Foreign Bodies Page 18
‘There would be fewer unexplained deaths in Europe if the people in so-called “civilized” countries would only realize that such reactions can occur in the human stomach or intestines, and that you don’t have to use poison to poison people with.
‘The day they killed Thû-Nug-Hyen of Phô-Vân-Nhoc (he had to die) he blubbered like a child because they tied him to the chair so tight, but for a long while he refused to confess. “Is it my fault,” he wept, “is it my fault if the chief engineer’s wife did not eat the fish with the caper sauce? That meal was the best meal I have ever served. It was perfect. You ate every bit of it yourselves and nothing happened to you. Why are you torturing me now? Was it my fault?”
‘Thomas, the chief engineer, whose eyes were red from weeping for the wife who lay quiet and cold in the next room, said nothing. He merely kicked the candlestick gently along the floor and under the chair to which Nug-Hyen was bound until the flame began to lick the seat on which the Annamite was sitting.
‘Nug-Hyen blubbered and swore, then said in a weak voice: “Take it away, M. Thomas! For God’s sake, take it away! The seat is burned through! Yes, I knew that Mme. Thomas hated caper sauce!”
‘So they killed him. But before he died he had time to tell me what he knew—gave me the menus for those delicious-meals-that-strike-you-dead. And Abbas-Ilahim and all the others—they told me, too. Dolorès-Maria-Virgine was the hardest to persuade, but she was the best of all. An artist! A real genius!
‘Forty-five menus they gave me altogether—but Dolorès Maria-Virgine alone told me in addition her eleven incomparable dishes and her five delicious ways of brewing ordinary coffee. If you eat any one of those eleven dishes with ordinary coffee—or any other dish with coffee brewed in any one of her five ways—pftt! It’s all over.
‘There you are. All those people knew. I know. But who else does? They all think they know, but they are all, or almost all, completely ignorant. And if I were to tell them that people can die from perfectly innocent dishes, and do die—they’d laugh me out of Paris.
‘Yet there is always the example of the milk and the artichoke. And the forty-five menus. And the five ways of brewing coffee.
‘Now will you have a brandy? Come, a brandy can’t do you any harm! Never? Well, I won’t say that…’
The Cold Night’s Clearing
Keikichi Osaka
In the course of his short life, Suzuki Fukutara (1912–1945) produced several notable crime stories under the pseudonym Keikichi Osaka. Among them was ‘The Monster of the Lighthouse’, published in 1935, which is included in Arisugawa Alice’s An Illustrated Guide to the Locked Room, a beautifully presented book which offers readers a visual treat, even for those who do not understand a word of Japanese, in the form of graphic illustrations of each crime scene. Arisugawa lists twenty ‘international’ novels and short stories, including classics by Carr, Chesterton and Zangwill, and twenty Japanese stories, such as the Osaka tale, which he identifies as outstanding examples of the form.
Equally impressive is ‘The Cold Night’s Clearing’, which dates from 1936, and is a classic example of the ‘tracks in the snow’ type of impossible crime puzzle. Both stories are included in The Ginza Ghost (2017), a collection of Osaka’s mysteries published by Locked Room International. The stories were published from 1932 onwards, translated by Ho-Ling Wong, and edited by the owner of Locked Room International, John Pugmire.
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 Tokyo. 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 living 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 this spring, kept watch on 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 in 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 curtains 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.
I had finished a late dinner around eight. Because vacation had already started at the girls’ academy, I was preparing for a trip somewhere to the south. Suddenly Miki, a student in Sanshirō’s refresher course A, arrived at my door, bringing me the bad news of what had happened at the Asami home. Despite feeling a shudder because of the cold weather, I immediately grabbed my skis and hurried there with Miki. As I was leaving, I could hear the Christmas Eve bells of the town church ringing, so it must have been around nine o’clock.
