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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
A gruesome Japanese murder mystery from the author of The Tattoo Murder __________ *** Praise for The Tattoo Murder *** 'Like voyeurs, we follow Takagi down the charred streets of bombed-out Tokyo to scenes of fastidiously executed decadence' New York Times 'This lurid mystery provides a fascinating portrait of wartorn Tokyo' The Times Crime Club, Pick of the Week 'An engaging journey into a Tokyo ravaged by war and its criminal underworld... Crackles with the energy that made Takagi one of Japan's most popular crime authors' Financial Times __________ Strange things are happening in the Chizurui mansion... At night, a figure clad in a Hannya mask is spotted wandering around the house. The amateur crime fiction writer, Akimitsu Takagi, is sent to investigate, but then tragedy strikes. The head of the Chizurui family is found dead inside his study, locked from the inside, with only a Hannya mask and the scent of jasmine as clues to his mysterious death. As Takagi delves deeper into the case, can he discover the link between the family and the curse of the Hannya mask? Who was the person who called the undertaker and asked for three coffins? And how many buried secrets lie behind the inexplicable murder? The Noh Mask Murder is a gripping masterpiece of a locked-room mystery written by one of Japan's most celebrated crime writers.
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PRAISE FOR THE TATTOO MURDER
’A tale that fizzes with intrigue and ingenuity’
DAILY MAIL
‘Like voyeurs, we follow Takagi down the charred streets of bombed-out Tokyo to scenes of fastidiously executed decadence’
THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘This lurid mystery provides a fascinating portrait of wartorn Tokyo’
THE TIMES CRIME CLUB, PICK OF THE WEEK
‘Intricate, fantastic and utterly absorbing’
KIRKUS REVIEWS
‘Crackles with the energy that made Takagi one of Japan’s most popular crime authors’
FINANCIAL TIMES
‘The extensive and nuanced portrayal of Japanese subcultures makes The Tattoo Murder an absorbing and satisfying read’
BUSINESS POST
‘A delightful, different book, not only because of its unusual setting and premise, but because Takagi is a powerful plotter and constructor of fascinating, complex characters’
THE A.V. CLUB
Contents
THE NOH MASK MURDER
6
Prologue
In the summer of 1946, a year after the end of the war, at a bathing resort on the Miura peninsula in Kanagawa prefecture, I ran into an old school friend. His name was Koichi Yanagi.
He had only recently returned to Japan, having been deployed to Burma shortly after earning a chemistry degree. I, on the other hand, had been rejected from the army on the grounds of poor health and, after working as an engineer at a munitions company until the end of the war, now found myself staying at the Marine Hotel, which overlooked the resort in question.
Back then, the idea of writing a detective novel hadn’t yet crossed my mind, but that didn’t stop me from lugging around various classics of the genre—books I had devoured over and over since childhood, often to the detriment of my actual eating habits.
Of course, Koichi knew all about this passion of mine. During our schooldays, I hadn’t been content simply to read what others had written, but would occasionally play the detective myself, poking my nose into some real-life mystery I was convinced required solving.
‘You know, Akimitsu,’ he once said to me, ‘if you’re so unhappy working as an engineer, why don’t you start a detective agency? Or write your own mystery novel?’
I wasn’t entirely sure he was joking.
‘Of course I’d like to be a detective, but who’s going to hire me? As for writing a novel, well, I’ve never attempted anything like that. If I were to give it a try, though, I’ve always thought 8I’d like to write something a little different from your average whodunnit …’
‘Something a little different?’
‘See, most detective novels have some hapless Watson-type following Sherlock Holmes or whoever around and relaying his dazzling exploits to the reader. It’s all a little dull, really. Then there are the ones where the detective himself turns out to be the criminal, but these days that’s starting to feel rather stale too. There’s even the idea of the Watson-style narrator confessing that he was the murderer all along, but Agatha Christie already did that quite masterfully with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd …’
‘Well then, how would you write your novel?’
