The Crane Pavilion (32 page)

Akitada watched him. “Tell us about it.”

“I was afraid the police would find out about me. Years ago I did something I’m ashamed of and was sent to prison. I was building a road with other prisoners, and one day I ran away. I begged for food at temples and monasteries. One day, something happened to me at a temple. I saw a vision of the goddess Kannon. When the monks found me crying and praying, they asked what was the matter. They took me to their abbot and I confessed everything. When I was done, he said the goddess had forgiven me. He said he needed someone to look after this mansion and gave me this job. When he brought the lady to live here, I saw she was very kind and beautiful. She was an incarnation of Kannon to me. I would never have hurt her. That cursed day when the children came to fetch me, and I saw what had happened, I fell to my knees and prayed. That’s when I saw the trunk and knew what I had to do. And that’s what I did, and it’s all I did.”

Silence fell.

The painter broke it first. “But,” he said, “that means someone else killed her.”

Akitada nodded. “Yes, someone did kill her.”

Koshiro flung himself down before Akitada, knocking the
go
board aside and scattering the stones. “I swear I’m innocent. I don’t know what happened.”

Akitada sighed and got to his feet, extending a hand to Lady Akiko. “Come,” he said. “There’s nothing more for us here. We must find the killer elsewhere.”

Koshiro wailed, “What will happen to me?”

“If you’re innocent, nothing. But if you have lied or kept anything hidden again, I’ll see to it that the law falls upon you with special heaviness.”

Outside again, he turned to his sister. “Be warned by his story. These people have led rough lives. If we confront the murderer, he may become violent.”

She laughed. “I look forward to it. Life gets pretty dull when you see nobody but people of your own kind. And I’m not at all the refined creature you take me for.”

She was probably right about that.

They walked back to the main house and entered the wing occupied by Genshin’s guests.

Hearing their steps, the professor opened his door and looked out into the corridor. He was bleary-eyed and stank of wine. His eyes moved from Akitada and Tora to Lady Akiko and widened. “Dear me,” he said. “Do my eyes deceive me or is this a celestial being?”

“You may remember me,” Akitada said coldly. “The lady is my sister. She takes an interest in Lady Ogata’s story. Akiko, this is Professor Suketada.”

The professor blinked. “I hardly dare offer my hospitality,” he said, bowing, “but I’m a poor man and perhaps, in her kindness, her ladyship may overlook the shortcomings of my current abode.”

He stepped aside. Akiko looked at the cluttered room, wrinkled her nose, and decided to stand near the doors to the veranda.

“We needn’t trouble you long,” Akitada said. “What do you know about the caretaker?”

“He’s as lazy as they come. Caretaker? He only takes care of himself.”

“How long has he been here?”

“Let me see. About as long as I. I think he showed up right after I moved in and introduced himself. I’m afraid I don’t waste my time talking to caretakers. You’ll have to ask Yoshizane. They’re fast friends.”

Akiko interjected, “Do you ever take on private pupils, Professor?”

Akitada stared at her. Surely she was not thinking of hiring this wine-sodden individual for his children.

The professor made her another bow. “Very rarely, my dear lady. My research takes up all of my time. I’m engaged in writing a history of the Imperial University, you see.”

“It will be a most learned work, I’m sure,” Akiko said. “But you have had private students in the past?”

The professor waved a hand. “A few. Not worth the effort. The young are irritating dolts. I offered to help our young Akushiro recently and found him very unstable. Apart from the fact that he can’t keep his mind on anything but women, he’s dangerously violent.”

Akitada asked, “Violent? He seemed more the frightened rabbit type. What happened?”

The professor rubbed his chin and grimaced. “He was supposed to be writing an essay on Kung Fu Tse and scribbled some silly poem instead. I made a scathing comment on his poetic skills and he hit me. That ended our lessons.”

Akitada raised his brows. “It seems I was wrong about that young man. I intend to have a word with him. Where is his room?”

The professor took them along the corridor and pointed to a door. “He may not be in,” he cautioned. “Now and then he actually attends a lecture at the university.”

As soon as the tall figure of the professor had bowed and disappeared into his own room again, Akitada tapped on the student’s door. Getting no response, he opened it and walked in, followed by Akiko and Tora.

