The Ginza Ghost Read online

  Lieutenant Natsuyama took Kiyo to one side and started with some simple questioning. Kiyo was nervous and acted flustered, but did manage to explain how everything had happened.

  ‘And so Mr. Oshiyama went out very late last night, and I think he had some drinks before he returned here. Afterwards, we went to sleep too, so I don’t know anything about what happened until Mr. Ōtsuki called us.’

  Thus did Kiyo conclude her testimony. Lieutenant Natsuyama went outside through the front entrance, and headed for the garage. With the help of a flashlight, he found several footsteps of a woman made on the ground near a puddle of water, running in the direction of the garage.

  The smell of oil hung in the garage, but there was no car.

  Lieutenant Natsuyama looked here and there in the empty garage, but then sighed. He crouched down, took out a handkerchief and carefully wrapped it around a shining object lying on the floor.

  It was a bloody knife. It was also an impressive-looking knife, the likes of which he had never seen before. It appeared to be a ladies’ knife, with a gorgeous shape and a fancy ivory grip with relief. Letters had been engraved in a corner of the grip. The lieutenant brought the light in his hand closer and looked intently at the writing.

  Celebrating your seventeenth birthday. February 29th, 1936.

  The lieutenant’s eyes gleamed. He slid the knife into his pocket and went back to the main building, where he started questioning Kiyo, who was still flustered, again.

  ‘By the way, how old are you? Over fifty?’

  ‘Actually, I’m exactly fifty….’

  ‘Hmm. And your daughter?’

  ‘My Toshiya? She’s eighteen….’

  ‘And Ms. Evans?’

  ‘She is well into her sixties.’

  ‘And Miss Tomiko?’

  ‘She’s seventeen now.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Lieutenant Natsuyama grinned with satisfaction. ‘One final question: do all the people in the Horimi household have a key to the villa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Miss Tomiko has one too?’

  ‘Yes, probably….’

  ‘Thank you.’ The lieutenant turned to a nearby subordinate and told him jubilantly: ‘We’re finished here. The medical examiner will have to stay until the team from the court of justice arrives. We’ll head for the toll road right away.’

  6

  By the time Lieutenant Natsuyama arrived at the Jikkoku Pass entrance of the toll road, Ōtsuki had already returned there with the police car which had been sent to the Hakone Pass entrance in advance. He had been waiting for Natsuyama’s arrival at the Jikkoku Pass station.

  The policemen who had arrived first had already split up into two teams, and had been watching the road from both stations. The moment Ōtsuki saw the lieutenant, he called out to him.

  ‘Have you already finished your work at the villa?’

  ‘There was little to do there. We know the murderer escaped here, so I had to come at once. But anyway, I have a good idea of who the murderer is.’

  ‘You already know? Who is the murderer?’

  ‘Well, before we go into that, haven’t my men found that car yet?’

  Ōtsuki waved his hand in front of him with some annoyance.

  ‘No, that’s the problem. It appears that the only possibility left is that it plunged down the ravine.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to agree. We’ll have to make a search for it.’

  ‘But you see, searching for that car might be difficult. On my way back here, I kept an eye on one side of the road all the time but considering this darkness, and the fact that this toll road is almost six miles long, well, the ravine by the side of the road is rather deep. The road is also dry, so there are no tracks, and so I have no idea of even the approximate location where the car could have fallen.’

  ‘But we can’t just sit here doing nothing.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Anyway, we can first take a look at the ravine on the other side of the road. But to come back to my first question, who could the murderer be?’

  ‘The murderer? It’s Mr. Horimi’s daughter.’

  The lieutenant jumped back inside his car after saying that. The shocked group also got into the car, which backed up and started heading for the Hakone Pass Entrance. Their speed was ten miles per hour.

