‘The 28th of November, you say?’
With my mind still blank, I simply repeated the driver’s reply.
‘Why are you so preoccupied with the gloves, sir? Was there something special about them?’
The driver was leering, but I said nothing and stared intently at a speck of dust on the windscreen. I remained that way while the car travelled for four or five blocks. Suddenly, I rose up inside the vehicle, grabbed the driver’s shoulder, and shouted, ‘You’re sure it was the 28th of November? Would you be prepared to swear to it in court?’
The taxi had swerved and the driver was adjusting the steering wheel to bring the car under control. ‘In a court? Is this some sort of joke? But I’m certain it was the 28th of November. I’ve even got a witness. My relief driver saw them too.’
Although Aoki was very surprised, he could see how serious I was and he replied earnestly.
‘Right then, take me back now.’
Although he was growing more confused and looked a little afraid, the driver turned the taxi around as I had asked and took me to the front gate of the Oyamada home. I leaped out and rushed to the entrance. Taking hold of the maid who happened to be there, I demanded, ‘In the major house cleaning at the end of last year the boards of the ceiling in the Japanese section of the house were apparently completely stripped and washed. Is that true?’
I knew this because, as I have indicated above, Shizuko told me when I went up into the attic. The maid must have thought me mad. For a while she looked at me intently before saying, ‘Yes, that is true, sir. It wasn’t a full scale washing – just cleaning down with water – but the house cleaners were certainly here. It was the 25th of December.’
‘The ceilings of all the rooms?’
‘Yes, the ceiling of every room.’
Perhaps having heard all this, Shizuko emerged from the house and asked me with a worried look, ‘What has happened?’
I repeated my question and after Shizuko had given the same reply as the maid I said a quick goodbye, flew into the taxi, ordered the driver to take me to my lodgings, and sank deep into the cushions and the muddy fantasy that seemed to have taken hold of me.
The boards in the ceiling of the Japanese section of the Oyamada home had been taken up and washed with water last year on the 25th of December. Thus, the ornamental button had to have fallen in the attic after that.
However, the gloves had been given to the taxi driver on the 28th of November. As I have noted above several times, there is no doubting the fact that the ornamental button had fallen from those gloves.
Accordingly, the button from the gloves in question had been lost in a place in which it could not have fallen. I realized what it was this puzzling phenomenon indicated.
In order to be certain, I visited Aoki Tamizou at his garage and met the assistant driver, who confirmed that it had indeed been the 28th of November. I also visited the contractors who had cleaned the ceiling of the Oyamada household and learned that the 25th of December was the correct date. They assured me that nothing, no matter how small the object, could have been left there.
The only explanation that would enable the claim that Oyamada had dropped that button to be maintained is as follows.
The button remained in Oyamada’s pocket after it fell from the glove. Unaware of this and not wanting to use a buttonless glove, Oyamada gave them to the driver. In a strange turn of events, the button accidentally fell from Oyamada’s pocket when he subsequently climbed into the attic anywhere from a month, at the earliest, to three months later (the threatening letters first began to arrive in February).
It seems strange that the button was in the pocket of Oyamada’s waistcoat rather than an overcoat (usually gloves end up in overcoat pockets and it is unthinkable that Oyamada would have worn an overcoat when he climbed up into the attic; indeed, it would even be somewhat unnatural for him to have worn a jacket when he entered the space) and surely a man of means such as Oyamada would not have worn his winter clothes through the spring.
As a result, the pall of darkness cast by Ōe Shundei, the beast in the shadows, spread ever further over my soul.
The news that Oyamada was a sexual fiend such as might be found in a modern detective story had perhaps triggered in me a monumental delusion (though the fact that he had lashed Shizuko with a riding whip was beyond doubt). It might be that he was killed for somebody’s purpose.
Ōe Shundei! Ah the image of that beast persists tenaciously within my soul.
