by I. J. Parker
Okamoto returned with a pale, plain young woman in a house dress. He said, “This is my elder daughter, Otomi. Please ask her anything.”
Akitada and the young woman bowed to each other. She went to kneel behind her father’s cushion, her eyes downcast and her work-reddened hands folded modestly in her lap.
Akitada was unused to speaking to strange young women, but he tried. “Did you know that your sister had a … er … met someone?”
The young woman shook her head and said, “My sister did not confide in me. She is a foolish girl. She is always reading stories, and sometimes she makes them up. I did not think anything when she said she had fallen in love with a nobleman.”
“You did not share a room?” Akitada asked, puzzled how a lover could have visited Tomoe without her sister’s knowledge.
To his dismay, Otomi began to weep in harsh, racking sobs. Akitada shot a helpless look at Okamoto.
The older man smiled a little sadly. “Hush, Otomi!” he said, explaining, “The girls did not get along. Tomoe said her sister snored, and Otomi wanted her to stop reading by candlelight.”
Otomi sniffled. “I think she just said those things because she wanted to be alone to receive this person. How could she go away with him like that in the middle of the night without a word to anyone! But my father has always allowed her to do whatever she wished.”
Okamoto shook his head. “No, Otomi. You exaggerate.” Turning to Akitada, he said, “This is really not like Tomoe. No good-by! Not so much as a letter! I am afraid the poor child has been abducted by a man who had no intention of treating her honorably. That is why we must find her.” His short, stubby hands became fists. “This person of rank knew we are only ordinary people without learning and he thought it would be easy to fool us. You, being a young gentleman yourself, will understand much better than I the person who took my child. What do you think we should do? Please speak frankly. I shall not take offense. My child’s life is precious to me.”
Akitada hesitated. It crossed his mind that Tomoe had run off with some commoner, perhaps even a rich man’s servant. He said awkwardly, “I do not want to worry you more, but I am wondering why the minister dismissed you. You are a highly respected man, and have had the honor of addressing His Majesty.”
The older man looked uncomfortable. “I was a little surprised myself. Still, I am nobody. It is only my association with wrestling which brings me in contact with the ‘good people.’”
Akitada turned back to the young woman. “I assume you never saw your sister’s visitor. But perhaps she described him when she talked about him. Anything, the smallest detail, may help me to find him.”
She nodded. “Tomoe said he looked exactly like Prince Genji. And that, like Prince Genji, he wore the most ethereal perfumes in his robes. Is there such a man among the great nobles?”
The question struck Akitada as incredibly naïve. He blurted out, “Prince Genji is a character in a novel.”
“I thought so.” Otomi’s expression was almost triumphant. She reached into her sleeve and produced a crumpled bit of paper. “There,” she said, extending it to Akitada. “She left this behind.”
It was a poem, or rather a fragment: “By the pond the frogs sing in the branches of the fallen pine; / Let the two of us, like a pair of ducks, join their … “ Either the author had been interrupted or had discarded a draft. But the brush strokes were elegant; both the calligraphy and style were those of a courtier. Apparently that much of Tomoe’s story had been true.
Folding the paper, Akitada tucked it into his sleeve and said, “This may be some help.” Okamoto’s anxious eyes met his, and he felt great pity for the distraught father. “It is possible that the man was sincere in his feelings for your daughter,” he said gently.
Okamoto regarded him fixedly. “He took Tomoe without my permission.” When Akitada nodded, he laughed bitterly. “The poem is just a bit of verse, that’s all. The fine gentleman dashed it off at a moment’s notice to turn a poor girl’s head.”
Akitada said helplessly, “Well, I’ll make inquiries. Can you describe your daughter to me?”
Okamoto tried, but tears rose to his eyes, and Otomi spoke for him.
“Tomoe is in her sixteenth year,” she said, “but well grown and tall for her age. She has an oval face, her skin is very white, and her eyes are large. Tomoe’s hair reaches to her ankles and is very thick. I brush it for her every day.” Otomi compressed her lips before continuing, “In front of her left ear she has a small brown mark which looks like a little bug. She hates it and always wears her hair loose so it covers her ears.” She gave Akitada a fierce look. “My sister is very beautiful. She looks nothing like me at all.”
Okamoto shivered and wiped the moistness from his eyes. Immediately Otomi rose to get another robe and draped it around his shoulders solicitously. “You are tired, Father,” she said. “I shall fetch a brazier of hot coals and some wine.”
Embarrassed, Akitada rose, saying, “I am very sorry for your trouble and shall try to help.”
Okamoto rose also, leaning on his daughter’s arm. “Allow me,” he said and pulled a slender, neatly wrapped package from his sleeve. “This is a token of my gratitude for your interest and will defray any immediate expenses.”
Akitada accepted with a bow and took his departure, wondering why the girl Otomi looked so complacent, almost happy, as she stood beside her father.