  But they had not even advanced half a mile when the complexity of the investigation started to make the group anxious. They were crawling along the ravine side of the road, but the surface was completely dry and they could not detect any traces of a car having gone off the road. If only a guard rail had been constructed on the side of the road, then they could have guessed where the car had fallen by the broken rail. But this was a road built uniquely for automobiles—not open to pedestrians—so there were only a couple of fancy looking white-painted guard rails placed here and there as decoration, which were useless.

  The meaningless and depressing investigation continued for a while, when the car entered an acute, reverse S-curve with no guard rail. The irritated lieutenant clicked his tongue. The car was heading for Hakone Pass, but after taking the first sharp corner, the car was now facing the other way, in the direction back to Jikkoku Pass.

  The end of the S-curve resembled a large C-shape with an almost straight bottom. The car passed a traffic sign displaying an upside-down “L”-shape, and had already advanced twenty metres when Ōtsuki suddenly sat bolt upright, as if he had seen something.

  ‘Stop the car!’

  The constable immediately stepped on the brakes.

  Ōtsuki opened the door, got out onto the footboard and called out to the constable inside the car.

  ‘Please back the car up. Yes, like that. More, more. Okay, stop!’

  Nobody knew what was going on.

  Ōtsuki sat down in the passenger’s seat, taking the same sitting position as before. His voice trembled with tension as he said: ‘And now go forward again. But I have to ask you to go as slowly as you can. Oh, and that coupé didn’t have its interior light on. The inside of the car has to be dark. Switch the light off.’

  The light was switched off and the car started moving again.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ The lieutenant couldn’t take it any more and called out in the dark.

  ‘I think I’m starting to get it. Starting to get to the truth of what has happened. It’s almost here.’

  ‘What’s almost here?’

  ‘Just wait and you’ll see.’

  The car slowly made its way back to where it had stopped previously. It was just before the final corner of the C-curve. The road made a sharp corner to the left, and the only thing visible in the headlight was the pitch-black empty space of the ravine.

  Ōtsuki had been looking in front of him, but suddenly cried out.

  ‘There it is! Stop the car!’

  ‘Where is what?’ the lieutenant asked.

  ‘It’s gone already. But it’ll be back. You can’t see it from there. Come over here.’

  The lieutenant leant forward, his head right next to Ōtsuki who had moved to the driver’s seat, and looked in front of him.

  ‘There’s nothing here.’

  ‘It’ll come in a moment. There it was! No, it’s not outside the car. It’s right in front of you, on the car window!’

  ‘Ah!’

  On the surface of the car window in front of him, the lieutenant could clearly see, in close-up, a bright traffic sign displaying an upside-down “L” in mirror-image form, indicating an impossible turn to the right. The sign, however, soon vanished into the surrounding darkness.

  The road in front of them turned to the left, but inside the car there had briefly been a traffic sign indicating a turn to the right!

  7

  ‘Turning your head back to the rear window when you saw that image projected on the front window was the smart thing to do,’ Ōtsuki said, impressed, as he tapped the lieutenant on the shoulder.

  Looking through the square glass window
behind the back seats, one could see the road close by, glowing faintly red because of the tail light, and the rest was ink-black darkness. But they could see a traffic sign floating clearly in that darkness, illuminated by a bright light coming from somewhere. They had just passed by that traffic sign on the side of the road. This traffic sign had appeared like a mirage in the darkness, but disappeared again immediately. As it kept on appearing and disappearing, it left a bright after-image in the eyes of all the men in the car.

  ‘It was a trick played by Fate,’ said Ōtsuki. ‘The ray of light is from the aerial lighthouse on the other side of that small hill right next to us, shining here at an angle. The traffic sign in the dark over there warns us of the correct direction, indicating a turn to the left. But when that ray of light reflects off the traffic sign, that image is projected as a mirror image through this back window, onto the front glass window of the car, indicating a right corner. That coupé didn’t have its interior light on, the air here in the ravine is clear, and the headlights were shining deep into the darkness. Also, this front glass window is at a slight angle, so this reflection can only be seen by the person in the driver’s seat when they are leaning slightly forward. But even so, this false image only appears for a second, and it is unlikely that under normal circumstances, any person would have mistaken it for a real traffic sign and driven off into the ravine.’

