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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news - the son of one of the island's most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger - with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters' lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophecy, and to protect the three women if he can. As Kosuke Kindaichi attempts to unravel the island's secrets, a series of gruesome murders begins. He investigates, but soon finds himself in mortal danger from both the unknown killer and the clannish locals, who resent this outsider meddling in their affairs. Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the fiendish Death on Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo's classic Japanese mysteries.
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PRAISE FOR SEISHI YOKOMIZO’S MYSTERIES
‘Readers will delight in the blind turns, red herrings and dubious alibis… Ingenious and compelling’
ECONOMIST
‘At once familiar and tantalisingly strange… It’s an absolute pleasure to see his work translated at last in these beautifully produced English editions’
SUNDAY TIMES
‘The perfect read for this time of year. Short and compelling, it will appeal to fans of Agatha Christie looking for a new case to break’
IRISH TIMES
‘This is Golden Age crime at its best, complete with red herrings, blind alleys and twists and turns galore… A testament to the power of the simple murder mystery and its enduring appeal’
SPECTATOR
‘The diabolically twisted plotting is top-notch’
NEW YORK TIMES
‘A stellar whodunit set in 1940s Japan… The solution is a perfect match for the baffling puzzle. Fair-play fans will hope for more translations of this master storyteller’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW
‘With a reputation in Japan to rival Agatha Christie’s, the master of ingenious plotting is finally on the case for anglophone readers’
GUARDIAN
‘A delightfully entertaining locked room murder mystery… An ideal book to curl up with on a winter’s night’
NB MAGAZINE
‘Never anything less than fun from beginning to end… Truly engrossing’
BOOKS AND BAO
‘A classic murder mystery… Comparisons with Holmes are justified, both in the character of Kindaichi and Yokomizo’s approach to storytelling—mixing clues, red herrings and fascinating social insight before drawing back the curtain to reveal the truth’
JAPAN TIMES
‘The perfect gift for any fan of classic crime fiction or locked room mysteries’
MRS PEABODY INVESTIGATES
CONTENTS
CHARACTERS IN GOKUMON ISLAND
THE INVESTIGATORS
THE HEAD KITO FAMILY
THE BRANCH KITO FAMILY
OTHER RESIDENTS
Various islanders and investigators
PROLOGUE
Kosuke Kindaichi Arrives on Gokumon Island
Seventeen miles south of Kasaoka, falling right on the border between Okayama, Hiroshima and Kagawa Prefectures, in the middle of the Seto Inland Sea, there’s a tiny island. Measuring barely five miles in circumference, its name is Gokumon-to, meaning Hell’s Gate Island.
Many theories have been bandied about over the years as to how it got that name. The most credible is that the correct name was originally Kitamon-to, or North Gate Island. The evidence for this is as follows…
For as many as a thousand years, the Seto Inland Sea was famous for its bands of pirates, whose first leader was the notorious Sumitomo Fujiwara. Back then, trading ships from continental Asia sailing into central Japan through the Kanmon Straits, which divide the southern island of Kyushu and the main island of Honshu, constantly had to contend with the daredevil pirates of the Seto Inland Sea. The pirates’ fortunes were up and down over the centuries, but they have existed since the Nara Period, or the eighth century. Up until the early Edo Period, or the seventeenth century, the pirating tradition was passed on from generation to generation. In a famous chapter of Japanese history, the Yoshino Period, these Seto pirates really came into their own, playing a major role in the sixty years of conflict between the Northern and Southern dynasties, during the 1300s.
One particular band of pirates, known as the Iyo, were based around the Seto islands from the Iyo coastline to Hiuchi-nada and Bingo-nada. As the current Gokumon Island was their northern stronghold, the story goes that they were the ones who named it Kitamon, or North Gate. And somewhere over the years, that name changed to Gokumon—Hell’s Gate.
However, there exists another theory, one not based on historical fact. It is rumoured that sometime in the early days of the Edo Period, a giant man by the name of Goemon, six feet seven inches tall, lived on the island. This rumour spread around the whole of Japan, and the island where he was spotted became Goemon Island, a name which eventually evolved into Gokumon Island.
