Murder on the Cliff

by Stefanie Matteson

  Kneeling with her samisen, Fujiko proceeded to sing the melancholy song. After the audience had applauded, Paul translated the words for the benefit of the English-speaking guests:

  “Rain falls gently on the lighted stream. Is it Okichi who goes in the palanquin along the Shimoda street wet with spring rain? Her tears run down her cheeks like the falling petals of the flowers of the camellia. The sad street song and the willows, weeping, keep company with her heart.”

  Returning from the front of the room, Fujiko took a seat between Lester and Justin. Justin ignored her—he was still too busy talking with Dede, but Lester made the most of the situation to take his revenge on Marianne. As Fujiko poured his Scotch, Lester made a great show of studying the nape of her neck.

  Charlotte had to admit the nape of her neck was intriguing. Like her face, it was covered with white makeup except for three flame-shaped areas that hung down from her hairline like long, thick locks of hair. These were the deep yellow shade of her natural skin.

  “I don’t know about Japanese men,” Lester said loudly as he hung over the back of her neck like a bloodthirsty vampire, nuzzling it with his beaky nose, “but to us Texas men, these napes are pretty damned sexy.”

  Marianne gave him a dirty look, but Fujiko took no notice at all: she was obviously used to being ogled by drunken men.

  By now, in fact, most of the guests were drunk or getting there. The mayor of Shimoda was lunging at Sumire, sending his wife into a fit of giggles. Billy was bragging loudly to Nadine about his boat, as he had all through the song. Even their host was beginning to look a little glassy-eyed.

  After the next course, the geishas changed places again. This time, it was Okichi-mago who sat between Charlotte and Shawn. First she filled Charlotte’s sake cup, then Shawn’s. As Shawn filled the geisha’s sake cup in return, Charlotte noticed that it was a shallow, wide-mouthed cup of a deep sea-green color.

  Okichi-mago noticed Charlotte’s gaze. “It’s a replica of the sake cup that Townsend Harris gave Okichi,” she explained. “I always drink from this cup, just as my great-great-great-grandmother Okichi did.”

  “But how did you know what it looked like?” asked Charlotte. It was supposedly the original that was on display inside the house.

  “I saw the movie,” Okichi-mago replied. She smiled, pressing her lips together to avoid showing her teeth. As a part of the skeleton, the teeth were considered a reminder of death, and it was considered impolite to show them.

  Charlotte wasn’t bound by any such restraints: she threw back her head and laughed, the deep husky laugh for which she was famous. “You saw the movie!” It struck her as very funny: life imitating art come full circle. Perhaps the sake had gone to her head as well.

  “Who else was I to use as a role model?” said Okichi-mago.

  “Is the idea of wearing camellias from the movie too?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I have to admit that I’ve capitalized shamelessly on the legend. I wouldn’t have chosen the camellia myself. It isn’t a popular symbol in Japan. Its tendency to drop prematurely from the branch is considered an omen of death. But it was Okichi’s symbol, so I wear it.”

  As they spoke, another parade of dishes was brought out: a palate freshener of fresh vegetables followed by lobster and crabmeat tempura, and then a grilled chicken dish. For a while there was silence as the guests ate the main dishes. Then Tanaka volunteered to sing.

  “I am going to sing a short song called a kouta,” he said as he took his place at the head of the room. “Like Fujiko’s song, it is about Okichi.” He looked out at Okichi-mago, who averted her eyes. He sat with his hands on his knees, the eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses half-closed. His white hair glowed in the candlelight. He sang the brief song in a pure, clear voice, accompanied by Keiko on the samisen.

  As he sang, Charlotte could sense Okichi-mago tense up. She thought of Okichi’s bitter words from Soiled Dove, in which the geisha’s lot was likened to the sake cup, which was passed around to be pressed against the lips of any man, no matter how repulsive. “Even wives are like sake cups, sake cups that are carried to the lips only when there is still sake in them,” Okichi had said. She wondered if that’s how Okichi-mago thought of herself.

  “Bravo, bravo,” cried the mayor of Shimoda as Tanaka finished. They seemed to be the only English words he knew.

  After bowing to the audience, Tanaka resumed his seat, and Paul translated. The kouta was the song equivalent of the haiku, or brief Japanese poem, he explained. The song was called “The Marionette,” and the words were simple: “Your heart flip-flops and changes like a marionette. There’s someone in the shadows pulling your strings.”

