The Master Key E-Book

Masako Togawa

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 266

Beschreibung

The prizewinning debut mystery from one of Japan's best-loved crime writersThe K Apartments for Ladies in Tokyo conceals a sinister past behind each door; a woman who has buried a child; a scavenger driven mad by ill-health; a wife mysteriously guarding her late husband's manuscripts; a talented violinist tortured by her own guilt. The Master Key, which opens the door to all 150 rooms, links their tangled stories. But now it has been stolen, and dirty tricks are afoot.A deadly secret lies buried beneath the building. And when it is revealed, there will be murder.Masako Togawa (1931-2016) was born in Tokyo. Her father died when she was young, and she spent the rest of her childhood living with her mother, in an apartment building for single women, which provided the inspiration for the setting of The Master Key. After leaving school, she worked as a typist for some years, before stepping onto the stage as a cabaret performer in 1954. She soon began to write backstage during the breaks between her performances, and in 1962, her debut novel The Master Key was published, and won the Edogawa Rampo Prize. She went on to become a hugely successful crime writer, but continued to lead a colourful parallel life as a singer, actress, feminist, nightclub owner and gay icon. She died in 2016 at the age of 83.

Leseprobe

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CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEPROLOGUEPART ONEPART TWOPART THREEPART FOURPART FIVEPART SIXPART SEVENPART EIGHTEPILOGUEAVAILABLE AND COMING SOON FROM PUSHKIN VERTIGOCOPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

1 April 1951: At the Otsuka Nakacho crossroads

On that day, the snow (unusual for April) which had fallen on the night before was still half an inch deep in the morning.

But before midday the sun peeped through the clouds and a thaw set in. In no time at all, the streets once again danced in the sunshine of spring.

At exactly noon, a woman tried to cross the road at the Otsuka Nakacho crossroads, even though the lights were against her.

Her head was completely hooded by a red scarf, and she wore a thick winter coat over black ski pants. This in spite of the fact that everyone else on the street was beginning to sweat slightly in the warm sunshine…

When the woman had got about a third of the way across the road, a small van came racing towards her from the direction of the Gokokuji temple. It was fully laden with wooden kegs of nails. The young driver, a boy from the mountains, was affected by the snow; his mind was full of the rosy-cheeked girls of his native place, and he had his foot hard down on the accelerator as he came up the slope. The green light seemed to beckon his youthfulness on—hurry! hurry! it seemed to say. From the corner of his eye, he caught a sudden glimpse of the girl in the red scarf but to him it was just a further reminder of the girls in his snow-bound native village. Perhaps that was why he skidded on the tramlines, although one cannot be sure. At any rate, the inexperienced young driver slammed on his brakes, but the van did not respond to his efforts to control it. It slid right around and headed back towards the woman. The last thing the young man saw before closing his eyes was the red-scarved and astonished face of the woman as she came crashing through his windscreen.

It took three minutes for the white ambulance to come from the fire station a hundred yards from the junction; it sped away with the casualties, and in another three minutes had delivered them to a nearby branch of the T University hospital. During this time, the girl opened her mouth and muttered something three times, but no one could catch what she was trying to say. By the time the ambulance reached the hospital, it was over.

A tall, white-coated doctor examined the body and pronounced it dead.

‘In spite of the lipstick, this was a male,’ he added in a strangled voice. His face was quite expressionless.

Those present had difficulty in repressing their laughter, until they were overcome by the solemnity of death, so that even the horror of the traffic accident was driven from their minds.

The young driver, who had been but the instrument of destiny, was punished beyond reason. He was in deep shock, and even after admission to the hospital he seemed unable to close his mouth. He slavered constantly, and kept muttering disjointedly, but all he could say was, ‘The red scarf, the red scarf.’

Time passed.

The busy police detectives waited for a family to come forward and identify the body of an unknown male, aged about thirty, who wore female dress…

Time passed.

A cub reporter covering crime, with time on his hands, went around the homosexual world of Ueno showing the photograph of the unidentified male…

Time passed.

