The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan

by Ben Stevens

  Well – ‘imitation’, you might say.

  ‘Very well, Holmes-san, I will tell you my story. And I also retract any suggestion that I might take your life, or that of your friend. I regret saying such a thing, now. For you are a good and just person, quite simply, and Japan needs you – for so long as you choose to stay in this country, so very far from your own...

  ‘So when I finish my story, if you feel that I was not entirely justified in seeking to end the life of this man named Abe, then I will simply step down from this golden lotus, hand you the shuriken I have spent countless hours learning how to use, and you may take me before the chief magistrate of this region.

  ‘But first – my story…’

  3

  ‘Once, in a different lifetime, I was a maiko - a ‘trainee’ geisha. I learnt how to apply the deathly-white makeup upon my face, and how to maintain a mask-like expression. How to sit in seiza, entirely motionless. Scarcely seeming even to breathe... Useful training, wouldn’t you say, for what I would ultimately disguise myself as…?

  ‘Of course, I was also learning how to dance, play the shamisen, pour sake, act demurely in front of male patrons… And then came the day that a group of these ‘Crazy Ones’ – with their tattoos, wild hairstyles and swords – came to visit the place where I, some other maiko and our geisha tutors were staying.

  ‘We could hardly turn them away… At first they just drank, and laughed… And then they turned ugly. They barricaded the doors, the windows. People outside knew what was happening, but everyone is scared of the Crazy Ones. Some of them are former samurai; they know how to fight.

  ‘And how to be evil. We were raped, all of us. Repeatedly, by every man. I cried out that I was only thirteen, but the man I would – much later – again recognize only laughed as he thrust himself harder into me.

  ‘I was forced to commit some of the most vile, depraved acts you can imagine. It was not simply a matter of lying there and being used by every member of the Crazy Ones. That man who later became a monk, calling himself ‘Abe’, had a particular fondness for me.

  ‘The things he made me do…

  ‘Finally, after a couple of days, it was over. The Crazy Ones left, leaving me and the other maiko and older women lying beaten, naked and bleeding upon the tatami. Once I’d sufficiently recovered, I left – I could never become a geisha now. I learnt later that a couple of the other women were driven mad by what they’d experienced, and that one committed suicide.

  ‘I travelled; I walked far. I lived in forests and drank from rivers. I learnt how to use a knife and how to use that dreaded weapon of the ninja, the shuriken, so that no man would ever use me as that man with the hooded eyes, and the missing little finger, had.

  ‘And I learnt how to meditate, calming my mind. Turning my own thoughts away from the blackness, and the odd desire for suicide, which was the result of my treatment at the hands of the Crazy Ones. I learnt how to sit absolutely motionless for hours, so that birds, even, would alight on my shoulders. I entered into one town and there, in a dark back alley, came across two men attempting to rape a woman. I killed them both, with the knife. Then I melted back into the darkness, almost before the woman knew that she had just been saved.

  ‘I became an assassin, but only of those men I encountered who abused women. I continued to travel; I had no need for money; I had only those possessions I absolutely required. I learnt how to blend into any scenery; once I disguised myself as a scarecrow, standing there in a field all day long as farmers labored all around me. I was able to control my breathing, my thoughts – everything.

  ‘And then came the day when I entered into this temple hall – as anyone may do – with the intention of praying before the statue of Buddha for a while, and saw that monk.

  ‘It was him! I knew it instantly. Those hooded eyes gazed upon me, attempting to look benign. And the missing little finger…

  ‘He quietly greeted me. I nodded in reply. For the first time in many years, I actually felt my heart-rate increase. I wanted to kill him there and then, and yet I knew the moment I said who I was – and what he had done to me, while I was still basically a child – he would shout for help and attempt to flee.

  ‘I first needed to ‘stun’ him, in some way… To shock him so greatly that he would be rendered incapable of shouting out for help…

  ‘I went away, into the forest that lies behind this temple, and there meditated for several days.

