Togakushi Legend Murders (Tuttle Classics)

by Yasuo Uchida

  "That would be nice."

  "You're not taking this seriously."

  "Oh yes I am. Very seriously."

  "That's hard to believe. Or, have you got another idea of your own?"

  "Oh, I can't say that I don't, now that we know the car was Kayo's."

  "So what do you think?"

  "Well, I think I can make a pretty good guess as to where the car was going and for what."

  "You can? Really? Where?"

  "To the Koshimizu Plateau Hotel. Kayo was taking Takeda back there. It would have been awfully difficult for him to have to walk back on that road at night."

  "What?" Appalled, Kinoshita looked at Takemura, almost with contempt in his eyes. "Are you putting me on?"

  "No, I mean it. Judging from the length of time the car was gone, doesn't that seem like the best guess?"

  "I suppose so. Then, instead of getting out, he went back to the villa with her? Is that it?"

  "I had no idea you were so stubborn. No. We can be sure at least that he got out of the car in as inconspicuous a place as possible. The question is, what happened after that?"

  "Oh, I see. Then, was he attacked somewhere between the car and the hotel?"

  "Well, your ideas certainly do lack imagination, but I wouldn't say that's entirely impossible."

  "Lack imagination? But what else could have happened?" said Kinoshita with a sour look.

  "Well, now..." said Takemura, his voice trailing off.

  In Togakushi, the height of summer was approaching. On the plateau, where the snow piles high during the long winter months, magnificent natural changes take place during the brief period between spring and autumn. Summer is truly a feast of all nature, in the midst of which the crowds of humanity that flock there are no more than extras playing a mob scene. The leading characters are the sky, mountains, trees, and birds.

  Takemura had Kinoshita stop the car in front of a park and got out. They had barely started out for the Togakushi Plateau, but having climbed up from the bottom of the basin in which Nagano City was located, they were already bathed in exhilarating sunlight. A breeze with the fragrance of forest caressed their cheeks.

  "Hey, how about some buckwheat noodles?" said Takemura.

  "Buckwheat noodles again? You sure do like them, don't you, Inspector?" said Kinoshita with a smile, getting out and following him.

  That was true, and Takemura thought it funny himself. Whenever he ate out, if he could find a buckwheat-noodle shop anywhere around, that was what he always had. It had become a sort of routine. When first married, he had tried, out of consideration for Yoko, to adjust his eating habits to hers. But not for long. She had not liked buckwheat noodles. If she ate noodles at all, they would be Chinese noodles, or at most, ordinary Japanese white ones. Before he knew it, however, she had undergone a complete change and begun to eat buckwheat noodles along with him, and now, at times she even suggested herself that they have them. Her husband's likes had become her own.

  A woman was a creature who would do anything for the man she loved, reflected Takemura. There was no end to the heinous crimes committed throughout history by tormented women. A woman was capable of a terrible vindic-tiveness that a man was not. That was probably what had motivated Kayo Ishihara, who had given herself heart and soul, not to her husband, but to Kisuke Takeda. But in this case, the vindictive woman herself had been killed. If it must be assumed that the same person had killed Takeda, Ishihara, and Kayo, then what could the motive have been?

  No one had been found so far with a motive for killing all three. Or more to the point, no common factor had been found which might provide such a motive. It was of course possible that either Ishihara or Kayo had been killed only to eliminate a witness. Such a hypothesis would greatly simplify the search for a motive, making it a search for some common factor between Takeda and either Ishihara or Kayo.

  Even so, Takemura would still not readily be able to name a suspect. Takeda's wife, Sachie, came to mind. From the point of view of motive alone, she would of course make a perfect suspect for the murders of Takeda and Kayo. A proud woman from a distinguished bloodline, if she had discovered the infidelity of a husband who might now be master of the house but had once been a mere servant, she would hardly have taken it lightly. Possibly it had not even been the first time, and she just hadn't been able to endure it any longer. But this case was not one of simple, impulsive murder. It was in fact a very intricate crime, abounding in almost absurd behavior, and carried out with skill and ingenuity, leaving not a trace, which almost aroused Takemura's admiration. It was not a crime that had been committed on impulse by someone crazed with jealousy.