I haven’t been able to ascertain which of the stories—the Kitamon or the Goemon—is correct, but there is a general consensus as to how the sinister-sounding corruption of its name to Hell’s Gate came about.
This is how the story goes…
During the Edo Era, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the island was ruled by the feudal lord of the Chugoku region of Japan. It was an isolated island of granite, thick with red pine trees, and inhabited only by a few fishermen, descendants of the pirates of the past. The feudal lord decided to make the island a place of exile. From that time on, for many years, all the criminals in his territory who had their death sentence commuted were imprisoned on this island, and it became known by the inauspicious moniker Gokumon, which can be read as Prison Gate as well as Hell’s Gate.
And so, through those almost three hundred years of the Edo Era, how many unfortunate souls were exiled on Gokumon Island? Were there some who were eventually pardoned and allowed to return to their home towns? For sure there were many, banished here for life, who died and were buried on the island. A good many of these had intermarried with the fisherfolk, descendants of the Iyo pirates, and started a new bloodline. There were still others who had children with the daughters of fishermen and, after receiving a pardon, left the island, abandoning their children.
By the Meiji Era of the late nineteenth century, exile was no longer used as a punishment, but the people already living on the island were closed-minded and insular to an extreme. They rarely agreed to marry with people from any other place. Thus, each and every one of the barely 300 households on Gokumon Island, and their (just) over 1,000 inhabitants, had both pirate and prisoner blood running in their veins.
It was a man by the name of K—, once a schoolteacher on one of the neighbouring islands, who told me of the laborious process that had to be undertaken if ever there was a crime committed on any of these Seto Inland islands.
“The island I used to work on had a population of about a thousand. They’ve been intermarrying for two or three—in the worst cases, for five or six—generations. So the whole island is like one large extended family. What kind of authority can a police officer from another part of the country have in a place like that? If there’s a crime committed, the whole island closes ranks and the police are powerless. If there’s a quarrel among the islanders, for example, a complaint that some property’s gone missing, or money’s been stolen, and the police are called in to investigate, without fail the moment they close in on a suspect, the parties in question immediately come to their own arrangement. And the story changes completely: ‘Oh no, it wasn’t stolen after all! I’d completely forgotten that I’d shoved it in the back of a cupboard.’ In some ways this makes life easy, but at other times it’s a complete pain in the neck.”
If the ordinary islands of the inland sea were that way, then how could it not be also in an extraordinary place like Gokumon Island, with its descendants of pirates and prisoners? The people were already ostracized by the inhabitants of surrounding islands, and their hostility to any outsider was uncommonly strong. If a crime were committed on Gokumon Island, one can only imagine how hopeless was the lot of the police.
And then there was a crime… And what a terrible crime it was too, a hideous nightmare of a case, unearthly and insidious, a systematically plotted serial-murder case, truly befitting a place named Hell’s Gate. It really was a bizarre, and frankly impossible-seeming, string of murders.
That said, it’s important to note that Gokumon Island is not a remote island in the middle of a vast, empty ocean. It is located in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Although it’s a fair distance from the rest of the islands, it does have working electricity and its own post office. And there’s a daily ferry to and from Kasaoka on the mainland.
It was the middle of September 1946, about a year after the end of the Second World War. A thirty-five-tonne ferry, the White Dragon, had just left Konoshima Port in Kasaoka, headed for the islands. It was packed to the brim with passengers. A good half in those days were fairly well-to-do citizens, and they were on a trip from the mainland to Shiraishi Island for a special fish dinner. The other half of the passengers were island folk who had been over to the mainland to stock up on necessities. They were mostly fishermen or their wives. All of the islands in the Seto Inland Sea were blessed with bountiful fish, but they were severely lacking in suitable land for cultivating rice, so residents were in the habit of taking fish to the mainland to exchange for rice.
The body of the ship with its filthy, worn tatami matting was crammed with these people and their baggage. The stink of sweat and fish along with paint and gasoline and exhaust fumes—any single one of these smells would be unpleasant by itself, but when mixed together in a teeming ship, it was enough to make anyone vomit. However, these fishermen and farming folk were strong both in spirit and stomach. Without a care in the world, they sat there talking in shrill tones, laughing and generally enjoying themselves.