  ‘And then the idea came to me… I had, previously, successfully disguised myself as a scarecrow, amongst other things – a tree, a rock… But would I be able to impersonate that statue of the Buddha that was in the temple hall…?

  ‘I visited the temple several times more. People frequently entered into that hall, from outside, in order to pray. I was not especially noticed. Besides which I have trained myself to pass unnoticed, even when I am present. You would be surprised at how great an aura even the most ‘unremarkable’ of humans projects – once you actually become consciously aware of such a thing…

  ‘I realized that that accursed man, now masquerading as a monk, ‘opened’ the hall most mornings – and that he always did this alone.

  ‘I closely observed the statue of the Buddha. I learnt to replicate its pose exactly. I obtained golden body-paint. I practiced applying it. I shaved my head. One day I entered into the temple and hid in the small corridor that lies behind this hall. No once checked there, before locking up in the evening. In the night I took down the statue – it was heavy, but not impossible to lift; I believe it is gold plating upon a wooden frame – and, first disrobing it, placed it, along with my clothing and few possessions, inside one of the cupboards that are along that corridor.

  ‘Then I undressed, and by lamplight applied the golden paint, put upon the robes – which are sufficiently loose that they serve to disguise my breasts – and took position on top of this golden lotus. I waited there as dawn began lighting the hall, illuminating the sliding windows of wood and paper. And then entered that man; I had my eyes closed, as does the statue, but I knew it was him. He had a snuffly way of breathing, and dragged his feet slightly…

  ‘And then I opened my eyes, and addressed him! And yet, it was not as satisfying as I’d imagined… At first, he could only mutter ‘No… no…’, so that I feared I had, in fact, shocked him so greatly that he’d just been driven insensible…

  ‘But then he pleaded that he’d changed character, had turned his back upon his former life – the very reason for him having become a monk. He begged for his life…

  ‘But nothing would change my resolve; he was going to die, come what may, for what he and those other men had done to me and the other women and girls. He clutched at his chest, those hooded eyes growing ever wider with shock and fear as I continued to quietly explain just who I was, and so the reason why he was shortly going to die.

  ‘But he robbed me of that part of my revenge – the throwing of the shuriken – by suddenly dropping dead upon the tatami, curse him. Still, I had undoubtedly caused his death, at least…

  ‘And then some other monks entered, before I could come down and replace the Buddha statue in its original position. And then you were summoned, and I continued to sit motionless. It did not matter, I thought, I could wait all day. When the hall became empty, I would quickly restore the statue and dress myself, before secretly taking my leave…

  ‘But you, Holmes-san – you saw through my disguise. My congratulations; your reputation is certainly deserved…

  4

  ‘…And my congratulations to you,’ said Holmes quietly, after a few moments of silence had passed. The hall was very bright now, lit up by the midday sun outside. ‘You are a remarkable woman, a survivor of a horrific experience that would have broken many other people; and you have successfully taken your revenge against a truly evil man.

  ‘For some offences in life, surely, a second chance can never be permitted.’

  Before anything else could be said, there
came the sound of voices in the corridor beyond the entrance to the temple hall. In entered the fox-faced priest, the senior monk accompanying him.

  ‘Despite the unfortunate tragedy of Abe-san’s death,’ began the priest brusquely, ‘we are still shortly due to hold a service, here in this hall. So, if there is nothing else…’

  The dismissal was obvious, and the English detective nodded.

  ‘No, I believe the monk’s death to have been entirely natural. A heart attack, most likely,’ said Holmes casually. ‘Yoshida-sensei and I will leave, now. Although… after the service, is the hall in use?’

  ‘Well, no,’ returned the priest, looking confused by the foreigner’s seemingly strange question. ‘People may visit it in order to pray before the statue of the Buddha here, but nothing else in particular is planned, following the service.

  ‘On occasion, this hall just lies empty…’

  ‘I see,’ said Holmes, in the same easy tone. ‘If you’re ready, Yoshida-sensei...?’

