Zen there was Murder Read online

‘Now look,’ she said, ‘I can tell my readers that when the experts are asked what Zen is they pull your nose. But that’s not enough for Honor Brentt’s Thursday Page. I made my name by getting at what really goes on. And that’s what I mean to find out about Zen. What goes on. Well, Mr Utamaro, are you prepared to answer? What is Zen about – after all the tricksy bits?’

  Mr Utamaro got up.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  He strode to the door and out of the room.

  Honor jerked to her feet and went after him. The others looked at each other and followed. Alasdair Stuart, the last to leave the room, looked round as he went, saw the black oil-stove in the elegant chimney place, stooped and extinguished it.

  A duty done.

  He went out, hurrying after the others. The empty echoing carpetless corridor. Ahead somewhere Mr Utamaro’s firm steps breaking the silence. He followed.

  The clear spring sunshine was lighting up the hall. Motes danced in the yellow beams. A breeze from a half-opened window stirred the papers pinned to a big green baize notice board. As they fluttered the holes in the baize underneath were revealed.

  Mulcheaten Manor

  County Education Residential Courses

  Adult Education Sub-committee

  Week beginning 10 April

  ‘Country and Scottish Dancing’

  Week beginning 17 April

  ‘Zen Buddhism’

  Week beginning 24 April

  ‘Accountancy for Trade Union Officials’

  Week beginning 1 May

  ‘Nature Study’

  Week beginning 8 May

  To be arranged

  Week beginning 15 May

  ‘Shakespeare – His Mind and Art’

  Pinned at the bottom of this sheet a smaller one. Major Francis, Warden, will be on annual leave from 17 April to 23 April. Mr Utamaro will be in charge.

  In a dark corner by the staircase the face of a grandfather clock just discernible. Its tick loud and crotchety, penetrating the sound of footsteps on the uncovered floor. Its hands were pointing to twenty-seven minutes past three and it chimed unharmoniously eight times.

  The wide staircase. A dignified sweep. Shallow steps. Still uncarpeted. Mr Utamaro went up the middle of them without slackening pace. The others followed close to the graceful banister.

  Pausing at the head of the stairs to regain breath, Mr Applecheek – a faint purple flush on his parchment cheeks – turned to Flaveen who was beside him and said:

  ‘Ought we to know where we are going?’

  Mr Applecheek pattered across to the shelves and peered at the largest oasis of books.

  ‘Theology,’ he said. ‘I thought they looked familiar. Woefully out of date, of course, woefully out of date. But then this year’s books will be out of date before long.’

  He sighed.

  They stood in silence. Flaveen shifted from one foot to the other. Mr Utamaro appeared lost in deep thought.

  Suddenly his whole face was filled with a look of consternation. Every feature totally engaged. The eyes wide, the jutting eye-brows lifted, the nostrils extended, the mouth open. A caricature.

  ‘The oil-stove in the common room,’ he said. ‘Major Francis was most insistent that it should be put out if there was no one there. And I have forgotten all about it.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Alasdair said. ‘I happened to spot it and put it out myself. Major Francis is quite right, you know. Those things don’t want to be left unattended when you can’t be certain they won’t be knocked down.’

  The schoolmaster’s reproof.

  Mr Utamaro looked relieved.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you would like to see a toy.’

  Confident once more. A statement. Not to be argued with.

  Without waiting for their reactions he strode out of the room.

  Proprietorially.

  ‘We are to study something called koans,’ she added, ‘and we may achieve something else – the word escapes me.’

  ‘Satori,’ said Alasdair. ‘You have to work for it pretty hard. It means enlightenment.’

  ‘And what does koan mean?’ said Honor.

  ‘A koan, as I understand it...’

  Alasdair broke off. Mr Utamaro was pointing to his nose.

  ‘Oh,’ said Alasdair, ‘yes. I suppose so. It’s a way of making you think about – about things. It may be something done. Er – like a tweak on the nose, or something like that. Or it may be a sort of saying, a mysterious saying.’

