Passport to Crime

The Tragedy Of Black Swan Lodge
by Alice Arisugawa

Translated by Steve Steinbock

A row of crows looked like shadow puppets, lit from behind by a single streetlight, thinking about returning to their roosts.

The sun had set, leaving the sky black in every direction. I was late getting out of Osaka, and the detour into Kyoto to pick up Himura further delayed me. We stopped for a bite at a roadside diner. As we were leaving, I used a pay phone to call our friend Amano.

“We’re on our way,” I told him. “But don’t wait on us for dinner.”

Himura was sitting in the passenger seat, his arms crossed in meditation. A Chopin nocturne was playing on a classical station.

I grabbed the steering wheel and pulled onto the road.

Night filled the landscape along the coastal highway, making the nocturne strangely appropriate background music. I think the soloist was Adam Harasiewicz.

Himura was silent, maybe mentally editing his dissertation or reviewing his lectures for the following week.

I didn’t say anything.

But they say the mind abhors a vacuum, and a stream of random thoughts ran through my head. They gradually coalesced, settling on the conversation I had with Amano two nights ago, and whom I’d just spoken to again on the phone. We were on our way to his home, although neither Himura nor I had seen him in seven years.

The three of us had been friends in college. I knew he’d gotten married. I learned of the birth of his daughter from a New Year’s card, then a short time later he let me know about his wife’s death after a brief illness.

Then a call came in the middle of the night, the day before yesterday.

“Can you and Himura come?”

There’d been a situation. Amano discovered a dead man in the backyard of his isolated home. The police identified the body but were baffled as to how he died or how his body got there. Amano was shaken. He was worried that the killer or killers would return, putting him and Maki at risk. At the same time, he was doing his best to shield his daughter from the knowledge of a death literally in their backyard.

I had work I couldn’t avoid, so it was almost two days before we were on our way toward the northern coast of Hyogo Prefecture on the Sea of Japan. Five hours behind schedule.

“When you talked to him just now,” said Himura. “How did he sound?”

“Amano? Fine, I guess. He’s always sounded a little blue. But I could hear his daughter laughing in the background. Cute. It sounded like she was reading out loud to herself and laughing.”

“What’s her name?”

“Maki,” I said.

“Maki-chan,” Himura repeated.

Amano’s daughter couldn’t be much older than four or five. It was funny to think that my contemporary, someone Himura and I had gone to college with, was the father of a school-age child.

“It’s funny when you think about it,” I mused. “Less than a decade ago we were sitting around the dorm like idiots, talking about our dreams for the future. Amano wanted to paint. I wanted to write mysteries. You wanted to study the criminal mind.”

Himura grunted.

“We all did pretty well, you know,” I continued. “The three of us, each in our own ways, fulfilled our dreams.”

It was true. I, Alice Arisugawa, am a published mystery novelist. Himura Hideo is an associate professor of sociology who frequently assists the police departments of three prefectures. And Amano Hitoshi is an accomplished artist.

“Dreams?” Himura said. “I never had dreams. This is just what I do.”

“Come on, man. As a kid didn’t you always want to put on a cape and fight crime?”

“Dipshit,” he said.

He pulled a pack of cigarets from his coat pocket and shook out a Camel. I know he does that on purpose. Anytime I say something that annoys him, he gets back at me by filling my car with smoke.

“Before you light that,” I said, “could you check the map? If we miss the turn, we’ll end up going all the way around the peninsula.”

Himura spread the road atlas on his lap and studied it, the unlit cigaret dangling from his mouth. He looked up just as we passed a bus stop.

“We’re good,” he said. “This road takes us through Kinosaki Onsen and then it’s a straight shot to Amano’s place.”

“Cool,” I said. “What’s his house called? Koko-something?”

“Kokucho Tei,” he said, the Camel wobbling between his lips as he stuck the road atlas back in the glove box.

 

Kokucho Tei. There was something creepy about the name. Black Swan Lodge.

“I thought swans were white,” I said.

“Most are. Black swans came here from Australia. They’re technically an invasive species.”

“Weird name for a house.”

