Pathway to Japanese Literature

Otsune was a blind masseuse.
Short and plain-faced but cheerful and talkative, her skilled hands made her favored even by proper inns.
That day brought a morning reservation followed by a request from their regular patrons—the Noda family—for her to come around nine that evening.

Summons to the Noda residence meant either attending to Madam or a guest—most often Mr. Okawa.
This day too meant Mr. Okawa.
When Otsune arrived at quarter past nine, dinner was concluding; by half past she'd begun kneading muscles.

The meal was in the main residence, but Mr. Okawa slept in the annex—a far more compact Western-style building compared to the main residence.
The Nodas were said to have been enormously wealthy in the past, their main residence reportedly surpassing any inn in opulence.
They had acquired national treasure-class tea rooms and Noh stages transported from elsewhere, along with gardens spanning roughly five thousand tsubo.
What allowed them to maintain this grand Atami estate without converting it to an inn was their vast landholdings—sold off gradually to fund extravagant living.
The two men who occasionally visited for such business were Okawa and Imai.
They typically came together, it appeared.
These two had served as secretaries to the household's late master during his lifetime, though on this day only Mr. Okawa seemed present.
When Otsune went to the annex to administer the massage,

“Madam will also be requesting your services later, so please come as soon as you’re finished here.”

The maid had relayed this message.
This too was part of the customary routine.
Mr. Imai was still young, so he did not receive massages.

Mr. Okawa was the sort who became pleasantly drunk on small amounts of sake.
However, since he took sleeping pills before bed, within forty or fifty minutes of being massaged, he would begin snoring loudly and fall fast asleep.
That day proved no exception.
He was an eccentric man,

“Even a blind wretch with an ugly mug like yours might get peculiar notions when tipsy and kneading muscles, so I’ll have you wear that demoness’s Noh mask hanging on the wall while working.”

This had become their peculiar custom.
He must have been a cautious and meticulous man.
Yet despite this, he insisted on an intensely strong massage—demanding harder pressure and more force—so that working on someone like him drained several times the usual energy, making him a client masseuses dreaded.
Relieved that Okawa had fallen asleep, Otsune removed the oni woman’s Noh mask, placed it on the desk, and left the room.

Otsune prided herself on her keen intuition despite being blind, so she detested nothing more than being guided by maids when visiting her regular clients’ homes or inns.

“I have good intuition.”
“I can manage alone.”

Wherever she went, she couldn’t rest unless she said this.
Of course, maids everywhere had come to accept this as an established rule, so there were no longer any who would attempt to guide her.
The same held true at the Noda residence.
She groped her way along the wall and silently slid open the paper door.
Then, from the inner room came Madam’s voice,
“Is that you, Ms. Otsune?”

“Yes.”
“Wait there for a moment.”
“Yes.”

There seemed to be someone else present.

Madam lowered her voice to avoid being overheard but spoke with intensity,

“I can no longer endure your audacity.”
“You’ve already extorted ten million yen from me up to now.”
“Since I’ve already turned sixty-seven, I don’t care what becomes of my reputation at this point.”
“I will absolutely not give you any more money, so you can go ahead and spread my secret all you like.”
“First of all—what do you mean by knocking on doors in the dead of night from outside windows to extort someone?”
“Hurry up and leave.”

“You’ll regret this.”

A man’s voice was heard outside the window, chuckling as he uttered this parting shot.
Madam closed the window, so the man seemed to leave.

It didn’t seem to be Mr. Okawa, Otsune thought. He was sound asleep, and though the man’s voice had been too low to make out clearly, it hadn’t sounded like Okawa’s. The visitor appeared to be alone, but when it came to other men in the estate, there were only her son Hironosuke or the gardener. Hironosuke had returned from the southern battlefield with a leg injury that left him with a limp. Otsune had scarcely any interaction with either man.

Madam called Otsune into the inner room and,

"You’ve overheard something quite improper.
You mustn’t breathe a word of this to anyone."

"Understood.
I won’t say a word."

“Is Mr. Okawa asleep?”

“Yes.”
“He was asleep with loud snoring.”
“I see.”

After that, Otsune finished massaging Madam and left around 11:30 PM.
At that hour she would usually visit her regular inn, but exhausted from massaging Okawa that day, she returned to her teacher’s house and

“The gentleman with the oni mask at the Nodas’ tonight really wore me out.”
“Please let me rest.”

They certainly wouldn’t discuss such matters around clients, but at her teacher’s house they openly shared even scandalous stories over tea.
Having made this request and been permitted to rest, she drank about a small cup of sake as was her habit on weary evenings,

“Mrs. Noda’s being blackmailed by someone.”
“Seems she’s already been squeezed for ten million yen.”
“Not that gentleman with the oni mask, mind you.”

She’d just blurted out everything she’d been asked moments earlier not to disclose.
And having grown pleasantly tipsy from about a small cup of sake before falling soundly asleep, Otsune remained unaware of that night’s fire.