‘I’d have the detective solving a genuine real-life mystery, and narrating his actions as he does so—a first-hand account, if you like. But it wouldn’t be one of those pulpy, old-fashioned memoirs where the detective makes himself out to be a real hotshot. The focus would still be on logical reasoning, you see, but it would be much more than a simple record of the investigation. Instead of the detective merely stating what he did, on what date, with whom and so on, all that detailed evidence would form the basis for a meticulous account of his every thought, his precise chain of reasoning—and all the actions he took as a result.
‘Of course, it’d be a very hard format to pull off. Firstly, you’d need an incredibly elaborate real-life crime to solve—it’d be no good relying on some half-baked or accidental murder for your mystery. Secondly, you’d need a whole range of attributes to write the thing: the physical stamina to traipse around gathering clues, the deductive skills to analyse them effectively, and then the literary talent to set it all down convincingly in writing. I do wonder if any one human could ever possess all three attributes in sufficient quantity …9
‘Still, I’d certainly like to give it a try one day. I’d tackle some fiendish real-life mystery, then set down precisely how I solved it in the form of a novel. My readers would be presented with the exact same evidence as the author. They’d be able to follow the detective-narrator’s train of thought, assess the appropriateness of his actions—and even come up with their own alternatives. But I don’t imagine an opportunity like that will ever present itself …’
‘Well, Akimitsu, if anyone ever comes looking for a detective, I’ll know where to send them!’
This, at least, I assumed to be a joke. But it wasn’t long until, making good on his promise, Koichi relayed to me a desperate plea for help from a man named Taijiro Chizui. Alarmed by the letter requesting my aid—and one enigmatic phrase in particular: I finally learned who was behind the mask!—we made our way to the Chizui mansion. But by then, it was too late.
My would-be client was found dead in an armchair in his bedroom. What was more, the room was completely sealed, and no wounds were visible on the body. If it hadn’t been for that fearsome Noh mask, said to harbour a two-hundred-year-old curse, staring coldly into space from the floor, or the three coffins that someone had ordered from the undertaker in advance, we might well have concluded that he’d merely died from a heart attack.
But once the curtains had opened on this tragedy, the Chizui family was plunged into catastrophe after catastrophe—and at a terrifying speed. Three coffins turned out to be too few. Before long, the entire illustrious family had reached its demise.
Then there was that jasmine fragrance lingering around the corpses, not to mention the other ‘props’—a spray of maple 10leaves and a Noh costume with snake-scale patterning—that, along with the mask, suggested the advent of some evil spirit. In a sort a dramatic flourish, it even seemed as though the demon’s magic powers had rendered the immutable laws of physics completely irrelevant.
Faced with a case like this, I was overcome by a kind of fervour. Hoping to make my long-cherished dream a reality, I tackled it with all the energy I could muster. But the result was—well, perhaps you can imagine. I was forced to abandon my investigation halfway through. I wasn’t entirely clueless as to the murderer’s identity, but I had to leave the actual solving of the mystery in someone else’s hands.
Afterwards, I did everything I could to forget all about the events in question. So, when Hiroyuki Ishikari, the public prosecutor involved in the case, sent me a package containing a letter, a sealed note and a thick journal, I was practically dizzy with shock.
The journal revealed the true extent of the tragedy that had befallen the Chizui family. The role played by the Noh mask, and the frightful method by which the murders were carried out—it was all there, and in painstaking detail. Most remarkably of all, the entire account took the form of that new type of detective novel I had been vaguely aspiring to write—a detective memoir.
The journal—that of Koichi Yanagi, who in the end had been the one to solve the mysteries of the Chizui family—formed the bulk of the documents, with Mr Ishikari’s letter providing an introduction and conclusion. They made for an enthralling read—but also an unsettling one. For they constituted a horrifying record of the damage that the crimes of a lunatic had inflicted on a great number of people, and precisely how those crimes had been exposed.11
After careful consideration, I have decided to present these documents without the slightest embellishment. At this point, neither Mr Ishikari nor Koichi is likely to object. Certain moralizing types might well raise their eyebrows at my decision, but such prudishness has never held much weight with me.
