The Lady Killer

by Masako Togawa

  There is a game called capping or tailing—he had heard it called both. One takes the last syllable of a word and starts the next word with the same syllable. Although it is a game for two, he played it with himself to pass the time. He began with the name Sobra and carried on from there. Playing this game of linking suddenly brought another linkage clearly before his mind. Of course he could not be proved guilty; he always had an alibi. The alibis linked onto each other, just as in his game.

  For example, whilst the cashier was being murdered in her room at Kinshicho on the fifth of November, he had been with Fusako Aikawa in her flat at Koenji on the other side of Tokyo. Even if he was suspected, apart from the scandal of sleeping with someone not his wife, he was safe; he had an alibi.

  And—linking again—while Fusako Aikawa was being murdered, he was with the art student. Admittedly, the two apartments had been much closer than in the previous case, but nonetheless he had certainly been in Asagaya with Mitsuko at the time. So he had a watertight alibi in each case.

  Watertight? But wasn’t there a fatal flaw?

  Fusako Aikawa, his alibi in the cashier’s murder, was dead. His alibi in that case was illusory. He looked out of the window, but these ominous feelings destroyed the beauty of the countryside.

  If asked where he had been on the night of the cashier’s murder, there was no one to support his evidence. Why had he not realized this before? He cursed himself for his foolish complacency.

  Viewed in this light, the two murders began to seem closely interwoven. Rather than two separate incidents, he was looking at a sequence of events.

  Had Fusako Aikawa been murdered for no other reason than to destroy his alibi? In the back of his head, he heard the mocking voice of the killer. What was the motive? Was he reading too much into it? Who stood to lose most from the death of Kimiko Tsuda?

  Someone was trying to frame him.

  The circle of his logic complete, he was now convinced that his theory was correct. The two murders had been committed in order to entrap him. He stirred in his seat and groaned; the foreigner looked up from his crossword for a moment, studying him dubiously before returning to his pastime.

  And if that was true…

  Then the murderer would strike again. To destroy his other alibi. By killing Mitsuko Kosugi. She was the last link in the chain.

  The in-flight announcement crackled over the loudspeakers, instructing the passengers to fasten their seat belts. Below, he could see the approaches to Haneda Airport. And he still could not understand why someone was trying to trap him.

  As soon as he was outside the terminal, he telephoned Mitsuko’s apartment at Asagaya. The hoarse voice of the receptionist told him that Mitsuko had gone home to her family for the holiday and would not be back before the fifteenth. He replaced the receiver and stood lost in thought for a while before taking a taxi back to the Toyo Hotel.

  3

  The narrow lane leading to Mitsuko Kosugi’s apartment was unlit and was bordered by fences weatherproofed with black tar. It was pitch dark, and visibility was not helped by a misty drizzle. Ichiro Honda pulled down his waterproof hat, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way down the alley. The stepping-stones were slightly raised above the black silt, and he had to tread carefully to avoid tripping.

  At the entrance, he peered over the fence. He could see a faint light glowing behind the curtains of Mitsuko’s room; she was in.

  Relieved, he opened the front door and went in. He opened the shoe compartment marked “Kosugi” and slipped in his low-heeled Guccis. There was a pair of lady’s brown pumps in there already.

  He went into the hall. The reception desk was dark and empty, just as Mitsuko had told him it would be at this hour. He turned and made his way down the broad corridor leading to her room.

  The corridor turned sharply to the left just before her door, forming a right angle like a carpenter’s square. So once he stood in front of her door, he was invisible from the rest of the passage. So nobody would see him or question him.

  From some nearby room, he could hear the muffled sounds of a television program. It was 11:30; someone was watching the midnight show. Upstairs, he could hear footsteps, but apart from these two sounds, the building was silent. He made his way stealthily down the passage.

  He reached her door and knocked, at first softly and then louder. There was no reply. He leaned on the door of the broom cupboard opposite her room and thought. Later, he remembered the sign “Broom Cupboard” lettered on the door.