＊

The fire occurred at the Noda family’s annex.
As it was located in Yamanote—an area with poor water access—and with the vast garden requiring considerable time and effort just to extend the hose and get water flowing,
only the annex building ended up completely burned down, though within the ashes lay a man’s discovered corpse.
Futons had been laid out in two rooms, with one containing the body.
The corpse’s room appeared to be the fire’s origin point, and examination of the burned ruins confirmed both doors had been locked—
the corridor-facing door secured from inside, its neighbor-facing counterpart locked from outside.
That adjacent room too held a laid-out futon.
The corpse was Okawa.

Since it was a locked-room death, they had nearly concluded it was either careless handling of cigarette ashes or suicide—but coincidentally, a newspaper reporter lived across from Otsune’s massage parlor. And just as this reporter returned from investigating the scene, he happened to overhear the masseuse engaged in a standing conversation with neighbors.

“Otsune-san went to massage at that household last night.”
“That man’s a strange one, you see. Apparently, he makes her wear an oni mask during massages because even someone like Otsune-san—a middle-aged woman who’s no beauty—might get carried away and start feeling frisky if she drinks while working, which would be troublesome.”
“But then Otsune-san apparently heard Madam being blackmailed there too.”
“She’s already been blackmailed out of ten million up till now, so she’s had enough.”
“He told her to go around spreading the secret everywhere.”
“Then the man was apparently heard saying in a terrifying voice, ‘You’ll regret this soon.’”

This reporter was an employee at a Tokyo newspaper’s branch office. He had just returned from the scene and called headquarters to report it appeared to be an ordinary accidental death. If this were murder, it would make front-page news. In hot spring towns, such stories became major talking points, so they kept sharp reporters on hand for precisely this sort of thing. With that recent eight-person farmhouse massacre in Kanto still fresh as a national sensation, they thrilled at landing this exclusive scoop—the very lifeblood of their trade.

“Where is Otsune-san now?”

“She’s still snoring away, you know.”
“It’s already past ten, isn’t it?”

“Massage work wears you out completely every single day, even if you get that much sleep.”

Thereupon, the reporter requested a meeting with Otsune and had her roused from sleep.
When she learned that such a major incident had occurred, Otsune completely lost all color from her face.

“If this gets written in the newspaper, it’ll be disastrous! I never imagined something like this would happen—I just carelessly let it slip. I won’t answer any more questions!”

“If you don’t answer, I’ll have to spice up the story myself. It’s not like you’ve done anything wrong—in fact, you’ll become famous overnight! Your name will be known across Japan. People won’t criticize you—they’ll celebrate you as some brilliant detective!”

“You’re really determined to write it?”
“That’s my job—how could I not write this?”
“Well, I suppose there’s no helping it then.”

Otsune recounted to Reporter Tsuji what she had heard and experienced the previous night, but being the account of a blind person, its crucial points were as unstable as a structure missing a vital nail.

“Did Okawa ever tell you anything that sounded like blackmail?”

“I don’t think anyone would ever say ‘I’m a blackmailer’ themselves.”

“So you left the room once Okawa fell asleep.”
“You left without locking the door then?”

“Obviously.”

“Who was staying in the room next to Okawa’s?”

“There was no sign of anyone staying there, though.”
“However, it seems a futon had been laid out in the adjacent room just like the others.”
“In that case, perhaps it was Mr. Imai.”
“Mr. Okawa and Mr. Imai often come together from Tokyo and stay over.”
“However, I don’t mean to say the blackmailer was Mr. Imai.”
“Since Okawa made you wear an oni mask while giving him a massage, did he ever show any indecent behavior?”

“Since he’s such a cautious person, there’s no way he’d ever do something like that. If you go adding embellishments to even that, I’ll be in real trouble. Just be careful.”

“Ah, sorry. I thought that if he were acting strangely toward you, it wouldn’t be surprising if something had happened with Madam Noda. In other words—I meant whether the futon in the adjacent room was intended for Madam.”

“Ridiculous!”

Tsuji had elicited many other details, but since they were based on a masseuse’s observations, few could be considered reliable. What could be considered somewhat reliable were the following points.

Otsune massaged Okawa from around 9:30 to around 10:30.
Okawa stated he had taken alcohol and sleeping pills and fell asleep with loud snoring during the massage.
Otsune straightened the futon, placed the Noh mask on the desk, and left the room without locking it, though what became of the cigarette butts remained unclear.
Okawa had indeed lit a cigarette during the massage, but there was no indication it had ignited anything.
(Otsune claimed to have a sensitive nose.) When she left Okawa’s room, Otsune went to the main house’s Madam’s quarters.
At that moment, Madam was refusing a blackmail demand from a man outside the window, though the man’s identity remained unknown.
Otsune left around 11:30 PM, but the fire was discovered at 1:47 AM.
The post-fire investigation revealed all doors to Okawa’s room had been locked.
Okawa appeared to have burned to death after suffocation, with no traumatic injuries suggesting homicide or evidence of poisoning found.

When Tsuji hurried straight back to the scene, he found an announcement had just been made: Okawa's burned Boston bag had been discovered containing charred remnants of 1,000-yen bill bundles estimated around one million yen.
Based on this, the authorities appeared to have concluded that suspicion of an outside perpetrator's violent crime had effectively been dispelled.

Tsuji no longer concerned himself with official pronouncements.
He would confront the mansion's occupants directly.

