The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan

by Ben Stevens

  These words might well have been taken for a compliment; but the way in which they had been spoken was far less flattering. As though Holmes’s foolish mutterings about blood-sucking demons, vampires or whatever you may wish to call such creatures of mere myth and superstition had caused Iwasaki to suddenly have second thoughts about employing him.

  ‘There is a room here, in which you and your doctor friend – Yoshida-sensei, I believe? – might stay while you investigate this matter, if you so desire,’ said Iwasaki then, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘I accept the case,’ said Holmes. ‘You will have noticed, of course, that poor Yoshida-sensei is currently having some difficulties walking. As such, I would like to leave him here, in the room in which you are so kindly letting us stay, while I return to the inn we were at previously to get our few possessions.

  ‘And then… then I shall begin my investigation…’

  2

  A short while later I found myself lying in a room with an adjoining bathroom on the fourth floor of the teahouse – that is, the top floor of the large building which seemed to have any number of rooms and corridors. As I’d been helped up the steep wooden stairs to this room by Holmes, both of us following the woman named Iwasaki, we’d passed by a number of these tatami rooms, which lay empty and somewhat gloomy in the fading late-afternoon light.

  I tried to imagine these rooms lit up by oil lamps, male customers drinking, eating and laughing as the geisha of this teahouse played, sang and danced for them, but it was no use. That strange, murky sense of depression which had been plaguing me for some weeks only intensified, so that I found myself dreading being left alone in whatever room we were heading towards…

  ‘One of the other geisha here will be up shortly, to bring you some refreshment,’ Iwasaki informed me, as Holmes helped me sit on one of the two futon which had already been lain out. (Obviously, the owner of this teahouse had expected we would agree to her suggestion that we stay here.)

  Then Holmes followed Iwasaki out of the room, and I was left alone. There was a lamp, which I lit, but otherwise I had nothing to do except sit upon my futon and try to stop my thoughts from becoming too morose.

  I wasn’t certain what exactly the matter was with me; I’d told myself that my spirits would improve as soon as I could walk properly again, and yet…

  And yet I’d been feeling this way even before that silly and moreover fully avoidable accident, when I’d badly sprained my ankle after slipping in a muddy patch that lay along a path…

  There was just… a sense that time was slipping away; that I was perpetually following this foreigner from one bizarre and often dangerous situation to the next, and that sooner-or-later we would be overtaken by the specter of death which always followed us so closely.

  We’d survived so much, often when the odds against our survival had seemed overwhelming… Yet no matter how brilliant Holmes’s wits, such luck could not hold out indefinitely…

  There came a gentle knock on the sliding door, and then it slid open. In entered another geisha, as Iwasaki had said. This geisha carried a tray with food, a flask of drink (I fervently hoped that it was sake) and a small hot towel upon it.

  ‘I am Omitsu,’ stated the white-faced woman, in a gentle voice that caused a strange feeling of warmth, deep in my belly. Immediately, for some indefinable reason, I felt my spirits lift slightly.

  Despite the burning lamp, it was still none too bright in this room. The sliding shutters of wood and paper were closed across the window that lay behind the futon. Outside lay the fog which seemed to hug this area as evening descended, the lights from the many inns, pleasure houses and so on burning vaguely, mistily through it, enticing custom into more convivial surroundings.

  The woman passed me the tray, and I was able to discern that she was certainly younger than Iwasaki. She wore a kimono of dark red, and when she spoke again I saw that her teeth had also been blackened –

  ‘I have been told that you are injured…’

  Her big, almost doleful eyes seemed to flash sympathy at me, there in that ill-lit room.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘Just a silly accident, when I was walking to this town a few days be –’

  My voice abruptly cut off, for I realized that Omitsu was not really listening, instead staring intently at my face. Then she raised her right hand, gently placing it on my left cheek. It seemed that I could scarcely breathe, as she subjected me to this strange analysis of hers.

