The Hell Screen (45 page)

“Your name, then?” demanded Kobe.

The elderly man wiped his nose again and sniffed. “Cursed cold,” he muttered. “I don’t remember an introduction. Your turn first.”

Kobe snapped, “I’m Kobe. Superintendent of police.”

“Ridiculous.” The man chuckled. “What would a police superintendent from the capital be doing out here? Try again.”

Kobe bristled. “Don’t waste my time!”

Without rising, the little man managed to sketch an obeisance. “Harada. Formerly professor of mathematics at the Imperial University. Presently a lowly drudge.”

“I am investigating a crime. Are you familiar with the name Nagaoka?”

The little man stared at him. “Nagaoka’s in trouble? You surprise me. He was just here.” “

“When?”

Harada sniffed and turned the leaf of his account book, running a finger blue with cold down a line of entries. “That’s the day,” he mumbled. “Yes, I make it the second day of this month.”

“Ah!” Kobe was hitting his stride. “We’re getting somewhere. By the way, what in hell are you doing out here?”

“In hell or not, I’m working. True, at the moment I’m in hell: cold sober, suffering from a bad cold, and keeping the tightwad slave driver’s accounts in an unheated garden pavilion while a policeman’s shouting at me.”

Akitada suppressed a smile. Kobe was certainly not getting much respect in the country. He asked the irreverent Harada, “Where is your master?”

“My master?” Harada drew himself up and attempted to look at Akitada over his nose. The effect was spoiled by another droplet forming at its end. He dashed it away with the much-abused sleeve and said haughtily, “If you—a total stranger to me, by the way—are referring to Yasaburo, you have not been listening. That man is nobody’s master. He’s incompetent at everything, a total failure. I work for him, but I am certainly his master in most things. A fine distinction, young man. Remember it!”

Akitada smiled. “Forgive me, Master Harada. My name is Sugawara. I take an interest in the case of one of Superintendent Kobe’s prisoners, Nagaoka’s brother.”

“Hah! The unfortunate Kojiro.” Harada eyed him, then said, “Hell opens its jaws in many nooks and corners. Beware of the demons among the living.”

“What do you mean?” asked Akitada sharply.

But Harada had turned away, shaking his head. “Nothing, nothing. You’d better wait for Yasaburo. He’s out with his little bow and arrow, wreaking death and destruction among the crows.” He huddled back into his quilt and rubbed more ink.

Kobe angrily opened his mouth to show Harada who gave the orders, when there was the sound of shouting from somewhere beyond the house. They turned.

Another strange-looking creature was approaching rapidly through the snow-covered garden, this one tall and thin and with a gray-streaked beard and bristling eyebrows. He was dressed in an old-fashioned fur-trimmed hunting cloak, fur cap, and long, snow-caked fur boots. Except for the fact that he was carrying a bow and had several arrows sticking up from a quiver behind his left shoulder, he might have been an emaciated old bear walking on his hind legs.

“Who in the name of the forty-eight devils are you and what do you want here?” the creature shouted shrilly, shaking his bow, as soon as he saw them. “Get away from him! He’s working. That’s what I pay him for, not to chat with every fool who’s lost his way.”

“Are you Yasaburo?” roared Kobe, his patience gone.

The furry man—well into his sixties, to judge by the beard—stopped to glare at them. “I asked first,” he snapped.

Kobe’s face darkened. He had clearly had it with insubordinate civilians. “Police,” he snapped. “We have some questions. In the house.”

Yasaburo s glance flicked over them. “I am retired,” he grumbled. “If you want an expert, go to the young fellows at the university.”

Kobe jumped down into the snow. “I said, in the house. If you don’t move now, I’ll have my constables tie you to a horse and trot you back to the capital.”

Wordlessly Yasaburo turned and marched toward the house. A string of birds tied to his belt flopped and swung like the tail of some large upright beast. Akitada thought he heard a soft cackling behind his back, but when he turned, Harada was bent over his account books making entries.

The main house was an old manor with a steep roof, sturdily built of massive timbers, but blackened by age and generations of smoky fires. In the dirt-floored entry, Yasaburo flung the string of birds into a corner and sat down to remove his snow-caked boots on a stone step leading up to the wooden flooring of a dark corridor. “Cursed birds!” he grunted. “Nothing worse than crows for making a racket.” He issued no invitations to his guests to join him.

Neither Akitada nor Kobe commented, but simply removed their own boots and followed Yasaburo. He shuffled ahead and brought them to a large room with a central fire pit, much like Kojiro’s, except that this room contained along the back wall a wide wooden dais, raised about two feet above the rest of the flooring. On this dais rested many strange objects, indistinctly seen in the general gloom until Yasaburo struck a flint to a couple of oil lamps.

They stared in surprise at a large hide-covered drum decorated with wood carvings of orange flames and a black and white yin-yang symbol, several smaller shoulder and hip drums, folding stools, a zither, and a couple of lutes. Suspended from nails in the wall hung several flutes, both the long, transverse kind and the short ones.

“I see you have musical performances out here in the country,” Akitada said.

Yasaburo grunted. “Not anymore. Used to when the girls lived here. Nothing to do now but sit around and wait to die.” He kicked a few dusty, faded pillows their way, and stirred the coals in the fire pit. Tossing some dried wood and pinecones onto these, he started a fire, which shot several feet up toward the soot-blackened rafters. Smoke filled the room.

