The Ginza Ghost Page 22

  ‘I see,’ continued the customer, ‘but why did that book dealer place the fake letter-box there at all?’

  ‘That’s precisely what makes this a big deal…,’ replied Toki. ‘The man was a complete fake. The police investigated him, and while he looked and talked exactly like a Japanese, he was actually a secret agent sent here from China a long time ago. He needed an occupation to cover his activities here, so he became a second-hand book dealer, working mostly at night. He was a pretty nasty piece of work, involved in all kinds of spying activities. As it said in the newspapers, he’d set up his night stall there, and noticed how the waitresses of Benten Street and the young men living in the boarding house of the military factory all posted their letters there. He thought it would be a great opportunity for spying, so he made use of the darkness and boldly placed a fake letter-box right next to his stall. And so he began retrieving important intelligence from the letters those people posted, who of course suspected nothing. He’d take the fake box back to his lair and open all the letters posted that night. While laughing at his own brilliance, he’d copy all the information he needed. When he was done, instead of destroying the letters, he’d return each one to its proper envelope, reseal it, and then post it in the real letter-box.’

  It was vexing to think that hateful man had also read Toki’s important letter. The customer nodded with wide-open eyes and observed: ‘What a terrifying guy. Awful thing he did there. Makes you scared of writing letters.’

  ‘You’ve said it. We need to be careful even when we’re just chatting like this in the open.’

  ‘Yes. But you were pretty amazing, seeing right through that guy’s schemes. You should get a medal for distinguished service for that. I bet the authorities will reward you.’

  ‘I really didn’t do much, hahahaha.’

  Toki laughed cheerfully. He left the earpick inside his customer’s ear and brought his hand up to the pocket of his barber’s uniform. Inside was the biggest reward Toki could ever receive.

  It was O-Sumi’s answer.

  First published in Kitan, November Issue, Shōwa 14 (1939) with the title Love’s Exploit (Koi no Otegara).

  THE GINZA GHOST

  1

  Shops of different colours lined up to form a rainbow on each side of a narrow street a mere three ken wide, creating a bright neighbourhood in the backstreets of Ginza. There was a place there—large for those backstreets—with a blue neon sign bearing the words “Café Blue Orchid,” and opposite it stood a neat little tobacco shop called Tsunekawa. It was a two-storey building, the front not even two ken wide. The shop was brightly lit, with beautiful, detailed decoration. For this reason, it managed to attract customers from all over the neighbourhood and make a comfortable living for the owner, as if it had found a way to capture all the jazz music emanating from the surrounding shops.

  The owner of the shop was a woman well into her forties. A sign written in a woman’s hand said “Fusae Tsunekawa.” Rumour had it that she was the widow of a retired government official, with a daughter about to graduate from the local girls’ school. She was a fair-skinned, full-bodied woman. While she did dress simply, befitting her age, she nevertheless projected an aura of youthfulness. At some point in time, a featureless young man—somewhere in his thirties—had moved in with her, but he was very reserved in his contact with the people from the neighbourhood. But this intoxicating period of happiness didn’t last for long. The tobacco shop thrived, and eventually a young girl was hired as both a shop assistant and maid. It did not take long for the peaceful harmony which had existed between the couple up until then to visibly break down. Sumiko, the shop assistant, was a young girl in her twenties with a beautiful tan complexion, and a body as bouncy as a ball.

  The waitresses of the Blue Orchid were the first ones to learn of the couple’s fights. From the Blue Orchid’s first floor box seats, one could see through the windows into the front of the first floor of the tobacco shop opposite. As the street was only three ken wide, they could also from time to time hear Fusae Tsunekawa’s desperate cries. Occasionally, one could even see her dishevelled shadow projected on the glass windows. At such times, the waitresses of the Blue Orchid would secretly look at each other and sigh, while entertaining their guests each at their own tables. But the disturbing atmosphere at the tobacco shop came to a head faster than anyone had expected, reaching a truly horrific conclusion. And it was the waitresses working on the first floor of the Blue Orchid at that time who became the witnesses of a baffling, inexplicable tragedy.

