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

He found the captain, dressed in the grey robe of mourning, standing on the verandah of his study. He held something in his hand and was staring at it fixedly.

The face he turned towards Akitada was drawn and white. Today Masahira looked old beyond his years, and Akitada was intruding into the man’s grief with a dangerous knowledge.

Reminding himself of the vacant-eyed monk in police custody, Akitada stammered, “Forgive the interruption, sir, but I’ve reconsidered the facts and I now know the monk is innocent. He merely sold one of his charms to Tomoe. It was the day before her body was found. I... believe someone else...” He broke off fearfully.

“Yes.” Masahira’s voice was flat, his eyes weary. “So you know what really happened?”

Hanging his head, Akitada murmured, “I believe so. Your lady...” He broke off. “I am very sorry, sir.”

Masahira sighed heavily. “No sorrier than I. I am responsible, even though I did not kill Tomoe. It was my foolishness that caused the tragedy. A double tragedy. I thought my wife was too accommodating when I asked her if I could bring Tomoe here. I should have suspected.” Masahira’s voice was bitter. “I found this in my wife’s writing box.”

Akitada glanced up. Masahira dangled a small wooden tablet with an inscription. The hemp string was broken.

The amulet.

“Lady Chujo must have gone to the villa after you told her,” said Akitada. “She mentioned the amulet, but Tomoe had just bought it from the monk, and not even you could have known that.”

Masahira said, “I did not.” He added heavily, “My wife will not be arrested. But she has agreed to renounce the world and spend the rest of her life in a remote nunnery. The monk will be released, of course, but I must ask your discretion. I already have Okamoto’s.”

Akitada thought again of the dangerous ground he had trodden. Deeply grateful, he bowed, saying, “Of course, my lord. I only regret having brought such misfortune to you and your family.”

Masahira waved this aside.

“Okamoto is a most admirable character.” He paused to look at Akitada. “I think,” he said, “that, whatever your motives were originally, you acted from concern for him and pity for—” his voice shook, but he went on “—his daughter. You were quite right in your feelings about both.” He broke off abruptly and turned away, weeping.

Akitada was backing from the room when Masahira spoke again. His voice had regained the tone of authority. “About your position at the ministry. I have had a word with Soga. You are to return to work immediately.”

Rosejoy’s Baby by DeLoris Stanton Forbes

It took the combined strength of the Devil’s Disciple and the Winged Angel to transport the body to its disposal site. After the Devil’s Disciple did the deed, the Winged Angel appeared (too late, yah yah yah, too late) to sigh and cry and suggest the use of the purloined Walgreen’s cart to carry the body the final two hundred fifty yards. She was heavier than the Devil’s Disciple had figured, so now that the deed was done, the Angel agreed to help push. “You’ll get yours, you know,” said the Angel, wings fluttering in agitation. “Oh, shut up,” said the Devil’s Disciple.

The lab report said she died from blunt trauma to the head; otherwise she was a healthy woman in her mid-twenties who was some four months pregnant. The lab said the baby had been a boy. I passed the report to George, who scanned it and grunted. “These babes are always falling for some no-good caveman type. Sooner or later they get knocked up and knocked around. This one got it good.”

The lab said her final resting place — in a stand of bamboo in Big Tree Park — was not the scene of the murder. She’d been transported there after she had been brained with some kind of heavy, blunt instrument. To put it simply, she’d been dumped, fetus and all, in a swamp.

I was standing off the boardwalk, mired at the edge of the bamboo plot. The bamboo was over six feet tall and plentiful; it had formed a bamboo cave, and that’s where the body had been tossed.

I wondered how the perp had known about the bamboo cave. Big Tree Park wasn’t among the most-visited of Fairland’s sightseeing attractions.

“Jeez.” My partner George wasn’t looking where I was looking. “This is some giant tree here. A thirty-five-hundred-year-old bald cypress.” George was reading from a plaque behind a sturdy chain-link fence that encircled the Big Tree. “Some senator named Over-street got the park started in 1927, it says. The tree’s named The Senator in honor of this Over-street guy. And old Cal Coolidge dedicated the park in 1929. Long before I was born.”

“The world was interested in ecology before you were born, George.”