The Master Key

PART SEVEN

After supper, the corridors echoed for a while with the sound of people walking up and down, the clatter of dishes and the splash of running water in the communal washplace. Then silence fell upon the building, to occupy it, usually, for the rest of the night.

Sometimes, one would hear the sound of a radio or the muffled tones of someone practising on the trumpet. But these noises also subsided after a little while, until it became so quiet that one could hear the switches, one by one, being turned off for the night.

It was at about eight o’clock two evenings after the committee meeting. A shadowy figure crept stealthily towards Yoneko’s door, moving secretively as if not wishing to be discovered.

Yoneko was in her room, composing her third letter to her former pupil, Keiko Kawauchi. She pored over the paper on her desk, writing carefully in the dim light of her standard lamp.

Having explained how she had purloined the master key in order to get into Chikako Ueda’s room, she went on to describe that day’s events.

At that moment, Yoneko heard a stealthy knock on her door.

‘Who is it?’

There was no reply. Yoneko opened the door a little and peeped out into the dark passage. She could just make out a dim figure standing in the gloom. A voice as chilly and slight as the draught which was flowing into the room whispered:

‘Miss Kimura! His Reverence’s prayer meeting and revelation of lost things will take place at eight-thirty. He has given exceptional permission for you to attend the seance, so I trust you will not let us down, will you? Please come to Miss Iyoda’s room on the first floor at eight-thirty sharp.’

And without waiting for a reply, the ghost-like figure slipped away into the shadows.

The girl who disappeared thus without Yoneko getting a proper look at her was indeed a strange figure. Her child-like body was topped by an adult head; had she but known it, Yoneko’s visitor was none other than the woman nicknamed ‘Thumbelina the Vestal’.

Thumbelina reached a pool of light on the landing, and there silently held up a black notebook. She opened it and placed a mark against the name ‘Yoneko Kimura’ written there in large characters.

Her name did not belie her, for in addition to her petite stature she was, like her namesake, exquisitely beautiful. She was young, and her long black hair shone with camellia oil. It hung in a heavy mass, swinging elegantly as she moved. Perhaps she had applied white makeup to her face and neck in the old-fashioned way; in any case, her skin was unnaturally and beautifully pallid. She was dressed like a priestess from a Shinto shrine, in the traditional white coat and loose red trousers.

Having closed the notebook, she looked at the watch on her wrist. Just about eight! There was something touchingly incongruous about a watch on so tiny and childish a wrist.

She made her way up to the fifth floor and walked straight into the end room as if she was quite accustomed to doing so without knocking. This room belonged to one Haru Santo, and was next to that of Chikako Ueda.

Haru Santo was kneeling in front of her personal shrine. Apart from the candles flickering in its recesses, the room was pitch dark. Her white hair shone eerily in the gloom. The candles seemed to light up every strand as if it was burnished silver wire, making it seem artificial, rather than a natural growth.

Thumbelina the Vestal slipped in beside Haru Santo and prostrated herself thrice before the altar. Then she swivelled around on her knees, placing her beautiful face next to the old woman’s ear, and whispered something for several minutes.

When she left Haru Santo’s room twenty minutes later, it was almost time for the seance to begin. She hurriedly made her way down to the first floor.

That gave Yoneko Kimura her first chance of getting a look at her. Having finished her letter to Keiko Kawauchi, she had been in two minds as to whether to attend the seance or not, but had nevertheless gone downstairs. She had expected to find Miss Tojo at the front desk, but Miss Tamura was on duty. Apparently Miss Tojo had had to go out at short notice, and so had asked her colleague to sit in for her.

‘Well, that key doesn’t fit any of the doors on the fourth or fifth floors. So what’s the betting we’ll find the culprit tomorrow on the third floor?’

Listening to Miss Tamura’s friendly gossip, Yoneko noticed Thumbelina coming down the staircase. It gave her such a start that she could not restrain a gasp. There was something truly weird about the little priestess. Yoneko gave up all thought of attending the seance, and rushed back up the stairs towards her room. But on the landing she bumped into Tomiko Iyoda, a seller of lottery tickets, in whose room the meeting was about to be held. She was leading a small group downstairs.

‘Well, well, Miss Kimura, how nice to see you! Come on down with us. The vestal spoke to you, I think? Good! Well, we’re just about to start.’

And so it came about that Yoneko Kimura attended a seance of the Three Spirit Faith.

All sorts of shoes and sandals were neatly arranged in the little lobby of Miss Iyoda’s room, suggesting the variety and number of their owners crowded inside.

‘Well, I apologise for the state everything is in, but please come inside.’

Tomiko Iyoda, speaking in sweet tones, drew Yoneko and her companions in after her.

There were some six people already sitting on the floor of the tiny room, surrounding a middle-aged man in a double-breasted suit. He had the look of a priest about him, and seemed to be delivering a sermon, which he broke off on the entry of Yoneko and the others.

‘I’m so sorry we kept Your Reverence waiting,’ said Miss Iyoda. She waddled over to the corner and, bending her fat body with evident signs of discomfort, picked up a pile of cushions and handed them around for the new arrivals to sit on. She then took her place next to the priest.

Yoneko sat next to the door, and, peering over the shoulder of the elderly woman in front of her, took in the scene. Miss Iyoda was plainly briefing the priest on the new arrivals; this was obvious, even though she spoke in a low voice. The priest seemed to be a man in his fifties. His angular face was framed by black hair glued down with pomade. He had bright red cheeks, and this sign of cheerful vigour was reinforced by the gusty laughs with which he punctuated his discourse, but once he caught your eye… Yoneko was forced to gaze downwards, so overcome was she by his sharp and questing gaze. It was as if he could read right into the hidden depths of her mind.

Amongst those present, there were some Yoneko knew by sight, but not one with whom she had ever exchanged a word. There were even some present who did not live in the building. They were all in their forties or fifties, and without exception their faces were those of people defeated by life.

‘Your Reverence, all is now ready. Pray begin when you wish.’

The low vibrant voice in which this remark was delivered seemed to echo inside Yoneko’s bones. It was the little priestess, the one they called Thumbelina, and as she spoke she fiddled with a small black box. Later, Yoneko realised that it was a tape recorder which was used for recording any words which were said during her trance so that they could be replayed after it was over. His Reverence would then interpret their meaning as necessary. But now he was instructing them on what was to follow:

‘Good evening, ladies. We will shortly establish communication with the spirit world, but first I must warn you about a few dos and don’ts. The world beyond is more terrifying than you can possibly imagine. Every kind of spectral being is to be found there, many of them engaged in endless conflict. However, you are with me, and so long as you do as I say you need entertain no fears. However, should there be any doubting person amongst you, let her be gone! For the presence of such a one can attract the Evil Ones, and draw down upon us their malicious and ferocious power! If such intrude upon our seance, not even I can guarantee that all will go well. But place your faith in me, and nothing untoward will occur!’