However, on a personal level, the memoir is not exactly a comforting read. In it, Koichi coolly describes my every action, never hesitating to criticize them where he sees fit. The result, I have to say, is that I come across as a complete blundering idiot—hardly a flattering depiction, but so be it. My deductive talents are clearly no match for his, and anyway, in this particular case, we turned out to be approaching the incident from very different angles.
I’ll end this preamble of mine here. The events described below took place in late August 1946, at the Chizui mansion, near the town of H– on the Miura peninsula in Kanagawa prefecture. Let us begin with Hiroyuki Ishikari’s letter, which I present to you now.12
1
An Uncanny Encounter on a Moonlit Night
(Hiroyuki Ishikari’s letter)
Mr Takagi, it is already three months since you left the Chizui murder case in our hands and departed for Tokyo. Shortly after you left, the incident reached its cruel denouement. And with it, the tragedy of the Chizui family finally came to an end.
I feel I have a duty, to you at least, to reveal the truth behind that tragedy. Your friend, Koichi Yanagi, put his very life on the line trying to uncover the machinations of that monstrous criminal, and I believe this journal of his will provide you with an unforgettable record of those events.
When you left us, you told me that Koichi’s journal could form the basis for a new type of detective novel, unprecedented anywhere in the world. Personally, I would rather you read it simply as the record of one man’s blood and tears.
For an engineer, you turned out to be a surprisingly compassionate individual. This might sound a little impertinent, but I must confess a degree of jealousy regarding your ability to depart so abruptly from the Chizui mansion. You see, in my thirty years as a public prosecutor, my world has been governed by two things: crime, and the law. My task has been to divide human behaviour into categories that are black and white, and I have never been permitted to venture into the grey between. Four divided by two has always equalled two; to me, no other solution has ever been possible.14
Even my colleagues call me a walking statute book; some liken me to a block of ice. Most other prosecutors allow some degree of personal emotion to creep into their application of the law. On occasion they apply their own discretion, and while the result may not always be some terrible upheaval of the social order, experience has shown me it never ends well. If I allowed my conscience to sway my application of the law even just once, I would feel obliged to resign from my role.
Of course, there’s a reason I ended up this way. Thirty years ago, at this resort close to the town of H– on the Miura peninsula in Kanagawa prefecture, I fell in love with an exceedingly beautiful young woman. Her dewy skin, her glossy black hair, her tall, almost Grecian nose and her dark, dreamy eyes all seared themselves into the depths of my mind, where they have remained ever since. If our love had only reached a happier conclusion, I would never have spent the past three decades withering away like this—a single, ageing man so immersed in the law as to be barely even human.
But cruel fate wrenched us apart. After that one dreamlike and blissful summer, she slipped from my grasp forever. When I heard she was engaged to another man, I cried—cursing the world, cursing her. I endured many a sleepless night. At one point, I even contemplated killing both her and myself. But once my agitation and anguish had died down, I arrived at a sort of bitter resignation. The job of public prosecutor which awaited me came to seem like my one true calling. Still, the pain I’d experienced left a scar on my heart—one which I fear may never heal. Indeed, in the three decades since, I have never even experienced so much as another woman’s rejection.
Mr Takagi, I wonder if you can understand how I felt upon being told I was being transferred to the public prosecutors’ office in Yokohama, not far from the resort in question.15
I am convinced that for every individual there is a place to which, no matter how much they might try to avoid it, they cannot help returning—a sort of spiritual home, if you like. Personally, this stretch of coast was the sacred site which I have never been able to forget. And, by a twist of fate, it was here that I became entangled in the bizarre case of the Chizui family murders, which marked the end of my thirty-year career as a prosecutor.
It was a humid evening in late August when, drawn to the beach by some mysterious force, I happened to stumble across Koichi Yanagi, the son of my departed friend, Genichiro.
That evening, grey thunderclouds towered on the horizon. No sooner had a damp gust of wind whistled past my cheeks than great drops of rain began thudding into the parched surface of the beach like a volley of pebbles, each leaving a black mark in its wake—then, moments later, they were violently pelting the roof of the small reed-walled hut where I had taken shelter. The horizon was soon shrouded in fog, and the four or five boats moored along the beach looked lonely and bereft in the downpour.
