The Master Key

PART SIX Three months before the building was moved

That morning, as was her unvaried custom, Yoneko Kimura left her room at precisely ten-thirty, holding a letter and fifty yen in cash.

When she had first retired from her post as a teacher of the Japanese language at the Takebayashi Girls’ School, she hadn’t known what to do with the time which suddenly hung so heavily on her hands. After a while, she began to devise ways of occupying herself.

At first, she used to go out at eight-thirty am, just as in the old days of her employment, and stroll to Ikebukuro. Once there, she would visit the cinema at the specially reduced price for the morning show and then wander around one or other of the department stores. This certainly killed time, but after a short while she had to give up this routine for two reasons.

First of all, it cost money—more than she could really afford. She had to pay to go into the cinema, and after window-shopping in the department store she would buy some hot sweet drink or other to restore her energy, or to prevent her throat from drying. (In reality, she was really fond of such drinks, and so these pretexts were rationalisation.)

Then in addition, mixing with the busy crowds brought home to her more than ever her real sense of loneliness. It even seemed better to stay in her little concrete cell of a room, contemplating whatever the future might have in store for her, and for a while she tried that. At least she could give her imagination free rein, and at least it was better than sitting on the department store benches by the urns where green tea was served free, and where she suffered the pangs of looking about her at the other old women of her age who also gathered in such places.

After confining herself to her room for a month, she became listless and lost her appetite, and so took to going out again just for the sake of the exercise. This time, she went in the opposite direction from Ikebukuro. She felt like a convalescent after a long illness, viewing the outside world with a fresh vision. Every few hundred yards along the way there was a red postbox; these became landmarks of her daily voyage, identifying for her the distance she had gone and how far she still had to go. And so it came about that day after day she would, almost subconsciously, take in the presence of the postboxes… until one day a thought suddenly struck her.

After all, postboxes were not just set up along the road as landmarks or as milestones. Why shouldn’t she use them for their proper purpose? Why not write letters to people?

Going back to her room, she opened her closet and got out the old graduation magazines from her former school. They made a heavy pile on her desk.

Her former pupils were almost too numerous to count. She determined to write to each in turn, one per day, starting with the earliest ones and working through them in alphabetical order. It wouldn’t matter if she got no replies.

And in that instant of decision, the purposeless emptiness of her recent existence fell away and she felt a deep sense of satisfaction as she thought of the task which would occupy the hours and days ahead.

Thenceforth, not a day passed but she wrote a letter to one of her former pupils. Generally, she wrote in the evening, spending about four and a half hours on the task. When the letter was complete, she would fold it carefully and put it in the addressed envelope, but she would not stamp it. She would leave it on her desk and go to bed. She got a particular satisfaction from once again employing the skills of her former profession, taking the due care in composition to be expected of a teacher of Japanese.

When she got up the next morning, she never re-read the letter. She would instead open the graduation list and underline the name of her latest addressee in red ink, and number it in sequence. This businesslike procedure gave her the satisfaction and security of routine. Then she would set out on her morning walk. She would stop at the small tobacconist at Otsuka Nakamachi and buy twenty Shinsei cigarettes and a ten-yen stamp. She would then stamp the letter and post it in a different box every day; the box, too, was predetermined according to the order of its position along her route. As for the rest of her day, it was spent in her room, so that her life was structured by the actions of writing and posting her daily letters. Her mind was concentrated, each new day, upon the former pupil to whom she was writing. First she would repeat the name of the girl over and over again until the image of her arose in her mind like a bubble of gas long trapped at the bottom of a swamp. At that instant, she could once more see her correspondent as she had been all those years ago, and remember everything about her clearly in her mind.

For instance, she would recollect how Miss A would freeze to attention, standing to one side, whenever Miss Kimura passed her in the school corridor. Or there was her memory of Miss B, one of her favourite pupils, whom she had caught skylarking with a junior girl on the station platform. The girl had been so embarrassed that she had hidden herself in the Station Master’s office! To her, such memories were full of poignant interest.

This was not, however, necessarily the reaction of the recipients of her letters, now mature women, who were thus abruptly brought face to face with memories of their youthful immaturity. Not all of them found Miss Kimura’s recollections as welcome as she would have wished. These spectres of their past were suddenly produced, as if on film, before their very eyes, and most of the recipients found her letters distasteful or even shocking and did not vouchsafe replies.

A few, however, found the experience of value in helping them reflect on their personalities past and present. All of them had the same points in common; like their former teacher, they were living alone and were suffering from a feeling of spiritual oppression. For all of them, the prospects ahead seemed dark or non-existent, and only the past had any real meaning or comfort. Like her, they led secret lives apart from the real world.

