The Night of the Bakeneko (2)

The next day, Haruhi gave us details of the other crimes.

The criminals had entered through Lady Fujiwara’s front door and stolen a scroll containing a haiku by Ryokan from the mantle in her living room. The security camera placed at the entrance to her home had been conveniently turned away.

Her chauffeur later admitted that he carried a spare latchkey and had been induced to aid the burglars under the threat of violence, so there was no real mystery there. The other two robberies, however, were exceedingly similar – the victims recalled waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of scratching at their bedroom doors.

Both of them owned cats so naturally assumed the sound was their feline friends asking to be let in. They thought nothing more of it. It was only the next morning that they realised that valuables had been stolen. In the first case, it was ¥5,000,000 in cash which the victim kept in a desk drawer in his study; in the second, a diamond encrusted ashtray of historical significance pilfered from the drawing room coffee table.

Additionally, the next morning’s findings exonerated the aforementioned pet cats. The scratch marks found on both of the victims’ doors were found to be too large and deep to have been made by any housecat. According to Haruhi, they looked as though they could have been made a bear or, alternatively, the claw of a hammer.

“Didn’t they interrogate that chauffeur?” I asked her, as we made our way to the Kamijousaki Theatre for a reason that she had not yet disclosed to me.

“He was blindfolded, Watson,” she revealed. “They made him surrender his latchkey and point out the security apparatus of the house; well, the security apparatus amounted to a single camera, but that’s beside the point.”

“But he actually talked to them, right? We’re dealing with guys wearing masks, not anthropomorphic animals?”

“The chauffeur talked to exactly one person while blindfolded. This person called themselves a representative of the 1001 Faces Gang and used a voice modifier, so there’s no way to identify them. The trail’s gone completely cold.”

“The 1001 Faces Gang? Doesn’t ring any bells…” my voice trailed off, as I noticed that we had approached the vicinity of the theatre. “Now, what are we doing here?”

“Consider it recon,” she replied, pointing at the marquee which advertised tonight’s show, a stage play called ‘The Villain of Vladivostok’. According to the obnoxious tagline, it was in equal parts dramatic and innovative, a work which threatened to “push the envelope”.

No matter how you spun it, this production was a bit too risqué for high schoolers.

“Our client is not only a man of independent means, Watson, but a patron of the arts as well. Mr. Miyazawa has invested a lot of time and money so that this show would see the light of day, and he certainly isn’t going to miss the premiere. That’s tonight.”

“And while he’s at the show,” I ventured, “the 1001 Faces Gang is going to be raiding his house. Is that it?”

“Unlikely,” Haruhi shook her head. “Look at their modus operandi up until now, Watson. They’ve always appeared to their victims right before they commit the crime. It’s almost like a warning; a harbinger of crime, if you will. These people aren’t content to just steal from others, they want people to know who did the job too.”

“So you think Mr. Miyazawa might be attacked on his way to or from the theatre?” I asked.

“Or when he’s in the theatre,” Haruhi said. “The play has … four intermissions? Something like that. Either way, there will be plenty of times when he might be alone.”

“So we should guard him,” I nodded, as though it were the most reasonable suggestion in the world. “Mr. Miyazawa is one of the show’s producers so he can get us in, can’t he?”

“Unfortunately, our agreement is contingent on him not having to fork out a single cent,” she shrugged casually. “A Scrooge, if I ever met one.”

“The money aside, they’re not going to sell tickets to high school students,” I pointed out, pulling slightly on my shirt collar for effect. “And we’re in our school uniforms too…”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Watson,” Haruhi grinned broadly. “My best sleuths are on the case. And hey, I see them now!”

She was pointing excitedly in the direction of the theatre’s ticket booth. A gangly looking man, adorned in a fedora and trench coat, was ambling his way towards us. His gait was, to be kind, vaguely reminiscent of a new-born fawn who was not yet used to walking.

It was only after he was within spitting distance of me that I realised that the stranger was of an immense height, a characteristic magnified by the fact that he didn’t seem to have any shoulders. His fedora was a size too small, the trench coat two sizes too big; all in all, he looked like a caricature of a basketball player, decked out in the garb of a hardboiled detective.

The strange man dropped something into Haruhi’s open palm, and she uttered something that sounded like “thanks!” or “good job!”. I was too stunned by this misfit’s appearance to be sure.

“Evenin’, Tanizaki-san,” he tipped his fedora towards me and staggered away.

How did he know my name?

The collar on his trench coat was turned up, so I couldn’t get a good look at his face. When he was out of earshot, I turned to Haruhi and inquired as to this person’s identity. “Just who was that?” I asked her, uncertain.

“You mean ‘they’, Watson,” Haruhi said. “As in ‘just who were they?’ but you already know the answer, of course. You only met them recently.”

