The Ginza Ghost Page 23

  ‘Where did he go for a drink?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The police officer immediately sent out a subordinate with the order to look for Tatsujirō. It then became the turn of the waitresses of the Blue Orchid and the three men to be questioned. The witnesses repeated the story they had told the police earlier. They weren’t able to offer any new information besides that. However, their statements did correspond with that of Kimiko, particularly in regard to Tatsujirō.

  After the questioning was over, the conclusions about the estimated time of Fusae’s death became available. It had happened between the time that the waitresses of the Blue Orchid had seen Fusae sitting opposite Sumiko and then slamming the window, and eleven o’clock. That meant that if Kimiko’s testimony was correct, Tatsujirō hadn’t been present in the building then. But couldn’t he have easily sneaked inside through the back entrance while Kimiko was watching the front, gone up to the first floor, killed Fusae and then fled again? In any case, it was imperative to investigate this Tatsujirō.

  Shortly thereafter, however, Tatsujirō came strolling back home on his own, without the company of a police officer. He looked as though he had no idea what had happened, and answered the police’s questions haltingly.

  According to Tatsujirō, he had been drinking at an oden[xxv] stall called Takohachi in Shimbashi from ten o’clock until just now, and had only just learned of the murder. The proprietor of Takohachi was sent for, and as soon as he saw Tatsujirō, he said: ‘Yes, this customer was with me from ten until just now. My wife and the other customers will also confirm this….’

  Disappointed, the officer in charge indicated the exit with his chin.

  Tatsujirō had been provided with an alibi. At that, the investigation began to feel desperate. Kimiko had been on watch at the front, and the yakitori vendor was adamant that nobody had left by the back alley. The windows on the first floor had been under observation from the Blue Orchid’s first floor and the window in Kimiko’s room at the back of the first floor had been locked from the inside. Even if that window had not been locked, you could only walk out into the two tsubo wide space to dry clothes located on top of the kitchen roof, which was closely surrounded by barbed wire. To make absolutely sure, they also checked the three houses facing the alley that connected the back of the house to the street where the yakitori stand was, but the back doors of all three houses had been locked since the evening, and there didn’t seem to be anything suspicious about them. That meant that at the time Fusae was murdered, the only people inside that tobacco shop, which had basically turned into a locked room, were Sumiko, who was later murdered herself, and Kimiko, who had been watching the shop.

  At this point, all the police could do was suspect these two persons. Kimiko was the first to be put under the spotlight. But here it appeared the scope of the investigation had become too limited. Their initial approach had been to find the murderer of Fusae, but this line of investigation overlapped with the mysterious murder of Sumiko, and the result was bewildering. It might be too farfetched, but suppose Kimiko had first killed her mother Fusae? In that case, Fusae could not have killed Sumiko later. Now suppose it was Sumiko who had killed Fusae. But this would lead to the odd conclusion that a dead Fusae could later kill Sumiko. In the end, the conundrum always came back to the mysterious murder of Sumiko. The officers in charge had no choice left but to tackle the ghostly murder case head on. Everyone tried their best to think the problem through.

  First of all, at the time Sumiko was murdered, the only persons present in the tobacco shop—which was basically a locked room on its own—were Fusae, who had been killed before Sumiko, and Kimiko, who said she was sleeping in her room at the back of the first floor. The police officers of course could not simply go believe in the existence of ghosts. The witnesses who saw Fusae kill Sumiko from the windows of the Blue Orchid only caught a glimpse of her. Nobody had clearly seen Fusae’s face, and the testimonies only agreed on the fact the murderer was wearing a blackish pattern-less kimono. What if it had not been Fusae who had murdered Sumiko, but Kimiko—wearing her mother Fusae’s kimono—who had killed Sumiko and later changed into her pink nightdress?