When she had written exactly seven hundred such letters, the lot fell upon one Keiko Kawauchi (b. 1930). Yoneko Kimura had been her class teacher for the two years preceding graduation—and those were the two years immediately following Japan’s wartime defeat, when society was in a turmoil and all the old values were being questioned. Naturally, the former educational system was also being reviewed and revised at the same time.

The older teachers like Yoneko found some of the educational reforms that were being imposed on Japan by the Occupation Forces very hard to stomach. Until the textbooks could be reprinted, they had to go through them inking out passages reflecting militaristic or nationalistic thinking. Also, they had to reduce in number, and sometimes simplify in form, the Chinese characters they had been accustomed to teach in the past. The students soon sensed the uncertainty of their teachers who had for so long reigned inviolate from their raised dais, to whom the new word ‘Liberty’, with its effects overflowing into the classroom, began to assume repulsive connotations. Yoneko made just one attempt to recover her former dignity and state, and that had concerned Keiko Kawauchi. Most of the girls came to school in black cotton stockings. Some of the girls didn’t have them, but most of the girls in the senior classes, the nubile ones, wore their uniform and black cotton stockings even though it was still a time of shortages and drab clothes in Japan. There was just one girl who was different—Keiko, who wore nylon stockings to school. Later on she had her imitators, but she was the first, and such clothes could only be obtained at great price through the black market. Seeing Keiko’s shapely legs glittering in the smooth nylons, Yoneko’s rage boiled up and overflowed. What angered her even more was the unladylike way in which Keiko sat with one thigh crossed over the other, as if to show off her legs and her stockings—such conduct in a young Japanese girl had been unthinkable before the coming of the Occupation Forces. Looking back on the incident, Yoneko now wondered why she had worked herself up so much over a trivial detail, but at that time it had seemed a matter of great moment.

In fact, those nylon stockings were like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, and Yoneko’s outburst of wrath merely reflected her deep dissatisfaction with the changes going on around her. Here was a threat, it seemed to her, to the whole structure of Japanese womanliness and morality, and it had to be faced head on. In stern tones, she rebuked the girl in front of the rest of the class, making it quite clear that nylon stockings were forbidden at school.

She had expected Keiko, after such public humiliation, to stay away from school for a day or two. In fact, she had herself begun to regret her over-reaction. But to the contrary, Keiko showed up at school the next day—still wearing nylon stockings. There were several other girls who, like Keiko, came from families which were prospering illicitly or indecently amidst the general ruin of the country, and these were the first to imitate her example. After a short while, all the girls in the class followed suit, until nylon stockings more or less became the fashion with school uniform. Yoneko came to realise that she no longer possessed the power to influence these adolescents of the postwar era, and accepted her defeat for want of any other course of action. The question was raised once at a teachers’ conference, together with the new trend of schoolgirls growing their hair long, a thing formerly forbidden. All the teachers had to accept that their authority was diminished and that there was nothing to be done about such issues.

Keiko had graduated whilst the resentment of this incident still lay coiled in Yoneko’s breast. Before her graduation, the school rustled with rumours that her elder sister had become a prostitute serving the needs of the US troops, but Keiko displayed no reaction whatever.

Yoneko’s subsequent detailed knowledge of Keiko’s career was based on the newspaper articles she had read at the time of the famous kidnapping incident seven years before. After leaving school, Keiko had gone to work in the Ginza PX, and within six months had married an American officer some fifteen years older than herself. At the time, Yoneko had felt that an evil fate seemed to dog Keiko, and that she was herself in part responsible. Subsequently, she had heard from one of the other girls that Keiko’s venture into international marriage had failed, but she had no idea of her current whereabouts.

In her letter to Keiko, Yoneko made no reference to the kidnapping incident, but merely enquired after her present circumstances. She then touched lightly on the affair of the nylon stockings, and addressed the letter to Keiko’s family home. She did not expect to get a reply—it would be another of those letters which were returned to her from time to time marked ‘Gone away. Return to sender.’

But she received a reply very shortly afterwards. After her divorce, Keiko had gone back to her parents’ home. She wrote about her school memories, and then went on as follows:

It would not be going too far to say that this letter altered the whole course of the rest of Yoneko Kimura’s life. She had written several hundred rather meaningless letters to her former pupils just to pass the time; now at last one of them was to bear dramatic fruit.

Although they lived in the same building, they were on different floors, so Yoneko knew very little about Chikako Ueda. She had passed her in the hallway a few times, that was all.

She spent the next week collecting information on her quarry, discreetly questioning her neighbours and the receptionists. The following facts emerged:

All of which being so, Yoneko realised that no purpose would be served by approaching Chikako direct. Not that this would have been easy, as Chikako’s whole course of behaviour and way of life seemed to be contrived in order to avoid meeting or talking with anyone. It did indeed seem as if she had something to hide.