Since starting with the maids is Journalism 101, he met individually with the three maids, but—

“Last night’s guest was only Mr. Okawa. Since he usually comes with someone named Mr. Imai, we cleaned during the daytime—the gardener did the dusting—and prepared bedding for two people. But when he arrived around eight in the evening, it was only Mr. Okawa. After that, no one else came.”

The answers of the three maids were identical. Only one young maid had stayed awake until Otsune left, and since Madam’s room and the maids’ quarters were quite far apart, she said she hadn’t heard any noises.

“Do you usually keep the door to the adjacent room locked?”

“No, we never made a habit of locking the doors to the Western-style annex.”

This was firmly asserted by the maids, leading to murder emerging as a plausible scenario.

Therefore, he requested a meeting with Madam.
Surprisingly, she agreed to meet without any fuss, but when questioned about the blackmail, she flew into a rage.

“I have no recollection of being blackmailed by anyone.”
“There’s no such thing as my being blackmailed by someone last night.”
“At that time, I had no recollection of meeting anyone.”
“Moreover, I absolutely did not remember saying such a thing.”
“Please take your leave.”

She stood up huffily and left.
Since there had been no time to ask about the one million yen in Okawa’s bag, he hurriedly went to the police station to inquire and learned that it was one million yen he had entrusted to Okawa to purchase stocks on his behalf.
Otsune’s account also gave no indication that Madam had paid money to the blackmailer; since she had instead flatly rejected the demand, this was likely money of that very nature.

The remaining family member was her son Hironosuke, who used a gatekeeper’s hut connected to the gate as both his office and living quarters.
His business was usury.
Having sold the mountain forest he had received from his mother during the Atami fire to start his usury business, he apparently enjoyed considerable success at first, but now with poor performance, he just kept limping around in a frenzy as his decline deepened—the growing desperation making him increasingly vulnerable to being outmaneuvered by borrowers, his situation seeming headed toward complete collapse.
The servants had all left as well, leaving only a single apprentice boy who had graduated middle school and was attending night classes.
When visited, the office contained nothing but account books and rows of detective novels.
Perhaps due to his limp, there was none of the composed demeanor one might expect from a bourgeois son.

“You have quite a collection of detective novels.”

“They’re my favorite books.”

“Around 10:30 last night—so they say—a man was blackmailing Madam from outside the window,” he began carefully maintaining his journalistic neutrality while watching Hironosuke’s reactions unfold like pages from one of those detective novels lining his shelves.“According to Madam’s response:‘You’ve already extorted ten million yen from me—how dare you try for more? Since I no longer care about honor anymore—go ahead and blab my secret! Not a single penny will I give!’ Then”—Tsuji leaned forward slightly—“the man outside supposedly said,‘You’ll regret this,’ before leaving.”

“Did my mother say that?”

“No, there happens to be someone who overheard it.”

“I suppose so. It would be strange if someone would admit such a thing happened on the very day an unnatural death occurred within the estate. Moreover, killing someone immediately after such an incident would be odd too. Especially when the blackmail victim was already overheard.”

“So that’s detective novel logic?”

“Well, that’s right. My mother also reads detective novels quite extensively.”

“Didn’t you see a strange man passing through the gate?”

“I was playing pachinko starting around nine, and around that time, I was eating udon at an udon shop. This apprentice boy happened to meet me on the road when he returned from night school in Odawara around eleven, and we came back together. You might be trying to say I’m the blackmailer, but if I had the skill to extort ten million yen from that mother of mine, I wouldn’t have failed as a moneylender in the first place.”

“So you’re suggesting that blackmailing Madam requires greater skill than moneylending?”

“Well, that’s right.
“I don’t know what kind of secret it is, but I think there’s no other way than to uncover that secret.
“Of course, if that secret could be easily uncovered, the blackmail wouldn’t hold water in the first place.
“Especially not from Madam’s own mouth.”

Tsuji recalled having seen several Noh masks displayed in the main house’s reception room at that time.
Among them, he thought there had been a demoness Noh mask.
In truth, he didn’t really know what shape a demoness Noh mask took.

“Does your household have several demoness Noh masks?”

“Well,”
“There are many Noh masks.”
“In our household, both my father and mother are Noh dance enthusiasts, so the masks are practical items.”
“There should be some of the finest ones in Japan.”
“There must be three or four demoness masks as well.”

“I hear there was also a demoness mask in the room with the burned corpse.”

“We shouldn’t keep anything valuable in that annex, but there may have been something of that sort.”

When a visitor arrived, Tsuji took his leave but stopped by the old man living in the tenement on the opposite side to verify his alibi—

“I was playing shogi at the greengrocer’s from nine to twelve.”
“Since it was last night, why don’t you check with Yaohisa about it?”

When he verified with Yaohisa, this alibi was clearly established. Since the Yaohisa family members all stated the same thing, there could be no mistake. After returning to the branch office, Tsuji called Tokyo to request an investigation into a man named Imai and sent a draft conveying the following meaning.

