The noh mask murder, p.1
The Noh Mask Murder, page 1
PRAISE FOR THE TATTOO MURDER
’A tale that fizzes with intrigue and ingenuity’
DAILY MAIL
‘Like voyeurs, we follow Takagi down the charred streets of bombed-out Tokyo to scenes of fastidiously executed decadence’
THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘This lurid mystery provides a fascinating portrait of wartorn Tokyo’
THE TIMES CRIME CLUB, PICK OF THE WEEK
‘Intricate, fantastic and utterly absorbing’
KIRKUS REVIEWS
‘Crackles with the energy that made Takagi one of Japan’s most popular crime authors’
FINANCIAL TIMES
‘The extensive and nuanced portrayal of Japanese subcultures makes The Tattoo Murder an absorbing and satisfying read’
BUSINESS POST
‘A delightful, different book, not only because of its unusual setting and premise, but because Takagi is a powerful plotter and constructor of fascinating, complex characters’
THE A.V. CLUB
Contents
Title Page
Prologue
1. An Uncanny Encounter on a Moonlit Night
2. Opening Act
3. The Chizui Family
4. The Mirage
5. Second Act
6. The Buried Crime
7. Third Act
8. The Greene Murder Case
9. The Merchant of Venice
10. The Demon in the Locked Room
11. The Final Tragedy
12. The Demise of the Chizui Family
13. The Sealed Note From Hiroyuki Ishikari
About the Authors
Copyright
THE NOH MASK
MURDER
Prologue
In the summer of 1946, a year after the end of the war, at a bathing resort on the Miura peninsula in Kanagawa prefecture, I ran into an old school friend. His name was Koichi Yanagi.
He had only recently returned to Japan, having been deployed to Burma shortly after earning a chemistry degree. I, on the other hand, had been rejected from the army on the grounds of poor health and, after working as an engineer at a munitions company until the end of the war, now found myself staying at the Marine Hotel, which overlooked the resort in question.
Back then, the idea of writing a detective novel hadn’t yet crossed my mind, but that didn’t stop me from lugging around various classics of the genre—books I had devoured over and over since childhood, often to the detriment of my actual eating habits.
Of course, Koichi knew all about this passion of mine. During our schooldays, I hadn’t been content simply to read what others had written, but would occasionally play the detective myself, poking my nose into some real-life mystery I was convinced required solving.
‘You know, Akimitsu,’ he once said to me, ‘if you’re so unhappy working as an engineer, why don’t you start a detective agency? Or write your own mystery novel?’
I wasn’t entirely sure he was joking.
‘Of course I’d like to be a detective, but who’s going to hire me? As for writing a novel, well, I’ve never attempted anything like that. If I were to give it a try, though, I’ve always thought I’d like to write something a little different from your average whodunnit …’
‘Something a little different?’
‘See, most detective novels have some hapless Watson-type following Sherlock Holmes or whoever around and relaying his dazzling exploits to the reader. It’s all a little dull, really. Then there are the ones where the detective himself turns out to be the criminal, but these days that’s starting to feel rather stale too. There’s even the idea of the Watson-style narrator confessing that he was the murderer all along, but Agatha Christie already did that quite masterfully with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd …’
‘Well then, how would you write your novel?’
‘I’d have the detective solving a genuine real-life mystery, and narrating his actions as he does so—a first-hand account, if you like. But it wouldn’t be one of those pulpy, old-fashioned memoirs where the detective makes himself out to be a real hotshot. The focus would still be on logical reasoning, you see, but it would be much more than a simple record of the investigation. Instead of the detective merely stating what he did, on what date, with whom and so on, all that detailed evidence would form the basis for a meticulous account of his every thought, his precise chain of reasoning—and all the actions he took as a result.
‘Of course, it’d be a very hard format to pull off. Firstly, you’d need an incredibly elaborate real-life crime to solve—it’d be no good relying on some half-baked or accidental murder for your mystery. Secondly, you’d need a whole range of attributes to write the thing: the physical stamina to traipse around gathering clues, the deductive skills to analyse them effectively, and then the literary talent to set it all down convincingly in writing. I do wonder if any one human could ever possess all three attributes in sufficient quantity …
‘Still, I’d certainly like to give it a try one day. I’d tackle some fiendish real-life mystery, then set down precisely how I solved it in the form of a novel. My readers would be presented with the exact same evidence as the author. They’d be able to follow the detective-narrator’s train of thought, assess the appropriateness of his actions—and even come up with their own alternatives. But I don’t imagine an opportunity like that will ever present itself …’
‘Well, Akimitsu, if anyone ever comes looking for a detective, I’ll know where to send them!’
This, at least, I assumed to be a joke. But it wasn’t long until, making good on his promise, Koichi relayed to me a desperate plea for help from a man named Taijiro Chizui. Alarmed by the letter requesting my aid—and one enigmatic phrase in particular: I finally learned who was behind the mask!—we made our way to the Chizui mansion. But by then, it was too late.
