The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan

by Ben Stevens

  ‘How did my father do this ‘grafting’? By making a small incision in the main branch, making a diagonal cut on the smaller cutting so that it would ‘splice’ in, and then tying it tightly in place with strips of cloth until nature took over and established a tighter bond.

  ‘This method did not always work. Despite my father’s skill, sometimes this cutting simply just withered and died. But, slowly, he grew better-and-better fruit, so that he was the number one producer for this area, though our orange grove is hardly the biggest here.

  ‘Most of the other orange farmers were happy for my father’s success, appreciating his hard work and not begrudging him his somewhat secretive ways – and even I, his only son, was only recently beginning to be taught them…

  ‘But Tashima, up there – he cursed my father, his own fruit often small, hard and green even as my father was able to begin selling his produce. He wanted my father to share his secrets – to just tell all he knew, as though this wasn’t the result of years of hard work, repeated failure, trial and error…’

  ‘Yes, yes, Terumasa,’ said Sagari the magistrate, in a voice he attempted to make soothing. ‘We understand. You have suffered a severe bereavement, and my advice to you now is to go home and rest. We will catch your father’s killer, have no doubt!’

  With a mournful nod, Terumasa trudged off through the orange trees. Holmes stared after him for a few moments; and then, addressing the magistrate, said –

  ‘So you are certain Miguchi-san was murdered?’

  Sagari made an elaborate pretence at restraining a sigh, but then still looked curiously at the famous foreign detective as he replied –

  ‘You have some other way of explaining that large bruise on the back of this fruit-farmer’s neck – the obvious cause of death?’

  Working alongside Holmes these past several months – almost as long as he’d been in Japan – I’d learnt by now that a strike at this point was the death-blow favored by the ninja (on the occasions when they did not use those weapons such as shuriken or ‘throwing stars’). As I thought this, the sweet-smelling orange grove with its many trees and hanging fruit all around suddenly seemed a far more sinister place, and my eyes darted among the shadows created here and there by the spreading branches…

  ‘I do not,’ said Holmes at length; and this was one of those rare occasions when he seemed genuinely confused.

  Sagari barely bothered to conceal a harrumph of satisfaction.

  ‘Fine, then,’ he said. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better see to it that poor Miguchi-san’s body is transferred to a more appropriate resting place, and then I’ll start investigating as to who was behind this foul crime.

  ‘There’s something in what the boy Terumasa says about certain other orange farmers and their jealousy – you mark my words…’

  2

  I followed Holmes back up the stepped hillside, the pair of us careful where we planted our feet and frequently taking hold of a branch to ensure our balance, as we had on the way down. Really, you needed to be as sure-footed as a mountain-goat to trudge up and down this hillside…

  We passed a couple of middle-aged men working in their orange groves, and informed them of Miguchi-san’s death. These men seemed genuinely saddened to hear of his passing, although we were deliberately vague with the ‘details’, so as to avoid causing any undue alarm. They’d be hearing soon enough about the bruise on the back of the neck and all the rest of it, anyway.

  I have said that this high, steep hillside was ‘stepped’. This was done in the typical Japanese manner, with walls made of rocks and stones piled one on top of the other, rising perhaps five or so feet in height and all held in place by a sort of wire netting. From these stretched out the various orange orchards, the majority small in size and leading rather sharply down to the next stone wall…

  At last we reached the top of the hill – and it was considerably harder climbing up than it had been getting down. I had the utmost respect for the men and women who worked here, gathering the fruit and pruning the trees. It was undoubtedly a tough job, for all the idyllic scenery.

  I then realized that we were in the very orchard which Terumasa had earlier pointed out – the one belonging to the orange farmer named Tashima. It was obvious that Holmes had purposely led us up this way. And here was the man who was surely Tashima himself; a hard-eyed, turtle-faced fellow who was staring balefully at us, paused in the act of plucking a ripe orange, a large wooden bucket full of fruit by his feet.

  ‘Who are you? What do you mean, by coming into my orchard this way?’ he demanded.

