The Master Key

by Masako Togawa

  She knocked on Chikako’s door and turned the knob, but the door was locked. She used the master key to open it. When she got inside, she found Chikako lying with her head on the low table. She had knocked over a glass of water as she fell, and it had dripped onto the floor, where an empty pill bottle had also fallen.

  This, then, was Chikako’s reply. Was it an admission of guilt or an assertion of innocence? For a second, Yoneko felt dubious, and then she knew the answer. Innocence would not drive one to kill oneself—this was a confession that she had indeed buried the child. She had chosen to die so that the secret would die with her.

  Yoneko broke out in a cold sweat, and felt aggrieved at being thus cheated. She dearly wanted to know where the body lay. She looked around to see if there was any sign of a suicide note, but there wasn’t. So she would have to work out the answer to the mystery by herself.

  At least she now knew for certain that the child was buried somewhere near at hand. Any lingering doubts were overcome by the fact of Chikako’s death. So the poem told the truth.

  The poem was true… Yoneko grasped the point in an instant.

  ‘The bath! The bathroom! That’s it!’ Yoneko felt herself shouting inside her heart. The dried-up lake plainly referred to the disused bath in the basement. And seven years ago the cement left over from the repair work interrupted by the war was still lying around that bathroom. Thereafter, it had been removed, and the bathroom used as a storage place for furniture from the communal rooms, old stoves, and so forth.

  She rushed out of Chikako’s room and down the stairs to the basement. She was determined to break open the bath herself. At that moment, she was no longer the retired old maid but the gambler turning the card which would seal her fate. Life and youth flowed back into her.

  Chikako’s door was left open, so that anyone passing by could see her lying face down on the table, the spilt water about her.

  And the master key remained in the lock, just as Yoneko had left it.

  PART EIGHT

  Some months after the building was moved

  Miss Tojo’s Chronicle

  I suppose I decided to set this all down in some proper form, as an archive for the future, during those thirty irritating minutes while the move of the building was delayed.

  During that half hour, I just gazed at the glass of water which was on the dusty table in front of me, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. My feelings were not directed at anything or anyone in particular, but at the caprices of fate which can bring about changes in the best laid plans of mice and men, as the saying goes. Fate! It can stab you in the back any time, upsetting the most carefully thought out activities. Fate doesn’t care what the upshot is.

  I can’t put up with such treatment. I feel as if the pride and spirit of the human race is being trampled on. However amusing the upshot might be, it’s worth remembering that some human is seeing his important plans crumble before his very eyes.

  Well, this present case has been so thoroughly reported in the press, on the radio and in the periodicals that I daresay everyone knows all the details backwards.

  Briefly, it was like this. A retired woman with time on her hands was living in the K Apartments for Ladies, a place with some history behind it. Having nothing better to do, she took to writing to all her former pupils, and found that one of them had married a foreigner and had her child kidnapped seven years back and never seen again. And this old teacher suddenly rushes out, at the very moment the building is to be moved, shouting out that the body is buried under the bath. And so they dig up the bath in the basement, and what do they find but a body of a child, just as she said! But, and here’s what caused all the excitement, it wasn’t the body of the kidnapped child at all! It turned out to be the child of a resident of the apartments. He was born deformed so she couldn’t bear to bring him up and killed him and buried him!

  The mother committed suicide; the old teacher who discovered all this was held by the police for enquiries because she had made unlawful use of the master key; and the celebrated priest and founder of a new mystic religion who had prophesied about the buried child was exposed as a fraud. So you can imagine what a field day the papers and so forth had!

  There’s no longer any doubt in my mind that the press, in spreading news, takes no account of the bare facts but rather prefers to call everything in question by means of irresponsible reporting. Maybe the gossip of housewives at the laundry, or of strap-hangers in the trams, is true as far as it goes but it doesn’t go beyond the surface or get at the real truth behind the facts.

