“Blood? Yes, I fear it is,” said Holmes distantly, and opened the box. “Poor Mister Minato,” he said as he looked down.
There, in a bed of pale silk, lay an aichuki. The blade was still tacky with blood.
“God in Heaven!” I exclaimed in dawning horror. “And the wrapping?”
“He wore it as a belt, when he did . . . what he did,” said Holmes in a still, distant voice.
“You mean he actually—?” I could not bring myself to say the rest.
“Committed ritual suicide in expiation of the killing of Lord Brackenheath,” said Holmes, putting the box with its ghastly contents on the desk.
“But why?” I asked. “He was protecting his country, trying to preserve an important agreement from ruin at the hands of a greedy, debauched—”
“Lord Brackenheath was stabbed in the back with just such a dagger. The death was doubly dishonorable in Minato’s eyes, because of form.” He looked once more at the aichuki.
I recalled the parting remark Mister Minato had made the last time I had seen him: It had been about form and substance. Like the Western man I am, I thought at the time that he was putting the emphasis on substance, as I would myself. But I was wrong. In the end, form made demands of him that resulted in this. “It seems such a waste,” I said, disliking the subtle twinge of guilt that went through me.
“So it does,” said Mycroft Holmes, and closed the box.
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