I. Parker - Death on an Autumn River

The boatman was eager to please a nobleman, and immediately ordered his assistants to pole the boat toward the pavilion. They entered a cove normally hidden from view. The other passengers craned their necks, wondering what the court official found so interesting.

Tora came to sit beside Akitada. “Is that the place?” he asked in a low voice.

Akitada nodded and pointed. “We found her over there, where the river makes the bend. She could have gone into the water from this pavilion. She had not been in the water long, and it’s much more likely than that she should have drifted upstream from Eguchi. I don’t trust that Eguchi warden.”

Tora looked dubious. “She could have fallen or been tossed from a boat.”

“Yes. It was just an idea.” Akitada eyed the pavilion. For all its glowing beauty, the place struck him as somehow menacing now. It seemed just the sort of place where a beautiful girl-child might meet her death.

“It’s a grand place,” said Tora, looking up at elegant rooflines and red lacquered columns. “The emperor himself might live in a place like that.”

It was indeed a palatial. As they had come closer, they could see other buildings raising their blue-tiled gables over the tree tops beyond the pavilion. Akitada called to the boat’s master again, “Do you know what this place is?”

“We just call it the River Mansion, sir,” the man replied. “The pavilion marks the place where we start the turn for the Eguchi landing stage.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“It’s a summer place for some great nobleman from capital. Sometimes they play music up there over the river, and fine gentlemen and ladies in silk of many colors walk around.” He shook his head in wonder. “The good people live every day of their lives in the Western Paradise.”

Yes, the elegant buildings in their beautiful setting looked like those in painted scrolls depicting the Western Paradise. To ordinary people, the lives of the rich and powerful were the most accurate image of ultimate bliss. As they gradually moved downriver and away from the site, Akitada got a vivid impression of music floating out over the water while celestial figures moved about under the trees or leaned over the red railings of the pavilion to watch the river traffic. It was a far cry from the rustic hermitage he had imagined as the perfect haven for his old age. Perhaps the reward for a good life was exactly the sort place one had dreamed of during his lifetime. He wondered what abode Seimei would find waiting for him.

Tora snorted. “‘Good people’? Hardly good. They may live in paradise, but their crimes send them to hell after they die,” he said, shocking the boat’s master and his assistants, but getting some nods and grins from passengers.

Like Tora, Akitada knew well enough that the lives of the powerful were far from perfect or desirable. He was tempted to stop over in Eguchi to find out who owned the River Mansion. He could ask Harima, the former choja. The thought of the two old people brought a smile to his face.

Tora must have read his thoughts. “Shall we spend the night and ask a few questions?” he asked eagerly. “We can go on to Naniwa the next morning.”

That was what Akitada had done last time, and it had led to nothing but trouble. Besides, while Tora doted on his pretty wife Hanae and had turned into a good family man since his marriage, his past had been spent among the women who earned their living on their backs. Tora might be tempted to take advantage of his temporary freedom from domesticity to return to his old ways. He said, “No, Tora. Have you forgotten Seimei’s death? As long as the villain who sent his men to my home is alive and free, your family and mine are in danger.”

Tora’s face fell. He nodded. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have been so stupid.”

They fell silent. Akitada wondered if Kobe could guard his family adequately if more armed men showed up at his house.

Tora said, “That postmaster’s story about the old princess and her young men sort of fits, don’t you think?”

“What?”

“What the boat master said about parties at the River Mansion. What if that’s where the princess lives?”

“I doubt it very much. It’s just a salacious tale told by a lecher.” But it struck Akitada that a nobleman might well use such a remote place to enjoy forbidden pleasures the court would frown upon or a highborn first wife might object to. Those pleasures, in the close proximity of a town that catered to all sorts of sexual perversions could involve the abuse of poor young girls, abuse that would lead them to commit suicide rather than face more of the same. It might even result in murder.

He thought of Otomo and his insistence that Korean girls were being abducted and put to work in Eguchi. There was something very odd about the way Otomo had pursued him with his suspicions. But the professor had never mentioned the word murder.

They stayed on board while the boat docked at Eguchi and watched passengers disembark and new passengers take their place. The short distance to Naniwa was uneventful. The skies were still blue, the broad expanse of the river glistened in the sun, and a fresh breeze brought the tang of the open sea.

In Naniwa, they walked to the government hostel. The fat man sat in his usual place. There was no sign of the little girl. The manager eyed them glumly.

“You had a visitor,” he told Akitada. “Right after you left. Ugliest bastard I ever saw. He left this.” With a smirk, he produced a badly wrapped package that seemed to contain a scroll. “I told him you’d gone and I didn’t know if you’d be back, but he said to keep it and he’d be back to pick it up if you didn’t show. Only he never came back.”

Akitada stared at the package and then at the fat man. It was clear that someone had opened and then rewrapped the package clumsily. He took it and said coldly, “Thank you. We’ll share a room. Bring our saddlebags.”

The fat manager got to his feet with difficulty, grabbed a saddlebag in each fist and lumbered down the corridor. He took them to the same room Akitada had occupied before and collected his tip.

“Where’s your daughter?” asked Tora.

“With her mother,” that man said and lumbered out.

“I wonder how the child is.” Tora looked after him with a frown.

“Let’s hope her mother is looking after her better than her father was.” Akitada was unwrapping the package. It turned out to be no more than a piece of bamboo pipe of the sort used in gardens to direct water into a basin. It should be hollow, but he could not see through it. He shook it and heard a soft sound inside. He looked about the room, then stepped out into the small yard where he saw a dry stick and used that to probe inside the tube. Some brown fibers fell out. He poked harder, and more fibers emerged, and then a small, heavy object wrapped in a piece of paper fell into his hand. When he unfolded the paper, he saw the Korean amulet. The ugly man had returned it.

“What is it?” asked Tora.

“It’s an amulet I bought and lost. Apparently, someone found it for me.” Akitada tucked the coin away in his sash. No sense in further stirring Tora’s interest in the dead girl from Eguchi. “Let’s have an early night. I plan to see the prefect in the morning. Nakahara is useless, but he did inform me that Munata is a close associate of the governor’s. If one of the two is a villain, then the other is also, and Munata is less likely to slip away to the capital. What about you?”

Tora stepped out on the veranda and sniffed the air. “I’ll go to Kawajiri. To that hostel.”

Akitada nodded. “The Hostel of the Flying Cranes.” He looked at Tora’s neat blue robe, his black hat, and good boots. “But not in those clothes, I hope.”