Togakushi Legend Murders (Tuttle Classics)

by Yasuo Uchida

  "A personal reason? Now that puts me at even more of a loss. Unless our president had privately asked him to help find a second wife for me!" With a laugh, Tachibana took a cigarette from the pack on the table and offered his guests a smoke as well. As he did so, his eyes met Takemura's. Takemura seemed to be trying to see into his mind.

  "No, thank you," said Takemura.

  Tachibana abruptly withdrew the cigarettes and averted his eyes, with an expression of frank hostility that he had not shown to that point. "Whatever reason this Takeda was having me investigated for, I'm not very happy about it. And that it should have made me the target of a police investigation makes it one hell of a big nuisance. Well, anyhow, when and where was the man killed?"

  "He died in the middle of the night of July 3rd. More precisely, it is estimated that he died within several hours either way of 2 A.M. on the 4th. But his body wasn't discovered until the 7th, so it's difficult to be exact."

  "The night of the 3rd would have been just after the party, right? I was staying at the Koshimizu Plateau Hotel. Wasn't he staying there too?"

  "He was supposed to be. But he left the hotel that evening and never returned. He was missing until his body was found on the 7th."

  "Where was it found?"

  "In a very peculiar place. On the southwest edge of Togakushi, at a campground called Arakura. One section of it is known as Poison Plain. In ancient times, a demoness named Maple is supposed to have lived there..."

  "Yes, I know. You're talking about the maple-viewing story. The origin of that place name comes from the poison sake that Maple is supposed to have served there to Taira no Koremochi."

  "Oh, you know. That's right. Well, anyway, that's where the body was discovered. On Poison Plain."

  "I see. Well now, if the cause of death were poisoning, that would really make a good story, wouldn't it?" laughed Tachibana.

  Takemura's expression became even more grim. "As a matter of fact, the cause of death was poisoning. Cyanide poisoning."

  "Good grief!"

  The two detectives kept their eyes on Tachibana, trying to tell whether or not his surprise was genuine.

  "That's weird!" said Tachibana. "I suppose it was merely a coincidence?"

  "We don't know," said Takemura. "But I, for one, am guessing that the murderer had some special purpose in leaving the body where he did. If he hadn't, he would hardly have needed to go to the trouble of taking it all the way out there."

  "Is it really such an inconvenient place?"

  "Inconvenient? Well, it's in the mountains."

  "Then, couldn't the murderer have been trying to hide the body?"

  "No, it doesn't look like it. The body had been left out in the open where it could easily be seen. There would have been any number of better places to hide it. Tell me, Professor Tachibana, where were you during the middle of the night of July 3rd?"

  "What?" exclaimed Tachibana, with a contemptuous look of disgust at Takemura. "Are you asking for my alibi?"

  "Just a formality."

  "Still, I must say I am surprised. Oh well, I suppose you've got to do your job. Let's see now. I was at the Koshimizu Plateau Hotel all night. Is that good enough for you?"

  "Is there anyone who can verify that?"

  "Well, the president of the university where I teach was staying in the next room, but I don't guess that would do for an alibi, would it? Which means I'm stuck," laughed Tachibana, poking a little fun at the detectives.

  * * *

  Just after the detectives left, Fusae Nakayama came in. "I just passed two gentlemen I've never seen before on the stairs," she said. "Did you have visitors?"

  "Oh yes, those were detectives."

  "Detectives? Is something wrong?"

  "They were here to question me."

  "You, Professor? Why, you must be joking!"

  "Not at all. It seems I'm suspected of murder."

  "What kind of idiocy is that? That's terrible!"

  "Terrible or not, it's true. You remember I went to Togakushi a few days ago? Well, it seems that a man staying in the same hotel that night was murdered."

  "Good heavens! Is that a fact? But why do they suspect you, Professor?"

  "Well, don't I look like an evil man to you?"

  "Nonsense! You look like a man who wouldn't hurt a fly!"

  "Then maybe they suspect me because I look too innocent."

  "This is a terrible conversation." She changed the subject. "Did you eat a good breakfast this morning?"

