Murder on the Cliff (19 page)

After the puppet play, the audience withdrew for a reception on the Horseshoe Piazza. As she helped herself to cheese and crackers, Charlotte was joined by Aunt Lillian, who looked as if she had just walked off a blue-willow plate in a kimono with a pattern of willow trees and teahouses. The cobalt blue of the kimono exactly matched the blue of her eyes.

“Wasn’t the play wonderful?” she asked, “I love the idea of experiencing eternal bliss together in paradise.” She quoted a line: “‘In the world to come, may we be reborn on the same lotus.’ It refers to the lotuses growing in the lake before the Buddha’s throne in paradise.”

“I suppose it helps make the whole idea of double suicide more palatable,” said Charlotte. “Though I must confess that I still find the whole idea farfetched. Why couldn’t they just elope?”

“That’s because you put too much store in your earthly existence, my dear. They’d rather be released from their unfortunate lot in this world and take their chances in the next. Besides, by committing suicide, they also achieve eternal fame. The Sonezaki Wood is a famous place of pilgrimage for lovers.”

“Immortality in this world and the next.”

“Yes. I thought you did an excellent job of explaining the play in your introduction. But you did make one mistake in your opening speech about Okichi-
mago
,” she said, her cobalt blue eyes twinkling.

“What’s that?”

“Paul Harris didn’t just discover Okichi-
mago
at a Kyoto geisha house last year. He’s known her since she was a girl.”

9

Charlotte wanted to talk with Shawn before he went back to Japan: if he’d had a rendezvous with Okichi-
mago
as she suspected, he would have been the last person to see her alive. And Spalding had told her he was scheduled to leave Newport with the other wrestlers on a flight out of Providence the next night. The only formal event on the wrestlers’ schedule today had been a children’s sumo workshop that morning (part of Lani’s effort to promote the internationalization of sumo), but the Black Ships committee had been keeping them busy in their free time. Tour buses had been taking them all over: a harbor cruise, wine-tasting, a visit to the mansions, a tour of Boston, and several radio interviews, with Lani serving as translator. The local press had been charting their every move. They were probably off doing something now. But Charlotte doubted Shawn was among them. First, he’d probably already seen the tourist attractions, and second, he probably didn’t feel much like playing. No doubt he would have heard that the police were no longer considering Okichi-
mago
’s death a suicide. They might even have interviewed him already. Charlotte checked her watch. It was just after four. If she left now, maybe she could catch him before dinner. The sumo wrestlers dined early in order to give them enough time to finish their enormous meals. Spalding and Connie, who had eaten with them on their first evening in Newport had been astounded at the amount of food they had consumed: one sumo wrestler—probably the gigantic popover from the first sumo match—had tucked away fifteen lobsters. Slipping away from the gathering, she hastened back to the theatre and quickly changed back into her own clothes. In a few minutes, she was heading down Bellevue Avenue.

Shawn and the other sumo wrestlers from his stable were staying at The Waves at the south end of the Cliff Walk, two houses down from Briarcote. The four houses shared a common road. Like many of Newport’s other mansions, The Waves had been chopped up into condos. Newport was a city of condominiums: new condos and old mansions converted into condos occupied by weekenders from Boston and Providence, boat owners who wanted a place to stay overnight, officers attending the Naval War College, college students working in bars and restaurants, and families taking their annual week at the beach. The sumo wrestlers were occupying two of the largest condos at The Waves, along with a cook who had been hired to prepare their enormous breakfasts and lunches. Dinners were eaten out, courtesy of local restaurants. Because of his senior rank among the wrestlers from his stable, Shawn had a condo to himself, which he shared with Lani. His stablemates were housed dormitory-style in the other. The condos in The Waves were among Newport’s most luxurious by virtue of the mansion’s dramatic location on a rocky promontory at the southern tip of the island. The Waves was one of Charlotte’s favorite Newport mansions. Built in the twenties by John Russell Pope, the architect of the Jefferson Memorial, as a summer house for himself and his family, its rambling half-timbered gables and undulating slate roof were meant to be reminiscent of an English country cottage. Despite its enormous size and the way it loomed fortresslike above its windswept site, it nevertheless projected a feeling of warmth and coziness.