He then turned around, and called Miss Yatabe to him. Yoneko observed how, once Miss Yatabe had sat in front of the priest, all the strength seemed to leave her body and throughout the session she seemed to be frozen in terror.

The little medium now proceeded to arrange two candlesticks, one on either side of Suwa Yatabe. She then nodded to Tomiko Iyoda, who lit the candles and then switched off the electric light in her room. Up until now, it had seemed like a meeting of a discussion group, but with the room in total gloom apart from the two flickering candles, the atmosphere now became eerie.

Yoneko sensed a cold breeze on her neck. She looked around, and was just in time to observe the slight form of Haru Santo slipping in through the door. Haru’s hair shone ghostly white in the candlelight as she crept to the cushion beside Yoneko and sat down.

‘Link hands with your neighbours!’ The priest’s voice was full of vibrant power. From Yoneko’s left, a clammy hand reached through the darkness and gripped hers. It was Haru Santo who had thus grasped her. Looking to her right, Yoneko could just make out the features of one of the people who had come at the same time as she had, but a sense of revulsion prevented her from reaching out and taking her hand.

‘Someone is not cooperating. The seance cannot begin until all hands are linked. Do as I say!’

The priest’s voice had become stern and authoritative. Yoneko could not but obey him, unpleasant as it made her feel.

On her left, Haru Santo was chanting the opening lines of a Buddhist Sutra. All around, the others present began to follow suit, until the room reverberated with their nasal tones.

Yoneko began to feel slightly nauseated by the whole proceeding. Someone had lit a bundle of incense sticks, and their powerful scent began to pervade the room.

The priest stood up and spoke.

‘Suwa Yatabe, forasmuch as thou hast besought this seance, come now and prostrate thyself before me so that thy spirit shall pass into my keeping.’

He reached down and placed his hands on Suwa’s head as he spoke.

She began to mumble disjointedly. From time to time, she seemed to be referring to a violin. At last she fell silent, at which point Thumbelina stood up and began to moan and sway and, eventually, raising her hands on high, to dance in a manner suggesting great exhaustion. In the flickering candlelight, there was something magical about the dance, with two white wrists flickering like butterflies in the gloom. Her long black hair swished from side to side, occasionally falling forward so as to totally obscure her face, then parting slightly to reveal a pale forehead.

Haru Santo began to tremble and shudder, and as she was clasping Yoneko’s hand tightly in her clammy grasp, the movement communicated itself to Yoneko’s body.

Suddenly, the medium raised her voice to a piercing scream and fell flat on her face. She lay still, but it seemed to Yoneko that she had begun to foam at the mouth, though it might have just been spittle. Her beautiful features, or what could be seen of them through the strands of black hair that lay across her face, seemed to be contorted with pain. Then her tiny body began to shudder and, grinding her teeth the while, she emitted a strange sound.

‘Hee, Hee, Hee! Hee, Hee, Hee!’

It sounded like an unpleasant laugh slowed down. Yoneko felt most disturbed. All around her, this strange performance was having the identical effect upon the audience, who sat very still and silent and watched dubiously.

‘The seance is now over. Release your hands.’ The voice of the priest echoed sonorously in the dark room.

Yoneko took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her hands. She felt relieved that it was over, and wished that someone would turn on the electric light, but it looked as if this sect preferred to conduct its business by candlelight. Suddenly she could not bear to stay for a second longer, and she rushed to the lobby and struggled into her shoes, expecting to be halted by a command from the priest, but no one paid her any attention. She opened the door and went out. As soon as she breathed the fresh cold air in the corridor, she felt better.

Within, the sect was continuing its meeting, but Yoneko made her way straight back to her room.

What had she in common with the people in that room, with all their talk of prophecies and revelations and the world of spirits?

She sat down by her desk and reached for the list of her former pupils. But all of a sudden she seemed to have lost the will to continue her series of ‘letters from your past’.

Yoneko spent the next two days doing nothing, and hardly daring to leave her room for fear of bumping into Tomiko Iyoda or other members of the Three Spirit Faith. From time to time she overcame her reluctance and went out to have a look at Chikako Ueda’s room on the fifth floor. But she had almost given up hope of making any progress in that direction.

On the third day, she was cooking herself a late breakfast when there was a knock on her door. She opened it to find Tomiko Iyoda outside, her face wreathed in smiles.

‘What a delicious smell. You’re toasting new bread, I suppose!’ And without more ado she kicked off her sandals and stepped into the room. Yoneko followed her, apologising as she went.

‘I do hope you’ll forgive me for leaving so suddenly the other night, after you’d gone to the trouble of asking me. I suddenly felt indisposed.’

There was nothing for it but to offer her unwelcome guest a seat.

‘Not at all, not at all. Don’t mention it. It quite often happens that way to beginners: the unaccustomed contact with the spirit world overcomes them at first.’

And without the slightest reserve she sat down, looking curiously around the room as she did so, and helped herself to a piece of Yoneko’s toast.

‘But I felt you’d like to hear the upshot of the seance—it’s most interesting, I can assure you. Of course, you realise that funny noise—“Hee Hee”—was a voice from the spirit world? It sounded sad to me, but after you’d gone His Reverence played it back over the tape recorder and explained that in the language of the spirit world that particular sound represents the crackling of flames.

‘His Reverence told us that this signified that the missing object had been burned. At which point, Miss Yatabe, the one who’d lost whatever it was—a violin, I suppose—suddenly came out of her trance. Well, that should be enough to convince anybody that our seances are genuine, I feel. But there’s more and better to come! Would you believe it! Today we had absolute proof of the truth of what His Reverence said. And it happened right before our very eyes—yes, I was there, and saw it, too! Look, I wouldn’t have told you this before, but I occasionally had my doubts too, you know. But not any more after this! O how lucky and happy I feel! That’s why I rushed straight here to share the good news with you!’