  Even the weather seemed to have contributed, as it was a night with an uneasy feeling to it. A cool wind had starting blowing from the west early on in the evening, but had suddenly stopped around ten o’clock, causing the air to become heavy with a peculiar stuffy heat, not at all to be expected from an autumn night. One of the waitresses, who had been entertaining a guest in a corner seat at the first floor, stood up and walked over to the window, fanning her neck with a handkerchief. She opened the sliding glass window, and absentmindedly looked at the house in front of her, but she suddenly turned her face away as if she had seen something awful and returned to her seat without saying a word, giving her colleagues a sign with her eyes.

  On the first floor of the tobacco shop, beyond the half-open window, the fair-coloured owner Fusae could be seen wearing a plain pattern-less, blackish kimono. Her man was not there, but the assistant Sumiko was sitting in front of her and appeared to be pleading with her about something. Sumiko in turn did not react to Fusae, but remained silent, with a sullen look on her face which she turned away from Fusae. The kimono she was wearing—with a gaudy crimson well curb pattern[xxiv] on a black background—made her look even more beautiful. But Fusae had quickly noticed the eyes staring at them from the Blue Orchid’s first floor. She turned a hostile face to the café, got up hastily and banged the window shut. Despite all the clamour of the jazz music, the noise of the window had been so loud that it was almost as if Fusae had shut the Blue Orchid’s own windows.

  The waitresses gasped and looked at each other. They started to send meaningful glances to each other.

  Tonight’s different from usual.

  Sumiko is really going to get it, finally.

  Tonight was indeed different from usual. Fusae was not screaming at whim, but slowly and surely applying pressure. Even if she had raised her voice, it would immediately have been drowned out in the din of the neighbourhood. At precisely eleven o’clock, schoolgirl Kimiko shut up shop, as per her mother’s instructions. But there was a little hole, like a small window, open in the glass door of the counter, and late customers could buy their tobacco there. Tatsujirō—that was the name of Fusae’s young man—had not shown his face at the shop that night, for some reason.

  Tonight’s really serious.

  She’s probably found proof of Tatsujirō and Sumiko’s relations.

  The waitresses once again whispered to each other with their eyes. But eventually all became silent, and by the time they could hear the rumbling of the train passing the Fourth Avenue crossing, the girls had already started thinking about closing time and had forgotten about the tobacco shop. They were trying to work out how to get rid of the group of three who had arrived early in the evening and were dead drunk by now. It was at that precise moment that tragedy reared its head.

  First a low, muffled scream—it was difficult to tell whether it was wailing or yelling—came from the lighted room on the first floor of the tobacco shop. The windows were still closed shut like a clam.

  The girls of the Blue Orchid looked at each other again in surprise. But then they heard a heavy thud from the same direction, like that of a person falling over. Surprised by this, the girls turned pale and, leaning forward over the window frame, they tried to peer into the building opposite.

  They caught a glimpse of a swaying figure, but it almost immediately collided with the light, and the room instantly became pitch-black. But the swaying figure then appeared again, havin
g staggered to the front window. With a loud crash, the figure broke the window in the middle, and its back became visible.

  It was a woman, the nape of her neck pale, and dressed in a blackish, plain kimono. Her right hand was sticking out of the window, and in it she held a sharp instrument—it appeared to be a razor covered in blood. Her shoulders were heaving because of her heavy breathing—her back still leaning against the window—and she appeared to be looking back into the dark room in a dazed manner. The figure seemed instinctively to sense the eyes watching from the windows of the Blue Orchid, and as she turned around, she staggered back into the darkness. It was a ghastly bluish face, glaring and with distorted features.