The storm kept up for around an hour. When the sky abruptly cleared and I finally left the hut, I was confronted by a breathtaking sight: an enormous double rainbow, arching in iridescent splendour across the heavens.
Most people will only see a handful of perfect double rainbows in their lifetime. As it happened, I had seen another one thirty years ago on this very beach, while I held that first love of mine in my arms. At the time, this rare phenomenon had seemed like some manifestation of a heavenly will, blessing our relationship and assuring our future happiness. With tears welling in our eyes, we had gazed wordlessly up at the sky.16
I found myself walking along the rain-soaked shore in vague yet stubborn pursuit of the rainbow. Eventually, I cut across the sands and through a grove of red pines, until I found myself at the top of a sheer cliff overlooking the beach, where I stood gazing at the rainbows for what felt like an age. It was as though something inside me had finally given way; all the turbulent emotions I had spent the past three decades trying to repress came welling up in my chest. Before I knew it, warm tears were trickling down my cheeks.
But of course, rainbows are fleeting things. Before long, those glorious arcs had dissolved into the grey evening sky without a trace. It was only then that I came to my senses and, with a deep sigh, began to take in my surroundings.
Thirty years ago, there had been nothing here except pine trees, but at some point a patch had been cleared to make way for a stately Western-style mansion. Its grey walls had been darkened by years of exposure to the sea wind; and a pair of iron shutters, red with rust, guarded each of its windows, giving the entire building a vaguely brooding and secretive aspect. Houses have their own personalities. Or, at the very least, a house and its inhabitants cannot escape each other’s mutual influence over their many years in each other’s company. In which case, I thought to myself—who on earth might live in a mansion like this?
I approached the gate and peered at the plain wooden sign embedded in one of the crumbling red-brick gateposts. It bore the following name:
TAIJIRO CHIZUI
Chizui was not a common surname. In fact …
Just then, I heard footsteps approaching and turned around to find two large dark eyes staring at me. They belonged to 17a young man, perhaps thirty years of age. How could I have forgotten that broad, intelligent brow—or those melancholic yet resolute lips?
‘Koichi, my boy!’
‘Mr Ishikari!’
We spoke at almost the same instant.
His father, Genichiro, and I had been inseparable during our schooldays. And when Koichi was younger he, too, had often come over to my house after his classes, still wearing his black school cap with its distinctive white stripes. But all that was more than a decade ago. As fate would have it, his father had perished on the North Manchurian plains in the war, having taken poison to avoid capture. The young man standing before me was his only descendant.
At such moments we are apt to become sentimental. Unable to quell the sensation that I had somehow been reunited with Genichiro, I smiled in a bid to disguise the tears in my eyes.
‘It’s been rather a while, hasn’t it?’ said Koichi. ‘I was repatriated from Burma not long ago. I’m sorry not to have been in touch. Where are you living these days, may I ask?’
‘I was recently transferred to the Yokohama office. My house is on the outskirts of the city—not too far from here. What about you?’
‘When I returned to Japan I was jobless and had nowhere to go. The Chizui family have been kind enough to let me live here with them. In exchange, I’ve been producing saccharin and dulcin in their laboratory for them to use as sweeteners.’
‘Really? I’d never have imagined you’d be living here, of all places …’
Perhaps these words of mine were not quite appropriate, or perhaps he was simply alarmed by the sudden excitement in my voice; whatever the reason, Koichi seemed rather taken aback.18
‘Is it so surprising?’
‘Well, it’s just I was reading the sign here just now, and the name reminded me of the Professor Chizui who died ten years ago. After all, Chizui isn’t a very common surname, is it?’
‘Ah, you knew of the Professor? Yes, this was his country retreat. When I was in high school, he was kind enough to act as my guarantor. That was what gave me the idea of coming here when I got back from the war.’
‘I see … Koichi, there’s so much to tell you, and even more to ask, but how about talking somewhere a little more comfortable? You could come over to my house tomorrow evening, perhaps?’