  ‘I – forgive me. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend, Yoshida-sensei. We are staying here – we were called to investigate the death of another fruit farmer called Miguchi-san.’

  ‘You are… that foreigner, Sherlock Holmes…? And Miguchi is… dead…?’ stammered Tashima, his left hand still unconsciously gripping the orange. His surprise seemed genuine – and he, like so many in Japan, had obviously heard of the Englishman…

  ‘It seems he was murdered, Tashima-san,’ stated Holmes, staring closely at the fruit-farmer.

  ‘I know nothing about this… But, wait – how do you know my name?’

  ‘Because the victim’s son has already mentioned you…’

  Tashima gave a bitter laugh, but I noticed he had trouble meeting Holmes’s gaze.

  ‘I take it I’ve already been tried and convicted of killing Miguchi, then,’ he said harshly. ‘I climbed all the way down there, killed Miguchi without anyone spotting me, then quickly climbed all the way back up here like a sprightly young man of twenty, again without anyone observing me – is that the theory?’

  With these words, his confidence seemed to grow, so that he now met Holmes’s eyes.

  ‘Who said Miguchi was killed down in his orchard?’ said Holmes quietly.

  ‘Because that’s the direction you’ve just come from, and it’s around noon on a weekday!’ retorted Tashima, his face growing red with anger. ‘Are you really this apparent ‘detective mastermind’, Holmes-san, or do you just hold us simple country-bumpkin folk in such obvious contempt?’

  I could not help but concede that he had a point.

  ‘I understand that there was some conflict between you and the deceased,’ said Holmes then, as I noticed that some of Tashima’s fruit had yet to ripen, and in any case was neither as large nor as generally appetizing in appearance as Miguchi’s produce. Truly, the dead man had been a master of his craft.

  ‘We’d exchanged a few words, that’s no secret,’ muttered Tashima tetchily.

  ‘You wanted him to share his secrets, so that you could produce a better crop – and, of course, earn more money…’

  ‘I suggested this to him, once or twice, yes,’ shrugged Tashima, as again his eyes darted to the ground. ‘Why shouldn’t simple folk like us help each other? But, oh no, he was too good for that!

  ‘And now he’s dead? Well, I’m… I’m sorry about that,’ continued the turtle-faced man hesitantly, ‘but it’s got nothing to do with me, no matter what that son of his says…’

  ‘Thank you for your time, Tashima-san,’ returned Holmes. With that, we walked away from the fruit farmer, heading out of the orange groves at the top of the hill and walking back towards our inn, the sea sparkling in the distance.

  3

  ‘Could it be that the orange farmer named Miguchi did not simply just trip, somehow striking the back of his neck on a tree – that is, causing the fatal blow himself?’ mused Sherlock Holmes, as we ate a little lunch back in our room at the inn. ‘He was an old man, slightly frail… It would not have required that hard an impact, at a point such as on the back of the neck, to have fatal consequences…’

  I kept quiet as I ate, knowing that this was just one of those occasions when the Englishman needed to voice his thoughts aloud.

  ‘Or did he meet a silent assassin, there in his much-treasured orange grove? An assassin sent by that Miguchi, who so readil
y pointed out to us the sheer impossibility of him clambering down to the orchard some two hundred feet directly below his own, personally killing the man whose orange-growing secrets he so coveted, and then climbing back up again, entirely undetected?

  ‘But surely such a thought is just ridiculous… Jealous orange growers employing ninja and the like, I mean…’

  I had to agree. It seemed as though the identity of Miguchi’s assassin might forever remain a mystery. Unless, of course, he had somehow received the fatal blow by accident… But then, how come he’d ended up lying face down? Everything about his sprawling pose had suggested he’d been struck from behind…

  Then I had a sudden brainwave, so that I could no longer keep quiet.

  ‘Holmes-san,’ I said. ‘His son – he more-or-less admitted that his father had kept his secrets concerning his orange growing ‘ability’ (for want of a better word – this grafting of fruit branches and the like, I mean) from him until recently.

