Three Tales of Love and Murder (Akitada Stories) Page 2

  Akitada realized belatedly that he faced a dilemma. If he insisted on reporting this murder, he would expose scandal in the family of Lord Kiyowara who was a notorious stickler for propriety. That would be the final straw for Soga who would dismiss Akitada instantly. The only safe option was to keep out of the affair and to depart for the capital as soon as possible.

  But Akitada was incapable of doing this. After a nervous look around to make sure he was alone, he went into the pavilion to make a quick search for letters or a diary, anything which might provide a clue to her lover or killer. Even this was dangerous. If he, an unrelated young man, were caught pawing through a young noblewoman’s private possessions, her father would be justified in having him arrested. But Kiyowara did not know that his daughter had been murdered. Would he prefer it to have been suicide? Surely not; surely he would want her killer caught. Any father would want to know the truth, scandal or not.

  The search produced nothing and that, perversely, seemed to prove a secret and illicit relationship. Dissatisfied Akitada left, extinguishing the candle and closing the doors to the garden. Then he went in search of Kiyowara.

  Kiyowara’s private quarters lay in darkness, but from the adjoining guest quarters came the subdued sound of male voices and the glimmer of light. His heart pounding, Akitada stepped on a rock and peered over the top of the fence. This courtyard was much smaller than Kiyowara’s and served only a single room, its doors wide open on the candle-lit scene inside.

  Lord Kiyowara and his brother sat side by side in conversation. Kiyowara looked dreadful, and his brother wept openly. Akitada felt his heart contract for the two men who shared the loss of a beloved young woman.

  This was not the time to add new sorrow, and Akitada returned to the banquet room where he found the Koses glumly sipping wine. Masanobu was saying angrily, “You recall, sir, that I was against the alliance from the start, but you insisted.” The elder Kose saw Akitada and put a warning hand on his son’s arm. “Still up, young man?” he asked lightly. “We were about to retire. Let’s give the family some peace, shall we?” They got to their feet and, with nods to Akitada, departed.

  Akitada wondered. Masanobu had sounded irritated rather than distressed by his bride’s death. So the marriage of Lady Umeko to the wealthy Kose had been strictly a matter of expediency, bringing financial benefits to the Kiyowaras and political influence to the Koses. Rumor had it that Kiyowara, though close to the emperor, had suffered grievous financial losses because of border wars and mismanagement of his northern estates. On the other hand, Lord Kose, round-bellied, triple-chinned, and florid, controlled great wealth and wanted his son to rise quickly to political eminence. Handsome and haughty, Masanobu looked every young woman’s romantic dream, but Lady Umeko’s father had not chosen him to please her. Neither had Masanobu desired her as his bride.

  Akitada wandered into the cherry grove to think about the men in Lady Umeko’s life.

  The tutor Akimitsu was Akitada’s age. He had hardly touched his food or wine during the banquet and had wept freely outside the lady’s room. Had Akimitsu been so foolhardy as to carry on an affair with Lady Umeko even as her father was arranging a brilliant match? Kiyowara’s rage would have been terrible, had he found out. For someone as obsessed with rank and status as he, a liaison between his daughter and a mere tutor would be intolerable.

  In that respect the Kiyowaras and the Koses were quite similar. Young Kose, already opposed to the match, would have felt doubly offended by such a betrayal.

  But foolish and dangerous as such an affair might be, it was not at all unlikely. Akimitsu, slender, gentle, and soulful-eyed, had lived in the same household with a lonely, homesick young woman; he was an accomplished poet, a fact which had not escaped Akitada during the aborted poetry contest, and might have won an impressionable young girl’s heart quite easily with his verses.

  Akitada gazed up into the darkness which had all but swallowed up the pale blossoms of the trees, and was reminded of Tsurayuki’s famous lines. “In the depth of night, where have the bright blossoms gone? I am cast in grief for her too soon taken by the dark.” Had Akimitsu grieved for his beloved? Or had he been overcome by remorse? Had he murdered the lady in a fit of jealousy? Or because he feared she would reveal their relationship to her father?

