Togakushi Legend Murders (Tuttle Classics)

by Yasuo Uchida

  "But leaving that aside for a moment, the missing shirt must have presented a dilemma to the murderers. They must not have discovered it was missing until after they had killed Representative Shishido and started to dress the body. They couldn't leave the body in the hotel, so they had to take it out dressed in the hotel robe."

  "I see, I see," said Ishida, rubbing his hands together with glee. "And now you're going to tell us how they got the body out, right?"

  "As for that," said Takemura, wetting his lips, "during the night, they put the body into the big bag on the laundry cart, and put the cart in the storage room at the west end of the hallway. With the body wrapped up in a sheet and covered by other dirty sheets, they wouldn't have had to worry about anybody noticing it, even if someone passed right by the cart.

  "Incidentally, since the suite used by both Takeda and Representative Shishido is on the third floor, the murderers had to use the service elevator to get the cart out. That elevator makes a lot of noise, though, so it wouldn't do to start it up in the middle of the night. Instead, they came back in the morning looking perfectly innocent, put the cart on the elevator, went down to the first floor, dumped the body, sheets and all, into the laundry's station wagon, and drove away with it.

  "Two people would have been needed for the operation, one to drive the car, and the other, someone who could go around collecting laundry in the hotel without arousing suspicion. A woman working at the hotel for the laundry would have been perfect. And in fact, I learned from hotel employees yesterday that on the day before and the day of the disappearances of both Takeda and Shishido, they saw a quite elderly cleaning woman they had never seen before arriving at the hotel in the laundry's station wagon. Also, I just spoke to another cleaning woman, who told me that before each of those days, she was asked by the laundry owner, Keiichi Noya, to take the day off."

  "I see," said Ishida. "So it seems certain, then, that the murderers were people from the laundry, right? But I hear that this morning a squad was sent to some place called the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom. Who were you after there?"

  "An old woman named Taki Tendoh, who lives there alone and tells fortunes. She has quite a following. I believe she is our principal instigator. Since we failed to get her today, I'm afraid I can't back up what I'm telling you, but from what I've learned so far, she does have a definite motive for the murders. I'm convinced also that she was the woman who posed as an employee of the laundry and had a direct part in carrying out the murders."

  "Hmm," said Ishida, leaning forward, totally absorbed. "So you're saying that this old woman, Taki Tendoh, is the main killer, and Keiichi Noya is her accomplice. All right, that leaves the question of motive. What was her reason for murder—and four murders, at that?"

  "At this point, we can only conjecture about the details. We do know, however, that at the hands of three of the four victims—Kisuke Takeda, Ryuji Ishihara, and Hirofumi Shishido—she had suffered considerable physical and emotional torment. I can only believe that her motive was revenge. To learn any more, though, we would have to get a confession from Taki Tendoh herself, or barring that, information from a Professor Tomohiro Tachibana in Tokyo."

  "Tachibana?" interrupted Ishida. "You don't mean Tomohiro Tachibana of T—University?"

  "Why yes. Do you know him?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do. But what could an ivory-tower scholar like him have to do with all this?"

  "I'm just getting to that."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. Please, go on."

  "I sent a man to Tokyo yesterday to see him, but Tachibana had just left on a trip to Nagano. I had hopes he might be coming here to see us, but it doesn't look like he was. So for the time being, let me tell you about the facts I've picked up so far, and the deductions I've made from them. Before I do so, though, it will be necessary for me to discuss the unusual nature of the murders.

  "First, Takeda's body was not disposed of until the fourth day after his death, when it was already in a considerably decomposed condition. I can think of no other reason for that delay than the killers' determination to display the poisoned body on Poison Plain.

  "Then, with the next two murders, the maniacal nature of the first one really became clear. The bodies of the Ishiharas were left at the Arrowstand Hachiman Shrine in the village of West Arrow—with arrows stuck in them. The Ishiharas had visited the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom on July 10th, and were poisoned there, I believe. The reason for their visit was that Ishihara had accused his wife of carrying on an affair with Takeda in Togakushi, while she maintained that the purpose of her trips there was to go to the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom. His insistence on going there with her to check out her story led them into a trap.