  He tried her door, and just as in the case of his visit to the apartment in Koenji, it opened to his touch.

  He stepped in and shut the door behind him. Ahead of him was a small sink, and to the left a curtain strung on a wire shut off the main room.

  “Are you in?” he called, making his voice falter on purpose. But there was no reply. He began to feel a brooding sense of oppression. His chest felt tight; try as he might, he could not rid himself of the recollection of Fusako Aikawa’s death. Would he find Mitsuko Kosugi in there, naked… and dead?

  He put his hand on the curtain and paused to collect himself. He had a premonition that he was going to find a death within. He pulled the curtain aside forcefully.

  There was no one in the room.

  But there were signs that someone had been there until a few minutes ago.

  He went over and sat down in a swivel chair in front of the desk. He looked around the room. He had phoned her three hours earlier, as soon as she had returned from her holiday, and had suggested that he would meet her at 11:30. He had suggested meeting somewhere outside, but she was plainly overjoyed to receive his phone call and insisted that he come to her room.

  “I’ll toast—er—special New Year cakes for you.” She seemed unsure about making him understand the word mochi in English. He could hear her voice now as he observed the rice cakes wrapped in newspaper on the dining table. She must have slipped out to borrow some seasonings, he decided. He lit a cigarette and waited.

  Blowing smoke out into that small room, he examined his surroundings. Clearly an art student’s room, with its volumes of painters on the bookshelves, the canvases stacked against the wall. The closet was ajar, and he could see a red silk quilt stowed away inside. He had not slept with a woman for a month. Seeing the bedding, he felt his desire surging up within him. He yawned and rotated the chair around to face the other wall. The chair creaked noisily in the silent room.

  He was facing a walnut-veneered wardrobe with a mirror on the door. Unconsciously he gazed into the mirror. It reflected back, showing him a face with disordered hair; his complexion seemed stagnant in that dim light. It was not a healthy face.

  And then he saw a small length of maroon-colored silk caught in the wardrobe door and hanging down. Without thinking, he fingered his silk tie, which was not his maroon-colored favorite. Was there not something familiar about the color of that two-inch-long piece of silk? It looked exactly like his favorite tie.

  Leadenly, he pushed himself out of the chair and walked over to the wardrobe. He was in the presence of a mystery that he must solve. What was his tie doing in Mitsuko Kosugi’s room? He reached for the door handle, but his hand was unsteady and on the first pass he missed.

  He was hesitant about prying into someone else’s wardrobe without her permission. But, after all, he told himself, he was only checking—nothing wrong with that.

  Perhaps the wardrobe was new; he had difficulty in opening the door until he applied his weight. He pulled hard; the hinge grated, the door opened, and…

  The dead body of Mitsuko Kosugi rolled out, leaning on his body.

  By reflex action, he warded her off, pushing her back, feeling the warmth that was still in her flesh. He could smell the scent of her hair, but more pervasive still was the same scent, half sweet, half sour, that he had smelled in Fusako Aikawa’s room.

  Turning his head aside in horror, he pushed the body back into the wardrobe and shut the door upon it. His hands w
ere trembling, his body suffused with a deathly chill; he could hardly breathe. His body seemed to have solidified where he stood.

  “Oh monstrous! Monstrous!” he groaned. He could still feel the touch of the woman’s inelastic skin under his fingertips. He rubbed his hand on his trousers as if to wipe the sensation away.

  The corpse was in a kneeling position, the better to fit into the wardrobe, its hands hanging loosely by its sides. And around its throat was his tie! He wanted to scream, but his voice was frozen in his mouth.

  He went back to the chair and sat down. His whole body shuddered with fear and anger admixed. What was he to do? He lit a cigarette and reached for the ashtray, the Pavlovian actions of a man deep in thought.

  Should he call the police? Or the manager of the apartment? To be involved in such a case would mean social ruin. But if he just ran away, what about the tie of his, knotted about her neck? Whatever else he did he must recover that tie first.