The radio signal had gotten fuzzy, so Himura leaned forward and fiddled with the radio dial until he found a jazz station with clear reception. Sarah Vaughan was singing “Misty.”

We were in a scenic region with expansive views of the Sea of Japan. A few kilometers inland was Kinosaki Onsen, a resort area situated atop a network of natural hot springs that had served tourists for over a thousand years. The roads were lined with hotels, restaurants, and spas.

As the road began to climb into the mountains, the restaurants became sparser and the streetlights disappeared, until finally there was nothing but a dark road surrounded by trees.

Vaughan’s rendition of “Misty” gave me shivers, but driving through this dark wooded hillside, Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” would have been a more fitting soundtrack.

“It’s hard to believe Amano lives this far out,” I said. “I mean, I wouldn’t complain if I inherited a mansion. But I’m not sure what I’d do with myself. I didn’t see any bookshops.”

Himura was ignoring me, just whistling along with Sarah Vaughan’s singing. I don’t whistle. I’d probably hit the wrong note.

We reached the summit and the road leveled off, then began to descend slightly. Finally some lights appeared between the trees.

“Black Swan Lodge,” I mumbled. “Sounds like a setting for a murder mystery.”

“No mystery,” said Himura. “Before Amano moved in, a murder did happen there. And now, it seems, there’s been another.”

The vague silhouette of the house came into view. Everything around was black as lacquer. I turned onto the gravel driveway and went another thirty meters before parking in front of the house. I looked at the clock on my dashboard. Three hours since I left Osaka.

We’d arrived at Black Swan Lodge.

It was a two-story clapboard structure that reminded me of the kind of small-town mansion you’d see in old American movies. Calling it a mansion was a stretch, but by the standards of homes we were used to, it was a mansion.

The exterior walls were painted charcoal black. I couldn’t see the roof, but I suspected it, too, would be dark as slate. If you wanted a house to be invisible at nighttime, this was exactly how to decorate it.

The front door opened and two figures, one tall and the other very short, appeared in the doorway. The larger figure was waving at us.

We climbed out of the car to greet them, and I could see that Amano had lost weight. His cheeks were sunken, and he had bags under his eyes.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. “Welcome.”

“Thanks,” said Himura, holding up a hand.

The girl hid behind her father. She had curly hair and was wearing a Russian-style peasant blouse, holding it at the hem, her large dark eyes staring at us curiously.

“Maki,” her father nudged her. “Don’t be shy. What do you say to our friends?”

She bowed awkwardly, and in a sweet voice said, “Konnichiwa.”

Himura and I both bowed to the girl in unison. “Konnichiwa, Maki-chan.”

We must have looked comical, because the girl clapped her hands over her mouth and began laughing. I shrugged. I often have that effect on women.

“Maki, these are my friends, Mr. Himura and Mr. Arisugawa. Arisugawa’s name is ‘Alice,’ just like Alice in Wonderland.”

“Alice?” The girl scrunched up her face. “That’s a girl’s name.”

“I know,” her father shrugged. “But in Japan, boys can be named Alice as well.”

That was an overstatement. My given name was a joke my parents had played on me, a pun on our family name. The only other male “Alice” I’ve ever heard of is the rock star Alice Cooper.

The little girl pulled away from her dad and made a dramatic show of opening the door for us. “Well?” she said. “Come inside!”

When Amano told me his house was an oversized shack, I assumed he was being modest. But when I took off my shoes and stepped inside, I saw just how run-down it was. The floor creaked under our feet and the windows rattled from the wind. It might have been a nice house once, but it hadn’t been maintained. But in contrast to the exterior of the house, the wallpaper was a light, calming color.

There was a huge birdcage set up in a bay window facing the sea. A black shadow was crouching in a little basket at the base. A crow?

Amano noticed my gaze.

“That’s Kyu. She’s a myna bird,” he said.

There was a rustling in the cage and the bird looked out at us. Her beak was orange, and she had yellow markings around her eyes.

“Sorry, Kyu,” said Amano. “Did we wake you?”

The bird looked at him and then eyed us.

“This place was originally called Black Crow Lodge on account of the color. We do get a lot of crows around here. There’s a flock that often hangs out on the roof.”