  "I took the abnormal display of the first three bodies to mean that someone was committing a series of murders for revenge, and wanted to be sure the next victim in the series knew it. As a matter of fact, Representative Shishido did receive a threatening letter, which seemed to me at the time to frighten him somewhat excessively. But his death proved that his fear had not been ungrounded. And this time, the murderers went to the elaborate trouble of hauling the body fifty kilometers to the General's Mound in Bessho Hot Springs."

  As Takemura paused for breath, Ishida interrupted once more. "Then does that mean we can expect the murders to continue?"

  "No, I don't think so, because the threatening letter said that the general would die last."

  "I see. But if that's the case, why did they need to go to all that trouble with the body?"

  "Only the murderers themselves know that for sure, but as I mentioned before, one reason was probably to throw the police off the track by getting the body out of the hotel. Another may have been a macabre sort of aesthetic sense of completeness. Perhaps you already know that the manner of each display had something to do with episodes in the legend of the Demoness Maple. Well, the General's Mound is the grave of one protagonist of the legend, Taira no Koremochi. The killers likened Representative Shishido to General Taira, so they probably wanted to leave his body in a fitting place. You see, during the war, Representative Shishido was in the military police, and..."

  "Just a moment," interrupted Ishida softly. "So your investigation has taken you that far, has it, Inspector Takemura?"

  Takemura looked at Ishida, wondering what the matter was. Ishida threw inquiring glances, first at Nagakura, then at Tsukamoto, both of whom looked awkward and remained silent. Miyazaki looked vacant, as if he had heard nothing.

  Finally, Ishida seemed to have made up his mind. Turning back to Takemura, he said, "Okay. Go on, please."

  "Is there some kind of problem?" asked Takemura, with an inadvertent touch of reproach.

  "As a matter of fact, it is an awfully delicate matter, what with the prospect of the lower house of the Diet being dissolved and a general election coming up. A lot of people have got a lot to say about it. But anyway, you go ahead, please. I believe you were saying that Representative Shishido was a first-lieutenant in the military police during the war."

  Takemura smiled ruefully. He had not mentioned Shishido's rank. "To continue, then, that fact has an integral bearing on the case, made even more clear by the fact that Ishihara was once Shishido's subordinate. The story goes way back to the end of 1944, at which time a draft-evading student was hiding in the Tendoh house, whose occupants were hereditary priests of the Hoko Shrine. The student was Tomohiro Tachibana. The people sheltering him were Taki Tendoh and an elderly couple of family servants named Noya.

  "One night, two military policemen raided the Tendoh house and arrested Tachibana. The informer who led them there was, I believe, a man named Kisuke Tokuoka—later Kisuke Takeda—who lived in the neighborhood. We can't know exactly what happened that night, but the members of the household, not to mention Tachibana, must have been treated with extreme cruelty, such cruelty that Taki Tendoh's hatred has continued to this day."

  "What?" exclaimed Ishida in dismay. "Are you saying that the motive for these murders lies in somethin
g that happened forty years ago? That seems a little hard to believe, doesn't it?"

  "To tell you the truth, I can't say that I haven't had my own doubts about it. But from the weird nature of the crimes, we have reason to assume the murderer to be abnormal at least in some respect. And if that's the case, isn't it possible that forty years' time has not served to erase the memory of what happened that night? The fact is that after that raid, Taki Tendoh did suffer mental problems, from which she has never fully recovered. Moreover, she secretly cultivated marijuana, which she apparently used in her fortunetelling. Since hemp had been grown in Togakushi for a long time, she probably knew about it from early childhood.

