The Hell Screen - [Sugawara Akitada 02]

by I. J. Parker

  “Could she have been angry with you for rejecting her advances?”

  Kojiro nodded. “She may have been. At the time I said some things to her that I regret now, but I meant to shock her into having more sense.”

  “Do you think she could have found another lover?”

  He shook his head. “I have wondered, but don’t see how. My brother never entertained, and the only men who came to his house were clients who never met his wife.”

  “What about her life before her marriage? Were there any men in it?”

  Kojiro shook his head helplessly. “I know only what she or my brother told me about her family life. Her father is a retired scholar. He moved to Kohata after his wife’s death. Nobuko was raised in the country, but she received a good education from her father. From what she said, I gathered that her life must have been entertaining. They had celebrations on all the festival days, sometimes with singers and musicians, and her father encouraged her to ride and took her with him on hunting trips. I always thought that she must be dreadfully bored in my brother’s house.”

  Akitada pulled his earlobe and pondered. “Surely your brother showed her the famous sites of the capital? Or took her to the palace for horse races, and to temples for the festival dances and play performances?”

  “No. My brother used to take an interest in theater in his younger years, but lately he considered public entertainments unsuitable for a man in his position and he would never have taken his wife. I thought she had settled for children and a quiet family life.” He flushed a little.

  “There were some actors staying at the temple where she died. Uemon’s Players, they called themselves. It may not mean anything, but I knew of your brother’s interest and now you tell me your sister-in-law also may have met such performers.”

  Kojiro looked blank. “I did not see them and know nothing of this.”

  In the hallway outside the cell, steps and voices approached, followed by the grating of a key in the door. It opened and Kobe stepped in. Kojiro rose, his mouth set and his face expressionless.

  Kobe nodded to him and turned to Akitada. “They told me you were here. Does Kojiro know?”

  “I only told him what I knew. Was the report correct?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Sorry, Kojiro. Your brother was found bludgeoned to death near the southern highway. You have my sympathy.”

  The prisoner looked down at his shackled hands. They were clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed white against the sun-darkened skin. “Thank you, Superintendent,” he said tonelessly. “I can only hope it was not my arrest and imprisonment which caused my poor brother to undertake this tragic journey.” He grimaced, then looked up at Kobe. “I don’t suppose you would let me out to find the bastards who killed him?”

  “You know I cannot do that. There is still a murder charge against you.”

  Akitada said, “All the evidence we have points away from Kojiro and to someone else. Now that Nagaoka himself has been killed—and Kojiro certainly could not have done that—is it not likely that the two murders are connected?”

  “Why? From all accounts, the man carried money, which has disappeared. He must have been set on by bandits.”

  Akitada sighed and rose. It was all too likely. “How is it that you are back so early?” he asked.

  “I met my sergeant at the city gate. He was bringing back the body. I suppose you would like to see it for yourself ?”

  “Yes.” Akitada turned to Kojiro. “I promise to do my best to find who is responsible for this. I liked your brother, you know. His knowledge of the antique trade was admirable, and he had great affection for you.”

  Kojiro struggled to his feet. “I know. Thank you,” he said with a bow.

  * * * *

  Akitada and Kobe crossed the prison courtyard to the same small building which had held the corpse of Nagaoka’s wife only a month earlier.

  Nagaoka lay in much the same spot. He, too, had suffered dreadful wounds to the head, but his thin, sharp features were untouched and looked strangely noble in death. He wore the clothes the servant had described, but there was something odd about the way the body lay, and Akitada stared for a moment before he realized what bothered him.

  “Are his legs broken?”

  Kobe looked, then bent to manipulate one of them. “No.”

  Behind them the door opened, admitting Dr. Masayoshi, the coroner.

  “A new case?” He came forward and stared at Akitada. “You again? Do you make a habit of visiting the dead?”

  “And a good day to you, Doctor.” Akitada made him a tiny bow, which the coroner returned in the same deliberately rude manner. Akitada pointed. “What is wrong with this man’s feet?”

  Masayoshi looked at the corpse, briefly felt one of the legs, then grinned. “Your little joke, my lord? Forgive me, but it was rather puerile even for you.”

  Akitada stared, then flushed at the insult. Controlling his fury with an effort, he walked to the body and jerked off one of the boots. Nothing at all was wrong with Nagaoka’s leg. His boots had been put on the wrong feet. Akitada’s eyes flew to Masayoshi’s face and caught the moment the coroner realized that it had not been a joke after all, but a mistake. Masayoshi’s eyebrows rose mockingly.

  Akitada was tempted to wipe the sneer off the man’s face, but he clenched his fists and turned his back abruptly on the grinning coroner. He told Kobe, “Did your men do this?”

  But they had not, and it changed everything. Even Kobe could not see bandits taking off their victim’s boots and then replacing them.

  Kobe scratched his head. He removed the other boot and looked at Nagaoka’s feet. They wore clean white socks. “Strange!” he muttered. “I thought they might have tortured him. Maybe they tried on his boots and they didn’t fit.”

