Three Tales of Love and Murder (Akitada Stories)

  THREE TALES

  OF

  LOVE AND MURDER

  by

  I. J. Parker

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Pronunciation of Japanese Words

  Introduction

  Death and Cherry Blossoms

  The Incense Murders

  Instruments of Murder

  Bonus Chapter: from THE HELL SCREEN

  About the Author

  Also by I. J. Parker

  Copyright 2012 by I. J. Parker

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission of the author or publisher.

  Edition: February 2012

  Pronunciation of Japanese Words

  Unlike English, Japanese is pronounced phonetically. Therefore vowel sounds are approximately as follows:

  “a” as in “father”

  “e” as in “let”

  “i” as in “kin”

  “o” as in “more”

  “u” as in “would.”

  Double consonants (“ai” or “ei”) are pronounced separately, and o or u are doubled or lengthened.

  As for the consonants:

  “g” as in “game”

  “j” as in “join”

  “ch” as in “chat”.

  Introduction

  THE THREE STORIES in this book have all appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. They have long been out of print and I have had many requests from readers to make them once again available. I have recently released AKITADA AND THE WAY OF JUSTICE, a collection of eleven of the stories and am working to release all of them individually or in smaller collections. Two of the stories are also in the general collection. The third, “Death and Cherry Blossoms”, appears here for the first time again after many years.

  The reason for combining them under a single topic was that these stories illustrate how the human passions related to love can lead to violence against women. In each of the stories, it is a woman who suffers either death or abuse. Historically, Japanese culture has left women especially vulnerable and helpless.

  Sugawara Akitada, a young official in the imperial government, becomes involved in their stories, as do several other characters familiar from the novels. While Akitada is the sleuth in each case, the others have significant roles also. In the first story, Akitada is still very young and holds a subordinate position in the Ministry of Justice. Minister Soga, his immediate superior, is a man who has an almost irrational dislike for Akitada and tries his best to ruin his career. In the second story, there is Akitada’s mother. Lady Sugawara is sharp-tongued, ambitious, demanding, and harshly critical of Akitada whom she considers a failure. Next we meet Tora, his loyal friend and servant, a former highwayman with little respect for the nobility and an eye for pretty women.

  The other characters are typical for the times and culture in and around Kyoto: noblemen and noblewomen; their household staff; artisans and tradesmen; courtesans and the servants of the law. The pursuits of the time are illustrated in Akitada’s flute playing, his cousin’s practicing the incense cult, young lovers exchanging poems, the celebration of the cherry blossoms, ancestor worship, wrestlers vying for prizes, pharmacists treating the sick with strange remedies, and sword smiths practicing their honored craft.

  And now to the stories.

  I. J. Parker

  January, 2012

  Death and Cherry Blossoms

  Heian-Kyo (Kyoto): during the Flowery Month (May), 11th century.

  IN the courtyards of the imperial palaces, cherry trees bloomed and nightingales sang, as beautiful court ladies and handsome courtiers wrote passionate verses to each other.

  Just beyond the palace walls, the business of the government took precedence over the amusements of spring and young love. Akitada, junior clerk in the Ministry of Justice, toiled away in semi-darkness among the dull dossiers of ancient court cases. A punitive assignment this, because he had once again disobeyed and meddled in a criminal investigation when his proper sphere was estate law.

  But on this day his dusty labors were interrupted by a summons from the minister himself, a summons which was about to catapult him once again into murder.

  The minister, Soga Ietada, a fat man with bushy hair and brows, preferred the cultivated pleasures of aristocratic life to his civil service duties. He particularly resented young trouble-makers like Akitada, whose ancient family and top honors at the university had earned him a post in his ministry.

  Knowing this, Akitada’s hands were clammy when he entered the great man’s office. As he knelt and bowed deeply, he wondered what new offense had been discovered and what additional punishment awaited him.

  “Sugawara,” Soga said, “I am sending you into the country with some legal documents to witness the principals’ signatures. You are to leave immediately.”

  “Yes, your Honor. Where am I going?”

  “To Kiyowara’s summer villa on the Katsura river. His daughter is marrying Lord Kose’s son. You will take the settlement papers to them.”

  Kiyowara Toyashi was the minister’s close friend and an imperial counselor of the junior fourth rank. Meeting him was an intimidating prospect for someone as young as Akitada. But it was offset by the trip to the Katsura river in springtime! Akitada’s face lit up.

  Soga regarded him sourly. “Remember, this is strictly business. Watch your manners. I don’t want to hear any more complaints about you. And change into something decent. You look positively grimy. You own a horse, I trust?”

  “Yes, your Honor.” Akitada did not, but he would rent one. Brushing at the dust on his threadbare robe, he asked, “Are there any instructions about the settlements?”

  “No. You will do precisely as Lord Kiyowara tells you. You may leave.”

  The cherry trees surrounding the pavilions, galleries, and courtyards of Kiyowara’s villa were in full, snowy bloom, gilded now by the setting sun. Here, too, the nightingales sang, mingling their notes with the tranquil sound of the slow-moving river beyond the garden.