My would-be client was found dead in an armchair in his bedroom. What was more, the room was completely sealed, and no wounds were visible on the body. If it hadn’t been for that fearsome Noh mask, said to harbour a two-hundred-year-old curse, staring coldly into space from the floor, or the three coffins that someone had ordered from the undertaker in advance, we might well have concluded that he’d merely died from a heart attack.
But once the curtains had opened on this tragedy, the Chizui family was plunged into catastrophe after catastrophe—and at a terrifying speed. Three coffins turned out to be too few. Before long, the entire illustrious family had reached its demise.
Then there was that jasmine fragrance lingering around the corpses, not to mention the other ‘props’—a spray of maple leaves and a Noh costume with snake-scale patterning—that, along with the mask, suggested the advent of some evil spirit. In a sort a dramatic flourish, it even seemed as though the demon’s magic powers had rendered the immutable laws of physics completely irrelevant.
Faced with a case like this, I was overcome by a kind of fervour. Hoping to make my long-cherished dream a reality, I tackled it with all the energy I could muster. But the result was—well, perhaps you can imagine. I was forced to abandon my investigation halfway through. I wasn’t entirely clueless as to the murderer’s identity, but I had to leave the actual solving of the mystery in someone else’s hands.
Afterwards, I did everything I could to forget all about the events in question. So, when Hiroyuki Ishikari, the public prosecutor involved in the case, sent me a package containing a letter, a sealed note and a thick journal, I was practically dizzy with shock.
The journal revealed the true extent of the tragedy that had befallen the Chizui family. The role played by the Noh mask, and the frightful method by which the murders were carried out—it was all there, and in painstaking detail. Most remarkably of all, the entire account took the form of that new type of detective novel I had been vaguely aspiring to write—a detective memoir.
The journal—that of Koichi Yanagi, who in the end had been the one to solve the mysteries of the Chizui family—formed the bulk of the documents, with Mr Ishikari’s letter providing an introduction and conclusion. They made for an enthralling read—but also an unsettling one. For they constituted a horrifying record of the damage that the crimes of a lunatic had inflicted on a great number of people, and precisely how those crimes had been exposed.
After careful consideration, I have decided to present these documents without the slightest embellishment. At this point, neither Mr Ishikari nor Koichi is likely to object. Certain moralizing types might well raise their eyebrows at my decision, but such prudishness has never held much weight with me.
However, on a personal level, the memoir is not exactly a comforting read. In it, Koichi coolly describes my every action, never hesitating to criticize them where he sees fit. The result, I have to say, is that I come across as a complete blundering idiot—hardly a flattering depiction, but so be it. My deductive talents are clearly no match for his, and anyway, in this particular case, we turned out to be approaching the incident from very different angles.
I’ll end this preamble of mine here. The events described below took place in late August 1946, at the Chizui mansion, near the town of H– on the Miura peninsula in Kanagawa prefecture. Let us begin with Hiroyuki Ishikari’s letter, which I present to you now.
1
An Uncanny Encounter on a Moonlit Night
(Hiroyuki Ishikari’s letter)
Mr Takagi, it is already three months since you left the Chizui murder case in our hands and departed for Tokyo. Shortly after you left, the i
I feel I have a duty, to you at least, to reveal the truth behind that tragedy. Your friend, Koichi Yanagi, put his very life on the line trying to uncover the machinations of that monstrous criminal, and I believe this journal of his will provide you with an unforgettable record of those events.
When you left us, you told me that Koichi’s journal could form the basis for a new type of detective novel, unprecedented anywhere in the world. Personally, I would rather you read it simply as the record of one man’s blood and tears.
For an engineer, you turned out to be a surprisingly compassionate individual. This might sound a little impertinent, but I must confess a degree of jealousy regarding your ability to depart so abruptly from the Chizui mansion. You see, in my thirty years as a public prosecutor, my world has been governed by two things: crime, and the law. My task has been to divide human behaviour into categories that are black and white, and I have never been permitted to venture into the grey between. Four divided by two has always equalled two; to me, no other solution has ever been possible.
Even my colleagues call me a walking statute book; some liken me to a block of ice. Most other prosecutors allow some degree of personal emotion to creep into their application of the law. On occasion they apply their own discretion, and while the result may not always be some terrible upheaval of the social order, experience has shown me it never ends well. If I allowed my conscience to sway my application of the law even just once, I would feel obliged to resign from my role.
Of course, there’s a reason I ended up this way. Thirty years ago, at this resort close to the town of H– on the Miura peninsula in Kanagawa prefecture, I fell in love with an exceedingly beautiful young woman. Her dewy skin, her glossy black hair, her tall, almost Grecian nose and her dark, dreamy eyes all seared themselves into the depths of my mind, where they have remained ever since. If our love had only reached a happier conclusion, I would never have spent the past three decades withering away like this—a single, ageing man so immersed in the law as to be barely even human.
