by I. J. Parker
Saemon fidgeted. “I hope you will pardon this humble place, sir. I’m a poor man. Is it about Kiyomura?”
“Yes. I am told you laid certain charges against Tora while suppressing other evidence. I wondered why.”
Saemon flushed. “I told the truth. It could not be helped.”
“All of you quarreled with the wrestler. All of you had cause to kill him.”
“Not I.”
“On the contrary. You had the best reason of all.”
Saemon bared yellow teeth in an attempt at a smile. “Your Honor is joking.”
The sliding door opened again, and Saemon’s sister came in with more wine and another cup. Noticing Saemon’s clothes, she asked, “Why are you wearing that old thing? What happened to your nice gray robe?” Without waiting for an answer, she deposited the tray and grumbled, “If you didn’t let that slut spend your hard-earned money on that beggarly Hiraga bunch, you’d have proper clothes for a man of your standing.”
Saemon hissed, “Stop your babbling, woman! Your foolish chatter offends our guest.”
The woman drew herself up sharply. Angry color suffused her face and the resemblance to her brother was startling. “Foolish am I? All day and all night I work and worry, and that is what I get? I take care of your house, your clothes, your meals like a servant. And I keep an eye on that whore you brought into our home who spends your money like water while we live like paupers. Hah! I hope she bought that sword to slit your throat some night.”
“Out!” Saemon was up, pointing a shaking finger at the door. His sister tossed her head and left. He said to Akitada, “I made the mistake of marrying a former courtesan. It has upset my household. I shall return in a moment,” and followed her.
The walls were thin, and again Akitada could hear angry shouting from the back of the house. He took his flute from his sleeve and looked at it thoughtfully. There were sounds of a scuffle and then a woman’s cries, abruptly stifled. Saemon returned, breathing heavily, and sat back down.
Akitada said, “You performed the examination of the bodies. May I ask what you found?”
Saemon calmed down a little. “Kiyomura was stabbed repeatedly,” he said. “At least two thrusts went straight to his heart. The beggar died of an apoplexy, possibly brought on by witnessing the murder.”
“Ingenious.”
Saemon frowned. “What do you mean? And what did you mean by saying I had the best motive.”
“Jealousy is a powerful motive, although in your case envy, pride, and greed entered into it also. You are an ordinary, hard-working man who toiled and saved for many years to buy the love of a beautiful woman. Then Kiyomura, who was by all accounts an obnoxious wastrel and womanizer, arrived on the scene and not only took your new wife, but asked her to support his luxurious life style with your money.”
Saemon was on his feet. “That’s a lie!”
“Is it? Kiyomura was particularly liberal with money last night, wasn’t he? And he enjoyed cruel taunts. He talked about an admirer and bragged that he had found a goldmine, and then he looked at you, and you realized that you had been subsidizing his life style all along.”
Saemon cried, “Lies, all lies. Has my wife --?”
Akitada said quickly, “No. Your wife has not betrayed you. You betrayed yourself in your past actions. Perhaps Hiraga’s presence last night reminded you of his wife’s visit to your house. You knew that Hiraga would think you unworthy of one of his swords. But Hiraga’s wife sold your wife a weapon without her husband’s permission because a large family of hungry children requires more income than a sword smith with such exacting standards in his customers can supply. When you discovered the sword, I am sure it rankled that your money had gone toward the support of Hiraga’s family. In any case, the quarrel between Hiraga and Kiyomura gave you an idea of the perfect revenge. You rushed home for the sword your wife had purchased--out of compassion for Mrs. Hiraga, I suspect, although you assumed it was for her lover--and you ambushed the drunken Kiyomura, intending to cast suspicion on Hiraga.”
A slow breath escaped from Saemon’s lips. His right hand crept to his sash and his eyes stared fixedly into Akitada’s. Then, exploding into sudden movement, he rushed forward. Something flashed in his raised hand. Akitada barely managed to twist out of the way, bringing his flute down sharply on Saemon’s wrist. There was a crack, a cry of pain, and then Akitada pinioned the pharmacist to the floor, twisting his arm behind his back.
The door opened abruptly.
“Ah, just in time, Inspector,” said Akitada, looking up from Saemon’s back. “Here’s your killer. I was wondering how to proceed. You must have the power of divination.”
The inspector gestured to two constables who quickly tied the dazed Saemon with the thin chains they wore around their waists. Saemon’s wife, dishevelled, one eye blackened, and bruises covering her pale face, came in after them. She did not look at her husband. Her eyes were on Akitada.
“Thank heaven you are all right, sir,” she said through swollen lips. “I hurried as fast as I could.”
The inspector said, “She has accused her husband of Kiyomura’s murder and identified the sword as one she purchased recently. Kiyomura was her lover.”
Saemon’s sister joined them, her eyes flying around the room.