  Once the legal business was completed, Lord Kiyowara invited Akitada to spend the night before returning to the capital. Since he had been instructed to do as Kiyowara suggested, Akitada stayed, attending a festive banquet that evening. After a sumptuous feast, Kiyowara and his guests took turns at some extemporaneous verses in praise of marriage and cherry blossoms.

  This threw Akitada into a schoolboy’s panic. High honors at the university and employment in the ministry had not helped him compose romantic poetry, a grave fault in an age which valued such things more than learning or character. To make matters worse, his host’s brother, already half drunk, had recited some highly salacious verses about the bride’s physical charms just before it was Akitada’s turn. Still flushing to the roots of his hair, Akitada was unable to think of some passable lines, when the first scream shattered the evening calm.

  Beyond the open doors of the banquet room lay the gardens and the women’s quarters. The screaming came from there, a steady stream of “aiiihhs,” gathering other voices to gain in volume, like a fire on a dry straw roof.

  The six men jumped to their feet, momentarily speechless. Across the gardens the screams died into a buzz of excited women’s voices.

  “What happened?” cried Kose Masanobu, the bridegroom.

  Lord Kiyowara frowned and clapped his hands for a servant. “Please do not concern yourselves, gen
tlemen. The women are easily frightened by mice in the country. No doubt it was just a silly maid. Please forgive the interruption.”

  The groom’s father, the wealthy Kose Yoshiari, looked dubious. “We had better go and see that everything is all right.”

  “Ah, I see what worries you,” said their host, smiling at young Masanobu. “Come along. It will not amount to much, but by all means reassure yourselves of her safety.”

  Perhaps the invitation was only for the Koses, father and son, but the other two members of the party, the host’s brother Tadahira, and the family tutor Akimitsu, trailed along.

  Akitada, the only real outsider, hesitated, then followed also.

  In the garden, the blossoming branches hung ghostlike in the gathering dusk, their whiteness a mysterious veil against the encroaching night.

  When they reached the bamboo gate to the women’s quarters, a male servant shot through. “My Lord,” he gasped, sliding to his knees before Kiyowara, “The Lady Umeko has killed herself.”

  The Lady Umeko was Kiyowara’s daughter and Masanobu’s intended bride.

  Kiyowara roughly pushed the servant out of his way and rushed toward the nearest pavilion. A group of sobbing maids clustered around the open door on the veranda.

  Following with the others, Akitada smelled it first. Blood—the scent of death: cloying, sickening, hot, unmistakable. His stomach lurched.

  The maids moved aside so they could see into the room. A single large candle was burning in a tall stand. Under it, on a thick grass mat, lay the young woman. She wore a beautiful gown of many-layered silks in shades of pink, rose, and soft green, and her long glossy hair made black ripples and waves across the voluminous pale folds. But her life’s blood had poured from the slashed throat and formed another, more horrible, pattern in crimson across her chest and the front of her skirt. She had fallen on her left side, her legs drawn up a little because she had been kneeling. Incongruously, a silver mirror and ivory comb lay near her, as if she had been rearranging her hair.

  Akitada felt a great surge of pity for the young woman, soon to have been a bride. Beside him, Masanobu suddenly turned away retching. His father went to help him.

  The dead girl’s father stood frozen in stunned disbelief. “Umeko,” he whispered. “Oh, no! It cannot be.” Turning away abruptly, he came face to face with Akitada.

  “I am deeply sorry, my Lord,” Akitada said nervously. Seeing the older man’s blank look of shock, he offered, “Would you allow me to make certain she is … beyond help?”

  Covering his face, Kiyowara nodded.

  Akitada stepped into the room gingerly. So much blood! It had splashed widely, drenching mirror, make-up boxes, and painted screens with its crimson surge. It covered the front of the young woman’s gown and her sleeves, and it had soaked into the grass mat on which she lay, turning its pale green fibers the color of maple leaves in autumn.

  Akitada knelt beside the young woman to touch her cheek. She was still faintly warm, and the blood still flowed, very slowly, from the gaping wound just beneath her chin. Moving his fingers below her ear, he could feel no pulse. The wound looked horribly like another mouth, vomiting forth life. She had been pretty, this young bride of eighteen, in the way that young women of ordinary appearance suddenly become quite lovely at that age. Akitada glanced around the luxurious room and then out at her stricken father who still averted his face.

  “I am very sorry, my Lord,” he said rising. “The Lady Umeko is dead.”

  Kiyowara turned a ravaged face toward him. “Oh my poor child! How could this happen? She was to be married this very night.”

  “Look for yourself, my Lord,” Akitada said. Reluctantly, the father approached and Akitada pointed to the young woman’s right hand.

  It lay flung out, partly covered by the long, blood-stained sleeve of her gown. The fingers curled loosely around the handle of a razor, the type women use to shave their eyebrows and hairline. The blade was covered with blood.

  Kiyowara gave a half-choking cry, then turned abruptly and ran. A soft murmur passed through the women gathered outside. The two Koses followed, the father supporting the son, and Kiyowara’s brother stumbled drunkenly after them.