  ‘Maybe his son was tiring of this; maybe he saw that he had the chance of making a considerable amount of money, if he could only learn all that his father knew.

  ‘But with this desired information mostly being kept secret from him – knowledge being only ‘drip-fed’ to him on occasion, as it were – his frustration grew and grew, until one day, there in that lonely little orange orchard at the foot of the hillside, he picked up a stout stick or something similar and…’

  I paused, catching my breath after my sudden fit of oratory. I felt gratified to see the famous foreign detective looking at me with an expression of mild approval.

  ‘Very good, my dear Yoshida-sensei. Admittedly we didn’t see any such stick lying around – assuming that was indeed the murder weapon, for the young man is certainly no master of unarmed combat – but then, he could have just thrown it away somewhere…

  ‘But there seemed to be nothing on the ground save for some fallen leaves, dried earth and the fruit which falls from the trees and rolls…

  ‘Rolls…’

  At once Holmes’s face adopted that distant expression I knew so well. Something which indicated this particular mystery might soon be a mystery no longer.

  ‘Supposing,’ he said then, ‘that whatever killed Miguchi just… rolled away, perhaps being caught in a net further down. We didn’t check that…’

  ‘What could this thing have been though, Holmes-san – this murder weapon?’ I blurted.

  “Murder’?’ repeated Holmes, staring intently at one wall, so that I knew he was again seeing that shady orchard in his mind’s eye… ‘Maybe not murder; but then, what I am thinking is surely impossible… A chance in a thousand… More than that – a chance in one hundred thousand…’

  The famous English detective was talking in riddles once more; and at any event, there was suddenly a knock on the door to our room and Terumasa burst in.

  ‘Forgive me, Holmes-san, but I thought you should know…’ he gasped. ‘Sagari-san has called in Tashima for questioning – I knew it!’

  ‘Quite so,’ returned Holmes coolly. ‘I may have cause to visit the pair of them in a short while – we shall see. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Yoshida-sensei and I have something to check….’

  4

  ‘As I say, a chance in one hundred thousand – a split-second action born out of petty jealousy and spite having quite unforeseen consequences. But, we shall see… First we must find what struck Miguchi on the back of his neck – and then rolled away, quite out of sight to anyone expect the person who might expressly be looking for it…’

  So said Sherlock Holmes, as we again clambered down the hillside. It seemed that the fruit farmers had finished their work by now, several wooden ladders being propped up against the trunks of trees, in readiness for tomorrow. Here and there, along the sloping ground, were the nets used to catch falling fruit; and then the stone walls, down which Holmes and I climbed into the next allotment, and so on…

  Finally we were in that shaded orange grove at the foot of the hillside. I looked straight up, through a gap in the spreading branches, at the allotment which was at the very top – Tashima’s allotment.

  Then I took notice of Holmes’s actions. He was checking the nets stretched along the ground here and there, several of them having already caught a quantity of fallen fruit.

  He began to mutter to himself, his search obviously not yielding what he wanted to see… Then he gave a sudden cry, and running down the sloped ground picked up something…

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding it up for me to inspect. ‘Here is what killed Miguchi…’

  ‘Someone… quietly coming up behind him, Holmes-san – his son, perhaps – and striking him upon the back of the neck with this ‘weapon’…’ I stammered, my mind desperately trying to make sense of this new piece of evidence.

  ‘Oh no, my dear doctor, this object was thrown – and from a great distance away,’ returned Holmes, indicating all the way up to the top of the hill, and Tashima’s orchard.

  ‘Impossible, Holmes-san!’ I said bluntly. I felt almost irritated; never had I heard anything more ridiculous. That this famous English detective should be the one to utter something so absurd…

  ‘No person in the world could make such an accurate shot, at such a distance, with such an improvised weapon.’

  ‘I agree, Yoshida-sensei,’ said Holmes amiably. ‘Only, the death-strike was not intended. It was an accident. That was why I spoke earlier of a ‘chance in one hundred thousand’.