Strange, how once the thought begins to bud, everything comes to seem suspicious. That a mere fiction writer like myself should have been able to make the deductions in that personal statement with such ease also seems odd when you think about it. Actually, I had left the draft of the statement uncorrected because I thought an outrageous mistake could be concealed in it somewhere and partly too because I was so absorbed in my affair with Shizuko. The fact is that somehow I did not want to go ahead with it and indeed I had actually come to think that was for the best.
Thinking about it, there is too much evidence on hand in this case. At every turn I made, pieces of evidence rolled about all too conveniently, as if they were lying in wait. Just as Ōe Shundei himself says in his works, detectives must exercise caution when they encounter too much proof.
First, it is hard to believe that Oyamada had forged the genuine-looking lettering of the threatening letters, as I had imagined. As Honda had said, even if it were possible to write characters that resembled Shundei’s handwriting, how could anyone copy his unique style, particularly an entrepreneur like Oyamada from a different field?
Only now did I remember a story written by Shundei called ‘The Stamp’ about a mentally unbalanced medical doctor’s wife who hates her husband. She learns how to write like him and forges a document in his hand as part of a scheme to make the doctor appear guilty of murder. Perhaps Shundei had done the same thing to bring about Oyamada’s downfall.
Depending on your viewpoint, this case seemed just like a collection of Ōe Shundei’s masterpieces. The peeping from behind the ceiling boards was from ‘Games in the Attic’ and the piece of evidence in the form of a button was also an idea taken from this work. The forging of Shundei’s hand came from ‘The Stamp’, while the raw wound on the nape of Shizuko’s neck hinting at a sadist emulated the approach used in ‘Murder on “B” Hill.’ Indeed the whole case smacked strongly of Ōe Shundei, including the glass shard that had caused the stab wound and the naked body floating under the toilet.
There seemed to be too many odd coincidences. It was as if Shundei had overshadowed the case from start to finish. I felt that I had followed Ōe Shundei’s instructions in piecing together deductions exactly as he wished. It even seemed that I had been possessed by Shundei.
Shundei was here somewhere. I was certain that serpent-like eyes glittered at the bottom of this case. It was not my mind theorizing – I sensed it within myself. He had to be here somewhere.
I was thinking about this as I lay on my futon in a room at my lodgings. Strong as my constitution was, even I was now tired of this never-ending fantasy. Thinking it over and over, I finally nodded off with fatigue. I awoke from a strange dream with a start and an odd idea came into my head.
It was late at night, but I called Honda’s lodgings and asked for him.
When he answered the telephone, I surprised him by asking without any preliminaries, ‘Now, you told me that Ōe Shundei’s wife had a round face didn’t you?’
After realizing it was me, Honda answered in a sleepy voice.
‘Mmn, yes, that’s right.’
‘She always had her hair done in a European style.’
‘Mmn, yes, that’s right.’
‘She wore spectacles for near sightedness?’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘She had a gold tooth.’
‘Yes, that�
��s correct.’
‘She had bad teeth, right. And apparently she often applied a poultice to her cheek to kill the tooth pain, didn’t she?’
‘You are well informed. Have you met Shundei’s wife?’
‘No. I talked to some of her neighbours in Sakuragi-chō. But she would have been wearing the pain-killing poultice when you met her, right?’
‘Yes, she always wore one. I suppose her teeth must have been very bad.’
‘Was it the right cheek?’
‘I don’t remember well, but I have a feeling it was the right.’
‘But it seems a little strange that a young woman who wore her hair in the European style would use an old-fashioned poultice for quelling tooth pain. People don’t use them nowadays, do they?’
‘You’re right. But what on earth’s this all about? Have you found some clue in the case?’
‘I have indeed. I’ll tell you all about it later.’
In order to be certain, I thus sought Honda’s confirmation of things that I had heard before.
Next, I went to the desk and much as if solving some geometry problem I inscribed on a sheet of paper a variety of shapes and equations, writing and erasing, writing and erasing until it was almost dawn.
