it amiss.”
The husband shifted his feet. He looked both ashamed and angry. “I was against it from the start. I am only a poor school teacher. We could not even give her a dowry. But Chiyo had her heart set on marrying a rich man and made eyes at the late secretary even though he was almost my age. Chiyo is very beautiful, and he came to me. He offered me money for her.”
Akitada could imagine the reaction to such an insult. Poor but respectable, the school teacher would have been deeply offended that the rich man wished to buy his daughter as if she were a common prostitute.
“You refused, I take it.” Akitada said.
The man nodded, still angry. “Of course. But my daughter left us. The next day we got a letter, saying she had gone to him to be mistress of his house and heart. I did not respond and forbade my wife to visit. But now …” He broke off, placing a hand over his face in grief. “Where could she be?” he asked dully.
Akitada promised to ask some questions on their behalf, and they were touchingly grateful. As he was by no means sure of success and, in any case, had no time to pursue the matter, he watched with mixed feelings as they walked away into the gray drizzle with lighter steps, convinced that they had found an advocate in him.
• • •
The minister received Akitada’s report on Judge Ienaga with satisfaction. The story of the missing wife intrigued him, because there was always a chance that it might be connected with the murder, in which case Ienaga could be dismissed. Therefore he permitted Akitada to take the rest of the day off to investigate her disappearance.
Ishigake junior was a pale, fleshy young man who tried to appear sophisticated. Akitada’s visit clearly puzzled him, but he dared not question the sudden interest of the ministry of justice in his father’s divorce.
“I cannot tell you much,” he said querulously. “I was not here. But my father’s ill-considered … er … connection with a young female from a totally unacceptable family was naturally a great concern to me.”
“Naturally.” No doubt about it, thought Akitada, glancing around at the trappings of wealth. If another son had been born to the unsuitable wife, he might have usurped a doting father’s affections, and the pudgy young man might have lost his inheritance. He coughed, saying apologetically, “Like everyone else, I seem to have caught a cold. The weather has been so wet. Perhaps you, too, have had that misfortune?”
The young man looked blank. “I never get sick,” he said. “In any case, there is little to tell, except that apparently my father came to his senses and sent the person back home to her family.”
“Ah,” said Akitada, “but that is the problem. She seems not to have arrived there. What with your father’s tragic murder, one cannot help wondering if the same man may be responsible for her disappearance.”
Young Ishigake frowned. “But the steward told me that my father’s … that she had been sent away the day before. He said that Father was very angry, and she left the house in tears.” He paused. “I’m afraid the steward insinuated that she was very flirtatious and might have been involved in some liaison. Perhaps she has gone to her lover.”
It certainly sounded possible. By her parents’ testimony, Chiyo was a spoiled and headstrong young woman. And, having defied her strict fath
er, she would hardly have returned to her parents if she had been divorced for adultery. Akitada thanked Ishigake and left.
Otagi, the house steward, was hovering near the entrance. He handed Akitada his boots.
Akitada thought the man looked nervous. “I heard you testify in court this morning,” he said, sitting on the wooden platform to slip his boots on.
The servant’s thin face was expressionless. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Akitada held a boot in his hand and studied the man. He looked about forty years old. His hair was thinning and his face prematurely lined. “I understand from your master that you saw your mistress leaving this house.”
Otagi stiffened. “I doubt that my late master’s son would refer to a woman of her class as my mistress,” he said frostily. “It was regrettable that my late master should have brought someone so unsuitable into this house, but it was no surprise to me that he sent her back to the streets.”