Honeymoon to Nowhere

by Akimitsu Takagi

  They finished their coffee and sat in silence for a few minutes. Kirishima kept drawing on his cigarette, his eyes half closed with concentration. Kyoko didn’t even try to guess what he was thinking.

  Then he got up to go, and she saw him out to the front door, as might be expected of a wife of three and a half months.

  But he failed rather miserably in his role as the en­thusiastic young husband. Instead of some tender words of farewell, he looked at Kyoko vacantly, and said, “No, it isn’t Etsuko who told a lie.”

  7

  Kirishima had been right. Less than five minutes after his arrival back at the office, he was told by Inspector Yoshioka on the phone that no one at the university had called the victim last night.

  “My man checked with a number of people in Tsuka­moto’s department,” Yoshioka said. “They all agreed it was nonsense . . . I had my own doubts from the start.”

  “I felt the same way.”

  “They said that while they might be a bunch of egg­heads noted for their tactlessness, they wouldn’t go that far—they wouldn’t drag a colleague out of bed on his wedding night without a compelling reason. And at the registrar’s office my man was told a young lecturer would never be required to go to the university at that time of night, not even in an emergency. If Tsukamoto had been the vice-chancellor or the dean of a department, that would’ve been a different matter . . . But the clincher is that not a single exam paper’s missing. They’re all in the safe, just as Tsukamoto left them there . . .”

  Well, that was that, Kirishima thought as he replaced the receiver after listening to the rest of Yoshioka’s report. It looked as if this would be all for the day—and it wasn’t very much. He had the uneasy feeling this might turn out to be another one of those hard-to-crack jobs.

  On his way home in the car that evening he recalled that strange glow in Etsuko’s eyes. Soon it would be his turn to question her . . . He drew a long breath and tried to keep his mind on the traffic.

  The front of his house was enveloped in darkness, but he could imagine its color, pleasantly subdued by the years. Only the plate at the entrance, bearing his name, was new and shiny.

  “Hello,” he said, handing his briefcase and overcoat to Kyoko who had come to meet him in the entry.

  While taking off his shoes, he said, “Did you go to see Etsuko again this afternoon?”

  “Yes.” She took his coat as they walked into the living room. “There was more trouble.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Etsuko’s parents tried to take her home with them, but she didn’t want to go. She said she was now Mrs. Yoshihiro Tsukamoto, and insisted on going to the apart­ment at Setagaya Daita where they were to live after the honeymoon.”

  Kirishima recalled Etsuko’s resentment when Yoshioka called her Miss Ogata by mistake. “It might have been her parents’ opposition to the marriage that made her so obstinate.”

  “That’s part of it, no doubt, but isn’t the only reason. She’s had a taste of independence, so now she wants to live her own life. I think I’d feel the same way in her place.”

  Kirishima changed into a winter kimono and sat down to warm his feet in the kotatsu. “I see what you mean,” he said, “but her married life only lasted a couple of hours—hardly long enough to make her feel like a married woman.”

  Instead of answering Kyoko busied herself with his clothes. Finally she said, changing the subject, “Etsuko is a very quiet, even-tempered girl, but she has a will of her own. Once she makes up her mind about something, she’ll stubbornly persist. That explains her daring lie about being pregnant, though normally she’s a very truthful person.”

  “Hmm . . . And what happened in the end?”

  “Her parents kept coaxing her, trying every trick they knew, and finally she agreed to go home with them, for a couple of days anyway. Her father said the apartment would be in disorder because the police had just searched it, and it wouldn’t be large enough for the wake service. And her mother insisted they now looked upon her dead husband as their own son, and their mind would never be at peace if they weren’t allowed to give him a proper funeral.”

  “I can sympathise with her parents. Apart from every­thing else, they’re probably worried she might try to com­mit suicide if left on her own in that apartment.”

  “I never thought of that,” Kyoko said anxiously. “It could happen quite easily, couldn’t it? She keeps saying she’d move into the apartment immediately after the funeral.”

