The Case of the Sharaku Murders (39 page)

“I see. And Mr. Saga just sat tight and waited.”

“Yeah. Waited to be murdered,” said Onodera. “It makes you sick, doesn't it? Listening to Mizuno's confession I wanted to lean over and slug him. Saga just sat tight and waited for Mizuno to return, convinced Mizuno had seen the error of his ways. He came back that afternoon carrying two boxes of sushi from Hachinohe. Saga, who hadn't had anything to eat since morning, tucked in without suspecting a thing. While they were eating, Mizuno grilled Saga about what he'd done while he was gone. Had he gone out? Had anyone come by? Had anyone telephoned? Had he called anyone? Since Saga wasn't supposed to be in Tokyo, Mizuno's plan would have been ruined if anyone noticed anything suspicious. Mizuno was very savvy about things like that. He said he was prepared to postpone Saga's murder if anything seemed out of place.”

Ryohei was astounded by Mizuno's meticulousness.

“Once he had confirmed to his satisfaction that everything was as it should be,” went on Onodera, “Mizuno told Saga that Fujimura had come to Tokyo to go talk to him, and he went out again. Saga was surprised to learn of this new development. This was also part of Mizuno's plan. With this piece of information, Saga wouldn't dare go out for several hours. Mizuno hurried over to the library. The rest happened just as we imagined. Having established his alibi, Mizuno returned to the apartment to kill Saga. A big guy like that wouldn't have had any trouble drowning a pipsqueak like Saga in a bucket of water.”

“So Mr. Saga's body
was
in the car when Mizuno and Yosuke…”

Nodding gloomily, Onodera wiped his forehead.

“Mizuno told me he never expected Yosuke to come along—but it gave him an airtight alibi. When they reached Saga's cottage, Mizuno and Yosuke split up and searched the house. Having never been there before, Yosuke didn't know his way around and Mizuno says he used the extra time to plant Saga's overnight bag and leave the newspaper and empty sushi tray on the table. Then he made sure Yosuke discovered them. He's a real sly one, that Mizuno.”

“You can say that again,” said Ryohei. “No wonder even Yosuke fell for it.”

“After that he disposed of the body. He drove Yosuke out to Cape Kitayama to make a show of looking for Saga. Once he was sure Yosuke had headed off in the direction of the restaurant, Mizuno returned to the car, hauled the body out of the trunk and… hurled it into the dark sea.”

“Didn't it make a noise?” asked Ryohei.

“There was a fierce wind that night apparently—perfect conditions for disposing of a body. Mizuno says he went back several times to make sure the body had sunk out of sight. Seems he was worried since it was so dark.”

“And Professor Nishijima? Was that Mizuno too?”

“Yeah. He confessed to setting the fire, though he denies he intended to kill the professor… By the way, you were right—Mizuno saw Yosuke going into the professor's house that night and thought it strange, knowing they had had a falling out. He hid beneath the study window and eavesdropped on their conversation. Apparently when he heard Yosuke tell the professor the catalogue was a fake he thought the game was up. But it seemed Yosuke didn't know about Mizuno and his associates. He'd only detected the forgery because of the offset printing, and Mizuno breathed a sigh of relief. Then he waited for things to quiet down, and when he thought the professor had gone to sleep he started the fire. He said he never dreamed Nishijima would be sleeping on the daybed in his study. But even if he'd been asleep in another room there's still a possibility he wouldn't be able to escape in time, so our reading of it is Mizuno acted with the intent to commit murder.”

Ryohei nodded.

“For that point on,” Onodera continued, “Mizuno keep an eye on Yosuke's activities. Even though the evidence of the forgery had been destroyed, Yosuke still posed a threat. Then, when Saga's notebook appeared in his mailbox, he immediately knew it was Yosuke's handiwork. It seems he decided he had no other choice now but to kill Yosuke. Because of the postcard, Mizuno figured Yosuke would turn up sooner or later at Fujimura's shop, so he set off for Sendai to get there first. When Yosuke arrived in Sendai, Mizuno already had him marked. He waited until Yosuke was alone on the street and ran him down in Fujimura's car. Yosuke must never have suspected
they
would be trailing
him
or he would have been more careful,” Onodera said with a shudder. “Yosuke only found out about Fujimura's role because of the postcard. Otherwise he might still be alive. By Mizuno's own confession, it was only once Yosuke had traced the postcard that he started to panic, thinking Yosuke would figure everything out. You see, the postcard was never part of Saga's original plan…”

“So it wasn't Mizuno's idea?” asked Ryohei.

