THE MASUDA AFFAIR
Recent Titles by I. J. Parker in the Sugawara Akitada Series
THE DRAGON SCROLL
RASHOMON GATE
BLACK ARROW
ISLAND OF EXILES
THE HELL SCREEN
THE CONVICT’S SWORD
THE MASUDA AFFAIR
THE MASUDA AFFAIR
A Sugawara Akitada Mystery
I. J. Parker
© 2011 by I.J. Parker. All rights reserved.
A version of the story of the lost boy appeared previously in short story form in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine under the title ‘The O-bon Cat’.
Contents
Characters
One: The Darkness of the Heart
Two: The Courtesan’s House
Three: The Dying Wisteria
Four: Tora’s Secret
Five: The Fishing Village
Six: Arrested
Seven: The House on the Uji River
Eight: Rotten Wood
Nine: Lord Sadanori
Ten: The Willow Quarter
Eleven: Making Amends
Twelve: Hanae’s Story
Thirteen: Peony’s House
Fourteen: A Death in Otsu
Fifteen: Family Secrets
Sixteen: The Little Abbess
Seventeen: Birds and Rhubarb
Eighteen: Fox Magic
Nineteen: The Bird Scroll
Twenty: Scent of Orange Blossom
Twenty-One: Lady Saisho
Twenty-Two: The Deadly River Gorge
Twenty-Three: Trouble Returns
Twenty-Four: The Truth
Twenty-Five: The Monk
Twenty-Six: The Masuda Women
Historical Note
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to my readers, especially Jacqueline Falkenhan and John Rosenman, for their generous comments and suggestions. Amanda Stewart, publishing director at Severn House, deserves special thanks for her clear editorial eye. And, as always, the Akitada story would not have been told without my agents: Jean Naggar, Jennifer Weltz, and Jessica Regel of the Jean V. Naggar agency. Words cannot describe what their continued support has meant.
CHARACTERS
(Japanese family names precede first names)
MAIN CHARACTERS:
Sugawara Akitada
senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice Tamako
his wife Seimei
an aged family retainer of the Sugawaras Tora
another retainer – young and of a romantic disposition Genba
a third retainer, middle-aged and with a love for food Kobe
superintendent of police
CHARACTERS INVOLVED IN THE CASES IN OTSU:
Lord Masuda
an old and wealthy nobleman Masuda Tadayori
his dead son Lady Masuda
his daughter-in-law; first lady of his late son Lady Kohime
his other daughter-in-law; second lady of his late son two little girls
Kohime’s daughters Mrs Ishikawa
their nurse Ishikawa
her son, steward to Lord Sadanori Peony
late courtesan kept by Masuda Tadayori Little Abbess
her maid Mrs Yozaemon
a poor widow in Otsu Manjiro
her teenage son Nakano
a judge Takechi
a warden the Mimuras
a fisherman and his wife the deaf-mute boy Dr Inabe (also, a cat)
the Mimuras’ alleged son a physician
CHARACTERS INVOLVED IN THE CASE IN THE CAPITAL:
Fujiwara Sadanori
a powerful nobleman and relative of the chancellor Lady Saisho
his mother Seijiro
her servant Hanae
a pretty dancer from the amusement quarter Ohiya
her dancing master Mrs Hamada
her nosy neighbor an elusive monk and assorted prostitutes (also, a shaggy dog)
The Darkness of the Heart
He was on his homeward journey when he found the boy. At the time, caught in the depth of hopelessness and grief, he did not understand the significance of their meeting.
Sugawara Akitada, a member of the privileged class and moderately successful in the service of the emperor, was barely in the middle of his life and already sick of it. He used to counter hardship, humiliation, and even imminent death, with courage, and he had drawn fresh zest for new obstacles from his achievements, but when his young son had died during that spring’s smallpox epidemic, he found no solace. He went through the motions of daily life as if he were no part of them, as if the man he once was had departed with the smoke from his son’s funeral pyre, leaving behind an empty shell inhabited by a stranger.
The poets called it the ‘darkness of the heart’, this inconsolable grief a parent feels after the death of a child, a despair of life that clouds the mind and makes a torment of day-to-day existence.
Having completed an assignment in Hikone two days earlier, Akitada rode along the southern shore of Lake Biwa in a steady drizzle. The air was saturated with moisture, his clothes clung uncomfortably, and both rider and horse were sore from the wooden saddle. This was the fifteenth day of the watery month, in the rainy season. The road had long since become a muddy track where puddles hid deep pits in which a horse could break its leg. It became clear that he could not reach his home in the capital, but would have to spend the night in Otsu.
In Otsu, wives or parents would bid farewell, perhaps forever, to their husbands or sons when they left the capital to begin their service in distant provinces. Akitada himself had felt the uncertainty of life on such occasions. But those days seemed in a distant past now. He cared little what lay ahead, and his wife cared little about him.
Near dusk he passed through a dense forest. Darkness closed in, falling with the misting rain from the branches above and creeping from the dank shadows of the woods. When he could no longer see the road clearly, he dismounted. Leading his tired horse, he trudged onward in squelching boots and sodden straw rain cape and thought of death.
He was still in the forest when a child’s whimpering roused him from his grief. He stopped and called out, but there was no answer, and all was still again except for the dripping rain. He was almost certain the sound had been human, but the eeriness of a child’s pitiful weeping in this lonely, dark place on his lonely, dark journey seemed too cruel a coincidence. This was the first night of the three day O-bon festival, the night when the spirits of the dead return to their homes for a visit before departing for another year.
If his own son’s soul was seeking its way home, Yori would not find his father there. Would he cry for him from the darkness? Akitada shivered and shook off his sick fancies. Such superstitions were for simpler, more trusting minds. How far was Otsu?
Then he heard it again.
‘Who is that? Come out where I can see you!’ he bellowed angrily into the darkness. His horse twitched its ears and shook its head.