Yoneko decided to keep Chikako under close observation for a time before proceeding further. She wrote back to Keiko, telling her of what she had learned and asking her former pupil to leave the matter entirely in her hands. She said that she would share with her the grief and pain that Keiko had suffered. This was all very well, but of course she had absolutely no idea of what she might be called upon to do when the time came. For the time being, all she could do was to try and get a peep inside Chikako’s room.

She continued her practice of writing one letter a day to her former students, but with less enthusiasm than before. On her way out to post them every morning, she would glance at the master key and secretly envy the receptionist within whose power it lay to enter every room in the block.

It was essential that she should get her hands on that key.

A few days later, Yoneko was to be found at the bottom of the stairway, peering down through the receptionist’s hatch. Miss Tojo was on duty; as usual, she was sitting with her head lowered as if concentrating on some book or document on the desk. But more to the point, the master key, readily identifiable from its red ribbon and large wooden tag, was also on the desk. This was in accordance with a resolution passed by the residents’ association shortly after the Suwa Yatabe incident.

Yoneko went up to the receptionist’s window. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but could I just have a look at the fourth-floor gas bills for last month?’ she asked. (She had just taken up a three-month spell of duty as committee member for the fourth floor.)

‘Miss Suzuki is complaining that her bill was too high last month. She says her meter must have been misread. She’s not the kind to take no for an answer, so if you don’t mind…’ she explained.

‘No trouble at all. After all, it’s my job—I’ll certainly go and have a look.’ Miss Tojo got up and went to the back of the room and began to rummage in the filing cabinet. The master key lay within reach of Yoneko’s hand. Could she make the switch now, she wondered. She stretched her hand through the window.’

Two days earlier, she had been listening outside Chikako’s door on the fifth floor when Miss Tojo had suddenly appeared. As Chikako’s room was second from the far end of the corridor, Yoneko had nowhere to hide. She started to try and cover up her unwarranted presence there by asking Miss Tojo who was the fifth-floor committee representative, but she need not have worried. As luck would have it, Miss Tojo was holding the master key and in search of a witness before she used it. The rule was that the witness should either be from a neighbouring room or a committee member. So, far from being curious as to why Yoneko was on the fifth floor, she was delighted to find her there. It so happened that Miss Haru Santo, who occupied the room next to Chikako’s, had telephoned to say that she had left her electric stove on. They let themselves in, and indeed found the stove on and the kettle boiled nearly dry.

‘It’s not particularly the fire risk that worried her—after all, there’s not much danger of that. No, it was the fear of incurring a high electricity bill that got her. She pretends to earn her living teaching Japanese to foreigners, but we know better than that, don’t we!’ Miss Tojo switched the stove off as she spoke.

Yoneko understood the implications of her last remark. Some while back, one of the other residents had visited one of the main Tokyo cinemas and, going to the toilet, had been surprised to find that the cleaner there bore a striking resemblance to Miss Santo. But the cleaner had made good her escape before any words could be exchanged.

Yoneko knew little more about Miss Santo apart from the fact that she had snow-white hair and was a fervent adherent of a new spiritualist sect called the ‘Sanreikyo’.[1] Perhaps her unusually white hair owed something to her fanaticism; at all events, she was a slightly creepy little old woman.

There was a small altar by the black curtain festooned with weird talismans; on top of it, there was a religious offering of rice wine. The whole room reeked of incense. All in all, it fully resembled what one would imagine the apartment of a devotee of a new religion to be like, and the fact that such a mundane reason as an electric stove had led her there caused Yoneko to find her surroundings even more strange.

‘But I’m glad people phone me without embarrassment when such things occur,’ said Miss Tojo, as she locked the door. ‘Since that fire in Miss Ishiyama’s room, it’s just as well to take full precautions.’

‘Yes—and it’s just as well you have a master key. What a convenient thing that is! You can get into anyone’s room…’ Yoneko replied vacuously, but the power of the master key had begun to obsess her.

‘Not just convenient; it’s a disaster if it gets mislaid. Just think of that recent incident where we found it still in the lock on the inside of Miss Yatabe’s room! We still haven’t got to the bottom of that one, but what a peculiar set of circumstances that was! We took every care, but it still vanished. You know, the builders of this place were ahead of their time. Just think how long it would take if there were no master key, and if we had to search through a hundred and fifty keys every time there was a problem like this! It showed real imagination to make one key to fit all the locks. Look, I’ll show you how it differs from all the other keys—do you see this groove here, at the tip?’

And she went prattling on about how this building had been the first in Japan to employ such a master key. And how essential a thing this had been at the time for an apartment block reserved solely for the use of unmarried young women.

