The Inugami Curse

by Seishi Yokomizo

  Just then, one of the detectives came up to Tachibana. “Chief, we found this.” It was a gold, chrysanthemum-shaped brooch about three centimeters in diameter with a large ruby in the middle. “We found it over there, near the overturned wicker chair.”

  Chief Tachibana and Kindaichi heard a strange cry escape Furudate’s lips, and whirling around in surprise, they found him staring intently at the brooch.

  “Mr. Furudate, do you know anything about this brooch?”

  Furudate took out his handkerchief and hurriedly wiped his brow. “Well, yes…”

  “Whose is it?” pressed Tachibana.

  “I think it belongs to Tamayo.”

  “Tamayo?” Kindaichi took a step forward. “But even if the brooch belongs to Tamayo, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s connected with this murder, does it? She could have dropped it long before last night.”

  “But…”

  “But, what?”

  “But that can’t be. I clearly remember her having this brooch on last night. Yes, clearly. Last night, as I was leaving, I accidentally bumped into her, and this brooch got caught on my vest. That’s why I remember it so well.”

  Furudate nervously wiped the sweat from his neck, as the chief and Kindaichi exchanged meaningful glances.

  “About what time was that?”

  “Oh, a little before ten. It was just as I was leaving.”

  So Tamayo must have come to the observation deck after the little incident with Furudate, but what business could she have had here at such a late hour?

  Just then, they heard footsteps from the direction of the stairs, and up popped Monkey’s ugly face.

  “Uh, Mr. Furudate?”

  “Yes? What do you want?” Furudate approached Monkey and exchanged a few words with him, but returned immediately. “Matsuko wants to see me,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Alright,” said Chief Tachibana. “Oh, and if you’re going, would you mind asking Tamayo to come here?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Furudate departed, but Monkey showed no signs of leaving and remained standing midway up the flight of stairs, glancing nervously around the observation deck.

  “Monkey, is there anything else you want?”

  “Yeah, well… something a little strange’s happened.”

  “Strange?” asked Chief Tachibana.

  “Yeah, one of the boats is gone.”

  “A boat?”

  “Yeah. Every morning I go and look around the grounds, checking to see everything’s alright, like. But this morning, as soon as I got up, I came downstairs here, and the sluice gate was open. I remember closing that gate for sure yesterday before it got dark, so I thought something strange’s going on. I looked inside the boathouse and, sure enough, one of the three boats was gone.”

  Chief Tachibana and Kindaichi looked at each other in surprise.

  “So, you’re saying that someone must have rowed out in that boat during the night.”

  “Don’t know that. I just know one of the boats is gone.”

  “And the sluice gate was open.”

  Monkey nodded sullenly.

  Instinctively, Kindaichi looked back toward the lake, but there was nothing like a boat anywhere on the rain-splattered waters.

  “Do your boats have any kind of mark on them?”

  “Yeah, they’ve all got INUGAMI printed in black on the side.”

  At the chief’s whispered command, three detectives rushed down the stairs, no doubt to search for the missing boat.

  “Monkey, thank you very much. If you notice anything else, please let me know.”

  Monkey bowed awkwardly and padded down the stairs.

  Chief Tachibana turned toward Kindaichi. “Mr. Kindaichi, what do you think? Do you think the murderer put Také’s headless corpse into the boat and transported it somewhere?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Kindaichi, looking out over the misty lake. “If so, that would mean the murderer is an outsider, since whoever it is has left in the boat and hasn’t come back.”

  “Not necessarily. The murderer could have weighted the body and thrown it into the lake, rowed to shore somewhere, and then hiked over the hills to return here.”

  “But that would be awfully dangerous. If the killer’s going to put the severed head so ostentatiously on display like that, there’s no reason to take such a risk hiding the body.”

  “Hmm. I guess that’s so.”

  Chief Tachibana stood staring abstractedly at the gruesome pool of blood, but all at once shook his head fiercely. “Mr. Kindaichi, I don’t like this case. Why decapitate the body? Why put the head on the chrysanthemum doll? I don’t like it at all. It just gives me the chills.”