At the far edge of the stern section, there was an odd-looking passenger. The man was dressed in a traditional serge hakama skirt. On his head was a shapeless, crumpled felt hat. These days even peasant farmers would wear Western clothes, or at least an approximation of Western clothing, at home. Off on a trip, the world and his wife would certainly be dressed Western-style. Right now, on this ship there was only one other man in traditional Japanese clothing, and he was a Buddhist priest. In those days, to persist in wearing traditional Japanese dress took some stubbornness, but this passenger didn’t look stubborn. He had a very ordinary sort of face. He was of slight build, and overall was rather undistinguished-looking. His complexion had the darkness of the southern Japanese, but it didn’t give him any semblance of being strong or robust. He looked to be around thirty-five years old.
Apparently oblivious to all the hubbub around him, the man leaned against the window, staring absently out over the ocean. The Seto Inland Sea was a deep emerald green, with picturesque islands dotted here and there, but the man seemed unmoved by such beautiful scenery. In fact, he looked more sleepy than anything else.
As the ferry passed from Kasaoka to Shiraishi Island and then on to Kitagi Island, many passengers alighted, but few boarded. Then, finally, three hours after departing Konoshima Port, right after making a stop at Manabe Island, only three passengers remained in the once cacophonous interior of the ferry.
It was then that something happened to change the expression on the face of the sleepy man.
“Oh, hello, Reverend Father, I didn’t notice you there. I didn’t realize you’d been away from Senkoji Temple! Where have you come from?”
At the sound of this voice, the sleepy man was suddenly wide awake. He turned around to see the speaker was a fisherman-type, around forty-five years old. He was wearing what appeared to be second-hand army khakis. But it wasn’t this speaker who had caught the man’s attention—it was the man addressed as the Reverend Father of Senkoji Temple.
The priest appeared to be about sixty—well, perhaps closer to seventy—but he was tall and well built, giving him the appearance of a much younger man in the prime of his life. His eyes, nose and mouth, all the features of his large face, added to the impression of an imposing character. His big, bright eyes were filled with warmth, but at the same time they had a sharpness about them that suggested they could chill a person to the bone. Over his white robes he wore a traditional smock-like travelling coat and a simple hood around his round face.
The priest’s eyes crinkled into a gentle smile.
“Hey, Takezo, I didn’t know you were on this ferry.”
He spoke in a leisurely manner.
“Anyway, where have you come from?”
It was the second time the man called Takezo had asked the question.
“I went to Kure to get our temple bell,” said the priest.
“Temple bell? Oh, the one that was confiscated during the war. Is it still in one piece?”
“Yes, it turns out it was never melted down. It survived the war.”
“And you went to pick it up… But where is it right now?”
“Ha ha. I may look strong but I’d never manage to get that bell back by myself. I just went to do the paperwork. I’m going to have to get some of the young lads from the island to go and pick it up.”
“I see. I’d be happy to go along and help with that. Anyway, congratulations on getting it back.”
“Yes, it’s returning to its rightful home,” said the priest with a smile.
Takezo moved in a little closer.
“When you mentioned returning to a rightful home, it reminded me—Hitoshi-san is supposed to be coming home soon.”
“Hitoshi-san?”
The priest looked sharply at Takezo.
“How do you know that? Was there news from his regiment?”
“No, not from the army. Well, not directly. I ran into someone who was in the same regiment as him… when was it? The day before yesterday, or maybe it was three days ago. This man turned up unexpectedly on the island, said he’d been entrusted by Hitoshi-san to let his family know that he’d survived the war. That he hadn’t been injured, that he’d be coming home on the next ship, or maybe the one after that. Sanae-san was overjoyed to hear it. She made the visitor food and sent him away with a bunch of gifts.”
“Hmm. And so he left again?”
“Yes, he stayed just one night. He left with a whole load of stuff… So do you think this means that Chimata-san is also alive?”