Yoneko Kimura spent that evening considering how she could get her hands on that master key, which could solve her problem. Eventually she came up with a plan.

Since the key spent the daytime under the nose of the receptionist, and the nights in a locker, the only apparent way to get hold of it was to break into the office at night and steal it from the locker. But this would involve forcing two locks, which was beyond her power. So if it had to be stolen by daytime, one would have to remove it by force, which she also had to rule out. There remained the possibility of explaining the whole thing frankly to the receptionist and asking for the loan of the key. Nonetheless, however correct her motivation, the receptionist would almost certainly abide by the rules and refer the matter to the residents’ committee for a decision. The request would almost certainly be rejected on the grounds of protection of privacy.

And so there was only one way left—sleight of hand. When the master key had been used to enter Miss Santo’s room, Yoneko had for the first time got a close look at it. Apart from a slight difference of patina, it hardly seemed any different from all the individual keys, including her own, used about the building. What distinguished it from the others was the wooden tag tied to it with a red ribbon.

Yoneko got out her own key and looked at it. It seemed to differ in no noticeable way from the master key. If it had a red ribbon and a wooden tag, it would look just like the master key. The red ribbon would present no problem, but forging the wooden tag and the writing on it might prove more hard. It would take some time to age a new piece of wood with sweat and grime. But then she noticed that the keys to the lavatory broom cupboards had an identical wooden tag—and this key was always left in the door of the cupboard where anyone could get at it! So she quietly removed the tag and the ribbon of the second-floor lavatory cupboard one day and soiled the ribbon until it looked just like that on the master key. She then tied the tag to her own room key.

Her plan was somehow to distract the receptionist’s attention and switch the master key with her own key on the lavatory tag, with the writing face down. If the exchange was not noticed right away by the receptionist, she should be able to effect her purpose. For when the switch finally came to light, even if she was accused of it she could deny all knowledge of the matter. What mattered was to get hold of the key and investigate Chikako Ueda’s room; once that was accomplished, she could pretend that her room key had been swapped at some stage without her knowledge, probably by the very person who had stolen the master key before.

And now that key lay within her reach. She stealthily moved her hand towards it; suddenly, without warning, Miss Tojo turned around.

‘Is it in that drawer, do you think?’ said Yoneko, lifting her hand quickly off the desk and pointing it at the cabinet behind Miss Tojo. Her voice faltered under the stress.

‘The receipts should be in the same drawer as the daily reports, but there are so many documents in there…’ Miss Tojo peered confusedly at the open drawer.

‘Maybe I could help?’

‘Oh, please do. Please come in.’

That was just the reply Yoneko was hoping for. Now she could get behind the counter, which would considerably increase her chance of making the exchange. She went through the office door for the very first time in her life; the room, she noticed, was very tidy. A book lay opened face down on the swivel chair behind the desk; Miss Tojo had indeed been reading whilst pretending to be busily engaged in her work. Yoneko herself loved reading, and felt a sudden affinity for Miss Tojo. She tried to catch a glance of the book’s title, but it was concealed behind a plain brown wrapper.

‘It’s certainly somewhere in this drawer.’ Just at that moment, the office phone rang.

‘I’ll just take that call while you have a look.’ Miss Tojo pulled out the drawer and carried it bodily to the office desk and put it down just by the master key. She then went to answer the phone, leaving Yoneko to leaf through the piles of receipts. She soon came upon the receipt she was seeking, but pretended not to have found it.

‘Hold on a moment please,’ said Miss Tojo to the caller. ‘I’ll just go and check—you did say Miss Munekata on the second floor, didn’t you?’

Miss Tojo put down the receiver and, pausing only to glance for a second at the book, the master key and the files, hurried out of the office. What a heaven-sent chance, thought Yoneko, as she fished into her blouse pocket and brought out the tag with her own room key on it. She placed it beside the master key and compared the two carefully. The ribbon was a little fresher-looking, but the keys themselves appeared without close examination to be identical. It didn’t seem as if the exchange would be noticed.

She was just about to slip the genuine master key into her pocket when it suddenly occurred to her that she might switch the wooden labels. She had no idea if she had time to undo the ribbons and retie them, but if she could succeed in doing so, it would be quite some time before the exchange would be detected.

She decided to take the risk, and set to work on the ribbon of the real master key. The knot was a little tight, but by using her fingernails she soon had it undone. So far, so good; her hands were hardly even trembling.

But the knot she had tied on her own room key a day or two before was a different matter. She kept counselling herself not to panic, but it seemed as if the knot could not be undone. Just as she was about to give up and leave the key on the desk as she had originally planned, the knot loosened, and so she decided to carry on after all. She began to attach the tag to her own room key.