  Just then, Tamayo came up the stairs. She was pale and her eyes wide and sharp, but her loveliness was unchanged. No, her frightened, somewhat helpless air even seemed to enhance her beauty—a tender, melancholy beauty like that of a fragile flower languishing in the rain.

  Tachibana coughed lightly and said, “Thank you for coming. Please sit down.”

  Tamayo glanced at the grisly pool of blood and grew wide-eyed in fear for an instant, but quickly averting her face, sat down awkwardly in one of the wicker chairs.

  “I asked you to come because I want to know if you recognize this brooch.”

  When she saw the chrysanthemum brooch in the palm of Tachibana’s hand, Tamayo stiffened for a moment. “Yes, I do. It’s… it’s mine.”

  “I see. And do you have any idea when you misplaced it?”

  “Yes. Probably last night.”

  “Where?”

  “I believe it must have been here.”

  Tachibana and Kindaichi quickly exchanged glances. “Then you came here last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Around what time?”

  “About eleven, I think.”

  “What made you come to a place like this at such a late hour?”

  Tamayo was kneading her handkerchief in her hands, kneading and kneading until it seemed she would tear the cloth in two.

  “Listen, now that we’ve come this far, why don’t you just let it out. Tell us everything. Exactly why did you come up here?”

  Seeming to come to a decision, Tamayo lifted her face with determination. “To tell the truth, I met with Také here last night. There was something I wanted to discuss with him in private.”

  The blood had drained completely from her cheeks.

  Tachibana threw another glance at Kindaichi.

  The Fingerprint on the Watch

  “You met with Také here last night?”

  All at once a slight hint of suspicion flickered in Chief Tachibana’s eyes. Kindaichi too frowned with a puzzled look and stared at Tamayo’s pale, bloodless profile, sphinx-like in its inscrutability.

  “What business did you have with him? Or, no, I suppose it was Také who asked you to come.”

  “No, that’s not right,” Tamayo stated crisply. “I was the one who asked him to come and meet me here about eleven last night.” Having said that, she turned her eyes hesitantly toward the surface of the lake. The wind must have picked up, for the rhythm of the rain beating on the waters grew more violent and chaotic, portending a storm.

  Tachibana and Kindaichi looked at one another again.

  “Oh, I see.” Tachibana cleared his throat with effort. “And? What business did you have with him? You said you had something you wanted to discuss with him in private.”

  “Yes, that’s correct. There was something I wanted to tell Také in secret, without letting anyone else know.”

  “And that was?”

  Tamayo suddenly turned her eyes from the lake back to the chief’s face. “Yes, with all that has happened, I will tell you everything, frankly and honestly,” she said with a steady gaze, as if she had made up her mind, and began her curious tale.

  “Mr. Inugami was very good to me. Ever since I was a child he always treated me with love and kindness, as if I were his gran
ddaughter. I’m sure both of you know that already.”

  Indeed Kindaichi and Tachibana knew it very well. The old man’s affection for Tamayo was obvious from the contents of his will.

  Seeing the two of them nod in silence, Tamayo continued, a faraway look coming to her eyes. “One time, Mr. Inugami gave me a watch. Not recently—it was when I was still in pigtails. A Tavannes pocket watch, a hunter, that Mr. Inugami had. It wasn’t a lady’s watch, but child that I was, I had fallen in love with it for some reason, and whenever I was near Mr. Inugami I would ask him to take it out of his pocket and let me touch it. Then, one day, he laughed and said, ‘If you like it so much, Tamayo, I’ll give it to you. It’s a man’s watch, though, so you won’t be able to carry it with you when you grow up, but… Yes, I know, you can give it as a gift to the man you marry. Until then, you take good care of it, alright?’ He was joking, of course, but saying that, he gave the pocket watch to me.”

  Chief Tachibana and Kindaichi, looking confused, stared at Tamayo’s profile. What connection did this watch have with the events of last night? Both men, however, hesitated to interrupt her. Instead they waited silently, for they saw that despite the grisly situation they were involved in, a look of indescribably tender love had flooded over Tamayo’s brows, eyes, and lips as she had spoken about the late Sahei.