She paused for a sip of tea, and then straightening her fat body she went on:

‘Well, you know there’s an old brick-built incinerator in the inner courtyard? Yes, well, it’ll have to come down because of the moving of the building, so since this morning the labourers have been raking out the ashes and what do you think they found? A violin case! Who could have put such a thing there? Well, it was badly scorched because although it was deep in the ashes, the heat of the fire had reached it. And the poor violin inside was scorched and warped, and the varnish was blistered. There it was, a worldfamous instrument of which there are hardly any left, all ruined! Well, Miss Tojo from the front desk said that Miss Yatabe would be the one to know about it, and of course she was dead right, because that was the violin which Miss Yatabe had lost, or rather which had been stolen from her that time when someone broke into her room using the master key, do you remember?

‘Poor Miss Yatabe! When she saw the state that violin was in, her knees crumpled and she sat on the floor and cried. For not only was it a famous instrument, but she had received it from her teacher years and years ago. Well, I suppose she shouldn’t be blamed, but in her place my first sentiments would be to wonder at the powers of the spirit world and marvel at how His Reverence has penetrated its hermetic secrets! More than the violin itself, his knowing how it would turn out—that’s what would move me!

‘I mean, that little medium can speak with the tongues of spirits, and of the dead, but there are many who can do that. But His Reverence can understand the language of that world! That is the real miracle if you ask me! It takes the wisdom and experience of someone like him to do that!’

Miss Iyoda seemed to be overcome by her own eloquence. Gradually she calmed down and then took her leave, urging Yoneko to be sure and attend the next seance.

‘Now that this has got about, people are coming from all over the building asking if a seance can be held for them. Miss Ueda from the fifth floor is joining us—Miss Santo, one of our most faithful believers, has persuaded her to come. Miss Santo says we all have a positive duty to persuade our neighbours to come, but you know how it is with neighbours—the closer you live to them, the harder it is to make such approaches.’

And she was off to spread the tidings amongst the believers on the third floor.

The news that Chikako Ueda was to attend the next seance gave Yoneko fresh hope. If she had joined the group, then she must be hoping to find out something by means of a seance. So if Yoneko went on attending, then one day Chikako might ask for a seance, and her secret might be revealed. It would take time, but seemed the best and least risky course of action under the circumstances.

Yoneko had thus all but given up her original plan to use the master key to search Chikako’s room when, as luck would have it, something happened that very evening to make her change her mind again.

Yoneko had been out to the public bathhouse, and was returning just before the front door was to be locked at eleven pm. Passing into the hall, she suddenly noticed something which she had overlooked before.

Just inside the door was a full set of mail boxes, one for each apartment. On the flap of each there was a tag, marked ‘In’ on one side and ‘Out’ on the other, the original purpose having been for residents to change the tag around as they went in or out. Now the paint was faded and on some of them one could no longer read the writing, and so recently people had given up changing the tags when they went out.

Yoneko was looking at the hundred or so boxes and contemplating on how the old practice had died out when she suddenly realised that there was one exception to this rule—Chikako Ueda! Her box read ‘Out’.

At that time she imagined it was just an oversight, but the next day she couldn’t help looking when she went downstairs, and saw that Chikako’s box now read ‘In’.

Unless someone was playing practical jokes—and this seemed unlikely—there was only one solution to the problem: Chikako Ueda, who was said never to leave the building, had gone out last night and deliberately changed her tag around!

From this fact, Yoneko could develop two hypotheses. Firstly, Chikako probably took great pains to switch around her tag when she went in or out. This could not just be from force of habit. Yoneko, who had lived a life of solitude for so long, was nonetheless still a good judge of human nature. She reasoned that at first, in the pride of one’s new room, one would change the tag every time one entered or left, and that this would go on for a day or so, but would wear thin after a week or so and more or less vanish after two months. And after two years of solitude, who on earth would bother with such a little thing?

And so it wasn’t just habit. There had to be a reason, and Yoneko guessed that Chikako was waiting for a visitor.

Her second hypothesis was based on the fact that Chikako only went out just before lock-up time. There had to be a reason for this, too.

She found the answer to this one quite simply. Miss Tamura told her that Chikako would go out once or twice a week to a nearby late-night drapers and obtain her supplies for the embroidery she did in her apartment to keep body and soul together.

‘You know, she’s so worried about someone calling when she’s out that she even leaves her key in the mail box every time she leaves the building! But no one has visited her for years and years. She’s an odd one, that’s for sure,’ confided the receptionist.

When she heard this, Yoneko wished that Miss Tamura had told the story much sooner, although there was no way she could complain about it to her! Perhaps she need never have stolen the master key and undergone the subsequent tribulations. But then, even if Chikako left the key in her mail box, it was right opposite the receptionists’ desk, and so it would have been no easy task to remove it and replace it without being seen.

She resolved once again to use the master key to get inside Chikako’s room.

As far as the master key was concerned, Yoneko could detect no change in Miss Tojo’s attitude towards her since she had switched the keys under her nose, and so presumed that she was not under any suspicion. Also, since the committee had tried the false master key in every door in the building and it had failed to fit even one lock, there was a general presumption that the key had come from outside, and on this vague basis the matter had been allowed to rest. So Yoneko felt that it would now be quite safe for her to use the master key whenever the opportunity presented itself.

She changed her tactics, and no longer went patrolling around Chikako Ueda’s room on the fifth floor. Instead, she made it her habit to pass by the front door between half-past ten and eleven every night and check up on Chikako’s letter box.

Three days later, her plan worked. She went downstairs to find that Chikako’s tag read ‘Out’.

She looked out of the front door. There was no sign of Chikako. Around the building, the earth excavated for the move lay in damp brown piles around the conveyors, and the air smelled of freshly turned soil. It was time to make her visit.

She hurried back into the building. The tag on Chikako’s box was still moving slightly, so she could not have been gone long. Yoneko hurried to her own room on the fourth floor and collected a torch, a pencil and a notepad. She felt quite calm about what she was going to do. Even if someone saw her going into Chikako’s room, she would act as if it was the most natural thing in the world; the last thing she should do would be to look guilty about it. If she behaved like that, then no one would suspect her. She felt quite courageous and resolute as she climbed the staircase.

She passed a woman in a nightdress in the corridor of the fifth floor. The woman was carrying a toothbrush, and disappeared into the communal washplace. Without letting this disturb her, Yoneko went straight to Chikako Ueda’s door and inserted the key in the lock. There was nobody around, and Yoneko felt how easy it had turned out to be. She stepped inside the darkened room, closed the door, switched on the torch and looked at her watch. It was ten-forty pm. That gave her ten minutes, during which she must complete her search of Chikako Ueda’s room. But what should she concentrate her searches on in that short time?

She swung the torch around the room, focussing the beam on the dusty walls. Obviously the first thing to look for would be a diary. On one side of the room there stood a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. She decided to look inside the drawers.