‘I’d be delighted to. By the way, did you see that double rainbow just now? I suppose you’re familiar with the German belief that any two lovers who see one of those together are doomed to separate. I’d never seen one before myself …’
I couldn’t help wondering whether Koichi was himself in love. There was something about his words, and the way he gazed up at the sky across which the rainbow had until recently arched, that I found deeply affecting. I took my leave of him and, feeling strangely unsettled, hurried away from the mansion.
As we’d agreed, Koichi paid me a visit the next evening. After an hour or so of innocuous chatter, I steered the conversation around to the topic that had been weighing on my mind.
‘Tell me, how exactly did Professor Chizui die?’
‘A heart attack. He was in the middle of an experiment when a glass flask exploded. His injuries left him bedridden, and shortly afterwards his heart failed. But, Mr Ishikari, something tells me his death was no mere accident.’
‘Well, I’m not sure about that—but it was certainly a great loss. Not being a scientist myself, I can’t speak for his specific 19achievements, but he was a brilliant researcher, wasn’t he? I’ve heard people say he deserved a Nobel.’
‘Indeed. Western scientists are only now, ten years after his death, acknowledging the true value of what he accomplished. The Professor was a worldwide authority on radiochemistry. If he’d lived and been provided with adequate facilities and funding, I dare say Japan might have beaten America to the atomic bomb. But of course, that wasn’t to be …’
‘How is his family these days?’
I had asked my question quite nonchalantly, but Koichi’s expression immediately soured.
‘The Professor’s wife lost her mind soon after he passed away; she’s been a patient at the Oka Asylum in Tokyo ever since. And to think that when I was a student she doted on me like her own child … As you know, I was struggling to pay my tuition fees back then and ended up taking a job as a tutor to Hisako, the Professor’s daughter. Hisako had been known for her beauty and virtuosic piano playing ever since her school-days. But it seems that while I was away in the army, her sanity unravelled completely—though whether her madness came from her mother or some other cause, I don’t know. When I came to see her shortly after I returned, I was shocked to find her barely a shadow of her former self.
‘But the tragedy of the Chizui family doesn’t end there. The Professor’s only son, Kenkichi, now fourteen years old, is in good mental health, but he’s been diagnosed with heart valve disease. It seems he doesn’t have long to live—and yet nobody has told him. It brings a tear to my eyes whenever I see him poring over his textbooks in preparation for his middle-school entry exams. It seems that, before long, there will be no one left to carry the torch of Professor Chizui’s genius.’20
Koichi silently lowered his head. I could only share his grief.
‘So who else lives in the house now?’
‘The Professor’s younger brother, Taijiro, brought his family here after they were burned out of their home in the Tokyo firebombing.’ At this point, Koichi’s voice seemed to flare with anger. ‘Mr Ishikari, I hate to speak ill of the people who have taken me into their home, but there is something deeply wrong with Taijiro’s entire branch of the family.
‘Take Taijiro, the head of the family: he is possessed by the most malign greed. The blood of Judas, who betrayed Christ for the mere sake of some silver, might well be pulsing through his veins. There’s no telling what he might do to satisfy his lust for wealth. In fact, I’m sure he’d be perfectly happy to murder someone—as long as it didn’t put him in danger personally.
‘His elder son, Rintaro, is a terrifying nihilist. All he really believes in is power; to him, justice and morality are no more than intellectual games. He seems to view everything in this world as a sort of dreary mirage, contemplating reality in the indifferent way one might gaze at a passing cloud in the sky. All capacity for feeling has deserted him, leaving behind only his abnormally sharp intellect; if he hasn’t murdered anyone yet, it’s probably only because it doesn’t agree with him as a hobby. He told me as much himself once, in no uncertain terms. If it had been you he was talking to, I imagine he would have informed you, with a scornful smile, that “the ultimate law is lawlessness itself ”.
‘It’s the same with Taijiro’s second son, Yojiro. He may not be quite as craven as his father, but still—a snake only ever begets a snake. If we were to compare Taijiro to a mighty sword, Yojiro is more like a dagger glinting in its sheath.
