The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan (16 page)

Taking this coil from me, Holmes first put it over one shoulder before proceeding to climb up a nearby tree! I watched in amazement as he made his way along a stout branch some twenty feet above my head, before tying one end of the rope around it and letting the remainder drop down to the ground. In just a few moments, he had climbed down this rope and was back on the ground.

‘Now,’ said Holmes. ‘I will give that fool of a magistrate a clue as to the
real
answer to this case.’

‘The killer climbed up a rope,’ I cried. ‘A rope hanging from the top of the cliff above – the one which juts out over the riverbank. I thought that no one could climb up that cliff; and yet I did not think of a rope, tied to something on the plateau at the very top.

‘Or maybe there was an accomplice – someone holding the rope… But those footprints, though, along the riverbed… and the discovery of the muddy shoes and bloodstained knife…’

The gentle smile Holmes gave me in return was one I knew all too well. It informed me that I was entirely incorrect in everything I was surmising.

‘But the lines either side of the victim’s mouth, my dear Yoshida-
sensei
? What about those…?’

I did not answer, as Holmes and I walked to the small prison that was nearby. Here, the magistrate brusquely escorted us to the small cell which contained the magistrate named Akiyama. He was a somewhat fleshy, indeed almost corpulent man – no doubt he ate well – and it was immediately obvious that he, at least, would be entirely unable to climb up any rope. Far less one which led to a plateau at the top of a cliff located approximately one hundred feet above the ground!

Still, with the magistrate grumbling in protest, Holmes requested that Akiyama be escorted from his cell to the tree nearby. Here, Holmes demanded that the man attempt to climb the rope!

‘And be warned,’ said Holmes severely to the merchant, ‘do not attempt to trick me. I shall
know
if you are merely pretending not to be able to climb this rope.’

With the merchant left with no alternative but to do as instructed, he took hold of the rope and vainly attempted to pull himself upwards. It was a sight somehow pathetic to see, as his feet scrabbled for purchase before his fleshy body slowly slid downwards, the merchant then yelping with pain and blowing on his hands, which had been ‘burnt’ slightly by the friction on the rope.

‘Need we prolong this pantomime any further, Holmes-
san
?’ asked the magistrate with affected weariness, though I saw now that the sight of the rope had stirred the same sort of questions in his mind that it had in mine.

‘You should know…’ continued the magistrate then, ‘you should know that this man had recently begun to see another woman. Knowing of the deceased’s extreme loyalty and affection towards him – despite his repeated physical
and
mental ill-treatment of her – Akiyama decided that it would be best just to murder her, so to prevent any embarrassing public ‘scenes’ that would result from Aoki-
san
finding out about his philandering, and which would potentially damage his social standing as a prosperous merchant.’

‘It’s not true!’ cried the merchant, tears showing in his piggish eyes as he stared beseechingly at Holmes. ‘Yes – yes I was cruel to her sometimes, may Buddha forgive me, and yes, I had taken to seeing a younger woman… But I would never have
killed
Hitomi.’

‘And those muddy shoes, and the bloodstained knife, concealed there beneath one of your pigsties, eh? What about those?’ cried the magistrate, stabbing one finger towards the quivering suspect.

‘I don’t
know
,’ returned Akiyama despairingly. ‘I don’t know why they were there – or
who
put them there. All I can say was, it wasn’t me…’

‘I know it wasn’t,’ said Holmes, his voice reassuring. ‘And I know it wasn’t you who killed Hitomi Aoki. So take heart, Akiyama – you will not be executed for this crime.’

I noticed that Holmes did not address the merchant by adding
san
to his name. A clear indication that although the English detective was determined to prove his innocence, he still held the man in contempt for his apparent ill-treatment of the dead woman.

‘Be careful, Holmes-
san
,’ cautioned the magistrate. ‘Be exceedingly careful. Don’t make promises which you may very well not be able to – ’

Despite the seriousness of this matter, I could barely repress a smile as Holmes irritably waved this pompous idiot into silence.

‘Those footprints were all made by the victim herself,’ said Holmes then, so that I at once forgot my minor merriment. Instead I (along with the magistrate, suspect and two accompanying guards) stared askance at him.

‘Hitomi Aoki first walked along the riverbed wearing her own footwear. Then she changed into the shoes she was carrying – of the type commonly worn by men – and proceeded to walk
backwards
, alongside the footprints she had just made, to a point on the riverbank.

‘Then she had only to walk
backwards
again, returning to the point where we found her body. This would, of course, give the impression that she had walked to that spot with an accomplice – who had then returned from that place alone.’

‘What is… what is this…?’ breathed the magistrate.

‘She did this ‘backwards walking’ most skillfully, so that it took me a few moments to realize it,’ continued Holmes remorselessly. ‘And then we have only to look at this rope, to realize the rest of the puzzle. That is – broadly speaking. There are a few other, minor details which are, of course, immediately obvious to the trained mind.’

‘The… the murderer climbed up this… this rope, to the top of the cliff?’ stammered the magistrate helplessly. ‘But how does that explain… explain there are only two sets of footprints, and…’

Again, with a curt wave of his hand, Holmes dismissed the magistrate’s almost dazed-sounding ramblings.

‘I’d better be the one to detach this rope from the branch above; and then I shall return to the house where Aoki-
san
’s daughter now lives by herself.’

Holmes looked at the magistrate, continuing –

‘Kindly come to this house in approximately half an hour, accompanied only by my good friend here, the doctor Yoshida-
sensei
. This merchant you can put back in his cell, and these two guards can return to their duties. When you return from that house – having had all the facts relating to this case revealed to you – you can release the merchant immediately.’

