Shizuko tried her best to stop me, saying ‘Such an unpleasant thing… you couldn’t possibly,’ but I would not heed her and, as shown in Shundei’s story, I removed the ceiling board inside the cupboard and climbed up inside the hole like an electrician. Apart from the maid who had come out to answer the door, there was no one else in the house, and as the maid appeared to be working in the kitchen I was not concerned about being spied by anybody.
The attic was not as beautiful as the one in Shundei’s fiction.
This was an old house, but the attic was not terribly dirty because at the end of the year the cleaners had come in and removed the ceiling boards and washed them thoroughly. Still, the dust had gathered over the past three months, as had the spider webs. First, it was so dark you could not see a thing, so I borrowed a torch that was in Shizuko’s house and, carefully navigating along the beams, I approached the spot in question. Gaps had opened up between the ceiling boards, which had perhaps curved back so much due to the cleaning. The light that shone up from below acted as a landmark. I had only gone a meter, but had already discovered something startling.
Although I had climbed thus into the attic, the truth is I thought it could not be as Shizuko said – that she must surely have imagined it. However, the reverse side of the ceiling boards did indeed carry the traces of someone having been there recently.
Suddenly, I felt a cold sensation. An indescribable shudder ran through me when I thought that Ōe Shundei, that poisonous spider of a man whom I knew only through his novels, had crawled through the attic in just the same fashion as I was now doing. I steeled myself and followed the footprints or handprints that had been left in the dust on the beams. At the place from which the ticking sound had supposedly emanated, the dust had indeed been considerably disturbed and there were signs that somebody had been there for a long time.
Preoccupied now, I began to stalk what appeared to be the traces left by Shundei. It seems that he had walked through more or less every part of the attic – the strange footprints were all over. In particular, above Shizuko’s parlour and the bedroom she and her husband used some floorboards had gaps between them and the dust was very disturbed.
Just like the character in ‘Games in the Attic,’ I peeked down into the room below and it seemed entirely possible that Shundei had gazed in ecstasy there. The strange scene in the ‘netherworld’ visible through the cracks between the boards was truly beyond imagination. In particular, when I looked at Shizuko, who happened to be right below me, I was surprised at how strange a person can appear depending on the angle of vision.
The strange scene in the ‘netherworld’
visible through the cracks between the boards
was truly beyond imagination.
We always look at each other side on and even the most self conscious person does not consider how he or she looks from above. How vulnerable we are! And precisely because of that vulnerability, those who make no effort to adorn themselves are exposed in a somewhat unflattering light. The depression between Shizuko’s fringe and glistening chignon (from directly above the marumage bob had already lost its symmetry) was thin, but some dust had gathered there and it looked very dirty compared to the other pretty parts. As I was looking from straight above, I could see down past the nape that followed on from her coiffure into the valley formed between the collar of her kimono and her back. I could even see the bumps along her spine and also the poisonous red weal that painfully wound along her moist white skin down into the darkness and out of sight. Regarded from aloft, Shizuko seemed to lose some of her ladylike refinement and instead a certain strange obscenity she possessed loomed larger for me.
To see if any evidence of Ōe Shundei’s presence remained, I directed the torch’s light onto the ceiling boards and searched around, but the handprints and foot marks were unclear and naturally fingerprints could not be made out. Shundei had probably worn gloves and gone in stockinged feet, as set down in ‘Games in the Attic.’
However, a small, mouse-coloured round object had fallen in a hard to see spot at the foot of a strut rising from the ceiling to a beam right above Shizuko’s parlour. The faded metal object was hollowed out like a bowl and looked like a button. On its surface, the letters ‘r.k. bros. co.’ stood out in relief.
When I picked it up, I immediately thought of the shirt button in ‘Games in the Attic,’ but this was a somewhat unusual button. It looked as though it could be some sort of decoration on a hat, but I couldn’t be sure. When I showed it to Shizuko later, she could only shake her head.
Naturally, I carefully sought to ascertain how Shundei had managed to sneak into the attic.
Following the traces of disturbance in the dust, I noticed that they stopped above the storeroom beside the entrance hall. The storeroom’s rough ceiling boards shifted easily when I tried to lift them. Using a broken chair that had been thrown inside as a platform, I climbed down and made to open the storeroom door from the inside. The door had no lock and opened easily. Immediately outside was a concrete wall just a little higher than a person.
Perhaps Ōe Shundei had waited until no one was about, climbed over the wall (as noted above, the wall was topped by glass shards, but this would be no obstacle to a scheming intruder) and sneaked into the attic through the storeroom’s lockless door.
Once I had fully grasped it all, I felt a little disappointed. I wanted to scorn the perpetrator for committing the childish prank of a delinquent. The odd mysterious fear disappeared, leaving only a real feeling of displeasure. (I would only learn later how mistaken I was to scorn the perpetrator.)