She heard footsteps on the stairs before she was half done; it was bound to be Miss Tojo making her way back. She slipped the key and tag into the drawer and pretended to be riffling through the receipts. Her hands began to shake, but after two or more attempts she managed to thread the ribbon through the head of the key.

The footsteps stopped outside the door, which then opened, and Miss Tojo came back in. Yoneko felt she could sense the receptionist’s gaze, even though her back was turned to her. She still had to fasten the ribbon; if she could quickly thread it through the key once more, that would do. She held the receipts in her right hand whilst her left hand worked on the key lying in the drawer. Using her thumb and index finger, she got the ribbon through the hole. One knot more, and it could not possibly work loose. Miss Tojo went to the telephone receiver just by Yoneko.

‘Hullo! Miss Munekata is a little busy and so cannot take your call. I’m sorry, but she says she’ll call you back.’

She turned to Yoneko. ‘“Inconvenient”, she says. Everything’s always inconvenient to Miss Munekata. I suppose she doesn’t worry about other people’s convenience.’

She was obviously annoyed at being put out for nothing. ‘Ah! I’ve found it at last,’ said Yoneko. ‘I’ll just take the drawer back over there.’

She picked the drawer up, and then let it fall with a crash to the ground. It landed face down, and all the receipts and documents were scattered over the floor. Miss Tojo got on her knees and began to pick them up again. Under cover of this distraction, Yoneko was able to put the key on the desk.

‘Oh! I’m so sorry! How silly of me!’ Whilst saying this, Yoneko picked up the book which was lying face down on the chair and glanced at the title. Words from the Spirit World—it meant nothing to her.

Miss Tojo turned round and saw what Yoneko was doing. Her features clouded with suspicion, and she quickly glanced over to where the master key, or, rather, its substitute, was lying on the desk.

Yoneko had no idea what the receptionist must be thinking. She felt embarrassed, and after making a few hasty apologies, withdrew without bothering to take that so important gas bill with her.

It was some days later, when Miss Munekata gassed herself, that the master key was discovered to have been switched. As this was just the latest such event, the receptionists (neither wishing to take any blame) professed total ignorance of how it had come about. Such, at least, was Yoneko’s interpretation of their silence.

About a week after Yoneko Kimura took the master key, a meeting of the residents’ committee was called. The loss of the key was high on the agenda.

During those seven days, Yoneko had been awaiting her chance to get into Chikako Ueda’s room but, just as normal, Chikako never seemed to go out at all. It appeared that the one exception to this rule was her weekly expedition to the grocer’s, where she would stock up with tinned foods and other durables. How she passed the remainder of her time alone in her room remained a mystery.

It had seemed unlikely that there would be any call for the master key to be used in that short period and so its loss would not have been discovered but for the accident on the second floor. A strong smell of gas was detected outside Miss Munekata’s room, and in the ensuing confusion the theft became known. Now Yoneko could only wait and let matters take their own course.

It appeared that Miss Munekata had gone to sleep leaving the gas stove on, and somehow the flame had been extinguished. One of her neighbours had got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, and had noticed the smell of gas exuding from the fanlight window above Toyoko Munekata’s room. It was fortunate that the discovery was made so early, thus avoiding a fatal accident.

Miss Kimura was aroused from her bed in the front office and, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, tried repeatedly to open Miss Munekata’s door with the master key. Needless to say, it did not work, but it took some time for Miss Kimura to realise that this was not due to some failure on her own part, and she spent several minutes reinserting the key in the lock and rattling it to and fro. At last she gave up, and the fire brigade was called. An ambulance with two acrobatic firemen on board arrived in a twinkling; one of them climbed onto a chair and squirmed through the fanlight until he could reach and remove the key from the lock inside. They got into Toyoko Munekata’s room and removed her unconscious body into the open air. She was still breathing faintly and so her life was saved.

If that had been all there was to it, there need have been no further repercussions. However, when they opened the window to air the room, a strong breeze blew in, disturbing the papers on the desk and eventually scattering them all over the place.

The residents had heard how precious the manuscript was, and so several of them entered the room and hastily retrieved the scattered papers. As they did so, they could not help noticing the peculiar mathematical formulae and symbols—triangles, circles, and childish doodles, and even obscene phrases—which made up the text. Rumours swiftly spread around the apartment block, to the effect that Toyoko’s great work was no more than a sham, and that she was touched in the head.

When Yoneko heard this, she was horrified to think that her theft of the master key had nearly brought about the death of a fellow resident. Furthermore, her action had indirectly led to Toyoko Munekata becoming a laughing stock, so that her continued occupancy of the apartment block was imperilled. She felt that Toyoko’s daily labours on the manuscripts of her dead husband were similar in many ways to her own daily letters to her former pupils. And so she could not bring herself to join the chorus of scorn directed towards Toyoko.

