Echoes

During a recent discussion on Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders, a friend made the following observation: "How come none of the mystery club members, for all their wisdom of classic crime fiction works, sensed that there could be something wrong with an invitation to an uninhabited island? Given their shared past, surely one of them would have thought of politely declining?"

It was, I felt, an argument that lends itself to works that tend to be self-aware and reflexive; so when the logic is reflected back on to the work itself, the deficiency seems to stand out that much more. In the case of The Decagon House Murders, the issue stems more from the lack of a proper 'trade-off' for the group to gather on the uninhabited island in the first place, given the surrounding context and history.

In mystery fiction works involving closed-circle situations, I have noticed readers (myself included) to be more generous with the rationale behind people gathering in the first place, than with the dynamics and mechanics of the way in which the situation plays itself out. The Decagon House Murders, otherwise an exemplar of the classical, logic-based school of mysteries, itself suffers from this shortcoming. However, Ayatsuji does improve on this aspect in a major way, with his third offering in the Yakata series: 1988's Meirokan no Satsujin (translated as The Labyrinth House Murders, 2024).

The setup is tantalising, and makes good use of a pitch-perfect casting. A few writers, an editor, a critic and a surprise guest gather at the residence of a famous author, each for their own reason. The editor to coax one last masterpiece out of the author; the writers to stay in the good graces of the author who was a mentor to them; the critic and the surprise guest attend the gathering for reasons that become evident once the party is underway. Missing from the party itself? The famous author, whose birthday is being celebrated in the remote Labyrinth House.

The initial scene-setting reminds me of the well-thought-out proceedings in the Detective Conan story, "The Holmes Freak Murder Case", where a bunch of Sherlock Holmes fanatics gather at a collector's place and take part in an exceptionally tough quiz to get their hands on the first edition of A Study in Scarlet. As the hidden motive behind the party is revealed—a writing competition to be judged by a panel of experts, with ownership of the Labyrinth House as the prize—along with the unforeseen death of the famous author, the similarities with the Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo story, "Russian Dolls Murder Case", become apparent. In that story too, a deceased author leaves behind his palatial house as his inheritance, and organises a competition among select participants to decide who gets to inherit it, thereby setting in motion a series of bloody murders. Things are no different in The Labyrinth House Murders—the competing authors are all killed in violent ways, with an added twist.

By this point, the nesting doll structure of the story is already established. The three translated stories in the Yakata series possess strong identities: The Decagon House Murders stands out as a reinvention of And Then There Were None, while The Mill House Murders has a fairytale-esque flavour to it. In The Labyrinth House Murders, Ayatsuji experiments with the structure of the novel itself, making it unfold in the form of 'a story within a story within a story'. The book opens with a certain Shimada receiving a copy of The Labyrinth House Murders by one Shishiya Kadomi, who had been present when the events mentioned in the book took place. We then enter the world of Kadomi's manuscript, surveying a meeting between the famous author and the editor a few months prior to the birthday party. There is a fair bit of foreshadowing and a subdued-but-clever introduction to the cast in the opening chapter itself.

The events of the party kick off in earnest with shenanigans that clue in to some character traits and authorial tendencies of the writers participating in the competition. Then comes the double shocker: the announcement of the death as well as the terms and conditions of the will that bequeaths the entire mansion to the winner of the competition, besides funding a mystery-writing competition in the author's name. The will and its conditions lay a solid groundwork for the mystery to unfold: no one except a secretary and a doctor to step outside the house for the duration of the competition; the author's suicide to be reported to the police after five days; the fifty-page story entries to be set in the Labyrinth House, featuring only people present in the house, and centred on a murder mystery; all stories to be typed out in typewriters provided in each of the authors' room. The tension is depicted well, and the competition forces the authors to face their own demons—and their greed for the mansion itself.

Not surprisingly, the authors meet ghastly ends. An invisible enemy targets them one by one, walking through and around the solid walls of the mansion, terrifying and befuddling the remaining characters. And this is where Ayatsuji accomplishes an inspired, audacious feat of plotting: each of the authors, barring one, are killed in ways that completely resemble the manners of death they outline in their own submissions for the competition.

The possibilities for the impossible occurrences expand, and the scope of the novel assumes a sprawl as broad and convoluted as the floorplan of the Labyrinth House. Modelled after the mythical labyrinth in the Palace of Knossos, while also resembling one of those 'get in and out of the maze' puzzles one sees in children's books, the house itself plays probably the most significant, involved role I have seen in the Yakata series so far. In doing so, Ayatsuji pays homage to the works of Seishi Yokomizo, another maestro from the past. It mentions Yokomizo's Akuryū-tō (The Island of Evil Spirits) in reference to a message left behind, but for me, the operations of the Labyrinth House are more reminiscent of the Western-style manor in Meiro-sō no sangeki (Tragedy at the Maze Manor), whose hidden passages, peepholes, and secret doors are depicted vividly, and which play such an important role in the adaptation starring Ikko Furuya. Even more serendipitously, both Yokomizo's and Ayatsuji's novels feature climactic sections that take place in caves.

What is perhaps another strange point of similarity is the fact that both The Labyrinth House Murders and Tragedy at the Maze Manor reveal 'hidden' culprits. But, while the adaptation of Yokomizo's work explores this in a straightforward way, Ayatsuji, in keeping with the multi-layered nature of the book, employs a fair amount of narrative trickery to keep the real culprit cloaked till the very end. And, while some may object to the way the novel utilises fair play in the post-manuscript revelation where all disguises are discarded, this is also Ayatsuji at his playful best. While I did perceive a lack of the characterisation one sees in The Mill House Murders, the conceit, structure, and trickery seen here, and the much-better rationale for the setup, more than make up for it. The Labyrinth House Murders witnesses an author at his self-assured best—exhibiting a level of imagination, control, and sportsmanship few can aspire to achieve. One wonders what further surprises lie in store in the Yakata series.

The End is the Beginning is the End

The legendary Japanese detective Kosuke Kindaichi meets his creator Seishi Yokomizo in the sitting room of the author's residence in Yoshino city in 1956. It is a moment worth preserving in a photo album; thankfully, for us, it is also the way in which Kon Ichikawa chooses to begin the last of his 1970s adaptations of Kosuke Kindaichi novels. The movie in question? 1979's The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope (Byoinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie).

In Ichikawa's large directorial oeuvre, his films based on the Kindaichi novels occupy a special place in the hearts of mystery lovers. In the 1970s, he adapted five novels, a mix of top- and second-tier works of Yokomizo: Inugami-ke no ichizoku (1976), Akuma no temari-uta and Gokumontō (both 1977), Joōbachi (1978), and Byoinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie (1979). Later, he would go on to film Yatsuhaka-mura (1996), and, in what turned out to be his last film, a remake of Inugami-ke no ichizoku (2006) with the original cast.

Ichikawa is widely credited for developing probably the first authentically Japanese iteration of Kindaichi for the big screen. Earlier movies—such as Gokumontō (1949), Yurei Otoko (1954), Kyuketsuga (1956), and even Honjin Satsujin Jiken (1975)—reimagined the persona of Kindaichi more along the lines of American sleuths, replete with western attire and, in the cases of Yurei Otoko and Kyuketsuga, a focus on more thriller-ish elements (gunshot exchanges and more). However, when Ichikawa debuted Kōji Ishizaka in the role of Kindaichi for Inugami-ke no ichizoku, the previous trappings were all discarded. Instead, Ichikawa brought to life the Kindaichi Yokomizo had characterised in The Inugami Curse: "mid-thirties, slightly built, with an unruly mop of hair, and wearing an unfashionable serge kimono and wide-legged, pleated hakama trousers, both very wrinkled and worn ..."

The appearance of the great detective: Kōji Ishizaka as Kosuke Kindaichi in Inugami-ke no ichizoku (1976)

The shift towards a more faithful visualisation and characterisation of Kindaichi clearly worked wonders, for a 'Yokomizo boom' soon followed. Ichikawa's Kindaichi films from the '70s are all beautiful productions—rich in atmosphere, full of shots that capture Japanese landscapes and scenes in telling but languid detail, and above all, narrating stories of crime and detection deeply embedded in Japanese culture, values, and lore. The formula was a winning one—and Yokomizo's willingness and flexibility in acceding to Ichikawa making subtle changes to his stories further add to the value of these films, helping them transcend the level of being merely faithful adaptations to becoming films that can be enjoyed on their own merits. It is to Yokomizo's and Ichikawa's credit that, barring a few exceptions, most Kindaichi adaptations for TV and the big screen ever since have retained Kindaichi's presentation with kimono and hakama trousers, while making alterations to the plots of the novels, resulting in innumerable permutations and combinations that still continue to feel fresh and instructive for new audiences.

The masked man in Ichikawa's Inugami-ke no ichizoku. The portrayal has become a mainstay in Japanese mystery fiction, endlessly replicated and parodied

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After a career spent solving some of the most convoluted, heart-rending cases in Japan, Kindaichi decides to go to USA once again. But, first he heads over to author Yokomizo's house to say his farewell. While conversing, he comes to know of the Honjo photography studio, which later becomes central to the events of the film. As he needs to have a passport, Kindaichi visits the studio to have his picture taken. Here, he learns about the abandoned premises of the erstwhile Hogen family  hospital and residence on the Hospital Hill—the location that becomes the site of the first horrific incident. 

