The Masuda Affair (27 page)

The servant nodded. ‘They know,’ he said quite seriously. ‘Waiting to be fed. I’ll get some food.’

Akitada looked up into the dense branches. The foliage was alive. Did they know their benefactor was dead? They must have seen Inabe’s killer come with murder on his mind and watched him leave, his hands stained with the blood of their friend and that of one of their own. It was a foolish speculation, and Akitada turned to business.

The warden’s people had left the door to the studio unsealed. Muttering angrily under his breath, Akitada walked in. If anything, the stench was worse today. Like the warden, Akitada went to raise the shutters to the back garden. Light, fresh air, and birdsong poured in.

The room looked the same, except that the body was gone. The doctor’s blood still stained the floor, though, and attracted an occasional fly. More flies crawled on the dead crow. The warden had also taken the murder weapon, but the broken birdcage still lay there, and Akitada bent to pick up the pieces.

The old servant hovered at the door. He said, ‘I haven’t come in here.’ He did not explain if he feared the dead man’s spirit, thought to remain around its home for forty-nine days, or the warden’s anger.

Akitada said, ‘I’ll be working with your master’s papers. Don’t let me keep you from your chores.’

The old man looked relieved and crept away. Strange, thought Akitada, how many old men and their old servants he had met on this case. First the old lord and his servant, and now the doctor and his. Or perhaps it was not so strange. If loyalty meant anything, then master and servant would grow old together. He thought of Seimei. The bond between them was as strong as blood. The Masuda servant’s passionate hatred for Peony was due to that loyalty. But the doctor’s servant seemed more confused than grief-stricken or angry. Perhaps his claim that he had walked to his cousin’s funeral was untrue.

Enough theorizing. He needed facts.

He prowled around the room, looking at everything but the books and papers. The clothes box held plain and badly worn black robes and under robes, loin cloths, socks with holes in them, and a moldy black cap. Some of the things were good silk twill, but green with age. The dishes were a similar mix. Some were of cheap earthenware and some of fine china, but the china was cracked and chipped. Two pale rectangles on the wall suggested that paintings had hung there once. Otherwise, there was little of a personal nature in the room. No games or musical instruments. Just the broken birdcage.

It supported what he had been told of the doctor: that he had become an individual who cared nothing for personal luxuries, though once he had been well-to-do and had led a different life.

Akitada inspected the shelves of drugs and ointments next. He opened jars and twists of paper and sniffed at the contents. The doctor must have known what all this was, but Akitada was in the dark. Seimei or Tamako might know. Seimei had always dabbled in herbal medicines, and Tamako was an avid gardener who would probably recognize the dried plants that hung from the doctor’s rafters.

He looked at them: bunches of leaves, glaucous or grey, glossy or downy, coarse and smooth, large, small, feathery and spiny, palmate and toothed. He recognized none. Black,
white and brown tubers hung among them, twisted and shriveled in their dried death. They reminded him of the neglected garden at home, of the dead wisteria, and of the coldness that had come between him and his wife.

He turned to the books and papers.

The doctor had the medical texts, the
Ishimpo,
as well as a series of herbals and pharmacological treatises. These, along with the
Book of Changes,
the
Manyoshu,
and the four Confucian classics, made up his library. But there were also handwritten scrolls and notebooks. The notebooks were what he had come for. They seemed to cover interesting medical cases and diary entries. Just what he needed. He laid them aside.

In the rolled-up scrolls, each sheet was carefully pasted to the next, while the notebooks were sewn together along one edge. The scrolls contained drawings and poetry. Akitada recognized some of the lines. Apparently, the doctor had liked the poems and had copied them for his own satisfaction. One of the scrolls was devoted to bird studies. It had drawings, as well as observations about avian habits and wise sayings and legends. On the most recent page, he found drawings of a crow and a detailed sketch of its wing. Under the drawings, Inabe had written down the legend of the crow that was sent by the goddess Amaterasu to guide the first emperor and his army to their new homeland.

