The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan (15 page)

And I blinked, for my vision had suddenly become slightly blurred.  

Sherlock Holmes and the Shinto River-Dancer

1

 
The middle-aged woman had been stabbed through her heart. She lay there in the semi-dried mud which had been churned up all around her, obviously during her death throes. Her hands, lying there by her sides, were like the left-hand side of her chest also bloody.

  Despite all the mud and the blood, anyone could see that she wore the snow-white robes of a
Shinto
‘maiden’ – one of those women who have, since early childhood, been trained in one of the duties concerning Japan’s oldest religion… 

  Now, the magistrate in attendance explained just what this woman’s particular duty had been –

  ‘A river-dancer,’ he explained to Sherlock Holmes, me and those few other people gathered round the body. ‘Hitomi Aoki
was one of those special women, blessed by nature, who can entice the rain itself to fall just by performing a special dance in a dried-up riverbed.’

  ‘Only this particular riverbed has not long been dry,’ noted Holmes – something made more than obvious by the fact that the mud had not yet fully dried. This also explained the footprints leading to – and from – the murder scene.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Holmes-
san
,’ said the magistrate tightly. ‘Such an observation hardly constitutes a – shall we say – very
thorough
test of your deductive powers…’ 

  At this thinly-veiled admonishment, the English detective merely nodded and gave a slight smile.

  ‘This riverbed is
indeed
almost never fully dry, so that I had never heard of Aoki-
san
being called here to dance before. But that said, this is certainly her body lying here, and she has been stabbed –
murdered –
and this muddy riverbed shows two clear sets of footprints.

‘Namely, her own and the murderer’s – walking side-by-side to where her body now lies – and then just the murderer’s footprints walking back away.’

‘You are for some reason
certain
that these other footprints belong to this woman’s murderer?’ asked Holmes curiously, in his near-flawless Japanese.

‘Oh please, Holmes-
san
,’ returned the magistrate, waving one hand in a disparaging manner. ‘When two sets of footprints lead to a corpse, and only one set can then be seen walking away…’

At this declaration, Holmes looked thoughtfully up at the cliff which jutted out almost directly overhead this part of the riverbank. The sea lay no great distance away; I could just hear its waves crashing against the shore…

As I say, this rocky cliff jutted out, forming a small plateau that was perhaps one hundred feet above. From where we now stood, it was obvious that not even a
ninja
could have scaled up that craggy, protruding rock face to the top. Some scraggy, hardy vegetation grew out of this rock face, here and there.

The magistrate, following Holmes’s gaze, barely restrained a shake of his head.

‘Really, Holmes-
san
,’ he began. ‘I’m fully aware of your reputation for investigating the – shall we say – rare and unusual; and yet, may I ask, exactly
what
are you expecting to discover here? Evidence of a levitating assassin, perhaps, despite the footprints we see leading
away
from the dead body…?’ 

 
‘So you need only to discover who made these rather indistinct footprints, then?’ asked Holmes, returning his attention to the magistrate.

  I looked at these footprints myself. They really were rather indistinct. They could have been made by anyone. But the other footprints – there was no doubt that these belonged to that pretty, but rather stern-faced woman now lying dead there in the mud...

  (Here, I should say that the magistrate had been meticulous that no one should trample these footprints as we approached the body. To this end, he had insisted that we come from over the top of the riverbank, rather than along the riverbed itself.)

  ‘There are a number of clues to be going on with, Holmes-
san
,’ returned the magistrate evasively.

  ‘Quite,’ said Holmes, in a voice that was suddenly curt and dismissive. As I was already aware, he had only a limited patience for this type of small-town magistrate. They tended (one might almost say quite remarkably) to have to a man almost exactly the same type of character.

  ‘Is total idiocy a requirement for such a profession?’ Holmes had previously (and more than once) demanded in exasperation…

  …Now, Holmes leant down close to the woman’s face. And utilizing some of those skills I had inevitably learnt from being in his service, I saw what he saw: the lines of tightness either side of the mouth; a rigidity which not even death itself could displace. There had been great pain in the body during life – or great pain in the heart…

  ‘We will go now,’ Holmes then informed the magistrate. ‘Thank you.’

  And with that, he walked suddenly away, so that I had to hurry to catch up with him…      

2

 
Back in the town that was close to the riverbed, it did not take long for Holmes to discover that the dead woman had a daughter. We went to visit her at the small home she had shared with her mother. With some reluctance, it seemed to me, the young woman – who gave her name as Rinko – invited us inside.

  As she poured us both a cup of green tea, I noticed a snow-white robe hanging from a doorframe. This was Rinko’s, presumably – she was also a river-dancer…?  

  ‘I do not know who could have killed my mother,’ said the young woman (she appeared to be still in her late teens) sullenly, kneeling to face us across a low table in a
tatami
mat room. Her long black hair half-obscured her face, so that it was difficult to see her eyes. Also, she spoke almost in a mumble.

  ‘And you – you will continue in your mother’s profession?’ asked Holmes gently.

  ‘Hardly my mother’s ‘profession’ anymore, seeing that she is dead – but yes, I will,’ returned the young woman morosely. ‘It is common for daughters to follow their mothers as
Shinto
dancers, after all.’

  ‘And your mother had not spoken of any fears recently, concerning…’

  Holmes let his last word fade into silence – an open question, inviting confidence.

