The Hell Screen - [Sugawara Akitada 02] Page 34

  “How long have you worked for Yasaburo?” Akitada asked.

  “Almost a year.”

  “Then you don’t know much about the performances they used to give?”

  “Not much. I watched once, then stayed away when they played the fools.”

  “So you did not take your meals with the family?”

  Harada looked back at him over his shoulder. “What, me? Never. I would not have accepted had they asked. I stay in the garden pavilion and sleep in the stable.”

  Akitada had suspected as much from close contact with Harada’s quilt.

  By the time they reached the capital, Harada had unburdened himself about his work: Yasaburo rented out plots to poor farmers in exchange for rice, which he traded for silver or invested in more land purchases. Harada’s function had been to collect rents, and to keep the books in such a way that the annual tax collector’s visit might pass with minimal losses. He glossed over illegalities, but his tone implied them. He had disapproved, but, unattractive as working for Yasaburo was, he had little choice in the matter. Besides, he pointed out, it left him time to read and write, and to make periodic trips to the capital.

  He shivered a little and sighed. “I suppose I could have saved myself that terrifying ride out of loyalty to a man I have no respect for.”

  Long before they reached the eastern jail, Harada began to sag more heavily against Akitada, and when they arrived, he had fallen into a fitful sleep.

  “We’ll put him in one of the cells,” said Kobe when he saw them trudging into the prison courtyard, Harada slumped forward across the horse’s neck and Akitada grimacing as he tried to keep him from falling off.

  “He feels feverish,” Akitada said. “I think he is too ill to stay here. It is not just that Harada should now die in prison because of Yasaburo’s misdeeds. If you agree, I will take him home, where Seimei can look after him. Besides, I have a feeling he knows something about the murders without being aware of it.”

  * * * *

  NINETEEN

  The Temple of Boundless Mercy

  Saburo opened the gate and helped Akitada with the semiconscious Harada. When they had him standing on wobbly legs, Harada mumbled, “Sorry, must’ve had a drop too much. Head hurts,” and pitched forward. Akitada caught him and picked him up bodily. Harada weighed little, even with his assorted blankets.

  “Get Seimei and send him to my room,” Akitada told Saburo, and carried Harada into the house.

  In his study, he laid him down. Harada opened his eyes and blinked at him. “What... where ... ?”

  “Don’t worry! My secretary is quite good with herbal remedies, and so is my wife. They will have you feeling better in no time.”

  “Tha’s very good of you,” mumbled Harada. He looked at Akitada uneasily. “Er, who are you? I seem to have forgotten.”

  “Sugawara. You are in my house. I brought you here because you seem a bit feverish.”

  “Hmm,” said Harada, and fell into a dry coughing fit which left him shaking and gasping.

  The door opened and Seimei came in.

  “Another patient for you,” said Akitada. “This is Professor Harada. He was manager for Nagaoka’s father-in-law, Yasaburo, who was arrested for Nagaoka’s murder. Our guest is a witness in the case. I brought him here because he is too sick to go anyplace else.”

  Seimei was immediately all interest and attention. He knelt, greeting Harada with a bow, before peering at his face intently. Harada peered back. Seimei bowed again and touched Harada’s forehead. “A fever is burning your life force and you must be put to bed immediately, sir,” he informed the sick man. Then he turned to Akitada. “Shall I put Professor Harada in Miss Akiko’s room?”

  “Yes. And see what you can do for him.” Harada had closed his eyes and was either asleep or unconscious. Akitada took Seimei aside and gave him a sketchy outline of Harada’s misfortunes, adding, “He has suffered more misery than one man deserves.”

  Seimei shook his head with pity, but remarked, “As to what he deserves, sir, we do not know what he may have been guilty of in his previous life.” Seimei was a strong believer in karma as the ultimate leveler of human lives, punishing transgressions and rewarding virtues in subsequent lives.

  “How is Tora?” Akitada asked.

  Seimei smiled. “Much improved, though he won’t say so in front of the ladies.”

  “The ladies?”

  “Oh, yes. He has visitors every day.”

  Akitada scooped the sick man up again, and carried him to another wing of the house where his sister Akiko’s room had stood empty since her marriage to Toshikage. There, Seimei spread bedding from a trunk. Together they divested Harada of an odd assortment of patched blankets and robes and tucked him under the quilts.

  The small room Tora shared with Genba was crammed full of people. Tora, covered by a quilt and leaning on an armrest, reclined on a mat in its center. Next to him sat Miss Plumblossom, enthroned on an upturned water barrel on which someone had placed one of the silk cushions from Akitada’s room. Apparently she refused to sit on the floor like everyone else. Slightly behind her was her maid, her scarred face hidden behind a fan, and on Tora’s other side knelt a very pretty young girl with sparkling eyes. Genba’s bulk filled the rest of the room. All of them looked up at Akitada’s entrance, smiled, and bowed.

  “Well!” Akitada looked around. “I hope I see you all well. Especially you, Tora.”

  “Pretty well, pretty well,” Tora said with an expression of patient suffering. “The company helps, but the nights are bad, and I can’t seem to move without much pain.” The pretty girl by his side took his hand and stroked it, murmuring, “My poor tiger.”