Miki was a tall and lively girl, one of the early-maturing ones you see in every girls’ academy. She had already mastered the secrets of make-up, the length of her skirt was always changing, and she was always filling the corners of her class-books with the names of poets in very small print. Miki often went to visit Sanshirō at his home. ‘Mr Asami is teaching me literature,’ she woul
d say, but she also visited the home during Sanshirō’s absence, so it might have been Oikawa, and not Sanshirō, who was ‘teaching her literature.’ Anyway, that night Miki had gone to Sanshirō’s house, but it seemed as though nobody was home, even though the doors and windows weren’t locked. Thinking this was a bit strange, she opened the front door and went to the back, as she always did when visiting. When she discovered the abnormal state inside the house, she hurried to my place, it being one of the closest.
I lived less than ten minutes away from the Asami residence by ski. Their house was stylish, like a timbered lodge. It was the right-most house in a block of three. The people of the house on the far left seemed to have gone to sleep already, as the curtains were already drawn. The house in the middle was also dark; a notice said it was for rent. When we stopped in front of Sanshirō’s house, Miki was trembling and seemed as if she didn’t want to go inside, so I told her to go to the house of Tabei, a physics teacher at the academy, who also lived close by. Finally, I got a grip of myself and entered the house.
Haruo’s room was near the front door. A child’s crayon drawings of ‘a general’ and ‘a soldier with tulips’ were pinned to the wall. In the middle of the room stood a potted fir tree, with braids of golden wire and chains of coloured paper threaded between the branches, topped by snow made of white cotton. It was the Christmas tree Sanshirō had bought for his son just before he had left for his temporary assignment.
But the first thing I noticed as I entered the room was the empty bed of the little master of the Christmas tree standing in front of a small desk in one corner. The blankets had been thrown back and the child who should have been sleeping there was nowhere to be seen. The silver-paper stars of the Christmas Tree that had lost its master sparkled as they started to turn and sway in the cold currents of air.
It was then that I found the other, temporary, inhabitant of the room. Oikawa was lying in the opening of the door leading to the living room in the back, face down towards me. I recoiled, but when I saw the chaotic state of the living room through the door, I pulled myself together, cautiously sneaked to the opening and looked at both the man lying at my feet and the occupant of the living room.
Sanshirō’s wife, Hiroko, was lying with her head leaning on a stove which was standing on a galvanized plate. The awful stench of burnt hair hung in the room. I stood there for a while, trembling in shock, but finally pulled myself together, crouched and carefully touched Oikawa’s body. It was not the body of a living person.
From the disorder around their fallen figures, it seemed as though both Oikawa and Hiroko had put up a struggle. They seemed to have been beaten, as I could see countless purple welts on their foreheads, faces, arms and necks. I quickly found the weapon: the stove’s iron poker, slightly bent, had been thrown near Oikawa’s feet. The room was in chaos. The chairs had been overturned, the table pushed away and a big cardboard toy box, which had probably been on top of the table, had been thrown in front of the sofa. It was wet and crushed. A toy train, a mascot figure, a beautiful big spinning top and more had been thrown out of the box, together with caramel, bonbon, and chocolate animal candies. You could almost sense a childish purity from these toys which had lost their master.
If I’d been a witness to this kind of scene in the house of a total stranger, I probably wouldn’t have stayed to take in so much detail of what I saw. I’d have been so shocked at finding dead bodies that I’d have run to the police immediately. But at the time I was less troubled by what I’d seen than by what I hadn’t seen. It dawned on me that I hadn’t seen the son ever since I’d entered the house. It might seem strange, but I felt more anxious about the missing child than about the dead people in front of me. Just like Oikawa and Hiroko, I, too, had been responsible for his safety during Sanshirō’s absence.
The house was divided into four rooms. I quickly searched the other two as I tried to keep my fearful heart in check, but even after going through the whole house, I couldn’t find any sign of the child.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me: the sliding window of the room where the tragedy had happened was open. That was strange: nobody would normally leave a window open on such a cold night. I imagined that the individual who had beaten two people to death and taken the child must have fled through the window, failing to shut it in his haste. And so, with some trepidation, I returned to the living room. Inching slowly round the wall, and ready to take on the invisible enemy if necessary, I peeked out of the window, which looked out on a garden and hedge at the back of the house.