  * * *

  The shop was too crowded for Takemura to enjoy the buckwheat noodles he had been so eager for, making him wish he had waited until they got to the Okubo Teahouse, or better yet, the Middle Shrine.

  Shizu Kasai had told them that the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom was located between the Hoko Shrine and Middle Shrine villages. They did their best to spot it from the car, but must have missed it, because before they knew it, they had entered the Middle Shrine village.

  "We'll just have to go back and look more carefully this time," said Takemura.

  "I'm afraid you'll have to do most of the looking, Inspector," grumbled Kinoshita as he made a U-turn and headed slowly back.

  In the low-lying area to the left of the road, there was an irrigation pond, and beyond it a stand of cedar stretching toward the Hoko Shrine village. "It should be somewhere around here," said Takemura. "You can let me out for a look."

  Kinoshita pulled over and stopped. Takemura got out onto some grass and looked as far as he could into the trees, but couldn't make out anything. Kinoshita spotted a station wagon coming slowly up the hill, on the side of which was the name Hokushin Laundry. The driver was a girl.

  "Hey, Miss!" he hailed the car rudely, at the top of his voice.

  He could have been a policeman or a punk, but she stopped, with a contemptuous look. Her face was that of a young girl, with no make-up at all, but Kinoshita saw at a glance that she was very pretty. He abruptly changed his manner, partly because of the man sitting next to her, who looked of an age to be her father.

  "Er, there's supposed to be a place around here called the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom. You wouldn't happen to know where it is, would you?"

  "Oh, yes. Just a little way down the hill there's a narrow lane running off to the left. Just follow it to the end, about three hundred meters. There's a little sign beside this road where the lane goes off," said the girl.

  "Oh, good. Well, thank..." Kinoshita stopped, his eyes having fallen on the man beside her. "Say, aren't you the gentleman we visited in Tokyo?"

  "Why, you were one of the detectives, weren't you? Well, well, what a coincidence!"

  Takemura hurried over to the car. "Why, Professor Tachibana!"

  He looked totally different in the sporty clothes he was wearing, but the gentleman sitting next to the girl was indeed Tomohiro Tachibana.

  "What? You here too, Inspector?" said Tachibana easily, almost glad to see them again. "Still on the job, I guess?"

  "Yes, still investigating the same case. And you, Professor?" Takemura's eyes strayed to the girl.

  Afraid of giving the wrong impression, Tachibana said with forced smile, "This young lady is a student of mine. She's working here for the summer and offered to show me around on her route. She has to make a lot of stops, but that's just fine with me. This has turned into a much more enjoyable summer vacation than I had expected."

  "Well, I'm glad to hear that. Are you staying at the Koshimizu Plateau Hotel?"

  "Yes, that's right."

  "I may be wanting to talk to you again, so, see you there, perhaps."

  They said goodbye, and the car started off a little jerkily on its way up the hill.

  "There's something fishy about that guy hanging around here," said Kinoshita, watching with folded arms as the car disappeared. "Do you think the girl is safe w
ith him?"

  "What? You liked her, did you? I think I'll tell her," laughed Takemura.

  About a hundred meters down the road, they found the lane. Looking carefully, they saw the small sign with the words "Hall of Heavenly Wisdom," hidden in some tall grass. The lane was of rough gravel, barely wide enough for a single car. It must once have been a lumber road or something. As Kinoshita was wondering what he was going to do if he met a car coming toward him, they came out on a clearing in which stood a crude, thatched-roof cottage. There were three cars parked in front of it and several people standing around under the eaves or in the shade of the trees. All of them were standing perfectly still, with the air of people waiting for someone. Takemura and Kinoshita got out of the car and headed for the dark hole of an entrance under the low roof.

  "Hey you, why don't you wait your turn?" said a thin man of about forty. He and a woman standing beside the entrance both gave them reproachful glares.

  "Our turn?"