  ‘No,’ returned Rinko; a little too quickly, I thought. The single word sounded almost
defensive
. Or maybe, I then considered, she was merely uncomfortable talking to a foreigner…

‘There was nothing,’ she continued. ‘She did not seem upset or worried about anything and – I say again – I do not know who could have killed her. That is all.’

  Holmes nodded, and seemed about to say something else when there came suddenly a loud knocking upon the front door. With a sigh, Rinko rose to open it; and a moment later we heard the magistrate’s voice declare –

  ‘We have found your mother’s killer!’

  At this, Holmes rose hurriedly. I followed him out of the small room, to the entrance of the house. The magistrate, stood just outside, raised his eyebrows upon observing the foreign detective.

  ‘Well, Holmes-
san
, I assume you were following some line of enquiry by coming here,’ he began, pompously. ‘But while you have been sitting here and… talking… I have both tracked down and arrested the murderer!’

  ‘Who… who is it?’ stammered Rinko, and for a moment Holmes glanced sharply at her.

  ‘The merchant named Akiyama.’

  At this, Rinko gave a small gasp.

  ‘But he and my mother were – ’

  ‘Yes – lovers,’ broke in the magistrate. ‘And it’s also no secret, here in this town, that Akiyama treated your mother cruelly during the course of their long relationship together. Only, your mother was devoted to him, and so would seek no other. We can say such things now, with this killer safely under arrest!’

  ‘And the proofs of his guilt are…?’ asked Holmes quietly.

  ‘A mud-covered set of shoes, and a bloodstained knife, discovered hastily concealed under one of the pigsties that Akiyama has in one part of his large garden,’ returned the magistrate instantly, now looking almost with contempt at the famous Englishman. ‘This would seem to indicate Akiyama’s guilt rather firmly to
me
, at least. So how about to the great Sherlock Holmes?’

  Ignoring such tedious goading (this was hardly the first time a small-town official had been visibly riled by Holmes’s presence), Holmes instead said –

  ‘How, exactly, did you come to discover these… items?’

  ‘I already had my suspicions, concerning Akiyama’s involvement in this matter,’ returned the magistrate, with an infuriating air of self-importance. ‘But naturally I had to visit his large residence, to inform him of the death of the woman who had been his lover for a considerable number of years now.

‘Naturally,’ muttered Holmes, so that the magistrate glanced sharply at him.

‘But then, crossing the ‘yard area’ – if you will – that surrounds his home (he is known to deal in many things, from animals to furniture), my trained eye deduced that a board under one of the pigsties had recently been removed and then replaced – only this time with the inside face now showing on the outside!

‘Naturally, this part of the board that had until now been protected from the weather showed a somewhat ‘fresher’ appearance than those other boards. So, I immediately suspected that it had been removed in order to conceal something
behind
it – in the cavity beneath the pigsty – with it then being put back in such haste that its different appearance to the others went unnoticed.’

‘Yes,’ nodded Holmes. ‘That would make sense…’

‘I’m glad you think so, Holmes-
san
,’ returned the magistrate brusquely. ‘Anyway, at the very least, the wealth of this merchant named Akiyama will now pass to the victim’s daughter here, in accordance with the law of this region. This may prove of some small consolation, perhaps.

‘Akiyama is denying everything, but the facts are obvious,’ continued the magistrate. ‘He went with Aoki-
san
to this riverbed, away from prying eyes, and there stabbed his victim before walking back away. He then attempted to hide his muddy footwear and bloodstained knife – and yet still I succeeded in finding them.’

‘Did this Akiyama also paint the words ‘
I am the killer
’ on a large wooden board, which he then carried up by his chest as he paraded around town?’

‘What?’ snapped the magistrate, looking at the Englishman as though he’d gone mad.

‘I mean along with the fact that this merchant left such obvious traces of his guilt: the footprints on the riverbed (the most obvious of all, naturally), and the almost
deliberately
clumsy attempt to conceal the muddy footwear and alleged ‘murder weapon’.

‘Really,’ Holmes continued, ‘one can only assume that this Akiyama, this merchant,
wanted
to be captured.’

The magistrate opened his small, puckered mouth as though to speak… Then he abruptly closed it again, instead choosing to glower at Holmes.

‘You have this merchant under custody, I assume?’ asked Holmes.

The magistrate nodded moodily.

‘I should like to talk with him – in an hour or so.’

When there was no immediate reply, Holmes continued –

‘I promise I will not take long – ’

‘Yes, yes,’ barked the magistrate. ‘He is in the prison here. Whenever you like – if you must…’

‘Thank you,’ returned Holmes. ‘I will be there in a short while. Shall we depart, Yoshida-
sensei
?’

And with that, Holmes and I left the small house.

3

Holmes tasked me with finding a long length of rope, and explained that he had to go on some errand of his own. Of course, I did not ask what this was; but meeting me again just a little while later, he said –

‘I have visited the physician of this town, Yoshida-
sensei
. As I suspected, he had lately been attempting to treat the river-dancer named Aoki.’

‘I noticed those lines around her mouth, Holmes-
san
,’ I declared. ‘I am a physician myself, after all… Though whether these lines came from physical or mental pain, I could not be quite certain.’

‘Well, a visit to this physician has informed me that such lines were – in part – due to recent ill-health. Rather…
severe
ill-health, I regret to say.’

The words
in part
caused me immediate confusion. Was Holmes implying that those lines had also been caused by some mental, or rather some
emotional
upset? Yet Holmes’s attention was now firmly fixed upon the thick coil of rope I had purchased, and was now obliged to carry with both hands.