Initially, this incident had been viewed as an accidental death or suicide, but through Otsune’s testimony, it became clear that Mrs. Noda had already been blackmailed for ten million yen by someone and had also rejected another blackmailer who came knocking at her window around 10:30 PM that night. Suspicion grew strong that whoever had knocked on that window had committed murder. Okawa was such a timid and cautious man that he even made the blind masseuse wear a demoness Noh mask while massaging his shoulders; it would be strange for him to get up and attempt blackmail while knowing Otsune was in Madam’s room. Moreover, Otsune testified with certainty—through her tactile sense and experience as a masseuse—that he had not been feigning sleep. She had confirmed Okawa’s deep slumber, placed the Noh mask on the desk, and left without locking the door.

Yet the fact that one door was locked from the outside and another from the inside meant someone had committed the crime—first locking the corridor door from within, exiting into the adjacent room, then locking that door from the outside before fleeing. The Western-style room’s door was not one the maids ordinarily locked, making it clear someone else had done so. Furthermore, since the connecting door had been locked from the adjacent room, it proved this could not have been the deceased’s doing.

As for the man blackmailing Mrs. Noda, only the gardener had a clear alibi; Hironosuke did not. Moreover, suspicions were arising about Imai’s alibi—a man who had always stayed with Okawa as his companion and for whom the maids had prepared a futon in the adjacent room expecting him to sleep there. The likelihood of this developing into a complex mystery grew stronger. While some suspicion remained regarding why the one million yen in the bag hadn’t been stolen, one could only imagine some sudden incident had occurred that left no time for theft.

He wrote up an article conveying this meaning, complete with photographs, in both the national and local editions.
Because both the police and other media outlets had viewed it as an accidental death and had even forgotten to question Otsune, they were startled by this article, prompting a full-fledged investigation to commence.

*

The next day, Imai—who appeared at the Atami Police Station voluntarily—stated that two nights prior he had been drinking in Shinjuku from nine to eleven and had returned home before midnight.

“After reading this morning’s paper, I learned Mr. Okawa wasn’t a blackmailer.”
“If anything, he was lending money.”
“He must have lent Madam six or seven million yen.”
“Madam had plunged into stocks and lately suffered consecutive heavy losses—she’d nearly run out of assets to sell.”
“There remained a small mountain yielding minerals—a low-grade deposit—and though she’d begged me to sell it, finding a willing buyer proved difficult despite her incessant催促.”
“We somehow secured an eighteen-million-yen contract—half paid upfront in cash, the balance through a promissory note three months later. About a week ago, an employee from the firm and I visited the main house to hand over nine million yen in cash and formally exchange contracts.”
“At that time, I repeatedly urged Madam to quit stock trading and implored her to repay Mr. Okawa’s loan.”
“Mr. Okawa came alone to Atami to collect it, taking along the loan certificate where I’d acted as guarantor.”
“Given this collateral was such an extravagant mansion, it’d be absurd to surrender it for six or seven million including interest.”
“Truth be told, I’d been nursing resentment even before that.”
“Madam made me negotiate for over half a year—guiding potential buyers to the site multiple times—yet beyond expenses, she gave me a paltry fifty thousand yen as thanks.”
“While I understand her frustration at the lower-than-expected sale price given these deflationary times—”
“—that’s precisely why I refused to accompany Mr. Okawa.”
“There’s no merit in shadowing someone merely collecting a repaid debt.”
“So if Madam considers debt collection akin to blackmail under her peculiar logic—well, call it what you will—but Mr. Okawa wasn’t one to extort others.”

His testimony was unexpected.

“Were there any signs of anyone else being blackmailed?”

“Well,”
“Given that the money they lost in stocks alone must amount to hundreds of millions, even if ten million yen were passed around from one hand to another, third parties wouldn’t notice a thing.”
“Secrets worth blackmailing over are things others can’t possibly know—that’s what makes them blackmail material. As for such private matters in her life, I couldn’t begin to speculate.”

“How much funding did her son Hironosuke receive?”

“Just a small woodland.”
“With favorable timing, it apparently turned into twenty or thirty million yen right away, but once he started the moneylending business, everything went downhill fast.”

“How much are the Noda family’s assets currently worth?”

“They’re bone-dry now. Apart from the eighteen million yen from this recent sale, there are only one or two items that don’t even seem worth half that much, and then there’s just that mansion. There might still be some antiques left, but in truth, it seems they’ve already sold off most of the notable items. We don’t get involved with that area, so we don’t know.”

Imai’s words carried a tone as though he had already concluded that the culprit was someone from the Noda family.
In the end,

“Since we’ve heard Mrs. Okawa is currently in Atami, have someone inquire about Mr. Okawa’s purpose for traveling there and related matters.”

When they questioned Mrs. Okawa directly, it became evident that the trip’s purpose had not been to purchase stock certificates but rather to collect repayment of a debt.

“Given that the mansion served as collateral, we had never pressed for repayment. But precisely because of that, accepting just one million yen seemed unthinkable.”
“I found it rather strange.”

“Had your husband been closely acquainted with Mr. Imai for a long time?”

“Now that they worked at different places and there was an age gap between them, it seems they had little interaction apart from matters concerning Madam Noda.”

However, according to reports from Tokyo, the alibi Imai presented was extremely vague.
In Shinjuku's drinking establishments, there were no regular patrons matching his claims nor any tangible leads—the sole corroboration came from his wife.
He had returned home around midnight and simply slept until late morning without any notable occurrence—that was all there was to it.

