Seichō Matsumoto - Points And Lines

"Not just today. She'll probably be away the whole week," Yaeko informed him, raising her eyebrows.

"Is she on a honeymoon with that man we saw?" Yasuda asked, setting his sake cup on the table. "That's what it looks like. Isn't it startling?" "Why should it shock you? You girls should do the same." "No such luck. Not unless you take me, Mr. Ya." "Me? Leave me out of it. Anyway, I couldn't take so many of you." Yasuda left, but, probably for business reasons, returned the following evening with two guests. On this occasion, both Tomiko and Yaeko waited on him and they talked about Otoki.

He returned again the following week, but by this time, as it happened, Otoki and her male companion had already been found dead, in a most unlikely place.

On the main railway line to Kagoshima there is a small station called Kashii, three stops before the city of Hakata. From the station, the road inland, in the direction of the mountains, leads to Kashii Shrine; in the opposite direction, it goes down to the seashore from where Hakata harbor can be seen.

Directly in front of the beach a narrow strip of land called Umi no Nakamichi extends into the sea like a sash, and at the end of it the island of Shika appears to float on the water. Off to the left lies the island of Noko, barely visible in the misty distance. It is an exceptionally beautiful spot.

This stretch of seashore is called Kashii Bay. In olden times it was known as Kashii Inlet. In those days, Otomo no Tabito, a government official, was inspired by this same scene to compose the poem that appears in the Manyōshū, a famous eighth century anthology:

At low tide though our sleeves may

get wet, let us hunt

After sea herbs for breakfast in

Kashii Bay.

However, the sentiments of a court noble of long ago are scarcely relevant in the matter-of-fact world of today. On the very cold, early morning of January 21, at about 6:30, a workman was walking along this beach. Instead of looking for herbs for his morning meal, as in the poem, he was on his way to work at a factory in Najima. It was shortly after dawn. A thick mist was still gathered in the distance; Shika Island and Umi no Nakamichi were only dimly visible. The wind, which tasted of the sea, was penetrating and cold. The man was walking rapidly, his coat collar turned up. The beach, strewn with rocks, provided a short cut to his job; he passed here every day. But there was something this morning that was out of the ordinary. His eyes first took note of it. Among the jagged black rocks that stood in his path he spied two objects. Incongruous, irrelevant, they were conspicuous in that familiar scene. In the pale light of early morning, as yet unwarmed by the rays of the sun, the objects looked very forlorn. The loose ends of the wrappings that covered them fluttered in the wind; they were the only things that moved-they, and the long hair. The black shoes and white socks were very still.

His peaceful mood was shattered. The man turned and took to his heels. He ran back towards town and banged on the door of the first police box he came to.

"There are dead bodies on the beach!"

"Dead bodies? On the beach?" The old policeman stood up and shivered as he buttoned his jacket. The man was obviously very excited.

"Yes, two of them. It looks like a man and a woman."

Such a report, so early in the morning, made the old policeman's eyes pop open. "Where are they?"

"On the beach over there. I'll show you."

"Just a minute."

The policeman was a bit flustered. He took down the man's name and address, then telephoned the main police station at Kashii. As they left the police box together, their breath made little white puffs in the crisp morning air.

The two bodies lay on the beach in the cold, salty wind. Now that he was accompanied by the policeman, the workman was able to look at them more calmly. He noticed the woman first. She lay with her face looking up at the sky. Her eyes were closed but her mouth, partly open, revealed her white teeth. Her face was slightly flushed. Underneath a gray coat she wore a brick-colored kimono; the white collar was slightly open at the neck. The folds of the kimono were neatly arranged and she lay in a very orderly manner. The skirt ends of the kimono, fluttering in the wind, exposed the yellow lining. There were clean white socks on her feet, which lay primly aligned. Her clothes were not soiled. Nearby lay her sandals, also neatly arranged. The workman looked over at the man. His head was turned sideways. His face also appeared flushed, almost the face of a living person. He looked as if he had been drinking and had fallen asleep. The cuffs of his brown trousers showed from under a dark blue overcoat and his feet, in a pair of black shoes, were carelessly extended. The shoes were brightly polished; the socks were blue, with red stripes. The bodies lay quite close together.

Small crabs were scurrying in and out of cracks in the rocks. One little crab was trying to crawl into a bottle of orange juice that lay near the man's body.

"Love suicide," said the old policeman, looking down at the bodies. "Poor souls; still young, too."

The light showed that it was getting on towards midmorning.

Forty minutes later, alerted by the Kashii police, the chief of the detective division, accompanied by two assistants, the police doctor and a criminal identification officer, arrived by car from the Fukuoka police station.

When they had finished taking pictures from every angle, the police doctor inspected the bodies.

"Potassium cyanide," he concluded. "The brightly flushed face is characteristic. They must have taken it with the juice." Some orange-colored liquid still remained in the soft drink bottle on the rocks nearby.

"Doc, how long do you think they've been dead?" the chief asked. He was fingering his small moustache.

"I can't be sure until I check more carefully. Offhand, I'd say about ten hours."

"Ten hours," the chief repeated, looking around. This set back the suicides to ten or eleven o'clock the previous night. He seemed to be trying to visualize the scene. "You believe they drank the poison together at the same time?"

"Yes. They must have taken the potassium cyanide in the orange juice."

"What a cold place to die in," someone remarked.

The doctor looked up at the speaker. He was a man in his early forties, very thin and wearing a shabby overcoat, a nondescript little man.

"Ah, Mr. Torigai!" The doctor addressed the detective, looking into his thin face. "Your remark applies to living persons. As for a place to die, it is immaterial whether it is hot or cold. For that matter, fruit juice is hardly a wintertime drink. Anyway, this couple…" The doctor stopped and smiled, then added, "They were probably in an abnormal state of mind, victims of a sort of perverse, inverted psychology."

The detectives laughed. The police doctor had a pretentious way of speaking that they liked to ridicule.

"It takes courage to decide to drink poison. And a peculiar state of mind to acquire that courage," the chief commented.

"Chief, do you think this could be a case of murder and suicide?" asked one of the detectives. He had a marked country accent.

"It can't be. There are no signs of a struggle; their clothes are not even in disorder. I feel sure they took the poison willingly."

It was true. The woman's body was in perfect repose. Her white socks were immaculate, as if they had just stepped out of the sandals that were neatly placed beside her. Her hands were folded over her breasts.

Since it was clearly a case of love suicide, the detectives relaxed. They even showed signs of disappointment that no crime was involved, that there was no need to search for the murderer.