Murder on the Cliff Read Online Free Page B

backing, she’s become the most well-known hostess in Kyoto, and her teahouse has become the most fashionable. It’s called the ‘American Tea House.’ People seek it out the way they might a restaurant owned by a movie star here.”
    “And?” prompted Charlotte.
    “Last week, she threw him over. Announced that she was breaking her contract. The Japanese are outraged. They’re calling her every name in the book. There are even editorials bemoaning the national decline of honor. Humiliating one of their leading citizens for …” Connie’s gaze shifted to the other side of the porch, where Marianne was flirting outrageously with Shawn.
    Charlotte completed the sentence: “An American sumo wrestler.”
    If body language could be X-rated, Marianne’s was. From across the room, Lester stared at her, his forehead creased in a frown. He had seen her through several of these flirtations—most recently with a college sophomore—and would probably see her through several more, but he clearly wasn’t happy about it.
    “If you ask me, that’s why Tanaka was so nasty. Getting back at the Americans for Shawn’s stealing his geisha. He’s probably mad at him for his success in sumo too. Spalding says the Japanese have really given Shawn a hard time. A lot of Japanese hate to see a foreigner succeed at their national sport, and to succeed so quickly.”
    “I’m surprised he’s gotten as far as he has,” said Charlotte, knowing how xenophobic the Japanese could be. “Did you say there have been other American sumo wrestlers?”
    “Two,” Connie replied.
    “Did they run into trouble too?”
    “Not as much. They’re both Hawaiians. One’s retired now; he’s the one Spalding wrote the book about. He’s going to be here too. The Japanese felt some kind of racial kinship, I guess. Actually, it’s more than just race. Shawn is a Japanophile: he studies Zen, he does ink-wash paintings, he speaks perfect Japanese. He’s more Japanese than most Japanese, and that rankles them.”
    Charlotte looked over at Shawn. He was big and handsome with heavy, dark eyebrows and deep green eyes, but it wasn’t only his size and looks that made him attractive. He had grace and style, and conveyed the sense of power in repose that was typical of top athletes at the peak of their form. In short, a young god—a lot younger than Marianne.
    “Nice-looking, isn’t he?” said Connie, who wasn’t immune to the blandishments of male charm herself.
    Had Connie been about twenty years younger, Charlotte suspected it would have been she who was making the play for Shawn instead of her daughter. Though she had settled down in her later years, it was no mystery from whom Marianne had inherited her inability to control her reckless impulses.
    As they watched, a photographer approached the couple. As he aimed his camera, Marianne grinned and draped herself over Shawn. They made a striking picture, and she knew it.
    Leaving Connie to Spalding, who had worked out the Tanaka problem with Mori, Charlotte headed inside to the gallery, where there was an exhibition of the famous Black Ships Scrolls. The long scrolls were arrayed around the room with translations of the Japanese inscriptions underneath. Charlotte started at the right of the longest one and worked her way to the left. Backwards by Western standards, but from beginning to end by Japanese. The depictions of Perry’s expedition had been executed by Japanese painters on the spot. The first boats to greet Perry’s expedition had been filled with artists who had recognized the market for paintings of the foreign barbarians and their awesome ships. The scrolls were far from fine art, but they had a primitive charm. Charlotte was amused by the depictions of Perry as a comical swaggerer with slanted eyes and a huge nose, of the dragonlike black ships belching clouds of steam and smoke, and of drunken crewmen with copious body hair consorting with courtesans, perhaps Okichi—pre-Townsend