  ‘A riddle,’ said Flaveen, ‘I told you so all along.’

  ‘Zen monks,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘sit on the ground. But I do not think you could sit like that for long.’

  He looked at them and chuckled.

  ‘We will find some chairs,’ he said, ‘and then there will be no need for chin-rests, and that was going to be difficult. I wrote to Harridges for them, but they told me that in England you do not have them.’

  ‘Chin-rests?’ said Flaveen. ‘Whatever are chin-rests?’

  ‘When you do not know,’ Mr Utamaro said, ‘ask. That is Zen. A chin-rest is a stick which a monk puts under his chin so that he will not fall over in long hours of meditation.’

  ‘Sure, it’ll be long hours of sleeping, I’m thinking,’ said Jim Henderson. ‘Idle time spent at the expense of the community.’

  Ulster sociology.

  ‘There you are wrong in two things,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘One: during the meditation periods two attendants walk up and down the lines of monks and if they see one not working at his koan they hit his back with a stick. Two: Hyakujo said a thousand years ago “A day of no work is a day of no eating”.’

  ‘There’s theory and practice,’ said Jim.

  In a single grunt.

  They walked forward into the empty room. Over the double doors was a small gallery entered from the floor above. On it were stored various articles – a standard lamp with a broken shade, the bust of a man of severely classical appearance and a large wooden crate.

  ‘I expect it’s another riddle,’ Flaveen said. ‘Fancy it all being a sort of joke, and I was afraid it would be something much too highbrow for me.’

  ‘It was very brave of you to come, then,’ Mr Applecheek said. ‘Very brave indeed. Even rash.’

  ‘Oh well, I had to come.’

  A fact stated.

  ‘Yes, so did I. I had to come.’

  They said no more and set off after the others. Two self-absorbed faces: the old one, crackly skinned, lined, worked upon; the young one, a white peach, untouched, vulnerable.

  Another corridor. Doors on each side. Their paintwork not fresh. Ingrained grime round the handles.

  Mr Utamaro stopped at a pair of double doors, no more imposing than the others. He paused with both hands on the twin doorknobs.

  ‘The Zen-Do,’ he said.

  He opened the doors. The others crowded together behind him.

  The room was large with big windows looking down on to a wide lawn dominated by a huge cedar of Lebanon. Its dark green leaves filtered the light at each window and chilled the air of the room. There was no furniture, only on shelves which took up most of the walls were here and there a few scattered books, leaning together in protective clumps.

  ‘When is a surprise not a surprise?’ said Flaveen.

  She giggled.

  ‘This is the Zen-Do?’ said Miss Rohan. ‘Was that the word?’

  Severity.

  ‘The Zen-Do, the meditation hall,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘Perhaps this is the answer to your question, Miss Brentt. Sitting here like monks in a monastery in Japan and studying the koans I give you, perhaps – who knows? – you will achieve satori.’

  Honor looked round and said abruptly:

  ‘The old library. Must have had room for a good many books. The walls go up two storeys, I suppose. What did you call it?’

  ‘Mr Utamaro said it was the Zen-Do, the meditation hall,’ Miss Rohan said.

  Chapter 2

 
The others looked at each other.

  ‘I think we had better follow again,’ said Alasdair. ‘Stick together, you know.’

  He slipped the heavy horn-rimmed spectacles into his top pocket and set off in pursuit.

  The clean swept corridor. One, two, three doors. Mr Utamaro had opened the fourth and they just saw him going into the room. They filed in behind him.

  The small room was completely empty except for a glass showcase standing on metal legs in the middle of the bare floor. The case itself was eighteen inches long and twelve wide. Its base was of black velvet and on this there rested a single object.

  They crowded round on either side of Mr Utamaro to look at it. The dusty, neglected room – a large patch of the faded wallpaper had been pulled off one of the wails – and the shiny intrusive showcase focused attention compellingly on the object they enshrined.

