The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan (8 page)

Katamari’s hand shook as he pointed one thin finger at Sherlock Holmes. His eyes seemed almost to glow with hatred, in the semi-darkness that was by the window.

‘A curse on you, Holmes,’ said the senior monk, his voice a horrible, high-pitched whine. ‘I put a – ’

‘Your reign of fear and death is over!’ cried Holmes, in a voice so firm that the evil monk almost cowered before it. ‘It only remains now for you to face justice.’

‘Yes – justice,’ breathed the
Jushoku
, his expression haggard and terrible as he stared at Katamari.

‘I trusted you, for so many years,’ continued the priest. ‘But now I strip you of all authority and rank in this temple. You will be given to the authorities to stand trial for murder.’

‘And then to be punished with death?
That
’s the punishment for murder.
Never – do you hear me?
Never
!’ screamed Katamari.

With that he spun round, and before anyone knew what was happening he’d pushed open one of the sliding windows. In rushed the wind, once more.

‘Stop him!’ cried Holmes, at the same moment starting forwards. But it was too late. Katamari placed his hands on the bottom of the window frame, hesitated for just a fraction of a second – and then launched himself outside.

A terrible scream as he fell down, down…

And then there was again just the sound of the wind, blowing in from the stormy night outside.

11

‘What I still don’t understand, Holmes-
san
, is how you knew Katamari had been to China,’ I said exactly a fortnight later, as Holmes and I relaxed in an inn some distance away from the temple we’d finally left two days before.

‘As soon as I suspected the use of the so-called ‘Sticks of Death’, I knew that the murderer must have spent some time in China,’ replied the English detective. ‘Indeed, I should have suspected that this method of assassination had been used when I happened to hear about the death of the monk Matsuo, some six months before – especially given how his face apparently looked. But that would have seemed too fantastic…

‘Anyway, as I quickly became certain that the murderer was Katamari, I had only to catch him off-guard – that is, with the sudden question concerning how long he’d been in China.

‘Of course, learning that he’d spent time in Chang’an only provided more proof that he’d learnt about the Sticks of Death – as I also did there.’

‘So he also learnt some of these ‘dark secrets’, of which you previously spoke?’ I asked quietly.

Holmes gave a brusque nod.

‘One can guess that Katamari crept around the darker parts of the city in such free time as he had, exhibiting his natural slyness and cunning mixed with, I have to say, a certain, fiendish intelligence…

‘In this way he learnt about these deadly sticks of ‘incense’ – which have been used to conduct any number of assassinations in China, although even the
ninja
have yet to become aware of them in Japan.

‘Moreover, Katamari was able to get a few of them in his possession…’

Indeed, a close search of Katamari’s room, carried out soon after he’d committed suicide, had unearthed ten more of these ‘Sticks of Death’. The
Jushoku
had quickly relapsed into a terrible fever caused by the shock of all that had taken place, and the severe mental strain it had caused him.

This had resulted – finally! – in my having to attend to him closely for several days and nights. At times, it seemed as though the head priest wouldn’t survive – but then slowly he’d begun to recover.

As for the scrolls we’d discovered in that small, hidden room, what they revealed is by now famous, of course. The Sanskrit was quickly translated; and so we soon learned that numerous, previously unknown teachings of Buddha had been recorded on the paper stored inside the sealed lengths of bamboo.

It was this knowledge which Gyoja had brought back with him from his travels around India and China, and had then hidden in the temple he’d had constructed, leaving cryptic clues concerning the existence of this knowledge for anyone who could determine the real meaning of his words.

It seemed strange behavior, and I said as much to Holmes. But he only smiled.

‘Well, maybe he thought that whoever succeeded him should have to earn this knowledge, as he had,’ mused Holmes. ‘Otherwise he was just giving it away, as it were – the recipient getting it for free.

‘No, Gyoja was determined that whoever found all these scrolls would have to do so by their wits. Plus, as I said before, I believe there was a slightly puckish side to this outwardly holy man. However, he of course failed to predict the deception and murder his little game would result in…’         

The scrolls were soon taken away to Kyoto, there to be examined at length by experts. As the reader may already be aware, the information they contained led to major changes in Buddhist thought and theology, both in Japan and abroad, and also resulted in the formation of the now-major ‘Golden Path’ branch of Buddhism.

The story of how the scrolls were found, too, only increased Sherlock Holmes’s fame. As they would have made Katamari famous, had his fiendish plan been successful…

‘I can only presume,’ said Holmes about that man, ‘that after causing our deaths, he would first have blocked access to the Barrel Room on some pretence. He would then have set about hastening the death of the
Jushoku
– all the while carefully ensuring that this death was made to look entirely ‘natural’.

‘How exactly Katamari would have achieved this, I can’t be certain. But given the
Jushoku
’s
often fragile state of health, it would not have been an overly-difficult task – even without Katamari having to use one of his foul ‘sticks’.

‘In any case,’ continued Holmes, ‘with the
Jushoku
dead, Katamari would have had to succeed as ‘acting’ head priest. A period in which he would, quite suddenly, ‘discover’ the priceless scrolls hidden by Gyoja several hundred years before.

‘This discovery would instantly have made him famous; and would, undoubtedly, have seen him become a
real
head priest – if not at the temple where he’d previously been a senior monk, then at another.

‘
This
, you see, was Katamari’s ultimate ambition – an ambition he knew he could not possibly realize any other way. For so many years he bit back the frustration and bitterness he felt at being an anonymous senior monk at a remote temple – then, finally, he began to see a way he could possibly get everything he’d ever wanted.