The doctors and nurses at the hospital gradually ceased to joke during tea-breaks about the unidentified male, in female dress, who had been run over at the Otsuka Nakacho crossroads.

But somewhere, a woman waited alone in a darkened room… waited for the man to come back to her.

The room was on the fifth floor of an apartment block, buried in the shadows just two bus stops away from the Otsuka Nakacho crossroads.

She awaited the return of the man whom she had dressed in her own red scarf, winter coat and black ski pants, the man who had gone off with slumped shoulders, without even looking back.

She waited, alone, for seven years. She is still waiting.

The name of the building where she lives is ‘The K Apartments for Ladies’.

PART ONE

Three hints

The eye-witness: Three days before the accident

The man stumbled yet again as he climbed the stairs. The Gladstone bag that he was carrying seemed to get heavier and heavier; already, he had had to stop on the landing of the third floor to change hands. He gazed at the brown dyed leather bag, cursing its weight, but betraying no emotion towards its contents. He was too far gone to think of that any more. All he was now concerned about was getting everything over with as soon as possible. He had been driven along for the last few hours by a feeling of resignation, a hope that the end was at last in sight. His consciousness seemed blocked by a wall, or blinded in limitless darkness. Now that the end was at last near, he felt no elation, merely a sense of despair.

Shrugging his shoulders, he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and carefully readjusted the red scarf around his face before picking up the leather bag again. The sweet female perfume on the scarf affected him profoundly. Recovering his spirits, he lifted the heavy case and carried it, bumping his knees, up the staircase. From time to time, he could hear footsteps or voices downstairs. Hurrying on, he reached the fifth floor and, pausing only to make sure there was no sign of life in the corridor, made his way to the door of a certain apartment.

A girl was waiting there. Glancing at the travelling bag, she asked, ‘Did the receptionist say anything?’

‘No, she was so deep in her newspaper that she didn’t even notice me.’

As he replied, he lowered the case onto the doorstep. The leather base curled and the bag overbalanced onto the concrete floor with a dull thump.

‘Hey, watch what you’re doing! You shouldn’t treat it so roughly!’ exclaimed the girl in a loud voice.

The man wanted to point out how heavy the bag was, and how his hands were slippery with sweat. But he could only mumble, ‘It makes no difference.’

The woman, without seeking his help, lugged the bag into the middle of the room.

‘Poor little thing. Well, we’d better get him out quickly.’

‘Poor little thing.’ The woman repeated herself, but the man could only slump on the floor and gaze blankly at her.

The woman snapped apart the clasp of the bag, which fell open. Inside, there was the body of a small child. She unwrapped the thick blanket, revealing miniature features in apparently tranquil sleep.

His silky flaxen hair glimmered like gold in the lamplight. The girl chattered ecstatically.

‘Oh my, oh my! Poor little fellow—we must get you out of this, mustn’t we now? What a good little boy to put up with such cramps for so long!’

As she bent down to draw the little blanket-swaddled body from the bag, she noticed for the first time that he was gagged with a white handkerchief stained with clotted black blood. After a while she spoke, but her voice now had a hollow ring to it.

‘He’s dead.’

The man propped himself up on his elbows.

‘It couldn’t be helped. It was the only way.’

For a long while, all was silent in the room. The man and the woman just sat there with the corpse of the child in the travelling bag between them.

Ten hours later, the man once again took up the bag and set off downstairs. The woman led the way, flashing a torchlight down the stairs and along each corridor, making certain that no one was around. Taking their time so as to avoid making any noise, they finally reached the airless basement. There was a large tiled bath—about fifteen feet square—designed for communal bathing, which had not been used for some years. The man shone the torch around, picking out in the light various objects left scattered about when some construction project had been abandoned. There were a pick and shovel, a broken paper sack full of cement, a slimeencrusted wooden tub full of stagnant water, a heap of tiles… Last of all he shone the torch into the very centre of the bath, revealing a hole, about three feet deep, dug down beneath the tiles. He gazed at it intently; just as the woman had said, it was exactly the right size to take the Gladstone bag.