‘Even Taijiro’s mother, Sonoe, long bedridden with palsy, has the same fiery temper smouldering away inside her. And 21while his daughter, Sawako, is the most reasonably minded of the family, you have to remember that for many years she has had only lunatics, near-lunatics and invalids for company. Who knows when she might succumb to some violent fit of emotion?
‘Between the two remaining members of the Professor’s own family, and these five members of Taijiro’s branch, it is safe to say there is no love lost. As Jules Renard once put it, a family is a group of people living under the same roof who cannot stand each other. That house has been struck by a disease from within. Riven by mutual hatred, suspicion and a sheer failure to understand one another, the Chizuis are engaged in a perpetual and desperate struggle.
‘But precisely because their respective forces have reached a sort of equilibrium, the family appears, on the surface at least, to be entirely at peace. Any disruption of that balance, however momentary, would surely spell the downfall of the entire family. Who knows what tragedy may erupt among that forsaken tribe? In any case, I fear it may be fast approaching …’
His voice was crackling with emotion. I found myself wondering whether he had spent so long among the warped people he was describing that he might be beginning to harbour his own visceral hatred for them.
And yet his harsh words turned out to be true. A terrifying secret lurked within the Chizui family. As you will see from his journal, it was Koichi, with his outstanding skills of deduction, who, before our very eyes, penetrated that secret and solved the murders so brilliantly. At the same time, it wouldn’t be long before every single member of this once-noble family had departed from this world.
A few days later, on the night of a full moon, Koichi invited me to a festival in the nearby fishing town of K–. As I had no 22wife or children of my own, and Koichi no parents or other relatives to speak of, a sort of familial intimacy had sprung up between us.
The scene that presented itself at the festival was almost exactly the same as I remembered it from thirty years ago—fireworks, lanterns, shabby food stalls—and yet the face of my companion back then, asking me to wait while she bought me a whelk egg case, had been lost to the winds of time …
Eventually Koichi and I made our way out of the crowd and began walking home. The moonlight broke softly on the rippled surface of the sea, suffusing the entire scene with a silvery glow. As we passed through the grove of pine trees, their red trunks wet with dew, our footsteps were muffled, as though the sound had been absorbed into some other realm.
Just as we were approaching the promontory on which the Chizui mansion stood, I heard the mournful sound of a piano. I believe it was Liszt’s Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody, which even under normal circumstances tends to leave the listener feeling somewhat crazed. But that night, I perceived something monstrous and otherworldly in the melody.
Koichi nodded silently at my side. As I had guessed, we were listening to the playing of a madwoman. Hisako Chizui, once renowned for her brilliance at the piano, was grasping at the fraying threads of her memory in order to perform the rhapsody.
For a moment, we simply stood there and listened.
Then we saw it.
A demonic face had appeared in one of the upstairs windows, leering at us in the light of the full moon …
This was no illusion, and nor were we hallucinating. Even from a distance, we could clearly make out the sharp fangs and 23horns, bathed in cold moonlight. On that pale and wrathful face, the eyes alone glittered gold, while the cleft-like mouth that stretched almost from one ear to the other, looked as though it had, only a moment ago, been sucking the blood of some poor victim.
We could still hear the piano. In fact, the melody began to accelerate, becoming all the more terrifying, the notes racing towards us from somewhere behind the demon in the window. Soon all sense of rhythm had disappeared; the playing spiralled out of tune, straying from any musical scale. It was as though the awful cackle of the demon itself was being borne to us on the wind.
Then the piano abruptly stopped. In its place, the ghastly, deranged laughter of a woman pierced the night air.
The face was still visible in the window.
It was a deeply unnerving scene. But my prosecutorial instincts had taken over, and I saw in it not some fantastical nightmare, but confirmation that a complex web of secrets and conspiracy surely lurked within the Chizui family.
‘Do you see that, Koichi?’
‘Yes. A demon …’
‘A real one, you think?’
‘Surely not. No, it must be the Noh mask that’s kept in the house. It’s been handed down through the family for over two centuries. The story goes that a Noh actor named Gennojo Hosho once cursed it, and now it harbours his evil spirit. But … who could be wearing it at this time of night?’
His voice was trembling like he’d been doused with cold water. Just then, the demon withdrew silently from the window.