The priest closed his eyes.
“Right. There’ll be no problem if the main family line is safe.”
There was strong emotion in his voice.
That was when the strange man in the hakama and felt hat sidled up to him.
“If you don’t mind me asking, you’re not Ryonen-san the priest, from Gokumon Island, are you?”
The priest’s eyes popped wide open, and he stared at the man’s face.
“Yes, I’m Ryonen. And you?”
The man opened his suitcase and pulled out an envelope. Breaking the seal, he took out a folded piece of paper and handed it to the priest. It seemed to be a page torn from a notebook. The priest looked puzzled.
“The bearer, Kosuke Kindaichi…” he read aloud, but then stopped and looked up at the man’s face.
“This is Chimata-san’s writing!”
The man in the serge hakama nodded with enthusiasm.
“And you are Kosuke Kindaichi?”
The man nodded again.
“This is addressed to me, the village mayor and the doctor. Will you permit me to open it?”
“Go ahead.”
The priest unfolded the paper and scanned the faint pencil writing. After he’d finished reading, he folded the paper again.
“Give me the envelope. I’ll keep this safe.”
He placed the torn paper back in the envelope that Kosuke Kindaichi had passed to him, and then put it away in a large wallet he pulled from his breast pocket. Then he looked the stranger up and down.
“So, what exactly does this letter mean? That you need somewhere nice and quiet to recuperate? And Gokumon Island is the perfect location? Chimata-san has entrusted your care to Mayor Araki, Doctor Murase and myself?”
The stranger nodded.
“I hope it’s not too much trouble to you. I’ve brought a little rice with me, but—”
“No, no. Don’t worry about that at all. However poor we islanders may be, we can always find enough to feed one extra mouth. And if you’re on business relating to the heir of the chief family of the island, everyone will be sure to treat you kindly. Please enjoy your stay… Only there’s one thing, Kindaichi-san.”
“Yes?”
“What has happened to the head… I mean, Chimata Kito. Why hasn’t he returned home yet?”
“K-Kito-san…”
The stranger had begun to stammer slightly.
Takezo took the opportunity to cut into the conversation.
“Please don’t tell us he died in the war!”
“Well, not exactly. He didn’t die in action. After it had ended, he— Well, he was still alive in August of this year. It was on board a ship that was bringing us soldiers back to Japan…”
“He passed away on the ship?”
The stranger in the serge clothing nodded.
“There’ll be an official communiqué, but I’ve come here to inform everyone at Kito-san’s request.”
“What terrible luck!” lamented Takezo loudly, both hands on his head.
All three men went quiet and stared into the distance. The priest was the first to break the silence.
“A death in the main family line is very beneficial to the branch family, that’s for sure!” he said in a tone of disgust.
The engines of the White Dragon droned on and the ferry left behind it a foamy white trail on the surface of the sea. The emerald-green water of the Seto Inland Sea was calm and clear, but the swell of the waves suggested that a storm was approaching. Occasionally in the distance, there was the boom of something exploding.
CHAPTER 1
The Three Gorgons
Kosuke Kindaichi. Reader, if you happen to have picked up the mystery The Honjin Murders, you will already be familiar with him. It was back in 1937 that he solved a mysterious murder that had been committed at the home of an old Honjinowning family in a farming village in Okayama Prefecture. At the time he was a young man of around twenty-five.
What had he been doing since then? Well—nothing. Just like every other young man in Japan, he was drafted by the army and forced to join the war. The best years of his life became a kind of void.
For the first two years, he was in China. After that he was shunted around between different islands to the south, ending up in Wewak, New Guinea.
Kosuke Kindaichi’s division suffered a crushing defeat in their final battle, and took to their heels. The survivors met up with other divisions and regrouped. That was when Kosuke met Chimata Kito, four years his junior. Chimata had finished school in 1940 and immediately been posted to continental Asia. He’d followed approximately the same route as Kosuke and, like him, ended up in New Guinea.
Northern Japan-born Kosuke Kindaichi and Chimata Kito from the Seto Inland Sea got along famously. They did everything together. Chimata had caught a severe kind of malaria, which had a tendency to recur, and whenever it did, Kosuke was always by his side, tending to him.
