Honeymoon to Nowhere

by Akimitsu Takagi

  “That’ll be fine,” Kirishima said.

  “Okay then. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Twenty minutes later Kirishima was sitting in the police car, listening to Inspector Yoshioka’s report. Kitahara was following in the departmental car.

  The body had been discovered by a milkman on the bank of an irrigation canal at Kitamicho just before seven o’clock in the morning. The cause of death was strangulation. A preliminary estimate placed the time of death between ten o’clock and midnight. It was not yet clear whether the crime had been committed where the body was found. The body could have been taken there to be dumped. A search of the immediate area and inquiries in the neighborhood were still in progress.

  Identifying the victim had presented no problem. A wallet containing name cards and two round-trip tickets had been found beside the body. There was no money in it.

  The detective visiting the victim’s apartment had learned from the caretaker that Tsukamoto and his bride were to go on a honeymoon. But even after searching the apartment the detective was unable to establish the name and address of the bride’s parents. Then Chiyoda Uni­versity was contacted, and a Professor Kuwajima, who had been official witness at the wedding ceremony, told police the newlyweds had been staying at the New Tokyo Hotel overnight.

  It had taken nearly three hours to get this far, partly because of the morning rush hour, Yoshioka told Kirishima. He was still talking when the police car pulled up in front of the New Tokyo Hotel.

  As Kirishima and Yoshioka walked into the hotel lobby, two men rose from their seats at the far end. One looked like a detective, the other was Takuzo Ogata.

  Kirishima immediately recognized him—they had fought in court once, some years ago. But now Ogata looked like an old man of seventy or more.

  When Ogata saw Kirishima, his face became even more gloomy. He must have thought of his daughter’s feelings. “You are in charge of this case?” he asked, without really expecting an answer. “The detective here has told me what happened.”

  “Please accept my deepest sympathy, Mr. Ogata,” Kirishima said formally. Because of his official position he couldn’t say much more. “This is Inspector Yoshioka from police headquarters.”

  Yoshioka quickly mumbled his stock phrase of con­dolence and then added, almost in the same breath, “How’s your daughter?”

  “We put her to bed. My wife’s looking after her. She’s been fairly calm since the doctor gave her an injection.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I think she realized it when she saw the detective. We didn’t have the courage to tell her. It was a great shock to us, too . . . If only I’d opposed this marriage with a little more determination—” He stopped in mid-sentence.

  Yoshioka’s eyebrows imperceptively moved upward, but he must have decided not to pursue the matter at this stage. “Since the wedding took place only yesterday afternoon,” he said, “I imagine the papers wouldn’t yet be registered at the ward office. So legally your daughter is still unmarried and may continue to use her maiden name.”

  “That would’ve been a tiny piece of luck amid all the misfortune,” Ogata said dryly, “but in fact the papers were handed in yesterday—largely because it was one of those newfangled non-religious ceremonies.”

  “Aah, I see.” Yoshioka was a seasoned crime investi­gator, but he seemed genuinely sorry for the poor girl.

  Kirishima felt the same way, only more strongly. Etsuko had at last found happiness, and now this. He thought of Section 733 of the Civil Code which provided that a woman whose marriage had been terminated by the husband’s death or by divorce couldn’t remarry for six months. This was to ensure the proper identification of the father of any child. The provision would apply to Etsuko even if she happened to be still a virgin.

  Breaking the silence, Yoshioka said, “Was it a love-marriage?”

  Ogata nodded without comment.

  “Well, as you know, Mr. Ogata, I’ll have to ask you some further questions later on, but would you first take us to your daughter, please?”

  “She has suffered a very severe shock. You’ll keep that in mind, won’t you?” Ogata cast a pleading glance at the inspector and then at Kirishima before walking to the lift.

  When they entered the hotel room, Etsuko was sitting in an armchair in one corner. Her face was stiff like a mask, and she looked as if she had become insensitive to everything.

  As she recognized Kirishima, her swollen eyes widened and her mouth twitched a couple of times, but then she compressed her lips and turned her eyes away from him. Who could’ve imagined he’d have to see her like this?

  “Etsu,” Ogata said, “this is State Prosecutor Kirishima, and this is Inspector Yoshioka from police headquarters.”

  Silently she bowed.

  Kirishima signalled the inspector with his eyes. It was normal procedure to leave the first step in an investigation entirely to the police, and he was especially glad of this now.

  When Yoshioka began with a casual “Miss Ogata”, for the first time Etsuko’s face came alive.

  “I’m Mrs. Tsukamoto,” she said with resentment in her voice.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—just a slip of the tongue.” He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Tsukamoto, you may already know this—your husband was found dead this morning.”

  Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t say anything.

  Yoshioka then trotted out the formal sentence. “I fully appreciate how you feel but must ask you to co-operate with us so that the deceased may rest in peace.”

  She gave a tiny nod.

  “Thank you . . . And now, would you please tell us first about your husband’s relatives and close friends?”

  “He has a brother, Nobumasa Tsukamoto. He’s a chemist, working in the research laboratories of Toho Kasei.”