The next morning’s edition of Tsuji’s article reported that both Hironosuke and Imai had unclear alibis and that verification efforts were underway; it also mentioned emerging suspicions of collusion between Hironosuke and Madam.
With only the blind woman’s testimony to rely on, Tsuji—who had boldly set off with an exclusive scoop—was already complaining about the investigation’s stagnation and lack of decisive evidence.

*

When it came to the blackmail, Madam remained adamant that she had no memory of being extorted, insisting it was all a delusion conjured by the blind woman’s ears, leaving Otsune no choice but to endure days steeped in bitter helplessness.

“This is all Mr. Tsuji’s fault.”

Since Otsune blamed him so bitterly, Mr. Tsuji felt anguished too.

“I’ll get to the truth soon and make sure you get the credit.”

Though he said this, his heart wasn’t in it.
The main office had sent backup reporters to capitalize on this exclusive story, but now that things stood like this, reporters from both branch and main offices began competing for glory among themselves. The desperate need to save face had grown too tragic, leaving him unable to face each day without drinking.

As for Imai, while the main office had been combing through Tokyo, his alibi remained unclear; since no credible witnesses placing him in Atami around that time had come forward, there was nothing more they could do.
No personal effects of his were found in the burned ruins, but in any case, it was Imai who had known that Okawa had received a large sum of money that night.
However, upon examining the Noda family’s safe, they found approximately 2.5 million yen in cash, a 5 million yen deposit made the day after the mine sale, and what was burned—totaling around 8.5 million yen.
Given that only this much remained from nine million yen, it was strange for Imai’s crime.
Rather, it had to be concluded that Okawa’s debt collection had ended in failure.

Then it might have been Okawa himself who was knocking and shaking the door from outside the window. In that case, the culprit would be Madam, or alternatively, the possibility of Hironosuke being an accomplice could also be considered.

Then one day, the night-school apprentice employed by Hironosuke came to visit Tsuji,

“Mr. Tsuji.”
“I got such an eerie feeling that I ran away from that house, though.”
“If my story helps, will you find me a job?”

“I might not be able to get you into a newspaper company, but if your story’s useful, I’ll help you land a position at a company or shop that’s many times better than whatever you’re doing now.”
“What kind of story is it?”

“It’s about last night.”
“It was midnight.”
“I saw the gardener sneaking out into the garden, so out of morbid curiosity I followed him.”
“He circled all around the garden and knocked on Madam’s window.”
“Then he received something from Madam and did something with it.”

“And then?”

“At that moment, the old man spoke in a low, crushed voice—something like a foreign incantation.”
“Raoumuo.”
“That’s how it sounded.”

“Raoumuo.”

“That’s right.”
“He said it with a drawn-out pronunciation.”
"Definitely heard it that way."

“What about Madam?”

“She didn’t answer. She checked the item again and closed the window.”

“What was the shape of the item?”

“I don’t know about that, but it was something like a book or magazine, you see. What the old man received was also like that at first, but it turned out to be a bundle of bills. Two million yen. Since three million yen in fire insurance had come in that day, it was part of that.”

“How did you know that?”

“This morning, the old woman declared it openly: ‘Madam gave me two million yen as a retirement allowance, so I’m going back home to open a little shop.’ When Master Hironosuke heard that, he turned pale with fury and dragged his lame leg all the way to Madam’s room. He came back in a daze—must’ve been told by Madam that she’d indeed given it as a retirement allowance. ‘Was he the one blackmailing us? Unbelievable,’ he muttered like he was groaning, then went off somewhere. So I packed up my things and ran away.”

“What an utterly unexpected story.”

“Something else is going to happen at that house, I tell you.”
“I was so terrified I couldn’t stay there any longer.”

To doubt even what seems completely credible—this too constitutes the first lesson of detective novels.
The gardener’s alibi was perfect.
It left no room for doubt.
However, it should not be impossible to artificially create a perfect alibi.

Tsuji hurried to the Noda residence.

The gardener was in high spirits, in the midst of packing for his move.
When he saw Tsuji, the gardener was the first to speak.

“Oh, Mr. Reporter. Did that apprentice’s report reach you?”

“That’s exactly the thing. Two million yen retirement allowance, I hear.”

“That’s correct. After all, I’ve served here for about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years, you know. Other places pay even more in retirement allowances.”

“There’s no need to let such things reach people’s ears.”

“It’s a matter of pride. There’s no need to hide something I’ve officially received.”

“Even if you knock on the window at midnight and secretly receive something—does that count?”

“A lowly servant is expected to come through the garden, you know.”

There was no look of surprise in the old man’s words or face.
He had noticed that he had been seen by the apprentice.
He had ultimately been unable to meet Madam face-to-face, but upon having the maid relay a message and obtain a response, it was confirmed that two million yen had indeed been given as a retirement allowance.
It was a reply much like the gardener’s—“due to long years of service.”
Even when they knocked on the window late at night to hand over money and asked if it was a retirement allowance, the response was indeed that it was a retirement allowance, and beyond that, there was no comment.

Tsuji had the car driven to the massage inn, pushed Otsune-san inside as if abducting her, and brought her to the gardener’s house.

“Otsune-san, don’t you recognize this voice?”
“Talk to the old man and listen carefully.”

