Death of a Doll Maker (18 page)

“What are you doing?” Tora asked.

The boy looked up. “It’s glue I made from bean paste. I put the branches into trees or shrubs. The birds get stuck on them, and I catch them. I only keep the ones that sing.”

Mrs. Kimura said softly, “It seems quite cruel. But children don’t think about such things. He tells me he learned this from a man in the market. I confess I like all those birds singing in my garden.”

Tora looked at the cages hanging from tree branches and the house eaves and listened. The birds sounded quite happy. They were singing their little hearts out. Or maybe they were mourning the loss of their freedom. He asked the boy, “How do you know where the best birds are?”

Kinchiro grinned. “I watch them. Two days ago I heard a warbler in the big cedar in the alley behind us. I was looking up into the tree, when a man digging his garden got mad and screamed at me.”

Tora smiled. “Every craft has its troubles.” He turned to Mrs. Kimura, “Any more thoughts about Yoko leaving?”

“So you haven’t found her?”

“Not yet. Maeda is posting notices. If she sees one or hears about them, she’ll show up. Or maybe her boyfriend will.”

She shook her head. “Yoko can’t read or write. And what makes you think a market porter can?”

Tora sighed. “Why is it people just disappear here? It’s weird.”

“Who else disappeared?”

“The last governor seems to have vanished.”

As he explained that the governor’s ship had not touched land since he had left, her eyes grew round. “How strange! I think I saw him the day he left Hakata. He was with two other men on horseback. It was getting dark, but one of them is quite distinctive looking with his elegant mustache and beard and those eyebrows like two small roofs above his eyes.”

Tora smiled. “Roofs?”

She moistened a finger with her tongue and drew a pair of slanting lines meeting at an apex on the boards they sat on.

“So you could see his face?”

“Just for a moment before they turned the corner.”

Given the way Lord Tachibana had left things for them, Tora did not really care. “Well, I expect he’ll turn up eventually unless the fish ate him. I’d better be on my way. Do you need money?” He saw her expression and added quickly, “What with the extra mouths to feed.”

“Thank you, but we manage quite well,” she said primly. “In fact, the children are a big help to me and I’m growing fond of them. I shall ask them to stay. I have no one else to care for.”

16

THE ABANDONED WELL

A
s soon as he could do so, Akitada sent for Maeda and made his promotion official. He liked what he saw when he met the former sergeant. Maeda was well-spoken but modest about his education. He had a military background, something which would serve him well in his new role, and he expressed a concern about protecting the peaceful lives of the ordinary people in Hakata. He also impressed Akitada with a good knowledge of forensic practices. They parted pleased with each other.

Two days later they found Yoko.

By the time someone came to report a nauseating smell coming from an abandoned well, the rain had stopped and the weather had turned unseasonably warm. The smell and the number of flies around the wooden cover of the well had attracted the attention of some dogs who scrabbled at the wood, releasing more flies. Competition led to a noisy dog fight, which brought some boys, who obligingly moved the lid and looked down the half-filled shaft. Below lay a dead woman wrapped in a pale green quilt covered with cherry blossoms.

After verifying that the body was Yoko’s, Maeda sent a message to the provincial tribunal. By the time Tora arrived at Hakata police station, Yoko was already in the capable hands of the coroner, Dr. Fujita. Tora and Maeda went to watch him at his work.

In spite of all the horrors he had seen, Tora’s stomach turned. The beauteous Yoko was unrecognizable in the naked, swollen, and discolored corpse that lay on a stained grass mat while Dr. Fujita knelt beside it, probing various openings with a silver instrument which he raised to his nose from time to time.

Tora covered his nose with a sleeve and swallowed hard. He glanced at Maeda, who seemed absorbed in the coroner’s probings. “How long?” Tora asked.

“Who knows?” Maeda answered. “Most likely since the day she disappeared.”

The coroner looked up. “Deterioration is well advanced. Several days, I’d say.”

“What killed her?” Tora tried next.

Fujita snorted and pointed to Yoko’s chest.