  ‘I understand completely now. Let’s get down there at once.’

  Following the lieutenant’s orders, the men all left the car and stood on the edge of the ravine. Crouching down in the light of the car, they didn’t take long to find tracks in the grass near the road that appeared to be that of the coupé falling into the ravine.

  ‘We can go down this way, the slope is gentler,’ said Lieutenant Natsuyama as he started to climb down, aiming his flashlight at the rocky surface.

  ‘Lieutenant,’ Ōtsuki called out as he followed after the detective. ‘Did you find any evidence indicating the murderer is the young daughter of Mr. Horimi?’

  ‘I found the murder weapon,’ replied the lieutenant. ‘It was a fancy ladies’ knife, and there was an engraved message saying it was to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. And it was dated spring this year. The daughter Tomiko is seventeen this year.’

  Ōtsuki nodded silently and made his way through the grass down the mountain with the help of the scattered light.

  ‘Lieutenant, when you’re born, you start out as one year old. When you celebrate your first birthday, you become two years old. When you become three, you celebrate your second birthday. So someone who is seventeen, will celebrate her sixteenth birthday[xxi].’

  ‘Eh, what?’ The lieutenant swung his head around.

  ‘Lieutenant, if the knife said it was to celebrate the seventeenth birthday, it means the owner is eighteen.’

  ‘Eighteen?’ The stupefied lieutenant froze in his tracks for a while, but then quickly got a memo from his pocket and unfolded it with trembling hand. ‘Oh, I feel terribly ashamed. You are, of course, completely right. But we also have a girl of eighteen.’

  ‘Who would that be?’

  ‘The maid, Toshiya!’

  At that moment, the lieutenant’s flashlight caught some large collision markings on a flat section of the mountainside.

  Ōtsuki exclaimed: ‘It must have flipped over there. The car should be nearby. Let’s hurry.’

  The group started fanning out, without saying a word. Thorny bushes and shrubberies whose names they didn’t know started to appear among the weeds. Suddenly, Ōtsuki picked up the spare wheel of the coupé from behind a dried-out bush. The men remained silent, but their anxiety grew. Small lights criss-crossed over the mountain surface, and the only sound was of shoes crunching down. But then the lieutenant stopped in his tracks.

  There was no doubt that it was the cream-coloured coupé which was lying in the hollow right beneath them, flipped over to show its dark abdomen.

  The lieutenant and Ōtsuki exchanged not a word as they climbed down and forced the upside-down door of the coupé open.

  ‘Oh!’ the lieutenant cried out. The car was empty. But then Ōtsuki crouched down, and from the driver’s seat he picked up several bloody, entangled strands of grey hair.

  The coupé was in a terrible state. All the windows had been broken and the glass fragments scattered around. The rear axle had been bent into a twist, and the passenger door had been snapped off and lost somewhere.

  Suddenly one of the men picked out a trail of blood leading from the broken door into the undergrowth. The murderer had miraculously survived the crash. They started to follow the trail.

  ‘So this means it was a girl with grey hair. Hmm, I am curious as to the evidence you found. Show me that knife of yours.’

  Though annoyed by Ōtsuki’s comment, the lieutenant withdrew the knife he had wrapped in his handkerchief from his pocket.

  Ōtsuki took the knife and examined the engravings on the ivory grip with the help of a light. His eyes gleamed and he called out to the lieutenant.

  ‘Didn’t you see the date on this? You must be blind. A person who celebrates their birthday on February 29th is of course born on February 29th. But there is only a February 29th in leap years. So this person only celebrates their birthday once every four years. How old do you think this person is who has celebrated their seventeenth birthday? They should be over sixty.’

  ‘Now I see!’

  The lieutenant started to run forward, but Ōtsuki stopped him.