  But this idea was quickly shot down. It had only been about three minutes between the time when the figure who resembled Fusae had staggered away from the window at the crime scene after the murder, and when the group from the Blue Orchid had come out on the street and run into Kimiko, who was wearing her night dress. It would have been impossible for Kimiko to take off her mother’s kimono and put it on her mother again in that short amount of time.

  Well then, what if she had not been wearing her mother’s kimono, but had fooled everyone by wearing a similarly blackish kimono, which would have appeared to be a plain kimono seen from three, four ken away? That seemed plausible, so the police officers started a rigorous house search of the tobacco shop. It did not take long for them to find two or three of Fusae’s kimonos that seemed to fit the description from her chest of drawers. But these kimonos had all been prepared with moth repellent and been neatly wrapped in kimono wrapping paper. One could not do this in a mere three or four minutes. No, even if Kimiko had been the murderer, it would not explain why Sumiko had uttered Fusae’s name as she was dying. No matter how they thought about it, it was impossible for Kimiko to be Sumiko’s murderer.

  The police finally gave up on the investigation for the night.

  The following day, the newspapers all had big headlines on the appearance of the ghost. The irritated police started repeating the things they had done yesterday. The only new discoveries were that after they had sent the murder weapon—the razor—to forensics, they got confirmation that no clear fingerprints had been left on the grip because it was too narrow, and that after further questioning of Tatsujirō, they found out that he and Sumiko had become intimate at some point in time, and there had been quarrels about that in the house.

  And as the police were wandering aimlessly about in this thick fog of mystery, a call came in from an amateur detective, asking to speak to the police officer in charge. It was the bartender of the Blue Orchid, a young man called Nishimura.

  ‘…Hello, am I speaking to the chief inspector? This is the bartender of the Blue Orchid speaking. I know who the ghost is. I know the true identity of the ghost who killed Sumiko. Could you come over here tonight? Yes, I will explain everything then. You’ll see a ghost….’

  3

  By the time the chief inspector arrived at the Blue Orchid together with one of his subordinates, it was already growing dark outside. The side street was lively and overflowing with jazz music, as if the events of the previous night had already been forgotten, except for a few curiosity seekers gathered in front of the tobacco shop. It was quite busy both up and downstairs at the Blue Orchid, and everyone was sharing stories about the ghost of the tobacco shop.

  Bartender Nishimura, dressed in a white jacket and wearing a bow tie, warmly welcomed the police officers, led them up to the first floor to a seat near the front windows and had a waitress bring them a drink. The chief inspector, however, appeared irritated from the beginning. He hardly said anything, but watched the suspicious bartender’s actions closely.

  The room on the first floor of the tobacco shop was right across the street from them. The bodies had already been removed from the room for autopsies. Through the windows, fitted with sliding doors, they could see the electric light was switched on, as it usually was.

  The bartender finally started to speak. ‘You see, I thought that rather than clumsily explaining it to you over the phone, you’d understand better if I showed it to you in person.’

  ‘What are you planning to show us?’ The chief inspector asked suspiciously.

  ‘Well, the ghost, actually.’

  The chief inspector interrupted him. ‘So you mean to say you know who killed Sumiko?’

  ‘Yes, more or less….’

  ‘Who is it? Did you perhaps witness the crime scene?’


  ‘No, I didn’t see it. But seeing as Fusae was already dead at the time, there were only two persons left….’

  ‘So you believe the murderer’s Kimiko?’ The inspector laughed at him.

  ‘No, not at all.’ The bartender shook his head fervently. ‘You already ruled her out as a suspect, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, then, we’re all out of suspects.’ The inspector leant back, as if he had given up on the whole problem.

  ‘But you do have one,’ said young Nishimura with a smile. ‘You still have Sumiko.’

  ‘What, Sumiko?’

  ‘Yes. It was Sumiko who killed Sumiko.’

  ‘You mean it was suicide?’