  The rascal, thought Akitada, and sat down. He kept a straight face and told Miss Plumblossom, “I am happy to see that you have made your peace.” Sitting down had put him at a distinct disadvantage, because the formidable Miss Plumblossom now towered over him.

  She was untroubled by the impropriety. “The four of us have come to an understanding,” she informed Akitada, and smiled with fashionably blackened teeth. “Yukiyo, the foolish girl, will make up for falsely accusing poor Tora by helping him find the slasher. Between us we’ll get the bastard, if it’s the last thing we do.” She nodded emphatically and her red hair ribbons bounced.

  Akitada looked at Tora, who looked back uneasily. “It’s what I’d planned to do all along, sir,” he pleaded. “In fact, that’s one reason I went to Miss Plumblossom’s. I’ve finally got a case of my own to solve.”

  Akitada opened his mouth to point out some small problems—such as the fact that Tora needed rest, or that, once he was well, he had certain duties to perform, or that the slasher had so far escaped the superior manpower of the police as well as the watchful eyes of people. Something about Tora’s face made him keep his thoughts to himself. “Excellent!” he said heartily. “I wish you the greatest success. Given your experience and special talents and Yukiyo’s description of the man, you will triumph where Superintendent Kobe has failed.”

  Tora flushed with pleasure, but Miss Plumblossom said, “The silly girl says she couldn’t see in the dark. All she’s sure of is that he was smallish and thinnish but very strong. Humph!”

  “After such a vicious attack, it is a wonder she recalls anything. Perhaps in time she will remember more.”

  The maid mumbled something.

  “Oh, yes. She says she smelled him,” interpreted Miss Plumblossom with a toss of her head. “As if we could go around smelling people.”

  “What sort of smell was it?” Akitada asked, interested in spite of himself.

  Tora moved impatiently. “Never mind, sir. We’ll get it all sorted out. How was your trip? Catch any murderers?”

  “Superintendent Kobe has arrested Nagaoka’s father-in-law, and I brought home a guest, a Professor Harada. He used to work for Yasaburo. He is pretty sick, but may be able to give us some information. Seimei is tending to him now.” Akitada looked curiously at the pre
tty girl. “Is this young woman by any chance a member of Uemon’s Players?”

  “Yes, Gold’s an acrobat. She’s fantastic.” Tora smiled proudly at the girl, who returned the adoring look.

  “In that case, Gold,” said Akitada, “you may be able to answer a question. You stayed at the temple where the woman was murdered, didn’t you? On the fifth day of last month?”

  “Yes, sir. Tora’s already asked me about that. I saw nothing, and neither did any of the others, sir.”

  Akitada hid his disappointment. “You did not leave your room after dark?”

  “No. We had performed that afternoon and I was tired. Besides, it was raining.”

  “You slept alone?”

  “No. My sister and Ohisa shared the room. They came to bed later, but my sister also saw nothing.”

  “And Ohisa?”

  “Ohisa took off before either of us awoke.”

  “Took off?”

  Gold made a face. “Ohisa used to be Danjuro’s girl. Danjuro is our lead actor, and all the women are wild about him.” Tora glowered and she added with a smile, “Except me. I can’t stand the arrogant bastard. Anyway, he dumped Ohisa and she left in a snit, just like that. We would’ve been short a dancer if Danjuro’s new girlfriend hadn’t stepped in.”

  “And none of the others saw anything suspicious?”

  She shook her head. “They would’ve told me. We talked about the murder all the way back to the capital.”

  Akitada thanked her and turned to Genba. “I trust everything was quiet in my absence?”

  Genba nodded. “But there was an odd little man here a little earlier. He asked for you. Something about a screen he’s supposed to paint for your lady, so I took him to her. I hope that was all right?”

  “Heavens, Noami!” Akitada jumped up. “He is a very unpleasant person. I had better see him before he upsets my wife.”

  He met Tamako in the corridor outside her quarters. She had heard of his arrival and was coming to look for him.

  “I am glad you are back safely.” She bowed in her restrained and formal manner, but her eyes searched Akitada’s face.

  “I looked in on Tora first and found him surrounded by admiring females, plotting how to catch the slasher.” Seeing her incomprehension, he explained, “A man who has been mutilating and killing young women in the city.”

  Her eyes grew round. “How very horrible,” she breathed. “I had no idea such things were happening. Is it safe to go out?”

  “Safe enough, provided you go in the daytime, take a maid with you, and don’t venture into unsavory parts of town. By the way, I brought you another patient.” He explained briefly about Harada.

  She nodded, then took his arm. “Come! I have someone waiting to talk to you. The painter of the pretty scroll has called. I left him giving a drawing lesson to your son.”

  An irrational fear seized Akitada. “You left him with Yori?”

  But the scene which met his eyes was harmless enough. The defrocked monk, dressed in a decent gray robe, his short hair brushed back, knelt next to Akitada’s son. Both held ink brushes and were bent over a large sheet of paper.

