Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

Watertight? But wasn’t there a fatal flaw?

Fusako Aikawa, his alibi in the cashier’s murder, was dead. His alibi in that case was illusory. He looked out of the window, but these ominous feelings destroyed the beauty of the countryside.

If asked where he had been on the night of the cashier’s murder, there was no one to support his evidence. Why had he not realized this before? He cursed himself for his foolish complacency.

Viewed in this light, the two murders began to seem closely interwoven. Rather than two separate incidents, he was looking at a sequence of events.

Had Fusako Aikawa been murdered for no other reason than to destroy his alibi? In the back of his head, he heard the mocking voice of the killer. What was the motive? Was he reading too much into it? Who stood to lose most from the death of Kimiko Tsuda?

Someone was trying to frame him.

The circle of his logic complete, he was now convinced that his theory was correct. The two murders had been committed in order to entrap him. He stirred in his seat and groaned; the foreigner looked up from his crossword for a moment, studying him dubiously before returning to his pastime.

And if that was true…

Then the murderer would strike again. To destroy his other alibi. By killing Mitsuko Kosugi. She was the last link in the chain.

The in-flight announcement crackled over the loudspeakers, instructing the passengers to fasten their seat belts. Below, he could see the approaches to Haneda Airport. And he still could not understand why someone was trying to trap him.

As soon as he was outside the terminal, he telephoned Mitsuko’s apartment at Asagaya. The hoarse voice of the receptionist told him that Mitsuko had gone home to her family for the holiday and would not be back before the fifteenth. He replaced the receiver and stood lost in thought for a while before taking a taxi back to the Toyo Hotel.

The narrow lane leading to Mitsuko Kosugi’s apartment was unlit and was bordered by fences weatherproofed with black tar. It was pitch dark, and visibility was not helped by a misty drizzle. Ichiro Honda pulled down his waterproof hat, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way down the alley. The stepping-stones were slightly raised above the black silt, and he had to tread carefully to avoid tripping.

At the entrance, he peered over the fence. He could see a faint light glowing behind the curtains of Mitsuko’s room; she was in.

Relieved, he opened the front door and went in. He opened the shoe compartment marked “Kosugi” and slipped in his low-heeled Guccis. There was a pair of lady’s brown pumps in there already.

He went into the hall. The reception desk was dark and empty, just as Mitsuko had told him it would be at this hour. He turned and made his way down the broad corridor leading to her room.

The corridor turned sharply to the left just before her door, forming a right angle like a carpenter’s square. So once he stood in front of her door, he was invisible from the rest of the passage. So nobody would see him or question him.

From some nearby room, he could hear the muffled sounds of a television program. It was 11:30; someone was watching the midnight show. Upstairs, he could hear footsteps, but apart from these two sounds, the building was silent. He made his way stealthily down the passage.

He reached her door and knocked, at first softly and then louder. There was no reply. He leaned on the door of the broom cupboard opposite her room and thought. Later, he remembered the sign “Broom Cupboard” lettered on the door.

He tried her door, and just as in the case of his visit to the apartment in Koenji, it opened to his touch.

He stepped in and shut the door behind him. Ahead of him was a small sink, and to the left a curtain strung on a wire shut off the main room.

“Are you in?” he called, making his voice falter on purpose. But there was no reply. He began to feel a brooding sense of oppression. His chest felt tight; try as he might, he could not rid himself of the recollection of Fusako Aikawa’s death. Would he find Mitsuko Kosugi in there, naked… and dead?

He put his hand on the curtain and paused to collect himself. He had a premonition that he was going to find a death within. He pulled the curtain aside forcefully.

There was no one in the room.

But there were signs that someone had been there until a few minutes ago.

He went over and sat down in a swivel chair in front of the desk. He looked around the room. He had phoned her three hours earlier, as soon as she had returned from her holiday, and had suggested that he would meet her at 11:30. He had suggested meeting somewhere outside, but she was plainly overjoyed to receive his phone call and insisted that he come to her room.

“I’ll toast—er—special New Year cakes for you.” She seemed unsure about making him understand the word mochi in English. He could hear her voice now as he observed the rice cakes wrapped in newspaper on the dining table. She must have slipped out to borrow some seasonings, he decided. He lit a cigarette and waited.

Blowing smoke out into that small room, he examined his surroundings. Clearly an art student’s room, with its volumes of painters on the bookshelves, the canvases stacked against the wall. The closet was ajar, and he could see a red silk quilt stowed away inside. He had not slept with a woman for a month. Seeing the bedding, he felt his desire surging up within him. He yawned and rotated the chair around to face the other wall. The chair creaked noisily in the silent room.

He was facing a walnut-veneered wardrobe with a mirror on the door. Unconsciously he gazed into the mirror. It reflected back, showing him a face with disordered hair; his complexion seemed stagnant in that dim light. It was not a healthy face.

And then he saw a small length of maroon-colored silk caught in the wardrobe door and hanging down. Without thinking, he fingered his silk tie, which was not his maroon-colored favorite. Was there not something familiar about the color of that two-inch-long piece of silk? It looked exactly like his favorite tie.

Leadenly, he pushed himself out of the chair and walked over to the wardrobe. He was in the presence of a mystery that he must solve. What was his tie doing in Mitsuko Kosugi’s room? He reached for the door handle, but his hand was unsteady and on the first pass he missed.

He was hesitant about prying into someone else’s wardrobe without her permission. But, after all, he told himself, he was only checking—nothing wrong with that.

Perhaps the wardrobe was new; he had difficulty in opening the door until he applied his weight. He pulled hard; the hinge grated, the door opened, and…

The dead body of Mitsuko Kosugi rolled out, leaning on his body.

By reflex action, he warded her off, pushing her back, feeling the warmth that was still in her flesh. He could smell the scent of her hair, but more pervasive still was the same scent, half sweet, half sour, that he had smelled in Fusako Aikawa’s room.

Turning his head aside in horror, he pushed the body back into the wardrobe and shut the door upon it. His hands were trembling, his body suffused with a deathly chill; he could hardly breathe. His body seemed to have solidified where he stood.

“Oh monstrous! Monstrous!” he groaned. He could still feel the touch of the woman’s inelastic skin under his fingertips. He rubbed his hand on his trousers as if to wipe the sensation away.

The corpse was in a kneeling position, the better to fit into the wardrobe, its hands hanging loosely by its sides. And around its throat was his tie! He wanted to scream, but his voice was frozen in his mouth.

He went back to the chair and sat down. His whole body shuddered with fear and anger admixed. What was he to do? He lit a cigarette and reached for the ashtray, the Pavlovian actions of a man deep in thought.