  Impossible to tell. Akitada switched his mind back to the murder scene. The body had still been faintly warm; the blood had not yet congealed. The murder must have happened within an hour or two, roughly during the time of the banquet. Who among the men had left their company? Akimitsu, he recalled, had gone out twice, having been sent to the kitchen with instructions to the staff. But all of them had left the room both before and during the meal. Kiyowara himself had gone to check on the food preparation. And Lord Kose had got up to relieve himself, as had Lord Tadahira, and Akitada himself. Masanobu had wandered off into the gardens just before the poetry contest.

  The villa and its grounds remained shrouded in stillness. The Koses had retired to their guest quarters, and the Kiyowara brothers, worn out by grief, were no doubt also asleep. The corpse of Lady Umeko lay forgotten among her pretty things. Suddenly it seemed important to Akitada that she should not be alone in death and he went back.

  Something rustled in the shrubbery of her garden when Akitada opened the gate. The shadows near the wall were too thick to see, but he felt a prickle of fear at the thought that the killer had returned to the scene of his crime.

  “Who is there?” he cried softly, his heart racing. He heard someone breathing heavily. Then the slender figure of Akimitsu stepped from the shadows.

  The tutor looked ghastly but seemed peaceable enough. “I didn’t know anyone would be here,” he said, looking past Akitada toward the pavilion.

  “Why are you here?” Akitada asked.

  The other man could have asked the same question, but he turned listless, red-rimmed eyes on Akitada. “I loved her. She killed herself because her father was forcing her to marry that spoiled brat. I’ll follow her into death as soon as I have seen her one last time.” He raised his pale face toward the flowering cherry tree and recited, “Lovely though they are, I shall not see them again: pale cherries in bloom. My heart, crushed by harsh fate, shatters like their blossoms.”

  Very pretty, thought Akitada unsympathetically. He disliked emotional displays and felt the tutor talked romantic nonsense and was probably putting on an act. He said bluntly, “It was murder and I’m going to find her killer. What precisely was your relationship with the dead lady?”

  Akimitsu stared at him. “Murder? We … I was employed to teach her about poetry, because her education had been sadly neglected. Somehow we … fell in love. What do you mean, murder? I saw her. She did it herself.” Tears began to gather in his eyes and spilled down his pale cheeks. “We loved each other hopelessly. When she told me of her marriage to Lord Kose, I was going to leave, but she begged me to stay. She was afraid.”

  “Afraid? Of Masanobu?”

  Akimitsu buried his face in his hands. “Yes. No. I don’t know. She wouldn’t say! What does it matter now?”

  Akitada regarded him with irritation. Sentimental idiot. Such a highly improper relationship had been doomed from the start. Akimitsu’s behavior, apart from being reprehensible, had also been foolhardy. Nobody employed a young man in his house who might seduce his daughters.

  Akimitsu was edging toward the pavilion. “Please, may I see her one last time?”

  “I cannot stop you, but it’s not good to see violent death. You would do better to remember her as she was and help me find her killer.”

  Akimitsu turned tragic eyes to Akitada. “I’m no longer of this world, but of hers,” he said sadly.

  Akitada suppressed a snort, and climbed the steps to the veranda to open the door. He located the candle and struck a light. Akimitsu approached the corpse of his beloved reverently. Kneeling beside her, he looked at her face for a long time. Then he reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair from he
r face. The gesture was both caress and farewell. He bowed, rose, and turned to Akitada. “I shall be forever grateful to you, sir. Good night.”

  Akitada followed him out. “Akimitsu?”

  The tutor turned on the steps to the garden.

  “You cannot serve her by killing yourself, you know. Help me find her murderer. Tell me about her life here.”

  Akimitsu hung his head. “She’s dead and that is all that matters. I cannot help you. Her father brought her here four months ago and hired me to teach her. She was unhappy and very lonely, and we were drawn to each other. We both knew there was no hope for us. Lord Kiyowara had decided that she would marry Kose Masanobu.” Akimitsu grimaced. “He’s a rich dandy who is involved with the wife of another nobleman, not worthy of a pure spirit like Umeko.”

  “Would he have killed her to be free of her?”