  Still with a dreamy look, Tamayo continued her strange tale. “I was so thrilled. I always kept the watch with me, even putting it by my pillow when I went to bed. Tick-tock, tick-tock—listening to that clear, sharp sound was such a delight. I treasured it. But being a child, I’d sometimes damage it—winding it too tight or accidentally getting it wet. When that happened, it was always Kiyo who would fix it for me.”

  At the mention of that name, Tamayo’s fairy tale of long ago gradually began to acquire an air of reality. The two men’s expressions became more tense.

  “Kiyo and I are only three years apart, but he was always very skillful with his hands, even as a boy, and he loved working with mechanical things. He was very good at doing things like assembling a radio or building an electric train, so repairing my watch was a piece of cake for him. ‘Tamayo, did you break your watch again? Shame on you,’ he’d scold me. But when he saw me looking so sad, he’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll fix it. It’ll be ready tomorrow; I’ll fix it for you tonight.’ And the next day, he’d place the watch in my hand, as good as new, always smiling, laughing teasingly, saying, ‘Tamayo, you have to take better care of your watch. After all, you’re going to give it to the man you marry when you grow up, aren’t you? You have to treat it with more tender loving care,’ he’d say, poking my cheek gently with his forefinger.”

  As she told her tale, Tamayo’s cheeks colored ever so slightly, and her beautiful eyes glistened more brightly, as if they had become moist.

  Kindaichi pictured Kiyo, with his sinister rubber mask. Today, there was no trace of the past in that hidden, disfigured face, but the features of the mask that had been made identical to his former self were indescribably handsome even in their eeriness. His photograph in The Life of Sahei Inugami, too, showed that Kiyo had been an extremely attractive young man. No doubt he had inherited his looks from Sahei, who had even aroused homoerotic passions in Tamayo’s late grandfather, Daini Nonomiya.

  The episode Tamayo related had probably taken place when she was still in elementary school and Kiyo in junior high. What emotions had stirred between this young, doll-like pair? And what plans had Sahei made for them as he watched them?

  Kindaichi suddenly remembered the scene with Monkey’s chrysanthemum dolls. In the kabuki play Chrysanthemum Garden, the former general Kiichi presented the young lord and warrior Ushiwaka, who had entered his household disguised as a servant, not only with his secret book of military tactics but with his daughter Princess Minazuru as well. Among Monkey’s chrysanthemum dolls, Kiichi had been made to look like Sahei, while the young hero Ushiwaka resembled Kiyo, and Princess Minazuru, Tamayo. Did this mean that Sahei had planned from long ago to make Kiyo and Tamayo husband and wife and to bestow upon them not the secret book of military tactics, as in the play, but the ax, zither, and chrysanthemum—the right to inherit the Inugami fortune?

  Of course, it was Monkey, not Sahei, who had made the chrysanthemum dolls, so Kindaichi could not be certain that they reflected Sahei’s wishes. Besides, Monkey was not a man of normal intelligence. Could it not be, however, that with the God-given instincts of such individuals, instincts that are so often sharper than those of ordinary people, Monkey had subconsciously guessed Sahei’s feelings? Or perhaps, fond of Monkey’s naive directness, had Sahei secretly told him his plans? If that were so then Monkey might have made the dolls as a comment on the Inugami clan’s recent situation. Laying aside the question of Sahei’s possible intentions, therefore, Monkey, for one, must have felt that Kiyo should be Tamayo’s husband and that the three heirlooms should be presented to them and them alone. But Kiyo…

  But Kiyo was no longer the Kiyo of yesteryear. Those handsome features had been totally destroyed.

  Remembering that horribly mutilated, disgusting mass of flesh he had seen that day, Kindaichi felt a shudder of horror and was overwhelmed by a hopeless gloom. His meandering thoughts, however, were soon interrupted when Tamayo, after a period of silence, once again began to speak.

  “During the war, something went wrong with my watch again, but by then Kiyo, who had always fixed it for me, was no longer in this house. He had been drafted and was fighting on the battlefields somewhere in Southeast Asia.”