In the middle of the room there was a low table with a linen towel spread over crockery. It looked like a place setting under the towel, and she lifted it up to find that this was indeed the case, but it was not the kind of setting she had expected in this spinster’s room, for the cup was a large one and the chopsticks were of black lacquer and also large. In short, the place was set for a man and not for a woman.

Beside the setting were a few cans of food, a tin opener and a rice tub.

Yoneko felt a cold shiver run down her back. She was inexplicably frightened by this discovery. In order to confirm her suspicions, she opened the rice tub; as she had guessed, it was empty.

When one lives alone, one gets into the habit of talking to oneself. This gives the illusion that one has a companion, and so helps overcome the feeling of solitude. What Yoneko had now discovered seemed to be more or less the same thing. Chikako Ueda, by making a little ritual of setting out dinner for a visitor every night, was fighting her loneliness. But a meaningless ritual would not have this effect—it had to have some basis of fact upon which the fantasy could be built. Some years before, Chikako must have prepared supper for a man who had gone out and never come back. There could be no other rational explanation and Yoneko was convinced that she had discovered something of import.

Next, she tried the smallest drawers in the chest. One was locked and she did not waste precious time trying to open it. The other was full of old receipts and nothing else.

She went towards the window, where there was a writing desk and a bookcase. She let the torch beam play over the book shelves, but from reading the spines of the books it was clear that they were only old school textbooks. There was a pile of notebooks, covered in dust, on the desk, but these were just children’s exercise books of the type used for setting homework.

On the other side there was a newer looking exercise book. The word Elegies was written on the title page. There then followed two pages of translations from foreign poets; all the works were of sufficient fame for Yoneko to be familiar with them. On the third page, no author’s name appeared, but there was a poem entitled ‘To a child buried on 29 March’. Yoneko felt that this might prove to be of more interest to her, because of the date and the reference to a child, so she read the whole poem:

Plainly, the child described in the poem was George, who had been kidnapped from his mother Keiko Kawauchi. Yoneko was certain of this. There was nothing else written in the book. She read the poem once again and tried to learn it by heart, and this time it just seemed like any other poem to her, but she was sure her first impression was right. She wrote down the title in her notepad and got up to go. There was nothing else for her to see.

She switched off the electric torch and closed her eyes. The dull thuds of the work going on outside echoed in her ears—it was time to be gone. She would have plenty of time for thought later.

She turned on the torch again, and looked at the notebook. The beam rested on the title—Elegies. She turned to go, and the torch beam, moving with her body, suddenly picked out something bright on the window pane—it was as if a light was being shone inwards at her. She really did not have any more time to spare, but nonetheless she went over to examine this new discovery. It turned out to be the sort of mirror that small boys use to dazzle people in the rays of the sun. What could it all mean?

She slipped out of the room; she heard someone coming up the stairways jabbering away to someone else. She quickly locked Chikako’s door and walked briskly to the stairwell. She turned around and looked behind her. She thought she saw a door close quickly further down the corridor; she thought she saw a glimmer of white hair; but she couldn’t be sure.

However, it did seem to her rather likely that it was Haru Santo she had seen, and the faint glimpse she had caught of her stayed in her mind for a long time to come.

It was clear from what she had seen that Chikako was still expecting some man to come back to her. But the real possibility of such an event had long since vanished, and only the memory of it now remained, just as fairy tale figures remain in the back of an adult’s mind. The preparations for his return had become a daily ritual for Chikako, a reminder of his past presence as real and yet as remote as the sloughed-off skin of a snake one finds by the side of a road. There was no possible interpretation other than absolute fantasy or madness.

Yoneko thought of the white linen cloth and the masculine place setting. What a way to pass one’s life! In all her days, despite her occasional hopes, Yoneko had never associated in such a way with a man, and so found it hard to imagine Chikako’s feelings.

She wrote to Keiko Kawauchi. Having explained all that had gone on and what she had seen and how she was positive from the size and colouring of the place setting that a man was involved, she went on as follows:

She put down her pen at this point. The most significant thing she had discovered on her visit to Chikako Ueda’s room had been the poem, To a child buried on 29 March. But she still could not bring herself to inform George’s mother of this evidence which pointed to the certainty of her child’s death. Even if the evidence was even more complete, she cringed at the task. Perhaps it was better for Keiko never to know, for she had based her life on the hope of seeing her child again someday. Could she destroy Keiko’s illusions? Even if the man was the kidnapper, had Chikako been directly involved? Certainly she had loved the man, for, even though he had let her down, she had continued to wait for him all these years. Waiting for him had become the purpose of her life, just as it was with Keiko—could she, Yoneko, at one blow destroy the dreams of these two people on evidence which was still only circumstantial? Yoneko began to feel that she had meddled enough in other people’s lives already. What had begun as her curiosity about Chikako Ueda’s involvement in the kidnapping had reached a stage where Yoneko felt frightened by what she might yet discover.

And so she said no more about what she had found in Chikako’s room.

During the next few days, Yoneko could not take her mind off the vision of Chikako Ueda, plying her embroidery needle in her room as she waited for a man who did not come. People lived in a world of fantasy, she reasoned. Chikako Ueda and Keiko Kawauchi shared a similar fantasy. Yoneko felt isolated and empty at the thought that she herself had no such fantasy to give hope and point to her life. This was why her life since retirement had been so blank and meaningless as she felt it was.

Thereafter, Tomiko Iyoda called on her several times to invite her to attend meetings of the Three Spirit Faith, but Yoneko always refused. She did hear that Chikako had joined the group, but she was no longer interested in further spying on her. Perhaps, to the contrary, she was afraid that if she went to the same seance as Chikako she might find out even more about her.

It was not for another few weeks, by which time mid-April had brought clear skies and mild weather, that Yoneko changed her mind and decided to attend a seance.

After getting Yoneko’s letter, Keiko had written back urging her to pursue her researches further, particularly regarding the man who had been part of Chikako’s life. Yoneko had just put the letters to one side. What made her change her mind about attending a Three Spirit Faith seance was the so-called ‘Suwa Yatabe miracle’, which occurred during a seance at the end of March. According to Tomiko Iyoda, halfway through her trance, the medium had announced that André Dore, a famous violinist dead for some fifteen years had come in spirit form to announce that he had given his famous Guarnerius violin to Suwa Yatabe. And at this point the priest had opened the charred case to reveal within the Guarnerius restored to its former glory.

‘It was indeed a miracle. His Reverence merely touched that burned old violin, and there it was as good as new again! But as if that wasn’t enough—yes, there’s even more to come—at the same instant Miss Yatabe’s finger was mended! You know, she had visited dozens of doctors and none of them could do anything! What powers His Reverence possesses!’