Saemon jerked on his chains and cursed his wife. “Demon!” he cried, his face distorted with fury, “Whore! It’s all part of a plot. I’m charging her, Inspector. She killed the wrestler herself because she found a better lover.” He jerked his chin towards Akitada. “Yes, a nobleman. I caught them at their filthy game, and this is what they did, trying to get rid of me now.”
Akitada was as dumfounded by this accusation as everyone else. Not so Saemon’s sister, who cried, “It’s the truth. She was a whore before he married her, and she sleeps with every man who will have her still. I knew at once what this … this person”—she pointed at Akitada—”had in mind when he came here. He made sure Saemon was gone and then asked for her. But I sent for my brother, and he came at once. They were doing it, right there, on the floor of her husband’s house. Slut!”
The inspector’s eyes went to Saemon’s wife, took in the bruises and the tearful look she gave Akitada, and asked, “Is that why your husband beat you?”
“Of course it is,” cried the sister. “Only a saint could have restrained himself.”
Saemon’s wife did the worst thing she could possibly do. She ran to Akitada, knelt and pressed his hand to her cheek. “Forgive me,” she sobbed. “I did not wish to cause you trouble. I would gladly die to undo this evil thing.”
Akitada saw suspicion change to certainty in the inspector’s eyes. And her husband smiled. The man was as slippery as an eel and about to escape the net. Worse, Akitada’s reputation, already damaged in the eyes of his superior, would not survive this tale of sexual misconduct leading to a false murder charge laid against a respectable citizen.
He considered his situation and knew that the inspector was also put to a test. If he threw in his lot with Akitada, his punishment for a miscarriage of justice could be exile. And what about Tora?
After an uncomfortable moment, the inspector walked to Saemon and bent to untie his chains. Saemon’s lip twitched in triumph. His wife released Akitada’s hand with a small cry of despair and ran from the room.
“You are making a mistake,” Akitada said. “This man has killed twice, for the other body you found is his second victim, not a beggar, but an innocent passer-by who must have happened upon a murder scene before the killer could wash the bloodstains off himself. That is why I insisted you discover his identity.”
Saemon shouted, “Even an idiot could see there were no wounds on the beggar. How was he killed?”
Akitada walked to the wall and bent to pick up a slender steel needle. “This,” he said, extending the needle to the inspector, “is the weapon that man tried to use against me before your arrival, and he had used the same method to eliminate the witness to his crime. I s
uggested a careful examination. Instead you asked the murderer to investigate the cause of death. Even if you do not find a needle in the man’s head, you will find blood in the man’s ear or nose.” He turned to Saemon. “You may not know how to use a sword, but you are a skilled acupuncturist with medical training. Not only are the tools of your trade always with you in that satchel you carry, but you know how to inflict a fatal wound, whether it is a sword cut to the heart, or a needle puncture through an ear or nostril to the brain.”
“You will find no needle,” cried Saemon, “and bleeding from the nose and ears is common in cases of strokes.”
The inspector looked from the needle in his hand to Saemon and the chain which still lay at the pharmacist’s feet. Before Saemon could speak again, his sister shouted, “Besides anyone can use those needles. It means nothing. I can testify that my brother returned early last night.”
“You cannot,” said Saemon’s wife from the door. All eyes went to her. She was very pale except for the bruises, and she clutched a brown-striped man’s robe to her chest. “My husband left in a grey robe yesterday. I went to look for it and found this instead.”
The inspector snatched the robe from her hands and held it up. It was clearly too large for the thin Saemon.
“It’s not his,” Saemon’s wife said unnecessarily. “I’ve never seen it before. What happened to your grey robe, husband?”
“The police have it,” said Akitada. “Your husband traded clothes with his second victim. He tore it to make the dead man look like a vagrant, forgetting that beggars rarely wear clean, white loin cloths.
“Tie him up again,” the inspector told his constables.
Saemon cursed, and his sister wailed, “Don’t believe them. She’s an evil woman. What kind of wife turns on her own husband? Tell me that.”
They ignored her. The constables led Saemon away, and the inspector turned to Akitada. “A very strange case. It will depend on identifying the second man, easily done of course, but … er … my apologies for your inconvenience. Your servant will be released immediately.” He bowed and was gone.
Saemon’s sister stood uncertainly for a moment, then she looked at the younger woman. “You have no right here anymore,” she said venomously. “Get out of my house! If you’re here when I return, I’ll have you whipped through the streets for the adulteress you are.” Then she ran after the police.
Saemon’s wife hung her head. “She’s right,” she said, wringing her hands. “I am a terrible wife. I betrayed my husband, again and again. Now he will die because of me. I know I am worthless. There is nothing to do, but to die.”
Akitada said quickly, “No. Life thrusts difficult choices upon us. Your courage and sacrifice have saved my servant’s life and given peace to the spirits of the murdered men. You have also averted a good deal of unpleasantness for me and my family. Such acts will not go unrewarded. You may stay in my home until you find another, and you may count on me for money or any other help toward a new life.”