‘But I –’

The magistrate’s voice fell into silence, Holmes not listening, instead pulling himself up the rope in a series of easy, fluid movements to the branch above.

Appearing rather dejected, the magistrate motioned for the guards and the merchant to follow him back to the small prison. And I followed them, in accordance with Holmes’s wishes.

4

When the magistrate and I entered into Rinko Aoki’s small house a short while later, it was to discover Holmes sat with that young woman in the small
tatami
room, a letter lying on the low table.

‘I informed this young lady that her best chance was to make a clean breast of what
really
happened, concerning the death of her mother, and she – to her credit – immediately obliged.’

‘You seemed to know of everything
already
, Holmes-
san
,’ said Aoki, gazing at the hawk-faced foreigner almost in awe.

‘Tell the magistrate here what you said to me,’ commanded Holmes gravely.  

The woman nodded, and then said –

‘Maybe you think I am now making a case for myself, but I do not believe that I would have seen the merchant named Akiyama be wrongfully convicted and executed for the murder of my mother – no matter how shamefully he treated her over the years.

‘But I
did
want him to suffer somehow – to believe almost to the last moment that he
was
going to die – as some sort of revenge for all that my poor, devoted mother endured at his hands.’

‘What… What is this?’ demanded the magistrate.

‘Read the letter,’ said Holmes. ‘This one, lying upon the table.’

As the magistrate picked up this letter, Holmes looked meaningfully at him and added –

‘Rinko Aoki should certainly receive
some
sort of punishment for her deception… On the other hand, she has recently suffered the loss of her mother, so that perhaps a
short
period of imprisonment would be sufficient. Certainly nothing more than this.’

The magistrate did not answer, instead focusing his attention upon that letter. He held it in such a way that I, stood close beside him, was able to read it too.

My dear Rinko
(the letter read) –

By the time you read this, I will be dead. You knew I was to shortly die anyway, the doctor telling me that there is certainly a cancer growing inside of me. I have tolerated the pain this cancer gave me as well as I can and yet… Death, at least, will mean I no longer have to suffer
that.

You have never approved of the man I have been seeing since the time you were very young; ever since the death of your father, in fact. And it is true that he has beaten me and been unspeakably cruel on so many occasions. And yet, for all of that I still loved him. Until I recently (very recently) discovered that he has begun seeing another woman. This I cannot forgive.

So for just this reason alone, I have taken steps to ensure that Akiyama the merchant’s wealth will shortly become yours. I will die knowing that my beloved only child, now parentless and without any other relation, will at least not have any financial worries in the years to come.

All you need now do is this –

Go to the top of the cliff that is beyond the small temple and the cemetery nearby. There you will find the end of a length of rope that has been weighted down with a rock. Pull on this rope, and within a minute or so you will bring up a knife and a pair of shoes tied to the other end. These objects – particularly the knife – will be bloodstained. I am sorry. Yes, it is this knife I used to end my own life, first tying it to this rope, the other end of which is hanging just a couple of feet above the riverbed that is below the overhanging cliff.

The shoes… Well, you need not concern yourself about these.

Recover these items, Rinko, taking great care not to be seen by anyone, and hurl them in the sea somewhere. Return to our house – or rather your house, as it is now – and await to be informed of my death. Affect the suitable level of grief, as well as surprise at the events which follow next…

My daughter, I beg you to recover from whatever sadness or shock this letter has caused you, and to do at once as I have requested. Time is most important.

With all my love,

Mama.  

‘The way you reacted to the news that Akiyama had been arrested contrasted strongly with your almost sullen character of before,’ Holmes informed the young woman. ‘You could not play the part well; it did not sit easily with you.’

‘No,’ nodded the woman. ‘But as I say, still I wanted him to suffer, for all he had done to my mother.’

‘You nearly caused an innocent man to be found guilty of murder, and so to be –’

‘Yes, this we already know.’ Holmes curtly cut through the magistrate’s indignant (although also, it seemed to me, somewhat affected) bluster. ‘I would feel rather more sympathetic towards Akiyama – at the way this young woman’s mother planted ‘clues’ to frame him for ‘murder’, shortly before taking her own life – if it hadn’t been made abundantly clear to me just what sort of man he is.

‘So, as I say, this young woman should receive nothing more than a token punishment – is that clear?’

‘As you like, Holmes-
san
,’ nodded the magistrate sullenly. ‘You may be a foreigner, but I am aware of the fame you already have in Japan. So, I shall act in accordance with your wishes.’ 

Without another word, Holmes left the house. I followed him outside, and we began walking.

‘Together, Yoshida-
sensei
, we’ve faced murderous monks and enraged bare-knuckle boxers, to make reference to just two of our cases,’ mused Holmes, after a while. ‘And yet, give me any of these before the greatest danger of all…’

‘And that is…?’ I prompted.

‘A woman scorned,’ replied Holmes, with a gentle sigh. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Sumo Wrestler

Almost everyone had heard of Kato already, of course. The famous 350-pound, six-foot
rikishi
–
sumo
wrestler – who cared little for etiquette or tradition, destroying his opponents the length and breadth of Japan as he rose rapidly up the
sumo
ladder. He frequently liked to indulge in
sake
(which still never affected his performance in the
dohyo
– the semi-circular ring), which also on occasion caused him to grab male well-wishers by their genitalia, leading them yelping around some inn or other such place.