A jazzy interlude follows, in which a band called The Angry Pirates perform in an American army base camp in the city. In the middle of the performance, however, the trumpeter and the drummer mysteriously disappear, with the latter returning with a bleeding wound on his eye. The trumpeter remains nowhere to be seen. The scene shifts back to the studio where Kindaichi takes on a case on the studio owner Tokubei's request. Apparently, someone had tried to drop large wind chimes (fūrin) on the owner, the chimes being hung on the ceiling of the large hall one entered as they stepped inside the burned-out building. As soon as Kindaichi leaves the studio after being asked to collect his photo in three days, in walks a young woman with a strange request. Paying money in advance, the woman asks Tokubei's son Naokichi to capture pictures for a wedding shoot at the abandoned Hogen building that night. At night, Naokichi meets none other than the trumpeter of The Angry Pirates—a bearded, boorish man now in traditional Japanese wedding attire—and heads over to the building with his pinhole camera and other apparatus. But, something seems to be off about the entire situation—the bride at the venue seems to be a dead match for the woman who requested the shoot, and seems drugged and zoned off—eyes glazed, the body swaying from side to side and supported by the man's arms. And, every time Naokichi tries to make changes to the setting—for instance, removing the wind chimes or fixing the crooked lapels on the bride's wedding kimono—he is soundly rebuked by the bridegroom. Thus concludes one of the strangest photoshoots in Naokichi's career.

Kosuke Kindaichi meets his creator, Seishi Yokomizo

Two days later, when the wedding photos are developed, old Tokubei mentions to his son that the bride in the picture completely resembles the Hogens' girl, Yukari. That evening, when Kindaichi visits the studio to collect his passport photo, Naokichi shows him the wedding photo and narrates the events of that night, also adding that all the festive arrangements and decorations were gone by the following morning. He also tells Kindaichi that the reason the building is called the House of Hanging is because a woman hanged herself in the house the year after World War II had ended. Just at that moment, the studio assistant Mokutarō answers a call from that mysterious client asking to deliver the photos at that abandoned building, and to also take photos of the wind chimes. Kindaichi, Naokichi, Tokubei and Mokutarō visit the building where they are met by a horrendous sight: the chimes that hung over the wedded couple the previous night are replaced by the severed head of the bridegroom, the bearded man himself. In the midst of this shocking discovery, Mokutarō gives chase to a figure lurking in the darkness who bolts out of the building, and restrains him after a physical battle to bring an end to the proceedings of the day.

Just like the vibrant jazz beats heard in The Angry Pirates' performance, the opening half hour of The House of Hanging on Hospital Hill is marked by a chaotic energy and pace. Things happen in rapid succession leaving one with barely any time to process all that's happening. And yet, there is a slapstick nature to all these events: Ichikawa clearly makes fun of the conventions of the same works he brought to life on the screen. For instance, when Yokomizo's on-screen niece Tae interrupts the conversation between the author and his creation, she says that she remembers a character from Yokomizo's books who, just like Kindaichi, disappears whenever a tough case comes calling. To this, Yokomizo says he does not remember including such a character in his works. These subtle and entertaining winks and nudges abound in the film, but there is also a lot of humour that is driven by the manners and actions of the characters. Early on, Mokutarō commits the cardinal sin of nearly dropping backdrop curtains on to Kindaichi's head, with the result that Naokichi berates Mokutarō as a baka (fool) whenever the latter tries to act clever. Similarly, the exaggerated expressions and actions of the police detective Todoriki (actually a long-time friend of Kindaichi in the books, who appears in this movie idly wondering whether he had heard of a famous detective like Kindaichi before) and his assistant Bando, whenever they are confronted by a puzzling situation, serve to add much levity to what turns out to be a very dark and tragic story. 

The infamous wedding photo

Like other Kindaichi offerings, World War II looms in the background of The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope. However, the way it is integrated in the plot is somewhat different to what we see in other works such as Gokumontō. In fact, the way in which the war is invoked has more in common with Akimitsu Takagi's depiction of the effects of the war in The Tattoo Murder Case: in both cases, characters ruminate on the illogical nature of the destruction wrought—with some buildings completely destroyed and others miraculously standing.

The investigation takes the detectives and viewers to some delightfully offbeat locations (such as a shed in an abandoned mine/quarry) that show tell-tale signs of the war, but the roots of the affair itself go back several generations prior to the war. Kindaichi tales are complicated affairs frequently featuring convoluted family trees, and this movie is no exception even though it apparently simplifies the book's plot to a large extent. Even untangling the relationship between the Yamauchis and the Hogens, the two major families portrayed in the family, is a laborious task. It helps that this is treated quite humorously to an extent—in one portion, Kindaichi, speaking for the audience, states that even he cannot make head or tail of the respective family histories, to which Mokutarō, who becomes sort of a sidekick to Kindaichi over the course of the film, shows a family tree he has drawn on a notebook.

The fulfilment of a complicated revenge

With its focus on family relationships and misguided revenge, The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope therefore feels familiar to other works in the Kindaichi oeuvre, and features a mish-mash of tropes (impersonation, mistaken identity, role reversal, and more) seen in this universe. The use of framing devices, however, feels quite fresh in this movie. Such devices are seen in previous stories as well—for instance, the nursery rhyme song in Akuma no temari-uta, or the haikus in Gokumontō—but here, two devices are used: one traditional, the other modern. On the one hand, we have the wind chimes (fūrin); on the other, we have photography itself. The use of the wind chime is somewhat akin to the use of the haikus in Gokumontō—they are portents both of happiness and doom. For the Yamauchis, the sound of the chimes once indicated a period of family bonding and contentment; for the Hogens, the same chimes unveil a long-buried secret that ultimately leads the family to completely fall apart. This secret is also preserved in another form: photographs. In fact, the way the act of photography is used in this film—to oppress and blackmail certain characters, and at the same time, to selfishly enable the perpetrators to dream of becoming rich by moving beyond the profession of photography—constitutes a running theme throughout the film. Ultimately, a matriarch's instinct to protect and preserve whatever remains ends up dismantling three structures that served as symbols and victims of the perverted, awful, terrifying, and morally debasing influence of patriarchy: the Hogens, the Yamauchis, and the Honjos. In the end, Kindaichi does break the curse wrought by photography on the Hogens and the Yamauchis by breaking the incriminating glass negatives—but only when it's too late.

It was probably inevitable, but the gravity of the narrative leads Kindaichi's solo investigation to be a sombre one. His retracing of a singular chime to its point of origin leads us through some beautiful landscape, and some vivid footage of the manual process of making chimes, but what we find at the end of the arduous journey defined by challenges (such as family records being destroyed in the war), makes for depressing viewing that even the great detective's genteel mannerisms cannot assuage. The whodunnit aspect is solved at this point, but what follows is more desperation on the part of the culprit, followed by a long, sappy denouement where the culprit themselves come to realise the full implications of the secret, and the truth about their role in a previous tragedy. In the end, the future and the past of the house of Hogen are entrusted to a 'newcomer' and a rickshaw-puller—a popular Yokomizo treatment that is also seen in works such as Gokumontō and Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku. It is this part that makes for the toughest viewing, because Ichikawa completely strips the narrative of any semblance of humour, with even the bumbling police detectives showing some urgency without committing goof-ups. Even though the acting is captivating, with the actors showing the breadth of their repertoire, this tonal shift (replete with operatic music) to showcase a more humane aspect is a bit extreme—it makes the narrative overlong and deprives it of its snappiness.

Kindaichi after solving the wind chime murder case. This is probably the last time we see the great detective in Japan

As a swansong to the entire Kindaichi series, The House of Hanging on Hospital Slope is tinged with nostalgia, and reminds viewers of all the elements that made these stories special and engrossing. While superior examples are there, Ichikawa's adaptation of this work remains a melodious, beautiful production spotlighting, for one final time, Kindaichi in all his glory and vulnerability, while also portraying its female characters, most of whom go through untold misery and tragedy and have to fight for their redemption in their own ways, in a sympathetic, humane light, giving them agency and allowing them to find their own voices. 

In the epilogue, Mokutarō meets Yokomizo and Tae in the author's study, Kindaichi himself being absent. When Mokutarō wonders if Kindaichi will ever return, Tae informs him that Kindaichi has disappeared and gone away to San Francisco. It is wishful thinking, of course, but one expects that Kindaichi went to San Francisco in pursuit of some equally complicated cases, the chronicles of which remain unrecorded with Yokomizo's death in 1981. As Yokomizo tells Kindaichi in the beginning, "People are the same all over."

Two Families

Since the beginning of the year, I have been thinking of dabbling in a bit of crime/mystery writing myself. This is absolutely not my forte, and I am far more comfortable analysing fiction than writing it myself. Regardless, I decided to take the plunge. The following long-ish, self-indulgent story is the result of my first stab at fiction-writing of any kind. I have not edited or fine-tuned it in any way, as I wanted to keep a record of the raw, unpolished version of my first story.

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On an overcast day, Peter Ramanujan intently watched a children’s game of gullee cricket unfold under a flyover.

“Bowl him out!”

It was the last over of a frenetic match. As the ball sailed over the captain’s head after his exclamation, tempers frayed even further. The next deliveries—marked by prolonged deliberations, interpretations of the game, and yelling—yielded a boundary, followed by a hattrick of wickets, and more noise. The equation came down to six runs off the final ball with a wicket remaining.