She flushed and her eyes moistened. “Your home?” She shook her head with a sad smile. “You are very kind, sir, but your ladies would not welcome someone like me. No, don’t insist.” She paused. “But if I might borrow travel funds? I would like to see my parents again. They are getting old and I would like to look after them.”
• • •
The sun was setting. A refreshing wind blew from the western mountains, and here and there sere leaves drifted from the trees. The willows on the bank of the Kamo had turned yellow, and their dancing branches looked like threads of golden silk against the brown brocade of the river. The heat had finally broken, but Akitada, who was walking across the bridge, had a face full of gloom.
“Sir, sir!” Tora was running toward him, grinning broadly. “I knew you would do it.”
Akitada stopped. “I paid a heavy price,” he said sadly, reaching into his sleeve and holding out his broken flute.
Akitada serves for four years in the North (Black Arrow and Island of Exiles) before returning to the Ministry of Justice in the capital. Married and with a young son, he has to deal with the death of his mother and patch up family disasters while a serial killer targets him and his family (The Hell Screen). The next three cases happen afterwards, during the happiest years of his marriage. In the first, Akitada’s empathy draws him into the lives of the ordinary people around him. In this story, Captain Kobe reappears as the conscientious officer of the law.
The Curio Dealer’s Wife
Heian-Kyo (Kyoto), 1020; Frost Month (December).
AKITADA was on his way to the curio store when he saw her. The woman was standing on a stone at the corner of the substantial and well-kept Hamada property, peering over the fence into the narrow garden beside the house.
It was not this fact which made him pause. Many hungry beggars checked out the premises of prosperous merchants in search of a friendly servant. This woman, who was no longer young, was dressed poorly for this chilly season. Her clothing was of the cheapest faded cotton, and she wore mended straw sandals on her bare feet. But there was a certain cleanliness about her, and her silver-streaked hair had been pinned up with great care. Also, her thin figure was very straight and her bare arms and hands graceful. None of these things were common among female beggars. Besides, Akitada thought, there was something familiar about her hairstyle and the way she held her shapely head.
He approached and startled her. She stepped down from the stone quickly but then relaxed.
“Forgive me,” said Akitada, inclining his head politely. “For a moment I thought I recognized you.”
Her face was slender, lined by age or anxiety, the eyes lustrous as if moistened by unshed tears, and her lips were compressed firmly. Akitada thought she looked like someone who held in pain by sheer force of will.
She averted her face. “Possibly,” she said softly and brushed past him.
The voice reminded him. It was deep for a woman and had a lovely resonance.
“Mrs. Hamada!” Akitada exclaimed. “Wait! You are Mrs. Hamada, aren’t you?”
She stopped without turning; just stood there, perfectly still and straight, waiting.
He walked around her and bowed again. “My name is Sugawara. I am with the Ministry of Justice and I used to visit your fine store quite often in the past. Once you waited on me. I was buying a flute.”
As he spoke, his eyes fell to her clothing, her straw-sandaled feet again. The prosperous merchant’s wife he recalled had worn plain but costly silk gowns and silk stockings.
“I am no longer Mrs. Hamada,” she said, not raising her head.
Thoughts raced through Akitada’s mind. He vaguely remembered hearing that the curio dealer Hamada had left for a business trip to China or Korea. But that had been years ago. Had he died? Had she remarried and fallen on hard times? Who owned the store now? There had been small children, boys who would have inherited.
“I am sorry. You lost your husband then?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” she said, and glanced back at the store with a look of anger and longing. “The man who returned from China is not my husband, but he now has my home and my children.”
Akitada, taken aback but curious and touched by her distress, invited her to a small restaurant nearby and ordered bowls of noodle soup for both of them. She accepted the invitation with a quiet grace, and ate hungrily but with great neatness. When she was done, she lowered her bowl, laid aside her chopsticks, and bowed deeply to him.
“You are very good,” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “I cannot remember when I ate last.”
“You have no money?”
“Neither money, nor home. When I realized that he was an impostor, I accused him. The charge was heard in court. I lost. The moment the judge confirmed his identity, he turned to me and pronounced the words of divorce. Right there in court, in front of everyone. When I got home, the doors were barred to me. In a moment, I lost everything—my children, my home, my clothes,
everything.”
“But how do you live?”
“Oh,” she said quickly, “I have been sleeping at the Charity Hospital. I give them a hand sometimes, and they tolerate me. The clothes I wore to the trial I traded for these and used the extra money to pay clerks to draw up petitions to the court to reopen the case. They have been rejected.”
“How long have you been without a home?”
“Six months. I have only seen my children twice. When you saw me, I was trying to look for them in the garden. I go every day. Usually his servants chase me away.”
Silence fell as Akitada considered her extraordinary tale. It was not plausible. The man who had returned must have been recognized by neighbors, servants, friends, customers. The municipal judge would have investigated and heard witnesses before finding against her. Was she mad? He began to regret having told her his name and occupation.