Kobe and Akitada sat on the cushions at a safe distance from the pit.

Their host barely waited for the flames to die back before suspending a blackened iron kettle from the chain above the pit and filling it with wine from an earthenware pitcher. Then he pulled off his fur cloak and cap, tossed both on top of a huge clothing trunk in a corner, and sat down with his visitors.

“Well, what d’you want to know?” he demanded. His manner was belligerent, but Akitada thought he sounded uneasy.

“I’m Kobe. Superintendent of police in the capital,” Kobe told him. “You have had a recent visit from your brother-in-law, Nagaoka?”

Yasaburo did not quite suppress a start. “What about it?”

“Why did he come here?”

Yasaburo shifted on his cushion, then said, “A condolence visit.”

“Involving money, I gather,” Akitada put in.

Yasaburo glanced at him from under his bristling brows. Instead of answering, he got up and ladled wine into three cups, passing two to Kobe and Akitada. “You don’t look like police,” he said to Akitada. “Who are you?”

“I am Sugawara Akitada and represent the interests of Nagaoka’s brother.” The warm wine was sour and cloudy. Either the man was desperately poor or the miser Harada had called him.

Yasaburo glowered. “The bastard who killed my girl? You have no business in my house. Get out!”

Kobe said, “He stays. And you talk. Now!”

“What do you want from me?” Yasaburo’s voice took on a whine. “I have lost my child, my beloved daughter, beautiful and talented beyond compare, and you come and torment me with stupid questions. So what if Nagaoka showed up a week ago? He took his time. It’s only right he should apologize for what his brother did to my little girl. And he did not stay. Arrived one morning and left again. Had business elsewhere, he said.”

“What sort of business where?”

“How should I know. Probably tracking down some rare object, hoping to cheat semiliterate monks so he could sell it in the capital for a fortune. That’s all he was good for, money. That’s why I let my little girl marry him. So she would have some of the better things in- life. Hah!” He made a choking sound, shook his head, and covered his eyes with one hand.

Akitada thought the show of emotion unconvincing. This Yasaburo was full of contradictions, playing many roles simultaneously. One moment he was the rustic hermit, then an eccentric academic, then again the grieving father or the worldly cynic. He was intensely curious about this man, but thought it better to let Kobe do the questioning, particularly since he was no longer a welcome visitor.

“Speaking of Nagaoka’s wealth,” continued Kobe, “how much blood money did he pay you?”

There was a startled pause; then Yasaburo growled, “Not enough!”

Kobe turned to Akitada. “Well, that explains what happened to the money. Not highway robbery, then.”

Yasaburo’s head came up. “He might have carried more. How do you know he was not killed for his money?”

“Did I mention he was killed?”

Yasaburo said angrily, “What else would a superintendent of police be doing here? Well, he deserved it. He is responsible for my daughter’s murder by that depraved brother of his. And how much do you think her life was worth to him? A mere eighteen bars of silver, that’s all! I told him what I thought of him, my wealthy son-in-law. He tried to excuse himself. Said business had been bad. Even had the nerve to claim Nobuko’s tastes had been expensive. Hah! The miser kept her locked up in his house day and night like a slave.” He paused, drank deeply from his cup, and slammed it down. “And then the cold fish sent her off with his randy brother. For all I know, he told the bastard to get her with child. When my poor girl fought the fellow off, he killed her. No, no, Superintendent, eighteen bars of silver is not enough for such an outrage!”

A brief silence followed that shrill outpouring of venom. Then Akitada said, “That is a scandalous accusation. And a cowardly one. It takes little courage to heap abuse on the head of the dead.”

“Spare me that drivel.” Yasaburo glared at Akitada, then asked Kobe, “Well, have you got what you came for?”

Kobe said, “Not quite. We have reason to believe that Nagaoka died here and was taken later to the place where he was found.”

Yasaburo stumbled to his feet. “What? When? He left here the way he arrived. Alive. On his horse. My boy can tell you. You’re not going to pin this on me.”

“Sit down! Let’s talk about his visit.”

Suddenly both strength and fight seemed to go out of the old man. He muttered, “I know nothing about Nagaoka’s death. He left here alive. Must have run into robbers on the way.”

“No. Tell me about the blood money.”

“Eighteen bars. He owed me more. We agreed on thirty-five bars when I went to see him in the capital. He gave me five bars then and promised me the rest later. But he brought only eighteen.”

Akitada interjected, “Why would he pay you? He did not believe in his brother’s guilt.”

Yasaburo sneered. “What difference what he believed? The police said he was guilty. The moment I heard about it, I went for my money. And Nagaoka did not refuse. Just asked for time.”

“Hmm,” said Kobe, scratching his short beard. “Let me get this story straight. You made certain demands on Nagaoka, he gave you a down payment, and was bringing the rest here in person?

“That’s what I said.”

“But he did not bring enough, and so you got angry, eh? Very angry, I would say.”

Yasaburo bit his lip. “I was not pleased and let him know it. He left right away.”

“What about refreshments? After a long, cold journey?” Kobe raised his cup. “Some of your hot wine? After all, the man was related to you by marriage.”

Was there a nervous flicker in Yasaburo’s eyes? He definitely hesitated before answering. “A cup of wine, that was all.”