It didn’t take Charlotte as long as usual to travel the length of Bellevue Avenue. She was driving her own car, an ordinary Oldsmobile. When it came to cars, she was in Spalding’s camp: pretentious cars weren’t her style. At the end, she turned onto Ledge Road and from there onto the private road leading to The Waves. The house was built in the form of a U surrounding a walled inner courtyard. Inside the courtyard, apple trees flourished and flower beds bloomed, protected by the building from the driving winds off the ocean. As she entered the courtyard through a low door in the wall, she saw a gardener working in a rose bed, and asked him where she could find the sumo wrestlers. “The important sumo wrestlers, or the rest of them?” he asked. “The important sumo wrestlers,” she replied. The gardener directed her to a door opening off the courtyard. She should have been able to figure it out for herself: outside the door was a simple pair of rope thongs.

Shawn answered the door and bowed, Japanese style. He was wearing only a
mawashi
, a practice
mawashi
made of heavy canvas, rather than silk. In texture and size, it resembled a fire hose. He was shining with sweat.

“I thought you were Lani,” he said, apologizing for his appearance. “Won’t you come in?” He gestured toward the interior.

Once she had removed her shoes, Shawn ushered her into a huge wood-paneled room with giant windows overlooking the ocean. The oversized modern furniture had been moved aside to make room for futons that had been rolled up for the day. Shawn maneuvered a chair into position for her. “Why don’t you sit here?” he said. “I’m just going to put on a kimono. I’ll be right back.”

The room was immaculately neat. Apart from the rolled-up futons and a couple of lacquered wickerware trunks, the only sign of the sumo wrestlers’ residency was a small shrine that had been set up at the side of the room. Above the shrine hung a scroll that was decorated with ink-wash calligraphy.

Shawn returned a minute later wearing a summer kimono in shades of green that emphasized the deep green of his eyes.

“I’m staying here with Lani,” he explained. “In Japan, we usually stay at temples when we’re on tour so we can practice on the grounds. Most of the
rikishi
are staying in condos in the mansions for the same reason.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Charlotte, but she didn’t really mean it. The setting was beautiful, but the ultramodern furnishings seemed out of place, more suited to a New York penthouse than a vacation retreat by the sea.

“Too luxurious for me,” he said. “Are you familiar with the Japanese idea of
wabi
? The rough translation is refined poverty.”

Charlotte shook her head.

“It means the absence of excess. Not wanting what’s lacking. Making do with what’s at hand. Enjoying simple austerity. It’s a concept that’s always appealed to me.” He smiled. “But I guess I can live with excess for a while.”

“For the bachelor residence of two men, it’s very neat,” she commented.

“It’s part of the sumo way of life,” said Shawn. “Always keep your surroundings neat so that you won’t be ashamed if you die while you’re away.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Readiness for death is one of the pillars of the code of the samurai. It’s recommended that you meditate on death every morning and every evening. If you die every day in your mind, you won’t fear death. Death sharpens life, just as discipline sharpens pleasure.”

Despite a hefty dose of native New England common sense, Charlotte had a superstitious belief in the power of mental images; to her way of thinking, if you imagined something powerfully enough, it might come true.

“It’s a hard concept for Westerners to understand,” Shawn continued. “Most Westerners think it’s morbid, but actually it’s the opposite. By dying every day in your mind, you’re freeing yourself to live in the moment.”

“I don’t think it’s morbid. I think it’s dangerous: by dying every day in your mind, aren’t you opening the door to death?”

“Aha! That’s another difference between East and West. To the Oriental, tempting fate is impossible because your fate is preordained.”

“Karma?” said Charlotte.

Shawn nodded and leaned against the back of a chair. “I saw you at the match yesterday,” he said. “How did you like it?”

“I loved it,” she replied. “I didn’t really expect to. I’m not a very sports-minded person. But I liked the swiftness of it. The immutability. It’s like acting in that respect: you only get a few minutes for your big scene; if you flub it, there’s no second chance.”

“That’s what I like about it, too. Only one chance to win or lose. It’s very Eastern, very Zen-like. Of course, you need a certain amount of strength and size, but the important thing is concentration: to me, it’s more like ink-wash painting than wrestling.”