  As he spoke, Charlotte realized that the song was an indictment of Okichi-mago. The person in the shadows pulling the strings was Shawn.

  Shawn had sat quietly through the song and the translation. Now he also volunteered to sing. He explained that his song was also a kouta; it was called “Evening Rain.”

  Charlotte could see the surprise among the Japanese guests as Shawn rose and went up to the front of the room. Singing kouta was considered an art. Although it was a common avocation of wealthy Japanese businessmen, it was an unlikely one for an American sumo wrestler.

  Like Tanaka, Shawn sat on his knees with his hands resting lightly on his thighs. Before starting to sing, he looked over at Okichi-mago, who looked up at him lovingly before lowering her eyes into her sake cup.

  Shawn’s voice was deep and resonant—not beautiful, but compelling. As he sang, Charlotte could see the Japanese guests’ look of surprise change to one of admiration. The exception was Tanaka’s assistant, Hayashi, who had been making sheep’s eyes at Okichi-mago all evening, and who clearly resented Shawn.

  Shawn provided his own translation: “Rain tonight it seems. Drifting out of the clouds. Even the moon is haloed. Resigned to a drenching, the two of us, moored together. The rendezvous tree.”

  After Shawn’s song, a dessert of Japanese persimmons was served. Then came the fun and games: rock, paper, scissors; paper-folding tricks, magic tricks, fan tricks. But despite the best efforts of the geishas, the evening dragged. The only live wires were Billy and Nadine, the veteran Newport party-goers.

  Charlotte attributed the lack of party atmosphere to her host, who seemed dejected. If he’d thrown the party to satisfy the judge, it would explain his lack of enthusiasm. But then why the lavish presentation—the paper lanterns, the arrangement of camellias, the elaborate dinner? It didn’t make sense.

  As the evening drew to a close, the mood grew even more subdued. The mayor of Shimoda had piped down at last; the sake had finally gotten the better of him. Mori had stopped clicking his camera. The raindrops falling on the shingled roof sounded a monotonous tattoo.

  Finally Okichi-mago took the stage with her long-necked samisen. “I will sing Okichi’s famous song, ‘Raven at Dawn,’” she announced. She sang in English in a clear soprano: “Dozing and softly aroused, lost and disheveled through love, the courtesan Urazato wonders: by what strange affinity did I love him so from our first meeting?”

  She looked up at Shawn, and then continued: “Ah, now mingled with my sorrow, the sound of that samisen from the second floor. Some time ago it was that Tokijiro stayed on with me, day and night; we embraced each other all the time, we talked together with such joy. My love for him filled my whole body with an unbearable longing. But tonight, what contrast! I know not even where he may be—we two, who can never become man and wife. Oh, for the man I love, my life I’d gladly give. What could I regret, leaving this evanescent life? Oh, what a pitiless floating world!”

  As she sang, teardrops drifted down her ghostly white face. Finally she sang the bittersweet refrain: “Sleeves wet with weeping, bosom torn with cares and sad regrets. The past will ne’er return: will drinking bring forgetfulness? Forget and drink—besides that, only to pluck the samisen with muffled fingertips. Once more I hear the raven’s cry at dawn: that memory … Night dee
pens on Shimoda’s waterfront. Tears falling, drop like red camellias.”

  The melancholy notes hung in the still air. The rain had stopped. The only sounds were the tinkle of the wind chimes and the splash of the waves against the rocks below. The candles flickered, creating shadow patterns in the rafters. For a few minutes, they sat silently. Then, the waiters reappeared with pickles, tea, and bowls of rice signaling that the party was over.

  By the time they had finished with the bowing and leave-taking, it was just eleven. A light wind was blowing the rain clouds away. As they left the temple, a full moon was emerging from behind the clouds. It was surrounded by a luminous ring—a haloed moon.