There hadn’t been a battle in New Guinea after 1943. The American army paid no heed to the little battalion that had been left there, and was making great strides elsewhere. Kosuke and Chimata’s unit, ignored by the enemy, no longer had contact with their main army either. There was no hope for them, and they were left to spend gloomy days, hanging around doing nothing.
Their comrades-in-arms were struck down one by one by fever and malnutrition. On this particular front line, if someone died, no replacement came: they just become short one more man. As they fell, one after the other, the few who were left were stricken with despair. Their uniform and boots were tattered and worn; they sat around like a bunch of helpless statues.
And then the war ended.
Kosuke Kindaichi always found it strange—the total elation shown by his friend Chimata Kito.
“I’m going home alive!” he yelled with utter joy, as if some sort of heavy burden had fallen from his shoulders, or he’d been released from a dark, locked room. It was an extreme, a bizarre, kind of euphoria.
Of course, anyone would be delighted that a war was over, just as anyone would feel horror at the prospect of dying like a bug. But there was no one who seemed to fear dying the way that Chimata Kito did. Each time he suffered a bout of malaria, he would tremble at the shadow of death in the same way a small child is afraid of the dark. He was a tall, powerfully built man, generally of a strong disposition. When it came to anything else, he showed a level of bravery far above all other men, so this extreme fear of death was completely out of character. His fear was so strong it had become an obsession. It was quite eerie, Kosuke thought.
But then, Chimata Kito died after all—ironically, on board a ship headed home, not five days before he would have been able to set foot in his native land. And now here was Kosuke Kindaichi on his way to give his friend’s family the news of his death.
Kosuke recalled how, shortly before setting out, he had visited the home of his benefactor, Ginzo Kubo (please refer to The Honjin Murders). Ginzo had offered the following advice:
“Ko-san, don’t forget you are only visiting Gokumon Island to deliver news of your comrade’s death. If you have any other purpose at all for your visit, if there’s something else on your mind, I urge you not to go. Listen, Ko-san, Gokumon Island is a dreadful place. Why are you going somewhere like that, Kosuke?”
Ginzo knew Kosuke Kindaichi better than anyone else. He looked at his young friend’s face with concern and tried to read his thoughts—
The Buddhist priest’s voice abruptly cut off Kosuke’s reminiscences.
“It’s a case of
“Summer grass—no trace of mighty soldiers’ dreams.”
“Sorry? Did you say something?” Kosuke asked. He thought he had heard the priest quote a haiku.
The priest was standing at the window, looking out into the distance at the blue of the ocean.
“That noise.”
“Noise?”
Just as Kosuke repeated the priest’s word, he heard the sound in the distance: a boom as if something was exploding.
“Oh, that! It sounds as if they’re setting off unexploded underwater mines.”
“The more distant sounds are the mines,” replied the priest. “The closer sounds are from that island over there. They’re knocking down the military installations. As if toppling what is left of ‘mighty soldiers’ dreams’. Doesn’t it remind you of that haiku? I’d like the great Basho to be able to see all this.”
It was a very bizarre situation in which to bring up Basho. Kosuke stared in surprise at the priest, who turned from the window to look at him.
“This area isn’t even the worst. If you head west—because we’re close to China, the islands are full of big craters. They look like beehives. There was even one island that was secretly making poison gas. Now they have no idea how to deal with all the gas that’s left there. On our island they built an air defence base with anti-aircraft guns. About fifty soldiers turned up and started digging up the mountain. They made holes all over the place. That’s all very well, but when the war ended, they didn’t make any effort to tidy up after themselves. They just upped and left. There’s no way to clean it up properly. The poem goes, ‘Destroy a country, but its mountains and rivers remain’, but it’s more like ‘Destroy a country and completely mangle its mountains and rivers beyond recognition’… Look—there it is.”
