The Old Men of Omi (7 page)

“Where is he now?”

“Back at headquarters. The coroner is in a quandary.”

Akitada raised his brows. “Why?”

“Because he thought it was a natural death and is no longer sure about it now.”

“Ah!” Akitada looked around. “What about the servants? Have they been questioned?”

“There are only two. A young couple. They swore nobody came during the night. It must have happened at night. The wife found him in the morning when she brought him his gruel.”

“You saw the body here. What did it look like to you?”

Takechi scratched his head. “Well, he was lying just there. On his stomach. His legs were drawn up a little and his arms were out like this.” He spread his arms wide. “There were no wounds. It looked as though he’d become faint and fallen down. His bedding hadn’t been slept in.” Takechi gestured toward the neat quilts. “I figured he’d been working at his desk and got up to go to bed when death overcame him. He was an old man after all.”

“How old?”

“In his eighty-second year. When a man gets that old, death isn’t a surprise. It can happen any moment.”

Akitada went to look at the papers on the desk. The judge seemed to have written down details of a legal case. “Any idea what he was working on?” he asked the police chief.

Takechi shook his head. “It’s something to do with the imperial pheasant preserve. I couldn’t make it out. The two servants can’t read, but they thought he was writing down a record of his cases. Reminiscing, you know.”

Akitada nodded. Old men were prone to doing that. He’d found himself remembering events of the past since Lady Yukiko had asked him to tell her about them. It was strange, this connection between past and future. The young wanted stories, and the old spent their declining years telling them. And so the past was likely to color how the next generation would think and act.

Suddenly depressed, he put such reflections from his mind and admired the fine writing utensils, picking them up one by one and turning them in his hands to study the decorations. Among them was a small wooden carving, a contrast to the delicate workmanship of the other items. It appeared to be a figure of Jizo, the Buddhist divinity who was variously the protector of children, women, and travelers. Such figures, carved from wood or stone, abounded in the land, being found along roadways everywhere. More than any other divine representation of the Buddhist faith, Jizo seemed to belong to the people.

This figure was roughly made. Unlike the stone statues beside the roads, it was small enough to hold easily in one’s hand.

No doubt it had had some special meaning for the judge or he would not have kept it on his desk beside the pretty objects. He replaced it and turned to look about the room but saw nothing else of interest. “Have you spoken to the servants?”

“Yes. If you’ve seen enough here, perhaps you’d like to talk to them yourself, sir?”

As it turned out, the young couple occupied roomy quarters in the former stable. The judge had evidently no longer any need for horses. They were greeted by the wife, who was holding a baby and trying to control a half-naked toddler at the same time. She bobbed several bows, looking distracted and gesturing for them to come in.

Akitada saw that they were quite poor. The room was bare except for some worn bedding, a few chipped utensils, and an iron cooking pot over a meager fire.

They remained standing. Though the floor had been swept, there were no cushions or reed mats to sit on. Such abject poverty was unusual for a couple who clearly served as the main servants in a large household.

The chief smiled at the frightened-looking woman and tickled the toddler’s neck. He asked, “Where is your husband, Tatsuko?”

She looked vaguely guilty. “Kiyoshi went to the harbor looking for work. We have no money and no food.”

“Ah,” said Takechi, “the judge forgot to pay you?”

A glint of anger appeared in her eyes. “He’s always slow, and then he takes back some of our earnings for rent. There’s two more of us now.” She nodded toward the children. “What will happen? He owed us wages. I don’t even have enough for the children to watch a puppet play.”

“I don’t know.” Takechi glanced at Akitada, who was already searching his sash for some money to give her.

Akitada said, “I take it Nakano was a tightwad. I will never understand how anyone can treat his people this way. I expect they worked hard for what he paid them.” He passed several silver coins to the young woman. “Here, this should help for a while. Do you know who inherits?”

She shook her head. “He never married.” She was staring at the silver in her hand, then looked up. “Thank you, your honor,” she cried and fell to her knees, bowing so deeply that the child at her breast sent up a loud squalling.

