Inspector Imanishi Investigates

by Seichō Matsumoto

  “That’s why practically everyone would know a person who was a native of Kameda. I had my men go around with the photograph of the victim sent by your headquarters; it doesn’t seem that the person is from this area. But…” he paused, and then continued, “about a week ago, a strange man appeared in the town of Kameda.”

  “When you say strange, in what way?” Imanishi asked.

  “At first glance he seemed to be a laborer, wearing an old, worn-out suit, a man of about thirty or forty. He wasn’t considered strange from the beginning, but when your inquiry came and we checked out the Kameda area, people recalled that a stranger had been around.”

  “I see.”

  “This man stayed at Asahiya, an inn in Kameda. This inn is an old house, and well regarded in this area. It’s not strange that he stayed in that inn, but it seems odd that a laborer would stay in such an inn.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “The inn at first refused to accept him. They didn’t want him spending the night because of the way he looked. But the man said that he had enough money and would pay in advance. The innkeeper agreed to let him stay because they didn’t have any other guests at the time. Of course, they didn’t give him one of their good rooms.”

  “What kinds of things happened?”

  “Well, that’s about all. Nothing happened in particular. He paid the inn for his lodging in advance as promised. He even gave a five-hundred-yen tip to the chambermaid. There aren’t many people around here who would give such a tip to a maid. The innkeeper regretted having given him a bad room.”

  “What did he do at the inn?”

  “He arrived in the evening. After supper, he said he was tired and went to sleep without even taking a bath. That made the people think that he was quite odd.”

  “Did anything else happen?”

  “Something strange? Well, this is what happened. The man slept until after ten o’clock, and called a maid to ask how late the inn kept its doors open. When the maid answered that they were up until one o’clock, he said he had something to do and went out, wearing the inn’s wooden clogs.”

  “He went out after ten o’clock at night?”

  “That’s right,” the station chief answered. “He returned to the inn just after one a.m.”

  He continued, “I forgot to mention this, but this man arrived with a shoulder bag. He left that bag at the inn when he went out. In this area all the houses close up early in the evening. So we can’t figure out what this man was doing when he went out from after ten until one o’clock. It wouldn’t be strange at all if he had gone out like that in a big city, but in our area, this is considered to be strange.”

  “I suppose so. And when he came back, was there anything changed about this man’s behavior?”

  “There wasn’t anything. It didn’t seem that he had gone drinking, and he seemed to behave the same as before he left. When the maid asked where he had gone, he told her that he had gone to run an errand. But no one runs errands after ten at night.”

  “I see. I suppose there is a record of his registration?”

  “Yes, there is. We could have seized it, but since we knew you were coming, we’ve left it at the inn.”

  “Thank you very much. Was there anything else that was strange?”

  “That was all at the inn. The man left just after eight in the morning. When she served him breakfast, the maid asked him where he was going. He said he was getting on the train for Aomori.”

  “What was the address he listed on the inn registration?”

  “It’s listed as Mito City in Ibaragi Prefecture.”

  “So he’s from Mito.”

  “So it says on the inn registration. When the maid said Mito must be a nice place, he spoke about its famous sights. So it seems that he wasn’t completely unfamiliar with Mito.”

  “What about his occupation?”

  “According to the inn registration, he put down company employee. But they didn’t learn which firm he worked for.”

  “So, it seems that what was strange was his leaving the inn for three hours late at night?”

  “Yes. But if that were the only thing, I wouldn’t have asked you to come all this way. There were a few other things that seemed unusual.”

  “Yes, and what were those?”

  “One was that this man was seen loitering in front of a dried noodle shop.”

  “What is a dried noodle shop?”

  “As I just explained, Kameda is famous for the dried noodles it produces. Rows of noodles are hung to dry next to the noodle-makers’ houses. It was at such a house that this man appeared.”

  “What did he do when he appeared in front of this dried noodle shop?”

  “Well, it wasn’t as if he did anything. He just stood there, in front of the place where they dry their noodles,” the station chief answered, with a strained smile.

  “He just stood there?”

  “Yes. He did nothing but stand there for twenty minutes or so, gazing at the noodles hung to dry.”

  “Hm.”

  “The shop owners were a bit concerned about this unkempt fellow standing in front of their drying area. But he went away after a while. That’s about all there is to tell. But I thought it might be of some interest to you.”

  “It certainly is interesting,” Imanishi nodded deeply. “I assume that the man who stayed in the inn and the man watching the noodles were the same person?”

  “I think so. There’s also something else.” The station chief gave a little laugh.

  “What is that?”

  “There is a river that runs through the town of Kameda. It’s called Koromogawa. A man thought to be this same person was seen lying on the bank of this river at noontime.”

  “Just a minute,” Imanishi interrupted. “Was that the day after he had stayed at the inn?”

  “No, not the day after. It was the day he went to the inn. As I told you, he got to the inn in the evening, so this was noon of that day.”

  “I understand. Please go on.”

