by I. J. Parker
“The farm was mine,” Yukihito said, “and I haven’t done anything.”
“Is that so?” Kobe got up and walked around his desk until he could lean over Nakamura’s nephew. “So you’re the master’s heir, are you? And when you heard the prince wished to build a temple, you knew you were about to strike it rich.”
Yukihito shrank back. “It’s all legal,” he protested. “I signed the papers weeks ago.”
“Did you indeed?” Kobe straightened up, grinning broadly. Turning to Akitada, he asked, “How did you guess?”
“There had to be something that would make the master’s death profitable. You may remember I suggested finding his heir. When you arrested that maid, I decided I had to do it myself.”
Kobe looked embarrassed. “I let the poor thing go. She kept crying for her kids.” Glancing at the unconscious Daisai, he asked, “What’s he got to do with it?”
“I believe that Yukihito was approached by his friend Daisai with interesting news about his uncle’s farm. But perhaps you had better let him tell his story.”
Seeing their eyes on him, Yukihito stammered, “You think I killed Uncle?”
Akitada said, “We think your friend Daisai killed him because you promised him and Lord Miyoshi a share in the profits from the farm. That makes you guilty also.”
Yukihito shook his head as if to clear it. “Daisai killed him?” he asked. Suddenly tears started to roll down his face. “Not Daisai,” he sobbed. “He wouldn’t do such a thing. Daisai knew I wouldn’t want Uncle to get hurt.”
“You’d better tell us about it,” said Kobe.
The story, haltingly told by a confused Yukihito, was simple. On one of his visits home, Daisai had told him that the poor land he was cursing was worth a great deal of gold in the capital. He had offered to arrange a sale after Master Nakamura’s death in return for a share for himself and a court official. Yukihito, penniless and hounded by creditors, agreed eagerly and signed the papers. Then, by a miracle, it had all come true. His uncle had died, he had sold the farm, and the money would be his as soon is this Lord Miyoshi paid. Kobe listened with open enjoyment.
“You don’t say,” he remarked when Yukihito was done. “How very nice!” He told the constables to take Daisai and Yukihito away and lock them up. “So you were right,” he said to Akitada when they were alone. “Miyoshi was a part of it also?”
Akitada nodded. “He had to be. Miyoshi knew of the crown prince’s dream and his plan to construct a fabulous temple in Nagaoka. He will not, I believe, readily confess his complicity, but Daisai will talk. His only hope is to show that he was manipulated by Miyoshi. The nephew, I think, truly was an unwitting tool in their hands.”
“Yes. He’s too stupid.” Kobe slapped his hands on his knees and said, “We’ll celebrate. You’ll take a cup of wine with me?” Akitada nodded. Overflowing with good will and generosity toward Akitada, Kobe remarked, “I must say it is amazing that you deduced all of this from the arrangement of a few stones on a go board.”
Akitada accepted the peace offering. “The particular contest they engaged in is called a ‘race.’ It is much quicker than the ordinary game, because it is won by whoever makes the first capture. It is possible that the master proposed the abbreviated game, as Miyoshi claims. It does not really matter. What is peculiar is that a superior player like Miyoshi would lose so badly.”
“But how did you know that?”
“Did you make a diagram of the game on the board?”
Kobe flushed. “No.”
“Well, let me see.” Akitada reached across the desk for a sheet of paper and the captain’s brush. Dipping the brush into the ink, he sketched the position of the nineteen black and white stones. “I believe, that is the way it was. We know Nakamura played black. He won because black surrounded and thus captured two white stones.”
Kobe stared at the paper and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Nakamura, playing black, started. They each played nine stones. The final turn was Nakamura’s and he completed the capture. But it took two turns to surround the stones, and Miyoshi had a chance to block. He did not block. A child could have played better.”
Kobe nodded. “Yes, I see it now. But it’s such a little thing to hang a murder on. Maybe Miyoshi had a bad day.”
Akitada shook his head. “No. I have thought much about this match. There seems to me only one reason why Miyoshi lost: he deliberately ended the game. Given his many attempts to take Nakamura’s title, he must have had a powerful reason to end the game so abruptly by losing. Miyoshi knew that Nakamura would die after drinking his tea.”
Kobe cried, “But that means Miyoshi poisoned the tea. What about Daisai? Why did he make up a tale about getting sick from Nakamura’s tea when there was no poison in the tea yet?”
“Daisai was his accomplice. It was he who poisoned the tea. Think about it. The murder involved a certain amount of risk which Miyoshi and Daisai shared equally for mutual protection. Daisai put the poison in the tea, and Miyoshi visited Nakamura to make sure the master drank it. When you accused Miyoshi, Daisai came forward with his story. Yukihito was carefully kept out of it, because he represented the missing motive and was clearly not very intelligent.”
Kobe thought. “It may be hard to prove.”
“Remember one of Nakamura’s rules,” said Akitada. “‘Always use your opponent’s weakness.’ Yukihito with his naiveté is the weakest link and has already broken the case. Of the remaining two, Daisai has the weaker personality. People like him always save their own skin at the cost of others. He is unlikely to suffer the penalty while Miyoshi goes free, reaping the profits from his crime.” He paused and smiled sadly. “I have learned much by playing go with the master.”