Even Peter, who was the farthest thing from an ardent cricket devotee, found himself transfixed by the spectacle. “Impossible to see such pure emotion and passion in professional sports,” he thought. Just then, the batter slogged the ball a long distance. Cue the inevitable cacophony of voices. “Four,” shouted a trio. “No, six,” erupted the opponents. A fight seemed to be brewing, but after a minute examination of the makeshift boundary line and the ‘mark’ made by the ball, the teams begrudgingly decided on a six. As the winners broke into a celebration, the other team promised to exact revenge in the next match—“we will defeat you!”

Peter moved away from the battlefield, only to turn back and hear a dull thud. Whatever was going on there had been interrupted by a steel lunch box that flew and landed close to the tower of bricks that functioned as one of the stumps. Peter instinctively looked up but could make out no one looking over the flyover. “Probably someone from a moving car … ”, he muttered. He made towards the place the box had landed, but the children had mobbed around the box by then, and were about to examine its contents. Soon, cheers rang out. “Certainly an unexpected reward for a hard-fought match, and maybe a half-day of hunger,” thought Peter, as he allowed himself the briefest of smiles.

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Peter Ramanujan continued on his way to the Brahmatalab police station in Mayanagari town. He had been invited out of the blue by his dear friend, Inspector Ashok Ghosh. “I wonder what he wants to meet me for."

Ten minutes on a straight path from the spot where he had watched the cricket match brought him to the mouth of the Brahmatalab road, locally known as the police thana road. The road was fragrant and tree-lined, but despite its peaceful environs, suffice it to say that the street and the police station on it had, over the years, gobbled up all the foul secrets and mysterious events from the neighbourhood and some other adjoining areas. “I just hope it’s not another case,” Peter mouthed, as a silent prayer escaped his lips.

His prayer was not heard. After five more minutes of walking, Peter stood in front of the station—a one-storey greyish-yellow affair that looked more like a homely cottage than an office building, with a blue-and-red board proudly spelling out BRAHMATALAB POLICE STATION in white, its address and contact details in black. The cottage was surrounded by a well-maintained garden filling the air with a fragrant, infectious smell, but Peter was not distracted by the blooms.

He found the station to be in a state of unusual activity. Several jeeps and vans stood outside the gate, and a constant stream of police personnel issued back and forth. “Excuse me, but where can I find Ashok Ghosh?” he asked, just as a khaki-clad constable rushed out of the station gates and jumped into a jeep. “Sorry, no time,” the constable yelled before the jeep rode off. “Ah, Ramanujan ji, you are just in time,” called out a voice. Peter turned around, and came face-to-face with Ramnath the sub-inspector. “I was looking for you—Ashok sir has asked me to accompany you to a crime scene.” 

“But what is the matter, Ramnath ji?”

“An accident involving some big-wig. Near the gol-chakkar (roundabout) close to the Hanuman mandir. Are you coming with me?”

There goes my day of peace, Peter cussed himself. He hadn’t even stepped inside the station, before he was ushered into a mobile van as it drove off, sirens blaring, along the same route he had come from. As they approached the junction of police thana road and the main thoroughfare, Peter was seized by a sudden desire to catch a glimpse of the children playing cricket under the flyover. He wanted to revel in the youthful exuberance of a children’s game, before the senses-numbing, almost dehumanising, demands of a morbid crime scene took over. “Can we stop somewhere for two minutes?”

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The detour led them to a scene straight out of hell. Gone were the vibrant screams of the children, and in its place was an eerie quiet unaffected by the din and noise of the passing vehicles. This unnerving silence had, in fact, heralded the sudden and uninvited appearance of death.

Peter and Ramnath could not quite believe what they were seeing. The state of shock lasted for a second, before instinct took over. Rushing out of the car, they sped to the first child lying on the ground. Within a minute, they had checked the pulses of all the children and a woman lying on the ground—to no avail. They were all dead—some clutching their stomach, others their throat; a few clawing and scratching the ground; some had fallen over to their sides or on their backs, while the woman, her head hanging limp, had tightly grasped two children to her bosom as if to protect them from some faceless enemy.

Their faces—some with eyes open, others closed—were contorted into visages of sheer, unimaginable agony which somehow still spoke volumes of their desperate attempts to cling to life. These life-like expressions of the dead would haunt Ramnath and Peter for a long time.

It was then that Ramnath observed the weird, misshapen blotches of cherry red and pink on the mouths and skins of the deceased—telltale signs of mass cyanide poisoning. “What has happened? And why did you want to come here?” he asked. “I will explain that later. But first, you must secure the scene and gather all the evidence. The corpses also need to be transported,” Peter managed to say, despite the storm raging inside him.

A moment later, recognition seemed to dawn upon Ramnath. “Wait a minute—it was only last week that I had told these people to vacate this area. So, how come they have returned?” Peter didn’t reply, but it was not hard for him to realise that the children must have still not got over their attachment to their old haunting grounds, and had returned once the vigilance had been lifted. “And on this very day …”

For quite some time, Peter’s attention had been drawn to the steel lunch box lying in the midst of the corpses. “Wasn’t this the one that flew off the bridge?” he pondered, taking a closer look but not handling it. Its lid, neatly labelled ANIL, lay some distance apart, but the contents of the box—a dish of peas and paneer, daal, and maybe some chapattis—were nearly emptied. “Ramnath ji, please handle this box carefully. It may be poisoned,” Peter called out. When he found a moment to himself, he started crying—“the curse of the gift from the heavens” was his repeated, cryptic refrain.

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Their mourning for the 11 victims was over by the time they wrapped up their preliminary analysis of the scene of crime. Leaving three constables in charge of canvassing and securing the scene of this tragedy, and collecting the rest of the evidence, Ramnath and Peter sped off to the accident spot, with an evidence bag storing the likely-poisoned tiffin box.

Twenty minutes later, the mobile van reached the accident spot. Inspector Ashok Ghosh had completely forgotten why he had invited Peter Ramanujan in the first place. Hiding his embarrassment, however, Ashok hailed Peter the moment he stepped out of the van. 

“Oh Peter, you have arrived? Just look at the mess here. The media is going to have a field day—the city’s famous businessman, Anil Mahajan, has been critically wounded in this accident.”

“When do I ever meet you without some kind of ‘incident’ happening?” thought Peter, a tad unkindly. Aloud, he said, “What? Only that day I came to know he had received the contract to redesign the state’s municipal corporation headquarters. And today, this happens!” 

Anil Mahajan happened to be the kingpin of Mahajan Constructions, a civil construction company that invariably took over any and all major construction projects in the city, public or private. Its modus operandi involved making use of its exhaustive network of eyes to spy on the operations of all its rivals, outbidding them always at the last possible moment. It had many enemies, but sabotaging its operations was out of the question—it had already driven most of its rival businesses into bankruptcy. Mahajan and his enterprise enjoyed considerable clout in political and private circles—his mansion, the largest in the city, was a seat of power in itself where deals were forged and lives ruined before they became public knowledge, and was located in the aptly named Mahajan Hills, a sprawling privately-owned property spread over 150 acres of sparse hilly forestland. “For such a person to meet such an ignominious fate—what a fall!” wondered Peter.

“But if it is an accident, what can I do?” Peter asked Ashok. “Listen for a moment, Peter!” replied Ashok. “Arriving at the site, I too had thought that this was a normal accident. But there are witnesses who state that before the crash, they had seen Anil shouting for help, saying that the brakes were not working. Passengers in other cars at that time have also said the same thing.”

The car, it turned out, had overshot the traffic signal at the Hanuman mandir roundabout—and, instead of turning right, had gone straight, veered and then crashed into the boundary wall of the premises of the state’s Civic Works Department headquarter. “At long last, the Department will have to get something repaired by themselves,” muttered Peter to himself. After all, this department was infamous for never ever letting its tools and men repair the crumbling buildings and roads.

A man emerged from the wreckage of the car. It was sheer luck that a malfunctioning car speeding at over 80 kilometres an hour had not caused a single casualty, owing to the unusually empty road at that time. The man—a mechanic who had been called to quickly ascertain the cause of the accident—confirmed that the car’s brakes had indeed been tampered with in a manner that “driving above 60 kilometres an hour meant that he was a dead man.” “I will of course have to analyse the mechanism of tampering,” the mechanic continued. “But I also feel that an accelerant may have been mixed in the car’s fuel, ensuring that the car could never have slowed down. It was a death trap on wheels—and my guess is that it was meant for Anil Mahajan only.”

Peter and Ashok silently agreed with that last assessment. It was a well-known fact that if there was one thing Anil Mahajan took pride in apart from his construction empire, it was his fleet of seven high-end luxury cars—one for each day of the week. It was also widely known that Anil always drove the cars himself—“I could never entertain the idea of someone else driving my hard-earned cars,” he had once bluntly stated in an interview. So, it was quite a shock last week when people on the streets saw Anil’s car—the same one that was wrecked in this accident—being driven into a mechanic’s shop by Samir, his eldest son. Anil himself was nowhere to be seen, and when tabloids pushed him for an answer, “no comment” was all he would offer.