“I think I’d remember if I met a giant with non-gender specific pronouns.”

“‘They’, meaning more than one,” she clarified. “That was the Shinsengumi. You remember Riku, Hinata and Shota, don’t you?”

“…Shinsengumi? You mean those elementary school kids who were at that theme park with us? Wait…”

Ah… so that explained their unnatural size and ill-fitting clothes. The ‘person’ who just walked past me wasn’t actually a person at all, but persons. I had been bamboozled by the proverbial oldest trick in the book: three kids sitting on each other’s shoulders while wearing a trench coat!

Didn’t I tell you that the Shinsengumi had a special technique that relied on Hinata’s mature features?” she quipped and then, slightly more forlorn, added, “The boy was born with an unfortunate face, but it can’t be helped. In any case, he helped us score four premium seats.”

“Four? You, me, Akiha and…?”

“President Sawamura will be joining us,” she explained. “Films and stage plays seem to me to be very different, Watson, but the President really wanted to be here… he was the one who fronted the cost for these tickets by the way, so remember to thank him when you see him.”

I made a mental note to do so.

“And what now? We go home and change clothes? Ticket or no ticket, we’ll be turned away at the door if we try to go in wearing this,” I once again brought the fact that we were wearing our school uniforms to attention.

“Yes, I suppose we should,” Haruhi held out one of the tickets. “But feel free to disregard the dress code, Watson, for something more comfortable. Something tells me we might have to do a bit of running tonight.”

***

8.45pm.

With fifteen minutes left until the beginning of the show, the night’s capacity crowd had already scrambled to their seats and were slowly settling in. The more extravagant amongst them were holding small, overpriced bags of popcorn and bottles of orangeade.

I, on the other hand, made do with a programme of tonight’s show having resourcefully turned it into a makeshift fan by folding it. I was under strict orders from Haruhi to remain in the lobby until after everyone had gone in, and to keep a lookout for anything, or anybody, suspicious.

The good news was that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The bad news was that the air conditioning in the lobby was much weaker than in the seating area, and so I held my programme close.

At this juncture, the only people left in the lobby now were two concession workers and an usher, whose duties seemed to include cleaning as well as directing people to their seats. He was in the act of sweeping when I approached him, and asked straightforwardly:

“You haven’t seen any six-foot ring-tailed lemurs around, have you?”

“No,” he replied, without looking up.

“Well, how about anyone who’s dressed strangely? You know, like underdressed or overdressed. Or maybe carrying a large bag that they could fit some sort of costume in?”

At this, he tilted his head upward and began to look me up and down. When he was done sizing me up, the usher said, “No large bags, but I did see somebody who is clearly underdressed.”

“Where?”

“I believe you might find him in the mirror, sir.”

With that, he went back to his sweeping. If I was a little bit more self-conscious, the whole exchange might have left me feeling quite embarrassed. I walked over to the concession stand and peered at my reflection in the glass countertop – taking Haruhi’s advice, I had chosen a breathable collared shirt and plain, knee-length cotton shorts, the very picture of ‘cool biz’. So what was that usher’s problem?

“Done admiring yourself in the mirror, handsome?”

Looking up, I saw Akiha standing on the other side of the counter, dressed in the tight and boyish uniform of a swanky theatre’s concession worker. A ghastly maroon colour, and evidently faux silk, even to my untrained eyes. She was holding out a small box of caramel corn, which I accepted without complaint.

“Thanks. What are you doing here?”

“I just spent the last three hours in a frog suit fighting a guy dressed up as a bear,” she told me. “I’m beat, and if I sit down in one of those velvet theatre seats then I’m going to fall asleep. And if that doesn’t put me to sleep, then a two and a half hour show about a dusty Russian aristocrat certainly will.”

“So you’re just going to wait out here?”

“I’ll be able to stay awake if I can move around,” Akiha replied. “And I can keep a lookout for anybody suspicious. The show starts in five, Sei, so you should be getting along. But wait a second…” she undid her bowtie and clipped it on the front of my collar.

“Hey now…” I protested.

“Don’t be a baby, it’s just a clip-on,” she said, adjusting it slightly. “Alright, now you look like a proper theatregoer.”

With that blessing, I strolled into the seating area to find my place. The show had not yet started, but the lights had already been dimmed. Fortunately, I had been given an aisle seat so there wasn’t need for much shuffling about. Our client, Mr. Miyazawa, had a middle seat in the row in front of mine.

From my vantage point, I had a great view not only of the stage, but of him as well. Even if I somehow lost sight of him, I knew that Haruhi had secured a box seat and was looking down on us right now. The man was exceptionally well observed, even if he didn’t know it. I crossed my legs and sampled some caramel corn.

Slowly, the curtain began to rise on the Sherlock of Saitama’s first encounter with the nefarious 1001 Faces Gang…