‘Just think of it,’ said her fellow committee member. ‘All circles and triangles and crosses.’ She was a school teacher, and had long been resentful of Toyoko’s superior manner. ‘She told us that unlike us she was engaged on a real work of scholarship! Well, that wind certainly showed her up.’

‘But we can’t imagine that her late husband’s research consisted only of such things,’ interrupted Yoneko, springing to Toyoko’s defence. ‘I can’t pretend to be an authority on higher mathematics, but I have heard that once you get to the philosophical level things are not as simple as they appear. I once read somewhere that to a mathematician a circle, or a wheel, say, is not perfectly round at all but is made up of an infinite number of angles.’ She was echoing the thesis she had heard from an enthusiastic young mathematician years ago in the school common room.

‘That’s true,’ agreed the first-floor representative, who worked in a museum. ‘My late husband was a professor of classical Greek. He used to write down all sorts of words and compose vocabularies in those funny letters; it looked more like a childish game than the work of a grown man.’

The committee was assembled for a meeting in the drawing room on the first floor. This room was rarely used and was in consequence dusty and had a mouldy smell. They sat around a large table, on top of which was placed a kettle, teacups and small cakes wrapped in cellophane.

The meeting had been called for six. It was now ten past, but the chairman had not yet arrived. She was a highly skilled and very experienced shorthand secretary who worked at the local council, taking the minutes, and was one of the most highly paid residents in the building. She was very public-spirited, and had served as chairman of the residents’ representative committee without a break for the last five years. The system was that one representative was elected for each floor for a full term of one year, and a further representative was elected for a term of three months. The chairman was also specially elected once a year, making a total of eleven members on the committee. However, at most meetings four or five members would be absent on other business, so the average attendance was about five or six plus the chairman.

The agenda for this specially called meeting consisted of two items, one of them being the perennial problem of cat messes. But the second topic was of much greater interest, and so there was an unusually high attendance, only two of the members being unable to come.

The item of particular concern was the planned movement of the whole building, which had been announced some six months before. Work was due to begin in just one more week.

The door swung open with a crash and a stout female figure came in cautiously as if expecting to find the space too narrow to squeeze through. It was the chairman, Miss Yoko Tanikawa; she was wearing a jacket of masculine cut and had a briefcase under her arm.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting! I had to clarify a few lastminute points about the move, which is on the agenda.’

She sat down at the head of the table and opened her case, producing various documents which she placed in orderly piles on the table.

‘Well, as you all know, they’ll get started on the move from next week. However, there are just one or two problems which need to be kept in mind. For instance, there’s the noise, which will be pretty troublesome. Then there’ll be all the dust—they’re digging out all the foundations, you see. However, taking the broad view, let us not forget that this is being done for the public good. It’s all part of the overall city plan for road-widening, and it is incumbent on all of us to cooperate and to put up with the inconvenience. However, there are limits—just because it is necessary to move the building does not in my view mean that we have to put up with workmen wandering in and out and disturbing our privacy. I would remind you all of how insecure we feel now that the master key has once more vanished. These apartments were founded with the intention of preserving the modesty and so enhancing the status of working women. That one little key was the guarantor of these aims, but in the wrong hands it becomes a threat. In such circumstances, locked doors lose their meaning!’

She sighed deeply, and then went on to say that the loss of the master key would be discussed in greater detail later on in the meeting. Before that, it would be necessary to determine what conditions should be applied to the construction workers during the course of the work. When she had finished talking, she passed the cakes and tea around the table.

‘Well, surely if it’s to do with the construction, we will just have to put up with people coming in and out, won’t we?’ The speaker was the representative of the third floor, who had recently received a commendation for her long services at the tourist company where she worked.

‘I couldn’t disagree more! That way, we’ll have every Tom, Dick and Harry coming and going as they please. If you ask me, everything’s getting too lax, and we should take a firm stand somewhere, and the sooner the better. Nowadays, we’re too soft on a lot of things, from the upbringing of the young to such matters as letting people keep cats, which leave insanitary droppings all over the corridors. That’s one thing I don’t intend to put up with any more round here. And if that wasn’t enough, we now have a peculiar man being allowed to come and go at will on the pretext that he is a missionary for one of these new-fangled religions!’

This angry outburst came from the full representative of the second floor, who had lately been promoted to section chief, the first woman in the history of her company to achieve such a rank. The alternate member for the first floor, Tomiko Iyoda, who was sitting on Yoneko Kimura’s right, bridled visibly during this speech and sprang to her feet when it was over. Not only was it her cat to which reference had been made, but she was also the recruiting member for the Three Spirit Faith which had been obliquely criticised.

