The Hell Screen (19 page)

“No, but since you recommend them, I shall perhaps go this year. Did you hear about the murder at the temple?”

“Yes. The next day. Horrible, wasn’t it? We missed all the excitement, my husband and I. We walked home in the rain right after the plays. Wet as drowned rats.” She laughed, then offered Akitada more wine.

“Perhaps one more cup,” he said. “Do you happen to recall the name of the performers?”

“They called themselves the Pure Land Dancers, but that name is just for temples. When they’re playing in the capital for ordinary people, they do more exciting stories about heroes and monsters, and there are acrobatics, and some things that’ll make you laugh. They call themselves Uemon’s Players then. That’s because the old man who runs the group is called Uemon, you see.”

“Yes. I see.” Akitada nodded with a smile at her enthusiasm. He glanced up the narrow, stony road which led to the temple. Perhaps he could make a brief detour and still reach Lake Biwa before dark. Farther than the lake he dared not travel. He hoped to meet his family on the way, or at least pick up some news of them from passing travelers. “Will you be here for a few more hours?” he asked the woman.

“Till dark,” she said with a sigh, glancing at her baskets. “Business picks up toward evening because travelers are trying to get to the capital before dark.”

Akitada took a silver coin from his sash and extended it to her. “For the food and a favor,” he said. “Would you keep an eye out for my family? My name is Sugawara and I expect my wife and three-year-old son, along with an elderly man and two strong young warriors on horseback and in wagons, with bearers and some mounted guards. If you see them, will you ask them to wait here for my return?”

She promised eagerly, tucking the coin inside her robe.

This time Akitada reached the temple quickly. It was nearly midday and cold, but the road was dry. The great roof of the gate where he had last seen Nagaoka’s wife and her brother-in-law still had silvery hoarfrost on its tiles. The colors of the vermilion columns and blue-tiled roofs were sharp and the gilded spire of the pagoda disappeared into the clouds above.

The sound of his horse’s hooves brought the gatekeeper running out to greet him. By good fortune it was the same man who had offered Akitada a glance at the plan of the temple that other morning. They recognized each other instantly and with mutual pleasure.

“Welcome, welcome, my lord!” cried the monk, taking the bridle of Akitada’s horse. “Have you heard the news? There really was a murder the night you visited.”

Akitada dismounted. “Yes. That is why I am here. The police in the capital have the suspect in custody, but there are some aspects of the story that trouble me and I thought I would come and take another look.”

“Then I have won my wager!” cried the monk happily, tying Akitada’s horse to a post.

“Wager?”

“I bet my friend that you would return. Oh, my lord, I hope you will forgive the impertinence, but after I spoke to you, I looked up your name in the visitors’ book. Then it came to me that you must be the same Sugawara who solved all those murders not many years ago.”

Akitada was astonished. “But how could you know about that? I have been in the far north for many years.”

“I have a cousin, my lord, who is a schoolteacher. He was one of your students when you taught at the university and told me all about those university murders. His name is Ushimatsu.”

Ushimatsu. Akitada instantly recalled the backward, shy, middle-aged student, the butt of his classmates’ jokes, who had humbly and cheerfully persisted in his studies. He smiled at the memory. “How is Mr. Ushimatsu?”

“Oh, very well. He teaches at a country school and has a wife and two little sons by now. He says he owes it all to you.”

Akitada was embarrassed. “Not at all. He was a very hardworking student who would have succeeded in any case. I am very glad to hear he is doing so well. Please give him my regards next time you see him.”

“Thank you, my lord, I will.” The gatekeeper rubbed his hands. “Now, what may I show you?”

“The service courtyard and the visitors’ quarters, I think. But are you at liberty to do so?”

They had climbed the steps to the gate. Inside the gatekeeper’s office, Akitada could see a young novice sweeping the floor with a straw broom. Somewhere a bell was ringing, its sound clear and high in the still cold air.

The gatekeeper rubbed his hands eagerly, “I am completely at your service, my lord. It’s too early for visitors. Just a moment.” He put his head in the door of his office and gave the novice instructions, then returned to Akitada’s side. “Ready, my lord! By the way, my name is Eikan.”

Akitada thanked him, relieved that he did not have to visit the abbot again to explain his purpose for the present visit. It had been bad enough last time, when he had used the temple to get out of the rain as if it were a roadside hostel. This time his reason for coming was even more dubious. He could claim neither official standing nor that he was acting on Nagaoka’s behalf.

Fortunately, his companion seemed to find nothing wrong in his curiosity. As they crossed the graveled courtyards of the public section of the temple, he told Akitada, “After the murder was discovered, I went back myself to look at the service yard where you thought you heard the woman screaming, but there was nothing to see. Still, you will have a better-trained eye for such things. I suppose not even the smallest drop of blood on a pebble would escape your attention?”