Beside herself with fear and anxious that her husband’s life should not come into danger, Shizuko suggested going to the police even if it meant revealing her secret. However, I had begun to look down on our opponent and I calmed Shizuko by assuring her the perpetrator would not do anything so silly as to drip poison down from the ceiling, as in ‘Games in the Attic,’ and that even though he had sneaked into the attic this did not mean he could murder someone. Trying to frighten people like this was just the sort of childish thing Shundei would get up to and it seemed likely that he would make it appear as though he were perpetrating some crime. I consoled her that a mere novelist like him lacked any further ability to put his plans into action. To set her mind at rest, I promised to ask a friend who was keen on such things to watch the area around the wall outside the storeroom every night.
Shizuko said that fortunately there was a guest bedroom on the second floor of the European style section of the building and that she would use some pretext or other to justify using that as their bedroom for the time being. This part of the building did not have any chinks in the ceiling for prying eyes.
These defensive measures were put into action the following day, but Ōe Shundei, the evil beast in the shadows, simply ignored the makeshift ploys. Two days later, on 19 March, the first victim was butchered, exactly as he had forewarned. Oyamada Rokurō drew his last breath.
The letter advising of the impending murder of Oyamada had included the phrase: ‘But you do not need to panic. I never rush things.’ Then why had he perpetrated the crime in such haste just two days later? Or perhaps that had been a tactic – a phrase inserted into the letter in order to create a false sense of security. But it suddenly occurred to me that there could be another reason.
It was something I feared when I heard Shizuko pleading in tears for Oyamada’s life after she heard the ticking watch and became convinced Shundei had sneaked into the attic. It seemed certain that when Shundei became aware of Shizuko’s devotion to her husband his jealously had intensified and at the same time he had felt threatened. He might have thought: ‘Right, if you love your husband so much, I’ll finish him off quick rather than keep you waiting a long time.’ Leaving that aside, in the case of the odd death of Oyamada Rokurō the body was discovered in extremely strange circumstances.
I
first heard all the details after receiving a message from Shizuko and hastening to the Oyamada residence on the evening of the same day. On the previous day, he had returned from the company slightly earlier than normal and there was nothing particularly unusual about his appearance. After finishing his evening drink, Oyamada said he was going across the river to play go at his friend Koume’s place and as it was a balmy evening he set off wearing simply a light Ōshima kimono and haori rather than a coat. This was at about seven in the evening.
As he was in no hurry, he strolled as usual by way of Azumabashi bridge and walked along the Mukōjima river bank. He stayed at his friend’s house until around midnight and then left on foot. It was all clear up to this point, but from there nothing was known.
Although Shizuko was up all night waiting, he did not come home, and given that she had just received a terrifying threat from Ōe Shundei she was very worried. As she waited for the dawn, she tried to contact everyone she could think of using the telephone and the servants, but there was no indication that he had been to any of these places. Naturally, she rang me, but I happened to have been out from the previous evening and as I did not return until the next night I did not hear anything about these events as they occurred.
Finally, the moment for Oyamada to show up for work arrived. As there was no sign of him, the company did its best to find him, but his whereabouts remained unknown. By this time, it was nearly noon. Just then, the Kisagata police called to report that Oyamada Rokurō had died in strange circumstances. A little to the north of the Kaminarimon gate train stop on the west side of the Azumabashi bridge, a path descends from the main riverbank walkway to a landing place for the ferry plying the route between the Azumabashi and Senju bridges. Recalling the era of the penny steamers, the ferry service was one of the Sumida River’s tourist attractions. I often boarded the motor launch with no particular purpose, making the return trip between Kototoi and Shirahige bridges because I loved the old-time rural atmosphere conjured up by the traders, who brought picture books and toys on board, and who described their wares in time to the beat of the screw in the hoarse voice of a narrator who takes on all the roles in a silent movie. The landing place was a floating quay on the Sumida River, and the passenger waiting benches and toilets were all located on this wallowing boat platform. Having used that toilet myself, I knew it was just a box-like enclosure with a rectangular opening in the wooden floor that opened directly onto the muddy river, which coiled along thickly about a foot below.
Just as on a steam train or a ship, there was nothing in the toilet to hold up waste matter and accordingly it was indeed clean, but if you stared intently down from the rectangular hole into the eddying fathomless black water, you could occasionally see bits of flotsam appear on one side of the hole and float out of sight on the other side like micro-organisms viewed in a microscope. It gave one a strange feeling.
About eight o’clock in the morning of 20 March, the proprietress of one of the merchant family stalls in Asakusa’s Nakamise arcade came to the Azumabashi ferry landing place on her way to Senju on business and while she was waiting for the vessel to arrive she went into the toilet. Immediately after, there was a scream and the woman came flying out.
When the elderly ticket collector asked her what had happened, she told him that she had seen a man’s face looking up at her from the blue water directly under the rectangular hole.
At first the ticket collector thought it might be a prank played by one of the crew (there had been some peeping Tom incidents in the water from time to time), but he went into the toilet anyway to investigate, whereupon he indeed saw a human face floating there about a foot directly under the hole. Waving to and fro with the water’s motion, half the face would disappear only to pop up again. ‘So help me, he looked just like one of them wind-up dolls,’ the ticket collector said later.