‘Take that back at once! How dare you refer to His Reverence in that way—a peculiar man indeed! And as if that wasn’t enough, you attack me through my little cat as well! I’ll have you know that I always clear up any mess he makes.’ She then lowered her voice a key and went on: ‘I will ignore your lies about my cat, but let me warn you that divine retribution invariably awaits those who slander His Reverence!’ She wanted to go on, but her neighbour, the full representative for the first floor, tugged her by the sleeve. Tomiko Iyoda was thus forced to sit down, but for a while she continued to glare angrily at her opponent, mouthing voiceless imprecations the while.

Miss Tanikawa, the chairman, behaved as if nothing had happened, calling on the next speaker, the member of the fifth floor, who was an employee of the local welfare office.

‘While the move is being effected, it will be necessary to disconnect such public utilities as the gas, the electricity and the water. Also, the whole programme will only take a relatively short time. I therefore think it both pointless and impossible absolutely to forbid the workmen to come and go as necessary. In any case, there are no grounds for classifying all the workmen as criminals or in any other way bad. If, when the time comes, anyone is worried they can go straight to the ladies at the reception desk and report any suspicious circumstances.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said someone else, ‘but you know what men are like. Before you know what’s happening, they’ll be forcing their way into our rooms asking for a cup of tea or something!’

After some further debate, it seemed to be the general consensus that the workmen should be trusted and not all regarded as potential thieves or worse. However, each member of the committee would take it in turn to patrol the building during the period of the work. Miss Tanikawa summed up with a humorous suggestion. ‘We’ll have an armband made with “Security Patrol” in big bright letters. It will serve as a kind of PR, and it mightn’t be a bad idea if the duty member carries a night-stick as well.’

The harmonious atmosphere thus created was soon destroyed by the member for the second floor, who returned to her earlier topic.

‘Madam Chair. I must raise an emergency item which is not on the agenda. I refer of course to the menace posed by those who have recently been pestering and pressurising our fellow residents with their campaign on behalf of a new religion. As Madam Chair so rightly remarked earlier, the prime objective of these apartments is to protect the privacy of the individual residents. I am absolutely opposed to those who force their way into other people’s rooms, like foot-in-the-door salesmen, in the name of religion. I want it stopped; several of my constituents on the second floor have already complained to me about it. I propose that the most stringent measures be taken to stamp out this practice.’

‘And who do you think you are to make such suggestions! I’ll have you know that religious freedom is protected under the constitution. The Three Spirit Faith never pressures anyone. Who are they who complain of being pestered? Let’s have their names, one by one!’

‘I don’t see why I should give you all their names. But as an example, we had the recent unfortunate incident when Miss Munekata nearly lost her life through gas poisoning. Now the word is going around that this was a so-called divine retribution visited on her for refusing to join your sect.’

‘She was punished by Heaven for slandering His Reverence. She came to the last public meeting and dared to confute His Reverence point by point on his exposition. She made him seem foolish in the eyes of the unbelievers, so His Reverence prophesied at that very time that ill would befall those who close their hearts to the True Teaching. What has occurred is no more than the fulfilment of his prophecy.’

‘Oh really—how very interesting. You say that the prophecy was followed by heavenly punishment, but it looks to me as if some mortal was responsible for this socalled divine retribution! It’s the first I’ve heard of a gas stove falling over and the fire going out. I don’t see how that could happen naturally—if you ask me, there was more to it than met the eye. Could it not be that someone switched off the gas at the stop-cock outside the room and then turned it on again?’

This was certainly possible, for as the member for the second floor had remarked, every apartment had its own separate gas meter and stop-cock outside, and it would be a simple matter for someone malicious to do as she had suggested. Indeed, Yoneko had entertained the same suspicion from the moment she had first heard of the incident. She wondered what the representative of the Three Spirit Faith would have to say to this insinuation.

The alternate member from the first floor sprang to her feet at once, but was for a few seconds too dumbfounded to reply. After spluttering with anger for a while, she began:

‘What possible evidence have you for such allegations? Don’t you know that the fire brigade made a thorough investigation and concluded that the kettle boiled over and put out the flame? Are you now implying that the Three Spirit Faith planned the whole thing? If so, I can promise you a writ for slander in no time at all!’

As she worked herself up into a passion, the speaker’s lips became flecked with foam, and a small globule of spittle landed on the table just in front of Yoneko.

The member for the second floor refused to admit defeat. ‘You don’t really mean to suggest that the gas was on so low that a little water from the kettle could put it out? If so, how could the kettle boil over?’