The doctor’s peculiar obsession with birds seemed harmless, even attractive, but what if it had affected his judgment? He turned to look at the dead crow. Making a face, he picked it up. The flies had done their work thoroughly; the black carcass was dusted with a snow of eggs and crawling with white maggots. Some fell off as he held the large bird by its foot and carried it outside to place it under a shrub. The birds fell silent for a moment. He looked up. Another crow sat on a low branch, its head cocked and its beady eyes staring at him accusingly. ‘I didn’t do it. I’m sorry,’ he said and felt foolish. The crow gave a harsh squawk and flew off. The bird chatter started up again.

And here came the old man, carrying a small sack. When
he reached the open area in front of the studio, he shouted, ‘Here it is. Come and eat.’

Another one who talked to birds.

Akitada watched as the servant loosened the knot on the bag and swung it. An arc of golden grain flew out and spread in a shower of kernels across the ground. In an instant, the air was full of feathered bodies and fluttering wings.

Akitada and the old man stood as hundreds of birds landed and scuttled about, chirping and pecking. More and more arrived, alerted by some secret code of their own, until the ground around them was covered with small feathered bodies in all colors and shapes. Then they were done and flew away again in another rush of wings.

Akitada was enchanted.

The old man folded the empty cloth. ‘The last of the rice,’ he said mournfully. ‘In his honor.’

‘But what will you eat now?’

‘Beans.’

He went back to whatever he had been doing, and Akitada looked after him, astonished that this man had thought it more important to honor his master than to fill his own belly. He had been wrong to suspect the man. This also was great loyalty and filled him with sadness. With a sigh, he returned to his work.

The medical notebooks turned out to be nearly incomprehensible. The doctor’s brush strokes were often careless, and worse, he used a form of abbreviated language that meant that Akitada could only make out a few sentences here and there. Part of the problem was the medical vocabulary. Of course, the notebooks might be deciphered by another medical man, but Akitada wanted to locate pertinent material on his own.

It took him well past midday to make out Inabe’s method of dating, and then another while to find the two notebooks that covered the dates of the two deaths. By that time, his stomach growled, his head ached, and his eyes no longer focused. He decided to stroll to the market to get a bite to eat.

The old man had disappeared. Akitada wondered if he was eating his meager meal of beans in some dark corner. The thought made him feel guilty. He decided that he could manage quite well with one bowl of noodles, purchased from a stand. But the noodles were surprisingly tasty and so he ate a second. After months with a listless appetite, he was beginning to take pleasure in food again. This also filled him with guilt. It seemed to him that it signified an end to his grief for Yori. He bought a few rice cakes for the doctor’s servant and chose to go back past Mrs Yozaemon’s.

The boy was outside. Even better, he was playing with the red top. Akitada smiled to see him spin the toy with considerable skill. He was afraid of another rejection and just watched the child from a distance. He was a handsome boy for all his thinness, and the old desire to hold a child in his arms again, to hear him laugh, to feel small arms hugging his neck, was back. He turned to leave.

At the doctor’s house, the old servant accepted the rice cakes with many bows and mumbled thanks, and Akitada returned to his work with a heavy heart and scant interest. He had barely started skimming the entries that dealt with the first smallpox cases when the old man appeared at the open door. He carried two ripe plums on a small footed tray, presenting them to Akitada with a bow.

‘Late ones. Very sweet.’ His eyes strayed towards the rotting plums his master had not lived to eat. ‘Wasps,’ he said worriedly, nodding towards them.

Akitada thanked him and said, ‘There are worse things than wasps. Warden Takechi should be back later. We will ask him when you can clean this room.’ When the old man still stood, looking around sadly, he asked, ‘What are your plans now?’

‘Plans?’

‘I mean if the doctor’s nephew decides to sell this place.’

‘Oh, he’ll sell it.’

‘How do you know?’

‘What the master said. Merchants want gold.’

‘Merchants?’ The old man abbreviated speech as his
master had abbreviated his journal entries. Some people became garrulous when they were much alone. Apparently not these two.

‘The master’s family. He didn’t like them.’

‘But I’m told he left this property to his nephew.’

‘Who else?’

