Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

“There was a need for secrecy at first. I wished to keep the affair from my household. Tomoe herself insisted that she needed no one. But as I said, I thought surely her sister—” he passed a hand over his face “—at any event, she became fearful. The foxes make strange sounds at night. She was not used to it. She developed a fear that I might meet with an accident and never return. She had dreadful dreams. One day I found her nearly incoherent. That was when I decided to bring her into my home.” He sighed deeply. “Too late.”

Akitada looked around the room distractedly. This had been the second reference Masahira had made to the sister. Had Otomi known of this place? If so, why had she lied? In his mind’s eye he saw again the complacent look on the plain girl’s face as she stood beside her father and said, “My sister is very beautiful.”

He became aware of the fact that Masahira was looking at him and said quickly, “May I see the pond now? And perhaps you could tell me how you came to find her body.”

Masahira nodded. He led the way into the garden. They followed stepping stones through dense shrubbery, but trees and weeds had grown up around the path and brushed and tore at their clothes. All around them the cicadas’ sound pulsed, pausing as they passed and resuming again.

“I went home to speak to my wife,” continued Masahira, holding a branch aside for Akitada. “To my surprise, she was immediately receptive to the idea. You must understand that I have no other women, and my wife is childless. She confessed that she looked forward to raising my children by Tomoe and to having her companionship. Overjoyed, I rushed back to tell Tomoe.” He fell abruptly silent.

The stepping stones only went as far as a stone lantern. Here Masahira turned right. “The pond is this way,” he said. His voice shook a little. In a distance Akitada could hear frogs croaking. There was no sign of foxes, but the dense shrubbery rustled with animal life.

They emerged from the trees. The pond lay before them, basking in the hot sun.

“When I got to the house, it was empty,” Masahira said, staring at the still water with a shiver. “I was puzzled, for I knew Tomoe was afraid of the garden, but eventually I went to search for her there. I almost turned around when I got to the pond without seeing her.”

The pond was shaped like a gourd and they were standing near its widest end. Up ahead where it narrowed, a small bridge arched across a dense growth of water lilies and lotus. Clouds of small gnats hung low over the water, and dragonflies skimmed the surface. The sound of the cicadas was less strident here, but the atmosphere of the pond, stagnant in the summer heat and choked with vegetation, embraced them like a suffocating shroud.

Masahira pointed to a thorny shrub near the path. “I saw a small piece of silk there and knew she had come this way. That was when I went to look in the water.” He walked forward to the muddy edge and stared down. “She was here.”

Akitada joined him. The water was brown but not deep. He could see the muddy bottom, pitted here and there by the feet of the sergeant and his constable. A huge silver carp appeared, rose briefly to look at them, and sank again. Other fish, fat, their colors dull grey and copper in the muddy water, shifted lazily across the mud, and a large frog, suddenly conscious of their presence, jumped in with a splash and swam away. In this neglected garden human beings were the intruders.

Masahira said, “She could have slipped and fallen. But I cannot imagine what would have brought her out here.”

Akitada glanced across to where a fallen pine projected over the water. “There are the foxes,” he said.

Two young cubs had climbed up and looked at them curiously. Masahira cursed, clapping his hands sharply. The cubs yelped and ran. A moment later their mother appeared, a handsome vixen with a long bushy tail, her ears pointed and her sharp nose twitching to catch their scent.

Masahira clapped again, but the fox stood her ground. “They behave as if they owned this place,” he complained. “I shall have workmen clean up this wilderness and drain the pond.” He turned abruptly and walked back.

Akitada stayed another moment, looking at the fox. Then he also turned to go.

What had happened here? He no longer suspected Masahira. It was clear that he had loved the girl and had made arrangements to bring her into his family. Who then? The envious sister? A jealous lover? Or a stranger, some vagrant coming across the lonely girl? The image of the scarecrow monk flashed into his mind, and he hurried after Masahira.

He caught up with him in the house. “That beggar outside the gate, do you know him?”

Masahira looked surprised. “Yes. He is one of the monks in a small temple a short distance away. Why do you ask?”