  "I had toast and milk."

  "I don't believe you. This package of bread hasn't been opened. I told you to make ham and eggs for yourself this morning, but you won't listen to anybody. Before you know it, you'll be suffering from malnutrition."

  The woman never stopped talking, thought Tachibana with a wry smile. Fusae Nakayama was the only daughter of an antique dealer across from the Red Gate of Tokyo University, and their families had known each other for a couple of generations. She was five years younger than his wife, Nobuko, but they had seemed to hit it off well, and what with one excuse or another—delivering a gift, learning Western cooking, and so on—she had managed to visit quite frequently.

  When Nobuko's illness took a rapid turn for the worse, followed by her sudden death, Fusae had cried so hard in front of everybody that even Tachibana was embarrassed. Then, almost before the seventh day of mourning was over, she had developed a peculiar enthusiasm for taking care of him—cleaning his apartment, doing his laundry, even preparing three good meals a day for him. Leaving aside the fact that she had told him how she had adored him as a young girl but thought of him as far above her, and forgetting the coquettish glances she sometimes cast at him, Tachibana had found her well-intentioned and extremely useful.

  "You said you were going out this afternoon, so I'll make you an early lunch, and you'd better eat all of it," she said, cheerfully beginning to prepare the meal.

  * * *

  "Well, what did you think of the professor?" asked Kinoshita, as they were waiting for a bus on the boulevard.

  "I don't know. He didn't seem to be lying, and yet, I got the feeling I couldn't trust him completely. The hardest people for me to get a handle on are ones of his age, especially scholars like him."

  "Still, it's a fact that Takeda was having him investigated. Isn't it strange that he didn't have any idea why?"

  "Yes, that it is. But I couldn't pick up anything from his attitude. I might just as well have not been looking at him. People of his age who lived through the war went through a lot, and one thing they all learned was how to be inscrutable. It isn't easy to get the truth out of them if they don't want you to know it."

  Takemura and Kinoshita next went to the private detective agency in Aoyama. "Yes, Mr. Takeda gave us a lot of business over many years," eulogized an administrator named Sawada who received them. "And if I remember correctly, just before he died, on the evening of July 3rd, that is, he called me at home with an urgent request that we investigate this Tomohiro Tachibana as quickly as possible."

  Normally the detective agency maintained strict secrecy for its clients, even from the police, but as this client had been murdered and the police needed all the information they could get to find the murderer, Sawada was quite willing to tell them everything he knew. He said he had gotten the feeling on the telephone that something very unexpected had come up, and Takeda was considerably upset. He had requested that the agency check out Tachibana's identity and send him a report immediately, after which they were to send a follow-up report on his daily activities and the background of his trip to Togakushi.

  "So we sent the first report, but then while we were working on the second one, this terrible thing happened," concluded Sawada, with a mournful look that might have expressed either his grief over the death of Takeda himself, or his lament over the loss of an important client.

  "Then may I assume that after you sent the first report, you put a watch on Tachibana?" asked Takemura.

 
"Yes. We began watching him on July 5th. We found out later, of course, that at that time, Mr. Takeda was already dead. I believe it was on the noon news of July 7th that we heard about it. Naturally, we were astonished."

  "So you had a watch on Tachibana from July 5th until you heard the news, right?"

  "That's right. But didn't you say that Mr. Takeda's death took place before dawn on July 4th? So that means we can't establish an alibi for Tachibana."

  "Yes, we'll certainly keep that in mind," said Takemura quickly Putting on a smile, he thanked Sawada and stood up to go.

  Kinoshita hardly managed to wait until they got outside. "What Sawada just told us about watching Tachibana from the 5th to the 7th does mean that Tachibana has an alibi at least for the time that the body was left on Poison Plain, right?"

  "Looks like it, but even if they did have a watch on him, it was only during the daytime, wouldn't you think? They wouldn't know, probably, if he did anything after he got home at night. Besides, we aren't sure there was only one person involved, you know, so it wouldn't mean anything, even if he does have an alibi for the time the body was left."