  It was hanging in my wardrobe in Yotsuya. Who brought it here? Who tied it around her throat? he thought, anger welling up within him. And then: It’s deliberate. It’s another trap. How could he escape the jaws of this trap?

  He did not stop to think that, the more he tried to escape it, the tighter it would grip him.

  He went back to the wardrobe and opened the door. This time, Mitsuko Kosugi’s body did not roll out. Her head hung loosely on her neck. Her hands were limp by her side. Her hair was in disarray. It was exactly as it had been when he had pushed her back inside the wardrobe.

  Fighting back his nausea, he reached down and loosened the tie, which was biting into her throat. It had been knotted very tightly; as he removed it, he could clearly see the livid marks of strangulation. He folded the tie, put it in his pocket, and shut the wardrobe door on the corpse.

  He went over to the door. Before passing through the curtain, he looked back to see that he had forgotten nothing, stepped out, and his hand on the doorknob, looked back again. He could see nothing; he touched his hand to his head, verifying that he was wearing his hat, and, satisfied, turned to open the door.

  It wouldn’t open!

  The blood rushed to his head, and he nearly fainted. But of course it would open; he had walked through that selfsame door a few minutes earlier, had he not? It must be stiff. He gripped the handle firmly, twisted it and pushed against the door with all his might. Apart from the creak of a budging screw, there was no reaction.

  The door was locked.

  He stooped and peered through the keyhole. The naked bulb outside shone on the wall and the door opposite—nothing else. Nobody. He gave up and went back into the room.

  “Why is it locked? Why is it locked?” he kept asking himself. He crouched on the floor like a trapped animal overcome by the exhaustion of its struggles. He looked up and saw the window.

  That was his route of escape.

  Outside, the horn of an automobile sounded, jarring on his nerves. The squeal of brakes, the footsteps upstairs, the drone of the television set, the faint sound of music—all of these seemed to grate upon his nerves. Remote as these sounds were, they seemed to be coming closer. The walls and floor of the room seemed to be closing in on him, and everything all of a sudden became colorless. He must escape!

  He moved over to the window and touched the curtain before he realized that he might be seen. He went back and switched off the light, noticing irrelevantly the dust upon its shade. Creeping through the darkness, he opened the window.

  There was nobody outside.

  He climbed out in his stocking feet and carefully closed the window, taking care to make no noise. He felt the damp and slippery ground chilling the soles of his feet.

  He went around to the entrance, peeped inside and opened the door stealthily. He made sure that he was unobserved and then opened the shoe box marked “Kosugi.” He reached inside.

  His shoes were gone!

  He was absolutely certain that he had put them in that box. What on earth could have happened? He fumbled inside; the pumps were still there, but not his shoes. Fear ran up and down his spine as he feverishly opened the boxes above and below and on either side. But his shoes were nowhere to be found.

  He heard a door open suddenly somewhere on the ground floor and leaped backward. The duckboard slid under his feet, emitting a scratching sound. He forgot about his shoes and ran out into the alleyway, stubbing his toe hard on a stepping-stone as he ran. The pain was agonizing, but he hobbled on as fast as he could, got to the main road and stopped a taxi. Fortunately the driver did not seem to notice that he was shoeless.

  He told the man to drive to Yotsuya Sanchome and lay in the back, pressing his forehead against the cool glass of the window. He was overcome with despair. Somewhere in the dark he heard a siren; had they discovered the body already? Had the police been called?

  He felt as if he was being pursued and slumped down in the seat. The driver slowed down; the siren came closer and closer, overtaking them with a burst of headlights into the taxi.

  “Fire somewhere,” said the driver, and Honda looked up and was relieved to see a fire engine and not a police car.

  He got off some distance before the Meikei-so. It would not do to have the driver remember his destination; he was becoming cautious.