  “He didn’t. You saw her.” His voice broke and his face contorted. Dropping his head, he wept silently.

  It seemed very dark. The sky had clouded up, obscuring the stars. Suddenly the dark clouds parted, their outlines silvered by a hazy moon as it swam into view. The cherry tree sprang into a ghostly presence. “Thank you, Akimitsu,” Akitada said with a sigh. “Don’t do anything foolish!” The young man shook his head, then quietly turned and disappeared into the shadows.

  Akitada looked at the moon for a while, then rose to make another search of Lady Umeko’s chamber. She was always writing, the maid had said. Surely she had confided her secrets to a diary and hidden it most carefully.

  This time, he went over everything in the room, lifting the edges of the grass mats, feeling the panels which formed the walls, pulling the small drawers from her make-up box to look for false bottoms, and even climbing on a stool to run his hands along the wooden cross beams. Nothing. And yet he was convinced that she had hidden it in this room, and in such a way that it was readily accessible to her. He glanced at the slight figure on the mat. She was small and fragile and would hardly be able to reach the beams or lift heavy boards. He let his eyes scan the walls again. When they reached the doors to the veranda, he noticed the decorative panels which had been inserted around the frame. Through these grilles of narrow lacquered bamboo pieces one could easily slip a thin book. He went to inspect them. The vertical panels were useless as hiding places, for the doors slid into them; but those above the doors covered open space. He slid his fingers along the lowest bamboo slat and touched fabric. Coaxed out from its hiding place, the object proved to be a sheaf of papers, sewn together down its middle into a red brocade cover. Lady Umeko’s diary.

  The smell of blood still hung cloyingly in the air, and Akitada carried the candle to the veranda to read by its flickering light what Lady Umeko had not dared confide to anyone.

  He skimmed the artless entries, begun at the home of her maternal grandparents and kept up at greater length since her arrival here. The brush strokes were unformed, the style artless. Lonely and estranged in this new place, she yearned for her father’s affection. Akitada skipped until he encountered Akimitsu’s name. She seemed to have regarded him as a friend, someone her own age she could talk to. She had copied down every poem he had sent her, along with her own, rather clumsy, replies.

  Impatient, Akitada turned the pages to more recent entries. In spite of her fondness for Akimitsu, she seemed to have accepted the betrothal to Masanobu to please her father. Umeko might have been unhappy, but she had certainly not been suicidal. In fact, she expressed the hope that she might be married soon and leave for her husband’s home.

  Then what had she been afraid of? Akitada went back through the diary. Shortly after her arrival and before Akimitsu entered her world, he suddenly encountered the entry: “He came to my room tonight, smelling disgustingly of wine. He was very affectionate and I wished my father were as fond of me. But then he frightened me with strange talk. I cried out when he touched my breast, and he left.”

  Akitada raised his head and listened. From beyond the fence to his right came a faint sound. Then a small branch snapped, and someone whispered. Akitada jumped up and cast a frantic look around; it took only a moment to shove the diary under an edge of the grass mat and return to the veranda. He looked for a place to hide. Too late!

  Kiyowara’s voice demanded, “Who’s there?” Akitada froze as the dark figure detached itself from the gate. In the light of the flickering candle, Akitada stood on the veranda like a thief about to take flight. “Sugawara! What’s going on here?” Kiyowara growled.

  “Ah …” stammered Akitada.

  More people arrived. Someone lit a lantern: Kose senior. Masanobu stepped forward into the light. “Well? What are you doing here, Sugawara?” he asked nastily. “Surely you did not lose your way?”

  Akitada pulled himself together and bowed to Kiyowara. “No, my Lord. I … thought it safer to stay here. To wait for the police.”

  “The police?” Kose senior demanded, his voice heavy with disbelief.

  “Yes. You see, I … I am afraid Lady Umeko did not kill herself. She was m-murdered.”

  Kiyowara was momentarily speechless, then approached angrily. “What nonsense is this, Sugawara? There is the razor in her hand.” He pointed at his daughter’s body. “In fact, you showed it to me yourself. What do you mean by making up such a thing now?”