“Hahaha. I was playing shogi at Yaocho from nine to twelve that night, you see. There’s no way Otsune-san would recognize it.”

Otsune shook her head plaintively and dejectedly,

“It was low—the kind of voice where you couldn’t make out a single word, you see.”
“It’s no use.”

“Right, right.
“Exactly right. What was it that the man Otsune-san heard say?”

“He said ‘You’ll regret this soon enough,’ but...”

“Well then, I’ll do it and show you.”
“In a low voice—‘You’ll regret this soon enough,’ you see.”

Otsune-san shook her head.
It was impossible—the gesture meant she couldn’t tell.
Tsuji stamped his feet in frustration, but it was in vain.

＊

Tsuji had sent off a lengthy article burning with the thrill of an exclusive scoop.
Yet it only appeared as a brief two-column piece in a corner of the local news section.
The incident was already beginning to slip from public memory.
The article had been revised to suggest that two million yen seemed no excessive retirement allowance for thirty-six years of service from a married couple, while the midnight exchange through a rapped window—conducted with such deliberate conspicuousness—came to be viewed as some sort of farcical farewell ritual, with added criticism that any proper blackmail scheme would have employed subtler methods.

While he was fuming over the article, Isezaki Kutaifu appeared at the branch office.
He was proprietor of an Atami inn but had formerly been a renowned magician—a man of such exceptional detective acumen that he’d solved difficult cases single-handedly; hence Tsuji had already sought Kutaifu’s counsel three times since this affair began.
Each time, Kutaifu had done nothing but interrogate him exhaustively about whatever interested himself, never offering any reply.

“That article was rather regrettable.”
“You journalists have this wretched habit of being too eager to write—it’s quite unacceptable.”
“It’s wiser to keep such matters under wraps and observe how things unfold.”

“However, you must have had your reasons for coming to tell me that.”
“To have that retirement allowance exchange turned into a farcical memory—it’s a feeling that leaves me unable to even cry.”

“That’s also due to the fault of your eloquent prose.”
“It’s too much like some foreign incantation.”

“Then what is it?”

Kutaifu had already forgotten to answer Tsuji’s question and began grilling him thoroughly.
Fortunately, he had kept the apprentice there overnight, so he called him out and had him answer Kutaifu’s questions.

“It seems the old man found out you were tailing him, but you didn’t notice that, did you?”

“Now that I think about it, I believe the old woman must have seen me.”
“Because I pass in front of the house.”

“You were certain you hadn’t been noticed when performing that farcical exchange, weren’t you?”

“That’s right. At that time, I definitely hadn’t been noticed.”

“How loud was the knocking on the window? Quite a loud noise, then?”

“It was quite loud. If you listen carefully, it’s a sound that could be heard even twenty or thirty *ken* away.”

“What about footsteps?”

“He used stealthy steps—but I could still hear him.”

“Then, what about the sound of opening the window?”

“It was quite a loud noise.”

“How wide was the window opened?”

“About four or five *sun*.”

“The light in the room was on, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t that bright. I thought it was a small lamp with a bean bulb.”

“Madam remained silent the whole time, didn’t she.”

“Yes.”

“Ah, I’ve got a good grasp now.”
“Next—regarding Mr. Hironosuke—is it true you met him on the road around eleven o’clock on the night of the incident and returned together?”

“There’s no mistake about that. There’s that spot where Atami Ginza meets the road coming down from the station through the mountains, right? We’d just started walking toward Yamate from around there. From that area to the Noda residence was still quite a ways. And with it being an uphill slope, it’d take a good while for someone with Bikko’s legs to manage it.”

“Were you sleeping at the time of the fire?”
“Yes, I hadn’t noticed anything until the fire truck arrived and shook me awake.”

“I’ve started to grasp various aspects of this, but what reason would someone have for doing such a thing?”

“Me?”

"My apologies."
"Of course it's not you."
"It's someone."
"They're not exactly doing anything complicated."

“Who are you referring to?”

Tsuji asked with a cheerful voice, but Kutaifu ignored him and,

“In any case, let’s try the experiment tonight after it gets late.”
“Please come to my humble home around midnight.”
“It’s a small experiment.”
“Even if this goes as planned, there are still mountains of things I can’t grasp.”
“Solving the case is a matter of taking it step by step.”

Kutaifu left after making this promise.

Around midnight that night, Tsuji visited Kutaifu.
Kutaifu had been waiting for him, but

“Since this place is by the sea and the sound of the waves would be distracting, I booked a quiet inn in Yamate instead.”
“Everything’s ready.”

“Is there an issue with the seaside?”

“Precisely.”
“This experiment concerns sound.”

When they alighted at the tranquil Yamate inn, Kutaifu led Tsuji to a hushed room downstairs.

“I had some trouble finding this room, but the conditions seem generally satisfactory.”
“Please stay there quietly and observe.”
“You must not make a sound or move.”
“Please refrain from making any noise during the experiment.”
“First, I’ll sit in this corridor chair and open the connecting door to the adjacent room’s hallway.”
“Now then—I’ll call Otsune-san here. That woman fancies herself a perceptive blind person, but blind people can’t see and thus have no frame of comparison.”
“Otsune-san keeps insisting she can walk alone thanks to her intuition, but that intuition isn’t particularly reliable.”
“She plods along the corridor wall at a snail’s pace.”
“When she goes to the bathroom, she bumps into everything and makes an utter mess of it.”
“The other day when I was muttering to myself, she piped up with ‘Oh—is someone there?’”
“I’ll summon her now. From this moment onward, maintain absolute silence and wait.”