  Nonetheless, there was a lot of coincidence involved—what I referred to as ‘tricks of fate’ earlier. In setting forth this record for future readers, I want to go beyond the different coincidences and their final result. I want to look at what various human beings planned, and what came about as a result.

  What follows is in its own way a tiny saga.

  *

  The tale begins thirty years ago. A young girl, raised on a farm in Hyogo prefecture, went to Kobe at the age of eighteen and worked as a housemaid in the home of a Christian missionary. By an irony of fate, at the age of twenty-five, instead of marrying a young man, she settled down as receptionist-manageress of an apartment block full of young women. Day in and day out she sat at the front desk, dreaming her dreams, and determined to better herself. She would watch the young ladies of her own age going out to their work, and she would secretly read and read—several books a day, sometimes, keeping them hidden on her knee under the desk. Well, the whole of human life is contained in books. Love, desire, success and failure, death and grief… they’re all there, in the world of books.

  So she went on sitting at that desk, and her straight little back gradually began to bend a bit, but still she went on reading books and fed and nourished her mind in that way. And one day, before she had time to notice what had happened, she woke up to find that she was forty years old. Suddenly, the shadow of tragedy passed over her at that moment—she didn’t know why it was so, but she felt it, and that’s what matters.

  Apart from her, there was one other receptionist, who was over the regulated age for the job. Just at that very time, the old receptionist suddenly died. The heroine of our story, if we can call her that, was left to clear up the old woman’s room and discovered something she had never suspected. You see, there was only supposed to be one master key, but the receptionist who died had a spare. It then became clear to the younger receptionist that her senior had used it to steal into the residents’ apartments and snoop around. It had become her secret pleasure to spy on the residents when they were out. And, after a year or so, our heroine became addicted to the same perverse pleasure. But she was cleverer and more cautious than her predecessor, and one day, when she slipped on the staircase and twisted her ankle, she feigned lameness even when her foot was better and thereafter went everywhere on crutches. So everyone thought she really was lame.

  One more thing contributed to the success of her activities. The new receptionist who joined after the old one died was an amiable body who had the habit of catnapping.

  Well, our heroine had one other trick up her sleeve to ensure that she could wander around the apartments at will without attracting too much attention. This was to take on a dual identity and become a resident, at least to outward appearances. During the years she had worked there, at least half the residents had changed. So she chose a vacant room next door to people who didn’t talk too much to strangers, and created for herself a second personality. It was quite easy to do, when you think of it, because all the necessary procedures for creating this new identity lay within her purview as receptionist. The apartment was confiscated during the war as enemy property; afterwards, it became a charitable trust and the rents were pegged at wartime levels so our receptionist found it quite easy to maintain her double life.

  Well, over a period of years, she got to know the secrets of every room, and thus of every resident. Within their thick walls, and beh
ind their strong doors, what a sedimentation of life those rooms contained! Most people would have broken under the weight of such knowledge, but our heroine was versed in the ways of life from her reading and so she could withstand the pressures of her secret knowledge.

  One night, she was in the basement when she saw two women burying a heavy brown leather case in the bottom of the broken tiled bath. They were a resident of the fifth floor and a girl entered in the visitors’ register as her younger cousin. Just at that time, the kidnapping of a mixed-blood child became a major topic in the press. Our sagacious heroine was quick to link all these facts and draw her own conclusions. But she kept it all a secret—without realising in what good stead this would stand her seven years later.

  Well, she had a younger brother whom she hadn’t seen for years. One day, he suddenly appeared, and announced that he was going to found a new religious order together with the Thumbelina vestal. He said he’d studied spiritualism in America, but our heroine didn’t believe him for one moment. He was the type who always made a botch of whatever he did. He’d had great ambitions as a boy, but everything had somehow gone wrong. She felt for him the love one can only feel for a close blood relative.

  She thought how she could make use of all the secrets she had discovered whilst living her double life, by passing them on to her brother. It may well have been the temptation of the devil.

  By now, I am sure that the reader understands that I am that receptionist, the ‘heroine’ of our story as I called her above.