  "The extremely elaborate planning of the murders, though, makes it obvious that someone else must have been involved. That person, I believe, was Keiichi Noya, the owner of the Hokushin Laundry, and the son of the Noya couple who took care of the Tendoh household. The Hokushin Laundry serves the Koshimizu Plateau Hotel, and laundry employees have free access practically anywhere inside the hotel, so it would have been a simple matter to take a wax impression of keys. We had all the hotel keys checked yesterday and traces of wax were found on a couple that clearly indicate such impressions were in fact taken.

  "Now, I doubt this Keiichi Noya is fundamentally of a criminal disposition, but he does seem to have quite an aptitude for the job. For instance, in the murder of Representative Shishido, he realized that it might be difficult to get out with too many people on the alert downstairs, so he left the room key on the floor under the hatch to the roof, knowing its discovery would cause a stampede to that spot.

  "So what it boils down to is that after an almost perfect series of murders, Keiichi Noya and Taki Tendoh ended up having to flee, all because of a white shirt that had been sent out for cleaning. They knew that would make it obvious the crimes had been a sort of inside job, and sooner or later would lead the police to them." Takemura finished his presentation with a deep sigh of near sympathy for the murderers.

  "I see," said Ishida, sounding sympathetic too. "So the erstwhile victim became the oppressor."

  No one raised any objections to Takemura's clear reasoning. Even Miyazaki, the proverbial fence-sitter, seemed to go along.

  "Well, that's really something! I don't doubt that it must all have happened just as you say, Inspector Takemura," said Ishida, standing up and shaking Takemura's hand.

  Miyamoto of the National Police Agency, who had maintained silence throughout, finally smiled and said, "You've done a good job."

  But the bigwigs had not quite completed their mission. The last to speak was Chief Nagakura.

  "Please don't let anything that has been said here get out of this room," he said, mainly to Takemura.

  * * *

  A short time later, Keiichi Noya's Hokushin Laundry station wagon was found beside the road near the boundary between Togakushi and Kinasa, about a kilometer west of the village of Upper Kusugawa. The finder, a resident of Kinasa, also told police that he had seen the same car parked at the same spot on the evening of July 6th, the day before Kisuke Takeda's body was discovered. The investigator who called in the report mentioned to Takemura that the spot was located at the entrance to a path going up to a place called Maple's Cave. Takemura quickly spread out a map. Sure enough, at a point where the path reached a ridge after climbing the north slope of Mt. Arakura, there was Maple's Cave, where the Demoness was supposed to have lived so long ago.

  He wondered whether the two were headed for the cave. If they were trying to re-enact the whole Demoness Legend, that was a distinct possibility. As he was absent-mindedly tracing the path beyond the cave with the tip of his ballpoint pen, though, he suddenly let out an exclamation. He had just noticed that it continued down the south slope, finally coming out into the Arakura Campground. So that was it! That was how they had gotten Takeda's body there!

  He had been had, he thought, biting his lip. The reason his men had been unable to find a single clue as to how Takeda's body had been gotten to Poison Plain was that they had been looking in the wrong place. The murderers had carried the body on foot all the way over the mountain from Upper Kusugawa! Unable to enter the campground the front way by car and leave the body without being seen, they had negotiated the mountain path at night, burdened by a rotting corpse, in a heavy rain that had been continuing for three days! How determined they must have been to leave that body on Poison Plain!

  Takemura had to admit he was beginning to sympathize with them. The old woman at the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom might be a murderess, but maybe she was not so very different from the Demoness Maple, who had resisted the authorities of the day from her hide-out in the Togakushi Mountains. He was reminded of Kinoshita's destruction of the doodlebug trap at the Hall of Heavenly Wisdom. Justice, Kinoshita had called it, the same justice the police administered to criminals. To the strong, apparently, might did indeed mean right.

  * * *

  Although Takemura had expected an APB for Keiichi Noya and Taki Tendoh to be issued that same day, he was left hanging all day with no word whatsoever from the bigwigs at prefectural police headquarters. The next morning, he was summoned by Miyazaki, who took him to Tsukamoto's office. Tsukamoto in turn took them to the chief.

  "Ah, thank you for coming," said Nagakura, standing up to greet them with an easy smile, in conspicuous contrast to the tense looks worn by Miyazaki and Tsukamoto. "Well, sit down!"

