The Case of the Caretaker

 'T is strange,—but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction; if it could be told 

"Don Juan"

The Mysteries! Newcomer Award is essentially the sister award to the better-known Ayukawa Tetsuya Award: both awards are organized by the same publisher and are meant for unpublished works of authors who haven't made their major debut yet as writers. The Mysteries! Newcomer Award is meant for short stories, while the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award accepts full-length novels/short story collections. Ayukawa Tetsuya Award winners are obviously published as standalone book releases, while in the case of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award, publication means being published on paper in the mystery magazine Mysteries! and as a seperate e-book release. Almost exactly one year ago, I reviewed two Mysteries! Newcomer Award winners together and I already noted that there at least seemed to be a wide range in the stories, as the situations/type of mystery in those stories were quite different, but both very satisfying stories. Still waiting for that second story of Yukashina by the way...

About 400-500 entries are accepted each year for the Mysteries! Newcomer Award, but even with those The two numbers, there's no guarantee a winner is declared: there have been years with no winning work, like 2011 and 2016. This year however, we have no less than two winners of the 17th edition of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award. Interestingly enough, the authors of the two works were both called Ooshima. However, one of them changed their name between the announcement of the winners, and the publication of the stories in the October 2020 issue of Mysteries!, so the fact that two Ooshimas won the same award in the same year, will be forgotten in the near future...

Anyway, so while Ooshima Kazuhiro won the award, it's now the name Yamato Hironori which accompanies the story Kamu Roujin ("The Biting Senior"). Konori Ken works at the Care & Social Welfare Section of City Hall and is one day visited by Kadota, who runs Yuimaru, a small day care services for the elderly. Each morning, they pick up their clients at their home to bring them to a central location where the seniors are taken care for during the day, and at the end of the day, they bring everyone back again. Yesterday however, an incident happened with Takizawa Ryoujirou, an elderly man in a wheelchair who's suffering from Alzheimer and can't speak anymore. The man is usually very peaceful and docile, but yesterday he suddenly bit the arm of the poor caretaker who was trying to put a bib on the man at lunchtime. While the woman was wearing a uniform, the man bit her so hard the bite marks were clearly visible on her arm and Kadota even had to bring her to the hospital. When Kadota later informed the daughter-in-law of what had happened however, she accused the caretaker of having messed up somehow, leading to the biting incident, and she said she'd bring her father-in-law to another daycare service. Kadota wants to know why Takizawa suddenly bit her employee, also because he fears the incident might be repeated even if Takizawa would go somewhere else, and asks Konori to investigate the incident.

This is certainly not a situation you're likely to see as the main mystery in a detective story! With a 'vague' problem like "why did the old man bite a young caretaker?" and the theme of the care for the elderly, you might be tempted to assume that this will be a mystery story that's more interested in exploring social problems, but it's actually surprising how Yamato does manages to write construct this premise into a proper puzzle plot story with clues and all. Granted, a lot of the clewing is a bit crude: one section in particular stands out like a sore thumb because you know that those few sentences are only there because they are to serve as a clue and once you see that, it's honestly not hard to figure out why old Takizawa bit the caretaker's arm. But still, Kamu Roujin is written as a proper mystery story, structured around the attempts of Konori to find a plausible explanation for Takizawa's sudden change in temperament and constantly stumbling upon facts that seem to deny his suggestions, until he finally manages to put everything together and even organize for a very satisfying denouement scene. Given that the story revolves around finding a motive for the "crime", it can definitely be difficult to present a convincing enough reason for the "culprit" to have done something and also present it in a way that allows the reader to figure it out beforehand based on clues, but it's done fairly well here. And I'd definitely want to see more of the premise of a municipal care service offical detective explored in a short story collection!