  “Nonsense! They would not have bothered to put them back.”

  Masayoshi had knelt to examine the head wound, probing it gently with his fingers. He was pursing his lips. Moving forward, he lifted the dead man’s eyelids and then smelled his mouth. He got to his feet with a satisfied grunt. “Even stranger than the boots,” he said, “is the fact that this man died from poison.”

  “Poison!” yelled Kobe. “How poison? Even an idiot can see he’s been clubbed to death. Why poison him, too? Are you mad?”

  Grinning, Masayoshi folded his arms across his small paunch and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Not at all.” He chuckled. “I must say, you present me with the most interesting cases, Superintendent,” he said appreciatively. “But actually you got it backward. He was poisoned first and clubbed afterward. You notice that there is very little blood in the wound. Dead men don’t bleed, you see.”

  Silence greeted his explanation.

  Much as he detested Masayoshi’s manner, Akitada did not question his professional expertise. In fact, he should have seen the lack of blood himself. He asked brusquely, “Can you tell when he died? And how much later the head wounds were inflicted?”

  Masayoshi became businesslike. He returned to the body, flexing its limbs and joints down to the fingers and toes, then pulled apart the clothing to study Nagaoka’s torso and poke his thin belly. Finally he pinched the skin in a few places. Straightening up, he said, “Hard to tell. Depends on whether he was left lying around outside or inside near a fire. He’s been frozen, of course, so he was outside at least part of the time and probably all of it. My guess would be several days. The head injury happened shortly after death, probably while the body was still slightly warm. There are some residual traces of bleeding in the wounds.”

  “Several days! That’s not much help for the time of murder,” exploded Kobe. “What about the poison? How soon before he died did he take it?”

  “Ah. That is even more difficult. Some poisons work quickly and some are quite slow. And we do not know how much he consumed. He may have lasted a few heartbeats, or taken a whole day and night to die, or even several days. I cannot be certain what he took until I dissect him and ma
ke certain tests. These, as you will hardly wish to spare any of your prisoners, will involve rats, whose tolerance for poison is different from that of humans. Still, we’ll know if it was quick, and may be able to guess at what it was. Though I have an idea about that.”

  “Which is?” demanded Kobe.

  “No, Superintendent! You must wait. I don’t enjoy making a fool of myself and avoid it at all costs.” His eyes slid to Akitada, and he smirked.

  Akitada bit his lip. “Well,” he challenged Kobe, “either way, it eliminates highway robbery as a motive. Poisoning a man requires thought and selection. It is not random. Are you ready to admit that you made a mistake about Kojiro?”

  “Certainly not. This does not clear him of the other charges.”

  “Your people should not have moved the body. The killer may have left clues to his identity. Footprints, for example.”

  “I know.” Kobe cursed. “It looked like a robbery. The money was gone, along with his horse. He was lying by the road. And my sergeant was so pleased with himself for identifying the missing Nagaoka that he decided to bring him back here for us to see. I’ll have his balls for this and fry them in oil. How’s Tora, by the way?”

  Akitada suppressed a chuckle. “Seimei thinks he will do well.” Suddenly and perversely he felt a great deal better about the Nagaoka case. “Shall we go take a look at the scene while your capable coroner does his job?” he suggested, with a smile and bow toward Masayoshi, who looked at him in blank astonishment.

  Kobe cursed again. “I suppose wed better. Before it gets dark.”

  * * * *

  Dusk fell early, before they were well out of the city. It was bitterly cold. A sharp northerly wind pushed them onward and brought heavy dark clouds on their train. Kobe muttered something about the failing light, but Akitada would not turn back. The smell of snow was in the air, and he was afraid all tracks would disappear if they waited for the next day.

  So they rushed on at a gallop, on horses requisitioned for government business, followed by the cowed sergeant and six mounted constables.

  It was difficult to talk over the sound of the horses’ hooves and the gusts of wind, and for a while they simply covered ground. Soon the horses were steaming; flecks of foam from their muzzles flew back past the riders.

  To the right and left of the raised highway, fallow rice fields and withered plantings of soybeans stretched into the murky distance. A few small farms huddled under dark groves of trees, like birds gone undercover from the freezing cold.

  It began to snow when they were about halfway. The low dark clouds had steadily caught up with them, moving faster and lower, and when the first flakes materialized in the cold air, they stung their cold faces like pins and dusted their clothes and the horses’ manes.

  The sergeant pulled up beside Akitada, perhaps to avoid catching more of Kobe’s wrath. He was eager to make up for his mistake and scanned the distance anxiously. “See that line of pine trees up ahead?” he shouted, pointing at a shadowy bank of darkness in the general murk. “That’s a canal. It crosses the road. About a mile after that is the turnoff.”

  Minutes later they passed over the small bridge and turned down a narrower track.

  “Where does this road lead, Sergeant?” Akitada asked.