  Takemura realized with surprise that the chief was speaking not to the other two, but directly to him. He sat down obediently on the edge of the sofa. Miyazaki sat down next to him, and Tsukamoto sat down in an armchair facing them.

  "Our two visitors of yesterday left this morning, but I must say, they were most impressed with your presentation, Inspector Takemura," said the chief, taking out a cigarette for himself and offering one to Takemura. Takemura accepted it, and the chief quickly extended a lighter and lit it for him. Something extraordinary was obviously up, though Takemura had no idea what. He tried to prepare himself for anything.

  "I know you haven't picked up the suspects' trail yet," continued Nagakura, "but you just keep trying, and take your time."

  "Pardon?" responded Takemura, unaware that he was gazing hard at Nagakura. Take his time?

  Avoiding the gaze, Nagakura leaned back and looked at the ceiling, exhaling smoke. "The fact is, you see, that at the request of certain people, we are going to keep to ourselves what we've learned about Representative Shishido's past. Instead we will announce that the murderers were suffering from paranoia and hallucinations under the influence of marijuana. It is true, isn't it, that this Taki Tendoh spent ten-odd years in a mental institution? You said yourself that the murders were quite abnormal. Our official announcement may not be quite the truth, but still, it can't really be too far off."

  Takemura could pretty well guess the positions of the "certain people" who had made the request. With an election coming up, it would not be convenient for them to have the information come out that an influential Diet member from their party had begun his career in the military police of the old Imperial Army.

  Miyazaki watched anxiously as Takemura scratched his chin. "I know that makes it difficult for you, but it's all right, really," he said, as if comforting a spoiled child.

  "I see," said Takemura, looking back at him with an unintentionally bitter smile. "All right."

  "Oh good. I'm glad you understand," said Nagakura. A burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He had not expected Takemura to give in so easily and could not hide his relief.

  As for Takemura, he could only wonder at himself for having so easily dropped his principles. On other cases, when his colleagues had been willing to compromise or look the other way, he had always been the one to stumble on alone to the bitter end. He never would have expected he could do what he had just done. Strangely, though, he did not even feel angry. In fact, he had the distinct feeling that things were actually better this way, though he would not have wanted to try to explain
to himself why.

  Beyond the Togakushi Inner Shrine, the slope suddenly steepened. The other two routes up West Peak were much the same—as soon as they reached its base, they turned sharply upward, clinging to the rocks most of the way. The distance was not so very great, and chains were provided at difficult places, so it was not especially dangerous. Still, one could get the exhilarating feeling that one was now a true alpinist.

  Climbing the path once used by ascetic monks seeking the spiritual retreat of the mountains, Tomohiro Tachibana picked his way carefully, step by step, praying as he went. Passing below the huge rock overhang known as Hundred-Room Tenement, he gained altitude steadily, using the chains where provided. By the time he reached Chest-Splitting Rock, a step away from the ridge, he was thoroughly out of breath. He remembered the first time Taki had taken him up into these mountains, forty-odd years ago—how they had gone straight to the top, passing one party after another—and look at him now! He painfully felt his age.

  Reaching the ridge, he came to the fifty-centimeter wide, ten-meter long razor's edge called Ant-Gate Crossing, whose sheer cliffs on either side made it the scene of a good many fatal falls. For novices, there was a path around it, which he took without hesitation.

  Arms and legs numb, he barely managed to keep going. Finally he made it to the stone marker at the midpoint of the West Peak ridge trail, which commanded an unobstructed view in every direction. Before him, Mount Taka-tsuma, the highest peak of the Togakushi Range, seemed to soar to the sky like a gigantic anthill. Below him was a great canyon, like a mortar scooped out of the rocks between West Peak and Mount Takatsuma. The bottom was covered with virgin forest growing to the base of the cliffs. Sitting down on a rock, he gazed at the scene. Somewhere in that forest were Taki Tendoh and Keiichi Noya.