Holding his sleeve over his nose, Tora stepped closer. Below Yoko’s left breast were two blood-stained wounds, two additional openings for Dr. Fujita to probe. He promptly inserted his instrument as far as it would go into one of these. A trickle of foul-smelling liquid appeared. Tora stepped back quickly. The coroner repeated this with the second wound.

“A knife,” Fujita said, frowning at the slender probe. “Fairly long and sharp. It went deep. The first one missed the vital organ. The second killed instantly.”

Maeda asked, “The same sort of knife as the one used in the last murder?”

Fujita nodded. “Yes, it could be same. But such knives are common in people’s kitchens.”

Maeda glanced at Tora and took his arm. “Thanks, Doctor. Let me know if you discover anything unusual.” He led Tora outside and closed the door on the scene behind them. Tora gulped a few breaths of clean air.

“Delicate stomach?” Maeda grinned.

Tora glared at him. “Recent large meal.”

“I expect seeing the object of your amorous desires in such a state had something to do with it.”

“Shut up!”

Maeda chuckled, then sobered. “Sorry. Poor Yoko. You think the husband killed her?”

“No, I think whoever killed Mitsui’s wife did.” He paused as a memory surfaced. “Hiroshi,” he said in a tone of wonder. “It was him. The boy saw him digging a few days ago. I bet he was burying the knife.”

Maeda said nothing.

“Well?” Tora turned to him. “You see it, don’t you? She was stabbed, and with the same knife as his stepmother.”

Maeda shook his head. “Don’t be silly. You don’t know it was the same knife. This one could have come from Yoko’s own kitchen and been used by her husband who finally figured out she was sleeping with everybody but him. Why Hiroshi? What would be his motive?”

“Yoko’s husband’s not the type to do anything so strenuous as stabbing a fully-grown and healthy female much younger than him. Let alone carry her all the way to an abandoned well to dump her body in. Hiroshi had a cart.”

“Why do you keep linking this with Mitsui? He confessed to killing his wife. Case closed.”

“So everybody keeps saying.”

“Tora, the man confessed.”

“I know, but I think he was covering for Hiroshi. A father’s love for his son.”

Maeda sighed. “Not without more proof. Come on, we’ve got to start questioning people again.”

He selected three constables and sent them to the market to ask about Yoko’s shopping on the night she disappeared and about who had made the deliveries to her house during the past weeks. Then he and Tora set out for her home, accompanied by two more constables who started knocking on neighbors’ doors again.

Maeda and Tora went to see Yoko’s husband again.

Kuroki was a blubbering bundle of self-pity. His face was wet with tears, and so were the rumpled sleeves of his robe. He was barefoot and his sparse hair hung in loose strands to his shoulders. “What have you done?” he cried when he saw Maeda and Tora. “Have you found him? Is he in jail? My lovely Yoko! Oh, that I had to see her like that! What shall I do? I’m lost, quite lost without her.”

“No, Mr. Kuroki,” said Maeda, “we haven’t arrested anyone. We need your help to do so.”

“My help? You know who did it then?”

“Not yet.”

Kuroki burst into more wails. “This is terrible! The monster killed my wife a week ago, and he’s free? Who knows, he may be waiting to shove his knife in my belly next. I want a guard at my door day and night.”

Tora gazed at Kuroki’s quivering stomach and wondered if even as long a knife as the one that killed his wife would penetrate such a gross layer of flesh and fat far enough to strike at vital organs.

Maeda snapped, “Impossible. Pull yourself together. We have some questions. I want to know which merchants your wife patronized, and whether she ever spent a night away from home.”

Kuroki stared at him resentfully. “Of course she didn’t spend the night anywhere but here. What are you suggesting?”

Maeda wisely did not answer that. “Where did she do most of her shopping?”

“No idea. That’s woman’s work. I have my own duties to worry about. A clerk’s life isn’t easy, you know. I come home exhausted.”

He was no help. Tora knew Maeda had already checked with the bathhouse and confirmed the man’s earlier account, but he went over the details again. After dark, sometime between the hour of the boar and the hour of the dragon when her husband finally awoke to another day, Yoko had disappeared. This time span included her visit to the market, but since Kuroki had no idea when she had returned to their house, they could not narrow down the early hours, and because Kuroki had not checked on his wife after his return from the bathhouse, they could not be sure what had happened later.