Kosuke Kindaichi saw it then from the window of the White Dragon. Until the end of time he would never forget his first sight of Gokumon Island. To the west, the autumn sky was clear and bright, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine. But the gloomy sky over Gokumon Island all the way to the east hung heavy like molten lead. The island itself loomed out of the sea, just at that moment shimmering as it caught the light from the western sun.
Before the geological depression had formed what eventually would become the Seto Inland Sea, all these islands were the peaks of mountains. This meant that there was very little level ground on any of them. It was common for cliffs to rise straight up from the very shorelines, and Gokumon Island was one of the most extreme examples. Its tallest mountain peak wasn’t all that high, but the overall effect was of an island springing from the ocean, its cliffs rising hundreds of feet into the air all around. And these cliffs were topped with further hills, thickly covered in red pine trees. White plaster-walled houses, glowing in the evening sun, were dotted on the hill slopes under a glowering grey sky that seemed ready to attack at any moment. Kosuke felt a cold tingle run down his spine at this ominous sight.
“See up there on that high point? That’s my temple. Then just below that, the grand house with the white walls? That’s the place you’re on your way to visit—the Kito family home.”
The priest gestured as he spoke, but right at that moment the ferry turned around the edge of a cliff, and the temple and white house were instantly blocked from view. After they passed by the rock face, a rather flat and calm bay appeared before them. Scattered here and there on the gently undulating land were the small huts of local fisherman.
From the far side of the bay, a smaller boat came towards them. This was the welcome boat from the ferry company. As I already mentioned, there was a scarcity of flat land on these islands, and really no space for a thirty-five-tonne ship to dock. Consequently, each island had a shipping company branch office, which would dispatch smaller barges to meet the ferries, and transport the passengers onto the island.
The smaller boat reached the ferry just as it dropped anchor. The captain of the barge addressed the priest.
“Welcome home, Reverend Father. Oh, you’re here too, Takezo-san? Hey, Yoshimoto, take this luggage to Shimura on Shiraishi Island, will you? And say hello to Miyo-chan for me? Ha ha ha.”
As soon as the three passengers were aboard, he swung the barge around. With a phut, phut sound it blew rings of steam into the air, and gently set off back towards the shore.
“Reverend Father, is this gentleman going to be staying with you?”
“Ah, no. He’s the guest of the Kito family. He’ll be staying on the island awhile. Let’s make him welcome.”
“Of course. And er… if I may ask… How did the business with the bell go?”
“The temple bell? Yes, I got permission to get it. In two or three days’ time, I want to send some of the young men to go and pick it up. I hope you won’t mind helping to transport it. It’s such a heavy object, it’s going to require quite an effort.”
“With pleasure. But what a pain. They shouldn’t ever have asked you to donate it in the first place.”
“Hmm, can’t be helped. Since we lost the war, everything’s been a mess.”
“So true… Well, here we are.”
Just as the boat arrived at the quay, the rain clouds that had been hanging over Gokumon Island started to release a few drops on the arriving travellers.
“You’re lucky,” said the barge captain. “Any later and you would have been soaked to the skin.”
“Truly. It looks as if we’re in for a real downpour.”
Right out of the harbour, the road curved steeply uphill.
“Takezo?” the priest said.
“Yes, sir?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, could you run on ahead to the Kito residence and let them know that I’m bringing a guest with me.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, and then perhaps you’d drop by the village mayor and Murase-san’s places and ask them to go up to the main house? Let them know it’s a request from me?”
“Got it.”
Takezo set off at a trot up the hill, and the other two hurried behind him. Everyone they passed along the way bowed their heads respectfully to the priest. Then they stopped and turned to stare after Kosuke Kindaichi.
Dear reader, if you ever visited this island, in no time you would understand that the influence of priests is the most powerful thing of all. For the fishermen who only ever had an inch of plank between them and a watery grave, their faith was absolute, and it was entirely reasonable to them that the man who reigned over that faith had the power of life and death over them. On an island like this, the mayor was a lesser authority than the priest. Even the head teachers of the local primary school were hired and fired at the whim of this man.
