Masako Togawa - The Master Key

She went and sat down on the small chair which was obviously used by the students, and took one final look around the room. Surely she had overlooked nothing? The violin could not be in this room.

She heard footsteps outside, and started up towards the window. Whoever it was went past the door and further down the corridor. But at that moment, as she gazed fearfully towards the door, she caught sight of a small triangular shelf, set high up in the corner, on which there reposed a black violin case. It lay there, covered like everything else in the room with a film of dust, showing signs of long neglect. It had to contain the Guarnerius. She dragged her chair over to the entrance and stood on it. She could easily reach the violin case; once again covering her fingers with rags, she gripped the case and took it down from the shelf. Her nostrils tingled, sensing the proximity of stolen property. Hardly daring to breathe, and holding her discovery high above her head, she carefully stepped down from the chair and laid the case on the floor. Her trembling hands swiftly sought the catch—but it was locked! She tried rapping the fastening to see if it would loosen but, decrepit as the case seemed, it would not yield to her efforts. Suwa must have taken the key with her when she went out. There was no point in searching for it. Her blood raced as she experienced both dread and an overwhelming desire to see inside the violin case. The latter emotion proving the stronger, she stood up with the intention of looking for something with which to force the lock.

At that very moment, she heard footsteps in the corridor. They stopped outside the door, and there was a grating sound as a key was pushed into the lock. Suwa had come back! Noriko almost fainted from fright.

The master key, which she had left in the lock on the inside of the door, began to move under the pressure from outside. If she did nothing about it, the key would be pushed out of the hole and Suwa would be able to enter the apartment.

But what could she do? Hypnotised by dread, she could not even think. For if she was discovered in Suwa’s room, she would be branded as a thief and at the very least forced to leave the apartment block. A hot feeling on her inner leg aroused her; without noticing, she had passed water.

There was only one route of escape—the window. She raced over and unwound the catch, throwing the two leaves of the window outwards. She looked down; the ground was only about one metre below her, and there was no one in the inner courtyard. She looked back at the door; the master key had not yet yielded to the siege. Suwa was now rattling the knob impatiently. The Guarnerius case lay where she had left it on the floor. Now that her escape route lay open, and with no sign that Suwa would be able to effect entrance very quickly, she calmed down and realised that she had left her canvas shoes in the room and that also it would be a pity just to leave the violin behind after all her efforts.

There were sounds of other people gathering in the corridor. Miss Tojo’s shrill voice could be heard amongst them. There was no time to spare. Noriko acted as if in a trance, seizing up the violin case and her shoes and racing to the window. As she climbed out, her bedraggled skirt caught on the window catch and ripped as she tumbled to the earth. Without pausing to look around, she raced barefoot across the muddy yard; and slipped and fell. The violin case flew from her grasp and struck the brick-built incinerator house, suffering severe damage. She picked it up again and gazed wildly around the courtyard looking for somewhere to hide. With so many people around, she could not use the fire escape as was her normal custom. It looked as if she was cornered.

But there was one hiding place available to her—the incinerator. She wrenched open the iron doors and, pushing the violin case in first, crawled in after it. The interior was much wider than appeared from the size of the doors. Provided she was not discovered, she could remain hidden until nightfall and then make her escape. She only had to put up with cramped conditions for an hour or so. The incinerator had not been used for some time, and the recent rainfall had turned the half-burned paper and rubbish inside into a black paste which was extremely unpleasant to the touch. She wiped her feet with her rags and put on her canvas shoes.

After a while, she peeped out through a crack in the doors. She could see some of the windows on the lower two storeys of the building—but not the window of Suwa’s room. Doubtless people were clustered around that window, gazing into the courtyard. Indeed, she felt as if every window must conceal a pair of eyes gazing directly at the incinerator. She crouched in the dark, hardly daring to breathe and clasping the violin case to her breast.

Thirty minutes passed in this way, with no sign of anyone coming into the courtyard. She felt a strong desire to uncurl herself and have a look at the violin. Her eyes were now accustomed to the dark; indeed, what with various cracks in the structure and the open chimney, the interior of the incinerator was quite light. She felt around in the cinders and found a rusted five-inch nail. She tried to force open the lock of the case with it, but to no avail.

Then she noticed that the hinge had been distorted in the fall. She slipped the nail under it and prised it open in no time at all. The lid then came apart from the case with ease.

The violin lay there, its paint cracked in places. Not one string remained unbroken. There was a hole in the belly of the instrument, through which she could see a slip of brown paper pasted to the inside of the back. Could this indeed be the famous Guarnerius violin?

‘Poor violin,’ she thought. ‘Just to cover up her fingerprints, she scrubbed your paintwork and stuck on a piece of paper to hide the traces.’

She put the violin down, and conjured up a vision of Suwa’s face covered with the fingerprints of guilt. They were two of the same tribe, she and Suwa.

Her long-awaited object at last achieved, Noriko succumbed to the mental and physical exhaustion of the hunt. She fell asleep in the incinerator, the violin cradled in her arms. She awoke with a sneeze some while later, chilled to the bone. She put the violin back in its case, and hid it carefully in the back of the furnace.

Outside, it was pitch dark. A few lights yet shone in the windows as Noriko crept to the fire escape and made her way back to her room.

The evening concert had begun half an hour before. Suwa Yatabe was standing in the cold winter dusk outside the Hibiya Hall, gazing at the gloomy park. Occasionally, the sound of music within was wafted to her in the wind, arousing the bright memories of her past, only to fade as her career had faded.

It was well past the time of her appointment, but the foreigner who called himself ‘A.D.’ was nowhere to be seen. But she could not bring herself to give up and leave, hoping against hope that he would finally turn up.

The square in front of the Concert Hall was bathed in the pale light of mercury lamps. Apart from the occasional latecomer hurrying into the Hall, it was more or less deserted. A uniformed driver got out of a parked limousine, but it was only to wipe the window before retreating back into the car.

Suwa stamped her feet to keep the cold at bay, and from time to time moved from one pillar to the next.

A car turned in off the road, sweeping the square with its baleful headlights. It crunched across the gravel and came to a stop. A foreigner, wearing a long greatcoat turned up at the collar, got out and paid the driver. She could not see his face clearly, but he turned towards her and came bounding up the steps. Suwa stepped out from behind the pillar which had been hiding her, her heart pounding like a drum. But then she noticed that he was wearing glasses, and her heart sank.