  "I guess not. Now that you mention it, the body was left on Poison Plain at night, wasn't it? That makes Professor Tachibana look awfully suspicious, doesn't it?"

  "I'm not at all sure how he looks. I'm afraid my intuition seems to be letting me down," said Takemura with a frown.

  Tachibana finally realized that the girl sitting beside him was behaving strangely. He had been aware for some time that she was continually putting a handkerchief to her face, but had assumed the action to be merely a habit. When he looked away from the stage at her, however, he noticed for the first time that she was crying. The handkerchief was not merely for perspiration. With closer scrutiny, he saw she was trembling all over, apparently trying to keep from sobbing out loud, and that made him wonder.

  It wasn't that nobody ever cried during a Noh play, for many Noh plots contain strong elements of tragedy which can move an absorbed spectator to tears, just like an ordinary play or movie. In Noh, however, the spectator had to have quite a profound knowledge before being capable of that much empathy. The flowery language of Noh chants is entirely that of ancient poems and stories, and the Noh actor delivers his lines with a unique intonation in a voice which, furthermore, comes from behind his mask, making it an effort merely to distinguish the words. To understand enough to be moved by them, the spectator had to be quite well acquainted with Noh.

  The girl beside Tachibana did not look very familiar. She was only an auditor at his seminar, and he guessed she must have entered the university that spring. She looked very young. It was rare to see such a young girl watching a Noh play at all, let alone understanding it so well as to be moved to tears. That in itself would put her among the most knowledgeable of Noh spectators.

  There was just one small point that bothered Tachibana: the play they were watching was "Maple-Viewing," which belonged to the so-called fifth category of Noh drama.

  In a Noh play, the leading actor is called the "doer." The doer's role may be one of five—a god, a military commander, a woman, a madman, or a demon. The play is classified according to the doer's role. In the first category he plays a god, in the second a man, the third a woman, the fourth a madman, and the fifth a demon. Plays of the first category are all stories of good omen, with happy endings which could make no one cry. Plays of the second through fourth categories, with their battlefield scenes and love stories, are filled with tragedy and romance, and a fine performance could well move a knowledgeable spectator to tears.

  But plays of the fifth category feature demons. In the story of "Maple-Viewing," the military commander, Taira no Koremochi, comes to the Togakushi Mountains in autumn to hunt deer. There he meets a group of beautiful women holding a banquet in celebration of the autumn colors. They serve him sake and dance for him. He is overcome by drowsiness. Making sure he is asleep, they exit with the threatening words, "May you never awake from your dreams!"

  Koremochi has a dream in which he receives a divine oracle which reveals that the women are actually demons. He unsheathes the supernatural sword beside his pillow and lies waiting. A demon soon appears. More than two meters tall, it tries to fly off with Koremochi by the head, but he runs it through and slays it.

  The story is that of a hero against the supernatural, a story which might make a child cry, but hardly one to bring tears to the eyes of an adult. And yet, the girl beside Tachibana was crying with mournful abandon. He did not know quite what to make of her, but he nevertheless felt a surge of interest in the owner of such sensitivity and found it refreshing that such a young girl should be capable of so much feeling for the extremely stylized Noh drama.

  * * *

  The class leader of Tachibana's seminar, a boy named Minegishi, had suggested that they organize a Noh appreciation circle for the summer vacation. Quite a few students had thought it a good idea, and in the end, about twenty of them had agreed to participate. They would sit in the lowest priced seats, but they would attend professional performances of Noh plays from all five categories, and afterward discuss them over dinner with their professor.

  Hearing that some of the students would even delay their returns home in order to participate, Tachibana had most willingly agreed. He was a little wary about the talk of collecting money for drinks with the meal, but decided finally that alcohol would serve to enhance the mood.

  * * *

  Tachibana was now seated in the last row. All of the twenty or so seats were more or less similar, but in order to give his students a slightly better view, he had brushed aside their embarrassment and insisted on sitting in the back. He assumed that the girl was sitting there in the corner because she was merely an auditor in his seminar and had been embarrassed to take a better seat. It never occurred to him that she might intentionally have sat there to be next to him.