  “Well, there isn’t much except that this man was lying at the edge of the river. But there aren’t any men around here who can take things easy like that. There’s a road at the top of the levee. A local person who was walking on that road thought it was a strange place for a man to be taking a nap. He thought the man was a drifter.”

  “I see.”

  “No one said anything about this. It’s just that my men heard about it when they made their inquiries. When they asked if there were any unusual goings-on, they were told about this incident.”

  “That means that this man was lying about in the grass around noon. That night he left the inn after ten and returned at about one o’clock… This does seem to be strange behavior.”

  “You think so, too?” The station chief seemed relieved.

  “Napping on the bank of the river during the day and leaving the inn in the middle of the night, that doesn’t sound like a normal person, does it?”

  “If you think he may have been a burglar, I thought of that, too. But there weren’t any thefts reported around that date.” The station chief continued, “If there had been any actual loss reported… but there was nothing, so it’s hard to figure him out.”

  “Was that the only day that the man was seen wandering about?” Imanishi asked.

  “Yes, that’s the only day. Imanishi-san, don’t you think there’s some connection to the case you were asking about?”

  “Let me see,” Imanishi said and smiled. “Let us look around the town a bit.”

  “I’ll have one of my men show you around.”

  “Please don’t bother. If you could just direct us, we’ll go ourselves.”

  Imanishi and Yoshimura got on the bus for Kameda. The passengers were all from that locality. Their accents were so strong that it was hard for the outsiders to make out their meaning.

  Soon the row of houses ended, and the bus drove along a road through the fields. The warm season came to this area much
later than to Tokyo. The color of the new green leaves of the hillside was beautiful.

  They got off at the bus stop as instructed and went to the Asahiya inn. The station chief had said it was an old established house, and it looked it. The gabled entry seemed forbidding.

  Imanishi presented his police identification to the maid who came to the doorway. The innkeeper, a man in his forties, appeared.

  “I’ve come from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police,” Imanishi said. The innkeeper invited them to enter, but Imanishi preferred not to go inside. The maid brought seat cushions and some tea to the entryway.

  Imanishi described what he had heard from the Iwaki police chief.

  “Yes, we certainly had such a guest,” the innkeeper nodded.

  “Can you tell me about him in more detail?” Imanishi asked.

  The innkeeper agreed and recounted his version, which was no different from what they had heard from the station chief.

  “I understand you have the guest register?” Imanishi asked.

  “We do,” the innkeeper nodded.

  “Could you show it to me?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  The innkeeper asked the maid to bring the guest register. It was in the form of separate sheets of paper, each like a bill.

  The entry the innkeeper showed them read:

  “Hashimoto Chusuke, Number xx, xx town, Mito City, Ibaragi Prefecture.”

  It was inscribed in a very poor hand, as if a grade schooler had written it. But this was not unnatural, since the man had seemed to be a laborer. Imanishi stared at the characters.

  Imanishi asked what the man had looked like. About thirty years old, tall with a medium build, his face on the long side, and his hair short and unparted. His skin had been rather dark, but his nose was straight and his features even. The innkeeper said he had kept his face averted and had not met anyone’s eyes even when he spoke. That was why the maids’ memories were vague.

  Asked about the way he spoke, the innkeeper responded that the man did not have a Tohoku accent. His speech was close to standard Japanese and his voice was low. The general impression was that he had seemed to be a gloomy sort, and terribly tired. Everyone agreed on this point. He’d had neither a travel bag nor a suitcase, only the kind of shoulder bag people had used during the war with all his belongings in it.

  The two detectives visited the dried noodle shop. Next to it, bamboo poles were set with noodles draped from them. This made the noodles appear like white waterfalls when the sun shone on them.

  The woman of the house came out and showed them a narrow pathway about two hundred yards from the drying area, between the grass lots, that led to the main road. In this section of town the spaces between the houses were wide and overgrown with grass. The man in question had hung around this lot, squatting and standing, for about thirty minutes.

  Imanishi and Yoshimura walked until they reached a wide river that flowed from the surrounding mountains. The grass grew tall on its banks. A farm woman walked along carrying a hoe on the opposite bank of the river.

  “Imanishi-san,” Yoshimura asked, “what do you think? Is it your feeling that this man is the one who was with the victim at the bar in Kamata?”

  “I can’t say either way. But there is something strange about this fellow.”

  “There’s nothing definite, though, is there?” Yoshimura looked disappointed. “The name he used in the inn register is an alias, of course?” Yoshimura asked.

  “Of course.”

  Imanishi stated this so definitely that Yoshimura took the bait. “How can you tell?”

  “You saw the penmanship on that register, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did. It was very poor writing.”

  “Of course it was poor, since he wrote it with his left hand on purpose.” Imanishi fished his notebook out of his pocket and took out the carefully folded sheet from the inn register. “Look at this closely. See, there’s no flow in the writing at all. No one writes such awkward characters. Remember what the maid said at the inn? He didn’t fill in the register in front of the maid. She brought the register and left it in the room. When she came back later, it was filled in. The guest filled it in using his left hand to hide his handwriting while the maid was out of the room. So we can assume that the name and address are false.”