When he realized it was a corpse, the old man immediately got into a fluster and shouted out to the young fellows among the customers waiting for the ferry at the landing place.
Enlisting the aid of a strapping chap from the fish shop and some other young men, he attempted to lift up the dead body, but they were unable to pull him up through the hole in the toilet. Accordingly, they went outside and used a pole to prod the corpse out into the open water. Strangely, they discovered that the cadaver was stark naked, but for a pair of undershorts.
There was something unusual because this was a man around forty in rude health and it seemed unlikely that he would have been swimming in the Sumida River in this weather. Furthermore, a closer look revealed that his back had what looked to be a wound from a knife and the corpse contained relatively little water for a drowned man.
When it emerged this was a murder case rather than a death by drowning the commotion intensified. Then another queer thing happened when the corpse was lifted out of the water.
Under the instructions of an officer who had rushed from the Hanakawado police station after hearing the news, one of the young fellows at the landing place grasped the sodden hair of the cadaver and made to lift it up, but the hair slid smoothly away from the scalp. It was such an unpleasant feeling that the young man let go with a cry. It seemed odd that the hair should peel away so easily even though the body did not appear to have been in the water all that long, but a closer look revealed that what had appeared to be hair was in fact a wig and the man’s head was completely bald.
This was the wretched death of Oyamada Rokurō, Shizuko’s husband and director of Roku-Roku Trading Company.
After having been stripped naked, Rokurō’s bald head had been covered with a fluffy wig and the corpse dumped into the river beneath Azumabashi. Furthermore, although the corpse had been discovered in the water, there was no sign that water had been ingested. The fatal injury was a wound inflicted by a sharp instrument to the back, in the section near the left lung. Given that there were a number of other shallower stab wounds, it seemed certain that the criminal had stabbed the body multiple times.
According to the police surgeon’s examination, the fatal wound had probably been inflicted around one o’clock that morning, but as the corpse was not clothed and there were no belongings, the police were unable to identify it. Luckily, someone who knew Oyamada by sight appeared around noon and the police immediately telephoned the Oyamada residence and the trading company.
When I visited that night, there was considerable confusion at the Oyamada home, which was thronged with relatives from the Oyamada side, employees of Roku-Roku Trading Company, and friends of the deceased. Shizuko said that she had just returned from the police station and she looked around aimlessly amidst a circle of those paying their respects.
Oyamada’s corpse had not yet been handed over by the police. Under the circumstances, it had to undergo an autopsy, and accordingly the white cloth on the dais in front of the family Buddhist altar was occupied only by a hastily arranged mortuary tablet on which offerings of incense burned sadly.
From Shizuko and the trading company staff, I gained the full account of the discovery of the corpse as detailed above. When it occurred to me that I had caused this deplorable event, having scorned Shundei two or three days earlier and stopped Shizuko from notifying the police, I felt such shame and regret I wanted to leave.
It seemed to me that Ōe Shundei must be the criminal. When Oyamada was walking past Azumabashi after leaving Koume’s house, Shundei must have pushed him down to the dark landing place, struck him with a weapon and thrown the body into the river. Surely there could be no doubt that Shundei was the perpetrator. In terms of timing, Honda had indicated that Shundei was wandering around the Asakusa vicinity, and Shundei had even predicted Oyamada’s murder.
Still, it was very strange that Oyamada had been quite naked and wearing an odd wig. If indeed this was the handiwork of Shundei, why had he done such an outlandish thing?
In order to discuss with Shizuko the secret we alone knew, I wai
ted for the right moment then approached her and asked her into another room. Much as if she had been awaiting this, Shizuko bowed to the company and followed me in. Once out of sight of the guests, she cried out my name softly and suddenly clung to me. She looked fixedly at my chest. The long lashes glittered and the swelling in the space between her eyelids turned into large tears that coursed down her pale cheeks. The tears welled up one after another and flowed down ceaselessly.
Shizuko’s tears were subsiding, but now I was overcome with emotion and taking her hand in mine I apologized over and over, pressing her hand as if to give her strength.
‘I don’t know what to say. It’s all due to my carelessness. It didn’t occur to me that he had the ability to carry this out. It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry…’
That was the first time I felt Shizuko’s body. I shall never forget that even in that situation it seemed that her core was aflame despite her pale tenderness and I was acutely aware of the wondrous touch of her warm, nimble fingers.
When Shizuko had stopped crying, I asked: ‘So did you report that threatening letter to the police?’
‘No, I wasn’t sure what I should do.’
‘So you still haven’t said anything then?’
‘No, I haven’t. I wanted to discuss things with you.’
It seemed strange when I thought about it later, but at that time I was still holding her hand. Shizuko left her hand in mine and remained leaning against me.
‘You still think it was his doing, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. And last night something strange happened.’
‘Something strange?’
‘Well, I shifted our bedroom to the second floor of the European part of the building, as you suggested. It put me at my ease to think that we would no longer be spied upon, but it seems as if he was peeping after all…’
The Black Lizard and Beast In the Shadows Page 19