  The Noh appreciation circle was a tolerable success. As planned, they did splurge on beer and soft drinks at dinner, but even Tachibana was happily convinced that they got their money's worth. His tongue moved more freely than usual and he flattered himself that he had given a pretty good talk. He drank more than usual and toward the end of the meal began to feel gloriously drunk. At this rate, he figured, he was going to get home in a good mood for the first time in a long while.

  Then, as the dinner was drawing to a close and he was starting to feel drowsy, from out of the murmur of voices, he heard someone suddenly speak up from a corner of the room.

  "Professor Tachibana, from your talk a few minutes ago, I think you must have only a superficial knowledge of the story behind the play we just saw."

  Tachibana was startled, but not so much as his students. A hush fell on the room, and all eyes focused on the owner of the voice. It was the girl. Tachibana was sitting some distance away from her, but from his position, he had a clear frontal view of her.

  She was beautiful. Not pretty, but beautiful, having a classic oval face and striking black eyes that glittered in the slightest light. And those eyes were fixed, almost accusingly, on him.

  "It's very rude of me," he said, "but I have a terrible memory. I'm afraid your name escapes me."

  "She's a new student, Professor," said Minegishi. "Her name is Noya. Yuko Noya, isn't it?"

  The girl nodded. Noya was quite a rare surname. It was the first time Tachibana had ever heard it.

  "But Miss Noya, that's an awfully rude way to speak to your professor," Minegishi reproached her.

  "No, no, I don't mind. If we had to worry so much about how we word things, we'd never have any discussion about our studies," said Tachibana magnanimously. "If Miss Noya has a different opinion, I'd certainly like to hear it. After all, I might learn something. Now, Miss Noya, let's hear what you have to say."

  "You talked as though the demoness was just a monster without a heart, Professor, but I think that's a terribly onesided way of looking at her," said Yuko Noya, in a clear voice devoid of timidity. "T
here's nothing in the plot about how the women came to be having that feast in the mountains, so the play doesn't give a single hint about the origin of the maple-viewing banquet or its historical background. That makes it nothing more than a tale of heroism on the part of Taira no Koremochi. It totally overlooks the grief and resentment strong enough to have turned Maple into a demoness, and emphasizes only the symbolism of the evil karma lurking like a demon in a woman's heart, while it conveys nothing of how it got there. That makes it an awfully unfair and terribly shallow story."

  "I see," said Tachibana, his eyes wide. Her argument aside, he had not recently laid eyes on a young person who spoke such excellent Japanese. "Then you think that before the play begins, an explanation should be presented to the audience concerning how Maple became a demoness?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "Well, I certainly think that your deep consideration of the matter shows your fine attitude toward the appreciation of Noh. And as a matter of fact, there are quite a few other examples where the omission of a prelude colors the story that is acted out on stage. For instance, there's the one about the hollyhocks from the Tale of Genji, where events leading up to the scene on stage are totally omitted, and the play begins abruptly with the wraith haunting the hollyhocks. Nowadays, of course, everybody knows the Tale of Genji, but it's hard to believe that many people did when the play was first produced. Even so, the bold technique of assuming that the audience does have prior knowledge is one of the peculiar characteristics of Noh, and one way of looking at it is that the part not acted out forces the spectator to use his imagination.

  "Now, what about this Maple-Viewing play we just saw? I would imagine that, unlike the Hollyhocks play, the writer either didn't know or didn't care about the events leading up to what he depicted on stage. In other words, he intended no relation between the monster and the earlier 'doer'—the sensual beauty before she turns into a demoness. He was only trying to express the marvelous contrast between the splendid background of the Togakushi Mountains covered with autumn maples and the horror of the monster, and I think it's all right for the spectator to take it at face value. So all things considered, I don't think the grief and tragic history of Maple as a woman is terribly relevant to the play. But of course, I can't say that I don't understand how you, as a woman, would feel sympathy for her and want to defend her."