  “But where did this fellow go from ten at night to one o’clock in the morning?” Yoshimura asked. “From his behavior during the day, he didn’t seem to have any pressing business.”

  “That’s it. I was just thinking about that myself.” Imanishi stood in the grass with both his hands stuck into the pockets of his slacks. Ripples spread in the river in front of his eyes. The sun shone on the mountains and cast deep shadows.

  “This is a strange trip. The results are kind of disappointing, aren’t they? Imanishi-san, what shall we do now?” Yoshimura asked.

  “Since we don’t have any more leads, shall we go home?”

  “Don’t we have to find out where else the man went?”

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to. He was probably here in Kameda for only that one day.”

  “Then what did he come here for?”

  “I can’t tell. Though he seemed like a drifting laborer, there’s no evidence that he came to ask for work. But maybe we should make inquiries in the nearby towns just to be sure. After all, we’ve come all this way. Come on, cheer up,” Imanishi said, looking at Yoshimura’s dejected face.

  The following afternoon, Imanishi and Yoshimura visited the office of the Iwaki police chief once again.

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” Imanishi said.

  “You’re very welcome. Were you able to discover anything?”

  “Thanks to you we were able to get a concrete picture of what went on. It seems that the man didn’t make an appearance in any other villages. Just Kameda. He must have gotten on a train at Kameda Station and gone to another area.”

  “I see. That’s too bad. But it seems strange that he got off the train only at Kameda.”

  “That’s true. So maybe this incident holds some promise.”

  The two detectives chatted for a while with the station chief. After an appropriate length of time they took their leave.

  They walked toward the train station by the deep eaved houses of the snow country.

  They entered the small station and found the train schedule displayed above the wicket. The two men looked up to read the schedule.

  At that moment they heard a commotion behind them. When Imanishi turned around, he saw four young men with suitcases surrounded by several men who looked like newspaper reporters. Some had cameras and were taking photographs.

  Imanishi gazed at the four, wondering why the local newsmen were making a fuss over them. He could tell at first glance that the four were not from this region, that they had come from Tokyo. Although they were dressed casually, a closer look revealed that each item of their clothing had been carefully chosen. They were “casually fashionable.” They wore their hair rather long, and seemed to be around thirty years of age. The youngest of the four men had a pale face and thin eyebrows, and was wearing a gray suit with the collar of his black sports shirt out. He was saying, “I think it will be some time before Japan will be able to launch a rocket.”

  “What are they?” Yoshimura asked Imanishi.

  Imanishi had no idea who they might be. They seemed to him to be awfully young to have attained such importance.

  The local people waiting for the train in the waiting room of this lonely country station were also watching this group. Some young girls went up to the four men and stuck out a notebook. One of the men took out a pen and wrote in it. The girl bowed and went to the next young man. He also scribbled something with a pen. It was clear that the girl was asking for their autographs.

  “Could they be movie stars?” Yoshimura asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “But I don’t recognize their faces, and what they’re saying does
n’t fit.” Yoshimura pondered.

  “I can’t recognize the faces of the new movie actors,” Imanishi stated. “They keep creating more and more new stars. Young girls know a lot more about that kind of thing.”

  After a while, the group of young men went through the gate, toward the train bound for Aomori, in the opposite direction from the way Imanishi and Yoshimura were headed. The newspaper reporters bowed their farewell and left the station.

  “Shall I ask them?” Yoshimura said, his curiosity aroused.

  “No, don’t bother,” Imanishi stopped him.

  “But I’d like to know who they are.” Yoshimura approached the young girl with the autograph book.

  He bent over and asked her something. The girl answered, blushing slightly. Yoshimura nodded and returned to where Imanishi was seated.

  “I’ve got it,” he said, smiling self-consciously.

  “Who were they?”

  “They are intellectuals from Tokyo. They are members of the Nouveau group. They often appear in newspapers and magazines.”

  “What is this Nouveau group?”

  “You might say it’s made up of members of the younger generation who have progressive opinions: composers, academics, novelists, playwrights, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, poets – all types.”

  “You’re really up on all this, aren’t you.”

  “Well, I do read the papers and the magazines,” Yoshimura said, somewhat embarrassed.

  “So those four are members of this group?”

  “Yes. I just asked that girl. The one in the black shirt was Waga Eiryo, the composer. Next to him was the playwright Takebe Toyoichiro; then Sekigawa Shigeo, the critic; and the painter Katazawa Mutsuo.“

  When he heard these names, Imanishi realized that they were vaguely familiar.

  “Why did they come all the way out here?”

  “She said that a university rocket research center is located here in Iwaki. They’re on their way back from taking a tour of the center.”

  “A rocket research center in this backwater?”

  “When she told me, I remembered that I’d read about it somewhere.”

  “A strange location for such a modern facility.”