Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (76 page)

Kohime shrieked, gave the child a violent push, and ran from the room.

Akitada bent to help the boy up. He had guessed wrong, but his heart was filled with joy. “So you found your voice at last, little one,” he said, hugging him. “All will be well now.”

“She hurt her. She hurt my mother,” sobbed the child.

“Shh,” Akitada said. “Your grandfather and the warden will take care of her.”

Lady Masuda was very pale, but her eyes devoured the child. “Oh, I am so glad he is alive,” she cried. “How did you find him? I've been searching everywhere, terrified by what I had done.”

The old lord looked at her. “Are you responsible then?” he asked, almost conversationally. “He resembles your son, don't you think? Both inherited their father's eyebrows.”

She smiled through tears. “Yes, Father. But he's so thin now, poor child. And I gave that woman all the money we had.”

The warden cleared his throat. “Er, what happened just then, sir?” he whispered to Akitada.

“I think Lady Masuda knows,” Akitada said. “It would be best if she explained, but perhaps the child …” He turned to the boy. “What is your name?”

“You know. Yori. Like my father,” he replied, as if the question were foolish.

Lord Masuda's face softened. “Yes. That was my son's name when he was small. But you were about to suggest something, Lord Sugawara?”

“Perhaps Yori might be given into the care of your servant for a bath and clean clothes while we discuss this matter.”

“Oh, please let me take him,” pleaded Lady Masuda.

“No,” said Lord Masuda. “You will stay here and make a clean breast of this.” She hung her head and nodded. Her father-in-law looked at the old servant. “Send for my other daughter and bring the child back to me later.” When they had left, he sat up a little straighter. “Now, Daughter. Why was I not informed about my grandson and his mother?”

She knelt before him. “Forgive me, Father. I wished to spare you. You were so ill after my husband died.”

“You were not well yourself after you lost your child,” he said, his voice a little gentler.

“No. I had known all along where my husband had been spending his time. Women always know. I was jealous, especially when I heard she had given him a son while I was childless. But then my husband returned to me, and after my own son was born, I no longer minded so much that my husband went back to her.”

Lord Masuda nodded. “My son told me that he wished to live with this woman and her child. As he had given me an heir, I permitted it.”

Lady Masuda hung her head a little lower. “But then he died. And when my son also passed from this world …” Her voice broke, and she whispered, “Losing a child is the most terrible loss of all.” For a moment she trembled with grief, then she squared her shoulders and continued. “I became obsessed with my husband's mistress and her boy. I wanted to see them. Kohime was very understanding. She came with me. It was … an awkward meeting. She was very beautiful. I could see they were poor and I was glad. We watched the boy play with his kitten in the garden, and suddenly I thought if we could buy the child from her, I could raise him. He was my husband's son, and …” She hesitated and looked up fearfully at Lord Masuda.

He grunted. “I should have taken care of them. If you had brought him to me, no doubt I would have agreed to an adoption.”

“I went home and gathered up all the gold I could find, and Kohime added what she had saved, and we went back to her. But when we told her what we wanted, she became upset and cried she would rather die than sell her son. She snatched up the boy and ran out into the garden. We were afraid she would do something desperate. Kohime ran after her and tried to take the child. They fought …”

Lord Masuda stopped her. “Here is Kohime now. Let her speak for herself.”

Kohime had been weeping. Her round face was splotched and her hair disheveled. She threw herself on the floor before her father-in-law. “I didn't mean to kill her,” she wailed. “I thought she was going into the lake with the child, so I grabbed for her. When we fell down, the boy ran away. She bit and kicked me. I don't know how it happened, but suddenly I was bleeding and afraid. My hand found a loose stone on the path and I hit her with it. I didn't mean to kill her.” She burst into violent tears.

Lord Masuda sighed deeply.

Lady Masuda moved beside Kohime and stroked her hair. “It was an accident, Father. The boy came back,” she said, her voice toneless. “He had a wooden sword and he cut Kohime with it. I saw it all from the veranda of the villa. When Kohime came running back to me, she was covered with blood. I took her into the house to stop the bleeding. She said she had killed the woman.” She brushed away tears.

A heavy silence fell. Then Akitada asked gently, “Did you go back to make sure Peony was dead, Lady Masuda?”

She nodded. “We were terrified, but after a while we both crept out. She was still lying there, quite still. The boy was holding her hand and crying. Kohime said, ‘We must hide the body.' But there was the boy. Of course, we could not take him back with us after what had happened. We thought perhaps we could make it look as if she had fallen into the water by accident. We decided that I would take away the boy, and Kohime would hide the body because she is the stronger. I tried to talk to the child, but it was as if his spirit had fled. His eyes were open, but that was all. He let me take him, and I carried him away from the house. I did not know what to do, but when I saw a woman in the market packing up to return to her village, I gave her the money and the child.”

The warden muttered, “All that gold, and the Mimuras beat and starved him.”

“And you, Kohime?” asked Lord Masuda.

Kohime, the plain peasant girl in the fine silks of a noblewoman, said with childlike simplicity, “I put Peony in the lake. It wasn't far, and people thought she'd drowned herself.”

“Dear heaven!” muttered the warden. He looked sick.

“You have both behaved very badly,” said Lord Masuda to his daughters-in-law. “What will happen to you is up to the authorities now.”

