Back in May, Pushkin Vertigo released their eighth Kosuke Kindaichi novel, Yoru aruku (She Walks at Night, 1948), written by the patriarch of the Japanese honkaku mystery novel, Seishi Yokomizo – translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. No doubt, the book title will make Western readers immediately think of John Dickson Carr's It Walks by Night (1930) and not wholly without reason. But, as Ho-Ling Wong noted in his review, it also smacks of Edogawa Rampo's grotesque tales with its sleepwalkers, hunchbacks and headless corpses.
A strange situation has developed as tangled and twisted as their own family tree and backstory. Yachiyo Furugami is the 24-year-old daughter of Lady Oryu and the drunkard Tetsunoshin Sengoku, but her official father, Oribe Furugami, consulted a soothsayer who ensured his daughter is not going to be a hunchback – instead she's destined to marry a hunchback. So good news for Yachiyo's hunchbacked half-brother, Morie, who's fallen in love with his technically not blood related half-sister. Only for her to announce her intention to marry a modernist painter, Koichi Hachiya, who's a hunchback. What worries Naoki is Koichi Hachiya was wounded a year ago when a woman shot him at Cabaret Hana. This still unidentified woman spotted the painter, shouted "you monster" and shot him. Naoki knows the mysterious woman who shot him at the night club is Yachiyo. On top of that, Yachiyo has been receiving bizarre letters alluding to the soothsayer's prophesy or warning her "walk not at night." That's a very odd, very peculiar warning as nobody outside the Furugami household knows she's a sleepwalker.
Torata is intrigued enough to accept Naoki's invitation, but things get progressively more bizarre than Naoki's story suggested and begins the moment they arrive. First of all, the Furugami estate is one of those Ellery-in-Wonderland style buildings, "a clever blend of traditional Edo Period craftsmanship and modern Western design," which gives off "a mysterious, almost otherworldly atmosphere." The bizarre scene greeting them could have been a fever dream: a furiously drunk Tetsunoshin Sengoku, dressed like a samurai, chasing a laughing and jeering Koichi Hachiya with a very real sword ("Bizarre old place, this house. Real monsters' den").
So they take the sword away and decide to lock it away in a safe "requiring both the key and a combination to be unlocked." Torata comes up with a three-word character for the combination lock, while Naoki hangs on to the key. Neither men can open the safe on his own. This precaution provided the plot with a locked room puzzle when the body of a headless hunchback is found. Together, they open the safe and discovered the sword coated in thick, dark blood! But how could the killer have taken and returned the sword from a double locked safe ("objects don't just travel through locked doors")? And then there's the question of identity. Who, exactly, was beheaded? Morie and Koichi are both missing and certain identifying marks ended up not giving a clear cut answer. And why take the head?
There are many more mysterious, horrifying incidents following the murder and discovery of the bloodstained sword, but two months pass without a solution. Inspector Sawada permits them to escape the gossip and chatter of Tokyo to go to their old estate in a remote mountain village in Okayama Prefecture. While traveling to the village, Torata and Naoki are joined by a scruffy, shaggy-haired man with a slight stammer and shabbily dressed in a serge kimono and an exhausted-looking hakama – nobody less than Kosuke Kindaichi. Not that the two man are aware Kindaichi is a well-known private investigator who has the respect and corporation of the police. So the Great Detective doesn't turn up until halfway through the story and his role remains somewhat peripheral, even having to cede the spotlight during the denouement to the murderer's unhinged confession. In spite of that, Kindaichi's low-key entrance into the story immediately added interest and excitement to the case. It's easy to see how the figure of the tousle-haired man in an unfashionable kimono and hakana trousers became as iconic and synonymous with the detective story as the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes.
However, not even Kosuke Kindaichi could prevent the murderer from collecting a second head before the case can be closed. So how does it all hold up? Better than first expected.
She Walks at Night is not exactly an immaculately clued detective story, however, I was very please when the second-half began to force me to abandoned the solution I had settled on. You see, I wrongly assumed to have spotted the almost childishly simply method to take and return the sword from the double locked safe (ROT13: Anbxv ghearq uvf onpx jura Gbengn jnf cvpxvat gur guerr-jbeq punenpgre sbe gur pbzovangvba ybpx, ohg jung vs Anbxv unq n cbpxrg zveebe va gur cnyz bs uvf unaq ranoyvat uvz gb ybbx bire uvf fubhyqre. Na byq qbqtr ahyyvslvat gur qbhoyr ybpxf naq thrffrq Anbxv jnf va pnubbgf jvgu Lnpuvlb gb trg evq bs ure byqre unys-oebgure). So, when the second-half rolled around, I had expected nothing more than absorbing, thoroughly entertaining and unchallenging mystery yarn. Fortunately, my armchair solution didn't hold up during the second-half and the locked problem turned on something far more sophisticated and satisfying than the childish magic trick I suspected. Same goes for the who and why. And, while there's definitely an old or two at play, Yokomizo played them very well indeed.
So even though it has its shortcomings, She Walks at Night nonetheless developed in something more complicated than you would expect from a bizarre, nearly pulp-like story teeming with sleepwalkers, hunchbacks, decapitated corpses, missing heads, prophesy and a cursed sword vanishing from a securely locked safe. She Walks at Night is no Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951) and Yokomizo would go on to write a better, bizarrely grotesque family murder mystery in Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku (The Devil's Flute Murders, 1951/53), but She Walks at Night is a solid, mid-tier entry in the Kosuke Kindaichi series and the current translations. This series remains a highlight of the translation wave, because getting to read these previously inaccessible Golden Age mysteries is something not even best shin honkaku mysteries can match. So look forward to Jooubachi (The Queen Bee Mystery, 1951/52), coming next spring, which is apparently a high-profile Kosuke Kindaichi novel that "often makes the jump to both the small and the silver screen."
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