Masako Togawa - The Master Key

Miss Tojo consented readily. ‘Of course. Well, I’ll be off. It’s a bit early for it, but I’ll have a long bath. Cheerio, then!’

Miss Tamura blessed her luck. It was pure chance, plus her own quick thinking (and a lie) which had given her the whole day alone with access to the master key and her colleague safely away at the bath-house.

As soon as she saw Miss Tojo leaving with her washing things under her arm, she took the phone off the hook, collected the master key from the board, locked the office door and stealthily made her way upstairs to the second floor. She was almost in a trance, driven by a sense of some inevitable duty.

She tiptoed towards Toyoko’s room, trying to prevent her rubber sandals from making any noise as she went. She stopped in front of the door, trembling as she stared at the name, written in beautiful calligraphy: ‘ Munekata ’. Glancing around once more to make sure that no one was about, she hurriedly put the master key into the lock, but it did not seem to fit. She pushed and twisted with all her might, using both hands as if to force the lock. Suddenly the key turned with a loud grating sound and the door creaked open a few inches. She perceived a faint scent—the particular smell of the air in Toyoko’s room—and her senses reeled, half from fear and half from curiosity.

She quickly closed the door and locked it from the inside. Pausing an instant in the tiny entrance lobby, she felt a twinge of guilt which she quickly dismissed before pulling aside the curtain and peeping into the apartment.

The room was very untidy. Against one wall there was a collection of worn furniture in faded colours; in the centre an oak desk which somehow seemed to reflect its owner’s personality, dominating the rest of the room as it did. On top of various tallboys and packing cases, disorderly piles of books reached almost to the ceiling—fat, Western-published volumes interspersed with dog-eared reference works. They towered over Miss Tamura’s head, as if threatening her. ‘Your world is quite different from ours! This is the room of a distinguished scholar,’ they seemed to say. ‘You have no such learning, and shouldn’t be here!’ She glared back in resistance to the atmosphere of the room, and then, discarding her sandals, stepped right inside and gazed at the books, one by one, as if savouring their contents.

Seeing all these objects which had passed the years with the elegantly learned Toyoko, a grievous sense of her own inferiority welled up in Miss Tamura’s bosom. ‘These objects, too, have drawn into themselves the passing years as their owner’s youth and beauty faded. What sort of a man was her husband, and how was their life together all those years? Was it a happy one, I wonder?’ In her reverie, Miss Tamura was overwhelmed by curiosity about Toyoko’s private life, and her sense of guilt vanished at last.

She moved stealthily to the desk, and spread her hands on its top. It felt cold and hard, telling her of the sternness of a scholar’s life.

On the broad desktop, an old-fashioned stand for writing brushes had been pushed to one side; behind it there were several dry inkwells with pens stuck into them in confusion. There was a writing pad, its brilliant whiteness laid bare to the eye; beside it there was a neat pile, some twenty centimetres deep, of manuscripts, held in place by a marble paperweight. Immediately under the paperweight, on top of the other writings, was a sheet with the words ‘Completed Manuscripts’ penned in black ink.

Miss Tamura picked up the marble paperweight with both hands and placed it with great care, as if it were fragile, on the desk. She began to turn the leaves of the first manuscript, one page at a time, taking care not to disturb their order.

This heading was written in angular lettering on squared paper, and was followed by half a page of mathematical equations made up of numerals and symbols.

Miss Tamura examined the next few pages carefully. It was after about the third page that she began to sense that something was wrong. The formation of the characters and symbols started to assume odd shapes. Then they seemed to lose shape altogether: characters were abbreviated or written as if falling apart, and were increasingly interspersed with meaningless patterns, squares, triangles, circles, and cyphers like secret letters of an incomprehensible code. Irrelevant words and phrases of gibberish began to appear, written in minute letters.

The meaningless array of letters and signs went on for fifty pages. At the very end, there appeared a final line written in Toyoko’s flowing hand:

‘Recorded by my husband in his place of refuge at the reception area of the boundary city.’

Miss Tamura’s hands began to shake, and she was overwhelmed by astonishment. She began to wonder whether Toyoko’s husband had not been insane.

The second manuscript was entirely in Toyoko’s writing, but otherwise was an exact copy of the first one. The crazy title, the illogical patterns and the obscure symbols were all faithfully reproduced just as they were.

Miss Tamura began to turn the pages faster. The third manuscript was the same; the fourth too, and so on. Not the slightest change was introduced—each was just a copy of the original. She felt a malicious desire to get to the bottom of this useless labour, this pointless accumulation of meaningless data. Toyoko’s bloodless face with its almost transparent, pale nose floated before her eyes, chilling her spine.

Once more she seemed to hear the flat and toneless voice of the anonymous caller on the telephone.

She gathered together the manuscripts and piled them up exactly as they had been when she had found them, replacing the paperweight on top. She realised that she had been in a panic ever since entering the room, and noticed for the first time that her sleeve had caught on one of the pens in the inkwell, upsetting it; a dark blot was spreading over a page of writing that lay on top of the desk. It was time to go, but first she must have one last careful look around the room to make sure that she left no traces of her visit. She walked around nervously, giving way to a sense of desperation. There was nothing to mop the ink up with, and even if there was it would not remove the mark on the manuscript sheets, but she could hardly throw the paper away. What could she do? Toyoko was bound to realise that someone had been in her room, but would have no way of knowing who it was. There was nothing to link her with the crime, except the master key—but then anyone could use a key, provided that they had access to it. That was it! As things stood, only the receptionists had control of the key, and its misuse could be narrowed down to them, but if it were missing—lost or stolen, say—well, some blame would fall on them for carelessness, but no one could prove that one of them had misused it!

Her mind swam. Before her eyes proceeded a vision of the faces of the residents of the apartment block. The blame had to fall on someone who had no work, who was generally at home throughout the day, someone who was unpopular or regarded with suspicion… passing the key would be just like getting rid of the Queen in the children’s card game called Slippery Ann!

As if in a trance, she left the room, locking the door as she went, and hurried back to the staircase. She made her way up one flight of stairs and took off her slippers. She crept along the corridor and paused in front of the fifth door from the landing, Room 305. She looked around cautiously, and listened. No one about! Putting her ear to the door, she made sure that there was no sound from within. Just to make certain, she surreptitiously turned the doorknob; it was locked. She quickly slipped the master key into the keyhole.