Yoneko, hearing this, was inclined to think that there had been some trickery involved in the miraculous restoration of the violin, but she could not but be impressed by the story of Suwa’s finger.

The story spread, so that it was featured in an article in a monthly magazine, and soon hardly a day passed without someone in the apartment block discovering something they had lost, or some prophecy of a relative being involved in a motor accident turning out to be true, all as the result of the Three Spirit Faith seances. And then Tomiko Iyoda told Yoneko that Chikako Ueda was to have a seance to try and locate a missing friend. Yoneko could not repress her curiosity any longer.

‘Could I perhaps attend too?’

This time it was she who asked, for Tomiko had let it be known that the growing popularity of the cult had led to capacity audiences and people were having to be turned away of late. However, on this occasion, Tomiko agreed to squeeze Yoneko in as a special concession. The new rule was that to be sure of admittance you had to have attended at least four previous sessions and to make an offering on each occasion of at least one thousand yen.

Yoneko went down to Tomiko’s room a full thirty minutes early on this occasion, but there were already some six or seven people in the room when she arrived. The priest and the medium had not yet appeared, and neither had Chikako, on whose behalf the seance was being held. She sat on a cushion in the second row, next to a superior-looking woman in her mid forties who obviously came from outside. Tomiko went around the group and without showing any sign of boredom repeated the same things time and again—how the seances had proved to be of such value, how prophecies had been fulfilled, and how people’s lives had been changed thereby and so forth. Her audience were all quite prepared to agree with her, and sat nodding their heads and murmuring assent. It seemed as if this was part of the process of getting people into the right frame of mind for the seance.

At just before eight, the priest appeared, dressed as before in a black double-breasted suit and accompanied by the medium in her red ceremonial priestess’ skirt. The audience bowed deeply, sucking in their breath as a sign of respect. There was even one old lady who prostrated herself, touching her forehead to the floor, as the priest passed by.

The priest took his seat, and, addressing a woman in the front row, asked her how her relations with her husband were recently. This made everyone laugh, but Yoneko felt it was a contrived informality and did not join in. This sort of banter and discussion continued for a few more minutes, whereupon the priest broke off and said:

‘Leave the door open. The person on whose behalf we are met together tonight is on her way here.’

And the medium lit the candles, as before, and the electric lights were switched off. When the room became thus dark, Chikako Ueda made her entry, accompanied by the white-haired Haru Santo. It was some time since Yoneko had seen Haru, and she tried to catch sight of her face, but somehow there always seemed to be someone else’s head in the way. Yoneko reflected that Haru had only come into the room once it was dark on the last occasion, too. Meanwhile, Chikako took up her seat in the very front, facing the medium.

It was the first time that Yoneko had got so close to Chikako. As it was so dark, she could stare at her without embarrassment. In the flickering candlelight, she examined Chikako’s profile and saw a woman who, although in her forties, still had the dimples and fringe of a young girl. There was something very attractively feminine about Chikako, and it looked as if she was a woman who had ceased to age some years back.

As before, the priest adopted a commanding tone of voice and ordered all present to link their hands. Yoneko, thinking that the whole thing was like a staged performance, nonetheless obeyed, although it was with some reservations that she took the hand of the woman from outside who was her neighbour. Chikako then spoke in a clear and firm voice, giving the date of birth and name of the man she sought.

Yoneko tried to work out the age of the man, and found herself confused by the Japanese era system of dates, but at last calculated that he must be in his mid-thirties, and so must have been in his late twenties seven years ago. So he must have been a good ten years younger than Chikako. Could Chikako have had a love affair with a man so much younger than herself? And then Yoneko could not help but think of Keiko, who had married a man more than ten years her senior. In each case, it seemed that the hoped-for bliss had ended in sorrow. Why was it that so many people had such unhappy experiences in love?

While she was thinking over these things, the medium had entered her trance and now once again her whole body was shuddering in the throes of demonic possession.

What happened in the next ten minutes remained engraved in Yoneko’s mind for the rest of her life. The medium fell, as before, flat on her face and rolled around on the floor repeating meaningless and garbled words, with an occasional real word mixed amongst them. As these words emerged one by one from the jumbled mass of sound, they stuck in the mind of the hearers, until gradually they could piece together in their minds what was being said. It went like this:

‘Ow! It hurts… I can’t see anything… I’m in a suitcase, it’s hard… A man is putting me into a hole… There’s another grown-up with him… A lady! She has opened the bag… She’s looking at me… At my face… Now I can hear someone mixing concrete… I see a shovel… Oh, they’re shovelling concrete into my suitcase… It’s awful… I can’t see anything any more… They’re burying me in the dark… Mother! Mother!’

This was what Yoneko pieced together, word by word, from amongst the medium’s gibberish.

At this point, the priest laid his hands on the medium’s head, and cried out, ‘Stop! It’s the wrong spirit!’

And then, in ringing tones: ‘Spirit, I command you to be gone!—Get thee hence!’

Someone in front of Yoneko spoke in a quavering voice.

‘Saints protect us! It’s an evil spirit in our midst.’

In obedience to the priest’s command, the medium became silent and lay motionless, only the whites showing in her open eyes. The priest called for the lights to be put on, and the tension was lowered and everyone stretched themselves in their seats and waited expectantly. The priest called out Chikako Ueda’s name.

Chikako did not reply. Yoneko looked at her, and observed that the healthy and youthful appearance she had observed a few minutes earlier had vanished. Now Chikako’s whole complexion seemed to have turned grey, and she was staring vacantly into the middle distance, her mouth hanging open, her jaw slack. Tomiko lay her hand on her shoulder and called out.

‘Miss Ueda! Miss Ueda!’

Chikako just brushed Tomiko’s hand away with an unnatural force. She rolled her eyes up into her lids, and gave every appearance of having entered a catatonic state.

Yoneko left shortly after this, but subsequently heard that Chikako had remained in this condition until the next morning, sitting in the same position staring fixedly ahead. If anyone touched her, she struck the offending hand away.

Haru Santu had slipped out of the room even before Yoneko, and she appeared to have gone at the same time that the lights were turned on.

Making her way back to her room, Yoneko wondered what it was that the medium had said which had had such an effect on Chikako. Could it have been the voice of her lover crying out that he was being buried? Yoneko did not think so. There was clearly some connection between the burial the medium had described and the poem in Chikako’s room. This had been the voice of another spirit, and Chikako’s reaction and the priest’s announcement made the fact doubly clear. The voice had been that of a child being buried, and Yoneko was ninety-nine per cent sure that the child had been George. The medium had been describing the burial of a child in concrete, in terms which rended the heart of Heaven, had used the language of a child describing in terror what was going on before his very eyes.