  The waitresses of the Blue Orchid screamed. The three remaining customers, who had also witnessed the tragedy from behind the waitresses, quickly ran down the staircase and shouted out to the women and customers who were still having a good time on the ground floor:

  ‘Something horrible happened over there!’

  ‘Murder!’

  The men ran out in front of the café and one of them ran to the police box. The remaining two had awakened from their drunkenness and were walking up and down in the street, but then they heard a loud noise from inside the tobacco shop. They heard a violent crash as the door swung wildly open, and out stumbled the daughter Kimiko, dressed in a pink terrycloth nightdress.

  When she saw all the men and women who had come out on the street and were milling up and down, she cried out to nobody in particular:

  ‘Sumi was killed!’

  It didn’t take long for the police to arrive.

  It was indeed Sumiko who had been killed. She was lying with her face up in the pitch-black first floor room where the light bulb had been broken, wearing the dishevelled kimono with the gaudy crimson well curb pattern the waitresses of the Blue Orchid had seen earlier. A police officer with a flashlight, who had reached the room first, could hear heavy breathing escaping from Sumiko’s throat. But when he went to help her up, all she could manage was to gasp out:

  ‘Fu-Fusae…’

  After that, she went limp.

  It appeared her throat had been cut, and the sharp blade had left two clear lines on her neck. There was a pool of blood around her. At the edge of that bloody pond, near the window, was a blood-covered Japanese razor which appeared to have been thrown away.

  As for Fusae, she was nowhere to be found inside the house. She was not the only one missing: Tatsujirō was absent as well. Fusae’s daughter Kimiko didn’t go up to the first floor, but remained in front of the shop, pale and trembling.

  The girls of the Blue Orchid told the police in a brief but agitated manner all they had seen. The three men also confirmed their story. With the testimony of these witnesses, as well as the dying words of the victim, the police quickly grasped the situation and started an investigation into Fusae’s whereabouts.

  There were two more rooms on the first floor of the tobacco shop besides the room where the murder had taken place: a room that faced the back of the building, and one in between. But Fusae was not to be found in either room. Downstairs was the shop, and two more rooms. Needless to say, Fusae wasn’t to be found there either. The front had been locked at eleven o’clock and she couldn’t have left the building after the police had barged inside. The police headed for the kitchen, where there was a back exit leading on to an alley—only three shaku wide—which went past the three neighbouring buildings and ended up in another street. At the end of this alley stood a friendly-looking yakitori vendor, who had his street stall there at night. The man was adamant that nobody had appeared from the alley in the last three hours. The police returned to the shop and started a rigorous search of the house. They went through every nook and cranny, from the toilet to the built-in closets, and on the first floor—inside the built-in closet of the room where the murder had taken place, they finally found Fusae.

  When the police officer opened the paper sliding door of the closet, he cried out: ‘This can’t be!’

  Fusae was already dead inside.

  She was lying there, still dressed in the pattern-less blackish plain kimono the girls of the Blue Orchid had seen earlier. A towel had been twisted around her neck. Had she strangled herself, or had someone else strangled her? Her pale, colourless face was already slightly swollen, but there was no doubt that it was Fusae. Her daughter Kimiko was comforted by a police officer as she cried loudly in front of the lifeless figure of her mother.

  One of the three drunken men, who had been staring intently at the corpse, said in a shrill voice: ‘She’s the one. She’s the one who killed the woman in that gaudy kimono with the razor.’

  One police officer—apparently a senior officer—stepped forward, nodded intently and said: ‘That means that after Fusae murdered the girl Sumiko, she stood here in a daze, but then she noticed that you had seen her from the windows of the Blue Orchid, which brought her to her senses. It was too dangerous to go downstairs, so she staggered around and hid herself inside the closet. Eventually she became overcome by remorse and, unable to take it any more, she took her own life…. That’s probably what happened.’ He crouched down by the sobbing Kimiko, still dressed in her pink nightdress, and took out his pocket notebook.