  “To a village called Fushimi.”

  The name was familiar. “Isn’t that where Kojiro’s farm is?”

  “Yes, sir. Though it’s a pretty large place, actually.”

  Well, Nagaoka had said that his brother’s hard work had made his farm prosper. Akitada had a strong desire to see for himself. Since it was not far from where Nagaoka had been found, he thought Kobe might accept the need for a visit.

  Eventually the narrow road cut through a forest of pines and leafless trees, and the sergeant called out to slow down. They came to a place where the ground was churned up by the hooves of horses and boots of men, and stopped. The sergeant pointed. “He was right over there! Against that rock!”

  The sergeant, Kobe, and Akitada dismounted. Akitada cast a hopeless glance around. Those who had found the dead man, and those who had come later to get him, surely had destroyed any tracks left by his killers.

  But when they reached the rock, the sergeant pointed out hoof marks in the soft ground. “They brought him on a horse,” he said. “We came on foot and carried him back to the highway.”

  “ ‘They’?” Akitada crouched to stare at the indentations. His heart started beating rapidly. “A single horse! Perhaps his own? And whoever brought him took it away again. Could a single person manage? One man ... or woman?”

  The sergeant glanced back at the waiting constables on the road. “His companions may have stayed on the road.”

  “Not likely under the circumstances, Sergeant,” snapped Kobe. “He was poisoned. I hardly think the murderer would bring along an escort while disposing of the body.”

  The sergeant flushed. “The body was sort of flung down,” he said to Akitada, “not laid flat or sat up or anything. I suppose a strong woman, if she had a dead man draped over the saddle of a horse, could pull him off. A man, definitely. Getting him on is a bigger problem.”

  They all crouched, studying the prints, but there were too many to make sense of. Akitada gave up first and followed the hoofprints away from the rock. The tracks slanted toward the road more or less along the same line on which they had arrived, and rejoined the tightly packed dirt track about fifty feet from the rock. The horse’s hooves had left clear marks in the moist earth of the grassy verge. To Akitada’s eye, the impressions looked the same both coming and going. “Come here, Sergeant,” he called. “Have a look at this. All the hoofprints are the same depth. Yet we know that, coming, the horse carried the body. That means the person who brought the body must have led the horse to the rock, and then ridden back to the road. Do you agree?”

  The sergeant nodded eagerly. “You are right, sir. Let’s look for his footprints here.”

  Akitada turned to Kobe, who had come up. “There was only one horse,” he said. “And only a single individual leading it. This individual lives within walking distance from here.”

  Kobe glanced down the road where it disappeared among the trees in a haze of blowing snow. He scowled. “How far is the brother’s place?” he snapped at the sergeant.

  The man flinched. “A couple of miles, sir. I can’t make out any footprints, except in this place here.”

  In the growing darkness, they gathered and peered at a shallow impression. “Maybe a boot, not big, but not a woman’s, either,” guessed Kobe. Nobody could improve on this, and after another look around they gave up. The light was failing rapidly, and the snow fell more thickly.

  “Let’s go to Kojiro’s farm,” said Akitada, swinging back in the saddle. “The weather is worsening and we will probably have to seek shelter anyway.”

  Kobe scowled at the sky, but he nodded with a grunt, and the small cavalcade set out again.

  They reached their destination just before it became necessary to light their lanterns. To Akitada’s amazement, Kojiro’s property was a manor house in a compound of buildings which was larger than his own in the capital. The entire compound was walled and had an imposing roofed gate.

  “Are you sure we have the right place?” Akitada asked the sergeant. “This looks like some nobleman’s estate.”

  The sergeant assured him that there was no mistake and applied the wooden clapper to the bell.

  Kobe joined Akitada. “What do you make of this?” he asked, clearly thunderstruck. “The man acts like the merest peasant. If he has this much wealth, why didn’t he make an outcry? Where are all his wealthy friends? Or the poor officials who would gladly put in a good word for him for a small present?”

  Akitada was completely out of his depth. “Perhaps he just does not have any connections and friends. Or maybe he does not believe in bribes.”

  Kobe was snorting his derision when the gate opened on oiled hinges.

  A boy of ten or elev
en stood there, holding up a lantern and looking at them. Behind him an elderly man in a simple cotton robe came hobbling up, leaning on a stick. The wide courtyard was neat in the light of torches fixed to the walls of the manor house before them.

  “You are welcome,” the old one said, a little out of breath. “I suppose you need lodging for the night?”

  Akitada glanced up at the sky, which was nearly black and filled with swirling, dancing snowflakes. “Yes, thank you for your hospitality. The weather caught us unprepared. We are from the capital, investigating a murder which happened nearby. This is Police Superintendent Kobe with his men, and I am Sugawara Akitada.”

  It was doubtful if the old man took in Akitada’s name, but when he heard Kobe introduced, his expression changed, and his eyes became fixed on the superintendent. “Are you the one that’s put my master in jail?” he asked, suddenly belligerent.