Kobe nodded. Raising his cup to Akitada, he said, “I wish I had known the old man. He must have been something.”
Outside the latticed window, a bird began to sing.
Akitada’s eyes moistened. After a moment, he said, his voice catching a little, “When I was on my way to see the master, I heard a cuckoo singing in a willow. I should have suspected then. The cuckoo is called the guide of the soul across the hills of death. No doubt it was taking Master Nakamura to paradise where he is even now teaching the immortals how to play the game.”
The song stopped and, with a flutter of wings, the bird was gone.
Kobe cleared his throat. “I wonder,” he said, “if you would honor me with a small lesson?”
In the following story, Akitada overcomes his personal convictions to do a favor for a former servant. It is one of several instances when Akitada confronts a tendency for prejudging people in the course of solving a crime. Kobe reappears, now promoted to superintendent and a staunch friend to Akitada.
The New Year’s Gift
Heian-Kyo (Kyoto): Eleventh century; in the First or Sprouting Month.
THE dark figure crossed the street and paused in front of the rice merchant’s shop. A sliver of light from inside briefly lit a young man’s face before he melted into the shadow of the doorway.
Only a few doors away a middle-aged couple, huddling together against the freezing drizzle under an oilpaper umbrella, stopped on their homeward walk. Their name was Otogawa, and they were returning from New Year’s dinner at their son-in-law’s house.
“Did you see that?” the woman hissed. “Wasn’t that Kinjiro sneaking into Itto’s place?”
“Damn that Itto!” mumbled her husband, swaying on his feet and nearly dropping the lantern. “Hope the fellow kills him. The old miser’s got us like rats in a bag, rot him!”
“If you stayed away from wine and dice, we wouldn’t be in this shape,” she scolded. “And you’re drunk again. As if we had anything to celebrate when you’re about to lose the shop.”
“Shut up!” he muttered and gave her a push that made the umbrella tilt crazily and drench them both with icy water. He cursed and reeled toward the door of his shop.
His wife followed him inside, muttering angrily
. He collapsed on the raised flooring and began to snore. She lit an oil lamp from the lantern he had carried, put away the wet umbrella, then took off her outer wrap and her husband’s muddy wooden sandals. She did not bother to cover her sleeping husband but scurried to a narrow window high up in the wall. It looked out over the street and was covered with oil paper which was translucent in the daytime. Climbing on a small chest, she peered through a tear in the paper at the rain-glistening street outside.
She was just in time to see the dark figure emerge from the shop next door and the young man rush past her window.
“It was him,” she cried triumphantly. Her husband’s comment was a loud snore. She climbed down and went to shake him awake. “Get up! Something’s happened next door. You must go over there right away.”
“Wha …?” He sat up drowsily.
“To Itto’s! That young hellion Kinjiro just ran out again. He’s done something.”
“Why should I care? Serves the tight-fisted villain right if the kid robbed him.”
“You fool. If you offer your help, the old man may wait for the money.” She slipped the sandals back on his feet and gave him a push toward the door.
With a grunt, her husband staggered out into the icy rain.
• • •
The festive New Year’s season began badly in the Sugawara household. On the first day of the year, the weather was so abysmal that the emperor could not pay homage to the lodestar, a bad omen for the nation, and apparently also for the Sugawara family. Akitada was passed over in the annual promotions. On the second day, the diviner came to cast his divining rods. When he read the resulting hexagrams, he looked glum and shook his head. Young Yori came down with a fever that night. On the third, the so-called “tooth-hardening” day, Akitada’s elderly secretary Seimei bit too heartily into one of the “tooth-hardening” and life-prolonging rice cakes and broke a front tooth, throwing the whole family into gloomy anticipation of his death. Then Akitada caught a cold.
By the morning of the seventh day, the day of the seven herbs rice gruel, he woke with a vile headache and sore throat. His misery grew when no gruel appeared. In fact, there was no breakfast at all—not even a soothing cup of hot tea, though Seimei was usually obsessively punctual and reliable.
Shivering, Akitada dressed and went across the chilly courtyard to the kitchen. There he found to his irritation his entire staff—Seimei, the cook, his wife’s maid, and the boy Toshi— who swept the courtyard and answered the gate—clustered around a seated beggar woman.
“What is going on? And where is my rice gruel?” Akitada croaked, glaring at everybody accusingly. This was no time to gossip with stray beggars. It was the busiest time of the year, and he had a cold.
Most of the kitchen surfaces were covered with trays and baskets of New Year’s delicacies: melons, radishes, and huge platters of round, flat rice cakes, along with salted trout, and roasted venison and boar, all auspicious foods for the coming year. Among the foodstuffs Akitada saw his bowl of seven herbs gruel—so beneficial for all sorts of ailments, sore throats for example—left to grow cold because of the shabby visitor.
They immediately knelt and bowed to their master. Seimei, senior retainer and family friend, performed this obeisance in a perfunctory manner, sitting up quickly to say, “It’s Sumiko, sir. She’s in trouble.”