  “Well, that’s something to think about when the time comes. All they can do at the moment is try to solve their immediate problems, one at a time.”

  Early next morning Inspector Yoshioka called on Kirishima at his office.

  First he handed over the postmortem report. It con­tained nothing unusual. Congestion in the abdominal region indicated the victim had been rendered uncon­scious with a karate blow before being strangled. The time of death was placed somewhere between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. This meant Tsukamoto had been murdered approximately one hour after leaving the hotel.

  Yoshioka then reported on the result of inquiries made at the hotel. One of the bellboys had seen Tsuka­moto leave via the front entrance at about half past nine, but wasn’t sure if he had engaged a taxi. This was being checked with all the taxi companies at present. It would take some time.

  As to the victim’s belongings at the hotel, there was a suitcase and a camera. The suitcase was filled with the usual things required for a one-week trip. No money was found in it, and he hadn’t deposited any for safe-keeping at the hotel. This suggested he had all the money for the trip in his wallet when he went out, and it was taken by the killer. It was unthinkable a man going on his honeymoon would have been without any money.

  A search of the victim’s apartment didn’t yield much, Yoshioka said. The only valuables found in it were a savings bank book with a balance of 558,650 yen, and a life insurance policy for 1,500,000 yen. From the savings account 400,000 yen had been withdrawn a few days earlier. This seemed to be a reasonable amount to cover the cost of the wedding ceremony and the honeymoon trip.

  Listening to the inspector, Kirishima thought the money in the victim’s account was rather more than one would have expected. A thirty-year-old lecturer at a private uni­versity wouldn’t be earning very much. Many academics of this class had to supplement their income by teaching elsewhere in their spare time or by writing magazine ar­ticles for small fees. Even if Tsukamoto had been very careful with money during his bachelor years, it would have been difficult for him to save up nearly 1,000,000 yen by the age of thirty. This seemed to be a point worth looking into.

  Yoshioka said the beneficiary of the life insurance pol­icy was the victim’s elder brother. It had been taken out about two years ago. At that time the victim wouldn’t have known his bride. It would have been natural for him to make his brother the beneficiary.

  As expected, the detectives didn’t find any jewelry or share certificates in the apartment. There were quite a lot of books but no valuable collector’s items among them. And according to Koike, the victim’s lawyer, Tsukamoto had no real estate or any other property apart from his per­sonal effects and some copyrights.

  When finally Yoshioka came to the search of the area where the body had been found, he looked slightly uncomfortable. “So far we haven’t found a thing,” he said, “but we’re still looking.”

  This was the end of his report on the facts. He only stopped to light a cigarette before eagerly moving into the field of opinions and theories.

  “On the basis of what we have to date, I’m inclined to rule out money as a motive. The only two people to profit from Tsukamoto’s death are his wife and his brother. If he had been worth hundreds of millions of yen, then the position would be entirely different. But it’s unthinkable that for something like 1,000,000 yen she would’ve joined in a plot to marry him and
then get him murdered on the wedding night. Nor do I believe his brother would’ve killed him for an insurance of only 1,500,000 yen. Actually, Koike told me the brother had repeatedly asked the victim to change the policy, making his fiancee the beneficiary. And at the wake service last night, he told Ogata he intended to hand over the whole insurance money to the widow. He said this was the least he could do in compensation for all she had to endure.”

  Kirishima nodded a couple of times. When it came to inheritance, it wasn’t uncommon for relatives to start wrangling, but Tsukamoto’s brother was obviously a kind-hearted, unselfish man. No, inheritance seemed to have no bearing on this case.