  "Yeah, everybody else is waiting." He nodded toward two others in the shade of the trees, who were watching apprehensively, afraid that Takemura and Kinoshita were going to cut in.

  "But we're..." Kinoshita imperiously reached for his badge. Takemura quickly stopped him.

  "Sorry," said Takemura. "Thoughtless of us. We'll just wait too. But she sure does have a lot of customers. Is she really that good, this fortuneteller?"

  "Oh yeah, she's real good. Your first time, then?"

  "Yes, our first time. You're from Osaka, are you?"

  "Why yes, Izumi-Otsu. But it looks like we're out of luck today. The last time we were here, too, there were about ten people ahead of us, and we waited nearly all day, but she stopped before she got to us."

  "Just like that?"

  "Yeah. When she gets tired of it, she doesn't care how many people are waiting. She just quits for the day. That's why people get so mad when somebody tries to break in. But I'm sorry I spoke to you that way just now."

  "No, no, I can certainly understand how you felt. Our fault completely."

  Takemura took Kinoshita by the arm and led him away to the edge of the clearing. "We'll just have to wait," he said. "If we make the fortuneteller cranky, we'll be causing a lot of trouble for those people."

  Having calmed the disgruntled Kinoshita, Takemura stepped into the shade of a locust tree. There was a little brook just beyond the tree that made the place feel cool. As he squatted down with an uninhibited shout of relief, he spotted something very rare on the ground in front of him. This part of the ground, probably under water when the brook was high, was practically all sand. In it a doodlebug had dug a cone-shaped hole.

  "Hey, come look at this!" he called to Kinoshita.

  "What is it?"

  "It's a doodlebug hole! The larva of a mayfly is in there."

  "Gee! That's a doodlebug hole?" Never having seen one before, Kinoshita looked at it with great interest. As he was doing so, an ant crawling nearby chanced to fall in. The unfortunate ant tried its best to climb out, but the sand kept crumbling under it, and it ended up at the bottom of the hole. As soon as it got there, the sand lifted, and a strange, ugly little black creature appeared. An instant later, ant and creature both disappeared, faster than the eye could follow the action.

  "What a horrible little bug!" said Kinoshita, glaring at the hole with a scowl. Then suddenly he raised his foot and destroyed it with the heel of his shoe.

  "Hey, that was a rotten thing to do," said Takemura.

  "What do you mean? It was only justice."

  "What kind of justice do you call that? I call it 'might makes right."'

  "But isn't that how the police do things?"

  "Oh?"

  Takemura saw another side of Kinoshita's personality, which captured his interest. A long time on the police force sometimes gives a person the idea that he is somehow different from the ordinary person, and he acquires the Establishment feeling that might does make right. Takemura always cautioned himself never to forget, even when dealing with a suspect, that human pain was still human pain. Some of his colleagues, of course, considered him a bleeding heart. They felt their job was to exercise the authority of the state to its limits, and any sympathy toward the target of an investigation was to them taboo. Takemura had no wish to criticize them. Perhaps the road one chose was a matter of personality. There was something to be said for both attitudes. He could see that Kinoshita was at the crossroads between the comfortable feeling that he was exercising the authority of the state and the sympathetic feeling for the pain of the weak.

  * * *

  They had to wait a full hour and a half for their turn, and two more parties arrived as they waited. The woman in the party just before them must have received a prediction of ill fortune, because she went away with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

  Entering the cottage, they found themselves on a dirt floor like that of an old farmhouse. It took quite a while for their eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. Takemura stumbled at the place where shoes were supposed to be removed, giving himself a nasty bump on the shins.

  "Come in," said a woman's voice from the back. Taking off their shoes and stepping up onto a board floor, they crossed it to a dark, shiny, wooden door. Slowly opening the heavy door, they were met by a light blue cloud of smoke accompanied by an odor which made Takemura flinch.

