Crime at Christmas (6 page)

A little over two hours later Otani slid the
shoji
screen in the upstairs room to one side
and gazed pensively through the glazed panel behind it at his favourite night
view, of the great sweep of Osaka Bay. It was crisp and clear outside, with
only a few rags of cloud occasionally obscuring a moon almost at the full. The
huddle of tiled roofs with their solar water-heating panels and the forest of
television aerials on the houses lower down the foothills of Mount Rokko which
offended his eye by day were effectively obliterated, while the navigation
lights on ships a mile or so away from where he stood twinkled cheerfully and a
distant glow to the left marked the coast of Wakayama Prefecture.

Nothing Hanae had passed on from the gossipy Mrs Hamada contradicted what
Kimura had told him about Judy Bencivenni, but his mental picture of the lady
was nevertheless now subtly different. Kimura's team had assembled an impressive
file of papers about her and her husband. Mrs Bencivenni's real first name as
registered by her Japanese mother was Midori, but by the time she won a scholarship
to the elite Canadian Academy in Kobe she was Judy, and Judy she remained
through its junior and senior high school departments. A Kobe Carnival Queen at
eighteen, she had been photographed by the Kobe Shimbun newspaper, whose files
yielded a print showing a startlingly pretty girl and a two-paragraph
'interview' in which she spoke touchingly of the loving care she had known at
the Kobe Orphanage and her determination to do anything she could to help those
less fortunate than herself.

The record showed that she had honoured that pledge. Judy had been a star
student both academically and on the sports field, but the orphanage budget
could not afford college fees for her and there are no scholarships for higher
education in Japan. Her looks and talents stood her in good stead, though, and
after graduation from the Canadian Academy she had landed a good job as a
bilingual secretary with the American Consulate-General.

She maintained a continuing connection as a volunteer helper with what had
by then become known as the International Children's Home. Being technically a
stateless alien, at twenty-two she applied for Japanese nationality and was
turned down; but strings must have been pulled by her American employers
because within six months she had been able to obtain an American passport and
move to the United States. During six years there she kept in touch by letter
with the children's home, and indeed—according to Mrs Hamada, who was on the
committee of management—was reputed to have donated two or three hundred
dollars every Christmas to pay for presents for the children. Mrs Hamada
thought that she was working at this time as a secretary for Japan Air Lines in
Los Angeles, but wasn't sure.

Kimura's file showed that Mr Luke Bencivenni arrived in Japan as a member
of the staff of an American bank in 1978, accompanied by his wife Arlene, who
drowned while swimming in Lake Chuzenji near Nikko the following summer. After
the tragedy Bencivenni returned briefly to America but remained with the bank,
being transferred to its Osaka branch. That Christmas he went for a brief
holiday to Hawaii, returning with a new bride, the former Judy Nakano.

Kobe Prefectural Police might not have picked up the connection had not
the second Mrs Bencivenni almost at once plunged herself into a round of
charitable activities which meant that she soon began to figure in the gossip
columns of the English-language press (which was routinely scanned by Kimura's
staff in the Foreign Residents' Liaison Section). The fact that she was
beautiful and had excellent dress sense helped, as did her husband's early
retirement from the bank and the rapid expansion of the consultancy business he
started immediately afterwards. He did very well, and within a year or two the
Bencivennis were leading Figures in the western community in Kobe.

Inevitably, such a socially prominent alumna of the children's home as
Judy was soon elected to its committee of management, and she had been its
president for the past two years; by all accounts an effective manager of
committee business and a tireless drummer-up of financial support. Mrs Hamada
had told Hanae that it was Mrs Bencivenni's idea to approach the Kobe South
Rotary Club to which Otani belonged for a contribution, and Mrs Hamada
herself—confound her—who hit upon the idea of a lavish Christmas party financed
and organized by the Rotarians.

Otani sighed, turned away from the window, dropped his
yukata
on the
tatami
and slid under
the
futon.
Hanae was as usual
tranquil and immobile, wearing her own
yukata
which if he knew her
would still be mysteriously uncreased when she got up the next morning.

'And I'm stuck with the job of being Santa Claus,' he grumbled. Then he
raised himself on one forearm. 'What I don't understand is why he should
want
to kill her. According to both Kimura
and your Mrs Hamada they're successful and popular. Luxury apartment, no
children—not of their own, anyway. I suppose Bencivenni might have had some by
his previous marriage, but there's no note of any and even if he had they'd be
adults by now. And he's got this very attractive wife.' A thought struck him.
'Ha-chan, he's a good bit older than her. I wonder, did Mrs Hamada hint that
she might be having an affair?'

Hanae had been so still that she might have been asleep, but in the bar of
moonlight which lay across their bedding he saw her eyes blink open. 'No.
Quite the reverse, if anything. It seems that several of the men in their
circle have tried to start something, but she's never given any of them the
least encouragement. And of course, a woman in her position, it would be all
over town in five minutes if she did. Even Mrs Hamada's obviously a bit jealous
of her looks, so I expect the foreign ladies on the committee are too. They're
all older, I believe. So they'd pounce on the least suggestion of scandal.'