  And yet… I did not want it to end, and that is the truth. I felt more at peace, more relaxed, than I had for a long, long time. Perhaps forever… The growing darkness in the room seemed almost to hum, so quiet and still did it otherwise lie.

  Abruptly, the geisha straightened.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I have brought you some refreshments. I will return later.’

  I stared back at her as though dazed.

  ‘Yes, I… see,’ I mumbled foolishly. ‘I… later…’

  But already, Omitsu was gone.

  When Holmes returned, his overall demeanor was as subdued as ever I’d seen it. He had the appearance of a man trying to recover from some great shock, recently received.

  ‘The merchant truly has been driven out of his mind,’ remarked Holmes quietly, sitting down on the futon beside mine. ‘It was… awful to see a man – to see anyone – like that; shouting and ranting, his eyes bulging and his limbs tied to a wooden chair so that he shouldn’t break free and harm anyone else – or himself.

  ‘His wife (a meek, timid creature, obviously cowed by her husband back when he’d been in full possession of his faculties – and she as well as anyone else knew what had brought him to the servant girl’s room on that particular night) says that he shouts almost continually, day-and-night about ‘white faces’, ‘staring eyes’ and ‘blood’.

  ‘Certainly he was saying such things somewhat loudly when I saw him; and then exhaustion overtook him, for his head suddenly fell to one side and his eyes closed.’

  Holmes paused, and shook his head before continuing –

  ‘It is too late now to continue any further enquiries, but I shall resume first thing tomorrow, trying to locate all the residences that have claimed an attack by this… whatever it is, and seeing if any sort of pattern can thus be established…’

  If I am to be honest, I was having trouble concentrating on what Holmes was saying. I wanted only to see – to talk with – that geisha named Omitsu again.

  ‘Are you quite all right, my dear Yoshida-sensei?’ asked Holmes quietly, as I turned on my side, facing away from him.

  ‘I think so – just tired…’ I replied.

  I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, Omitsu’s whitened face floating there in the darkness before me…

  3

  When I awoke in the morning, Holmes was already gone. I managed to limp into the bathroom adjoining this room – and then fell back upon my futon, my ankle aching fiercely. As a doctor, I obviously knew how to expertly massage it, so to remove much of the pain and also encourage healing.

  I had paper, brush and ink, so that I prepared to write up one of the recent cases I’d shared with Sherlock Holmes. But then there came that soft, already-familiar knock on the sliding door of this room.

  In entered Omitsu, again carrying a tray.

  ‘Good morning,’ she greeted. ‘Holmes-san requested that you be allowed to rest, when he left earlier.’

  ‘Well, I am awake now,’ I returned, as the tray bearing white rice, miso soup and a delicious-looking piece of fish was handed to me.

  Omitsu knelt down beside my futon, her strangely large eyes again staring into mine, so that I at once felt my throat growing tight. I was truly captivated by this delicate geisha, now clad in a kimono of dark green trimmed with gold). And yet there was a strange scent about her; some faintly metallic smell that was at once slightly repulsive and also somehow –

  Thrilling.

  …I passed into a strange, dreamlike e
xistence. Perhaps I now even inhabited the geisha’s shadowy world known as Karyukai – the ‘flower and willow’ world.

  Certainly I cared for nothing except Omitsu’s presence…

  …And then sometime later (how much later?) Holmes was back in the room, and Omitsu was gone.

  ‘A bad business,’ muttered Holmes, shaking his head. ‘I have visited several of the places where people – young women, usually – have been discovered dead in the morning, all of the corpses allegedly with this bite mark upon their necks, the blood completely drained from their bodies…’

  ‘Really?’ I uttered.

  ‘Interesting to note, Yoshida-sensei, that the rooms in which these victims have been found dead are all sited on the first floor, or else – if on the second or even third – are easily accessible from the street or alleyway outside, the intruder being able to climb up on walls, low sloping roofs and suchlike.

  ‘So, we can cast aside any notion of some supernatural, levitating killer, at least.’