  A short sword or long dagger, its fine steel blade curving slightly and running into the hilt without a guard. The hilt itself was worked with delicate ornamentation in the Japanese style. The contrast between the grace of this work and the devoted purposefulness of the plain close-grained steel of the blade.

  ‘This must be the famous sword,’ said Honor. ‘I wondered if that was what we were going to see. We had a couple of pars about it when there was that business at the customs when you arrived. That was what put me on to you.’

  ‘What was that?’ said Miss Rohan. ‘I saw nothing about it in my paper.’

  ‘Not the sort of story that gets into your sort of paper,’ Honor said. ‘Too much human interest. To begin with the sword’s worth a packet, and, more to the point, it was used for a murder.’

  ‘A murder, oh dear,’ said Miss Rohan. ‘Was that why it was mentioned in the papers?’

  ‘No, the murder was years ago,’ Honor said. ‘This time it was because the customs had some query about it, that was all. A local reporter got on to it and sent in a bit with the romantic history angle. It was a quiet night, no heiresses eloping, no sex killings, so it made a little story. “Customs Quiz Murder Weapon.” You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ said Miss Rohan.

  ‘No, perhaps you don’t. It’s just what brings me my bread and butter,’ said Honor.

  ‘And me my jam,’ Gerry said.

  ‘The trouble with believing that things such as the sword are important,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘is that you do not listen to what is said about them.’

  The introspective comment.

  ‘Who believes they’re important?’ said Honor.

  ‘The reporter you spoke of did,’ Mr Utamaro said. ‘That was why he sent you information which I had not given him. This sword has never been used to commit murder.’

  ‘You mean the papers got the facts wrong?’ Alasdair said.

  ‘Only when you have gone past facts,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘can you observe them with enough detachment to see them correctly. If your reporter had been instructed in Zen he would have heard me tell him that the sword I had with me – the sword in the showcase here – was one of a pair. In the fourteenth century swords for samurai were made in pairs, a big one and a small. This one is the smaller of a pair, the wakizashi.’

  ‘How is that spelt?’ Alasdair said. ‘I’ve no doubt Miss Brentt will want to send her paper a corrected version of the story.’

  Honor waved the suggestion away with an awkward scrubbing motion of her long skinny hand.

  ‘How interested do you think our readers will be in that?’ she said. ‘They’d resent the waste of space, and we’re not in business to make our readers resentful.’

  Alasdair took the horn-rimmed glasses from his pocket and put them on his heavy nose. An improvement in severity.

  ‘Well, I’m relieved to hear that this sword has killed no one,’ Miss Rohan said. ‘It looks decidedly capable of doing so.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘someone else who is too caught up in trying to remake the world to their own pattern. You did not hear what I said, Miss Rohan. My actual words were: “This sword has never been used to commit a murder.” But it has, indeed, killed many people in battle as it was handed down from samurai to samurai over six hundred years. And some of them will have used it to take their own lives too – the wakizashi is the blade used for hara-kiri.’

  ‘It gives me the creeps, it does really,’ said Flaveen.

  In a whisper.

  Jim Henderson, standing near her, said:

  ‘Why would you let yourself think a thing like that? That sword’s not a particularly effective weapon in a modern context. I’d take a simple sten gun any day.’

  ‘Nevertheless I’ve no doubt the sword’s lethal,’ Alasdair said.

  He leant forward and inspected the showcase.

  ‘I suppose this is perfectly safe?’ he said.

  ‘It was installed by a famous firm of locksmiths,’ Mr Utamaro answered. ‘Major Francis insisted on it. He has great confidence in the firm.’

  Alasdair straightened up.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I see the nameplate. They’re good people. The best.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Miss Rohan said. ‘One would not want a thing like that loose about the house.’

  ‘Oh, this one’s safe enough,’ said Gerry. ‘It’s the other one, its big brother, that you want to watch out for. The one the murder was committed with.’

  He turned to Mr Utamaro.

  ‘I’d lock that up too if I were you, really I would, old boy.’

  ‘You mean the other sword of the pair is somewhere in the house, not under lock and key?’ said Miss Rohan.