• • •
His first visit was to the headquarters of the municipal police to see if there had been an accident involving a young woman. He was shown to an office where an harassed looking sergeant was bent over paperwork. Akitada sat down and waited.
“Of all the things to happen!” the sergeant muttered to himself. “And the coroner is sick! Heaven only knows if I got this right. No names, he says. How is a man to file a report without names, I ask you.”
Akitada leaned forward. “A troublesome case?” he asked.
The sergeant looked up. “Oh. Sorry, sir. Didn’t realize you were there.” A puzzled frown, then a tentative smile. “Haven’t I seen you in the Ministry of Justice?”
Akitada bowed slightly. “Sugawara Akitada,” he introduced himself. “Junior clerk.”
“Right! Yes, we’ve got a nameless suicide. And the report was brought in by a nameless citizen.” He looked over his shoulder, then leaned forward to whisper, “It’s all very hush-hush. Your boss talking to my boss. Actually it was the captain of the palace guard.”
“Ah!” nodded Akitada. He asked in a whisper, “Masahira or Morikawa?” There was a right guard and a left guard of the palace.
“Masahira,” mouthed the sergeant. He continued in a normal tone, “I’ve been told to file a report without names; just the ‘unfortunate female victim’ and the ‘person who made the discovery.’ On top of that we don’t have a coroner’s report. All I know is the girl was dead when we pulled her from the water.”
A girl! Akitada became alert. “Perhaps,” he offered, “I could be of assistance. I am not a coroner, but I learned a little forensic medicine when I was a student at the university.”
The sergeant was relieved. “If you wouldn’t mind taking a look,” he said, getting to his feet. “Just a bit of the jargon and I can finish my report. We’ve got her in the back room.”
The back room was a barren space, dim with the shutters closed, and contained nothing but a covered body on a mat. A faint smell of rotted vegetation hung in the air. The sergeant threw open the shutters, then pulled back the straw mat which covered the corpse.
Akitada held his breath. He saw the face first, and felt an almost physical pain that someone so young and beautiful should be forever lost to the world. Slender brows arched over eyes shaded by thick lashes, now wet against the pale cheeks. The small nose and softly rounded lips were almost childlike in their freshness and innocence. She looked asleep, and like a sleeping child, she touched a hidden desire to cherish and protect.
Too late! The long hair, matte
d with mud and rank vegetation, stuck to her skin, was tangled in the clammy folds of her fine silk clothes (lovely rose colors shading all the way to the palest blushing skin tone), and reached to her small, slender hands and feet. There was so much hair, so many layers of wet silk that she seemed to be wrapped in them as in a strange pink and black cocoon.
Akitada knelt beside her, feeling strangely reverent, his eyes on her face. He saw no marks on her except for a thin red line high on her neck beneath the jaw. It disappeared under her hair. He extended a hand, almost apologetically, and brushed aside a strand that covered her right ear.
There it was, a dainty dark brown mark, no bigger than an orange seed. According to her sister, it had worried her, but Akitada thought it most beautiful, this small imperfection in the otherwise perfect face of the girl Tomoe.
“Oh,” he murmured, overcome with pity and regret. The puzzle had turned into something far more real that touched him deeply.
The thin red line widened and deepened just below the ear but did not continue around her neck. It was recent. Whatever had caused it had not been strangulation, though something might have been put around her neck and then jerked backward.
“What is it?” asked the sergeant. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
She was everything out of the ordinary to Akitada’s mind, but he asked, “Did she have anything around her neck?”
“No. Well, was it suicide or what?”
“What makes you think it was suicide?”
“My boss told me it was. He said she left a letter or something before drowning herself.”
Akitada sighed. It was too likely that Tomoe had written a tragic love letter. If Masahira was the lover, he was beyond her reach. He looked at the lovely silent face before him. A young romantic girl would have found the noble captain irresistible. Masahira was in his late thirties and one of the most handsome men at court. All the empress’s ladies in waiting were said to be in love with him. For all that, Masahira had had an excellent reputation up to now. Married to a daughter of the chancellor, he had never been rumored to have affairs or even flirtations. If he was indeed the man, Tomoe must have seen him at one of the wrestling contests held in the palace. He would be in attendance, riding at the head of the imperial guard, resplendent in golden armor shining in the sunlight and seated on a prancing steed.
“Well?” urged the sergeant. “Shouldn’t you take off her clothes?”
Akitada recoiled from the suggestion. Instead he gently opened her lips and felt inside. He pulled out a fragment of a water plant and some wet dirt. “She drowned,” he told the sergeant. “The fact that she swallowed water mixed with vegetation and pond mud proves that she was alive when she fell in.”
“Ah,” nodded the sergeant. “I shall put it in my report.”
Akitada turned her head and felt the skull, moving the wet hair aside from the skin. On her left temple he found a bruise, slightly swollen and discolored. Her hair had become glued to the scalp and as he pulled it loose the tips of his fingers came away red.