This line of thought, however, also opened the distinct and uncomfortable possibility that this incident may have been an inside job, involving immediate family member(s) or someone hired by them. Ashok therefore dispatched three officers from the scene to the Mahajans’ residence to interview them and check their stories. At that moment, Ramnath came with a report: “Anil ji has been admitted to City Heights Hospital, but his condition at the moment is touch-and-go.” 

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“Brain haemorrhage. Neck break. Rib fracture. Bleeding in lungs.” Peter and Ashok listened to the doctor in the emergency ward of City Heights Hospital list out the near-fatal diagnosis. “There are a lot of external lacerations. When he was wheeled in, he was in a state of deep shock, but he has now been sedated. He could regain consciousness in the next two or three hours, but I can’t predict anything at the moment.”

Peter and Ashok looked at the barely breathing Anil Mahajan. There was no doubt that, had he been conscious, his state and the doctor’s diagnosis would have given him a nasty shock. It was just as well, but in this state, Anil resembled a mummy somehow brought to life. Bandages were wrapped around his face, arms, and chest, almost serving as a life support. His legs, which had miraculously escaped any kind of injury, barring the odd scratch or two, were barely moving—owing, no doubt to the sedation, but also creating the illusion that the shattered upper portion of his body was where his life resided the most.

“Doctor, you also mentioned that Anil ji was muttering something?” Ashok finally asked.

“Yes, he was. Give me a second…” Hailing a passing ward boy, the doctor said, “Call Ramesh once.” As the boy ran off, the doctor added, by way of explanation, “Ramesh was the one who had heard Anil ji say something.” Accompanying the ward boy, Ramesh, the male nurse, arrived a few minutes later. Ashok repeated the question. “I can’t say for sure, but my impression was that he was repeatedly saying something like ‘they have killed me—they are all my enemies’. After a pause, I also heard the names ‘Samir, Sunil, Amar’ from him.”

Ashok and Peter nodded their heads meaningfully. The incoherent talk of a man in a delirious state did not mean anything, but Samir, Sunil, and Amar were the names of Anil’s three sons—the squabbling successors to his empire. Together, the three sons, their wives, and Anil were the very portrait of a dysfunctional family, united only by thoughts of greed and more greed. Ironically, even though they each had different visions, none of the sons showed any inclination to continue the construction business. And so, despite its stature, Mahajan Constructions’ existence seemed inextricably tied to Anil Mahajan’s.

The inspector’s phone rang. As Peter and Ramnath watched, Ashok’s face grew cloudier and grimmer. By the time the call was over, Ashok wanted to bang his face against the wall. Having decided otherwise, and after taking a long breath, he relayed what he had heard: “The team from Mahajan Hills just called. All members of the Mahajan family have been killed, no exceptions. Cyanide poisoning suspected.”

At that moment, Peter and Ramnath’s blood ran colder than it had ever done.

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Peter had no desire to visit Mahajan Hills—one scene of massacre had tormented him sufficiently. Directing Ramnath to keep watch over Anil and to report any developments, Ashok rushed over to Mahajan Hills. He drove through the gates of the stately mansion, coming to a halt in front of the portico with arched pillars. One of the constables greeted him and accompanied him to the scene of carnage, past the copiously weeping maali (gardener) standing at the doorway.

The first thing that caught one’s eye on entering the Mahajan’s mansion were the gigantic white-marble statues of gods and goddesses from the Hindu pantheon kept at various corners of the massive living space. The Mahajans liked to think of themselves as deities presiding over the lives of whoever stepped foot inside their house, and this installation of statues served to inspire awe and reverence among the visitors. This time, however, they stood as mute, omniscient witnesses refusing to say whodunnit—“as if they had run out of boons to bestow upon the family, and had instead meted out divine justice for a change.” The very next moment, he corrected his line of thought—“but, surely, murder is very much a human act.”  

Five officers were minutely analysing and scraping the room for prints, and other evidence. Ashok surveyed the scene—one of the officers was kneeling near the corpse of Amar, who had collapsed, face-forward, on the first landing of the staircase that led to the floor above. The three wives had evidently been sitting on the sofa in the sitting room, but death took different forms with them. Amar’s wife had pitched forward, nearly shattering the glass table in front of the sofa. Samir’s wife was still sitting clawing at her throat, head hung back over the sofa, eyes bulging open. Sunil’s wife, meanwhile, had fallen sideways on the floor, a trickle of blood around the portion of head that had struck the ground, mouth open with the tongue hanging out. In the kitchen adjoining the dining space, Sunil himself lay half-kneeling, head slumped, an arm trying to reach the tap in the sink. Samir lay fully on the floor, limbs in a posture that suggested wild thrashing movements before death, and a light pink foam issuing from a wide-open mouth.

Ashok fell sick to the stomach. He had already observed the same misshapen cherry red/pink blotches on the victims’ skins which Peter had observed in the children and the mother. An officer came forward to tell him that some traces of a cyanide derivative had been detected on each of the dishes and glasses in the kitchen as well as those on the dining table. “I hope no one has touched anything with bare hands? Keep yourself covered with the gloves and mask here.” Having barked out the directions, the inspector then proceeded to call one of the officers, and instructed him to have all the bodies transported to the morgue in the police headquarters [since the Brahmatalab police station itself didn’t have one]. “When will it all end today?” Ashok asked himself wearily.

The maali’s pathetic sobs could still be heard from outside the door. Still in his mask and gloves, Ashok enquired, “Are you the gardener here? Were you the first to see the dead bodies?” 

“Yes…”

“Tell me what happened here. Speak freely, and leave out no detail.”

“I was watering the plants. I was supposed to be paid today, so after I had completed watering all the plants, I rang the bell two-three times. When no one opened the doors, I went to the front-facing windows and looked inside. I immediately felt something was odd. I shouted all of their names, but no one responded. It was then that I realised something was very wrong.”

“What did you do then?”

“For some time, I had no idea what to do. Then, the milkman arrived. We tried to break open the front door, but it did not budge. We were about to call the police, when your men arrived. How can I face my master now?”

Ashok thought it prudent not to mention anything about Anil’s condition. Instead, he changed tack.

“When you were watering the plants, did you see anyone enter or leave the premises? Are there any other entry or exit points from the house?”

“No, I do not think so.”

“Okay, that’s all for now. But stay here—and do not try to leave.”

Ashok turned to join the investigator’s activities, but the maali’s voice beckoned him.

“Sir… there’s something I want to tell you.”

“Yes, go ahead?”

“I should not speak ill of the dead, but it is a fact that I did listen to the family members speak during the evening. Anil ji was not there, so they were all speaking pretty loudly. What can I say? The colour drained from my face as I listened to them.”

Ashok egged the gardener on.

“Sir, they weren’t nice people at all. Yesterday evening, they were planning to kill my master. They were saying that they would mix poison in Anil ji’s tiffin-lunch for the following day. They seemed to be excessively troubled by some will. I listened to the entire conversation, and stealthily ran away from the house, but at some distance away, I paused and stood beside the road. When Anil ji passed by the spot on the way to the house, I stopped the car. Then I told all I had heard to him. My master pledged me to secrecy, and so I have done. But this matter has now left me shaken. Is the master alright?”

The confession of the gardener hit Ashok like a thunderbolt. But it had only served to complicate matters. Who had killed the would-be murderers? And, how did Anil Mahajan become a victim of a planned accident, when the plan actually was to poison him at long distance?

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Meanwhile, back at City Heights Hospital, Ramnath received a call from the forensic analyst at the morgue in the police headquarters, confirming what they had already suspected—that cyanide had stained the fingertips and a large portion of all the victims’ bodies—from the foodpipe all the way down to the intestine. The poison was also detected in the food samples from the tiffin box—“of a dose sufficient to kill 10 elephants,” added the analyst. Anil Mahajan’s life—with his vital signs closely observed through monitors and beeps—hung in the balance.

“Now that I see it, I have completely forgotten to send the lunch box to the headquarters? Should I go to drop it off?” Ramnath’s remark broke Peter out of his reverie. 

“No, leave it be. As it is, the results have already arrived. At this moment, it is more important that we keep strict watch over Anil.” 

At around the same time, around 20 kilometres away, Ashok was racing to meet a certain Ravi Bansal, lawyer in the firm Jajwala and Sons. Ravi and Ashok had crossed paths several times before, their first encounter dating back to their childhoods. Ravi, Ashok, and Peter went to the same school where they were known to be top-class pranksters and troublemakers.

Ashok met Ravi not on the premises of Jajwala and Sons, but in Ravi’s house. As Ashok sank into the leather sofa, Ravi asked, “Ashok, what brings you here? Have you thought of a new chapter for The Book of Practical Tricks? Hey, look at this! I am working on an entire section of tricks involving water.” Ashok took the scratch pad, but its contents failed to amuse him. Seeing the cloud descend on his friend’s face, Ravi asked, “Ashok, what’s the matter? Is there something you are not telling me?”

“Have you seen the news?”

“No. I have just returned today, from my annual vacation.”

“Anil Mahajan was in a car crash today. He is in a critical condition. But, that’s not all. His entire family was murdered today. Poisoned.”

“But, I… I do not understand. What are you saying? Why, it was only last week that… ”

“Yes, Ravi?”

“What I wanted to say is that it was only last week that Anil ji changed his will in my presence and registered a new one. This was the day before I left for my leave. The new will is in the office.”