To the old man’s mind, family, no matter how unpleasant, came first. Akitada wondered if the property, even in its ruined state, might present a motive for a greedy man. ‘The nephew has visited here?’

‘Once.’

‘When was that?’

‘After the harvest. Spent the night.’ The old man made a face. ‘Quarreled and left.’

‘They quarreled? What about?’

‘Don’t know. The master said, “Good riddance.’”

Akitada sampled a plum. It was delicious. Perhaps he should plant another plum tree. The one in the south garden was too old to bear fruit. This reminded him again of Tamako’s wisteria and other garden matters. He glanced up at the dried herbs. ‘Where did your master get his herbs?’

‘The garden. The monks. And the pharmacist.’

‘There is a herb garden? Where?’

The old man took him. Down a narrow path through the shrubbery, there was a small clearing of cultivated land. A spade lay beside a newly-dug section. The old man said, ‘Time to split the rhubarb.’

‘Rhubarb?’ Akitada was beginning to understand the way his mind worked. He had fed the birds all the rice, and now he was digging the herb garden. He was showing his respect to the dead man.

‘
Daiou
root. For constipation,’ said his companion.

‘Are any of these plants poisonous? Like
warabi,
for example?’

The old man gave him a pitying look.
‘Warabi
’s not medicine. Doctors heal.’

True enough. Akitada was hunting another murderer altogether. He thanked the old man and returned to his notebooks.

When he read the entry for Peony, he was disappointed and baffled. She was identified only as ‘drowned woman’. The doctor had noted a bruise on her left temple and written ‘not serious’ next to it. And then came the puzzling part, for he had written in the margin, ‘There is no end to my guilt.’ What guilt?

Akitada put the notebook aside and reached for the one that covered the previous year. But no amount of searching produced an entry for the Masuda heir. It was as if his death had never happened, and yet Inabe had treated the young man. He went through the whole notebook again. There was not only no reference to a patient with the flux at the time, but also the pertinent days did not exist in the notebook. He saw no obvious break in the note-taking, no unfinished sentences, but he checked to see if pages had been removed. If so, it had been done so carefully that there was no trace of it.

A
fter Tora left Little Abbess he made straight for Sadanori’s mansion. As before, the gate stood open, but today no bearers delivered lumber and no carriage waited. At the gate stood one of the monks with a basket hat. When he saw Tora, he placed his wooden begging bowl on the ground between his bare feet and started to play softly on a long, straight bamboo flute. He was not playing very well.

Tora paused to dig out a couple of coppers and drop them in the bowl. The monk lowered his flute and bowed. ‘May Amida bless you.’

‘Your first visit to the capital?’ asked Tora. He gestured at the empty street. ‘Not much traffic here. You’d do a lot better at one of the bridges or in the markets.’

‘Thank you. Do you work in this fine mansion?’

‘No.’ Tora had no time to chat with idle monks. He had his own questions to ask.

A few house servants in their white uniforms and black hats were busy with chores, and in the distance he heard hammering. The builders, apparently, were still busy. The same servant who had discovered Tora on his last intrusion approached.

Tora greeted him like a long-lost friend. ‘Good morning, brother. I was hoping to catch you. We weren’t introduced last time. I’m Tora.’

The other man looked surprised. ‘I’m Genzo,’ he said, nodding a greeting. ‘How’s the job coming?’

‘We ran into a little hitch.’ Tora was pleased with this fabrication. There was always some hitch on a building project. ‘Nothing serious, but the boss wants to know when to expect another inspection. He was hoping Ishikawa was still out of town.’

‘No such luck. He got back last night. But he hasn’t talked to the master yet, so maybe that’ll buy you some time.’

‘Genzo!’

They turned. Sadanori stood at the veranda railing of the nearest building.

Genzo knelt and bowed. ‘Yes, Master?’

Tora remained standing and stared up at his arch enemy. The lord’s fleshy face was nearly round, and its features, a pair of small eyes, a button nose, and small pink lips under a tiny black mustache, struck him as ridiculous. He reached up to stroke his own handsome mustache.

Sadanori’s eyes flicked over him. ‘Who is that person?’ he demanded.