I shivered, recalling that in English, a flock of crows goes by a different name.

“When my aunt bought the house, she renamed it. She said she hoped the new name would bring better luck. Changing the name was a lot easier than repainting.”

Now the name of the house made sense.

“Hello,” I said to the bird.

It looked straight at me but didn’t respond.

Maki came up beside me.

“Kyu-chan doesn’t talk, Mr. Alice,” she said apologetically. “She doesn’t even sing.”

“She’s always been that way,” Amano said. “Maki and I have been trying to teach her since we got her, but she’s never said a peep.”

I nodded. I have a neighbor in Osaka who has a canary that never sings.

“Daddy, don’t say mean things about Kyu-chan. It’s not her fault. She’s just not very smart.”

Himura looked curiously at the bird. He slowly walked the perimeter of the living room, ending up behind the birdcage. Then he raised his hands and suddenly, without warning, smacked his hands together with a loud clap, startling all of us.

“Himura, what the hell?”

“Did you see Kyu-chan’s response?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “We were busy watching you act like an idiot.”

“You didn’t see a response because there wasn’t one. She’s not antisocial or slow. She’s deaf. She’s a myna bird with no hearing.”

“Hah?” yelled Maki. “Is that why she can’t talk?”

“That’s right,” said Himura, stooping to the girl’s level. “Because she can’t hear, there’s no way for her to imitate. She can’t copy what she can’t hear. Not only can’t she speak human words, but she doesn’t even make normal bird sounds.”

The girl looked from Himura to the bird.

“I’ve lived with Kyu-chan this whole time and I never knew. How did Mr. Imura know that so fast?”

Amano, just as surprised by the revelation, said, “He’s a detective, honey. Detectives can figure things out that the rest of us don’t notice.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Himura said. Then he kneeled in front of the little girl. “Maki-chan, it’s not Imura. My name is Himura.”

*   *   *

“My aunt lived here less than a year,” said Amano, after we’d all gathered on the worn living-room couch. “She and I were close. When she died last year, she left the house to me. No one else in the family wanted it.”

He shrugged.

“I thought about turning it into a communal art studio, or a vacation rental. But . . .”

He let the thought hang there. He stroked his daughter’s hair.

“We like living here,” he said. “But it’s not very convenient. Even artists need groceries. Plus, I’m trying to figure out school for Maki. She’s ready for kindergarten.”

“The school,” said the girl in a grown-up manner that almost made me laugh. “It’s really far.”

It was amusing watching Maki and Amano interact. She seemed to act more like a sister to Amano than his daughter.

“I’m a lousy father. If I had money, I’d figure out a way to send her to school or get her a tutor.”

Maki sidled up next to her dad.

“Daddy, it’s okay. I don’t need school.” She looked at me and Himura. “Dad teaches me stuff, and I read lots of books.”

“Honey, can you get us some spoons?”

Amano opened a box of fancy English biscuits from Fortnam & Mason that he’d probably been saving for company.

“Alice,” he said, turning to me, “when you write, are your plots based on the fieldwork you do with Himura?”

“I don’t write about real crimes. They’re just stories on paper. Works of fiction.”

“Still, it must be difficult. Reading a good mystery is like watching a skilled magician on stage.”

That is one of the nicest compliments a mystery novelist can receive.

“But I always thought of you as someone who gets tricked more than the one who tricks others.”

So much for compliments.

“Magic and detective fiction have different goals,” I said, wanting to get in the final word. “Plotting a mystery means planting clues in plain sight, so that the reader sees and remembers them, but doesn’t realize they’re relevant to solving the mystery until the solution is revealed.”

“How is that different from magic? They both involve misdirection, right?”

“There’s a lot of overlap. Magic and detective fiction both use misdirection to hide the truth. But at the end of a detective novel, the truth is revealed. In magic, on the other hand, the audience is never supposed to see the clues, and at the end of the show, they’re entertained without ever learning how the trick was done. In detective fiction, it’s a guessing game, like Twenty Questions. With each clue, the reader gets more and more confounded until the detective pulls away the curtain to reveal the truth, giving the reader that cathartic aha moment. That catharsis is why people read mysteries.”