After the two passed through the fishing village, the road grew abruptly steeper. As they followed its zigzagging course up the mountain, Kosuke caught sight of a large mansion up above. Viewed from beneath, it looked like a small castle. The granite walls of the mountain soared up like ramparts and were topped with white plaster walls and a massive nagayamon gateway. Beyond, the tiled roofs of several buildings were clearly visible. This was the house of the main line of the Kito family, owners of the biggest fishing fleet, and Gokumon Island’s most powerful family.
As soon as Kosuke Kindaichi and the priest passed through the main gate, a man rushed up to greet them. He wore an old, faded bowler hat. The wide sleeves of his cape-like overcoat flapped as if he were some kind of bat, and his feet in their white tabi socks and sandals kicked up the gravel as he scurried towards them.
“Oh, Ryonen-san, Takezo’s messenger just alerted me…”
“Koan-san, let’s wait to talk inside, shall we?”
The man wore steel-rimmed spectacles and had a scruffy goatee. He looked as if he’d pulled on his clothes in a hurry—under his cape he wore a haori jacket and hakama. He was around fifty-five years old, and Kosuke Kindaichi understood from the priest’s words that this was Gokumon Island’s Chinese herbal medicine specialist, Doctor Koan Murase.
On the other side of the long, tunnel-like entrance gate was another impressive entranceway, this time to the main house. Hearing their approaching footsteps, a woman came running out to kneel before a large folding screen, place her hands on the ground and bow in welcome. Kosuke Kindaichi’s eyes grew wide. He had never in his wildest dreams imagined that in this fisherman’s home on this godforsaken island there could live a woman of such amazing beauty.
She appeared to be in her early twenties, her hair falling in abundant waves down to her shoulders. She was dressed in Western clothes—a plain brown jacket and skirt, her only adornment a simple red ribbon at the neck of her white blouse.
“Welcome!”
She looked up at her guests with the most charming pair of eyes. There were dimples in her cheeks which only added to the warmth of her smile.
“Sanae-san, I’ve brought you a guest,” said the priest. “Are the girls at home?”
“Yes, they’re inside.”
“Good. All right then, Kindaichi-san, Koan-san, let’s go in and wait for the mayor. He should be along soon.”
Without any more ado, the priest stepped up as if it were his own house and made his way inside. The young woman looked a little dubiously at Kosuke, but then meeting his eye, she blushed and hurried to overtake the priest.
“Ryonen-san, what’s this all about?” asked Koan-san. “You asked me to alert the family quickly, so I rushed here without knowing why. But please tell me who our visitor is.”
“Didn’t Takezo tell you?”
“No, nothing. I was just told to hurry.”
“Never mind, let’s just go inside and then talk,” replied the priest. “Hey, Sanae-san, I just heard from Takezo that Hitoshi-san is alive and well.”
“Yes, I’m pleased to say that he is.”
“That’s good news. At least— Oh, here’s the mayor.”
Makihei Araki, the village mayor, was about the same age as Koan the doctor, but whereas Koan was as tall and slender as a Japanese crane, Araki was short and stocky. He was not exactly fat; more sort of wide and flat. He also looked as if he’d pulled on his old, worn morning coat in a hurry.
“Ryonen-san, what’s so urgent?”
As you’d expect of a village mayor type, his tone was confident and relaxed.
“We were waiting for you. Right, let’s go on back.”
The moment the mayor took off his shoes and stepped up into the house, there was a thunderclap like a tray of cups being overturned, and the rain began to fall in torrents.
“Oh my. That’s a devil of a rainstorm,” muttered the doctor, twisting his scrawny goatee.
The rain fell on the path they had just taken, turning the mansion garden white as if covered with icicles.
The guests were quickly shown through to a spacious room, about ten tatami mats in size.
“Sanae-san, this’ll be fine. Could you go and ask the girls to come here as soon as possible? No doubt it’ll take them a while to get their make-up on though, ha ha. Right then, everyone please take a seat. It’s really dark in here, isn’t it? Koan-san, how about turning on the light?”
With the lights on, Kosuke’s eye was caught by two photographs in the tokonoma display alcove. Both were of young men in army uniform. One was clearly Chimata Kito, who had died with him on the ship home from New Guinea. Which meant the other one must have been his relative Hitoshi, whom the priest had just mentioned to Sanae. His features were very similar to Sanae’s, and Kosuke supposed they must be brother and sister.