  And we left that hall.

  Sherlock Holmes and a Death in the Orange Grove

  1

  ‘Holmes-san– praise be to Buddha you are here…! Please, come quickly!’

  With these words, the young man with the towel tied around his head burst into the room at an inn where Sherlock Holmes and I were staying.

  ‘What is the matter?’ demanded Holmes in his excellent Japanese, as this bug-eyed young man all but dragged him off the futon where he was laying.

  ‘My father is dead – murdered!’ returned the young man, tears beginning to pour from his eyes. ‘He lies among one of his orange groves…’

  At this, Holmes got speedily up, and I followed him and the young man out of the room and towards the sprawling orange groves which grew upon stepped hillsides close by the sea. I understood that these were owned by various farmers, and that it was about this time that the oranges were harvested.

  Yes, I could see various men and women plucking the fruit from the trees, some of them stood upon short ladders. It was delightfully sunny, a wonderfully sweet smell of fruit perfuming the air. The sort of heady, ethereal atmosphere I had delighted in just a short while earlier, when Holmes and I had taken a walk along this same route.

  But now –

  Holmes and I were soon obliged almost to run, so to keep up with the young man who’d fetched us from our room at the inn. We scrabbled down the steep hillside, passing any number of trees laden with fruit, quickly becoming quite sweaty and exhausted. Finally, we entered into one of the shady groves at the foot of the hillside, some two hundred feet below the first of the orchards at the top, which were close to the inn and indeed the rest of the seaside village where we were staying.

  ‘There, Holmes-san,’ panted the young man, pointing ahead of him through the orange trees – the fruit upon them beautifully fat and round – to a small group of people who were standing around looking down at something.

  I need hardly tell you that this ‘something’ was the corpse of the young man’s father. A slightly wizened, leathery-skinned man of perhaps sixty to seventy years of age, his head turned to one side as he lay sprawled upon the ground. Slightly beyond him, I observed, a low net had been stretched out – there were others, also, designed (it was not hard to realize why) to catch any fruit which fell from the trees and rolled along the slightly sloping ground, before it became too damaged to sell.

  ‘My father – the finest orange grower who ever lived,’ declared the young man then, his voice thick with repressed tears.

  Holmes was already kneeling down beside the corpse.

  ‘A blow to the nape of the neck,’ he declared, his distant voice displaying his mechanical thought processes. ‘Something hard dealt the fatal blow – a wooden club, perhaps, or even just the heel of the hand belonging to someone skilled in unarmed combat, chopping down with brutal force upon – ’

  As the young man gave what was almost a whimper, I coughed and said tightly –

  ‘Holmes-san…’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said another voice, belonging to one of the four men standing around the body of the fruit farmer. ‘I believe you are the illustrious Holmes-san? We had, of course, already deduced just how poor Miguchi-san met his end. The large purple bruise clearly visible upon the back of his neck is rather indicative of some significant trauma.

  ‘We just decided to exercise a little discretion in stating the obvious, that’s all, in case we should unduly distress the victim’s son…’

  ‘I take it you are the local magistrate,’ returned the famous English detective.

  ‘Again, hardly a first-class test of your purported powers of deduction,’ returned the thin, waspish-looking individual. ‘But yes, I am. Sagari’s my name, and I have with me here my deputies.’

  ‘The ground around the body has been greatly disturbed by your feet,’ continued Holmes amiably, ‘thus making any examination of it somewhat fruitless – if you’ll pardon the pun.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Holmes-san,’ declared Sagari tightly. ‘But with the body of a respected villager whom I knew well lying on the ground before me, and his young son grieving over the murder of his father, I don’t find myself in the most comical of moods!’

  ‘Quite,’ said Holmes, and this time it was his turn to cough. ‘Only, you’re quite sure it’s murder…?’

  ‘Unless the assailant crept up behind Miguchi-san and then hit him as hard as he could upon the nape of his neck with some weapon by accident, Holmes-san?’ suggested Sagari caustically.