“I know how to play Twenty Questions,” said the little girl. “Can we play?”

“Later,” said her father softly.

“How’s your painting going?” asked Himura.

“It’s been tough. If I had money, I wouldn’t be living in a house filled with such bad karma.”

“But you have the freedom to paint whatever you want, right?”

“Yeah, well, lately I’m not doing real art. The best I’m doing is cheap oil paintings that people slap into a frame to decorate their apartments. I also do storyboard illustrations for advertising companies.”

“Amano, you’re selling yourself short. I wish I could paint.”

“Yeah, well.” Amano shrugged.

“Daddy, what does ‘bad karma’ mean?” asked Maki.

“It means that something that happened a long time ago— Actually, it’s just an expression that grownups use. Anyway, I’m making more tea. Anyone else? Maki, can I get you a glass of milk?”

“Yes, please.”

I thought about it. Did Amano’s house have bad karma?

Before Amano’s aunt bought the house, it had been owned by a banker and his wife who used it as a vacation home. But their vacation went sour when the man killed his wife during a fight. The police later found his car along with a suicide note.

Amano set a glass of milk by the birdcage, where Maki had a play area with books and her toys.

When he came back, he added a generous splash of brandy into each of our teacups.

“There’s a cliff near here called Otomi Bluff,” he said in a low voice once his daughter was out of earshot. “It looks out over Wakasa Bay. That’s where the police found the guy’s car along with his note. Case closed. That should have been the end of it.”

But it wasn’t.

“That was two years ago. But the day before yesterday, I found his body. Here on my property, in my backyard.”

“And it’s being treated as a suspicious death?” I asked.

Amano put a finger to his lips and glanced at his daughter.

“She doesn’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t want it to scare her.”

“Um. Excuse me,” the girl said, looking up at us. “What’s a ’spishus death?”

“Never mind, Maki. Just grown-up talk. Finish your milk and get ready for bed.”

“I don’t want to go to bed! I’m not tired.”

“Then why don’t you watch TV or something.”

“There’s nothing good on now. I want to play with Mr. Alice.”

Amano sighed. “Why don’t you read the book we got yesterday?”

“It’s boring,” she complained. But then she pulled a book off the shelf and sat back down.

“She loves books,” whispered Amano. “Once she starts reading, it’s hard to stop her.”

Himura smiled, and said, “You’re looking at the future president of the Alice Arisugawa Fan Club.”

Himura doesn’t get along with people. He doesn’t trust women, or men for that matter. But he has a lot of respect for cats and kids.

Once the girl was ensconced in her books, Himura lit another cigaret and said, “The bank manager and your aunt. What’s the connection?”

“No connection. My aunt always wanted a house with a view of the sea. After the incident, this place came on the market at a bargain price.”

The couple, Namiki Masato and his wife Mineko, had been having marital issues. There had been in-law tensions. And then the wife learned that Namiki had been having an affair. They’d hoped a holiday house by the sea would give them a chance to relax, work through their problems, and start over. But on their second day at the house, things went south. The police found the woman’s body on the driveway near their car tracks. It looked like she had been trying to leave, to go back to their home in Osaka. Namiki had tried to stop her. He did it with a kitchen paring knife.

She never made it back to Osaka.

The suicide note read: I had to stop her. If she took my car, where could I go?

They never found his body.

Not, that is, until the day before yesterday, when Amano found the corpse inside an old well at the edge of the backyard. Namiki had been dead less than a week.

*   *   *

“Daddy, will you read to me?”

“Honey, I’m having a conversation with my friends right now. I promise I’ll read to you later.”

“But I’m bored. I want you to come and read it to me now.”

“Maki, you need to wait. No whining or you go straight to bed.”

The little girl stood up. The book was in her hands and a pout on her face.

Amano turned back to us, rolling his eyes.

“Maki-chan,” said Himura. He slapped me on the back. “Uncle Alice here would love to read to you. He writes books, so he’s good at reading them.”

“Really?” said Maki with her head tilted and her eyes opened wide. “You write books?”

She was starstruck, and I was touched.

How could I refuse?