  As a result, he had to walk the hundred yards or so of asphalt road to his apartment in his socks, which became soaking wet. Also, his big toe was throbbing, and the pain made it hard to walk. When he got into his room, he took off the muddy socks, one of them bloodstained, and discovered that he had broken the nail of his toe halfway down. He wrapped his foot in a handkerchief and massaged his toe.

  He had to check his tie in the wardrobe. He pulled the tie out of his pocket, looked at it, and hurled it to the ground as if it had turned into a poisonous snake. For there were initials sewn into it, and they were his.

  Hoping for the one-in-a-million chance that would prove him wrong, he went to the wardrobe and opened it. Perhaps his tie was there and this one belonged to someone else with the same initials… He felt a searing pain in his left cheek and sprang back. It felt as if a red-hot skewer had struck him. For a moment he had a blackout, and then he touched his cheek; it was covered with blood. He looked down on the ground; at his feet was a thin blade attached to a length of bamboo. The wardrobe had been booby-trapped.

  Ten or so ties swung mockingly on the rail inside the door, but his maroon tie was not amongst them. His eyes filled with tears; the pain and the torment had made a crybaby out of Don Juan. Pressing his hand to his cheek, he staggered over to the desk. His hunter’s diary, which he always kept under a paperweight on the top, was gone!

  He lay face down on the bed. When, after a few minutes, he rolled over, for an awful instant he could not see.

  4

  Early in the morning of January 25, ten days after he had fled Mitsuko Kosugi’s room, Ichiro Honda was arrested for murder. The police came to room 305 in the Toyo Hotel and took him away.

  The police had been able to trace the man calling himself Sobra through the handmade Italian shoes that had been left at the scene of the crime. They had been a special order, so tracing their owner was a simple matter. This had never occurred to him, nor had he thought in the meantime of going to the police and explaining what had happened.

  Since the murder, he had taken no initiative but had just waited to see what would happen. He was like an insect that has lost its wings. About the only thing he did was visit the Meikei-so three days after the murder. He was worried that the taxi driver might have remembered the Meikei-so, but this turned out to be the least of his worries. For when he entered his room, he noticed that someone had taken away the bamboo with the blade in it, which he had put in the corner. This not unnaturally stunned him. But he carried on as he had intended; he packed all his belongings into a bag and informed the manager that he was moving out and wished to settle the balance of the rent.

  He roped up the bag, addressed it to his father’s house in Kagosh
ima, and sent it by rail.

  Each day on his way to work, he would follow the case in the papers. The police were hunting for Sobra; well and good—they could never identify him as being Sobra. His main fear was that he might somehow come to be embroiled in the case; he feared the resulting scandal. However, he reassured himself that this could not possibly happen.

  In the evenings he hardly ever went out anymore. He killed time lying on his bed in his room, waiting for things to blow over. But when he slept, he had nightmares; he dreamed that he was being crushed by heavy weights and woke up shouting and in a cold sweat.

  He followed the progress of the investigation as well as he could by buying all the papers and listening to the radio whenever he got the chance. The newspapers reported that the same criminal had been responsible for all of the murders. On about the twenty-third he watched a TV program featuring the officer in charge of the case, a man with thinning hair and a distrustful look in his eyes. Little did he think that within a few days he would be facing this man across the interrogation table. The policeman said that the criminal had left a vital clue on the scene and that his arrest was only a matter of time. Maybe not tomorrow, but the day after, or else the day after that. Tomorrow never comes, thought Honda scornfully.

  However, the day came when he was awakened by knocking at his bedroom door and opened it to admit three men, one of them holding a warrant for his arrest. They seized him and handcuffed him like an animal and bundled him into a car.

  Seated in the car as it sped toward police headquarters, a policeman on either side gripping him tightly by the arms, he looked back with nostalgia to the morning of the fifth of November when he had been awakened by somebody in slippers walking down the corridor outside. That was the day of the first murder, when his luck had begun to run out. What had become of the beautiful freedom that he had once so enjoyed?