Now, it was always me who sent the letters arranging our trysts and after three days had passed without contact from me it seemed that Shizuko could wait no longer, for she sent a message by express mail asking me to come to ‘our hiding place’ tomorrow around three in the afternoon without fail. She also complained, ‘Perhaps you no longer like me now that you have discovered my excessively sensual nature. Could it be that you are afraid of me?’
Even after receiving this letter, I did not feel particularly enthusiastic. I just did not want to see her face. Nevertheless, I went to that ghostly house near the Ogyō-no-Matsu pine tree at the time she set.
It was a maddeningly humid day in June, just ahead of the rainy season, and the sky hung down oppressively overhead as gloomy as a cataract. After getting off the train and walking three or four blocks, my armpits and back were clammy with sweat and when I touched my collared shirt it was soaking wet.
Shizuko had arrived a little earlier and was sitting on the bed in the cool storehouse, waiting. We had laid a carpet on the second floor of this building, decorating the scene of our games as effectively as possible with a bed, a sofa, and some large mirrors. Ignoring my pleas to desist, Shizuko had without reserve purchased ridiculously expensive objects, including the sofa and the bed.
She wore a bright single-layer Yukitsumugi kimono and a black silk sash embroidered with fallen paulownia leaves. As usual, her hair was done in a shiny marumage bob and she lounged on the bed’s pure white sheets. But the harmony of the European furnishings and her traditional Edo style contrasted bizarrely in the storehouse’s dark second storey. Although now a widow, Shizuko continued to wear her hair in a style denoting a married woman, and when I saw that scented, shining marumage bob of which she was so fond, I immediately beheld her in a lascivious light, the marumage falling apart, the front locks dishevelled, and straggling wisps in a tangle at her neck. For she usually spent as much as thirty minutes in front of the mirror combing her tousled hair before leaving the house we used for our assignations.
As soon as I came in, Shizuko asked me, ‘Why did you come back the other day just to ask about the house cleaning? You seemed very agitated. I wondered what it could be, but I couldn’t think what it was.’
Taking off my coat I said, ‘You couldn’t think what it was? Something very important. I made a big mistake. The attic was cleaned at the end of December and the button fell off Oyamada’s glove over a month before that. You see, he gave the gloves to the taxi driver on the 28th of November, so the button must have come off before that. The order is all topsy turvy.’
‘My!’ said Shizuko with a startled look, but it seemed she had not fully grasped the situation for she went on ‘But the button fell in the attic after it had come off the glove then.’
‘Well, it was after, but the issue here is how long after. It would be strange if the button did not fall when Oyamada climbed into the attic. Precisely speaking, the button fell after, but it fell in the attic at that same time and was left there. You’ll agree that it would be beyond the laws of physics to think that the button took more than a month to fall after it had been torn off?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Shizuko, who had grown somewhat pale and was still thinking.
‘If the button was in Oyamada’s pocket after dropping off and then accidentally fell in the attic a month later, that would make sense, but do you think Oyamada would have worn the clothes he used in November last year through this spring?’
‘No. He was very fastidious about his appearance and at the end of the year he changed over completely to thick, warm clothing.’
‘You see. That’s why it’s strange.’
‘Well,’ she said, drawing a breath, ‘then surely Hirata…’
‘Of course. This case smacks too strongly of Ōe Shundei. I have to completely amend that statement I wrote recently.’
I then explained to her in a simple fashion that, as noted in the preceding chapter, this case resembled a collection of Ōe Shundei’s masterpieces, that there was too much evidence, and the forging of handwriting seemed all too genuine.
‘You won’t be well aware of it, but Shundei has a truly strange lifestyle. Why didn’t he receive guests? Why did he seek to avoid visitors by shifting house so often, going on trips, and falling ill? Finally, why did he waste money by continuing to pay rent on that empty house in Mukōjima Susaki-chō? Even for a misanthropic novelist, that seems very odd. Too odd, don’t you think, unless it was in preparation for murdering someone?’