He handed the torch to the woman, and, tipping the contents of the cement bag out onto the floor, began to shovel it into a mound. Some of the cement had already set into hard lumps, but by dint of shovelling and flattening, he was at last able to form a little peak. Taking a little tin, he made several trips to the tap and, filling it each time, poured the water onto the cement. Every time he turned the tap on, the pipes rattled and wheezed alarmingly. But, nervewracking as this was for both of them, he persevered and at last the cement began to soften and crumble into a sludge. The woman opened the bag. The child was invisible under the blankets. She began to shovel the liquid cement into the bag; when it was full, she closed it and placing her hands on it spoke gently:

‘What a beautiful coffin we have made!’

‘Yes—it’s quite conceivable that the body will never decay,’ replied the man in a low voice. Although his face was running with sweat so that he could hardly keep his eyes open, he could waste no time before picking up the bag and hauling it to the centre of the bath. The woman drew a handkerchief from her bosom and mopped his brow. Then the two of them dragged the bag, which had become enormously heavy because of the cement, to the hole, which proved to be too narrow to accept it. Regardless of the noise, the man seized the pick and widened it where necessary. He knelt in the bath and crammed the bag in. It only remained to fill the hole with cement; the woman helped him; when it was full, they pressed the cement level with their bare hands, which turned red and raw as a result.

Then they carefully laid tiles to hide the cement. They were so engrossed by their labours that they failed to notice that a third person was hiding in the shadows and watching them.

The visitors’ book

When the ‘K Apartments for Ladies’ were first opened, various strict regulations were ordained to govern the behaviour of the young residents. Nowadays, however, they had all reached mature years, and most of the rules had become a dead letter. But some had acquired the force of precedent and continued to be observed, the chief and most strictly observed of which was that it remained absolutely forbidden for members of the opposite sex to stay overnight in the apartments. Females could spend the night there provided they first reported to the reception desk.

But most of the occupants had become old maids, living isolated lives without friends or acquaintances, and so since the end of the war it had become rare for outsiders to visit or stay the night. All of which being so, there was still nothing so very suspicious about the entry in the visitors’ book showing that Chikako Ueda, Room 502, had a close relative staying with her during the nights of 29 March to 1 April 1951.

The name of the guest was Miss Yasuyo Aoki.

Years later, when the police were looking into the matter of this female cousin, they questioned both of the receptionists. Their memories were by then hazy, but their testimonies agreed on one point—without question she was a woman.

One of the receptionists, Katsuko Tojo, having testified that she was on duty at the time that Chikako Ueda first brought her cousin to the apartment, went on as follows:

‘I’m quite sure that Miss Ueda told me that her cousin would be staying with her for a fortnight. Yes, of course it was Miss Ueda who filled in the visitors’ book, while her cousin just stood gazing out of the window. I don’t particularly remember exchanging any conversation with her. Maybe it was her clothing, or perhaps they said she was from the Snow Country, but anyway she certainly had a rustic look… yes, that’s it, she had a red muffler wrapped round her head. From the next day, Miss Ueda came to the office alone and filled in the visitors’ book. Well, it’s merely a formality—no need for the guest to come and do it herself. But after three days, she stopped coming. I never set eyes on the cousin again—she must have left about that time, I just can’t remember, it must have been when Tamura was on duty.’

Katsuko Tojo went on to cover herself by adding that as she had a bad leg, and could only move with the aid of a stick, she was largely confined to her seat when on duty and so could not really tell what was going on.

Her partner, Kaneko Tamura, testified as follows:

‘You ask me if I remember Miss Ueda’s cousin carrying a large bag? Please excuse me—my memory’s got so bad recently. I even forgot to pass on a telephone message yesterday, and the representative of the third floor is on to me about it! Well, if I can’t even remember a telephone call, you can imagine how little confidence I have in my memory nowadays. So you can see why I can’t remember about Miss Ueda’s younger cousin seven years back. Oh—excuse me—I do remember something after all. She was strikingly pretty. Deliciously chubby, and very fair-skinned—but I’m not sure, really.’