  At this, I turned to face Holmes.

  ‘You surely didn’t believe in such a thing in the first place, Holmes-san,’ I said.

  Holmes stared back at me, his expression unreadable.

  ‘I never discount anything, Yoshida-sensei, until it can be entirely disproved. But still… something attacked these people, once darkness had descended, taking their blood without them making a murmur and then fleeing without anyone seeing a thing… Until that merchant happened to blunder in, that is…’

  ‘And now, Holmes-san,’ I said, ‘with it being autumn, so soon becoming dark in the evening, and so foggy…’

  ‘This killer will strike again, and again, until – until they are stopped,’ commented my Holmes. ‘But there seems to be no pattern as to where they will strike, only the certainty that those people occupying rooms by themselves, with windows easily accessible from the street, are most at risk. As such, a number of such rooms are now lying empty, people instead choosing to share with others as a way of obtaining some measure of security.

  ‘Really, beyond further promulgating this somewhat obvious advice to those people who live and work in this town’s pleasure quarter, I – for the moment – have no other idea how to proceed with this investigation,’ declared Holmes, somewhat ruefully.

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I have now to go and talk with Iwasaki – to basically repeat what I have just told you… But, in any case, how is your ankle, Yoshida-sensei?’

  ‘It is healing, Holmes-san,’ I mumbled, again turning so that I faced the wall. ‘I just find myself so tired…’

  ‘It is evening anyway,’ declared Holmes, as I heard him stand. ‘You rest now; I will return in a while…’

  But I was conscious only of that fierce desire to be with Omitsu again; and smell that strange scent about her, the one that somehow caused my very senses to reel…

  I was bewitched, I realized vaguely – bewitched by this beautiful young geisha – and I did not care in the slightest...

  4

  The days and nights all melted together, Omitsu and Holmes never in this dimly-lit room at the same time. Vaguely I sensed that my ankle was getting better, and this almost alarmed me.

  Alarmed me because soon I would be able to walk again, and already Holmes was talking as though this was one of those occasional cases he would be unable to solve. As such, we would be obliged to leave this large teahouse which had (as I now knew) Iwasaki, Omitsu and four other geisha working – and living – within it.

  Holmes said something concerning this teahouse, and those other teahouses in this neighborhood, still doing only limited business. But most evenings I heard noise coming from one of the rooms downstairs – laughter, singing and so forth – and so I assumed that the six geisha here had at least some customers to entertain.

  But, really, I cared nothing for any of this. I only waited for Omitsu to come bearing that tray (always this happened while Holmes was out) – and then…

  Well…

  But it was as I was shaving one day that I felt a sudden thrill of something almost like terror. For my hand had slipped, and I had cut myself. I wiped the slight wound with my fingers – and then caught the faintly metallic tang of my own blood…

  In a flash, I realized that it was this I had smelt (if only faintly) about Omitsu. I had smelt blood on her skin. My senses reeled, and for a moment I almost passed out.

  I’d been… who knew how many days in this dimly-lit room, Holmes conducting his investigations during the day, leaving early in the morning (commonly before I was even awake, for I had become very sluggish) and returning late in the evening, when I was already beginning to drift off to sleep…

  I found my blood-stained fingers now creeping up slowly to my neck, feeling either side of it, as though searching for…

  This was absurd! Yet I felt… fear, there in my very guts. Yet still also that consuming desire for the geisha who visited me in this gloomy room, the shutter always drawn across the window…

  ‘Yoshida-sensei…’

  I started – Omitsu was standing just behind me; I had not even heard her knock and then enter, so deep had I been in my thoughts. Her large, doleful eyes fastened on my cheek, which was bleeding…

  ‘You have cut yourself,’ she observed, her voice now like an autumn wind blowing through a pile of crisp, dead leaves.

  ‘It is nothing,’ I replied, trying to keep my own voice steady…

  ‘You are leaving tomorrow.’

  The words came as a statement.

  ‘What – what do you mean?’ I stammered in reply.