  Yoshioka said, “I’ve no idea how much money he had in his wallet—it could’ve been anything between 50,000 and 100,000 yen, perhaps more. Whatever it was, it wasn’t nearly enough to make somebody want to murder him for it. I know there are quite a few examples of people getting knocked on the head for 10,000 yen or less, but in all such cases the attacker hoped for more, the victim being a stranger to him. Furthermore, these crimes are invariably committed by people of poor intelligence. But this time the killer was clever enough to lure the victim out of the hotel on his wedding night . . . I think the money was taken in an attempt to throw us off the scent.”

  Kirishima was impressed with the inspector’s reason­ing. The way he eliminated one unlikely motive after another revealed him as an experienced investigator of considerable common sense.

  “Well now,” Yoshioka said, “this brings us to the question of grudge. This could well be the motive we are looking for. And the person to come immediately to mind is Higuchi, Ogata’s junior partner. Being a lawyer, he’s sure to prove a difficult customer. He was away in Chiba yesterday, so today is my first opportunity to take a good look at him. But I can assure you, Mr. Prosecutor, I’ll be keeping an eye on him from now on . . . I also heard the victim had some connection with Kokoku Dojinkai, one of those right-wing extremist groups. My men are checking on this at the moment. The leader of the group, an old fellow called Kumagaya, has been away on a trip, I understand. There seems to be no reason for him to have any ill feeling toward the victim, though you never can tell with people like him . . . Besides Higuchi and Kumagaya, we’re looking at all the victim’s friends and his past relationships with women. We just might come across somebody with a secret grudge against him.”

  As he spoke, Yoshioka’s sun-tanned face beamed with vitality. Kirishima thought once this inspector had a clue in his claws, he’d hold on to it like a mud-crab.

  “The most baffling aspect of this case, Mr. Prosecutor, is the strange behavior of the victim himself. Imagine anybody being prepared to leave his bride in the middle of their wedding night!”

  “Agreed,” Kirishima said. “And there’s something else. Most newlyweds who spend their first night in a hotel won’t disclose where they’re staying to avoid teas­ing telephone calls. So the person who made this call must have been very close to the victim to know it. What d’you think?”

  “I’d go along with that, except for one thing. In his speech at the wedding reception Koike let the cat out of the bag by announcing the couple would spend the night at the New Tokyo Hotel and leave for Kyoto on the super-express the following morning. Yesterday he was eating his heart out over this slip of the tongue, but actually the victim’s honeymoon plans had been common knowledge days before the wedding. All his students—even his girl students—knew the name of the hotel, as we found out. They had been told by the victim himself. So we can’t narrow the field of suspects to those who at­tended the wedding reception. In any case, I’d say the killer could’ve easily obtained this information if he wanted to.”

  Yoshioka drew on his cigarette and blew out the smoke like a steam whistle. “Moreover, the switchboard attendant at the hotel told us that the caller—a male voice—hadn’t specified the number of the room but inquired if there was a Yoshihiro Tsukamoto staying there and then asked to be connected to his room. This again suggests we shouldn’t try to narrow the field too quickly, or we might miss the man we want, or end up with the wrong one.”

  Kirishima suppressed a smile. It was supposed to be the prosecutor’s duty to stop the police from jumping to conclusions. But now things seemed to be the other way around, he thought wryly.

  “Now, concerning this telephone call,” Yoshioka said, “I think there are three possibilities to consider. The first and most unlikely one is that the killer cleverly deceived the victim by impersonating somebody at the university. To do this he would’ve had to imitate not only the voice but also the speaking manner of that person. In addition, he would’ve had to dream up a situation at the university which would’ve looked sufficiently convincing to the vic­tim . . . No, that’s too much. It might have been possible for the killer to bring off such a stunt if the person to be imi­tated had been met by the victim only once or twice before. But to impersonate successfully someone who had been al­most in daily contact with him?” He slowly shook his head.

  “I think your argument is quite sound,” Kirishima said. “But we mustn’t discount the possibility that the killer is actually a member of the university staff.”