“I doubt we shall find any blood. It rained hard that day, and by nighttime the ground was still soaked with water.” Akitada did not mention that the murdered woman had been strangled before her face was mutilated. Strangulation rarely left traces apart from signs of struggle, and those would long since have been obliterated by the passage of monks and the incessant raking of gravel.

They passed through the covered galleries and reached a plain wooden door. Eikan opened it, and they stepped down into a courtyard, surrounded on three sides by low, plaster-walled buildings with thatched roofs and on the fourth by the gallery they had just left. A grayish column of smoke rose from a chimney of the central building. Long rows of firewood were stacked against its wall, and wooden kegs against the building on the right. In the middle of the courtyard stood a well, surrounded by a waist-high wall of darkened wood on a platform of large stones. A wooden bucket hung over it suspended from a winch.

“The kitchen yard,” said Eikan. “The building across from us is the monastery kitchen. To the right are the pantry and bathhouse, and to the left a storehouse for religious objects and statues. You may have passed through it on your way to your room.”

“Yes”—Akitada nodded—”yes, of course. I remember now. I was very tired, but you are quite right. My room must have been back that way. We passed through such a building. I recall being startled by a life-sized statue of a demon king.” He turned to gauge distance and direction. “Now that I see it in the daylight, I am more than ever convinced that it was near here, or in this service area, that a woman screamed in the middle of the night.”

Eikan shook his head dubiously. “There is no one here at night. The last hot meal is prepared at midday. We have midnight prayers and have to be up before sunrise for meditation. The bells remind us of our duties. Perhaps the scream came from the other side, the visitors’ quarters? If, as you say, you were very tired, you might have been drowsy and confused.”

“No. I am quite certain the sound came from here. And a murderer would hardly be deterred by a ‘no admittance’ sign. Neither, for that matter, would drunken youngsters bent on mischief.”

“Ah, you are thinking of the actors.” Eikan nodded. “It is possible. Do you suspect one of them of having killed the lady?”

“No. At this time I am merely wondering if someone might have seen or heard something unusual.” Akitada wondered again if Nagaoka could be the murderer, either by committing the crime himself or by hiring a killer. The police had checked the names of all the visitors that night, but Nagaoka would hardly have signed in under his own name.

The door to the storehouse suddenly opened and a figure in monkish garb hurried out with a pail. He was walking to the well. There was something familiar and unpleasant about him. After a moment Akitada recognized the eccentric painter Noami. He had fortunately not seen them and began to lower the creaking bucket into the well.

Akitada said urgently, “Come! I have seen enough here. Let us go to the visitors’ quarters now.”

But the creaking had attracted his companion’s attention. He cried, “Oh, what luck! Noami is here today. You must meet the famous painter who is working on our hell screen.” Paying no attention to Akitada’s gestures, he shouted across the courtyard, “Master Noami? A moment of your time. Here’s someone you must meet.”

The painter turned slowly to peer at them, then approached. He scowled when he recognized Akitada.

“Lord Sugawara,” said Eikan, looking from one to the other, “this is Noami. Noami, this is the famous lord who solves all the crimes in the capital. Imagine, he has come here to investigate.

Noami’s small, sharp eyes flicked from the monk to Akitada and back. “I have had the honor already,” he said in his strange, high voice, shrinking into his patched and stained robe.

“Really?” cried Eikan. “Oh, that’s right. You did spend the same night here, Noami. I had forgotten. Your comings and goings are so irregular.”

“What do you mean, ‘irregular’?” snapped the painter. “I am not a member of this monastery and consequently free to go as I please. Now, if you will excuse me, my lord, I have work to do.” He turned and went back to fill his pail from the well bucket. Picking it up, he trotted to the storehouse without another word or glance, went in, and slammed the door behind him.

“Oh, dear,” said Eikan apologetically. “So rude! He is peculiar, but the most gifted artist of this century.”

Akitada looked after the man thoughtfully and said, “The century is not over yet, and I cannot admire the gory scenes he seems to excel in.”

“Oh, you have seen the hell screen. Yes, it makes me shudder, too, but that is after all the purpose. It is said that if we can just save one soul from sinful living by impressing him or her with the sufferings of their afterlife, it has served its purpose.”

“I expect so,” said Akitada, and turned to leave, but at the gallery he paused and looked back. “You said Noami spent the night of the murder here. Where does he sleep?”

“Sometimes in the room where he works, sometimes in one of the empty monks’ cells. He used to be a monk, you know.”

“Used to be? Did he renounce his vows, or was he dismissed for improprieties?”

Eikan spread his hands. “Nobody seems to know, my lord.” He grinned suddenly. “And believe me, we have tried to find out. Though I shouldn’t say it, life has a certain sameness to it day after day in a monastery. You have no idea how interested everybody is in the murder. The abbot has already assigned three penitential meditations to stop such worldly concerns. For those we stay up all night, kneeling on the hard floor, our backs straight as pine trees. If we drowse off or slouch, we are struck with a bamboo cane by the hall steward. But even that has not stopped the young monks from whispering about it.”