Still, I turned and glared at Himura.

“Alice,” he said. “Try to keep an ear on our conversation while you’re reading. You know how to multitask, right?”

Before I could come up with a snappy response, Maki took me by the hand and pulled me toward her reading corner.

I went along.

She handed me a book and then sat on the floor, cross-legged, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Read it from the beginning, okay?”

I did my best. I do a lot of readings at bookstores and libraries, but I don’t remember ever having such an eager audience. It was a collection of Aesop’s Fables. I sat down and opened the book. The first story was called “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”

It was a lot different from reading a scene from one of my detective stories. I started reading, doing my best to enunciate and give the characters personality. At the same time, I tried to follow the conversation of my grown-up friends.

“So essentially,” I heard Himura say, “Namiki Masato faked his suicide.”

“Right. The police obviously jumped to the wrong conclusion. They found the car and the note and, assuming he had jumped, just closed the case. His body was never found, but they figured he’d gotten washed out to sea.”

“Now that they know he was still alive, have the police been able to trace Namiki’s movements during the past two years?”

“No. But they did look into what was going on before he killed his wife. He’d been having an affair with a teller from the bank where he was the manager. The police are trying to track her down, on the assumption that they’d been in touch and were possibly living together.”

“She’s not still at the bank, I assume.”

“Right. She quit shortly after the incident here.”

“That makes sense,” said Himura. “Their affair may have been the cause of Namiki’s marital problems, which led to the murder.

Amano nodded. “After Namiki disappeared, the other bank employees assumed that the girlfriend quit to avoid the gossip. Their relationship was no secret at work. But the police now think she may have left the bank so the two of them could run off together.”

“I’m surprised the police didn’t check on her two years ago, right after Namiki disappeared.”

“Right,” said Amano. “But they missed it.”

“If the two of them were starting a new life together, they would need money. Did Namiki make any large withdrawals before disappearing?”

“No,” answered Amano. “They checked his account, but nothing stood out.”

“He could have been planning this for a long time,” said Himura, stroking his lip. “Gradually setting money aside.”

“The girlfriend probably had some cash,” said Amano.

“Right. But after two years, it would have been getting tight for them unless they found a new source of income.”

“Uncle Alice,” Maki said.

I’d been paying too much attention to the case, and not enough to Aesop’s Fables.

“Sorry,” I said, and then raised my voice. “When the cold winter came, Mr. Ant was comfortable in the warm house he’d built. But Mr. Grasshopper had spent the entire summer doing nothing but playing music. He hadn’t prepared for winter at all.”

“Tracking down the bank teller,” said Himura, “is up to the police. Let’s leave it at that. But you found the body. Do the police have any idea how Namiki was killed and how his body ended up in your backyard?”

“They said he had blunt-force trauma on his forehead and on the back of the head. It looked like someone hit him from behind to stun him, then bashed him in the face to finish the job. Since he ended up here, they think he was probably killed nearby.”

“Your house is pretty remote,” said Himura. “Depending on where the murder took place, the killer would have any number of more secluded places to hide the body. They could dump him in the woods anywhere around here, and no one would have found it for years. But it was left here, at your house. There had to be a reason.”

“Himura, I don’t know what you’re suggesting, but I have no idea why he ended up here.”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m simply assembling all the facts in order to determine how they fit together. You asked for my help. If you don’t want that—”

“No. I’m sorry. Go on.”

“Describe how you discovered the body.”

I kept reading to Maki while straining to follow Amano’s story.

“I knew I had a well in the backyard. That’s how this house originally got its water. But I don’t know when it was last used. But because I have a little girl, I figured an open well is dangerous, so I was going to put a cover over it for safety. Maki knows not to go near it, but I wanted to be cautious. I got some old canvas and some tools and went out there. I was curious what it looked like. I’d never seen the bottom of a well before. But it was cloudy that day, so there wasn’t enough light to see anything. I ran back to the house for a flashlight. Then . . .”

He stopped midsentence and glanced at his daughter.

Read the exciting conclusion in this month’s issue on sale now!

Copyright © 2024 The Tragedy Of Black Swan Lodge by Alice Arisugawa