The likeliest scenario was one where her killer caught up with her after she returned from the market but before Kuroki had come home from his massage and
moxa
treatment.

They left Kuroki not much wiser. Maeda’s constables returned from knocking at the neighbors’ doors and reported that one woman had seen Kuroki and his wife leaving their house together and walking off in opposite directions. The time matched what Kuroki had given for their departure. No one had seen either return or anyone else enter the Kuroki house, probably because by then they had been at their evening rice or asleep.

Tora said, “Let’s go question Hiroshi.”

Maeda sighed. “Very well.”

Hiroshi was not home. His slattern of a wife was cooking something. Some of the smaller children played with vegetable peels on the floor. “What’s the bastard done now?” she asked.

Maeda said, “We’re just double-checking on the murder of Mrs. Mitsui.”

Tora added, “And the disappearance of your neighbor across the street.”

She laughed. “That slut? If Hiroshi had ever tried to get anywhere with that one, I’d have killed them both.” She swung the knife and sent more scraps flying. The children squealed.

Maeda shuddered. “If you don’t mind, we’ll have a look out back.”

“What for?” she demanded.

“My friend here thinks he’s buried the murder weapon.” Maeda chuckled..

The woman glared at Tora. “That’s just more harassment. The police said he killed the old woman, and that was a lie. Now you’re trying to pin something else on him.” Tora fled. She shouted after him, “I hope you bastards go to hell.”

The big cedar grew just outside the fence between the yard and the back alley. It was easy to see how Kichiro could have surprised Hiroshi digging in that corner.

“There,” Tora said with satisfaction, pointing to a patch of disturbed soil. “You can see where he’s been digging.” He looked around, found the spade among some other tools, and started working.

After considerable exertion on his part, it became obvious that there was nothing to be found. Tora cursed and refilled the large hole.

Maeda wisely only said, “I’ve got to get back.”

At police headquarters, a surprise awaited them. In the front room sat three young market porters, looking extremely nervous. Mrs. Kimura had described their appearance well. One of the constables announced proudly, “These are the porters who made deliveries to the Kuroki house. We have been to every food merchant in the market.”

The three youngsters squirmed. The tallest said, “I’ve done nothing. What do you want from me? I’ll lose my job. My master will think I’m a thief or something.”

The other two added their own protestations.

Maeda heard them out, then said, “If you’ve done nothing but your job, you can leave after we’ve had a talk. And you can tell your employers you were helping the police. Let’s go to my office.”

They herded the three into Maeda’s new office, where they knelt and waited. Tora judged them to be between sixteen and twenty years old. One was quite handsome, and all three were well-built and as muscular as market porters should be. Yoko had had an eye for young men. It would have amused Tora, if he hadn’t seen her corpse that very morning.

“Very well,” Maeda started after he’d sat down and directed a scribe to take notes. “Give me your names, ages, where you live, and where you work.”

They complied.

“You made regular food deliveries for the Kurokis?”

They nodded, eyeing each other.

“Who made a delivery of honey, ginger, bean paste, and candied chestnuts about a week ago?” He consulted his notes. “It would have been the nineteenth day of the month in the evening.”

They looked blank and shook their heads in unison.

The constable cleared his throat. “The purchase was made at the Miyagi shop.”

One youth said quickly, “I was sick that day.”

Tora was leaning against the wall. “It wasn’t much,” he said. “I think she carried it home herself.”

Maeda frowned at the three youths. “We know for a fact that all of you did more than deliver purchases. Were you paid for this other work?”

All three turned beet red and averted their eyes.

“Well?”

The tall youth raised his chin. “Why would she pay for a little sex? Maybe she thanked me for the delivery.” He glanced at the other two. “I didn’t know about them,” he added.

The mood in the office had changed subtly. The three had become rivals and glared at each other.

Maeda asked, “And the same true is true for all of you? You all made deliveries and stayed for sex, invited or uninvited, as the case may be?”

They nodded. The handsome one offered an explanation. “She shops at my place regularly. She said she liked me and I liked her. She’s still pretty young and looks good, and her husband’s old and can’t get it up. She was willing.”