  After what she must have been through last night, her voice was remarkably firm, Kirishima thought.

  “What’s the brother’s home address?”

  “4-1017, Shimotakaido, Suginami . . . He was injured in a street accident at the end of last month. He also has a severe cold at present and is under medical treatment at his home, I think.”

  “He didn’t attend the wedding then?”

  “No.” The mention of the wedding seemed to heighten her distress.

  “Were there any other relatives of his at the cere­mony?”

  There was a lost, destroyed expression on her face, but she managed to take hold of herself. “Three or four of his relatives were there, but he hardly had any contact with them at other times. I met them for the first time yesterday.”

  “What about his friends?”

  She mentioned Koike and Kawaji.

  Yoshioka wrote down the names in his notebook and then turned to Ogata. “Have you already advised the victim’s brother and friends, by any chance?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Ogata said. “After I got here I rang three different places to check, but I simply asked if they’d received a phone call from the honeymoon couple. I pretended I was just a nervous father wondering how his daughter was faring. I didn’t want to give them the impression something might be seriously wrong.”

  Nodding, Yoshioka turned to Etsuko again. “Mrs. Tsukamoto, would you mind telling us now, as fully as you can, what happened just before your husband left you last night?”

  As a rule, women in her situation were so upset, the only way to obtain a coherent account from them was to ask them the same questions over and over again during a long interview. But her story was quite clear. She spoke in an orderly manner and sounded almost indifferent, showing no emotion at all. Yoshioka looked a little sur­prised, but Kirishima recognized in her that deep-seated, unrelieved grief that kept grinding away at a person’s sen­sibilities until they became paper-thin.

  “I see,” Yoshioka said. “Then at the time of the tele­phone c
all you weren’t with your husband?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He told you he had to go over to the university to lo­cate some missing exam papers, but he didn’t say who had telephoned?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Yoshioka signalled to one of the detectives in the room. The man left immediately, obviously to check with the university.

  “And he promised he’d be back within an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he take anything with him?”

  “Nothing special that I can think of.”

  “How much money do you think he had in his wallet?”

  “It must have been sufficient for the trip.”

  Kirishima thought it was quite natural for a bride of a few hours not to know how much money her new husband had on him.

  “As he was about to leave, did you notice any change in his manner?” Yoshioka asked.

  “Perhaps he looked slightly worried . . . I’m not sure.”

  “What sort of worry?”

  “I naturally thought it had to do with the missing exam papers.”

  “Mrs. Tsukamoto, I’ll ask you now to try to cast your mind back to your association with your husband before your marriage. Did you ever get the feeling he was worrying over something, or somebody—an enemy, perhaps?”

  She hesitated for a moment. Then she said, quite firmly, “I didn’t notice anything.”

  “Have you any idea at all who might have killed your husband?”

  “No.”

  “Or what might have been the motive for his murder?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Yoshioka might have thought it was futile to expect an­swers to questions like these from a woman who had been married to the victim only a few hours. Whatever he thought, he didn’t pursue the matter and turned to Kirishima. “Mr. Prosecutor, would you like to ask any­thing?”

  “No, not at this stage,” Kirishima said.

  Just then Etsuko got up unsteadily and gazed at him. There was such a strange glow in her eyes—it made him feel embarrassed, even afraid she might say something ab­surd in front of the inspector.

  But then she slowly shifted her gaze to Yoshioka and said, in a wooden voice, “When will you be ready to return my husband’s body to me?”

  The inspector’s sun-tanned face seemed to be losing some of its color. “The postmortem should be completed today.”

  “As his wife, I’ll naturally have to arrange for his fu­neral.”

  “I see,” Yoshioka muttered. “I’ll let you know . . . We’ll also have to make an official inspection of your husband’s apartment. This will include an examination of his be­longings for possible clues . . . Well, Mrs. Tsukamoto, thank you very much for your co-operation.”

  Etsuko bowed curtly and glanced in Kirishima’s direc­tion, but almost immediately turned away, as if the people in the room no longer existed. Only the slight quivering of her fingers revealed there was still some tension left in her.

  Kirishima eagerly led the way out of the room.

  Ogata followed them into the corridor, apparently to see them off.

  Yoshioka turned to him and said, “Mr. Ogata, forgive me for asking this at such a time, but couldn’t there be some other man interested in your daughter, by any chance?” When Ogata gave him a frosty look, he hurriedly added, “I hope you appreciate I’m not suggest­ing anything improper. I’m thinking of the possibility of a one-sided infatuation, which isn’t uncommon, as you know.”

  Ogata said, “As you can see for yourself, my daughter isn’t a beautiful woman by any stretch of the imagination, and she’s rather conservative in her outlook. In fact, she had very little to do with the opposite sex until she met Tsukamoto. The only thing—well, you’ll find this out sooner or later, so I might as well tell you now. The man I would’ve liked my daughter to marry wasn’t Tsuka­moto.”

  “Whom did you have in mind?”

  “Tetsuya Higuchi, my junior partner.”

  The three men were standing in front of the lift. Now it seemed Ogata meant to accompany them to the ground-floor lobby because he stepped into the lift with them.