Charlotte nodded at the calligraphy above the shrine. “One of your paintings?” she asked.

He nodded. “Ink-wash painting is very much like sumo: the inspiration has to be transferred to the paper in the quickest possible time; you have to be entirely in the moment. If you hesitate, you’ll tear the paper. There’s no deliberation, no retouching, no repetition. Once executed, it’s irrevocable.”

He gestured to French doors leading out to a grassy terrace where a canvas mat with a green circle outlined on it—a practice sumo mat—was spread out on the grass. A long black
mawashi
was draped out over a makeshift clothesline. “Would you like to sit outside?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

On the way out, her eye was caught by an object sitting on a small table beneath the shrine. It was a
chommage
in a Plexiglas box, just like the one Lani had showed her the photo of. “Is this Lani’s
chommage
?” she asked.

“No,” Shawn replied. “It’s mine.”

Charlotte glanced up at Shawn’s hair, but his
chommage
was still intact.

“Someone sends me one before every tournament. It’s their way of saying that it’s time I should retire. It’s a subtle form of harassment, one of many that I’ve had to put up with.”

“Do you know who sends them?” she asked as she looked again at the
chommage
. It looked like the shiny pelt of a dead muskrat.

“No. I have some ideas. But it doesn’t really matter—I look forward to getting them now. I use them in my meditations as a reminder of death, a
memento mori
. For a
rikishi
, retirement
is
a form of death.”

He led her through the French doors to the terrace.

As she followed, Charlotte noticed his peculiar gait: it was almost as if he were ice skating. Then she remembered something Spalding had said about sumo wrestlers sliding their feet to prevent stepping accidentally out of the ring. The gait must have become as habitual as a ballet dancer’s turnout.

“This is where I practice; it’s also where I meditate,” said Shawn, as they reached the center of the grassy terrace. “It’s totally private. In Japan, we like to have sumo fans watch us practice. But outside of Japan, people stare at us as if we were freaks.”

As many times as she had walked by The Waves, Charlotte had never noticed this terrace. From below, the wall surrounding it looked like part of the huge stone foundation that anchored the sprawling mansion on its rocky promontory. She said as much to Shawn.

“I know,” he said. “I like that about it. We can see them, but they can’t see us,” he explained, looking out at the tourists who were picking their way across the rocks below. “Unless they’re looking directly at us.”

Charlotte looked out, too. At the end of Ledge Road, a police scooter was ticketing illegally parked cars. The rocky ledges at the end of the road were a popular spot for fishing, diving, and rock-combing, and a problem with too many cars had led to the no-parking ordinance.

“Did you ever notice the stairs?” asked Shawn.

“No,” said Charlotte. “What stairs?”

He led her over to a gap in the wall where stairs led down to an overgrown path that meandered across the rocks to join the Cliff Walk. “Every once in a while, a tourist strays off the Cliff Walk and ends up here. They’re always very surprised. Suddenly they’re practically in someone’s living room.”

“They’d be very surprised indeed if they happened upon a couple of sumo wrestlers,” said Charlotte. “Especially in your skimpy
mawashi
.”

Shawn smiled. “I’m used to wearing a
mawashi
,” he said, “but I forget that other people aren’t. Someone once told me it looked like a diaper.”

Charlotte laughed.

For a moment, they looked out at the ocean, where the surf surged against the rocks, sending plumes of spray into the sky. In the distance, an excursion boat was rounding the point, beginning its tour of the Cliff Walk from the sea.

“I’m here about Okichi-
mago
,” said Charlotte, as they turned back toward a pair of lawn chairs that sat side by side, facing the sea. She explained about Lew Farrell asking her to look into the geisha’s death.

“May I ask you a question?” Shawn said hesitantly as they sat down. The sumo creed dictated that he not show emotion, but there was a heaviness in his manner and a dullness in his deep green eyes that betrayed his grief.

“Certainly.”

“Did you see her?”

Charlotte knew immediately what he meant. It was the survivor’s craving for the details of death, the details that were needed to fix the final picture of the dead person in the mind, to grasp the awful reality.