“Ravi, I am in a bit of a hurry, but could you quickly explain the differences? It could give us a motive for the incidents.”

“Why, yes, of course. It’s all pretty simple. The earlier will had divided all properties and assets equally among his three sons and their families—the divisions clearly outlined. However, since none of the sons and their families had shown any desire to continue the operations of Mahajan Constructions, he had revoked all the earlier provisions in this new will, and had instead bequeathed everything to a heritage conservation trust. Unless anything drastic happened at all, the will was to be made binding today, via an announcement.”

“Why, that’s pretty straightforward and convenient,” thought Ashok. A couple of possibilities had sprung to his mind, but only one could explain the change in modus operandi and how the would-be murderers ended up dead.

“Ravi, think carefully before answering, but did Anil have any offspring or family members other than these three? What I mean is, he may not have publicly acknowledged them, but legally, they could still have a claim to what the wills offered?

“I know what you are implying, but no. Anil ji was pretty firm on this point. And, neither have we received any such claims to this day.”

That shut the door on the possibility as soon as it had opened.

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More than four hours had passed since Anil Mahajan had been sedated. He had already been carried on a wheel stretcher to one of those private cabins in the hospital reserved for the super-rich and powerful. An attendant kept a watch on the patient, noting down the patient’s vitals and administering drugs intravenously from time to time, according to the doctor’s instructions.

Outside the room, Ashok, Peter, and Ramnath stood in deep conversation. They had already exchanged notes from the three incidents, and the fog had gradually lifted. Peter had offered an explanation that connected the three—yes, all three—incidents, but whether they could prove its veracity was a different matter altogether. At the most, they were banking on a kind of indirect confirmation, which would hold little value in a court. But, then again, none of the three present expected the case to make it to court. Which is also the reason why they had agreed to carry out an unconventional experiment.

The doctor came out of the patient’s room. “Anil ji is now conscious and awake,” the doctor said. “However, he cannot speak, as his vocal cords have received extensive damage. At the moment, he can only barely shake his head.” The three men nodded. Then, Ashok entered the room. Ramnath followed, carrying with him some items: car keys, sunglasses, a damaged leather briefcase, a pair of shoes, a blood-stained overcoat, a steel lunch box, and a plate. Peter entered the room last, standing close to the doorway.

Peter, sitting beside Anil, grasped Anil’s hands, before saying, “Anil ji, what happened to you was absolutely shocking. We are trying to get to the bottom of the matter as soon as possible. Can you please take a look at the following items and see if you can recognize them? No, no—please do not move yourself. Just nod your head to say yes, and shake for a no. Okay?”

With an almost imperceptible jerk of the head, Anil nodded yes.

“Ramnath!”

Ramnath came forward with the shoes, displaying all sides and angles to the patient. As Anil’s eyes followed the motion, he slowly shook his head once.

Next came the car keys. Anil nodded his head.

The sunglasses elicited another no.

The leather briefcase, on the other hand, was recognised.

At this moment, in came the doctor with an attendant carrying a pot full of khichdi. “I am sorry, gentlemen, but I must ask you to stop for a bit. Anil ji must have some food.” The attendant, in the meantime, poured some of the watery food into the plate, and some into the lunch box that Ramnath had earlier kept on the chair to show Anil. As the attendant slowly brought the plate before Anil’s eyes, he scooped a spoonful and brought it close to Anil’s mouth. By then, Ashok, Ramnath, and Peter had already seen the visible panic-ridden change in the patient’s movements. Eyes bulging wide, Anil frantically shook his head to the extent possible, and clenched his hands tightly. His body trembled, and he actively tried to avoid being fed the food. The doctor also observed this, and asked the attendant to stop. “Anil ji, you must have some food, otherwise you will become too weak. Or, do you want to be fed from the tiffin box?” And, thus, the same action was repeated with the lunch box. This time, Anil’s reaction was even more vehement. “Strange, I have never seen anyone react so violently to a meal of plain khichdi.” He made a note to later check if Anil had any existing food allergies, particularly to khichdi or any of its ingredients.

But, Peter, Ashok, and Ramnath had come to a different conclusion from the events that transpired. Closely watching the entire proceedings was the lid of the lunch box—the lid with the name ANIL.

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A little time later, Peter found himself alone in the hospital cabin with Anil. He had requested his good friend to grant him this time. Ashok understood immediately, particularly since it was Peter’s explanation of the entire sequence of events, which he had outlined previously, that made the most sense.

Peter took a deep breath. Followed immediately by a long sigh.

He was scared. Scared of what he was about to do. “A long day of dealing with death, non-stop, tends to do that to you … ” he tried to rationalise. But, what good, if any, were these actions going to serve?

Ever since the death of the children, there was a nagging sensation at the back of his head—the kind that makes you want to take a hatchet to your own head. A part of him had then fuelled this into a fire of righteous indignation, as news of more deaths rolled in. And now, having figured out the disparate threads of the affair, he wanted an outlet. It was selfish, petty, no doubt—and it would only serve to prolong the suffering and torment of himself and the patient. But, at this moment, no torture seemed to be greater than what he was going through, silently.

Peter slowly approached the victim. After comparing his thoughts with the inspector’s findings, a certain structure had come to his mind. Anil Mahajan must have told the family about his intentions to not leave behind a single penny, as long as they didn’t take up the mantle of Mahajan Constructions. The greedy vultures would then have given in to their murderous impulses—the first prey being Samir, who acted on his own. The tampering of the brakes and the car fuel would have been done when Samir took the car out for repairs—incidentally, the very day Anil Mahajan finalised his new will. Samir must have told no one about it; otherwise, the second attempt made no sense, especially since Anil’s driving schedule of ‘one car a day’ was fairly easy to deduce. 

“So, what about the failed attempt, and how did the children get mixed up in this? And why did the family end up dead?” Inspector Ashok’s question came to Peter’s mind. The gardener’s account was vital to unpick the mystery here. Having learned about the family’s poisoning plans, Anil Mahajan would have been furious. That he had taken matters into his own hand should come as no surprise. He must have gotten hold of some cyanide poison after his conversation with the maali. Later, at night or very early in the morning, when the entire family was asleep, he would have tiptoed into the kitchen, smeared the poison all over the utensils, leaving no one any the wiser. Later, on the way to his destination, acting on the maali’s warnings, he had dropped the lunch box off the bridge from his speeding car. It is possible that the choice of spot was completely random, or he may have seen it empty sometime over the week—either way, this act had the horrific consequences which Peter had witnessed earlier in the day. The unfortunate Anil was unable to cheat his karma, though—unaware of his eldest son’s machinations, he ended up in this hospital cabin, struggling to hold on.

Aloud, Peter said, “Anil ji, you have killed two families today. There were children under the flyover where you dropped your lunch box. They ate from it, and are now dead. I hope you know what you have done.”

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By the time Peter left the hospital, it was night. The bright lights of the streets failed to cheer him up. Two hours later, Ashok called Peter to inform that Anil Mahajan had also passed away—from a haemorrhage caused by a stroke.

That day, two families vanished from the face of earth in the city of Mayanagari. And a god-fearing man listened to the whisperings of the devil for the first time.

Last of the Steam-Powered Trains

Like the last of the good ol' choo-choo trains

Huff and puff 'till I blow this world away

And I'm gonna keep on rollin' till my dying day

I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains

—"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", The Kinks, 1968

The Kinks' 1968 album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, stands among the finest lyrical evocations of the vanishing English countryside. A personal favourite from the album is "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", the band's adaptation of the classic Howlin' Wolf song "Smokestack Lightning", in which vocalist Ray Davies pens a rollicking character study of a steam train in a museum reminiscing about its glory days when it huffed and puffed across the country. 

I was reminded of the song—and the album—as I came across a description of steam engine drivers in Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi Hakucho (originally published in 1960, translated as The Black Swan Mystery, 2024):

"In his faded blue overalls, the strap of his cap tight around his chin, a driver was sitting on his hard seat, his right hand gripping a lever, his eyes fixed on the two parallel rails illuminated by the headlights in front of him. The fireman beside him opened the firebox door with a clatter and shovelled in some coal. The violent vibrations of the engine had taken their toll on the driver’s stomach, and all the colour had drained from his face. Every time the fire door was opened, however, the burning red light would be cast on his cheeks, and for a moment his complexion would improve so much that he was almost unrecognizable. Driving a steam engine was much harder than driving an electric locomotive. And yet the reward for it was scant at best."

This is not without precedent of course. The opening stretches of The Black Swan Mystery feature elements I would not have expected in a work by Tetsuya Ayukawa—a fashionably rich woman outsmarting a blackmailer rather courteously, a workers' strike at a textile mill and negotiations to overcome the impasse, a religious cult pulling the strings, and more. Clever casting ensures that these events are mostly seen through the eyes of characters pertinent to the plot, but it is all very industrious and painstakingly, meticulously laid out. It is also quite unlike my impressions of Ayukawa from my previous encounter with him—in the short story collection, The Red Locked Room, consisting of a number of intricately and tightly plotted, yet highly imaginative, tales of crime and detection.

