The Hell Screen by I. J. Parker Page B

center. A faint smell of death hung in the cool air but was not yet offensive. Light fell through two high windows covered with wooden grates.
     
    Kobe went to the body in the middle of the room and flung back the grass mat covering the naked corpse of a young woman. She was on her back. Next to her lay a carefully folded bundle of clothing. Akitada recognized the material, heavy cream-colored silk with an embroidery of chrysanthemums and grasses. He had last seen it on the veiled woman in the rain outside the temple gate. The lovely fabric was stained with blood and dirt, and Akitada, having priced expensive silks for his sister, guiltily wished it had not been wasted on a woman who had first dragged it through the mud and then allowed herself to be murdered in it.
     
    “Well?” said Kobe, when Akitada’s eyes had rested long enough on the clothing. “Look at her! What do you think?”
     
    Akitada did as he was told. It was his second glance, and again he flinched inwardly. The first look had taken in the mutilated head and quickly escaped to the embroidered silk. The willful destruction of a part of the human anatomy which was the person’s identity, the self which he or she saw every morning in the mirror, the means by which humans are recognized for who they are and by which they express their thoughts and emotions to others, shocked even him who had seen too much of violent death. He recalled wishing to see the face of the veiled lady who had moved with such lithe grace. Now he would never know if she had been beautiful. Gone was the mouth which once had smiled at husband or lover and had spoken words of love—or hatred! The eyes would never again see the beauty of the world and mirror thoughts of happiness or sadness. Instead of a human face he saw a bloodied mask of raw flesh, the nose and one eye gone, the other covered with gore, and the mouth gaping like some grotesque wound. The memory of the horrors of the hell screen flashed into his mind. He wondered if the painter had studied his craft in the police morgue.
     
    It had been a vicious attack. The killer must have been either demented or so furiously angry with his victim that he was no longer rational. Akitada thought of Nagaoka, the husband.
     
    Kobe, untroubled by either philosophy or psychology, urged impatiently, “Well, come on! Or are you waiting for the coroner to tell you what happened to her?”
     
    “Talking about me behind my back again, Superintendent?” asked a high, brisk voice from the doorway. A small, dapper man in his fifties walked in with a bouncing step. He gave Akitada a glance, bowed slightly to both of them, but spoke to Kobe in a casual, almost jovial manner. “So? What gives us the honor of a second visit, Super?”
     
    “ ‘Us’?” Kobe grinned, raising his brows. “Have you appropriated police headquarters, Masayoshi, or just the morgue? Or perhaps you have formed a closer relationship with the late Madame Nagaoka here?”
     
    The dapper man cackled. “The latter, of course. It is a professional bond which always develops between the coroner and the latest victim of a crime. The intimacy of my investigation has much of love and passion in it.” He winked at Akitada, who frowned back.
     
    “I brought a friend,” explained Kobe. “His name is Sugawara. He’s the nosy fellow who likes to solve my cases. As he wanted a look, I thought you could use some help, being that you don’t seem to be able to make up your feeble mind about the cause of death.” Kobe turned to Akitada. “This is Dr. Masayoshi, our coroner.”
     
    Akitada gave the man a cool nod. He was scandalized by the coroner’s flippant attitude toward the body of a respectable young married woman.
     
    If Masayoshi noted his expression, he ignored it. “I’ve heard of you,” he said. “There was a great deal of talk the time you pinned a strangulation of a girl from the pleasure quarter on one of the silk merchants.”
     
    Akitada