After a glance at the warden, who shook his head helplessly, Akitada said, “Peony's death was a tragic accident. No good can come from a public disclosure now. It is her son's future we must consider.”

The warden was still staring at Kohime. “It was getting dark,” he muttered. “You can see how two hysterical women could make such a mistake.”

“You are very generous.” Lord Masuda bowed. “In that case, I shall decide their punishment. My grandson will be raised as my heir by my son's first lady. It will be her opportunity to atone to him. Kohime and her daughters will leave this house and reside in the lake villa, where she will pray daily for the soul of the poor woman she killed.” He looked sternly at his daughters-in-law. “Will you agree to this?”

They bowed. Lady Masuda said, “Yes. Thank you, Father. We are both deeply grateful.”

Akitada looked after the women as they left, Lady Masuda with her arm around Kohime, and thought of how she had said, “Losing a child is the most terrible loss of all.”

When they were gone, the old lord clapped his hands. “Where is my grandson?”

The boy came, clean and resplendently dressed, and sat beside his grandfather. “Well, Yori,” the old man asked, “shall you like it here, do you think?”

The boy looked around and nodded. “Yes, Grandfather, but I would like Patch to live here, too.”

T
HEY PUT DOWN
their offering of fish. The cat was watching them from the broken veranda. It waited until they had withdrawn a good distance before strolling up and sniffing the food. With another disdainful glance in their direction, it settled down to its meal, and Akitada threw the net. But the animal shied away at the last moment and, only partially caught, streaked into the house, dragging the net behind. A gruesome series of yowls followed.

“Patch got hurt,” cried the boy. “Please go help her.”

Akitada had to climb into the villa. He used the same post from which he had looked for the ghost, but this time he swung himself across the veranda and into the empty room. Walking gingerly across the broken boards, he found the cat in the next room, rolling about completely entangled in the netting. Carefully scooping up the growling and spitting bundle in his arms, he returned the same way. He had one leg over the window frame when he heard the mournful sound of the ghost again. Passing the furious cat down to the boy, he looked back over his shoulder.

One of the long strips of oil paper covering a window had come loose and was sliding across the opening as a breeze from the lake caught it. When its edge brushed the floor, it made the queer sound he had heard.

So much for ghosts!

Outside, Patch, a very real cat, began to purr in Yori's arms.

I
T WAS ALMOST
dark before Akitada returned to the inn to collect his belongings and pay his bill. He would not reach home until late, but he wanted to be with his wife on this final night of the festival. They would mourn their son together, sharing their grief as they had shared their love.

When he rode out of Otsu, people were lighting the bonfires to guide the dead on their way back to the other world. Soon they would gather on the shore to send off the spirit boats, and the tiny points of light would bob on the waves until it looked as if the stars had fallen into the water.

Someday he would return to visit this other Yori, the child who had come into his life to remind him that life places obligations on a man that cannot be denied.

On the jumbo
jet from Nairobi to New York, Jeremy is trying to explain to his wife why he feels … well … somewhat guilty about Davey Ladd's suicide.

Everywhere around them, passengers are wearing earphones and watching the movie.

Jeremy is whispering all this.

“But why should you feel guilty at
all?
” Therese asks.

She is whispering, too. They have spent the last two days in a courtroom on Taifa Road, where a panel of magistrates ruled that David Lawrence Ladd had taken his own life. It rained during the entire inquest. It was still raining when the plane took off from Jomo Kenyatta International this morning.

“Well, you know,” Jeremy says. “Because of the problem we had with him.”

“The problem was of his own making,” Therese says.

“Even so.”

“He was a very troubled individual,” she says.

Therese is thirty-two years old, lean and supple, and almost as tall as Jeremy; a startlingly beautiful brunette with large brown eyes and long black hair. On safari, she wore her hair coiled into a bun at the back of her neck. She wore khaki shorts she bought at the Gap and a khaki jacket with huge flap pockets. For the long plane ride home, she is wearing jeans and a baggy white cotton sweater.

Therese is twenty years younger than Jeremy.

He never expected the difference in their ages would become a problem, especially not so soon after their marriage. He knows he is not a spectacularly handsome man, but he considers himself reasonably good-looking in a somewhat distinguished way, with graying sideburns and a tall … well, almost stately … bearing. He considers himself a modest man, and he's not at all sure he agrees with
New York Magazine
's evaluation of him as one of the best internists in the city. He recognizes that he is a very good doctor … but one of the best? All he knows for certain is that he has tried to live both his personal and professional lives by the credo “Do no harm.”

But now Davey Ladd is dead, isn't he?

“By his own hand,” Therese reminds him.

“Yes.”

“So why should you be feeling guilty?”

“You should have seen him.”

“You see dead people all the time.”

“Not that many.”

“Enough. You're in the hospital every day …”

“Yes, but …”

“There are dead people in the hospital.”

“They don't look the way he did.”

Davey Ladd lying naked on his back with his own 9-millimeter pistol in his mouth, blood all over the pillow and the bed …

“This was uncontrolled bleeding, Therese. This was … wanton. The back of his skull was gone, the force of the explosion burst his eyeballs. It was gruesome.”

“I can imagine.”

They are silent for several moments. The man sitting on Jeremy's left, on the aisle, has fallen asleep with his earphones half on, half off. He is snoring loudly, and the muted sound of actors shouting at each other comes from the one earphone hanging loose on his cheek.