She realised that she must now tell Keiko Kawauchi the whole truth. She sat down there and then and wrote her a long letter describing in detail all that she had seen and heard, including the poem in Chikako’s room. She asked Keiko to think about it all and apply her own judgment as to what should be done next. She added that it might now be advisable to report the matter to the police.

As she addressed the envelope, Yoneko reflected that she still had some doubts as to whether the dead could really communicate with the living in this way. But there could be no doubting the effect of the words, purporting to come from the dead by way of the medium, upon Chikako Ueda.

It was the last Sunday in April. Yoneko was writing letters in her room when Keiko Kawauchi suddenly appeared at her door. Greeting her after a lapse of some twelve years, Yoneko could not help feeling that Keiko had become rather gaunt, although this may have been the effect of her wearing a Japanese kimono. It was too late to cry over spilt milk, but nonetheless Yoneko wished she had not written to tell Keiko so clearly that George was dead.

Keiko explained that she had been visiting Hiroshima when Yoneko’s last letters reached her home.

‘As George died at the end of March, it was exactly seven years since his murder. I went to Hiroshima because I heard of a mixed-blooded child of his age there, but of course it was a fruitless trip. And when I got home the day before yesterday, I found your letter waiting for me.’

Keiko wiped the tears from her eyes.

Yoneko did her best to console her, but could do so with little conviction.

There was no positive proof that Chikako Ueda had been involved in the kidnapping. It was by no means certain that the words which had issued from the medium’s mouth were George’s. What was undoubted fact was Chikako’s extraordinary reaction to them. And there was also nothing to suggest that the words did not relate to George. Regardless of whether or not the medium had supernatural powers, or had learned of the facts by other means, it remained obvious that a child had been buried and that Chikako was somehow involved.

And the evidence for this went further than Chikako’s behaviour at the seance, for there was also the evidence of the poem Yoneko had found in her room… To a child buried on 29 March… it was too much of a mere coincidence.

Of course, there was no year mentioned. It might have referred to 29 March last year, or ten years before for that matter. George had been kidnapped on 27 March, so there was a difference of two days in the dates. But if any evidence could be found that he had been buried on 29 March, then the poem would be conclusive proof of Chikako’s complicity.

‘If I could be positive that George was dead, then I could at least begin my life all over again.’

Keiko bent low, covering her face with her slim white hands. Looking at her, Yoneko for the first time saw her former pupil revealing her natural maternal instincts.

That night, Keiko stayed in Yoneko’s room. They talked until the small hours. Occasionally they spoke about the past, and what had become of Keiko’s schoolmates, but for most of the time George was the main topic of discussion. Yoneko felt keenly how Keiko had, for the seven years since the kidnapping, lived only in the hope of seeing her son again, and her heart bled for her. She could not but blame the father who had turned his back on the problem and on his wife and had gone home to America alone, but she could also sense how difficult it must have become to continue living with a wife whose only thoughts were for her vanished child.

‘While we were in the waiting room together, George was looking at a comic. When it became his turn to go in, he left it face down on the table, and he was going to finish it later. When he came out from his treatment, he looked for the comic, but a middle-aged American woman was reading it by then. I thought of telling her that my son had been reading it, but felt too shy to do so. Sometimes, when I look back on it, I feel that if he had had that comic to read, he would never have left the waiting room and gone back to the car, and my heart is full of hatred for that white woman.’

Keiko laughed bitterly as she said this, and suddenly Yoneko realised that if she could produce positive and final proof of George’s death it would in the end be for the good of her former pupil. Keiko’s whole life and personality had become distorted by the uncertainty about her child’s fate.

Since the seance, Chikako Ueda had become even more of a recluse, and there seemed no way that anyone could approach her. To get any further in her enquiries, Yoneko realised that she must invent some pretext for talking to Chikako. Even after Keiko went home the next morning, Yoneko spent the day thinking of nothing else.

That evening, when she was just going out to do some shopping, Miss Tojo called out to her from the front office: ‘You forgot to register your overnight visitor, you know.’ Her face was smiling, but behind the mask Yoneko could detect some suspicion about her relationship with Keiko.

‘Perhaps you’d care to fill in the book now?’ She pushed the register across the desk, pointing to a clean page. Yoneko could just discern the traces of writing on the other side.

‘I don’t want to be petty, but it’s always been the rule, you know… We’ve filled in without fail ever since the war ended, and I suppose we’ll go on doing so for another four or five years, even though society has changed.’

And she chatted on in this vein whilst Yoneko registered Keiko’s visit. Suddenly, she had a flash of inspiration. Having entered Keiko’s name and filled in the relationship column—‘friend’—she turned the pages back rapidly until she came to the year 1951. And, just as she had begun to inspect, there was an entry for Chikako Ueda. Ignoring Miss Tojo’s astonished and increasingly loud complaints at this breach of the rules, Yoneko gazed triumphantly at the evidence which lay before her, proof positive of Chikako’s involvement in the kidnapping.

Chikako Ueda was shown as having had a younger female cousin to stay with her between 29 March and 1 April 1951. The name was given as Yasuyo Aoki, aged thirty, unemployed. As George was kidnapped on 27 March, it seemed clear that this ‘female cousin’ was the kidnapper who had brought the child to the apartment block.

‘Oh, I remember,’ Yoneko interrupted Miss Tojo. ‘This was the cousin of Miss Ueda’s who came with a little boy of about four. He must be getting quite big now.’

Miss Tojo thought for a moment, and then replied, ‘No—she was quite alone—I’m sure of that.’ She looked Yoneko straight in the eye as she said this, taking the book back and putting it in the drawer. Yoneko felt that one leg of her hypothesis had been knocked from under her.

She went back to her room and retraced every development since she had received Keiko’s first letter up to this latest discovery in the guest register. She noted down on a sheet of paper those points which she felt to be of most significance:

Having set this all down in black and white, she then examined these facts against the hypothesis that Chikako Ueda was an accomplice in the kidnapping and that the man for whom she had been waiting for so long was the kidnapper. And she suddenly realised that, if this was so, then the young female cousin, the man who had not come back, and the kidnapper were one and the same person. Why had she not stumbled on this obvious fact before? Because she had started off with the false proposition that, because it was strictly forbidden, it was impossible that any male could spend the night in the K Ladies’ apartments. And of course not only Yoneko would fall into this trap—it seemed probable that anyone would.