Before long, Otsune seemed to have come plodding along the wall, making no sound of footsteps until she opened the door—but upon opening it,

“Good evening.”

“Wait in that room for a moment. I’ll wrap things up shortly.”

“Yes.”

“You really are impossible.
“I had wanted to rest with a massage in this quiet room tonight, yet here you come opening the sliding door from the adjacent room without even waiting for an invitation.
“I must ask you to leave immediately.”

“I must apologize for my grave discourtesy.”
“I didn’t realize that was the situation and must apologize for my grave discourtesy.”
“Well then, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

It was Kutaifu’s one-man performance.
He had merely altered his voice and accent slightly; it wasn’t a particularly elaborate dual role.
Kutaifu stood up from his chair and, without taking a step, reached behind him to close the sliding door with a rattle.

“Well now, that takes care of our rude guest’s departure. Otsune-san, enter.”

“Yes.”

Otsune entered the room.

“Otsune-san, do you know who that guest was just now?”

“Well, I can’t recognize them by voice alone, but is it someone I know?”
“Someone who comes to this inn, perhaps?”
“Then that must be Mr. Kawakami from Odawara.”
“I can tell by the heaviness in their voice.”

“That person makes no sound when they walk.”
“Did you hear the sound of departing footsteps?”

“I realized when the door closed, but he must have tiptoed away in embarrassment.”
“That’s not like him at all.”

Kutaifu began chuckling.
Then he called out to Tsuji,

“Hey, Mr. Tsuji. I thought it would turn out like this. Ever since I saw how my talking to myself was mistaken for someone else’s voice the other day, I knew exactly how this experiment would conclude.”

“Oh, Mr. Tsuji? You didn’t leave the room after all. No wonder I didn’t hear any footsteps.”

“Indeed, that was an intriguing experiment. However, it’s only grown more perplexing.”

“That’s just it. That Madam performs both Noh and Nagauta. She’s someone who can easily alter her voice. Putting on a man’s voice would be easy enough for her, wouldn’t it?”

Otsune was even more surprised than Tsuji and became utterly dejected.

“So then, was what I heard back then Madam’s fabricated voice?”

“I think so. That’s why you heard the door closing but didn’t hear it opening. If a woman had been shuffling along that long corridor hugging the wall, she should’ve heard the door open—meaning it was probably already open before you left the annex. And someone must’ve been waiting for you. Once that door shut, whether you heard footsteps leaving or not became irrelevant—what you might call having the snake’s head without its tail. But for you, Otsune-san, just grasping the dragon’s midsection was enough to satisfy your reasoning. That’s where your good nature shows—being slow to take offense—but there it is.”

“I’ve become so ashamed.”

“Ah well. That’s where Otsune’s value lies. Because those who intend to deceive others will inevitably be deceived themselves—such is the way of a trusting soul.”

Kutaifu thus comforted Otsune, then turned to Tsuji and,

“Now then, shall we consider this tonight in the quiet inn?”
"Why were such things carried out?"
“Your room has been prepared in Mr. Kawakami’s quarters in Odawara.”

*

Because he was a newspaper reporter, Tsuji hastily drew conclusions.
When he woke up, he had a rough idea.

The matter that took the most time was the foreign-language incantation, but just like Otsune’s misperception, this too should be considered a misperception on the Apprentice Boy’s part.
Once a conclusion was reached, he grew impatient.
Being unable to refrain from rushing into reporting immediately was his inherent nature, and he waited poised for Kutaifu to wake up, promptly plopped down cross-legged before him, and declared, “This case is a murder committed by the gardener at Madam’s request, isn’t it?”

“I see.”

“I believe Madam anticipated being blackmailed by the gardener later on, which is why she deliberately had Otsune—who’s naturally talkative and can’t keep a secret—overhear that information.”
“Since the gardener’s alibi only lasts until midnight, once the matter of Madam’s fabricated voice is resolved, he’ll have no alibi.”
“The fire was discovered around 1:40-something, you see.”
“In other words, Madam’s fabricated voice also served to disrupt the suspect’s alibi.”

“That’s an interesting perspective.”

“So the gardener not only played his crucial role but also commendably refrained from touching the one million yen in the bag. Taking that one million yen as payment for the trick, two million yen was only natural. But since that bastard had a childish streak, he probably deliberately knocked on the door from outside the window and said ‘Raumō’—in other words, presented a fake promissory note and made harassing demands—don’t you think?”

“A fake promissory note.”
“You’ve noticed a key point there.”

“In exchange for receiving the fake promissory note, the exasperated Madam handed over two million yen.”
“This was indeed money that had to be handed over.”
“No matter how much she was ridiculed, there was no choice but to give this money and drive him out.”

“I see. In that case, I shall pay another visit to your branch office and ask that apprentice boy a few questions.”

“Surely the apprentice boy isn’t the culprit?”