The sergeant peered. “Must’ve banged her head when she went in.”
Akitada looked up. “Not if she committed suicide. She would have walked into the water. Unless she jumped from a high place and hit some obstruction. Where was she found?”
“She didn’t jump. It was just a murky garden pond full of frogs.”
Frogs! Akitada was momentarily distracted by the memory of the poem. He asked, “Was the water deep?”
“No. It only came to my hips.”
Akitada looked at the sergeant. “Would you drown yourself in that? Where was this place?”
“Small villa in the western part. You know how things are over there. It’s pretty much deserted. She was staying there by herself. Not even a servant. If you ask me, it was your typical love nest.”
“Whose house?”
The sergeant cast up his eyes and grinned. “Ah! Your guess is as good as mine. The chief says it’s immaterial. She committed suicide. Case closed.”
“But what about her family?”
“We’ll post a notice! If anybody missed her, they can claim the body.” The sergeant looked worried suddenly. “It is suicide, isn’t it? Or … an accident?”
“You mean, could she have run into something with her head and fallen in the water? I don’t know. You will have to show me the place.”
The sergeant frowned. “Aren’t you first going to look at the rest of her?”
Reluctantly Akitada checked the small hands, the dainty feet in their white silk socks. Both were unmarked except by muddy water. Then he straightened her clothes gingerly. The dampness made the silk cling to her skin, outlining high, small breasts, a narrow waist, and delicately rounded hips and thighs. In spite of himself, Akitada felt the blood rise warmly to his face and looked away in self-disgust. Turning the body on its side, he found a long tear in the back of the outer gown. A sharp, thorny branch was caught in the hem, and the silk showed streaks of dirt and many small rips.
“Did you or the constables drag the body along the ground?” he asked the sergeant.
“No. Two of us scooped her out of the water and laid her on the mat she’s on now. She weighed very little, even with all the water.”
Akitada gently laid Tomoe on her back again, plucking at the layers of silk until she looked more decently covered. Then he rose.
“I am afraid, Sergeant, that this young person was murdered.”
The sergeant turned first red than white. “No!” he said. “I can’t put that in my report. I don’t care what you think you saw, it can’t be murder. The chief said suicide.”
Akitada shook his head. “It’s murder,” he said stubbornly. “She was knocked unconscious and then dragged to the water and drowned. Now let us go to this villa and see what we can find out.”
The sergeant looked panic-stricken. “Are you mad? You shouldn’t even be here. Come on.” Taking Akitada’s arm, he pulled him out of the room and locked the door after them.
“Now,” he said as they were standing outside, “you’d better go home and forget all about this.”
Akitada gave him a long look, then said, “As you wish,” and walked away.
The sergeant stood and watched him turn the corner, wondering belatedly what Akitada’s business had been.
• • •
Lord Masahira occupied his family mansion on the corner of Kitsuji and Nishidoin avenues. It was a large, generously staffed establishment, and Akitada had considerable difficulty being admitted. The man he was about to meet was a favorite with the emperor and related by marriage to the chancellor. That gave him the sort of power which would make even Soga grovel. No wonder the minister had dismissed Okamoto without the slightest encouragement. No wonder he had used his influence to keep Masahira’s name out of the investigation. They were covering up a murder.
Akitada saw again the still face of the dead girl and the pain in her father’s eyes, and a hot anger against Masahira filled his heart. He had known at the police station that he could not tell Okamoto of his daughter’s murder without at least identifying her killer first. And Masahira was the most likely choice.
The handsome captain of the imperial guard was in a small garden enclosed by the walls of several buildings. He was sitting on the edge of the wooden veranda and had Akitada’s visiting card in his hand. Glancing up, he said, “You are Sugawara from the Ministry of Justice?”
Akitada bowed deeply. He knew he was in the presence of one of the first nobles of the land but was much too angry to prostrate himself. Considering the collusion between this man and the minister, he also did not feel obligated to go into long explanations of his status.
When he raised his head, he saw to his surprise that the man before him had red-rimmed eyes and looked as if he had not slept. Beside him, on the polished boards, stood an untouched tray of food.
“Well? What does Soga want?” Masahira asked curtly.
If the minister found out about this visi
t, he would see to it that Akitada never worked again in any imperial office. On the other hand, Masahira’s question proved that he had recently consulted Soga about Tomoe’s murder. Righteous disgust gave Akitada the strength to continue.
“I am here on behalf of Okamoto Tosan,” he corrected Masahira. “He has asked for my unofficial assistance in locating his daughter Tomoe. Perhaps I should explain first that I have just come from police headquarters where I have seen the body of his unfortunate child.”
A slight flush appeared on Masahira’s pale face. “I see,” he said tonelessly. “Well? I was under the impression that the matter was being handled by Soga. Is it money the old man wants? How much? Come on! Let’s get it over with.”