  The boy looked up and a broad smile lit his face. Jumping to his feet, he ran to his father and wrapped his arms around his thighs. “I’m painting,” he cried. “I painted cats. Come see!”

  Akitada nodded to Noami, who bowed with unexpected politeness.

  “I called, sir,” he said in his grating voice, “to see if you wished me to proceed with the screen for your lady. Since you were not here, it was my great fortune to meet the beautiful lady herself and your charming son.”

  The compliments were courteous, but Akitada did not want this man near his family. “It was good of you to come,” he said brusquely, “but we have not really had time to consider the matter.”

  Yori tugged at his sleeve.

  “I was perhaps a little unreasonable about the price,” Noami suggested.

  Still easily shamed by money problems, Akitada felt the color rise to his face. “No, no. I have been too busy to consider and will let you know when we make up our minds.” He hoped Noami would get the idea that the visit was over.

  But the painter lingered. “Young Yori has something to show you,” he reminded Akitada.

  Reluctantly Akitada allowed his son to draw him over to Noami’s side. The sheet of paper was covered with pictures of cats. Some were admirably true to life, their catlike postures sketched with consummate skill: a cat jumping for a mouse, a cat staring down into a fishbowl, a cat toying with a beetle, a cat hissing, and a cat eating a bird. The others were childish copies by Yori, painstakingly executed, the black-on-white scheme enlivened by vivid touches of red.

  “Your son has a lively sense of color,” Noami commented, his eyes watching Akitada’s face.

  The red touches looked like blood, were meant to be blood. Yori had got the idea from the just-killed bird and applied a thick layer of red grease paint from his mother’s cosmetics to the bird and to the face of the cat. Pleased with the effect, he had then given all the other cats red muzzles. He pointed, quite unnecessarily. “Blood! Cats eat birds and mice and they get blood on them.”

  Tamako came to take a look and clasped her hand to her mouth.

  Noami chuckled, a dry coughlike sound. “A boy after my own heart,” he said, and put a hand on Yori’s shoulder. “So young and already so observant. What a man you will be someday!”

  Tamako jerked up the child. “It is time for his nap,” she cried, and ran from the room, Yori protesting loudly.

  Akitada looked at the painter with hatred in his heart. Controlling himself with difficulty, he said coldly, “We won’t keep you any longer. And there is no need to return. I will send for you if we decide on the screen.”

  Noami nodded. “I am told you saw the hell screen at the temple?”

  “Yes. It is greatly admired.”

  The painter cocked his head. “But not by you?”

  Akitada said stiffly, “I do not hold with the Buddhist theory of hell.”

  “Ah! I, on the other hand, have problems with the Western Paradise.” Noami stepped closer and fixed Akitada with his deep-set, burning eyes. “What pleasure can be so great that it matches pain? We all suffer the agonies of hell, but none has tasted the joys of paradise.” With that he turned and walked out.

  * * * *

  When Tora felt well enough to begin his investigation two days later, he dressed in the worst clothes he could find: baggy pants, liberally stained and torn in places; a ragged cotton shirt; a quilted jacket with unmatched patches, tied about the waist with a hemp rope; and old straw sandals. He untied his long hair, rubbed it with some greasy lamp oil, and wrapped a rag around his head. Finally, putting a scowl on his unshaven face, he left.

  He was headed for the western city, where poor people, criminals, and outcasts lived in tenements, abandoned ruins, or squatters’ shacks in open fields. There was the heart of the underworld of the city, the refuge of gangs and notorious criminals, of vagrants, beggars, cripples, and the insane.

  The day was overcast and cold. Tora walked at a comfortable pace to avoid undue strain to his recent injuries and thought about Yukiyo. She had tried her best to describe her ordeal. In a shamefaced whisper, she had spoken of her wounds, the horrible disfigurement of her face, the deep slashes across her breasts and abdomen. The monster had taken pleasure in the cutting, it seemed, but was not bent on killing her, or he would have stabbed or disemboweled her. Appalled by the viciousness of it, Tora had wondered if she encountered a demon instead of a man. His small size, his superhuman strength and cruelty, and his acrid stench all pointed to it. But Yukiyo had shaken her head stubbornly. He had been a man. As for the smell, it been more like hot lacquer or lamp oil, maybe.

  Some sort of craftsman, thought Tora as he walked. It was not a useful clue. There were too many of them in the city. Tora planned to retrace Yukiyo’s steps that night, beginning with the place where she had met the slasher
, at a cheap brothel. She had been soliciting there without any luck, but as she was walking away a hooded figure had reached out from an alley and drawn her into the shadows. In a hoarse whisper, the man had offered to pay her thirty coppers to go home with him. Thirty coppers was wealth; it would pay for food for weeks, and she had agreed eagerly.

  They had walked a long way, through a warren of back alleys in the far western city wards. Once she had glimpsed the roof ornament of a pagoda, and not long after that they had come to a grove of bamboo and entered an empty unlit house. There, in the darkness, he had given her a cup of wine. After that she remembered nothing until she woke in another alley in horrible pain, looking up into the horrified eyes of people who found her half-naked and bleeding.