“Of course that’s the case, but there’s one thing we need to ask the apprentice boy.”

The two arrived at Tsuji’s branch office.
Promptly summoning the apprentice boy, Kutaifu asked.
That was truly an unexpected question.

“Who reads the newspaper early in that mansion?”

The apprentice boy was so surprised he couldn’t answer immediately.

“Let me see... I attend night school and stay up late, so I’m not an early riser. The people in the inner quarters all wake up late too.”
“After all, the newspaper gets thrown through the gardener’s window first. That couple rises early—they’ve practically memorized every interesting article before the rest of us even wake up.”

“Was Mr. Tsuji’s newspaper delivered there too?”

“Of course.”
“Madam dealt in stocks, so she looked through most newspapers.”

Kutaifu nodded in satisfaction, having made his point,

“This is it—the key to solving this case.”
“Given his daily habit, we can naturally assume the gardener read the newspaper before anyone else even two days after the incident.”
“Until your morning article reported it, both the police and other newspapers had forgotten about Otsune.”
“They saw it as accidental death or suicide—no need to bother with a masseuse’s account.”
“So even if you’d investigated earlier when they’d already ruled it an accident, Mr. Tsuji, the culprit wouldn’t have cared.”
“But there was one thing they didn’t know.”
“They never realized there was a Noh mask in that room with the corpse.”
“You heard about the mask too, didn’t you? But you only asked about it out of curiosity—never dug into how it connected to the case.”

“That’s right.”
“It seems I didn’t conduct that kind of questioning.”
“It was reporting done for my own amusement—just adding a tangential tidbit about how the victim wore a hannya mask during his massage and had someone massage him.”

“That’s right. However, when you read that day’s article, it’s not the case. There is one thing written here that must not be overlooked. That day too, Otsune put the hannya mask on him and massaged. It states that after finishing the massage, she placed the Noh mask on the desk and left without locking the door. If this Noh mask had remained unburned somewhere within the mansion, wouldn’t it be evident that those who possessed it or could have possessed it were the culprits? The early bird gets three pennies—this must be what that saying refers to.”
The gardener was the first to read this. And since he goes around cleaning inside the mansion and gardens every day, he knows better than anyone what is where in the rooms and grounds. “If he had seen it somewhere, and if he obtained it before people had even read the newspaper, this would make perfect material for blackmail. Two million yen is practically a bargain. In other words, that gardener’s blackmail was nothing more than a new scheme that began on the day your article was published. When the commotion had somewhat died down, he began blackmailing in earnest before making his exit—but the item he exchanged with Madam for two million yen was a bit different from ‘Raumō’ or fake promissory notes. Rashōmon—probably the hannya mask from Rashōmon, don’t you think?”

Before Tsuji could utter another word, the apprentice boy shouted.
"That’s it! Exactly that!"
"It was an item about the size of a mask."

Tsuji wore a somewhat unconvinced expression,

“Many things have become clear, but what about Madam using a fake voice and taking back the Noh mask?”

“There could be various explanations for that, but when reading detective novels—particularly Western ones—there are many cases where a woman being blackmailed by a villain maintains absolute silence through ‘no comment,’ while conversely, a respectable man who knows her secret ends up having his alibi disproven precisely because he was with her.”
“She might have intended to exploit that weakness to devise a ‘no comment’ tactic.”
“I think it was a rather clever ploy.”

“I see. The newspapers also tended to defer to her ‘no comment’ regarding the blackmail matter.”

“That’s exactly it. Next, regarding the mask—don’t you think Madam put on the hannya mask to hide her face? Then she might have locked the door, set the fire, locked it again, fled in a panic, and brought the hannya mask back to her own room still wearing it. So if that article about the gardener extorting two million yen in exchange for something hadn’t been published in the newspaper, they might have been able to recover that Noh mask—but now there’s no hope of that anymore. In short, all physical evidence has been lost.”

Tsuji grew increasingly disappointed as he heard all this.
Even if he wrote this up as an article, without physical evidence he couldn't strike at the golden mark.
Everything remained nothing more than Kutaifu's deductions.
It was truly regrettable.

He crossed his arms and sank deep into thought,

“However, I can’t just not write this as an article.”
“I’ll make that old man confess and turn it into an article!”
Kutaifu quietly intervened.
“A newspaper of such stature should refrain from empty threats.”
“That gardener will never confess.”
“But I believe divine punishment will naturally descend upon the culprit before long.”
“You see.”
“Madam has no money left.”
“She will likely continue dabbling in stocks more and more—she killed one of her two allies herself, while the other betrayed her and left.”
“That person’s money might as well be scattered on sand.”
“Ruin will come naturally.”
“She’ll reach the height of decrepitude and expose her shame to all.”
“She may end up a beggar dying in some ditch.”

This prophecy was fulfilled in the very near future.
Hironosuke took all the money and fled.
There had been a threatening letter stating that if this were reported to the police, he would expose the truth behind Okawa’s murder.
Hironosuke was knowledgeable about the family’s internal affairs and well-versed in detective novels, so he was able to arrive at the same deduction as Kutaifu.
He had also realized that what had been exchanged for two million yen was the Noh mask.

Madam, driven to desperation, squandered her entire remaining fortune on stocks in a brief span and hanged herself to death.