The sum of the evidence given by the two women amounted to no more than the fact that, as the person in question was dressed like a woman and looked like one, it seemed unlikely that anyone would have taken her for a man.

The newspaper article

The story of the kidnapping of George, only son of Major and Mrs D. Kraft, aged four, did not break in the press until about the middle of April 1951.

The kidnapping took place on 27 March; the reason it was not made public until over a fortnight later was that the parents did not at first inform the police, but negotiated with the criminals secretly. They agreed to pay the ransom in two parts, the child to be returned on receipt of the second half. This was indeed an arrangement to the advantage of the kidnappers.

At least, that is what Major Kraft said, but as there were no witnesses, who could be sure of it? Because it appears that after arranging on the telephone for Major Kraft to deliver three hundred thousand yen to a certain spot (and he has never revealed where) the criminals broke off all further contact, although the Major persistently sought to re-contact them by advertising in the press. For several days, he inserted a three-line advertisement in every major daily paper:

‘Keep your promise. I will keep mine. D. Kraft.’

This caught the attention of a certain journalist, who was thus able to scoop the kidnapping. But even after the fact became widely publicised, the Major resolutely refused to call in the Japanese police. Instead, he gave an interview to the press and his message appeared beside a photograph of him and his wife.

‘All I want is to have the child back. I absolutely will not call in the police. I will carry out my promise completely—you do the same.’

They looked haggard. It seemed as if the Major was prepared to trust the kidnappers to the very last. Inevitably, the tragic sight of this gentlemanly foreign officer won people’s sympathy. Moreover, it was plain from his attitude that he believed the criminals to be Japanese. This was clear from his reply to the persistent questioning of a journalist when he revealed that the telephone message was in broken English; also, his advertisements were written in Japanese, and he had not placed them in the English-language papers.

Another interesting point was that Mrs Kraft was a Japanese. Her maiden name was Keiko Kawauchi, then aged twenty-four, and she had met her husband while working in the Ginza PX. It was a typical example of a mixed marriage at the time.

But after a little, public interest evaporated like the melting snows of spring.

It never became clear why Major Kraft so obstinately refused to call in the police, or take more positive steps at the time of the kidnapping, but it is known that one year later he divorced Keiko Kawauchi and returned to the United States. It was also strange that the Military Occupation authorities were completely silent about the whole matter.

PART TWO

During the construction work

Miss Tojo Reflects

This morning, although I had sprinkled water over the office floor, everything on the desk was soon covered in dust and felt gritty—most unpleasant! We’ve been plagued by dust every day since the construction work started, but today, what with the high wind, it’s been particularly difficult. When I open the heavy front door, the corridor acts as a funnel and the air is full of fine dust so that no amount of sprinkling will lay it.

But today should see the back of the task broken with the moving of the building. In thirty minutes’ time, the whole building will be moved four metres, with all of us inhabitants in it! For the last three months, they’ve been digging out the foundations and laying rails under the structure. Now, a crowd of workmen have gone into the diggings and will work the fifty hydraulic jacks installed there so as to lift the whole building at once. The five-floor apartment house is shaped like a three-sided rectangle; excluding the basement, there is a total of one hundred and fifty rooms connected by dark corridors into which the sunshine never penetrates. There used to be an incinerator in the central courtyard, but it has been taken down to aid the work of moving the building.

The square behind is already crowded with a mob of rubberneckers. A television broadcasting van has just arrived and, pushing through the throng, taken up position in the centre of the square. It looks as if they’re just about ready to start filming. In contrast, all within the apartment block is as quiet as the grave. Everyone is secluded in her room awaiting the moment the building will be moved.

It’s my turn to be on duty, so my opposite number is also in her room. I don’t feel at all comfortable sitting here all on my own. Comparing my watch with the clock on the wall behind me, I see that it is now twenty to twelve—that means I’ve got another twenty minutes to wait. I don’t feel like reading a book or a paper to pass the time, which hangs heavy on my hands. Sitting here vacantly, I feel it quite natural to chat to myself. The phrase goes round and round in my head—‘just a little while until the moment’—but precisely what moment? True, the office where I have sat for over thirty years, and this brick building of five storeys which has survived the great earthquake and the wartime air raids, has to be quietly moved, but is this what we residents are awaiting? This is surely just the outward appearance of the matter; being objective, which is to say looking at it from the outside, we won’t actually be able to see the building being moved.