  5

  Charlotte awoke early early the next morning. She checked the hands of the clock on her bedside table; five o’clock. Much too early. She tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. Seeing that the sky was clear and that it was going to be another gorgeous day, she decided to stroll the Cliff Walk. Strolling the Cliff Walk was something she did every time she came to Newport; it was her way of saying hello to the city-by-the-sea. Besides, she needed to get the kinks out: her hips were stiff from sitting on the floor for so long the night before. She was dressed in five minutes. After grabbing a slice of toast and a glass of orange juice, she was out the door. She joined the Cliff Walk at the foot of Briarcote’s lawn. The Cliff Walk ran right across the Smiths’ property, as it did the properties of the other Cliff Walk residents. Which is what gave it its appeal: it had often been called the most beautiful walk in the country—the gray-blue ocean on one side, the awesome façades of some of the world’s largest mansions on the other. Years ago, some oceanfront property owners had tried to bar the public from the Cliff Walk, but the Supreme Court had ultimately ruled in the public’s favor based on an old fisherman’s right of way. Briarcote was located at the tail end of the Cliff Walk, which was the least-traveled section. Not many tourists made it to the end of the entire three-mile stretch. It was also Charlotte’s favorite: here, the Cliff Walk was a narrow footpath that meandered across low ocean headlands between the head-high banks of wild roses from which Briarcote took its name. As she walked, Charlotte inhaled their wonderful perfume: it was particularly strong this morning, perhaps because of the rain the night before. Past Briarcote, the trail opened out onto rocky ledges. Two doors down was the first of the big mansions at this end: The Waves, a low, rambling English Tudor “cottage” on a rocky promontory. Beyond The Waves was Land’s End, the black-shuttered stucco mansion where the writer Edith Wharton had spent her summers. Wharton had loved Land’s End. Charlotte could easily see why: from this rocky promontory the ocean seemed to stretch all the way to Ireland. The view was directly east: the rising sun had tinted the horizon a rich orange and east a wash of peach over the landscape. Past Land’s End, the path curved around a promontory at Rough Point, where an elderly heiress lived in seclusion in a Gothic mansion. The high walls surrounding the property, topped with matted coils of barbed wire, forced Charlotte to walk on the rocks below. She loved the rhythm of walking on the rocks: the process of looking for the next place to put her foot cleared her brain. As she walked, she thought of her husband, Jack Lundstrom, from whom she’d been separated for several years. He had been attracted by her glamor, as she had been by his worldly success, but despite their best intentions, the marriage hadn’t worked out. As the widower of a traditional wife, he’d found it too hard being Mr. Charlotte Graham. But they’d remained on good terms, and neither of them had filed for divorce. Recently she’d had the feeling that he wanted to get back together, and she suspected Connie and Spalding, who were old friends of his as well as of hers, of some kind of plot. She had half-expected him to show up on Briarcote’s doorstep (she could just hear Connie: “What a coincidence,” she would exclaim, “Charlotte is visiting us too!”), but so far it hadn’t happened. She wasn’t sure if the prospect made her happy or not.

  Beyond Rough Point, the ocean became more tame and the coastline curved in upon the land to form a little bay. Instead of a rough path across a rocky shore, the path here was paved with asphalt. It was this section of the Cliff Walk that was most favored by tourists, though so far Charlotte had seen no one else other than a fisherman at Rough Point. No longer forced to mind her step, she was free to take greater notice of the architecture. The houses here were even more grand. The first mansion on this stretch was Marble House, the ostentatious marble palace built by William K. Vanderbilt. Taking her cue from Townsend Harris, Mrs. Vanderbilt, who by that time had become Mrs. Belmont, built a Chinese teahouse at the edge of the cliff, which was the scene of suffragist rallies in the early part of the century. “Brace up, my dear,” was the oft-quoted advice she had once given a dejected suffragette. “Pray to God. She will help you.” After Marble House came Beechwood, where Mrs. Astor had held the parties for her imaginary guests, and then Rosecliff, a replica of the Grand Trianon, Louis XIV’s pleasure palace at Versailles. After this peaceful stretch came the most dramatic section of the Cliff Walk. The low shoreline of smooth, greenish-gray rocks gave way to craggy, dark gray bluffs that reminded Charlotte of Bermuda. Rivulets of clear, cold water trickled over the edge of the cliff to the ocean below. The sun was higher in the sky now: it was beginning to burn the dew off the wildflowers that clung to the cliff’s edge. On the sea, flocks of birds flitted over the wavetops. Rounding a turn after a series of Victorian cottages, she found herself on the final section of her walk. Though the Cliff Walk continued for some distance, she would turn off at Narragansett Avenue. As the temple at Shimoda came into sight, she found herself thinking about the geisha party. She had left with the feeling of business uncompleted. Paul must have had a purpose in giving the party, but whatever it was, it hadn’t been realized. Marianne had said she was attending because she wanted to see what would happen. Nothing had happened. As American businessmen who were dragged to geisha parties in Japan often complained, it was a total bore. A lot of people had gotten mildly drunk, and that was all.