The Black Swan Mystery, on the other hand, unfolds as a rigorous police procedural, not marked by instinctive flashes of inspiration or brilliance, but instead by a physically exhausting process of following clues, links, red herrings, and other lines of enquiry. Tailing—once a tool of misdirection and building up suspense—becomes a necessary, widely accepted norm of investigation by this time whose utility is openly accepted by both the police force and the perpetrators of the crime. The act of physically following up on leads is used for another purpose here. As the characters move from place to place, we become privy to the evolving landscape of Japan (transitioning into a rapidly industrial one), and how individuals, families, neighbourhoods, social orders, systems (transport and education, for instance) and professions (most prominently, prostitution) trace their journeys across time and space. In it all, there's a sense of people looking to move on from their past, yet being inexorably caught up in it through forces and circumstances beyond their control:

"Onitsura just stared at the photo without replying. That Kayoko had once entered a ladies’ college only to suffer the fate of a prostitute, and that afterwards this fallen angel had seen yet another reversal of fortune, living in the lap of luxury because of her attachment to a man of great power and wealth, seemed to exemplify the wretched lot of so many young women who had been thrown into the chaos of post-war Japan and made to fend for themselves."

In this aspect, the novel resembles the works of another doyen of Japanese mystery fiction, Seichō Matsumoto, particularly those involving extensive train travel (see Inspector Imanishi Investigates and Points and Lines/Tokyo Express). It is also indicative of the enormous influence exerted by the shakai ha (or social) school of mystery championed by Matsumoto over Japanese mystery writing in those days. In fact, the modus operandi of the police investigation and its arrival at the solution would suggest that The Black Swan Mystery be primarily regarded as an extremely competent work of the shakai ha school.

But, of course, the work does not follow the course of a full-blown shakai ha mystery. A major difference is the fact that there is lesser focus on making out industrial society to be some monstrous evil entity exhorting people towards crime. It is also less obsessed with analysing the psychology of classes and crimes. 

However, what the novel does accomplish is the presentation of memory-based character sketches gleaned through conversations with diverse people (doctors, gardeners, corporate sector employees, housewives, railway conductors, religious shamans, pharmacists, among others) that are used to piece together the full picture. And, to go back to a point I had made earlier, it is here that I am most reminded of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. One can, for instance, in some ways juxtapose the essence of and sentiment behind a character's reminiscences of the pivotal Kayoko in the novel— 

"Kayoko and I were the best of friends ... We sat beside each other in class and always studied together. But that was only until we left school. I got married and became an ordinary housewife, whereas she—"

 and

"There she is after school, wearing make-up for the first time. During the war, they were so strict about it—if they caught you even putting on face cream at school, you’d get a ticking-off. I used to take so much pleasure in putting it on after we graduated. Kayoko looked so pretty with it, too…" 

with that of some lines in the album's song "Do You Remember Walter?": 

Yes, Walter was my mate.

But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?

and

Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed? 

Do you remember, Walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free? 

We'd save up all our money and we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea. 

But it was not to be.

I knew you then, but do I know you now? 

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago. 

Walter, if you saw me now, you wouldn't even know my name.

I bet you're fat and married,

And you're always home in bed by half past eight.

And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored  

And you'd have nothing more to say. 

Yes, people often change.

But memories of people can remain. 

An unexpected bonus, but delightfully welcome nonetheless. In fact, in hindsight, the act of the sympathetic Inspector Onitsura experiencing and solving the mystery indirectly—through the eyes, ears, and memories of others—brings some relief to the Inspector himself. Otherwise, this tale of a character's quest for freedom takes some very dark and tragic turns, bookended by a somewhat tender, moving climax that offers the space for the character to take charge of and narrate their own story, and not be explained away as a footnote in a chain of grand, deductive reasoning.

We are back to familiar ground when talking about the mysteries the book sets up. Tetsuya Ayukawa is known in Japanese mystery writing circles as a fierce exponent of the alibi deconstruction story—and The Black Swan Mystery is no different. The core mystery concerns the death of one Gosuke Nishinohata, the director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to train tracks, a bullet in his back. A plethora of scattered clues—an abandoned car, blood on a railway overpass, among others—point in different directions, while the motives and list of suspects are equally vast, owing to a large number of shadowy connections and incidents linked to the company: an ownership struggle within the company, labour unrest, Nishinohata's problematic past, ties to underworld figures, religious cults, and more. More incidents soon follow—a down-on-his-luck gardener is found poisoned at a railway station, an accident claims the lives of a voice actor (who claimed they had a solution to the mystery) and another employee of Towa Textiles, while the underground blackmailer is found dead in a forest on the outskirts of another city at the same time the company's workers had gone there to attend Nishinohata's funeral. It is all time-consuming, but is carried out rather assiduously and neatly in real time.

The police investigation responds in kind—and goes through the entire gamut of experiences following red herrings, obscure clues, circumstantial evidence, witness evidence, and combing through multiple dead-ends and breakthroughs. If there is one criticism to be laid, it is that we do not exactly witness the aftermath of the police's failures in the course of the investigation. The team seems excessively reliant on Onitsura and his mental acuity, the camaraderie between the officers remains virtually unaffected, while the officers on the ground carry on with a different thread of investigation, barely unaffected by the previous setbacks. As readers, we remain none the wiser on whether any punitive action, however perfunctory, was doled out—whether they were soundly rebuked, or some officers transferred to other teams/investigations, or whether the lack of success soured relationships between officers and hierarchies, and/or affected their morale, for some time. Certainly, a shakai ha treatment would have benefitted here.

As concerns the murders themselves, the one carried out on Nishinohata feels over-elaborate in its conception and setup on the one hand, its impact and execution stymied by the adversarial, coincidental circumstances on the other. The demise of the gardener, the voice actor, and the second Towa Textiles employee fall under the "unavoidable evil to advance plot ends" category.  However, I must reserve a high level of praise for the trick employed to kill the underground blackmailer, involving astute understanding use of train routes and schedules. It is also a poignant relic of the past—similar to the depressing motive behind the events of Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi Investigates, the acts of the criminal in their original form can no longer be practically carried out today, as the schedules and the train configurations are no longer there. It is oddly comforting to note, however, that closer home, in my country of India, an almost similar trick can be pulled off today if I travel from my hometown to the eastern metropolis of Kolkata, because the required differences in train schedules and the divergent routes to reach a common destination still exist.

It feels strange to conclude my thoughts on the note that The Black Swan Mystery reminds me more of Seichō Matsumoto's and Keikichi Ōsaka's works rather than Ayukawa's own short stories, as far as the themes are concerned. But, perhaps, that is where its charm and importance lies—not as an outright shakai ha or honkaku mystery, but as an instructive one seeking to bridge the gap between the two schools through an approach that is as much contemporary and fixed in its own time as much as it continues to memorialise a past people are seeking to leave behind, yet to which they find themselves inexplicably tied.

Man in the Box

My previous experience of a Masahiro Imamura work was with the experimental and entertaining Death Among the Undead, which broke new ground with its inspired-but-flawed use of zombies in a closed-circle situation. With an overarching thread of bioterrorism, I had expected things to escalate even further in the series, deploying more bombastic, hybrid-mystery elements.

Colour me surprised, then, because the second entry in the series, Magan no Hako no Satsujin (2019; translated as Death Within the Evil Eye, 2022), delivers a traditionally plotted, classically styled murder mystery, with just a pinch of the supernatural. No zombies, no bioterrorism plot points in the events as they transpire in real time.

Death Within the Evil Eye starts with a sense of déjà vu—Yuzuru Hamura making an idle deduction on the food a girl is about to order at the university cafeteria. It's very identical to the Sherlock Holmes-skit-like beginning of Death Among the Undead; however, due to the events of the first novel, this time, Hamura has no one to share his deductions with. The absence of Kyōsuke Akechi is felt throughout the novel, lending poignancy to the narrative and influencing the character dynamics of our protagonists in a major way.

Into this gap steps Hiruko Kenzaki, from the same university as Hamura, with her own quirks—a notorious oversleeper, and an exceptionally competent detective when it comes to real-life cases but utterly incompetent when it comes to identifying narrative trickery in fictional works. She also has a tendency to naturally attract freakish incidents. The two members of the reborn Mystery Society initially discuss strategies to hunt down the Madarame Organisation, the perpetrator behind the events of the first novel, through some potential leads—including one where a letter prophesising the Lake Sabea bioterrorist attack had been sent to a monthly magazine. However, Kenzaki decides to go at it alone, having already employed a private sleuth to investigate the Madarame Organisation's past activities and locations where it was active. In one of the finer bits of the novel, Hamura picks up changes in Kenzaki's attitude and demeanour, and decides to put the Tanuma Detective Agency on her tail. And thus it is that the duo find themselves on a journey to explore a former lair of the organisation. Their destination? Magan district in I county of W district.

Hereafter, the novel follows a pattern that may be familiar to readers of the Kindaichi series. A journey to a remote village in the mountains, with mysterious co-passengers (who happen to be students) headed to the same destination. To reach said destination, our main cast meets more curious folks—a professor and his son, a biker, a journalist, a woman visiting a grave in the village—all of whom then trek by foot to The Box of the Evil Eye—a two-storeyed building with no windows that was once used by the Madarame Organisation as a research facility to experiment with precognition and prophetic abilities. The purpose of the trip? To meet Sakimi, the prophetess whose prophecies have all turned out to be true for half a century.