“Never mind.” Akitada gave her a hand to help her up. “Did you or your husband hear anything last night?” he asked.

“Nothing. We’re too far from the house and sleep soundly. Did he cry out or something?”

Akitada said, “We don’t know. I wondered if you might have heard a visitor come or leave.”

She gazed at him, shaking her head. “A visitor? He had no visitors. He had no friends either. I don’t think anyone liked him, and he didn’t like people.”

The loneliness of old age. Neither family nor friends. But in this case, Akitada could not dredge up much pity.

Takechi said, “There’s a cousin in the capital and a niece or two in Nara, daughters of a sister he lost touch with. I assume one or the other will claim the property.”

“What will become of us?” she asked again, holding the child more closely.

Takechi patted her shoulder. “I’ll keep you in mind and will try to get you your pay, but I think your husband had better look for other work. And a place to stay.”

She nodded and started to cry.

They returned to police headquarters and the adjoining jail. This jail was very different from the one Akitada remembered, where he had occupied the single cell in the old office. Now he found a separate building with an astonishing ten cells and assorted other rooms. Eight of the cells were occupied.

“Do you have this much crime in Otsu now?” he asked Takechi.

“This time of year we have more transients than at other times, and outlying districts send us their most serious criminals. Three judges reside in Otsu now, and our provincial headquarters can handle crimes much more efficiently than in the past. It’s a good thing, but it means more work for me.”

He headed for a door at the very back and opened it. Within lay a simple room, well lit by several open shutters to the outside. The floor was scrubbed wood, and rolls of bamboo mats were stacked against a wall.

But Akitada’s eyes fell on two men crouching over a body that rested on one of the mats near the opened shutters. One was young with a slender body and an intent expression on his face. He looked up with a frown at the interruption. Then his face cleared. “Ah, it’s you, Chief.”

The other was elderly and apparently an assistant or servant of the younger.

Takechi made the introduction. “This is Doctor Kimura, our coroner. Kimura, I brought Lord Sugawara along in hopes of clearing up this case quickly.”

Kimura stood and bowed. “An unexpected pleasure, my Lord. And an honor to meet the famous solver of crimes.”

Akitada said drily, “Thank you, but my interest isn’t personal. I’m here on behalf of the governor who could not come himself. I’m merely to report. Have you finished your examination?”

“All but the study of the dead man’s organs, sir.”

Akitada eyed him with considerable respect. Few coroners bothered to cut bodies open. “Does that mean you cannot tell how he died?”

The young coroner smiled. “Not with certainty. Though I should warn you that his organs may not offer much information either. Still, one must be thorough, right?”

“Right.” Akitada approached the corpse to peer more closely. The judge was not a pleasant sight. Naked and considerably aged since they had met ten years before, he was no longer merely well-nourished; he was fat, and the fat hung off his bones in ugly rolls. His skin was mottled, though Akitada saw no wounds of any sort. His face, marred by jowls and deep lines running from below his eyes to his chin, resembled that of a demon. The white hair was thin and showed the scalp underneath. His topknot, tight though it was, failed at keeping his features in place. Akitada straightened and asked, “What can you tell us so far?”

“As you can see, there are no obvious wounds to the front of his body. The back is similarly unmarked. Except for this.” He bent to raise the dead man’s head by the topknot and gestured to its back. “Feel just here.”

Both Akitada and Takechi felt. Akitada detected a slight swelling.

Takechi said, “It isn’t much. Did it bleed?”

“No. The skin isn’t broken.”

“Hardly a fatal wound then?” Akitada asked.

“No. But there is something else.” The coroner lowered the head and raised an eyelid. Takechi and Akitada bent to look.

“His eye appears to be bloodshot.” Akitada shook his head. “That can happen to a living man and is fairly common among the old, I think.”

“It isn’t just bloodshot,” Kimura said. “If you look closely, sir, you may see that the white part of the eyeball appears to have many small red dots in it.”