The student’s room was not very tidy, but since he had not accumulated as many books and papers as Professor Suketada, it appeared cleaner and more spacious. The shutters to the outside were closed, but strips of light filtered in and revealed a clothing trunk, a small desk, a stand with books, a roll of bedding, a few utensils, and an old wooden box of the type that held money or important papers.

Akitada made straight for this box and found it locked.

Tora joined him. “It looks pretty flimsy. Shall I have a try at breaking it open, sir?”

Akitada hesitated.

“Go ahead!” urged Lady Akiko.

Tora picked up the box with both hands and shook it. It made a rustling sound. “Not money anyway,” he said. “Sounds like papers.”

“Papers,” cried Lady Akiko. “That’s much better than money. Open it.”

The lock turned out to be loose, having lost a nail in the past and being held by a single remaining nail which Tora pried out with his knife. Opened, the box revealed loose sheets of paper covered with poetry and a thin notebook.”

Lady Akiko snatched the notebook, while Akitada leafed through the poems. They seemed to be passionate love poems or dealt with death. Clearly the student had been in love with Lady Ogata. Akitada sighed and put the poems back. “Anything there?” he asked his sister.

She was absorbed in the notebook. “It’s a diary,” she muttered. “I think … it’s a woman’s diary. It must be hers.”

“Let me see.”

“Just a moment. Yes, she talks about her husband’s death here. It’s very sad.”

Akitada took hold of the diary and tugged.

“Wait. I want to see the end. It may give us a clue about her killer.

At that moment, the door opened, and the student walked in. He stopped, flushed as red as the lacquered railings outside the Takashina mansion, and gasped, “What are you doing in my room?”

With his next glance he recognized the diary in Lady Akiko’s hands, howled like some mad thing, and flung himself at her. Akitada moved to intercept him, but the impact threw him to the floor, where he landed so awkwardly that he nearly passed out from the pain in his half-healed back and shoulder.

As everything turned black, he heard Akiko’s scream and a shout from Tora. More screams and shouts followed, and when Akitada finally managed to catch his breath and open his eyes, the student flailed on the floor with Tora kneeling on his back and twisting one of his arms across it. The screams came from the student. Akiko lay beyond them, curled up and moaning.

Tora asked Akitada, “Are you all right, sir?”

“Yes.” Akitada struggled to sit up and fell back. “I’ll be all right in a moment,” he ground out.

Tora cursed and punched the side of the student’s head; the student screamed again. “Shut up, you disgusting coward,” snarled Tora and twisted his arm viciously.

Akitada remonstrated weakly.

Attracted by all the screaming, the professor walked in and stared at the scene. “What’s going on?”

This time, Akitada managed to sit up. “Stop twisting his arm, Tora,” he said. The screams turned to whimpers. Akitada crawled over to his sister. “Akiko? Are you hurt?”

She took a hand from her face and held it out to him. It was covered with blood. “He hit me,” she said in a tone of outrage.

Akitada helped her to sit up and took a look. “A nosebleed,” he said. “I don’t think it’s broken. He found a paper tissue in his sash and handed it to her.

She held this to her nose and peered at Tora and the student. “He’s the killer!” she said in a muffled voice and a tone of conviction.

“Oh, yes,” said Akitada, feeling his back to see if his wounds had opened up again. They had not, though they still hurt. “Yes, I think so. Everything points to it.”

“Yes,” agreed the professor. “I told you he was violent.”

The student sobbed.

“But why?” Akiko dabbed at her nose and studied the bloody tissue. “What possible reason could he have had?”

“Professor, would you give me hand? I’ve been wounded and this incident has taken the strength from my knees.” Akitada held out a hand to the professor who grasped it and pulled him to his feet. Akitada stood a moment, swaying.

“He attacked you, too?” the professor asked. “Where are you wounded?”

“They are old wounds. He rushed my sister and me because we were looking at Lady Ogata’s diary. He must have stolen it from her trunk after he killed her.”

A wail from the student, “I didn’t mean to hurt her! I loved her more than my life.”