  Beyond the door was an even darker room, in which sat a hazy, dimly illuminated figure dressed in the easily recognizable costume of a shrine maiden. Behind her was a simple altar, but they couldn't make out what was on it. On the floor in front of her was a small incense burner. The fire flickering there, nearly as small as a pilot light, was apparently the source of the pale blue smoke which filled the room. The only illumination was provided by the incense burner and four candles standing in candlesticks in each corner of the room. Closing the door behind them, they felt helpless in the near darkness.

  The shrine maiden did not say a word, so Takemura and Kinoshita sat down facing her without leave. She sat motionless and erect, but with head slightly lowered, so they could not tell her age.

  "Dogs," she suddenly muttered.

  They looked at each other, wondering whether she meant them.

  Slowly, she raised her head, an enigmatic smile on her lipsticked lips, her long, narrow eyes glittering with malice in the light of the incense burner.

  "I smell dogs," she said.

  This time her meaning was unmistakable. Kinoshita's temper flared. "Dogs" was a contemptuous term for the police. But how had she guessed?

  Takemura could not help marveling. "I'm Takemura, Nagano prefectural police, Investigative Section One, and this is Detective Kinoshita," he said, quickly deciding there was no point in trying to fool this woman. Having so decided, he could calmly gather his wits for the struggle.

  "Hmh!" she sneered, but the malice in her eyes seemed to abate somewhat.

  "We're sorry to barge in on you like this, but we'd like to ask you a few questions about a case we're working on."

  She did not condescend to reply, but neither did she give any sign of refusal.

  "I believe you know a woman named Kayo Ishihara?"

  Her expression did not change. Takemura took a photograph out of his briefcase and held it in the light of the incense burner for her to look at.

  "Yes, I know her," she replied in a peculiar, low tone of voice, without changing her expression or bothering to look at the picture. She must have recognized the name right off.

  "I believe she came here quite often," said Takemura. "Do you remember when she was here last?"

  "The beginning of this month."

  "You mean July 3rd?"

  "I think so."

  "She didn't come again after that? Like around the 10th?"

  "No."

  "When she came on the 3rd, was she alone?"

  "Yes."

  "How did she seem to you that day?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "For instance, did she seem wor
ried about anything?"

  "Do you think I ever get anybody here who isn't worried about something?" chuckled the shrine maiden.

  "But Kayo was trying to kill someone with a curse, wasn't she? Something called the Curse of the Demoness. Aren't you the one who taught it to her?"

  "Those things don't work."

  "Oh? They don't?" This really surprised him. "But Kayo believed in it. She was going through the ritual every morning and evening."

  "So? It made her feel better, didn't it?"

  There was some truth in that, thought Takemura, but it was tantamount to fraud.

  "Look, this is useless," said the shrine maiden. "Go away!"

  With that, she fell back into silence.

  Outside again, Kinoshita said in disgust, "Nasty bitch, isn't she?"

  "But she does a terrific job of seeing through people. That was really something, figuring us out like that."

  "Maybe it was just a bluff."

  "Oh, I think it must have been more than that. That Curse of the Demoness business was worthy of a psychologist, don't you think?"

  When they got into the car and Kinoshita put his hands on the wheel, Takemura said, "Be careful now. Do you feel all right?"

  "What? Yes, I feel great. Why?"

  "Well, I'm glad, but didn't that smoke bother you?"

  "Now that you mention it, it was awfully smoky in there, wasn't it? What do you suppose she was burning?"

  "Pot, I imagine."

  "What?" Kinoshita yanked the emergency brake. "But we can't let her get away with that! Are you sure?"

  "It wasn't enough to be that bad. She'd get no more than a warning."

  "But it's a violation of the Drug Control Act. We've got to report it to Section Four."

  "Now, just hold on!"

  "What? Why?"

  "Because I was just pulling your leg," laughed Takemura. "She wasn't burning pot. Only the hemp that it comes from. And she was only burning the stalks. They were stacked up beside her."

  "What do you want to do that to me for?"

  Takemura did not believe it had been only the stalks, but he didn't want the kind of fuss Kinoshita would have made. He had not rid himself of the idea that the Ishiharas might have gone to see the shrine maiden that night, and he wanted to save a narcotics rap for a last resort.