The others knelt to study the dead man’s eyes. The coroner raised the second eyelid. Both eyes were indeed as he had described.

Akitada sat back on his heels. “What does it mean?”

Doctor Kimura spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know … or at least I hesitate to say.”

“Speak up, man,” Takechi urged. “We can always decide later if it’s significant.”

“Well, I’ve seen this once before. On a murder victim in the capital. The corpse—it was a middle-aged woman—had died of strangulation. Her husband was her killer. I was a student at the university then and for once our professor, who normally lectured, took us to the police morgue, so that we might observe a female body. The secrets of the female are normally hidden from physicians who must diagnose and treat illnesses based on book learning.” He blushed a little when he met Akitada’s surprised eyes.

Akitada smiled. “I would think that a man with your intellectual curiosity would have remedied this by visits to the willow quarter.”

The blush intensified, but Doctor Kimura said, “Yes, but I was very poor in those days. I found that such education seemed well beyond my reach.”

Akitada and Takechi chuckled at this, and after a moment, the young coroner joined them. The moment of amusement over, Akitada pointed out, “The woman was strangled. I assume her killer left marks on her throat?”

Kimura nodded. “That is so.”

“But the judge’s neck bears no marks of strangulation. How then can the two cases be related?”

Again Kimura made the helpless gesture. “I cannot account for it. I only mentioned it because the spots on the eyes were the same.”

Akitada bent over the corpse and examined his face and throat carefully. When he straightened, he shook his head. “Nothing. How do you account for the bruise to the back of his head?”

“He could have fallen backward and hit his head.”

Takechi said quickly, “He was not lying on his back when we found him. He was on his side, almost on his front.”

“It is possible that the fall merely stunned him and he moved, perhaps in an effort to get up.” But Kimura looked worried.

“You think something is wrong,” Akitada said. “That someone may have caused this death?”

Kimura stared down at the judge’s body. “I don’t know, sir. I have no proof. We will cut him open, but I may not find anything useful. He was an old man, and not very healthy. He could have become dizzy from an excess of blood in his head, or its opposite. That would have caused him to fall. Death came a little later. Alas, dead men don’t speak.”

Takechi nodded. “I get it. It’s a natural death after all. Very well, finish the examination and let me have the report.”

Kimura bowed, and they left.

“What do you think, sir?” Takechi asked when they reached his office again.

“The coroner appears to be a very careful man. You’re lucky.”

“Yes. I think so. But I meant about the judge?”

“I think you’ve done all that was required, and so has Kimura. I shall tell the governor.”

Something nagged at Akitada after he parted from Takechi. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he had known Nakano and learned more about the man today. The judge had not been a likable man. The way he treated his servants proved this, as did the fact that he appeared to have no friends and that any family he had stayed well away from him. He had also been a miser and was probably quite rich by now. As a judge he had been corrupt. Such men make enemies and are likely to end up murdered.

On an impulse, he returned to the judge’s house where he found that the housekeeper’s husband had returned. He was playing with the toddler, carrying him on his shoulder while galloping around the courtyard. The child shrieked with delight and his father looked happy.

Akitada stopped. Just so he had carried his own children. And Yori had shrieked exactly like that. Yoshi was more given to giggling, and Yasuko had cried, “Faster! Go faster!” and belabored him with a small, pudgy hand. He missed the children and looked forward to having them come for the shrine festival. He would send Tora home today to carry the invitation and spend a night with his wife. That part of normal married life, Akitada missed most of all.

During the past year, he had gradually sought relief from several women who obliged for silver or a length of silk. They were discreet and pleasant—indeed one or two had been well educated for such women, and one had confessed to coming from a good family. This last had shocked him, but she had been matter-of-fact about her life. Her father was land-poor and had to feed a large number of children. She had become tired of never owning a silk dress, rarely having enough to eat, and not attracting any suitors except the most unsuitable ones. She liked her present life much better.

But such visits were not the same as the comfort a man found with his own wife.