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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.