  “You mean, he used his name openly, and only lied about the exam papers? But Mr. Prosecutor, in that case there would’ve been every chance of Tsukamoto reveal­ing the caller’s name to his wife before leaving, don’t you think? How could the killer have taken such a risk?”

  “He might have calculated that nobody would believe he had made the call in his own name.”

  For a moment the inspector seemed to struggle to con­ceal his scorn at this idea, but then he bowed and said, “I follow. You want me to take a close look at people at the university who had been associated with the victim. I’ll certainly do that . . . Now, the second of the three possibilities is that Tsukamoto himself told his wife a lie. Personally, I think this is the most likely thing to have happened . . . The third is obvious.”

  “Mrs. Tsukamoto told us a lie. Is that it?”

  “Exactly. Supposing Mrs. Tsukamoto overheard the phone conversation, or the victim told her the caller’s name. And supposing the caller was someone she couldn’t put into police hands or someone she wouldn’t believe could commit murder. What then?”

  Kirishima drew a deep breath. Until now this frightful theory hadn’t occurred to him. What if Ogata had a reason to prevent this marriage at all costs? And what if he had learned of that reason as late as the day of the wedding, perhaps only at the reception? This would make a desperate act by him appear more feasible . . .

  Yoshioka lit another cigarette, and said, “As I’ve already suggested, the most probable alternative is that the victim himself told a lie. And if that was so, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume he had a secret known to the killer, who made clever use of it.”

  “Yes, this is logical enough . . . It may be too soon to guess at the secret, but if it did exist, then it’s not unthinkable the victim unknowingly set himself up for the murder by sneaking out somewhere during the night.”

  “Well,” Yoshioka said, “if we assume there was a secret, the killer could’ve made use of it in two different ways. Either he convinced the victim a sudden emergency had developed concerning his secret, or else he simply threatened to disclose the secret unless the victim did as he was told. But somehow I don’t think it was a threat.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s rare for a person threatened to be actu­ally murdered. The only case I can think of is when the victim plucks up enough courage to attack his black­mailer, and gets killed for it. But on this occasion the victim had been enjoying some of the happiest hours of his life. He was hardly in a mood to do something desperate regardless of the consequences.”

  “That’s true,” Kirishima said absently. “A lot would depend on the nature of the secret, I’d imagine . . .” He scratched the back of his head for a while, then sat up and
looked the inspector in the face. “Mr. Yoshioka, the various theories you’ve advanced are all interesting and logical. But before we go any further, I feel we should try to find an answer to a basic question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Assuming this was a premeditated murder, why did the killer choose that particular night?”

  “Hmm.” Yoshioka stared at Kirishima rather stupidly. The question seemed to have thrown him completely off balance.

  “Whether he was going to use a threat or some clever lie, he must have known it’d be pretty hard to lure a man out of bed in the middle of his wedding night. Further­more, he knew very well that on that night, of all nights, the bride would be very close to the victim most of the time.”

  “Quite so,” Yoshioka muttered. “If Mrs. Tsukamoto is telling the truth and she was in the bathroom when the call came through, well, that was a piece of luck the killer couldn’t have counted on.”

  “That’s right. Undoubtedly, he would’ve been ready with an excuse in case it was Mrs. Tsukamoto who took the call. Even so, if he was known to her, he still would’ve run the risk of being recognized by her.”

  “If only she’d been there when the victim answered that phone,” Yoshioka said wistfully. “Even if he only said two or three words, the tone of his voice might have suggested to her whether he was talking to a friend, a superior, stranger, or what.”

  “Let’s forget about the might-have-beens and try to look at this thing from the killer’s point of view, shall we?” Kirishima could hardly conceal his impatience. “Anyone planning to lure another man into a death trap would naturally try to make contact when he knew the other was alone. Who would want a witness to murder? Until the wedding day the victim was living on his own as a bachelor, so the killer had plenty of better and safer opportunities to carry out his crime. Why then did he choose the wedding night—a night when there was a ninety-nine-percent chance of the victim not being alone?”