  Only the tutor remained, kneeling at the edge of the veranda, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with sobs. Akitada went to him, touching the young man’s arm. He started to his feet, groaned, and staggered away.

  Akitada had seen violent death before. It always moved him profoundly. But always the emotional shock passed into something else, a need to acknowledge the victim’s life by knowing fully the circumstances of the death. He turned now to look again at the scene of this tragic suicide, wondering why a beautiful young woman on the threshold of a full and privileged life would turn her face toward darkness.

  The contrast between the dainty furnishings and the gory scene was painful. The sliding doors to the veranda and the small private garden stood wide open. Outside, one of the flowering cherries reached its laden branches over bamboo fencing, and in an alcove stood more flowering branches in a large jar. The candlelight turned the white blossoms faintly golden, but outside, in the falling darkness, the splendor had faded into an insubstantial haze.

  The poetess Komachi, in her old age, had written, “The cherry blossoms have passed away, their color gone; age takes my beauty as it fades in the long rain of my regrets.” Lady Umeko would never lose her youth now. Even before she had lived it, her life had become too sad to bear.

  Akitada looked for that life in the room of painted screens, stacked lacquer clothes chests, musical instruments, dainty porcelain dishes, inlaid writing boxes, carved brush containers, rolled scrolls of illustrated novels and poetry collections, and gilded make-up cases. And he marveled again that, in the midst of her youth and hours before her marriage to a handsome and wealthy young man, in this pampered comfort of her pretty room and dressed in her loveliest gown, yes, at the very moment when she was combing her hair and looking into her mirror, she should have come to this desperate decision to end her life. It was inexplicable.

  His eye came to rest on the toppled mirror. Blood, spurting from the severed neck arteries, had covered its entire polished silver surface. On the crimson ground lay the lovely ivory comb. Ancient symbols of marital harmony, a pair of mandarin ducks, swimming among reeds, decorated its spine. A marriage gift from Masanobu? How futile its auspicious message seemed now! Not one drop of her blood marred its pale perfection.

  One of the poignant symbols of this senseless death, the comb made Akitada vaguely uneasy. It hinted at something else, something requiring a more detached and analytical explanation. And suddenly Akitada knew what was wrong. If she had laid down her comb to take up the razor, the comb should be covered with blood. This was no suicide. No, someone else had stepped behind her as she was combing her hair and had slit her throat. This person had then removed the comb from her lifeless hand and replaced it with the razor, tossing the comb carelessly on the bloody mirror. It had been a cold-blooded murder!

  Outside some frightened maidservants still hovered. He asked, “Who was Lady Umeko’s maid?”

  They ran away, but one young woman came forward and knelt, touching her head to the floor. “This insignificant person is called Otori,” she said.

  “Did you find your mistress like this, Otori?”

  The girl’s eyes were wide with horror. “Yes, sir. This person came to help her change her gown.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  She shook her head violently.

  “How long had she been alone in her room?”

  “My lady returned after viewing the cherry blossoms with the young lord, but she sent me away to have my supper before getting things ready.”

  “Getting things ready?”

  “For the young lord’s arrival.”

  Akitada flushed. Of course. This night Masanobu was to have consummated the marriage. He remembered seeing the young couple earlier from a distance. They had made
a charming picture, moving about the gardens, looking up at the clouds of white cherry blossoms spread against the mountains’ hazy blue and the limpid azure sky. Someone had cruelly stopped their union. He asked the girl, “Do you know if she expected a visitor?”

  A look of speculation passed over the girl’s face, but she shook her head.

  “How long have you served your mistress?”

  “Four months. Since my Lord brought my lady here.” She paused. “My lady was not happy here.”

  “How so?”

  Otori raised her shoulders helplessly. “Maybe she was homesick … or maybe she didn’t want to marry the young lord, sir.”

  The Lady Umeko had been Kiyowara’s child by an earlier marriage and had been raised by her mother’s people after the first Lady Kiyowara’s death, but this was the first suggestion that the young woman had not welcomed her father’s choice of bridegroom. Akitada asked, “What makes you think she did not want this marriage?”

  “She cried a lot and was forever writing. Maybe she was fond of someone else.”

  Again that look of speculation, only this time Akitada knew what she was suggesting. “You mean she loved another man? Someone here, in this house?”

  “I can’t say.”

  But there was a smug secretiveness about her, and Akitada persisted. “Can’t or won’t? Come on, you have some idea, don’t you?”

  Lowering her eyes modestly, she said, “My lady always sent me away to sleep with the other maids.”

  The implication was clear and shocked Akitada. “You suspect that she was receiving some man at night?” Sternly, he drew himself up. “Why did you not report this to her parents as was your duty?”

  The girl’s eyes widened with fear. “I know nothing,” she cried. Jumping up, she scurried away into the darkness.

  Akitada cursed his foolishness. The girl had crucial information, and he had scared her away. Who was Lady Umeko’s secret lover? Had he killed her because he was about to lose her? Or had Masanobu discovered the affair and murdered his bride in a fit of rage?