I was sitting beside Shizuko on the bed as I spoke. When she thought that it could after all be Shundei’s handiwork, she quickly became frightened, slid her body right against me, and gripped my left wrist with a clammy hand.
‘Now I realize what a fool he made of me, how I did exactly as he wanted. I was put through my paces too with all that false evidence he had set up beforehand, following his deductions directly as a guide. Ha, ha, ha…’
I laughed in self-mockery.
‘He’s an awful creature. He grasped my way of thinking exactly and set up the evidence accordingly. Why, an ordinary sleuth would have been no good. It had to be a novelist like me with a penchant for deduction because no-one else would have had such a roundabout and bizarre imagination. However, if Shundei is the criminal, a number of illogical points arise. Still, arise though they may, it is because the case is so hard to solve and Shundei such an unfathomable villain.
‘When you boil it all down, there are two such points. The first is that the threatening letters suddenly ceased to arrive after Oyamada’s death. The second is why the diaries, Shundei’s book, and Shin Seinen came to be in Oyamada’s book cabinet.
‘If Shundei really is the criminal, these two points just do not add up. If he copied Oyamada’s hand and wrote in the margins of the diaries and made the traces of writing found in the frontispiece of Shin Seinen in order to put together “evidence,” the thing that is really hard to understand is how Shundei could have obtained the key to the book cabinet because this was carried by Oyamada alone. Next, did he sneak into Oyamada’s study?
‘I have been thinking about these points so much over the past three days that my head hurts. In the end, I managed to come up with what I think may be the only explanation.
‘Given the pervading stench of Shundei’s works in this case, I took out his stories and began to read them, thinking that a closer study of his fiction might provide some key to solve this case. Although I have not told you yet, Shundei had apparently been wandering around Asakusa Park in strange garb, including a clown’s costume and pointed hat, according to an expert in these matters called Honda. When I inquired about t
his at some advertising agencies, they could only think that it must have been a vagrant from the park. That Shundei mingled with the homeless in Asakusa Park seems like something right out of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, don’t you think? After realizing this, I searched for something similar in Shundei’s fiction and discovered two pieces that you will perhaps know: “Panorama Country,” a long story published immediately before he went missing, and “One Person, Two Roles,” a short story published earlier. When I read these, I understood well how attracted he was by a Dr Jekyll-type approach, in which one person could transform into two.’
‘You’re scaring me,’ said Shizuko, gripping my hand tightly.
‘The way you’re speaking is strange. Let’s not talk about it, shall we. I don’t like it, not here in this dark storeroom. We’ll talk about it later. Today let’s have fun. When I’m here with you like this, I don’t even think about Hirata.’
‘Now, listen to me. This has to do with your life. If Shundei still has you in his sights…’
I was not in the mood for lovers’ games.
‘I have still only found two odd correspondences in this case. At the risk of sounding like an academic, one is spatial and the other temporal. Now, here is a map of Tokyo.’
I took out of my pocket a simple map of Tokyo that I had prepared and pointed with my finger as I talked.
‘I recall from my conversations with Honda, and the head of the Kisagata police station, the various addresses that Ōe Shundei flitted to one after the other. As I remember, there was Ikebukuro, Kikui, Negishi, Hatsune, Kanasugi, Suehiro, Sakuragi, Yanagishima, and Susaki. Ikebukuro and Kikui are very distant, but if you look at the map you’ll see the other seven places are concentrated in a narrow area in the north-east corner. This was a major oversight on Shundei’s part. The significance of Ikebukuro and Kikui being so far apart is easy to understand if you consider that it was from the time Shundei lived in Negishi that his literary fame grew and visitors began to throng to his home. Up until the Kikui period, he was able to carry out everything to do with his manuscripts by letter alone. Now, if we trace a line like this from Negishi through the following six places, an irregular circle emerges, and if we were to calculate the centre of that circle we would discover a clue to this case. I will now explain to you exactly what I mean.’
The Black Lizard and Beast In the Shadows Page 23