  ‘It is in America,’ Mr Utamaro said. ‘It was stolen from the family who owned the pair about fifty years ago.’

  ‘And it was traced to America but never found?’ asked Alasdair.

  ‘Yes, it was found,’ Mr Utamaro said. ‘It was found in the body of the thief who stole it, put there by an accomplice. After that the owners didn’t want it. It is in a police museum now, I believe.’

  ‘I should like to see it,’ said Mr Applecheek. ‘I should like to see the pair together.’

  He bent over the case and pored over the slim weapon on its wide black velvet bed.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Miss Rohan. ‘I thought Mr Manvers told us the other one of the pair was also in the house, and now I learn it is in America.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Gerry. ‘I did tell you it was in the house. I told you a beastly lie. Give you the old ants in the pants, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Miss Rohan. ‘A joke.’

  Douche.

  ‘Be careful, Mr Applecheek,’ said Mr Utamaro.

  His hand flashed out and moved the old clergyman back a few inches from the showcase.

  ‘The case must not be touched,’ he said.

  ‘Not touched?’ said Honor. ‘What nonsense is that?’

  ‘It is not nonsense,’ Mr Utamaro said.

  The quick smile baring the stumpy teeth.

  ‘I assure you there is a very good reason for it.’

  ‘A bit of hocus-pocus,’ said Honor.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘not hocus-pocus at all.’

  ‘Right,’ said Honor.

  She stepped quickly up to the showcase beside Mr Applecheek and placed her hand swiftly and decisively on top of it.

  The room suddenly filled with deafening noise. A long high-pitched throbbing note. Occupying every cubic inch between the four walls with equal unbearable intensity.

  The group round the showcase looked at each other bemusedly. Slowly lifting their heads; underwater in an overwhelming current.

  Mr Utamaro smiled. He spoke but only the movement of his lips made this plain even to those standing near him.

  Then he squatted on the floor under the showcase and turned something. A small trapdoor in the bottom of the case dropped. Mr Utamaro put a hand into the recess and, as suddenly as the blare had begun, it stopped.

 
Nobody said anything.

  The silence was as different from the stridency of the moment before as one world from another.

  Mr Utamaro turned the mechanism under the showcase again.

  ‘That was the alarm bell,’ he said. ‘It is set to go off at the lightest jar to the case.’

  ‘And it is switched off from underneath the case?’ said Mr Applecheek. ‘Most ingenious.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘The door underneath is opened by a combination lock for which only the warden and I know the code. It is possible with care to open it without setting the alarm off if you know the numbers, but if you get them wrong the alarm is actuated in that way too.’

  He swung the trap door shut and rose to his feet in a single lithe movement.

  ‘Now it is set again,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch the case.’

  ‘All right,’ said Honor, ‘I’ve learnt my lesson. But why did you have all this installed?’

  ‘That was because of the papers,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘Major Francis was worried because they had described the sword as being so valuable, and he insisted on precautions being taken. He took charge of the whole matter himself, and personally supervised the installation.’

  ‘But surely the sword is of considerable value,’ Mr Applecheek said.

  ‘Yes, it is valuable. After all it was made by the great smith, Muramasa. But it is not quite as valuable as the papers said.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Honor, ‘I’ll tell my editor his whole staff has got to have training in Zen. I know the routine: “unless you are uninterested in facts you cannot be interested in them.” It’s a line, all right.’

  *

  As they wheeled the tea trolley away from the Common Room – as Major Francis, the warden, was always careful to call it – the two German girls were giggling.

  ‘So English,’ said the chubby one.

  ‘One day I will write a little thesis – fünfzigtausend words on the English tea ceremony,’ said the other.

  Flaxen plaits hanging demurely.

  Abruptly the giggles ceased.

  Mr Utamaro came striding towards them.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said as he passed.

  ‘Good evening, Herr Professor.’

  As Mr Utamaro entered the Common Room Miss Rohan was saying:

  ‘I’m so glad they manage to get some help here. Things are not what they were. Or how they should be.’