And soon, a bridge burns down—isolating the whole cast. Then, the prophetess states that four people—two men and two women—will die. Yes, a major portion of the novel does indeed recreate the atmosphere and elements of multiple stories in Seimaru Amagi's Kindaichi and Detective School Q series.

Imamura does well to vary the nature of incidents that claim lives and distort minds: earthquake and landslide, animal attack, poisoning, and shooting. The cast, including two clairvoyants, reacts to the crises in a more diverse manner, even though they are already trapped in the clutches of the prophecy, than seen in Death Among the Undead. All this leads to multiple layered situations—and there's a definite improvement in establishing the closed-circle, locked-geography situations, the susceptibility of the characters to the supernatural, and creating the alignment between these situations and the rationale behind the characters' responses to these situations, when compared to the previous work. Having said that, the work still suffers from a problem I had observed in Death Among the Undead: namely that it is too aware of its status as a mystery novel, and the characters act not naturally or in accordance with the circumstances, but according to the dictates of mystery fiction tropes. It's a glaring discrepancy that is evident even here: in section-after-section dedicated to minutely dissecting each impossible situation through conversations and exposition (none of which, though logically sound, really stand out for quality or effect), but rarely do we see any concerted action.

Imamura thus comes across as an ideas man, rather than a natural plotter. The core of the novel—prophecies influencing people's actions—is carried out in several permutations and combinations. However, it is the spontaneous mix of superstitiousness, opportunism, and faith combined with fear, that invariably leads to unpredictable situations. Indeed, as Kenzaki points out in her summary of the case:

"This case is clearly completely different from the sort of crimes we all know. Setting aside the matter of whether Ms. Sakimi and Toiro’s powers were real or not, it is clear that our fear of their powers—and in a way, our faith in their powers—has influenced all that has happened here.’  

     Their powers had not directly killed anybody, but people had died there, whether by a natural event, or by human hand. In one sense, it was a murder case just like any other. However, the issue was that, additionally, the existence of precognitive powers had influenced our rationale and reasoning.  

     ‘A closed circle situation, plus precognitive powers. I do not believe that the police, coming from outside, can ever truly comprehend the fear and mental pressure created by such a combination. As soon as we step outside of the Box, the curious logic which has manipulated us over the last two days will disappear, as if it had all been just an illusion. Which is why I wanted to put an end to it all, before our tiny universe is broken up.’"

It is, therefore, quite unfortunate that the rationale and reasoning of the characters is also ultimately influenced too much by mystery fiction tropes and their analysis, which exert even more influence in the critical moments than any act of prophecy or clairvoyance does. Loss of hope and mounting despair can be powerful tools for authors to utilise, but when done in an organic manner. On the other hand, when they are used simply to serve plot-based, narrative, or trope-based functions, they can come across as excessively forced, artificial, and devoid of appropriate expression of emotions—as is the case with Imamura's two novels.

It is also the reason why, in my opinion, Imamura shines best when he explores human themes rather than supernatural themes. The evolving, moe-coded, Holmes-Watson relationship and dynamic between Kenzaki and Hamura, the continued acknowledgement of Akechi's absence—these form oddly tender oases in these two novels that revel in stretching character motivations to the extreme, and continuously putting them through a grinder. Both novels, I also think, are best read in light of a common them: revenge. While it is played in a straightforward, more preordained, manner in Death Among the Undead, the circumstantial nature of things ensures that the revenge seen in Death Within the Evil Eye is anything but straightforward, even though it is dictated by the needs of an infallible prophecy. The subject of the prophecy ends up as a victim, not of a direct revenge but an indirect, perverted one—one that not only fails to reach the intended target of the original grudge, but also effectively destroys the life of the perpetrator and condemns them to a future of utter futility, trapped by the nature and demands of the very things they exploited. In fact, this is rooted in a very Japanese sensibility—and one seen all too frequently in works featuring Hajime Kindaichi and Kosuke Kindaichi.

These are some of the aspects I would ideally have liked Imamura to have explored more in Death Within the Evil Eye, rather than the incessant homages to crime fiction he keeps making throughout the novel. There seems to be a third entry in this series—but I look forward to its translation with a sense of cautious optimism, and not of unbridled enthusiasm.

California Dreamin'

During what was, perhaps, the only Dungeons & Dragons session I have ever participated in, a friend of mine made a pitch for me to jump on the science-and-fantasy fiction bandwagon. Said friend introduced me to the 'Dying Earth' subgenre, which also happens to be a common theme and setting in Dungeons & Dragons games. It has a long lineage, featuring works from Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells to those by Gene Wolfe, but my friend particularly recommended stories and novels by Jack Vance. As it turns out, the subgenre is named as a tribute to Vance and his Dying Earth series (1950–1984).

I never did explore the 'Dying Earth' subgenre or Vance's series. My loyalty and devotion to crime fiction proved to be far stronger—and a cursory dive into Vance's bibliography showed that he wrote and published a number of crime and mystery fiction works, including a few under the Ellery Queen pseudonym. Last year, on a whim, I decided to read what sounded like one of the more interesting titles in his oeuvre—The Fox Valley Murders (1966). It is safe to say that I hit the jackpot in my first encounter with Vance's works.

Lived experiences of authors loom large over books I have read (or reread) in recent years. The descriptions of numerous fictional locations (villages, towns, hotels, buildings, among others) in Agatha Christie's novels, such as Peril at End House, Evil Under the Sun, and The Body in the Library, for instance, are said to draw inspiration from her travels and stays particularly in Devon and Torquay. In Seishi Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi series, on the other hand, Yokomizo's wartime experiences in the Japan's Okayama islands mould the settings, the narratives, the politics as well as the way characters act and interact with each other—particularly in works such as The Honjin Murders, Death on Gokumon Island and The Village of Eight Graves.

In The Fox Valley Murders, Vance draws upon his childhood experiences in his beloved Californian countryside in a more personal and intimate manner than Christie or Yokomizo. The result is a work where the geography and the cast of characters emerge as something resembling picture cut-outs from a photo album. It is, therefore, not surprising to note that the novel is propelled by an effective combination of nostalgia, and the use of well-defined, believable characters, crisp, entertaining, and humorous conversations, as well as vivid, evocative descriptions of locales. Employing a very American diction, The Fox Valley Murders is, in my opinion, one of the finest specimens of a 'regional mystery' I have ever encountered.

Events of the past cast long shadows—and these shadows re-emerge when Ausley Wyett ("tall and awkward, with lank brown hair, knobby knees and wrists, a good-natured, if somewhat moony, face") steps into the town of Marblestone in California's San Rodrigo county after serving a 16-year-long jail term. If there's one thing that unites Marbletown's residents otherwise divided by petty jealousies and rivalries, it's a profound hatred for Ausley ("A lot of people around here don't feel too Christian about Ausley Wyett"), who was convicted of raping and killing 13-and-half-year old Tissie McAllister (who "loved her parents and was loved in return"). Ausley maintained his innocence at the inquest, but even though the evidence leading up to the crime—a number of people having witnessed Ausley and Tissie walking together but not the crime itself—is pretty much circumstantial, Ausley's own actions after the murder ("I lost my head and did the foolishest thing I could have done”) drove a nail in his coffin. Some miles away from the town, he had been spotted, "digging a hole, with close at hand the body of Tissie McAllister." However, even a prison term fails to cure his hardheadedness, because after returning to Marblestone, the first thing he does is to send a letter to the five persons who had testified against him:

"Dear Sir:

I am now out of jail, where I have served sixteen long years. I could write a long book on the dreadful experiences I have witnessed. How do you plan to make this up to me? I await your response with great interest.

Very truly yours,
Ausley L. Wyett"

It is this letter that sets in motion the events of The Fox Valley Murders.

At around the same time that Ausley sets the cat among pigeons on his return to Marbletown, Joe Bain becomes the acting-sheriff of San Rodrigo county, after his predecessor Ernest Cucchinello ("Cooch") dies of pneumonia. 16 years ago, Joe had been "the tall hell-raising lad from Castle Mountain, who had run away from home and now lived in San Rodrigo where he consorted with Mexicans and fruit tramps." However, life soon served several curveballs. His wife elopes with a band's guitarist, leaving him with "his nineteen-month-old daughter Miranda standing in the play-pen, diapers dripping, milk-bottle empty, quietly philosophic about the whole sad situation." Leaving his child in the care of his mother, Joe  then joined the military, saw action in Korea, transferred to the military police, and used his GI benefits to study criminology. He then became a deputy-sheriff under Cucchinello, but the sheriff's death adds more responsibilities on Joe's shoulders. On a day-to-day basis, he also has to deal with the sly opposition of Mrs. Rostvolt, "clerk, matron, office manager and power behind the throne", who continuously undermines Joe's authority, and acts as the eyes and ears of the next likeliest sheriff candidate—Lee Gervase, "a vigorous and progressive young lawyer, formerly of San Francisco." Joe ultimately throws his name into the sheriff candidacy hat, partly on a whim, and partly to keep the old-school nature and identity of San Rodrigo county alive.