“No, Fujimura's. They stuck it in the catalogue at the last minute to convince people the album was old, but Mizuno regretted it immediately. At first nobody took any notice of the postcard, but wouldn't you know it, in the end that one stupid mistake proved fatal…”

Ryohei said nothing.

Fatal for Yosuke, that is—if only I hadn't asked him to
…

The thought was almost too much for Ryohei to bear.

“If only Yosuke had waited a bit longer,” went on Onodera. “At least until the Shoei painting had surfaced at Sotheby's. Perhaps then he wouldn't have been so foolish as to chase after that gang all on his own. Just one more day… If he'd known they'd gone and sold one of the paintings, surely even Yosuke would've given up and come to talk the situation over with you or me.”

“But the catalogue had been destroyed,” said Ryohei. “And besides, Yosuke wanted to keep Mr. Saga's notebook a secret at all costs.”

“Hmm. I can't really speak to that,” replied Onodera. “By the way, what about those clues Saga supposedly hid in the catalogue—did they really exist?”

“I've poured over my copy but I can't come up with anything—except for what Yosuke pointed out about the offset printing.”

“I see,” replied the detective. “But that's strange, isn't it? That means Saga would actually have to see the catalogue again in the flesh, so to speak, in order to point the problem out. He wouldn't be able to claim he figured it out from a picture in the newspaper. And what guarantee did he have that Professor Nishijima would be willing to show it to him?”

“Hmm…”

Onodera was right. From what he knew of Saga and the professor's relationship, Ryohei had to admit that was out of the question.

“It had to be something one could have figured out without seeing the original.”

“You're right.”

“No, the clue must be something else,” the detective said flatly. “But if Yosuke couldn't find it and
you
can't find it, then probably no one will. When you think about it Saga was a scary guy… and I don't just mean because he was so damn smart.”

Ryohei agreed.

Mr. Saga had been obsessed—obsessed with the professor. The catalogue was the fruit of that obsession.

Ryohei suddenly felt sad. If the ukiyo-e establishment had not been split into two rival factions, Saga and the professor could have pursued their research together, as friends, and this whole incident would never have happened. But in the wake of the murders, that rift, far from mending itself, only seemed to be getting wider.

Even though he had already decided to quit academia, this was one thing that still weighed on Ryohei's mind. There was no guarantee that some day another incident would not arise from this rift. In that sense, the affair had not been laid to rest. It never would, so long as the rivalry between the Ukiyo-e Connoisseurship Society and the Edo Art Association continued. Ryohei trembled with a sense of dread.

The fallout from the scandal had also destroyed Yoshimura's career, and Musashino University had cancelled all it courses on ukiyo-e. Like Ryohei, Iwakoshi was planning to return to his hometown. Nishijima's current and former students had all gone their separate ways.

In the end Mr. Saga won—it all turned out just as he planned.

Ryohei looked around, imagining for a moment he could hear the sound of Saga laughing. Suddenly the voices of the other travelers around him seemed very loud.

“Is something wrong?” Smiling, Onodera looked at Ryohei. Then, changing the subject, he said, “Now about the Akita School hypothesis… It took me several days, but I finally finished reading your paper. Yosuke was right—you're definitely onto something. Now, I don't know anything about painting, but looking at it as a criminal investigation, I agree entirely with your conclusion. Your theory is rock solid. It's a pity you don't have any proof, but in my line of work that's what we call ‘instinct.' From now on I can tell people Sharaku was actually a painter from Akita. Don't worry, sooner or later you'll find the evidence you're looking for,” Onodera said encouragingly. “Don't give up on ukiyo-e. Stick with your research.”

Ryohei felt a warm feeling rise within his breast.

“Thanks to you, I'm beginning to like ukiyo-e,” the detective went on. “I haven't learned much yet, but at least I can tell the difference between a Sharaku and an Utamaro.”

Onodera's body shook as he laughed. The detective's smile lifted Ryohei's spirits for the first time since the case had ended.

The two men laughed together.

Epilogue

T
WO
YEARS had passed.
      Ryohei was now teaching Japanese history at a private middle school in Morioka. Though popular with his students, he had a reputation for being a bit on the quiet side. Several times each year, however, when the class came to a unit on ukiyo-e, their teacher's eyes would suddenly light up as though he had awakened from a long sleep.

One day, needing to look something up, Ryohei made his way to the prefectural library, which has an extensive reference collection.