I saw exactly what I’d expected to see, there in the snow below the window. The chaotic prints of someone putting on skis were clearly visible, even in the dark. From those prints, two long lines went through an opening in the hedge and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Beneath the star-filled sky, I could clearly hear the tolling of the Christmas bells. They sounded eerie, like the whisper of the devil.
Without hesitation I returned to the front door, strapped on my own skis, and went round to the back of the house, to the open window of the living room. There were two parallel lines there in the snow, so one person must have skied there. Making sure not to erase the tracks, I went through the opening in the hedge and followed them. I’d only just started my chase, when I found an important clue: even though he was skiing on a flat surface, the kidnapper hadn’t used both of his ski poles. On the left side of the tracks, I could see the snow being scattered around by the ring at the end of the ski pole every three or four metres, but there were no such marks on the right side. I felt anxiety in my heart. I was right: the skier was using a pole in his left hand, but couldn’t use one with his right hand. That meant he was holding something else in his right hand. In my mind’s eye I could clearly see the image of the child struggling in the arms of his kidnapper. I grew more tense as I followed the tracks, which seemed to continue forever.
The tracks went through the hedge, across an open field, and towards a silent back road. This was a new residential area of H-Town. Here, there were houses with a lot of green space, spread far apart, and snowy fields. I couldn’t tell whether they were farm fields or just open ground.
The snow had fallen from dusk till eight and almost no ski tracks had touched the fair snow skin. Besides some tracks crossing in front of people’s houses, and dog tracks, nothing had disturbed the tracks I was chasing. But I had to watch out for my prey. I shuddered and continued to glide carefully beneath the silent night sky.
The ski tracks turned right at the back street and entered a wide snowfield. On the other side of the field was the main road that passed in front of Sanshirō’s house, going towards the town. The ski tracks crossed the field diagonally, going in the direction of the town and looked as if they might get back onto the main road at some point. If so, I might be able to ask for help from a policeman on the way. My spirits rose at the thought, and I hurried across the large field towards the road. But my hopes were dashed in the most surprising way.
It had been a mistake in the first place to assume the tracks would continue on the main road. When I reached a point halfway across the field, I suddenly realized I had lost sight of the ski tracks. Shocked, I looked about me. But there was nothing there except my own meandering tracks! Cursing myself for my inattention, I hurriedly retraced my own tracks, looking from side to side as I went. But no matter how much I went back and looked around, there was no sign of those tracks. I felt perplexed.
But near the entrance to the field, I did finally manage to find the tracks again in the pale snow. Relieved, I went near them and followed them carefully like following a piece of thread, making sure I would not lose them. Once again the tracks appeared to cross the field diagonally, heading towards the road on the other side. I wondered how I had managed to lose them the first time. I cursed myself again, and proceeded very cautiously with my eyes locked on the tracks. This time I noticed something truly unexpected.
The tracks became less deep near the centre of the field. They hadn’t been deep in the first place, but they became shallower and shallower with every metre, every centimetre I proceeded forward. Finally, to my utter surprise, when the track reached the middle of the field, they disappeared completely, as if the person who had been skiing here had flown right into the sky above.
Judging from the way he disappeared, the owner of the skis had to have grown a set of wings, or fresh snow had to have fallen on top of the tracks; there could be no other explanation for such a strange disappearance.
Still perplexed, I thought as hard I could. But, as I said before, the snow that had started at dusk had stopped completely by eight, and it had been the Cold Night’s Clearing ever since; snow had not fallen since then. Even supposing it had, why would it only have erased the tracks here and not the tracks back at the house? Snow would have fallen everywhere, and all the tracks would have been erased. Well then, could a strange wind phenomenon have happened here on the field, with the snow carried by the wind erasing the tracks just at this spot? But no wind able to do that had been blowing that night. I stood still in the field, feeling like I had seen a ghost. The eerie bells had not stopped tolling and the sound carried across the field, seeming like the sneering of the devil himself.