  “Then at one time she would’ve been associated with Higuchi to some extent?” Yoshioka spoke casually but hurriedly, with the air of a man to whom every minute was precious.

  “That’s correct. Of course, Higuchi is a very respect­able man. You can take it from me he had nothing to do with Tsukamoto’s death. This would be quite unthink­able.”

  “Naturally, he’d still have a lingering affection for your daughter?”

  “That I couldn’t answer. Anyway, much as I tried to talk her out of it, my daughter insisted on marrying Tsukamoto. There was nothing I could do, so I apologized to Higuchi, and he gave her up with good grace.”

  The lift reached the ground floor, but Yoshioka no longer seemed to be in a hurry. He suggested Ogata might like to sit with them in the lobby for a while. He found a sofa in a corner. “Did you have any special reason to oppose her marriage to Tsukamoto?” he asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Ogata said grimly. “And since we are on the subject, I’ll give you the whole story. It may help you with your inquiries.”

  He began with Yoshihiro’s father, and then went on to the younger brother on whom he now had the full information. He didn’t leave anything out. When he had finished, he said, “Father and younger brother—they were the reasons for my objection to the marriage. Of course, they can’t have any direct bearing on this inci­dent, since both have been dead for some time.”

  “Yes, of course,” Yoshioka said solicitously. “Well, Mr. Ogata, we do appreciate your help.” He thought for a moment. “Oh, and what about the funeral? Naturally, I couldn’t take your daughter seriously, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “Yes, I understood . . . Well, she’ll be chief mourner, so I suppose we must do all that has to be done in consultation with the victim’s elder brother.” He blinked a couple of times. Perhaps he thought of his daughter wearing black mourning clothes only a few days after she had been standing there, radiant in her white bridal outfit.

  “Then we’ll advise you about the release of the body as soon as we can,” Yoshioka said. “And thank you very much for your co-operation.” He stood up and bowed and watched Ogata’s tired figure disappear into the lift. Then he asked Kirishima if he’d like to return to his office in the police car.

  “No thank you. I have some other business to attend to.”

  “Well then, I’d better get on with it, I suppose . . . I’d like to keep in touch with you though, if I may.”

  “Yes, of course. Just contact me whenever you wish, especially when things get a bit further advanced. At this stage I’ve nothing special to ask.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Prosecutor.” Yoshioka turned to leave, then stopped suddenly and said, “This is a sad business, isn’t it? I myself have a daughter of nineteen.”

  Before returning to the office Kirishima called at his home. He invited his clerk inside, but Kitahara insisted on waiting for him in the car. As he walked in, he marvelled at his clerk’s unpredictable leaps between the heights of tactfulness and indiscretion.

  Kyoko was already making a cup of coffee for him. She looked at him inquiringly, but Kirishima didn’t have the time to satisfy her curiosity. It was he who wanted some answers from her.

  “Toward the end of last year you told me Etsuko sought your advice concerning her relationship with Tsukamoto.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wasn’t very interested in her problems at the time—I even asked you not to go into detail.”

  “Do you want me to do it now?”

  “Yes. Try to recall everything she told you.”

  “I met her once more after they got engaged. That’s when she told me how she tricked her fa
ther into giving his consent, with the lie about her pregnancy.”

  “Just start at the beginning, and try not to leave any­thing out.”

  Ten minutes later, when Kyoko had finished, Kirishima said, “It sounds reasonable enough . . . The only thing that bothers me is that character Watanabe. Etsuko didn’t say a word about him during the interview this morning.”

  “Well, he’s supposed to have gone to Hokkaido. Per­haps she just didn’t think of him.”

  “Yes, that’s possible. She was very upset.”

  “Should I suggest to her that she tell the police about him?”

  “No, I don’t think it’d make any difference. It won’t be long before they learn about him anyway . . .” He lit a cigarette and slowly inhaled the smoke. “And now, will you try to recall everything Etsuko said when you first met her this morning?”

  Kyoko obligingly repeated the conversation between them, and Kirishima noted that Etsuko’s account to the police was identical with what she had told Kyoko.

  “But hasn’t she already told the same thing to the police?” Kyoko asked.

  “Yes, she has. I just wanted to double-check it, since it’s such a queer story. That urgent call from the uni­versity—I’m pretty sure it was a lie. The police will know soon.”

  “You mean the killer told Mr. Tsukamoto a lie to lure him out of the hotel?”

  “That’s one possibility. Another is that Tsukamoto told Etsuko a lie. And a third one is that Etsuko told us a lie.”

  “But surely Etsuko wouldn’t . . .”

  “Look, as a prosecutor I must treat her as if I met her for the first time today. Your friendship with her doesn’t enter into this, so far as I’m concerned. To me she’s just the wife of the victim and an important witness.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Kyoko said unpleasantly.

  “But just to put your heart at rest, it’s not very likely Etsuko would’ve lied to you. She was terribly upset at the time. I don’t believe she could’ve thought up a clever story while in that condition, let alone told it to you with any semblance of conviction.”