  Just past the turn was The Breakers, which looked oddly deserted in the morning stillness. Usually the huge pile of limestone was crawling with tourists. After The Breakers came Edgecliff, the Japanese-owned mansion that would be the scene of the Mikado Ball. She was nearly at the end of her walk. As she crossed the lawn at Edgecliff, she came upon the first sign of life aside from the fisherman at Rough Point: it was Miako, Paul’s frisky Japanese spaniel. He was running toward her at full speed. Reaching her, he began barking furiously. Then, still barking, he ran ahead, and then-back. And again: ahead, and then back. He wanted Charlotte to follow. Charlotte complied: she was going in that direction anyway. The temple stood above her, on top of the Cliff Walk. When Paul Harris had pulled it out of the ocean, he had built a tunnel under it to keep the Cliff Walk traffic out of sight. It wasn’t a unique idea: several other Cliff Walk property owners had done the same thing. Charlotte couldn’t blame them: although the Cliff Walk traffic at Briarcote was light by comparison, Connie and Spalding were still reluctant to sit out on their terrace because they didn’t like being on display.

  Just past Edgecliff, Miako stopped at the head of one of the pebbly channels that had been carved out of the cliff by water runoff, and began barking again. Charlotte followed him down the channel, which was overgrown with underbrush. It ran sideways across the cliff toward a promontory, and then turned downward. As she rounded the promontory, Charlotte saw what Miako had been barking about. She found herself looking out over a small shingled cove that stretched from the promontory above her to the one on which the temple was perched. At the far end of the cove, a body lay on the shingle beach at the foot of the temple. From this distance, it looked like an elegant porcelain Japanese doll. But; she realized with alarm, it wasn’t a doll, it was a geisha. Following Miako, she scrambled down the channel to the foot of the cliff, hoping that whoever it was, wasn’t dead, only injured. A few minutes later, she had crossed the cove. Even from some distance, she could tell that the geisha was de
ad, but it wasn’t until she got up close that she saw it was Okichi-mago.

  She was lying on her back, slightly twisted to one side, with her knees bent. The tide had covered her lower legs. She was still wearing the seashell kimono; the clams, whelks, and periwinkles seemed to shimmer under the pale pink surface of the water. Catching sight of her broken ankles, Charlotte realized with a pang what had caused her death. Glistening white shards of bone had punctured the heels of her white socks. She had jumped from the temple gallery, landing feet first. Stepping over a piece of driftwood, Charlotte moved closer, and touched a hand lightly to the dead geisha’s face. Her skin was ice-cold and her jaw was stiff: rigor mortis had already begun to set in, indicating that she had been dead for some time. Charlotte shivered; the balmy air suddenly seemed cold and malevolent. Though the shards of bone protruding from her heels were grotesque, there was surprisingly little blood. Maybe it had been washed away. Her left hand lay under her body and her right was stretched out. Lying on the rocks near her right hand were several broken pieces of green porcelain—the sake cup. Charlotte also noticed that the lustrous surface of the baroque pearl on her obi clasp had been scraped off. But apart from the broken cup, her obi clasp, and her ankles, there was no other evidence of a fall. The surface of her white makeup was cracked from the dampness, but the rest of her makeup was still perfect. She was as beautiful in death as she had been in life; even her camellias were still fresh.

  But in spite of the neatness of the body, Charlotte was shocked at its appearance. There was something about it that was deeply disturbing, apart from its being dead. Charlotte had seen dead bodies before. What was it? Her head was tilted back and her mouth was open, exposing small white teeth that next to the porcelain white of her makeup looked more yellow than they actually were. Her sea-green eyes stared vacantly at the dawn sky. The seaweed, that was it! Entwined around her long, white neck was a slimy greenish-brown filament of ribbon weed. The seaweed looked like the tentacle of an octopus.