‘We won’t disturb you at all. You can all carry on living in the apartments just as before. You will see—you can fill a glass with water and we shan’t even spill one drop when we move the building.’

Such were the words of the important-looking gentlemen who had come to persuade us to accept the plans for widening the road. They were a Section Chief of the City Highways Department and the Departmental Manager of some construction company. We had opposed the earlier plans—tearing down half the building to make way for the road, or alternatively driving a tunnel through the lower three floors—and so they had come to win us over with the third plan. As a result of their explanation, given like a conjuror’s patter in their most coaxing voices, we gave way and have since become inured to living amidst the construction work, and we’re now cooped up like guinea pigs, literally holding our breath as we await the final event.

Man is an animal that seeks to know the reason for his existence, and just as a prisoner will scratch the wall of his cell to ascertain that he is still alive, and to mark the passing of time, so we guinea pigs had become so obsessed by the promise not to spill one drop of water that we agreed to put them to the test. It was Miss Shimoda, committee representative of the third floor, who first proposed this experiment. As she had originally been a science teacher, and was naturally devoted to experiments, it was perhaps a slightly strange outcome that she should have persuaded the majority to partake in what was after all a rather unscientific experiment. For the consensus was not for all to conduct a standard experiment, but for each to lock herself in her room and carry out the test in her own fashion. There was to my mind a certain irony in this. Still, as the practice of the ladies living in the apartments has always been to live their own lives without interfering in the affairs of others, it could not be helped. So that is the reason why all went to their rooms and locked themselves in an hour ago, providing the contrast between the bustle outside and the tomblike stillness within. The only sign of life is Miss Iyoda’s cat, which she has locked out of her room. It is curled up asleep on top of the banister on the gloomy staircase.

As for my views on this experiment—well, I think it’s childish, not to say stupid. But, as a caretaker here, I have to be sensitive to the psychology of the residents—what looks like mere child’s play in fact gives them something to be interested in. And as it is my duty to do what the majority of residents want, I too have put a glass full of water on the centre of the office desk.

Anyway, putting such thoughts aside, when I look at the water piled up to the brim of the glass, its surface like a living membrane, I remember first learning about surface tensions when I was a student, and how a speck of dust can break through it at any time; and I wonder if they are all so engrossed in this experiment just because they wonder if it will spill?

My answer is a definite No! The moment this building is moved, a past crime will be revealed. People are frightened that something will occur. That’s why they avert their eyes, preferring to stare instead at glasses of water.

About six months ago, a clap-trap new religious cult called ‘Oshizu’ was very fashionable in this building. An unpleasant-looking man of about fifty, his hair plastered down with pomade, brought a girl no taller than a child known as ‘the Thumbelina priestess’. I suppose they called her a priestess because she was dressed in a white robe with loose red trousers. Just like a shrine vestal, anyway, she danced some weird whirling jig. At first, only a few of the residents associated with her. But then, after a bit, she started making prophecies and miracles and the number of believers rose. There are still some who stick like I do to the first impression that she is a fraud, but the majority are now under her influence. When I say the majority, I mean most of those who spend the daytime in their rooms—in other words, the old women past retirement age. Those who still have work to keep them busy seem to be less involved.

But for some reason or other one thing haunted everyone’s minds—the theft of the master key some two months before. This one key, meant for the use of the wardens, can open every one of the hundred and fifty rooms in the building, and is still missing. For the last six months, everyone in the building has more or less lived in dread and uneasiness. After all, the women who have lived alone for so long in these apartments have their secrets, little aspects of their lives known only to themselves, and now someone unknown is free to pry into them, to intrude.