‘More, even…’

  Now, at this inn in which we were staying, I ventured to say –

‘Well, so much for Katamari. But, Holmes-
san
… The head temple of the Shining Path has its mystery solved for it. The
Jushoku
can again seek his successor, secure in the knowledge that no more tragedy will strike. The high-ranking Buddhist clergy in Japan have delivered to them a set of scrolls so valuable as to be priceless.

‘And as for
you
, who did all the work…?’

‘For me, there remains the promise of another cup of
sake
, and perhaps a bite to go with it,’ returned Holmes. ‘You’d care to join me, Yoshida-
sensei
?

‘I
am
technically on holiday, after all…’

With that this remarkable foreigner stretched out one thin hand, to ring the bell and summon the woman serving us.

Sherlock Holmes and the Bare-knuckle Brawler

  The following account of the case concerning the so-called ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’ is taken from the journal of Charles Bradley, the physician resident on Leaving Island. It was later translated by Sherlock Holmes himself into Japanese for me; I was in any case present for much of the proceedings. (Indeed, Holmes’s fabled powers of deduction saved an innocent man from quite possibly being hanged.)

But in describing the habits and language of the
gaijin
, the foreigners who inhabit Leaving Island, the English doctor Bradley is obviously at an advantage to me… 

  Bad feeling had existed between the two men for several months. Ever since James Plummer had arrived upon Leaving Island, in fact, he and Robert Figg (the so-called ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’) thus clapping eyes upon one another.

  Was it merely a case of two men taking an instant dislike to each other, with no other obvious reason or cause? Although we would eventually find out exactly what the reason for this animosity was, at the time it seemed a mystery.

For a good while the two men would stare hard at one another when they passed, but otherwise they made apparent efforts to stay apart. They would sit at opposite ends of the dinner-hall, for example, and had no reason to consort with one another either at work or during their leisure-time.

  But ‘Leaving Island’ (a loose translation of the Chinese characters the Japanese use to describe this island, created by digging a canal through a small peninsula and covering an area of barely one hectare) is hardly the largest of places.

Thus the ‘powderkeg’, as it were, of Plummer and Figg’s mysterious but still-obvious resentment was certain to explode, sooner or later…

  On the day that it did, we happened to have none other than the famous English detective Sherlock Holmes as a visitor upon Leaving Island. He’d been invited here by the Chief Official, Captain Harold Spillard, as a sort of honored guest, being fed a quintessentially English roast dinner, before being given a guided tour of the island.

  This tour could hardly have been of the greatest interest to the detective, given that Leaving Island consists primarily of drab warehouses, above which are the living quarters of the traders, sailors and so on who comprise the island’s inhabitants.

Most of these men (there are no women, save for those
yujo
, or Japanese ‘pleasure women’, who frequently steal across the bridge and onto the island at night, knowing that they will always find ‘business’ here) are English. There are also a few Portuguese and Dutchmen, although they tend to stay for a shorter period of time.

Holmes was accompanied by his friend, Yoshida-
sensei
, a sturdy-looking fellow who, I believe, works as a doctor, and also writes up Holmes’s cases within Japan from time-to-time. (A striking coincidence, obviously, given the similarities here to Holmes’s well-known friend John Watson in London…)

To this man, Holmes spoke in fluent Japanese; although he has been in the country only a few months, such is his remarkable intelligence that he can already speak, read and write this bewildering language fluently.

But I digress. I intended to describe the altercation which suddenly erupted one afternoon, between the ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’ Robert Figg and James Plummer. The two men appeared to have encountered each other, by chance, outside one of the stone-built warehouses; and finally their long-standing animosity bubbled over.

‘… think I’ve forgotten?’ Plummer was heard to say, as the loud altercation quickly attracted attention and thus brought men hurrying over.

‘Well – what do you intend to do about it, anyway?’ returned Figg, a sneer upon his hard face.

‘Thrash the hide off you – that’ll do, for a start!’ exclaimed Plummer, with an oath which does not bear repeating.    
          

‘I’d like to see you try,’ returned Figg, still wearing that sneer.

It is here that I should explain the reason for Figg’s rather crude nickname – although many may be familiar with it already. It related, quite simply, to his ‘talent’ (for want of a better word) for bare-knuckle boxing. Throughout the course of his long career as both a sailor and trader, he had fought any number of men of various nationalities bare-knuckle and, it is claimed, had always emerged from such matches the victor. From his defeated foreign opponents, then, had come his hard-earned but well-deserved nickname. 

Indeed, it would have been hard to conceive of a more splendid example of masculinity than this ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’. His black, slightly graying hair was cropped short, and he had a large moustache above thin lips and a perfectly square chin. His eyes were close-set and narrow, and contained a definite challenge to any man who dared ‘try’ him.

His hands were possibly the largest pair I’ve ever seen on a man, with thick veins and huge knuckles like knots in a ship’s ropes. I have some knowledge of the pugilistic arts, and have fought a number of bare-knuckle matches myself. Yet, I fully concede, I would have lasted barely seconds against the Brawler.

And as for the man who seemed certain to become his latest opponent – this James Plummer? It’s a little curious, but only now do I remark upon the fact that Plummer and Figg actually shared a similar accent. That is, one which you might expect to hear around the English county of Devonshire.

Otherwise, while still a tough-looking individual, with a sailor’s skin burnt brown by the sun and a broad, swarthy-looking face, I doubted that Plummer would fare any better against Figg than I would have done myself.