  The breaches of the trust inherent in my job, the immoral actions, or, let’s not beat about the bush, the crimes which followed should be seen against the background of my sisterly love. You readers who have grown up in happy homes will not be able to understand the feelings of someone like me who, after living alone for so long, suddenly encounters a chance of escape from this solitude. You will not therefore understand that in such circumstances one is prepared to give up everything rather than lose that chance. All I wanted to do was something, or rather anything, which would help my brother.

  I do not believe in the supernatural or in any Divine Being. So when I decided that a few fake miracles would be the best form of publicity for my brother’s religious business, I had no feelings of guilt on the matter.

  I also felt that I could kill two birds with one stone. The best way to bring about the discovery of the child buried under the bath would be by way of ‘miraculous’ prophecy from the Three Spirit Faith.

  So the trick I played on my colleague Miss Tamura—the phone call which led her to investigate Toyoko Munekata’s apartment and discover the meaninglessness of her scholarship—was, like the ‘miracle’ of Miss Yatabe’s violin, just a means to an end. My real objectives were to reveal the buried child and to do so by way of my brother’s prophecies.

  I realised that it would look suspicious if the Three Spirit Faith were to make a prophecy and then soon discover where the child was buried. It would be much better to use the prophecy to attract some other person’s interest so that that other person could be led to discover the body for herself. That way, nobody would doubt the genuine nature of the prophecy.

  And, because I knew the secrets of everyone in the building, it should be a simple matter to select the right person for my purpose and lead her, without her knowing, to the discovery I wanted her to make at the right time.

  As far as Miss Tamura was concerned, all I had to do was to get my brother to call from outside and drop the hint about Miss Munekata’s secret. Being of a good-natured disposition, Miss Tamura would hate having to conceal the phone call, and yet would be equally unwilling to reveal its content until she was sure of the matter for herself. It would then only be a matter of time, I reasoned, before she would use the master key to get into Toyoko’s room. Where she slipped up, and my calculations went wrong, was that she left the master key in the lock of Noriko Ishiyama’s room instead of returning it to the office. (She thought I was out at the public bathhouse, but in fact I returned early and observed her coming out of Toyoko Munekata’s room.)

  As my intention had been to spread a feeling of uncertainty around by having her use the master key to go into people’s apartments, her mistake in fact served my purpose. But the pains I had to take to get Noriko Ishiyama to use the key were more than you can imagine. I had to devise a way of getting the old newspaper, which I had originally come across in the deceased receptionist’s room, describing the theft of the violin into Miss Ishiyama’s hands. Then I had to invent a foreigner who came enquiring for a copy of the paper. It was all but impossible, but my plan worked. Then I was lucky enough to spot Noriko Ishiyama hiding the stolen violin in the incinerator, and so could recover it. (Needless to say, I substituted for it an instrument I bought in a junk shop, which I put into the real case.) This meant that I could bring about the ‘miracle’ of Suwa Yatabe’s violin, but in the end this led to the tragedy of her death, which I much regret.

  I must confess that when Miss Yatabe’s finger straightened out after the medium had told her that André Dore formally bequeathed the violin to her, I began to believe in miracles myself. However, when my brother, in order to gain more publicity for the ‘miracle’, went too far and told her to turn herself over to the police and to return the violin to André Dore’s son, her face changed colour suddenly and she screamed: ‘He had no son. It was you and your fellow conspirators who wrote that fake letter from a foreigner to me.’

  Well, that led to us having to push her off the rooftop. By ‘us’ I refer to the medium and Haru Santo. Of course, as you must by now have realised, Haru Santo was me in my other guise. As I wanted to keep an eye on Chikako Ueda, I waited till the room next to her fell vacant, and then Haru Santo moved in. I registered her name and made out the rental agreement in my official capacity.