‘Koichi, I realize now that I should have taken you more seriously. As a prosecutor, I can’t help sensing that this bizarre 24scene may be the prelude to a terrible crime. Unless … could it have been Hisako wearing that mask?’
‘Impossible,’ replied Koichi quickly, his voice trembling with a mixture of tension and fear. ‘You see, while the mask is kept in a case in the same room as the piano, only Taijiro has the key. Anyway, the music was still playing when the demon appeared in the window, but the piano and that window are separated by quite a distance. There’s no way it could be her.’
‘Listen,’ I told him, ‘I need to get to the bottom of this. I hate to intrude, but I’d like to speak with the master of the house. Could you go and see if he’s free?’
Koichi nodded and disappeared into the back entrance.
I was increasingly convinced that, before long, a dreadful crime was going to occur in this house. The bizarre scene we had just witnessed was probably only the overture …
I stood there, a cigarette dangling unlit from my mouth, as I gazed steadily at the dark, shadowy form of the mansion.
Eventually Koichi returned. His voice trembled as he spoke.
‘Taijiro says he can see you now.’
The front door opened slightly, casting a square of yellow light onto the ground in front of it. And so it was that I first crossed the threshold of the Chizui mansion—the stage of the awful tragedy to come.
The maid who had let me in guided me to a lavish reception room, where I waited for a few minutes until the door quietly opened.
‘My apologies for the wait. Taijiro Chizui.’
A grey-haired man with a slight stoop walked into the room. He must have been about sixty.
Here he was: the only sibling of the genius Professor Chizui. And yet nothing in his expression seemed indicative of the passionate yearning for knowledge that had so characterized 25his older brother. I’d heard he’d been a doctor with his own private medical practice for many years, and yet his demeanour was more reminiscent of some craven shopkeeper, with no trace of the dignified resolve usually associated with men of his profession. If his face suggested anything, it was a startling capacity for greed and malice. He had a large, hooked nose, small eyes that darted around relentlessly behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, thick lips, a heavy double chin, an unappealingly vague smile and a low, insidious voice.
I had known a defendant once—a dentist who had taken out a hefty insurance policy on his wife’s life, then poisoned her and eloped with his lover, before eventually being arrested. Something about the man before me reminded me of that dentist. If Professor Chizui had shunned all external distractions in his relentless quest for knowledge, I got the impression his brother instead simply saw knowledge as a tool for acquiring wealth, and would be willing to go to any lengths for personal gain.
‘I’m sorry to bother you so late in the evening—Hiroyuki Ishikari, from the Yokohama District Public Prosecutors’ Office. Koichi and I were walking past your mansion just now, and we happened to witness some rather mysterious goings-on upstairs. I just wanted to ask a few questions.’
‘I see,’ he replied, settling into a chair. ‘And what might these mysterious goings-on have been?’
‘We saw a demon.’
For a brief moment, Taijiro’s features seemed to twitch with anxiety.
‘Do you mean a real demon? Or perhaps someone in a mask …?’
‘Not a real one, of course—not in this day and age. But I hear you have a cursed mask in the family—handed down over 26two centuries, I’m told? Now, I don’t mean to pry into your family’s private affairs, but do you have any idea who might have appeared in the window wearing that terrifying object this late at night—or why?’
Taijiro was visibly shaken. He rose from his chair as if attempting to conceal his trepidation; his voice trembled as he spoke.
‘If Koichi has already gone and told you, I suppose there’s no point trying to hide anything. Yes, that hannya mask, crafted by the great Ittosai Akazuru, is our family heirloom. Previously it was passed down the main branch of our family—that of the Marquis Yoshida, the daimyo of Hokuetsu. But it is also the subject of a terrifying legend …
‘Around two hundred years ago, a young Noh actor, whom the family had taken into service, fell in love with one of the lord’s maids. But she never returned his affections. Indeed, quite the opposite: she revealed his secret to the entire household, rendering him a complete laughing stock. The actor fell into a deep depression. After donning that mask and giving a final performance of the play Dojoji in front of the lord, he took poison and ended his life. Soon afterwards, the maid went mad, and the mask was never used in performance again. Rumours spread that it harboured a terrible and powerful curse. If you wore it on the night of a full moon and recited a certain phrase, your wish would be granted—but in exchange, you’d be forced to give up your own life, just like the original wearer … So, Mr Ishikari, you’re telling me someone in this house was wearing the mask this evening?’