  Akitada looked at the Koses, wondering if one of them was the killer. He said, “Nevertheless it was murder. You’ll have to send for the police, sir.”

  “I will not! The village warden has been notified. He will certify suicide. And I forbid you to continue this outrageous abuse of my hospitality. You had better return to your room.”

  Akitada flinched. If it turned out that he was wrong, he would be in the most serious trouble. He decided to plead with Kiyowara. “As her father, sir, you must wish to see her murderer caught.”

  The elder Kose snapped, “You are over-stepping the bounds of good manners, young man. I suggest you do as you’re told. You have no business here.”

  “Precisely.” Masanobu eyed Akitada as if he had suddenly turned into a disgusting and dangerous insect. “I think he should be sent back immediately, Father,” he said. “With a sharp warning. A scandal will hurt my career. With this talk of murder, people will make up all sorts of tales.”

  Kiyowara Tadahira staggered toward them. He hiccuped, and raised a cup. “Poor li’l Umeko. Le’s say a prayer.” He stumbled on the steps and fell. Akitada moved to help him up.

  His brother snapped, “Leave him alone.” He clapped his hands for a servant and told the man, “Put him to bed, and this time stay with him.” The servant hefted the mumbling, weak-kneed Tadahira to his feet and supported him out of the courtyard with expertise born from practice. Lord Kiyowara shook his head, then turned to Akitada. “I’m sorry, young man,” he said in a softer tone. “I should not have spoken to you that way. It has been a terrible day and we are all overwrought. The warden and his men will be here soon. It is late and you will wish to return to the capital early tomorrow. I regret that you should have become involved in my daughter’s death.”

  Akitada bit his lip. “Since I was one of your guests when your daughter died, sir, the police will want to talk to me. Your daughter had not been dead long when we found her. They will ask all of us where we were when the crime was committed.”

  Lord Kose flared up, “Just what are you implying, Sugawara? We were together at the time.”

  “I believe each of us left the banquet briefly. They will verify your stories.”

  “Our stories?” demanded Lord Kose, turning purple with rage. “Lies, do you mean? Something we have made up to cover a murderous impulse? Are you mad, Sugawara?”

  Akitada was saved from answering by the arrival of the local warden, but the moment he saw the man, a local farmer, fall down on his knees to Kiyowara, Akitada’s heart sank.

  Gesturing toward his daughter’s corpse, Kiyowara told the warden, “Do your duty, man, but honor my poor child’s body.”

  The
warden looked, blanched, then nodded vigorously and approached the corpse. He stopped at a safe distance and peered.

  Akitada fidgeted. The man had not even bothered to take a light. Gathering his courage, Akitada protested, “We need a more experienced investigator, my Lord. This man may destroy evidence with his fumbling.” For good measure, he added, “As a representative of the Ministry of Justice, I cannot approve of such a slip-shod investigation.”

  The warden froze and cast a frightened glance at Kiyowara, who sighed and said, “Go on, Warden. All you have to do is verify that she committed suicide.”

  The warden bowed. He walked around the body slowly, studying it, shaking his head and muttering “Amida!” and “What a thing!” Finally he bent to look at the razor in Lady Umeko’s hand and asked, “Honorable Lord, was the young lady accustomed to doing most things with her right hand?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Ah. I thought so.” The man nodded. “Yes. Yes. In that case it is quite clear that the young lady must have done it herself, for she is still holding the razor in her right hand.”

  Akitada cried, “The razor could have been put there by her murderer.”

  The warden goggled at him. “Murderer?” He looked again, and said, “Yes. Yes. You’re quite right, noble sir; it could have been put there by her murderer.”

  “You fool,” Kiyowara groaned. “It’s a clear case of suicide. My daughter was unhappy about her approaching marriage. She was highly strung and afraid to leave her home and family. Perhaps she left a note. Search her!”

  Akitada protested again, again in vain. The warden approached the body and timidly felt the girl’s sleeves.

  “She usually carried things in her sash,” Kiyowara said impatiently.

  The sash was soaked with blood, and the warden flinched visibly. His function as local representative of the law had evidently not inured him to the taboos against touching the dead.