  ‘The foreigner you accompany, Sherlock Holmes, told my mistress; that is, Iwasaki-san. He can find no answer to – well, you know to what. So he, and thus you, are leaving first thing tomorrow morning.’

  My very mind was failing me. Now, I seemed to recall Holmes himself having said something like this, as I’d lain there half-asleep. No longer was I even certain where wakefulness ended, and dreams began…

  ‘So if your ankle can stand it, Yoshida-sensei, please come with me,’ said Omitsu then. ‘We have prepared some small celebration for you and Holmes-san in a room downstairs – our way of showing our gratitude for the Englishman’s help.’

  ‘But he has failed you,’ I mumbled, staring deeply into Omitsu’s eyes. ‘He does not know who –’

  ‘He tried,’ murmured Omitsu. ‘But please, come.’

  I could now walk almost without a limp, although my ankle still hurt slightly. So walking downstairs unaided, to this room where it seemed all the geisha of this teahouse were waiting, would not present me with any difficulty.

  ‘Holmes-san is in this room also?’ I asked as I began to follow Omitsu, the cut on my cheek having stopped bleeding.

  ‘He is currently out, but no doubt he will return soon,’ declared the geisha who was now facing away from me, the nape of her neck again showing so provocatively.

  ‘We can begin without him, anyway,’ she said then, as we left the dimly-lit room and walked towards the even darker staircase, the plaintive sound of a shamisen being plucked coming from the floor below.

  And all of a sudden (why?) I was terrified – more scared than I believe I have ever been before in my life.

  And yet there was no choice except for to follow Omitsu.

  The tatami room was large, and only semi-illuminated by the several oil lamps flickering in its corners. There was the usual low table bearing food and drink, beside it a number of cushions, obviously intended for Holmes, me and the geisha to sit upon.

  As for the geisha… they all seemed to be present in this room. Even the ‘older sister’, Iwaki. Omitsu ushered me inside and then closed the large sliding door.

  ‘Come,’ said Iwasaki, motioning at one of the cushions near the centre of the low table. ‘Please, sit.’

  I obeyed, but almost hesitantly, for there was a tone to Iwasaki’s voice I did not care for in the slightest. It was like… ice, I thought strangely.

  The e
yes of the other geisha all followed me, as I walked across the room and sat down. Then they moved so gracefully over to me, that it was almost as though they were floating – that there were in fact no feet at all beneath the bottoms of those splendid kimono, which were obviously worn only when there were paying guests in this opulent teahouse.

  These geisha surrounded me, filling a plate with food and pouring me a large cup of sake. This I sipped, at once feeling more relaxed. But then I noticed that Iwasaki was keeping herself somewhat removed from this little group – an indication of her superior rank, perhaps.

  ‘You have enjoyed… Omitsu?’ giggled one of the geisha, again with her face whitened and her teeth blackened. I stared at her, her face seeming to suddenly balloon slightly, there in the dimly-lit room.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I rasped, for some reason finding it slightly difficult to move my tongue.

  ‘You have had her… or has she had you?’ said another geisha, giving a cackle of laughter which this time made my blood run cold. I made to stand up, but my limbs were useless – as powerless as a newborn babe’s.

  ‘What is… what is this…?’ I just about managed to stammer. Four of the geisha crowded around me – Omitsu included – quickly got hold of my arms and legs. As powerless as my limbs were, they were now also restrained. The fifth geisha scuttled behind me, placing her hands either side of my head, as though to hold it in position.

  I tried desperately to move, but it was hopeless. Through a dazed fog, I realized that it was only these geisha who were keeping me in an upright position in the first place.

  And Iwasaki, her cold eyes gleaming at me in the gloom that seemed only to be intensifying, reached inside her kimono with one hand and produced what I took to be a key.

  Yes – it certainly was a key, for she stuck this in one of the cupboards sited along one wall and gave it a turn. A door opened, and Iwasaki reached inside with both hands and produced…