The atmosphere of the meeting was poisoned by further such debate, after which a vote was called on whether or not religious proselytising would be permitted in the building. After everyone had had their say, it appeared that the member for the second floor had four votes, as against two for the representative of the Three Spirit Faith, with one probable abstainer, and so Yoneko Kimura’s vote looked like being decisive. If she supported the motion, it would achieve an absolute majority and be passed, but if she opposed it the proposal would be shelved.

She gazed at the voting slip which lay before her, trying to make up her mind what to do. The regular members had cast their votes and folded the papers with practised speed. Just as she was about to set her pen to the paper, she became aware of the intent gaze of the woman from the Three Spirit Faith, who was staring at her hands as if seeking to hypnotise her. And so it was, perhaps, that she cast a negative vote causing the resolution to fail.

It was already past eight pm, but before they could bring the meeting to a close it was necessary to discuss the latest incident involving the master key. Chairman Tanikawa gazed around the table and addressed the group.

‘I think you will all have shared my disgust at learning that the master key disappeared under the very noses of the receptionists. It was bad enough when it happened the first time—you will all know of the incident last month when it was used to gain entry into Miss Yatabe’s room. It’s not good enough for the receptionists merely to express astonishment—I would like to see them at least display concern that such a thing can happen. One would expect a greater show of responsibility, would one not? But so soon after the first incident had brought home to us all the importance of the master key, it vanished again. I ask you, ladies, what next? How could they have failed to notice that the key had been switched? All the excuse they could find was to say that some supernatural agency was at work! Disgraceful, I call it, quite disgraceful!

‘However, there’s no point in shutting the stable door after the horse has gone. Let us rather resolve to identify and weed out the mischief-maker in our midst. I would like the cooperation of each one of you in finding out where the master key has gone.’

She held up something for everyone to see. ‘This is the key which was exchanged for the master key. If you examine it closely, you will see it is exactly like a typical apartment key from this building. I suggest that we concentrate on identifying the owner—how about it?’

‘Well, it certainly looks like an apartment key, but what do you suggest we do?’ asked one of the committee.

‘We could just ask every person in the building to show us her key. However, a large number of people would be involved, and the whole thing would smack of a police investigation, which would not be nice. So I propose instead that we take it in turns to try this key in every door until we find which lock it fits. When we find out who it belongs to, we’ll ask her for a satisfactory explanation.’

Yoneko sat frozen in her seat. She listened in a daze to the even voice of the representative of the fifth floor as she asked the next question. ‘That’s all very well, but surely it is likely to fit several doors?’

This left Miss Tanikawa nonplussed for a moment or two.

‘Yes, well, um… Yes, maybe. Anyway, let’s just try it and see. Obviously, if we can think of a better method, we’ll switch to that when the time comes.’

And the chairman’s proposal was passed unanimously.

‘Well, let’s get started first thing tomorrow. Let’s start on the top floor and work our way down in order. Representatives are to be responsible for their own floors. Let’s try and avoid attracting attention to what we’re doing—try each door only after checking that the occupant is out. It could be embarrassing otherwise.’

‘Most people are out at work in the daytime, but what shall we say to those who aren’t?’

‘In that case, you’ll just have to play innocent. Say something like “Isn’t this your key?” and put it in the lock to see. Well, that will do for today—same time and place next week.’

Miss Tanikawa brought the meeting to a close as quickly as possible before anyone else could protract the proceedings with further discussion.

As Yoneko filed out of the room, she found the third-floor representative, the delegate for the Three Spirit Faith, awaiting her in the corridor. That lady approached her and addressed her in an unpleasant tone of voice.

‘The spirit of His Reverence descended upon you, and was within you, forcing you even against your own will to vote on our side.’

And then she went on to urge Yoneko to attend at least one of the sect’s meetings to see for herself the power of which the elder was possessed.

‘He will ease all your sufferings, however great they may be. Of course, he can heal illnesses or discover lost objects if you ask him to. At present, he is fixing his mind on something that Miss Yatabe on the first floor has mislaid. Next week, he will hold a special prayer session, and I’ve no doubt he’ll reveal where it is then. Anyway, won’t you just join us once?’

Yoneko turned her away with a non-committal reply and made her way back to her room. She had more to think of than religious meetings; however interesting they might seem. She was far more concerned about the resolution at the meeting which could lead to the discovery of her possession of the master key.

If everything proceeded according to schedule, the search would reach the fourth floor in two days’ time. On which day a senior floor representative, Taeko Nakagawa, would return from a visit to the country. And when she did, Yoneko would have to accompany her from room to room, trying the key in every door until it became clear that it was her lock in which it fitted, making public her guilt.

Now she deeply regretted the light-hearted attitude which had led her to switch the master key for her own. Why had she been so short-sighted? Looking back on her own stupidity, she could not think what had come over her to act as she had.