Despite his daily frustrations, Joe never lets go of his keen, wry sense of observation, and makes himself available to most of the needs and demands of the residents:

"Charley Blankenship never seemed to change. He was a tall, pale, horse-faced old man with long arms and legs, soft gray hair, watery blue eyes, a pendulous pink mouth. He lived the life of a gentleman farmer, with a forty-acre cherry orchard and a white two-story house on Destin Road, south of Marblestone. Joe Bain had known him for as long as he could remember. During May, a favorite recreation among the local young people was stealing Blankenship cherries. Joe retained a vivid recollection of Charley Blankenship’s pallid face peering down the rows. He often carried a shotgun loaded with rock salt, and on one occasion had shot his nephew Walt Hobius. Opinion was divided on whether Charley had recognized Walt. Walt thought that he had, though Charley denied it to Walt’s mother, Dora. For the last ten years Charley leased the forty acres to a Japanese family, who during cherry season maintained a patrol even more vigilant than Charley’s had been."

Joe's common sense and troubleshooting skills are soon put to the test, as he has to balance his duties as  an acting-sheriff, as well as that of a candidate looking to win the upcoming sheriff election:

"Charley Blankenship turned him a look of more yellow malevolence than Joe would have thought possible from so rheumy and dew-lapped a face. There goes a vote, he thought in alarm. He jumped to his feet. “I’ll sure look into it, Mr. Blankenship. I believe in striking the iron before it gets hot. That way nobody gets burned."

Things do not get easier when a series of murders soon rocks Marblestone, claiming the lives of nearly all who had testified against Ausley. Former bus driver Bus Hacker dies in front of Joe, just as he opens the door to his house. Later, his house is burned down. Mushroom lover Charley Blankenship dies after eating a dish mixed with commonly known poisonous mushrooms which he picked himself. Willis Neff, another testifier, is shot dead, presumably in a hunting accident, in an open glade in a neighbouring county (warning: there is a glaring error in the timeline of death in this case, possibly due to a printing mistake). Oliver Viera falls off his ladder and plunges into a ravine while trying taking down a can of paint from the edge of the roof of his house. Towards the end, Cole Destin also has a very close shave in a traffic accident, but he survives. As Joe admirably puts it: "You feel a fool saying ‘accident’, you feel a fool claiming foul play. So what do you do?”

Investigator Joe comes across as a hardworking gumshoe, but much of his instincts are steered by his astute understanding of the residents of Marbletown and the relationship he shares with them. This same astuteness serves him well when he campaigns for votes, and it is amusing to see him switch between sleuthing and campaigning every so often:

Two elderly women came up to him. One asked in a bantering tone, “Can you be Joe Bain, the young rapscallion who was the shame of the neighborhood?”

Joe grinned. “I guess that’s me. And you’re Mrs. Mathews, my old third-grade teacher.”

“So you remember me after all these years!”

“How could I forget?”

The other lady said archly, “I don’t imagine you remember me!”

“I certainly do,” said Joe. “You’re Mrs. Beasley, at the post office. When I was ten years old I kissed your daughter. You caught me and whacked me good.”

“Think of it,” Mrs. Beasley marveled to Mrs. Mathews. “Ten years old he was, and kissing Arla bold as you please. Ten years old! And Arla pretending it was just an everyday occurrence. Oh, the little rascals. I hate to think what went on when my back was turned.”

“It goes to show that you never can tell. Arla’s married with four children, and Joe’s sheriff of the county.” Mrs. Mathews beamed roguishly at Joe. “How we used to pity your poor mother, coping with a pair like your father and you!”

“I imagine she felt sorry for herself at times,” said Joe.

The same Mrs. Beasley turns out to be a voter for Joe—and more importantly, provides a hint to the one existing, material evidence that would turn the case on its head, and indict the real criminal.

Reading the several conversations Joe has in sticky situations—and the way he inevitably exploits them (and the relationships he shares with antagonistic characters) for his benefit—makes one appreciate what a master manipulator he is. For instance, Joe is almost ensnared in a cartoonishly false rape allegation by Mary Destin, wife of Cole Destin and Tissie's elder sister—something that could have had serious implications on Joe's bid to be a sheriff. However, instead of being drawn into a long-drawn battle, Joe confronts the case head-on, lays out all his cards in front of Mary, and 'convinces' Mary that the implications of this case could be even more harmful for her—all in the presence of a hostile but influential local newspaper editor who agrees to drop the sensational article that would have demonized Joe even further. 

The conversations, interactions, and rich character portraits further reveal what a closed world Marblestone really is—where, barring a few exceptions, grudges are hard to forget, and meanness comes naturally to most, and whose prettiest pictures possibly exist only in the photos of an album. No wonder then that the real culprit's motives stem from an intense psychological pettiness and hostility towards their fellow residents. It is as though the town's atmosphere invisibly influences the culprit to carry out their deeds. 

Navigating such a familiar but unfriendly terrain, Joe pulls off an impressive double act—solving a devilish case and winning the sheriff election. To achieve this, Joe is constantly on the move, across the length and breadth of Marblestone and even beyond. These travels allow readers to immerse in some picturesque descriptions of Marblestone, its environs and neighbouring counties, as well as partake in some offbeat sights and sounds in and around the town: a church fight, a farmers' market, a political rally, a clash between a religious community and city folks, and more. 

The journeys also allow Joe to travel into his past and occupy himself with reflections:

This was Slough-house, an institution at its heyday during Prohibition, when it acquired a reputation for picturesque vice which it never quite outlived. Slough-house was now relatively respectable. True, there were rooms to be rented on a casual basis; complaisant ladies could generally be found at the bar. On summer Saturday nights there was dancing at an open-air pavilion beside the slough. Some of the most fragrant memories of Joe’s youth were connected with these Saturday night dances. The orchestra played romantic old tunes like I’ll See You in My Dreams, Whispering, Three O’Clock in the Morning; the weeping willows changed color as the floodlights shifted through red, blue, green, and gold. After one such dance occurred the incident which culminated in Joe’s marriage … Joe heaved a sigh for his lost youth. A dozen cars were parked in front of the bar. Luminous medallions advertising beer winked a cheerful invitation, but Joe drove past. It might not be too good an idea to be seen here. Not till after election, anyway.

In another instance, Joe thoughts take on a level-headed, morbid tinge:

Joe drove south along Destin Road to the ruins of the Hacker house. The fence smothered in red roses still stood. Joe leaned on the gate and considered the black rubble beyond.

The sun was gone; twilight blurred the mountain slopes, lights began to sparkle up and down the valley. Joe listened. Silence except for the warm wind in the poplars. A bat flew twittering past. The ashes of the Hacker house seemed more melancholy than ever. Joe thought of Millie’s letters to Bus, written long ago when the world was young. He looked down into the rubble where the exploded glass of Millie’s jams and preserves still reflected a few sullen lights from the sky. Life was a funny thing, thought Joe. You just reached the stage where you could appreciate it when you had to start worrying about how it would end … He walked back to his car, drove into Marblestone.

It all leads to a most unusual and entertaining climax where Joe eliminates his political rival, Lee Gervase, by implicating him in the case Joe is trying to solve for witholding vital information. In the same rally, much to the glee of the audience, the high-level delegates and organizers are left with eggs on their faces when Joe proceeds to reveal the truth behind the current spree of murders, as well as the killing of Tissie McAllister. All loose ends are tied up—and, for all its darkness, the novel has a happy ending.

Where the novel does subvert the classic detective fiction mould somewhat is in its choice of Joe as the protagonist, and a further definition of his role. In the grand old game of cat-and-mouse, as seen in Christie's Poirot and Yokomizo's Kindaichi series, the great detective often participates in a case in the capacity of a visitor, where they travel to places and glean information, background, and context from often untrustworthy and unwilling locals. The result is a view of the politics and mechanics of crime from the lens of an outsider. In The Fox Valley Murders, however, we are privy to the complexities of crimes, their impact on a town's residents and politicians, and the process of solving them, through the eyes of a local: Sheriff Bain. This makes for a more realistic portrayal, in so far as Joe's mastery of a crooked game is concerned—Joe has to manipulate his way through a corrupt rival, a sly subordinate, hostile and prejudiced inhabitants of the town, as well as media-persons and political dignitaries dead set against him as a candidate for the sheriff's position.

Seen in this light, The Fox Valley Murders has more in common with Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996), that wonderful series set in (mostly) smalltown America. The series introduces writer Jessica Fletcher, hailing from Cabot Cove, Maine, in the role of a sleuth. In my opinion, Jessica straddles the insider-outsider dichotomy perfectly. In the cases set in, say, Boston or New York, she fulfils the role of an inquisitive guest or trespasser, rising above circumstantial difficulties and solving the cases while being mocked and frowned upon by the suspects in the case. However, when incidents happen in Cabot Cove, things get a bit too personal, and Jessica performs a role akin to what Joe does in The Fox Valley Murders. While the modus operandi may not be as gritty and manipulative as seen in Vance's work, Jessica does call upon favours from his companions (Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Amos Tupper), and relies on her knowledge of Cabot Cove's residents, the relationship she shares with them, the city's history and evolving political climate, to dispense her own brand of ratiocinative, but ultimately sympathetic, justice—just as Joe Bain does.

Vance would go on to write another full-fledged Joe Bain novel, The Pleasant Grove Murders (1967), and a fully-sketched outline of a third novel, The Genesee Slough Murders. As someone previously relatively unaware of, but now keen to explore, American countryside mysteries of the kind seen in The Fox Valley Murders, I can only imagine the kind of complexities and tricks Vance cooked up in his latter two efforts.

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: ‘The Fox Valley Murders’: A hit combination of nostalgia and evocative descriptions of locales)