The other winner of the award was Ooshima Kiyoaki's Kagefumitei no Kaidan ("Ghost Tales of the Kagefumi Inn"), which is like the complete opposite of the motive-focused Kamu Roujin with its realist angle. Umeki Kyouko is an author of real horror stories, which she approaches from an investigative and folklore angle: she not only writes about these stories about ghostly appearances, but also interviews the people who actually experienced these supernatural phenomena and also attempts to pose her own interpretations of these odd occurances, analyzed from a folkloristic point of view. A few days before the new year starts, her younger brother is sent by their parents to check up on Kyouko in Tokyo and bring her some new year treats from her parental home. When there's no answer to the doorbell, he uses his own key to get inside the apartment, where a horrible sight awaits him. His sister is taped tight to her office chair and her eyes have been sewn tight with her own hair. While she remains unconscious in the hospital, she's fortunately going to survive the ordeal. But who did this to her and why? Her brother suspects it has to do with the new story she was working on, about the Kagefumi Inn in the Gozu Hot Spring region close to their parental home in the Tochigi Prefecture. A few weeks ago, Kyouko stayed there to investigate the ghost stories connected with the annex in the Japanese garden of this inn: while it's not in use anymore as a guest room, it appears that people staying the night (like staff members) there will receive an anonymous phone call on their mobile at 02:17 a.m. and if you take the call, some freakish misfortune will befall upon you in the near future. The brother decides to stay at Kagefumi Inn himself to see what his sister worked on exactly. The owners of the inn have heard of the incident with Kyouko too and are very willing to help out the brother, and there's even an exorcist staying in the annex at this very moment to see if there's really some ghost hanging around there. The brother is invited by the exorcist to come at night to the annex room to see if there's really a phone call at 02:17, but when the brother arrives at the annex, he finds it's locked and when he peeks inside through a gap in the window blinds, he finds the exorcist is lying dead in the room, with both his eyes scooped out of his skull! The owner and the brother break in through the window, but to their surprise they find all the doors and windows of the annex had been taped tight with demon-warding seals and that no person could've escaped from this room after taping every exit shut from the inside. So was it a ghost who killed the exorcist?

So this story is also a horror story, or perhaps I should say that Kagefumitei no Kaidan is mostly a horror story? Throughout the tale, the reader is presented with various supernatural and scary situations, some through the eyes of the narrator (the brother of Kyouko), some through the excerpts from the manuscript about the ghost stories happening at "K Inn" which Kyouko had been collecting. Stories about ghostly telephone calls, about children's voices coming out of nowhere, about monsters roaming the garden of the inn. But as this is a detective story, you'd expect most of these phenomena would be explained right and that there's perhaps one supernatural part that's left vague on purpose? Kagefumitei no Kaidan is the exact opposite: most of these phenomena will remain unexplained as supernatural horror stories, while only a small part of the tale will actually be explained in a rational manner. The result is a strange story where a locked room murder is solved in a classic manner by presenting a rational explanation supported by proper clewing, while at the same time we're also asked to accept the stories about ghostly children hiding between the dining tables at K Inn. The locked room murder where everything's been taped tight is a classic situation now and while the solution is okay and I like the clewing for it, it's pretty difficult for that part of the story to really leave a lasting impression considering we also have really nasty situations with the eyes sewn shut and eyeballs being pulled out of the head and stuff. The atmosphere is fantastic, with the jumping between the brother's narrative and the manuscript of Kyouko and overall, Kagefumitei no Kaidan is a good horror story, with a decent locked room murder plot included, but don't expect a straightforward mystery story where everything is explained at the end.  

The two winners of this year's edition of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award probably couldn't have been anymore different, but I guess that shows how diverse the mystery genre could be. Kamu Roujin was a story I wasn't sure I would like when I first heard about the premise, but I have to admit I liked it a lot more than I had expected. Kagefumitei no Kaidan too was different from what I had expected, with a more distinct focus on the horror angle, but I did enjoy it as a nasty-feeling scary story with a locked room murder hidden in there somewhere too. It'll be interesting to see if these two authors will release more in the future, as both of them have found fairly unique angles with their stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 大和浩則「噛む老人」 

大島清昭「影踏亭の怪談」