  Tamayo’s voice faltered a bit, but quickly clearing her throat, she continued. “I just couldn’t bear to take that watch to a shop to be repaired. For one thing, I had heard from time to time that with such a fine watch, there was a danger they would switch the movement for something inferior. The other reason was that I had come to feel that the only person who should ever repair that watch was Kiyo. I didn’t want to hand it to anyone else, even for a short while. So, for a long time now, the watch has not kept accurate time, but since Kiyo has finally returned…” Tamayo hesitated a moment but quickly seemed to urge herself on, “and seems to have gotten quite settled now, I took the watch to him several days ago and asked him to repair it.”

  Kindaichi suddenly became very interested. As was his habit when thus aroused, he began enthusiastically scratching his head. He did not yet understand what exactly Tamayo wanted to say or what thoughts lay in her mind. Nevertheless, there was something that was exciting him intensely, and he continued scratching his head with wild abandon. “A-a-and did K-K-Kiyo repair the watch for you?”

  Tamayo slowly shook her head. “No, he took it in his hand and looked at it for a while, but said he didn’t feel like repairing it then and would do it some other day. Then he handed the watch back to me.” Having spoken thus, Tamayo fell silent. Chief Tachibana and Kindaichi, expecting more, watched Tamayo’s face with bated breath, but she remained turned toward the lake and seemed loath to open her mouth again.

  Tachibana looked confused and scratched the side of his head with his little finger. “I see. And what does this have to do with the events of last night?”

  Tamayo did not answer his question, but abruptly turned her account in another direction. “I’m sure you both know what happened in this villa last night. There was a big fuss because Také and Tomo brought back Kiyo’s hand print from Nasu Shrine and tried to use it as, what’s the right word…” Tamayo shuddered slightly, “evidence?—yes, though that’s an unpleasant word—as evidence to check Kiyo’s identity. For some reason, Mrs. Matsuko obstinately refused to let Kiyo give them his hand print, and all Také’s and Tomo’s efforts came to naught. But then I suddenly remembered something. The other day, as I told you, I went to ask Kiyo to repair my watch, and he refused. After returning to my room, though, I just happened to open the lid, and saw Kiyo’s right thumbprint pressed clearly on the back of it.”

  Kindaichi suddenly jerked as if struck by lightning. Yes, this was what
had been exciting him so intensely. Kindaichi again began furiously scratching his head this way and that, his hair now a tangled mess. Chief Tachibana, appalled, stared at him for a while, but eventually turned back to Tamayo and said, “But how could you be certain that was Kiyo’s fingerprint?”

  Stupid question! Wasn’t it obvious? Tamayo spoke as if Kiyo’s fingerprint had been pressed there accidentally and she had later discovered it accidentally, but how could that be true? No doubt she had planned ahead and set a trap for Kiyo, intending from the first to get his fingerprint somewhere on the watch. Yes, this was what had been exciting Kindaichi so intensely—what an intelligent and, at the same time, what a cunning woman Tamayo was.

  “I don’t think there could be any mistake. I wiped and polished the watch completely before taking it to Kiyo, and the only two people who handled the watch were he and myself. Since that print is not mine…”

  I’m right, Kindaichi thought. Tamayo had wiped the watch clean, planning to obtain Kiyo’s fingerprint. How ingenious she was, though, to think of the back of the lid. What better place to preserve a fingerprint.

  Tachibana, too, finally seemed convinced. “I see. And?”

  “Yes, and…” Tamayo kept searching for words. “And, seeing Mrs. Matsuko’s attitude last night, I knew we could not hope to obtain Kiyo’s hand print any time soon. But to leave the situation as it was would mean making Také and Tomo, and their parents as well, even more suspicious. So, when I remembered Kiyo’s thumbprint on the watch, I felt it best to make things certain as quickly as possible, and at the risk of being a little presumptuous, I decided to ask Také to compare it with the hand print on the scroll.”

  “I see, and you asked Také to come here to speak to him about that.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was about eleven last night?”

  “It was exactly eleven when I left my room. I knew that if Monkey found out, he would insist on coming along. I couldn’t have that, so I first retired to my bedroom and then waited until eleven to sneak out.”