  In the thickets of large bushes in front of them, they could hear the noise of leaves being disturbed. The men crept silently closer. Making his way to the dark side of the thicket, the lieutenant switched on his flashlight.

  A small, dark human form was trying desperately to crawl back into the thicket, despite a broken leg. On seeing the light, it turned to face its pursuers.

  ‘It’s Evans!’

  It was indeed the small face of the grey-haired Evans. It was the face of Evans, torn between her dignity to protect the purity of her beloved Tomiko and her regret for the crime she had committed.

  First published in Shinseinen, August Issue, Shōwa 11 (1936).

  THE COLD NIGHT’S CLEARING

  The season of snow has arrived once again. And snow reminds me of that tragic figure, Sanshirō Asami. At the time, I was working as a simple Japanese language teacher at an academy for girls in a prefecture far up in the north: let’s call it H Town. Sanshirō Asami was an English language teacher at the same school, and also my best friend at the time.

  Sanshirō’s parental home was in Tōkyō. His family had made a fortune as trade merchants, but, as the second son, he wouldn’t inherit and trade didn’t really suit him anyway. So, after graduating from W University, he became a teacher, moving all around the country. He originally wanted to write literature, but he’d had little success, and by the time we became acquainted in H Town, he was already in his thirties and had become the caring father of an eight-year-old child. Sanshirō could be a bit quick-tempered, but he was also a frank and lovable person, and we quickly became friends. And it wasn’t just me: there wasn’t a person around who didn’t become friends with him. This might have been because of his wealthy family, but he was also very easy-going with his fellow teachers and likeable in his dealings with his fellow man, with nothing calculating behind his actions. So he wasn’t really suited to walking the dark path of literature writing—which might explain his lack of success. I quickly noticed this as I became friends with him.

  Sanshirō at home was a joy to see. His deep love for his beautiful wife and his only child was evident, as was the respect he enjoyed from his girl students, albeit tinged with envy. In fact, even though every teacher is destined to be given a nickname at a girls’ academy, I have to admit I’ve never heard one for Sanshirō. That was almost a mystery in itself. Yet, in hindsight, what occurred may have happened precisely because of his beautiful nature.

  At the time of the horrific event I was li
ving in a house very close to the Asamis, in the outskirts of H Town, which is probably why I was one of the first to hear about it. Sanshirō himself was away at the time and I was unsure what I should do. He had been sent by the Ministry of Education to a newly-opened agricultural school in the mountains, as a temporary teacher for the last month of the semester. The school vacation was supposed to start on December 25th, so Sanshirō was expected to return home that night, but the incident had occurred the night before, on the 24th.

  The cousin of Sanshirō’s wife Hiroko had been staying with her since the start of the month; his name was Oikawa, and he was a student at M University. I didn’t know much about him except that he seemed to be a good, bright lad; that he belonged to his university’s ski club; and that he had been in the habit of visiting his cousin here in the north every winter. (The snowfall here in December is so heavy, it’s possible to ski from the rooftops.) Oikawa, Hiroko and her son Haruo, who had just entered elementary school that spring, kept watch over the house during Sanshirō’s absence. So Oikawa was Sanshirō’s hired guard, in a way, yet the bizarre and horrific incident had occurred despite his presence.

  Clouds had started gathering on the morning of the 24th, and the grey skies finally gave away around the evening, so by nightfall snow had started to fall. At first it was just dancing down gently, but by six o’clock it was falling quite heavily. Yet at eight, as if the show’s final curtain had fallen, the snow just stopped, and a bright, star-filled sky could be seen from between the breaking clouds. Such sudden meteorological changes are pretty common in these parts. During the coldest thirty days of winter, the weather behaves strangely: by day the sky becomes more and more overcast, and then at night, as if it had all been just a dream, the clouds part and the moon and stars shine coldly in the clear blue night sky. Local people call it Kan no Yobare: Cold Night’s Clearing.