  ‘I’m sorry, Terumasa,’ said the magistrate then, as the young man again emitted a whimper.

  ‘The circumstances of this case are…?’ prompted Holmes.

  ‘I was working here, with my father, plucking the fruit from the trees,’ returned Terumasa readily, his expression remaining wide-eyed and frantic. ‘Just… just such a short time ago! You see his basket just there, half-filled. And mine, some distance over there… We worked sometimes together, sometimes separately. It was not even something we gave any mind to…

  ‘But then I thought that it was surely time for lunch… Usually it was my father who told me when we should take a break – I was still learning so much from him…

  ‘I went to find him and… and…’

  ‘You found him here,’ said Holmes with quiet sympathy, patting the young man lightly on one shoulder. ‘I am sorry for your loss. Forgive me, but… do you know if…’

  ‘If my father had any enemies?’ snapped Terumasa in an instant, and now his eyes were filled with anger. ‘Sagari-san has already asked me the same question, though being a local man, he already knew the answer. Oh yes, my father had an enemy all right – that bastard up there…!’

  Terumasa jabbed a finger way up the steep hillside, the base of which was only a few feet from where we were stood. I mean, this stepped hill covered with fruit trees – the beautiful blue sea just a little way beyond it – really was steep. Had we not watched our feet carefully on our way down from the top just now, frequently grabbing hold of branches and the like for the sake of maintaining balance, we might very well just have toppled downwards and broken our necks…

  ‘I appreciate you are deeply grieved, Terumasa,’ (the use of this young man’s first name by the older magistrate – especially without the use of the honorific san – showed just how long they had known each other) ‘but I must warn you against making any wild accusations against a fellow villager…’

  ‘He’s always been jealous of my father – you know that as well as anyone else, Sagari-san,’ retorted Terumasa. ‘My father’s oranges were the biggest, the juiciest; and they always somehow ripened several weeks before Tashima’s…’

  ‘Tashima being the name of this… other orange farmer, I believe…’ interjected Holmes.

  ‘The farmer who owns a large orange orchard right at the top of this hill,’ declared the magistrate. ‘You’ll find out anyway, Holmes-san, so you may as well know that there’s always been competition b
etween Tashima-san and… well… Miguchi-san.

  ‘The other orange growers didn’t object to Miguchi-san’s very effective but also rather secretive approach to producing his fruit; but Tashima-san thought him aloof and arrogant, and it caused several arguments between the two men…’

  ‘He was only jealous,’ stated Terumasa readily. ‘He’d not anything like the ability for growing oranges which my father possessed; all he wanted to do was steal my father’s ideas…’

  ‘Now, now, Terumasa,’ cautioned the magistrate; but as he spoke, Holmes started looking closely at some of the branches of the fruit trees all around us. And only now did I realize what was peculiar about them.

  These branches had been grafted onto a number of main limbs of the trees, here and there. And they were, for the most part, bearing wonderful-looking fruit. It was extraordinary! But how in the world had such a feat been achieved?

  ‘I see what has caught your attention,’ said Terumasa, a certain tone of pride displacing some of the anger previously in his voice. ‘Well, this is what undoubtedly made my father the finest orange grower in the whole of Japan.

  ‘Fruit trees are like horses, you see. That may seem like a strange thing to say, but allow me to explain what my father realized. You can crossbreed the finest, the biggest, the most robust and healthiest, so creating an even more perfect specimen of tree – and fruit.

  ‘Perhaps my father had one tree that bore fruit which unaccountably ripened earlier than is usual (no bad thing, for the demand for oranges is always there), and another which had unusually large fruit, and yet one more whose oranges had no seeds – something greatly appreciated by many customers…

  ‘He would take cuttings from these various trees, and transplant them onto the main branches of others he selected – a cutting from a tree which produced seedless fruit being grafted onto a tree which produced larger than normal oranges, for example.