The objective of Ryohei's search was the origin of an old place name in Iwate Prefecture. Heading straight for the reference section, his hand reached for the “Tohoku” volume of
The Geographical Encyclopedia of Japan
,
edited by Yoshida Togo. First published in 1899, the encyclopedia runs to seven volumes and over five thousand pages, and remains today the best source of information about the history and origins of Japanese place names.

Unfortunately, Ryohei was unable to find the name he was looking for. He put the “Tohoku” volume back where he had found it and pulled the supplementary index off the shelf.

Opening it at the front, he saw the first hundred pages consisted of testimonials about the encyclopedia by twenty-five prominent individuals. Intrigued, Ryohei began flipping through the pages. Most of the great intellectuals of the late nineteenth century were represented. Among them Ryohei noted the names of Tsubouchi Shoyo, Shibusawa Eiichi, Okuma Shigenobu, and Hara Takashi.

Wow, an all-star lineup!

Ryohei was suitably impressed. Though he often used the encyclopedia, he had never noticed these testimonials. Selecting one interesting-looking section at random, Ryohei began reading:

In these flourishing times there is no shortage of books, and each passing month brings more and more. But most of these are aimed at appealing to popular tastes and passing fancies. They are mere trifles… This is something intellectuals like myself greatly bemoan.

As his eyes took in the old-fashioned sounding prose, something clicked in the back of Ryohei's mind—he had come across the same passage somewhere before. The author of the article was someone by the name of Kano Jigoro. Ryohei seemed to recall that he was the founder of the modern sport of judo.

Ignoring the nagging feeling at the back of his mind, Ryohei turned the page:

He grew up in a small village in the mountains and at one time aspired to make his name in the world as a scholar. But due to circumstances beyond his control he was forced to abandon his formal education without finishing middle school… When he came of age he had to make his own way in the world, again for family reasons. He eventually found his way to Hokkaido…

Ryohei stopped reading and stared at the page. Now he remembered. It was a passage from Kiyochika's preface to Sato's catalogue, the part where he talked about the life of Sato Masakichi. The phrase, “when he came of age he had to make his own way in the world” had stuck in Ryohei's mind because it was so old-fashioned sounding. Apart from the fact that “Hokkaido” had been changed to “Akita,” the two were identical. This section had been written by one Ichijima Kenkichi.

Of course! And the earlier one too
…

Ryohei turned back to the previous page—it was the first paragraph of Kiyochika's preface.

What does it mean?

For a moment, Ryohei couldn't make sense of it. Then a light bulb went off in his head.

This is it! This is the clue! Mr. Saga lifted Kiyochika's preface from this encyclopedia on purpose!

A scholar of Saga's caliber could easily have written Kiyochika's preface in convincing period style if he had wanted to. Instead, he had chosen to steal it verbatim from Yoshida Togo's
Geographical Encyclopedia
as evidence that the catalogue was a fake. Ryohei felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him.

He excitedly began flipping through the pages, scanning the various testimonials. He came across a couple more passages that matched Kiyochika's preface exactly.

In the end, Ryohei determined that Saga had pieced together Kiyochika's preface using excerpts from four of the testimonials in the encyclopedia.

Ryohei checked the date of publication of that particular edition: October 13, 1907. The same year as the catalogue.

Mr. Saga must have used this to piece together Shoei's biography too. He says in his notebook that he cut the words out of a book from the same period. This must be the one he was referring to.

The
Geographical Encyclopedia
would have been the easiest place for Saga to find unusual place names such as “Odate” and “Honjo” which appeared in Shoei's biography.

Ryohei's head began to reel.

Once Professor Nishijima had unveiled the Shoei Hypothesis to the world, all Saga had to do was trot out the encyclopedia and point out the plagiarized passages. That's all there was to it. People would begin to doubt the authenticity of the catalogue. Then Saga would go on the attack.

His heart pounding, Ryohei dashed out of the library. He started running in the direction of his apartment. He had to tell her.

If only I'd known
…
If I'd only noticed it then
…

Ryohei continued running.

Ryohei clattered up the stairs to his apartment, threw open the front door and dove inside.

Startled by the sound, Saeko, wiping her hands on her apron, hurriedly emerged from the kitchen. Ryohei slumped down on the floor clutching his chest.

“I did it—I finally found it!” he blurted out, still short of breath.

Saeko stood frozen.

“If only I'd known then… Yosuke would still be alive… He wouldn't have had to die,” said Ryohei, choking back tears.

Saeko only nodded.

A cool breeze blew through the room rustling her silky hair, which she had let grow long.