But cruel fate wrenched us apart. After that one dreamlike and blissful summer, she slipped from my grasp forever. When I heard she was engaged to another man, I cried—cursing the world, cursing her. I endured many a sleepless night. At one point, I even contemplated killing both her and myself. But once my agitation and anguish had died down, I arrived at a sort of bitter resignation. The job of public prosecutor which awaited me came to seem like my one true calling. Still, the pain I’d experienced left a scar on my heart—one which I fear may never heal. Indeed, in the three decades since, I have never even experienced so much as another woman’s rejection.
Mr Takagi, I wonder if you can understand how I felt upon being told I was being transferred to the public prosecutors’ office in Yokohama, not far from the resort in question.
I am convinced that for every individual there is a place to which, no matter how much they might try to avoid it, they cannot help returning—a sort of spiritual home, if you like. Personally, this stretch of coast was the sacred site which I have never been able to forget. And, by a twist of fate, it was here that I became entangled in the bizarre case of the Chizui family murders, which marked the end of my thirty-year career as a prosecutor.
It was a humid evening in late August when, drawn to the beach by some mysterious force, I happened to stumble across Koichi Yanagi, the son of my departed friend, Genichiro.
That evening, grey thunderclouds towered on the horizon. No sooner had a damp gust of wind whistled past my cheeks than great drops of rain began thudding into the parched surface of the beach like a volley of pebbles, each leaving a black mark in its wake—then, moments later, they were violently pelting the roof of the small reed-walled hut where I had taken shelter. The horizon was soon shrouded in fog, and the four or five boats moored along the beach looked lonely and bereft in the downpour.
The storm kept up for around an hour. When the sky abruptly cleared and I finally left the hut, I was confronted by a breathtaking sight: an enormous double rainbow, arching in iridescent splendour across the heavens.
Most people will only see a handful of perfect double rainbows in their lifetime. As it happened, I had seen another one thirty years ago on this very beach, while I held that first love of mine in my arms. At the time, this rare phenomenon had seemed like some manifestation of a heavenly will, blessing our relationship and assuring our future happiness. With tears welling in our eyes, we had gazed wordlessly up at the sky.
I found myself walking along the rain-soaked shore in vague yet stubborn pursuit of the rainbow. Eventually, I cut across the sands and through a grove of red pines, until I found myself at the top of a sheer cliff overlooking the beach, where I stood gazing at the rainbows for what felt like an age. It was as though something inside me had finally given way; all the turbulent emotions I had spent the past three decades trying to repress came welling up in my chest. Before I knew it, warm tears were trickling down my cheeks.
But of course, rainbows are fleeting things. Before long, those glorious arcs had dissolved into the grey evening sky without a trace. It was only then that I came to my senses and, with a deep sigh, began to take in my surroundings.
Thirty years ago, there had been nothing here except pine trees, but at some point a patch had been cleared to make way for a stately Western-style mansion. Its grey walls had been darkened by years of exposure to the sea wind; and a pair of iron shutters, red with rust, guarded each of its windows, giving the entire building a vaguely brooding and secretive aspect. Houses have their own personalities. Or, at the very least, a house and its inhabitants cannot escape each other’s mutual influence over their many years in each other’s company. In which case, I thought to myself—who on earth might live in a mansion like this?
I approached the gate and peered at the plain wooden sign embedded in one of the crumbling red-brick gateposts. It bore the following name:
TAIJIRO CHIZUI
Chizui was not a common surname. In fact …
Just then, I heard footsteps approaching and turned around to find two large dark eyes staring at me. They belonged to a young man, perhaps thirty years of age. How could I have forgotten that broad, intelligent brow—or those melancholic yet resolute lips?
‘Koichi, my boy!’
‘Mr Ishikari!’
We spoke at almost the same instant.
His father, Genichiro, and I had been inseparable during our schooldays. And when Koichi was younger he, too, had often come over to my house after his classes, still wearing his black school cap with its distinctive white stripes. But all that was more than a decade ago. As fate would have it, his father had perished on the North Manchurian plains in the war, having taken poison to avoid capture. The young man standing before me was his only descendant.
At such moments we are apt to become sentimental. Unable to quell the sensation that I had somehow been reunited with Genichiro, I smiled in a bid to disguise the tears in my eyes.
‘It’s been rather a while, hasn’t it?’ said Koichi. ‘I was repatriated from Burma not long ago. I’m sorry not to have been in touch. Where are you living these days, may I ask?’
‘I was recently transferred to the Yokohama office. My house is on the outskirts of the city—not too far from here. What about you?’
‘When I returned to Japan I was jobless and had nowhere to go. The Chizui family have been kind enough to let me live here with them. In exchange, I’ve been producing saccharin and dulcin in their laboratory for them to use as sweeteners.’
‘Really? I’d never have imagined you’d be living here, of all places …’
Perhaps these words of mine were not quite appropriate, or perhaps he was simply alarmed by the sudden excitement in my voice; whatever the reason, Koichi seemed rather taken aback.
‘Is it so surprising?’
‘Well, it’s just I was reading the sign here just now, and the name reminded me of the Professor Chizui who died ten years ago. After all, Chizui isn’t a very common surname, is it?’