Otani didn't quite follow, but rolled on to his back and made himself
comfortable. 'Sorry to keep you awake. I'm afraid I'm not a bit sleepy. Want a
cup of tea or anything?'

'Not really. I don't mind talking anyway, it's interesting. Surely she
must have given Mr Kimura some reason for saying such an extraordinary thing
about her husband?'

'Oh, she did, but it doesn't impress me. She said she'd discovered that he
recently took out a huge insurance policy on her life. A husband can do that,
you know. And that he's let slip that he had collected a substantial sum by
way of insurance when his former wife drowned. Putting two and two together,
Mrs Bencivenni thinks her death might not in fact have been an accident.'

'What an awful thing to suggest! But. . . but why
now?'

'Well, Bencivenni handles investments for a lot of Americans living here.
And you know what happened on the New York stock exchange recently. Here too,
of course. She told Kimura she thinks he might have over-committed himself financially
and be in urgent need of funds to avoid bankruptcy.'

Hanae reflected in silence for a long time. 'I'm so glad we keep our
savings in the bank, dear,' she then said thoughtfully. 'What are you going to
do?'

Otani sighed. 'Well, I suppose the least we can do is check the local
police report on that drowning in Chuzenji years ago. It might help me sort out
my ideas.'

The party at the children's home was a great success. Safely concealed
behind an enormous white beard and moustache and with his floppy red hat well
down on his forehead, Otani rang his bell with gusto and was delighted to
discover what he should have realized from the first, that all the children not
only spoke Japanese but that nearly all
were
Japanese.

The extent of the munificence of the Kobe South Rotarians revealed when
Otani opened his sack and handed out the presents brought squeals of delight
from the children and approving nods from the staff of the home; and afterwards
when he had divested himself of his finery Otani was drawn aside by a senior
member of his club and gravely thanked for his outstanding contribution to the
festivities.

'Such a pity Mrs Bencivenni couldn't be here after all, though. I know she
would have wished to thank you personally, but I understand she was unavoidably
detained.'

'I can't follow your reasoning, Chief,' Kimura said for the second time.
'All right, so central immigration records indicate that she was in Japan as a
tourist at the time the first Mrs Bencivenni was drowned, and the only
so-called witness the local police managed to find did have a vague recollection
that there had been one other woman swimming in that part of the lake before
Arlene Bencivenni went under. But he was a long way away and it proves nothing,
even granted that Judy Nakano was an all-round athlete at school. Surely the
husband remains the obvious suspect if she really was murdered. . .and that
isn't by any means established.'

'I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm going to talk to the poor woman
myself,' Otani said. 'I think that with careful handling she'll confess that
she accused her husband of planning her murder because she intended to kill him
. . . so that when she eventually did so she could claim it was in
self-defence. Why otherwise come to the Japanese police with such a tale? What
were we supposed to do? Why not simply leave him? She'd proved beyond question
that she could earn her own living both in Japan and in America.'

'But there's still no
reason
for it. Remember, he insured her life, not the
other way round.'

'Oh, there's a reason. She hates him, you see. With a deep, consistent,
murderous hatred that at first sustained her, then fed on itself and brought
her to crisis point. When you first described Mrs Bencivenni to me you said she
wasn't off her head. Not obviously, perhaps, but in my opinion hopelessly
unhinged. More to the point, hopelessly obsessed.'

Otani paused, rubbed his eyes and blinked. 'A victim of circumstance, some
would say. I don't know. Anyway, I propose to suggest to her that her years
of—not dedicated exactly, calculated perhaps—her years of service to the
orphanage where she'd been brought up gave her such a position of trust there
that the time came when she could delve into their confidential records more or
less at will and turn up a name or names. Have you got a cigarette on you?'

Kimura gave him one and lit it for him. Otani looked tired, but soon began
to speak again. 'I'll point out that either when she was working in the
Consulate-General here in Kobe or when she went to the United States she was
able to check US Army records or hire an enquiry agent to do it for her. I'll
suggest that these confirmed—as we can find out for ourselves easily enough—that
a certain young GI was serving with the Occupation forces in Japan in 1949 and
1950. And I shall explain that we think her next step was to discover his
current whereabouts and circumstances and use her beauty and intelligence to
entrap him. Ah, I see it's beginning to dawn on you too, Kimura.'

'I don't believe it, Chief!'

'I don't want to myself, but I do, and I can't help feeling sorry for her.
It's a terrible burden she's borne for most of her life, Kimura. Bottling up
all that dark hatred from childhood onwards so successfully . . . then living
with the knowledge that she seduced her own father, murdered his wife and
married him with the intention of one day killing him too. A man who still
probably has no idea he even has a daughter, much less who she is.'

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