The priest took a seat.
“Right then…” he said, looking at the faces of the doctor and the mayor. “This is why I summoned you here today. This gentleman, Kindaichi-san, was Chimata’s comrade-in-arms.”
The goateed Koan-san stared at Kosuke in surprise. The mayor pursed his lips. Neither man spoke.
“And he’s brought us a letter from Chimata-san.”
Koan and the mayor turned their attention to the paper in the priest’s hand.
“So… what’s happened to Chimata-san?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead. Passed away on the repatriation ship.”
Koan’s shoulders suddenly seemed to collapse. His goatee trembled. The mayor groaned and twisted his face into a frown. Kosuke Kindaichi would never forget this moment of strained silence between the three men in the room. There was an ominous fear that seemed to stab him to the bone. The dread welled up in their eyes.
Outside, the rain still hurtled down like a waterfall. Then they heard voices.
“Sanae-chan, where’s this visitor?…”
The rather rough, vulgar female voice came from somewhere close by, and was followed by the sound of a shoji partition door sliding open.
“What? There’s nobody here.”
“Look over there. They’ll all be in the ten-mat room.”
“Yukie-chan, who’s this visitor anyway?”
“I bet it’s Ukai-san.”
“Don’t be silly. If it was Ukai-san he wouldn’t come in through the front way. He’d slip around the back to meet secretly.”
“Meet who?”
“You know perfectly well he comes to see me.”
“Shut up. It’s me he comes to see.”
“Oneesan, just a minute. Does my obi look okay?”
“Looks okay to me. The bow looks good.”
“I dunno—it feels weird. Tsukiyo, fix it for me?”
“Hana-chan, I already told you it looks fine. If you waste any more time, the visitors will all have left when we get there. Hey, Yukie-chan, what are you up to? You can’t go on ahead by yourself! That’s sneaky!”
The general kerfuffle, racket of raucous voices and footsteps grew steadily closer, until finally there were shadows visible through the paper shoji doors. All of a sudden, the girls seemed to be in the midst of some kind of secretive conversation. The odd phrase could be heard, such as “I don’t know, I’ve never seen him” and “He’s not very good-looking”. Kosuke could hear the girls giggling, and he couldn’t help turning bright red in the face.
The priest gave an awkward laugh.
“Come on, girls, don’t just stand there whispering to each other. Hurry up and greet our guest properly.”
“Oh no, you can hear us?”
The door finally slid open, and one at a time, cackling with laughter, wearing long-sleeved kimonos in the style of young apprentice geisha, their obi belts tied high at their backs, three young women coquettishly entered the room. They knelt at the threshold and bowed their heads, causing the artificial flowers pinned in their hair to bob and sway like ghostly apparitions.
Kosuke gulped and stared, despite himself.
“Kindaichi-san,” said the priest, “these are Chimata-san’s younger sisters: Tsukiyo, Yukie and Hanako. All born a year apart. Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen.”
They’d been given classically elegant Japanese names, named in turn for the moon, snow and flowers. But looking at these three beautiful, but somehow very oddly precocious girls, Kosuke Kindaichi felt a wave of foreboding wash over him. For the first time he realized how difficult his mission was going to be…
In the oppressive heat of that cramped and overflowing repatriation ship, Chimata Kito had lain dying like a rotting fish. At the very end, gasping for breath, he had repeated the same words over and over.
“I don’t want to die. I… I… don’t want to die. I have to get home. My three sisters will be murdered. But… but… I’m done for. Kindaichi-san, please… please go to Gokumon Island in my place. You know that letter of introduction I gave you?… Kindaichi-san, I didn’t mention it until now, but I’ve known for a long time who you were… The Honjin murder case… I read about it in the newspaper… Gokumon Island… please go there. In my place. My three sisters… My cousin… my cousin—”
And with that Chimata Kito had taken his last ever breath. In the stinking, seething heat of that repatriation vessel.