Sumiko? Akitada blankly eyed the kneeling beggar woman. She was wet and dirty. On second glance, she looked younger than he had thought, but sickly and misshapen.
“You do remember Sumiko, sir?” urged Seimei. “Lady Sugawara’s maid? She left us last summer to marry Kinjiro.”
“Oh!”
Akitada was shocked. This pale, worn, and slatternly looking woman was their Sumiko? His wife’s little maid had sparkled with health, prettiness, and laughter. In fact, they had fully expected her to run off with some wealthy merchant’s son. Sumiko had certainly had enough admirers and turned down several good offers of marriage, perhaps because she was attached to Akitada’s wife. She had even accompanied them to the north country. For eight years Sumiko had been a part of their family, and then, a year ago, out of the blue, she had announced that she wished to marry a penniless good-for-nothing.
The young man was not only poor, eking out a miserable wage as a messenger between post stations, taking and bringing horses as they were needed, but he had been in trouble with the law. Sumiko had defended him, claiming he was a changed man and would be adopted by a generous relative, but Akitada and his wife did not take this seriously; they attempted to talk her out of it. Sumiko had ignored all warnings and married her man.
“The police have arrested her husband for the murder of his adoptive father,” said Seimei now, justifying all of Akitada’s misgivings about the match.
Sumiko burst into violent sobs.
“She says Kinjiro didn’t do it,” Seimei continued, “but they have no money, sir, and Sumiko isn’t well. She expects her first child any day. Not knowing where to turn, she has come to you.”
Akitada looked again and saw that the pitifully creature in her loose faded garment was indeed in the last stages of pregnancy. He was not as a rule a superstitious man, but now he thought of the diviner and wondered what new calamity had just befallen them. This, however, he did not say. Instead he exclaimed with false heartiness, “And quite right, too. Welcome, Sumiko. We’ll soon have you smiling again.”
The young woman raised herself with difficulty, supporting her grotesquely swollen belly with both hands. Akitada marveled that she could have walked any distance in her condition. Her face had a translucent bluish pallor, and her lips were colorless. As he searched for more soothing words, she gave him a tremulous smile, and for a brief moment he recognized the old Sumiko.
“You’re cold and wet,” he said. “Have you eaten today?”
She shook her head.
The cook jumped up. “I’ll heat some of the seven herbs gruel.”
Sumiko waved the offer away. “I only came to beg your help for Kinjiro, sir.” She hesitated, then added pathetically, “For old times’ sake.” Fumbling in her sleeve, she produced a small package wrapped in crimson silk. This she extended to Akitada. “And to wish you and your lady an auspicious year.”
Akitada took the gift from her icy fingers and unwrapped a small carved tortoise, symbol of long life and happiness. The tiny creature on the palm of his hand was a lucky charm, not expensive, but clearly treasured for its magic powers. If anyone needed luck, it was Sumiko, but he could not refuse this traditional New Year’s present. “Thank you, Sumiko,” he said. “I am very sorry about Kinjiro’s trouble and will certainly try to help.” He was afraid he sounded as dubious as he felt. To his mind, Kinjiro’s reputation made his guilt a virtual certainty. “But you must eat some gruel first.” His own stomach growled. “The herbs will be good for you and your child.” Casting a hungry glance at his bowl of gruel and a pitying one at Sumiko, Akitada told Seimei to make the young woman comfortable and bring her to him later.
Back in his study, he sat down behind his desk, placed the tortoise in front of him, and drummed his fingers dejectedly. He wished he had snatched one of the rice cakes on his way out of the kitchen. He wished Sumiko had not appeared today of all days, bringing such a gift. With a sigh, he rose and went to a small chest where he kept his valuables. Inside lay a small stack of gold coins. He took one and a sheet of decorated paper to wrap it in.
Placing his gift for Sumiko next to the turtle, he waited. Seimei eventually appeared with a steaming bowl of gruel and busied himself making Akitada’s morning tea.
“What’s the story?” Akitada asked, raising the bowl to sniff the aroma of parsley, borage, garlic, and other pungent green things, before taking a cautious sip. His wife Tamako had gathered the first greens of the year herself. They were added to the usual plain rice pottage in honor of the season and to ward off disease during the coming year. While Akitada doubted such long-range effects, he was very fond of the flavor and thought i
ts medicinal properties soothed his painful throat.
“It appears that Kinjiro was invited for New Year’s dinner at his adoptive father’s house,” Seimei told him, “but they quarrelled and Kinjiro left in anger. The next morning the old man was found stabbed to death.” Seimei measured tea into a small cup of Chinese porcelain painted with sprays of pink plum blossoms. This also was a custom of the season. “Itto’s neighbors testified that they saw Kinjiro return during the night. He does not deny it, but says he left the old man alive and parted from him on the best of terms and with a gift of silver.”
Akitada’s face lengthened. “That sounds highly unlikely.”
“Yes, it sounds unbelievable, and it’s his word against that of the widow. She says they quarreled when her husband told Kinjiro he had cancelled the adoption, Kinjiro became angry and threatened him. The police have searched Kinjiro’s room and found the silver but no weapon. With his reputation, they had no choice but to arrest him.”