As for myself, although I’ve spent nearly all my working life as a receptionist here, and haven’t been able to get about much, not even to see a film or two since my leg went wrong, and although I must as a result appear a bit eccentric, it’s not really so. I’ve enjoyed reading since I was a child, and try to understand the way of life of as many people as possible; I carefully read several newspapers every day, and hope I haven’t fallen behind the times. But most of the residents here have at some time or other had the opportunity to lead as full lives as are open to women. Now, as they grow old and look back on the bright days of their pasts, a lot of them perversely withdraw into their shells. When I sit in my office by the front door after those with jobs have left, I shudder as I look at the silent staircase and think of those women in the building who will spend their remaining days in solitude, as if imprisoned by concrete walls. They merely stay alive; they have no activity except to dream about the past. At such times as this, I have a sort of hallucination: I imagine how, in rooms on the third floor, the fifth floor, old women pass their days in silence still gazing at the broken fragments of the dreams of youth, every now and then letting fall a sigh that echoes down the corridor, until they combine on the stairway and roll down to the cavernous hallway, raising one long moan around where I sit.

To such old maids, their little secrets are all they have to live for, all that gives them pride, all that remains of their possessions and estate. I think that the desire to pry into such secrets is reflected in the meaningless experiment with the water glasses.

From the small window of the reception office, I gaze out through the massive glass doors of the hall which shut me off from the world outside. I can see everything that is going on out there. I can see the mob outside, thronging the square and not the slightest bit put off by the choking dust that fills the air. They jostle one another as they try to peep into the foundations. Looking at them from my side of the glass, I wonder what on earth it is they are expecting. They are waiting just like a child waits who has wound the spring of his toy as far as he can, and holds it tight before letting it go. Or are they perhaps waiting to see the hole left behind when the building is moved? Perhaps they think it’s like excavating an ancient tomb—perhaps they wonder what will be brought to light? ‘This old red-brick building has stood here for fifty years, since it was designed by a young foreigner with the aim of helping Japanese women emancipate themselves; once aforetimes, passersby would gaze at it with envious curiosity, this house reserved exclusively for single young ladies! Now the long years have wreaked an equal havoc on both the building and its inhabitants. What secrets, carefully hidden for so long, will now be revealed in the clear light of day when the building is moved? Beneath the ground lie immured what ghosts of yesteryear…?’

Are they lured by such trite images? Is that why they are waiting? That young housewife there, for instance, the one with a baby on her back and a shopping basket in her hand—what is it that has driven all thoughts of shopping for lunch out of her head to make her stand there with the rest? Is it after all just a short break in her busy life—just a few lost moments one noontime, I wonder? Or does she dream of witnessing—just one chance in a hundred—the collapse of our building?

Whilst I have been conducting this meaningless conversation with myself (a habit I’ve acquired naturally when sitting alone in the office; usually when I’m in a good mood it just happens spontaneously), time has passed and it’s now five to twelve. A vigorous-looking young man has stuck his head out of the window of the television broadcasting van; he’s waving his hands about. Oh, I see, the knock-kneed man in charge of the operation is going over to talk to him… he’s wearing a safety helmet. They’re having words—now the foreman is running towards the porch! He’s opened the glass doors—making his way to my window. What can he want?

‘Can I borrow the phone, please? The removal’s been delayed thirty minutes—all because those television boys want to record the historic moment. Can you beat that? They went over my head to do it, too! Just because they’re behind with their preparations, we have to wait. All they can think of is themselves—what about my workmen who’ve been standing by their jacks all this time?’

He’s really upset! He’s going to break the dial on the phone the way he’s wrenching it! There goes the noon siren, and the jacks were supposed to be operated at exactly twelve. All the residents will be staring intently at their glasses of water! What tomfoolery! I don’t know why, but this delay disturbs me too. The crowd outside are making disappointed gestures. Footsteps on the stairs—someone’s coming down—it’s Yoneko Kimura from the fourth floor. She’s not going outside—she’s going down to the basement. Funny look on her face! And here comes another. Michiyo Yamamura from the fifth floor. Her slippers slap the wooden floorboards as she makes her way over to me. She’s in a panic, all right!