The kidnapper, either under the pressure of necessity or as part of a prearranged plan, had disguised himself as a woman and passed himself off as Chikako’s cousin and spent two nights with her. Seen in that light, the K apartment block would be the safest hideout imaginable.

The more she thought about it, the more horrified she became. As each clue fell into place, it became clear what had happened. She pictured the course of events and visualised the young man dressed as a woman standing in front of the reception desk, just where she had herself stood only a few minutes before, sheltering behind Chikako’s skirts. Could he have possibly brought George here alive? It would be no easy matter to smuggle in a four-year-old child, to keep him quiet, and so… he had naturally killed him! He had put the body in a rucksack, or suitcase, or some such container, and carried it here. If one was to believe what the medium had said, he had brought him in a suitcase. With what fear of being detected the two of them had climbed the stairs all the way to Chikako’s room on the fifth floor! But where had they buried the child? Unquestionably, somewhere in the building. In the inner courtyard? Under the incinerator, perhaps?

At least one thing was clear. There was now no doubt in Yoneko’s mind of Chikako’s connection with the kidnapping.

Chikako had pledged herself to a man, and waited for him ever since. The man, the kidnapper, had made a promise to Major Kraft, George’s father, and had failed to keep it. He had betrayed Chikako and the Major.

She pondered this a while, and then the germ of an idea grew in her mind. Suddenly she saw everything in a blinding flash of inspiration. The man had not betrayed Chikako and the Major—something, some unforeseen accident had prevented him from doing what he said he would. There was no way in which she could deduce precisely what had happened, but she felt that this explanation fitted all the circumstances.

She looked at her clock. It was two am. In the far distance, she heard the baleful whistle of a steam engine. Yes, beyond doubt, the kidnapper was the man Chikako had awaited so long.

All that remained to be discovered was where the child lay buried.

She got into bed and turned out the light. Gazing into the impenetrable darkness of her room, she puzzled over something else. How could the medium have come to know about Chikako’s secret? She did not believe in the claims of the supernatural power made by the Three Spirit Faith. For example, if the voice they had heard was truly that of George, it seemed unlikely that he would have used the standard Japanese word for Mother. Keiko had said that he addressed her by the English word ‘Mummy’.

This thought frightened her. It meant that, far from the Three Spirit Faith having supernatural capabilities, someone, and that someone closely connected to it, knew of what had happened and was plotting some deep scheme. But who? And why?

At last, her vision blurred in the dark and she fell asleep.

The mist which had begun to settle on the streets an hour before now enveloped the town; nonetheless, it was quite a warm evening and one could just see the naked bulbs, strung around the trench at four-metre intervals to prevent people from falling into the excavation under the apartment block.

The myriad lights of the amusement area below twinkled and died out one by one under the veil of the mist. Yoneko gazed at them in fascination. She was leaning out of the window in the rear corridor on the fifth floor. She had tried every trick she could think of during the last fortnight to get Chikako to let slip where the child was buried but it had all been a waste of time. She had even tried phoning from outside. She had chosen a telephone box in a lonely area and, having called the building, waited for a few minutes while Chikako was summoned from the fifth floor. She had stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth, and, being unused to practising deception, felt thoroughly ashamed of what she was doing. At last she heard the echoes of footsteps approaching the phone at the other end, the sound of the receiver being taken up, and Chikako’s breathing. She could visualise the scene at the other end, and felt as if somehow all her efforts to conceal her identity would fail. Disguising her voice and speaking through the handkerchief, she said, ‘I know you buried the child. Say where, at once! I know it’s in the apartment block.’

She tried to be as threatening as possible. But Chikako said nothing. Instead, Yoneko could hear, first of all, the sound of the phone being dropped, and then the voice of Miss Tojo calling out Chikako’s name.

Thereafter, she spent several days racking her brains to think of some other technique. Every day she went into the inner courtyard and looked at the latest diggings. The incinerator and the greenhouse had been removed and the earth all turned over, but there was no sign of any childish bones having been dug up, and no tales of such an event either. She examined the earth and clay which had been dug out from the foundations and dumped by the conveyor on the ground above. Sometimes, she thought she could sense the presence of a rotting corpse, and her stomach turned. Once the soil had been removed, the workmen tamped down the earth under the walls of the building and laid heavy girders and rails. At this point, Yoneko began to doubt if it really was true that a child was buried somewhere in the vicinity. At such times, the words of the medium, the poem in Chikako’s room, and all the other pieces of evidence she had so carefully assembled seemed to amount to no more than her wild fancies. But she could not drive out of her mind the conviction that there was a child buried somewhere around the building. The tale of the man who had spent the night in Chikako’s room disguised as a woman, and of Chikako who had waited for him all the long years since, now took a second place in her mind. She was possessed by the illusion of the child buried beneath the building and there was nothing she could do about it. Before falling asleep at night, she saw in her mind’s eye the site after the building had been moved, with a suitcase somewhere in the centre. But Keiko’s son, George, was alive and well and moving around inside the suitcase.

These imaginings were to stand her in good stead when she had all but given up hope of getting Chikako to talk. She made a plan based on them. As soon as the building had been moved, she would rush to Chikako’s door, knock loudly, and shout out ‘They’ve found the child’s body!’ This should at least produce some reaction which would be of use.

For this plan to work, it would be necessary to prepare Chikako’s mind with a few hints of what lay in store for her. So for the past several days she had written ‘A divine revelation’ on a half sheet of rice paper such as was used by oracles at shrines and pushed it under Chikako’s door. The ‘divine revelation’ that Yoneko wrote read as follows:

‘When the building is moved, then all the sinful events that lie buried beneath it shall be revealed. And lo! the child thou didst bury shall come back to life!’

At just about the same time, a rumour went the rounds that a miracle would occur when the building was moved. It was said that the Three Spirit Faith had revealed that a child, kidnapped seven years ago, would be discovered. This gave Yoneko the horrible feeling that someone knew what she was up to! She felt as if all the guilt she was trying to expose was turning around, piling on her. If the Three Spirit Faith made such an announcement, it was clearly part of a human and not a supernatural plan. She felt that this plot would come to fruition before her very eyes on the day that the building was moved. As the instant when the building was to be moved came closer and closer, Yoneko felt more and more like a gambler whose fate rests on one hand, lying face down on the table, which is about to be turned over and exposed. For good, or perhaps for ill…

Only two days remained until the building would be moved. All preparations were complete. The workers had nothing left to do, and peace and quiet had at last returned to the inner garden which lay hidden in the mists below.