“A fine way to show it,” growled Tora, pulling the student’s head back by his topknot. This produced another squeal. “You’re nothing but a crybaby,” Tora told the youth. “Why should a lady like that even look at you?”

The student whimpered, “You’re hurting me.”

“Let him get up,” Akitada said, “but have your sword ready in case he makes a break for it.” He moved gingerly. The pain was going away. Akiko was also standing now, the blood-stained tissue pressed to her nose, but a distinct gleam in her eyes as she watched the student getting to his feet. He was a pitiful sight, his hair loose and his face blubbered with tears and snot. He looked around at the circle of his grim-faced accusers and shivered.

“Very well,” said Lady Akiko. “You’ve admitted killing her, but you say you didn’t mean it. Explain!”

The youth hung his head and dabbed a sleeve at his face. “She made me so angry. She mocked me!” He dabbed again and raised his eyes to look at Akiko. “Women are cruel!”

Akiko chuckled. “Nonsense.”

He cried, “Look at you! You don’t care. You come into my room and go through my things and you laugh at me. How would you like being laughed at?”

Akitada went to pick up the fallen diary and held it up. “It seems to me you did the same thing and you stole what you found. This was surely among Lady Ogata’s things.”

“I had to take it after … I had to make sure she hadn’t written about me.”

“And had she?” Lady Akiko asked.

He glowered. “She was a fox! She teased me, pretending she liked me. I wrote her poems and she lied. She said the poems were beautiful. But in her diary she says she couldn’t stand me and that my poems are horrible. Like a fox, she tricked me and made me reveal my feelings when I was caught by her beauty and false kindness. Then, when I poured out my love for her, she laughed at me. I got angry! I shook her to stop those evil words. When she was silent, I let her go.” His face crumpled. “She fell, and I saw she was dead, and I was frightened.”

“And you decided to make it look as if she’d committed suicide?” Akitada asked.

The student nodded. “It was hard. She was heavy.” His tone was accusatory, as if he blamed the dead woman for this also.

“You thought people would think she had done it herself?”

The student nodded.

Akitada said, “But unless she had used a trunk to stand on, she couldn’t have hanged herself. And there was no trunk there when she was found. Can you explain that?”

The student looked puzzled. “But everyone said the trunk was there. I must have put it there. I was very upset at the time. I thought of the diary and searched for it. When I found it, I took it away with me. I don’t remember what else I did, but I must have put the trunk under her.”

“Very odd!” said the professor, who had listened with great attention to all of these revelations. “Clearly, killing the poor lady caused him to lose whatever small amount of sense he had before.”

“I wish it had been you, you drunken sot,” the student snarled at him.

Tora drew his short sword and raised it. “Down on your knees!” he snapped.

The student obeyed.

Suddenly Akitada felt utterly spent. He swayed and only caught himself by putting one hand on the small book stand.

Tora held out his sword. “Professor, if you’d take over for a moment, I’ll find something to tie this brat up with. And then we’d better send for the police.” He glanced at Akitada, who nodded wordlessly.

Akitada felt faint and hoped he would neither faint nor vomit. Akiko came to stand beside him and touched his hand. “Time to go home,” she said softly. “Tora can handle matters here, can’t you, Tora?”

34
Senior Secretary Soga

The student Takechi Akushiro was arrested. The professor, perhaps because of his outrage over the moral turpitude of the younger generation, accompanied Tora to police headquarters to support his charges against him. The student confessed readily, though not without putting blame on Lady Ogata for having provoked him.

The case was closed, and yet Akitada felt dissatisfied. There was the matter of Lady Ogata’s real identity. On his instructions, Tora had not revealed this to the police, but Akitada felt her family should know of her death.

But he was not equal to taking such a tale to a man like Senior Secretary Soga and was still fretting when, to his consternation, Saburo admitted the Senior Secretary to his study the next day.

Soga Ietada, tall and thin, walked in briskly, cast a curious glance around at all the books collected by Akitada and a long line of learned Sugawaras, and a more penetrating one at Akitada. His expression was grim.

Akitada knelt and bowed deeply, ignoring the pain in his back, and wondering what new disaster was about to strike.

“Please be comfortable, Sugawara,” said the secretary. “I understand you are recovering from a knife attack?”