The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo by Okamoto Kidō & MacDonald Ian

Author:Okamoto, Kidō & MacDonald, Ian [Okamoto, Kidō & MacDonald, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Japan, Historical
ISBN: 9780824831004
Amazon: 0824831004
Goodreads: 814937
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 1937-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

[ 4 ]

“Do come in. This way, please.”

Okame went out to the front door looking slightly flustered and beckoned the newcomer to enter, but the latter hesitated.

“I see you have other guests.”

“Yes …”

“I shall return later, then.”

The woman turned to leave, but Hanshichi called to her from inside.

“Excuse me, madam — would you please wait a moment? I wonder if you would be so kind as to take a look at this woman who is impersonating you, and give us your opinion.”

The first woman turned even more pale, but quickly seemed to regain her composure and broke into a broad grin.

“Inspector — so it’s you! I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you at first, but as soon as you came in, I knew you weren’t just anybody. You’re that inspector from Mikawachō, aren’t you? Well, I guess I can drop pretenses. The game’s up.”

“Just as I expected,” Hanshichi said, smiling. “When I was out front I saw that your supposed master had sent a hired palanquin to fetch Ochō — now that would be a real first for a daimyo! And a lady-in-waiting with a callus on her little finger? It looked like a bad act to me. So where did you two appear from in those getups? Your acting was pretty good, but the staging left a lot to be desired.”

“You’ve got me there,” the woman said, with a slight bow of the head. “I thought this would be a tricky performance, but I worked up enough courage to go through with it. I thought I had the plan all worked out — but I didn’t count on running into you, Inspector. So I suppose I’d better just confess everything.

“You see, I was born right here in Edo in Fukagawa — my mother was a teacher of old samisen ballads… .”

As it turned out, her name was Oshun. Her mother had wanted her to follow in her footsteps and had devoted herself to training her daughter from childhood to sing ballads. But no sooner was Oshun old enough to wear a full-length kimono than she went boy-crazy and caused her poor mother no end of grief before finally running away from home. She spent the next two or three years up north as a traveling minstrel, wandering all over the Jōshū, Shinshū, and Echigo areas. When she at last returned to Edo her mother was already dead. Some of her old acquaintances still lived in the neighborhood, so she set herself up teaching ballads and began to attract a few students. But the quiet life wasn’t for her. She had a weakness for penniless wastrels and, needing money, learned how to entrap married men and blackmail them.

She stole people’s belongings from bathhouse changing rooms.

Then, one day she happened to hear a rumor about Ochō from the neighborhood fishmonger.

Oshun was on good terms with the fishmonger, whose daughter was friends with Okame, so naturally the news of Ochō’s mysterious abductions reached Oshun’s ears. Oshun knew that Ochō was a beauty, so she hatched a crafty scheme to use the story of the kidnappings to get hold of the girl herself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.