  ‘But then, this rock had to land somewhere… Come, we have something to check in Tashima’s orchard, and then I believe that it’s time we visited him and that fool of a magistrate…’

  5

  Sherlock Holmes and I visited the magistrate’s office shortly afterwards. Sagari looked irritably at us as we entered, while Tashima gave a low moan at the sight of the rock held in Holmes’s hand.

  ‘Taken from the wall at the end of your orchard, Tashima,’ said Holmes. ‘I checked, and found the small gap made. Extracted after you gazed down the stepped hillside (and congratulations on your sharp eyesight, by the way) at the distant figure of the late Miguchi-san working away among his bountiful orange trees, and felt your sense of anger and frustration at his superior and, moreover, secretive methods overwhelm you.

  ‘Hardly knowing what you were doing, you pulled out this piece of rock from the wall, dragging it through a gap in the wire netting and throwing it downwards, in the general direction of Miguchi-san… But then, incredibly, you saw him collapse – this piece of rock had, quite by accident, struck him directly upon the back of his neck!

  ‘Sickened by what you’d done, but determined that no one would ever know that you were responsible for Miguchi-san’s death, you quickly resumed your work, preparing to feign shocked surprise the moment you were informed of his death.’

  ‘Impossible…’ breathed Sagari, but he was looking at the lean, hawk-faced foreigner with wide eyes.

  ‘As I told my good friend Yoshida-sensei here earlier, this rock had to land somewhere,’ returned Holmes, with a shrug. ‘I knew a man who once threw a message in a bottle out to sea; and then thirty years later found this same bottle lying, unopened, upon a stretch of shore on the opposite side of England.

  ‘Such remarkable things do happen, you know.

  ‘Anyway, having unfortunately struck Miguchi-san with an immediate, and quite fatal, consequence – he did not even cry out as he collapsed, so his son Terumasa would not have heard anything – the rock rolled away out of sight. It would never have been noticed, had I not expressly been looking for such a thing.

  ‘A stupid, petty, childish act of ill-temper,’ continued Holmes, looking at Tashima who had begun to weep, tears coursing down his turtle-like face. ‘But one which had a result you certainly never intended, no matter how great your dislike for Miguchi-san.’

  ‘Well, Holmes-san,’ coughed the magistrate. ‘Although I’d already had the idea of bringing in Tashima for questioning, it seems all credit mu
st go to you for solving the murder of Miguchi-san…’

  “Manslaughter’ is, I believe, the strongest charge Tashima should face,’ returned Holmes sternly, as the old fruit farmer now covered his face with both hands, his body convulsed with sobs. ‘This cannot be a capital offence, despite the regrettable loss of life.

  ‘But in any case, I give all credit to you, Sagari-san. You need not mention my involvement in this matter at all.’

  ‘But why, Holmes-san?’ demanded Sagari, his thin face showing his surprise at the Englishman’s words.

  ‘I believe your parting words to me, there in Miguchi-san’s orange grove a short while earlier, went something like – ‘There’s something in what the boy Terumasa says about certain other orange farmers and their jealousy…’

  ‘A quite correct conjecture, as it transpires… That aside, this whole matter has been quite childishly simple, remarkable only for the fact that this rock plunged through space, gathering deadly momentum on its downward path of some two hundred feet, before striking poor Miguchi-san exactly (but still entirely by chance) on the nape of his neck, thus killing that elderly man instantly.

  ‘If someone was to try and make such a shot on purpose, no matter how good their aim, it would surely take them many thousands of attempts – perhaps a lifetime’s worth…

  ‘You can write all of this in your report. As I say, you need not mention me. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be going. I have the honor of bidding you good-day.’

  And I followed Holmes back out of that office.

  Sherlock Holmes and the Disappearing Dragon

  1

  ‘It was there, Holmes-san, located upon the roof on the far right-hand side – just as the dragon statue is still there upon the left!’

  So said the priest excitedly, pointing with his forefinger at the sweeping temple roof. This was, indeed, now absent of one of the two marvelous golden dragon statues which had (or so declared the priest) been placed either side of it.