  ‘Precisely.’ A serious expression appeared on Nishimura’s face. ‘Everyone has been under a ridiculous misapprehension right from the beginning. If Sumiko had been discovered after she’d died, the misunderstanding probably wouldn’t have occurred. But she was seen squirming around in agony after she’d cut her own throat and was writhing in her final moments. That is why everyone mistook her suicide scene to be a murder scene. I believe it was Sumiko who killed Fusae. Last night, Fusae’s scolding led to a quarrel between the rivals in love, and eventually, Sumiko strangled Fusae. When Sumiko came to her senses, she realised what a horrible crime she’d committed, one she could never get away with, and the first thing she did was to hide Fusae’s body inside the closet. She probably did that because she knew it was dangerous to leave her out there, because Kimiko would come up at eleven. And after grappling with her conscience over what she’d done, she finally committed suicide. So what happened was the exact opposite of what you thought when you discovered Fusae’s body. Sumiko’s dying words—Fusae’s name—were not uttered to accuse the person who’d killed her. She called out the name of the person she’d killed, out of remorse. Anyway, that’s just how I see it.’

  ‘Don’t joke around!’ bellowed the inspector. ‘Do you mean to say that the woman all the waitresses here saw, the woman who was leaning against the window wearing a plain kimono and holding a razor was not Fusae, but Sumiko? Impossible. You’re the one who is under a misapprehension here. Listen to me. Most importantly, you should consider the kimono. Fusae was wearing her plain kimono, and Sumiko was wearing that gaudy kimono….’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ This time it was the bartender who interrupted. ‘That’s exactly the point I want to make. You see, that ghost appeared because… Oh, I think preparations are completed now, so now I’ll have you witness the appearance of your ghost.’

  He continued as he got up: ‘…You still don’t see who it was? The true identity of the ghost who appeared right in the middle of Ginza? I’d think that anyone would realise it if they reflected closely on what actually happened during the incident, and the position of that building….’

  Having said that, a cocky smile appeared on the bartender’s face and he went downstairs, leaving the perplexed police officers behind. But he soon returned with a large National bicycle lamp, and said to the chief inspector as he walked over to the windows: ‘The ghost will now appear before you, so please stand here.’

  The inspector grimaced, but walked over to the windows as instructed. The waitresses and customers, who had all been watching them discreetly from a distance, now stumbled over each other as they made their way to the windows. Nishimura said: ‘Look at the window opposite.’

  The electric light was still shining in serene silence in the first floor window of the tobacco shop only three ken away, but then they caught the glimpse of a figure inside the room, and a shadow was cast on the windows.

  Expecting something unusual to happen, the people in the Blue Orchid all leaned forward and stared at the window. The shadow on the window swayed and stuck a hand out. Suddenly the light went off.

  ‘Listen carefully. At the time of the incident, the person behind that shadow staggered around and hit the light and the room became dark, just as it has now.’

  The bartender had barely finished speaking when the window opposite was opened noisily from the inside, and out of the darkness emerged the back of a woman wearing a blackish, plain kimono, pale in the nape of her neck, precisely like the figure the people had seen last night. But then the bartender aimed the light of the National lamp he was holding at the woman’s back. The figure of an older woman wearing a blackish, plain kimono promptly changed into the figure of a young girl wearing a kimono with a gaudy, crimson well curb pattern on a black background.

  ‘Kimiko, thanks,’ yelled the bartender to the figure opposite. The woman in the window turned silently around and smiled sadly at him. It was Kimiko.

  ‘Now you’ve all seen it. I had to borrow Kimiko and that kimono for the experiment,’ said the bartender as he smiled mischievously at the chief inspector, who still remained baffled.

  Nishimura continued. ‘You still don’t understand what’s happened? All right, let me explain. Think of it like this. Suppose you have something written in red ink. If you looked at the text through normal, plain glass, it will be red, precisely as if you looked at it without the glass, correct? But suppose you look at something written in red ink through a red glass. You won’t see any writing. Just as when you develop a photograph. That’s a hobby of mine, by the way. Sometimes when I’m developing a film beneath a red light I get confused when my package of printing paper wrapped in red paper disappears, even though I’m sure I placed it right next to me. I fumble around and suddenly my hands feel something, even though my eyes can’t see it. This is the same phenomenon. But if you use blue glass instead of red glass to look at the writing, it will appear to be black.’