By now, Taijiro seemed gripped by an uncontrollable fear.
‘Where is it kept?’ I asked.
‘A glass case in the spare room upstairs.’
‘And who has the key?’27
‘I do.’
‘Would you mind showing me it?’
‘Of course not. Follow me.’
He led us down the hall and up the large staircase to the left of the front door. We came to a halt by the first room on the left at the top of the stairs.
‘It’s in here,’ he said, flicking a light switch.
As we stepped into the Western-style room, an eerie sight immediately confronted us. From the glass case mounted on a table by the wall glared the cursed mask—and yet that was not the most shocking thing in the room. In the corner, hunched over a black piano, was the deranged Hisako.
As soon as the light came on, she rose to her feet and turned to stare vacantly at us. It was just as Koichi had warned me: madness seemed to have oddly accentuated her beauty, lending her the uncanny allure of a wild rose blooming out of season. But there was something wax-like and cold about her expression; her long, dishevelled hair hung loosely over her shoulders, and the dark pupils of her large eyes stirred so restlessly that it was impossible to know exactly what, if anything, was the target of her gaze.
She advanced a few paces towards us. Her face was as expressionless as that of a wax figure or a Noh mask, and yet she appeared to be murmuring something over and over. Then, before I knew what was happening, she had lunged at me and pressed herself to my chest.
‘Finally!’ she whooped. ‘You’re back! I’ll never let you go, you hear? You’re mine for ever!’
It had been three decades since I had last known a woman’s embrace, and even then I’d never experienced anything like this. At the same time, it was quite a terrifying encounter. I simply stood there, powerless to stop the complex whirl of 28emotions—fear and pity, dread and faint nostalgia—that had stirred inside me.
But it really was only a moment, for Taijiro immediately grabbed Hisako by the shoulders and pulled her from my chest.
‘What are you playing at? This man is our guest, not that lover of yours. He died a very long time ago, and he’s never coming back, you hear?’
It wasn’t clear whether she had understood him. At first, she simply fixed her vacant gaze on me again. But soon an unsettling smile began to tug at the corners of her lips.
From a vase on top of the piano, she picked out a single carnation and brought it to her mouth. Then she abruptly began to sing:
My heart goes south to find you;
My letter entrusted to a swallow,
Alone, I wait out the winter,
When, oh, when, will you return?
It was a poignant melody, reminiscent of some old German ballad. As she sang, she wandered off down the hallway, but the melancholy tune seemed to linger faintly in the air.
Taijiro also appeared to have been listening keenly. He turned to me with a bitter smile.
‘I’m sorry, that must have been quite alarming. Hisako is a little … unbalanced, you see. She’s my brother’s daughter, but if anything she seems to have taken after her mother. She was all but engaged to a young nobleman, but then he died in the war—and now look at her.’
Koichi and I remained silent, immersed in our thoughts. The sight of that once-talented and beautiful woman, now 29consumed by madness, seemed to have deeply moved him; I could I have sworn I saw tears glistening in his eyes.
After a short pause, we managed to gather ourselves.
‘So,’ I said, ‘this is the Noh mask you were telling me about.’
‘Indeed.’
Taijiro had not lied: the mask was indeed a terrifying piece of craftsmanship. The large, sharply upturned golden eyes; the crescent-shaped mouth that extended almost to the ears, its sharp fangs protruding from either side; the long, subtly curved horns—it was all enough to stop anyone dead in their tracks. Could that young Noh actor’s final grudge really still lurk in the mask now, two hundred years after his death?
I slowly put a hand to the lid of the case.
‘So it’s kept locked … The key, please. Tell me, do you keep it on you at all times?’
‘Well, not always.’
‘I wonder if someone could have taken the key when you weren’t looking, made a duplicate and used it to open this just now …’