Somewhere, she heard a clock strike eleven pm. Yoneko straightened up and made her way towards Chikako’s room in order to pass the folded rice paper under her door. As she turned the corner, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Someone was coming. As Yoneko was wearing the patrol armband, there was no need for her to hide or run away. She went to the stairwell and saw Suwa Yatabe coming up to the fifth floor. Suwa bowed slightly as she passed, but her face showed an expression of distaste. She hurried along the corridor and vanished up the stairs which led out onto the roof. She seemed to be carrying an unusually heavy load on her conscience for one who had experienced a miracle, thought Yoneko, and then paused to wonder what Suwa would be doing on the roof at such an hour. However, she stuck to her original plan and made her way to Chikako’s room with the ‘divine revelation’ in her hand. As on all previous occasions, she crept quietly so as not to be heard.

When she got back to the staircase, she thought she could hear a human voice crying out in grief. But it could have been a cat miaowing, or a drunk singing in the road below. All was still again for a moment, and then she heard it quite clearly—the faint sound of a violin being played. It seemed to come from the roof. She heard the vibratos echoing in the night air. She went to the staircase leading to the roof, and as she did so, the sound became louder and then suddenly broke off.

It was pitch dark on the roof. Yoneko stood by the door, creaking on its hinges, and peering into the mist called out: ‘Miss Yatabe! Miss Yatabe!’

There was no response. Yoneko took a few steps onto the roof and, raising her voice once again, called out:

‘Miss Yatabe!’

The low railing around the roof loomed through the mist, seeming almost to be self-consciously aware of its own existence, but there was no sign of any living being. Somewhere in the distance below, Yoneko heard the shrill squeal of brakes being suddenly applied. She felt suddenly afraid. She froze where she stood, but could hear no sound about her. There was something unpleasant in the air.

The next morning, she awoke to shouts that told her what it was. Suwa Yatabe had committed suicide by jumping from the roof. She had put down the famous violin before leaping to her death, and her body was found on one of the piles of earth which had been excavated from the foundations.

Yoneko reflected on how she and Suwa had passed each other the night before, she on her errand and Suwa hurrying on the way to her death. Now she understood why she had heard the violin but had found no trace of Suwa. Suwa had been bidding farewell to the world on the instrument she loved so much, but Yoneko had interrupted her, and she had gone without completing her tune.

Yoneko felt sad thinking of the last years of Suwa, the violinist whose hopes had turned to sorrow. She did not doubt that Suwa had committed suicide, but one thing puzzled her.

On the day of the move, it was windy from dawn on, and dust and grit from the excavations whirled in the air and crept into every corner of the building.

The death of Suwa Yatabe two days before had left everyone stunned, but the excitement of the move now brought things back to life. They got ready for the experiment with the glass of water, which they had looked forward to for so long. Some even made innocent little wagers with cakes or sweets on the outcome. But Yoneko was indifferent to such goings on. She had passed by Chikako Ueda’s door once early on in the morning but thereafter had returned to her room to await quietly the hour of noon, and the moving of the building.

She was working out what she should do if her ruse caused Chikako to confess where the child was buried. She had expected to hear from the police after she had revealed all she knew to Keiko, but this had not happened.

She puzzled over where the child could be buried. All the soil around the building and in the courtyard had been dug out to quite a depth, so it couldn’t be there. Perhaps under the walls, or the foundations of the incinerator? She remembered the words she had heard about being in a suitcase covered in cement, so such a place seemed likely. Or under the floor? Anyway, if Chikako confessed, she could get the workmen to dig up wherever it was, and then her first action, she decided, would be to call the police.

This led her to imagine Chikako locked up in a cell, which made her feel even worse. She did not enjoy interfering in other people’s lives or laying bare their secrets for all to learn. Little had she dreamed, when she began to write to her pupils to overcome the boredom of retirement, that it would end in her exposing someone else and causing her to be dragged off to prison. She began to regret what she had done. Chikako had waited alone in her little room for seven years, and the man had not come; was not this punishment enough? Was it really essential for her to be put at the disposal of merciless public opinion? That would not bring the child back to life.

Yoneko cast her mind back to the three months after her retirement, when she had sat alone in her room gazing at the cold walls. What thoughts had crossed her mind then? Had she reflected back on the life of an old maid who had just let the days go by and life pass with them? She wondered if she had pursued Chikako so relentlessly out of jealously because she had at least had an affair with a man? This thought made her feel she had lost all her strength and purpose.

Reflecting thus upon her solitude, Yoneko glanced down at her watch, which she had put on the table. It was five to twelve. She got up to go to Chikako’s room.

Not a soul was to be seen in the corridors or on the staircase, and the whole building was eerily silent.

Just as she reached Chikako’s room, the noon siren wailed at a nearby factory. She thought that the building would now begin to move, and rushed to the window but could see nothing to suggest that the move had begun.

She knocked on Chikako’s door and turned the knob, but the door was locked. She used the master key to open it. When she got inside, she found Chikako lying with her head on the low table. She had knocked over a glass of water as she fell, and it had dripped onto the floor, where an empty pill bottle had also fallen.

This, then, was Chikako’s reply. Was it an admission of guilt or an assertion of innocence? For a second, Yoneko felt dubious, and then she knew the answer. Innocence would not drive one to kill oneself—this was a confession that she had indeed buried the child. She had chosen to die so that the secret would die with her.

Yoneko broke out in a cold sweat, and felt aggrieved at being thus cheated. She dearly wanted to know where the body lay. She looked around to see if there was any sign of a suicide note, but there wasn’t. So she would have to work out the answer to the mystery by herself.

At least she now knew for certain that the child was buried somewhere near at hand. Any lingering doubts were overcome by the fact of Chikako’s death. So the poem told the truth.

The poem was true… Yoneko grasped the point in an instant.

‘The bath! The bathroom! That’s it!’ Yoneko felt herself shouting inside her heart. The dried-up lake plainly referred to the disused bath in the basement. And seven years ago the cement left over from the repair work interrupted by the war was still lying around that bathroom. Thereafter, it had been removed, and the bathroom used as a storage place for furniture from the communal rooms, old stoves, and so forth.

She rushed out of Chikako’s room and down the stairs to the basement. She was determined to break open the bath herself. At that moment, she was no longer the retired old maid but the gambler turning the card which would seal her fate. Life and youth flowed back into her.

Chikako’s door was left open, so that anyone passing by could see her lying face down on the table, the spilt water about her.

And the master key remained in the lock, just as Yoneko had left it.