  ‘Aha,’ said the chief inspector, ‘I think I get what you’re saying. But still….’

  ‘It’s really just a minor point,’ said bartender Nishimura. He smiled at the chief inspector, and then continued with his explanation. ‘And now we replace the writing made in red ink with a kimono with a gaudy crimson, well curb pattern. In normal light, we’d all see a crimson-coloured well curb pattern, right? However, just as in the example of the red ink just now, when you shine blue light on that same kimono, the crimson well curb pattern turns into a dark, blackish well curb pattern. And, if the fabric beneath is black too, then you’d have black on black, and the pattern wouldn’t be visible any more. It’d only appear to be a black, plain kimono.’

  ‘But the light in that room was off at the time.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It’s only because the normal light of that room was off that the phenomenon occurred.’

  ‘Was there a blue light on, then?’

  ‘Eh? There’s a blue light on all the time. If the blue light had only been switched on at that very moment, everyone would’ve noticed, of course. But that’s not what happened. It was only when the normal light inside the room disappeared, that the blue light, which had been on all the time, started to have a clear effect. That’s why nobody standing here at the window noticed anything.’

  ‘But where is that blue light then?’

  ‘Come on, think about it!’

  The chief inspector thought for a moment and then rushed to the window, without listening to the rest of what the bartender had to say. He grabbed the frame, swung his legs over it and leant outside, almost enough to fall down. As he looked up, he cried out: ‘Of course, that’s it!’

  Above the windows of the Blue Orchid, a large neon sign with the words “Café Blue Orchid” was shining brightly.

  ‘It’s quite impressive, noticing a thing like that,’ said the policeman to the bartender afterwards, as he bought him a beer. The young man appeared to be embarrassed by the praise and smiled.

  ‘Not at all. You see, I’m always witnessing a smaller variant of the ghostly phenomenon every day.’ He indicated the waitresses with his chin. ‘The girls here may be wearing the same kimono both day and night, but they appear like different people at different times. You might call them a kind of Ginza ghost too….’

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

  * * *

  [1] Translator’s Note: Honkaku (orthodox) mystery fiction refers to a form of detective fiction that is as much literature as it is an intelligent game, where fair play and logic are deemed its greatest qualities. The term was first coined by Saburō Kōga in the 1920s.

  * * *

  [i] Japan has a long tradition of small entertainment parks on the roofs of department stores, which thrived especially in the period after World War II. The first one was opened in 1903, featuring children’s games like see-saws and rocking horses. Other department stores soon followed with facilities like fountains, lakes, gardens, mirror houses and more. In 1923, Matsuzakaya’s department store in Ginza, Tōkyō opened a rooftop zoo with a lion and a panther.

  [ii] Yukata are simple, informal kimono.

  [iii] Chindon’ya are street musicians in eccentric dress who go around in the streets advertising and announcing events. The practice started in the late 19th century, but they disappeared almost completely after television became widespread.

  [iv] A kōban, commonly known in English as a police box, is a small neighbourhood police station, usually only housing only a small number of police officers.

  [v] An engawa is a veranda outside traditional Japanese homes leading directly into the garden.

  [vi] Kagasuri, or “mosquito pattern,” consists of a cluster of very fine crosses, somewhat similar to mosquitoes.

  [vii] Fukusuke is a god of merchant prosperity, recognizable by his large, bald forehead.

  [viii] Kikugorō Onoe is a stage name dating from the eighteenth century used by a group of actors of kabuki, a classical form of dance-theatre. Actors can succeed to the prestigious title. Kikugorō VI (1885-1949) held the name during the time The Mourning Locomotive was published. He was regarded as one of the greatest kabuki actors of the first half of the twentieth century.