  The investigating magistrate and the medical examiner arrived at the crime scene soon afterwards and the investigation started in earnest. It wasn’t long before a truly baffling, horrific truth was revealed through the autopsy of Fusae’s body.

  Fusae had murdered Sumiko, so naturally, Fusae should have died after, and not before Sumiko. But despite that apparently self-evident truth, it was Sumiko’s body which was still warm and showing some signs of life, while the appearance of after-death signs had already progressed quite a lot on Fusae’s body. Based on a scientific and coolheaded observation of all the signs, such as cooling, stiffness and death spots, the medical examiner determined that at least one hour had passed since Fusae’s death.

  ‘But that’s crazy…,’ said the police officer, who was completely overwhelmed by this fact. ‘That means…no, that’s impossible. It’s been twenty minutes since Sumiko was killed, but you say it’s been an hour since Fusae died, so that means that forty minutes before Sumiko was killed, the murderer had already died, before her victim…. In other words, the Fusae Sumiko mentioned with her dying words, the Fusae wielding a razor seen by a number of witnesses, that was not the real Fusae, but a Fusae who was dead already…. Unbelievable. That means it was Fusae’s ghost. A murder committed by a ghost…. A ghost appearing right here in Ginza, in the middle of the jazz neighbourhood. The newspapers will have a field day….’

  2

  The case had been thrown into confusion. The police officers felt as if they had run into a brick wall. The problem had been split into two. They had two victims. One of them was killed by a ghost. The other had first died and then turned into a ghost and committed a murder. What a strange story.

  However, they couldn’t allow the setback to impede their investigation. They quickly regained their spirit and were determined to move on. For the time being they set aside the problem of Sumiko, who had apparently been killed last, and started investigating the death of Fusae.

  Had Fusae committed suicide? Or had she been murdered?

  The medical examiner’s answer to the problem was that, unlike death by drowning, it was very difficult to strangle oneself with a towel, and he was therefore of the opinion it was murder. The investigating magistrate and the police officer in charge both agreed broadly with that opinion. Investigation headquarters was set up in the shop downstairs and the formal questioning of the witnesses began.

  Kimiko, the daughter, was the first to be called. Having lost her mother, the girl was naturally extremely upset and made her statement between sobs.

  That night, mother Fusae had ordered her daughter to watch the shop, and taken Sumiko up to the first floor. That was around ten o’clock. Kimiko had noticed that her mother was in a very bad mood, but that
was not a rare thing, so she thought nothing special of it and she watched the shop while reading some magazines. Because she goes to school, she has to get up early every morning, so she was quite sleepy at eleven and, as always, she closed up the shop, went to her room—at the back of the first floor—and went to sleep. She had not heard any voices from the front room when she came up the staircase. However, Kimiko said that she did not consider that suspicious; it was rather the cause for some strangely embarrassed feeling. She had fallen asleep but had been wakened by a scream and the noise of someone falling coming from the room at the front. She had remained in her bed for a while, thinking about what to do, but eventually she could bear it no more and slid out of bed. She went to the room at the front, but the light was out. With fear in her heart, she switched the light on in the middle room, and opened the sliding door to get a look inside the room in front. There, she saw Sumiko lying in the middle of the room. She then ran down the stairs, opened the front door and cried for help. That was the extent of her testimony.

  ‘When you looked inside the front room, did you see your mother standing near the window?’

  Kimiko shook her head at the police officer’s question.

  ‘No, she wasn’t there at that time.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it was odd your mother wasn’t anywhere around when you hurried downstairs in shock?’

  ‘…Mum sometimes goes out late at night drinking with an uncle, so I thought she was gone….’

  ‘Uncle? Your uncle, eh? Who might that be?’

  The police officer had seized on her words. Kimiko hesitantly explained that she meant Tatsujirō. Nervously, she added: ‘…Uncle Tatsujirō went out before Mum did, while I was still watching the shop. But the back door is left open, so he might have returned later. I was asleep, so I can’t say.’