  So for five years, wearing a white wig, I lived part of every day in the role of Haru Santo. Every evening I would peep in through Chikako Ueda’s window. I rigged up a wing mirror from a car on a stick so that I could see what was going on. Every night, she would open the little drawer she always kept locked, take out a cardboard box and gaze at its contents for hours on end. I took it for granted that this was the three hundred thousand yen ransom for George—well, for once I was made to look a perfect fool! For it turned out that the box contained a certificate of marriage registration, duly sealed, which would acquire the full force of law merely by being delivered to the ward office. I just can’t imagine how anyone could spend her evenings for seven years looking at a marriage certificate left behind by some man who had abandoned her, but that’s what women are like, I suppose.

  Well, in the same way the little medium Thumbelina loves my brother, and it was out of love for him that she was my accomplice in the murder of Suwa Yatabe. She was not actually present, but she lured Suwa to her death by telling her to come to the rooftop at eleven pm and promising to return the violin to her. Suwa, thinking that it was only little Thumbelina she had to contend with, lowered her guard enough for me to push her over the edge.

  I had made allowances for someone seeing Suwa going onto the roof and following her there, as indeed Yoneko Kimura did. First of all, I had taken a thick bamboo pole (one of the ones used for drying laundry) and lashed it to the railings so that it led down to Haru Santo’s windowsill. I was thus able to make good my escape, and later on I replaced the pole where I had found it. Also, in order to cover Suwa’s screams as she fell, I had brought with me a tape of her playing the violin, and played it at the right moment.

  All well and good as far as it went, but I never intended to become a murderess. I detest such things, and getting into the position where I had to kill Suwa Yatabe was my big mistake—in the case of Toyoko Munekata, I had no intention of killing her, and indeed she survived the gassing. I just wanted to punish her for her overwhelming pride, and saw my opportunity when she descended on me the day before, berating me in her usual haughty manner because her fanlight window wouldn’t shut. So I knew p
erfectly well that if I turned off the gas from outside and then turned it on again, I could teach her a good lesson but without fatal consequences.

  I pretended not to notice when Yoneko Kimura switched the master key, and I think my plans there went off very well. You see, Miss Kimura stood apart from all the others, being much more intelligent than the average and also possessed of abundant common sense. A person just like me, in fact, and so it was very easy for me to foresee how she would react to any given occurrence and make my dispositions accordingly. So I made sure that by one means or another she got to know everything that I knew about Chikako Ueda. For instance, I had witnessed the burial in the bathroom, but could by no means impart that directly, so instead I just wrote that elegy and left it in Chikako Ueda’s room for Yoneko to read. Then I made sure she would hear the right things from the medium, and that she would get the chance to see the register of overnight visitors… I led her, by these three clues and by other means, along a process of deductions which culminated in the understanding I wished her to have. I felt just as if I was the director, and got great pleasure out of seeing my actress perform her role exactly as I wished.

  But my masterpiece as far as she was concerned (and I’m sorry to keep harping on my own brilliance, but that, after all, is the theme of this document)—the high point of my direction—was young Kurokawa. You remember, of course? He was the former playmate of George’s who wrote an essay titled ‘My little foreign friend’ for his teacher, Chikako Ueda. Yes, well, that was my doing, too.

  It was like this. After witnessing the burial in the bathroom, I passed many a day seated at my desk wondering what was the connection between Chikako Ueda and George. I worked out all sorts of possible theories, but they were all too far-fetched for me to believe in with any conviction. So I bought and read everything that had been published about the kidnapping—quite a pile of newspapers and magazines, but standing, as it were, on top of that pile I could see over the wall and discover the connection. And what caught my eye was a remark made by the maid in Major Kraft’s household. ‘My son was very close to George, and they used to play together.’ It was like playing three-cushion billiards; there was no direct link between Chikako and George, so I had to make an indirect connection. I worked on the supposition that the maid’s child had been a pupil of Chikako’s. If that were the case, then it might well have been that he mentioned George to his school teacher. Or, to carry it further, he might have written an essay about his little foreign friend. And that essay could have planted the dreadful idea of the kidnapping in Chikako’s mind. This sort of set of circumstances would at least provide a firm linkage between Chikako and George.