Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

It was a summer evening.

Izumihara dragged his heavy boots, caked with sand and dust, as he crossed the long C Bridge and made his way to his familiar boarding house.
His boarding house stood in Denby Town—a forgotten district forming a block along the Thames embankment.
Izumihara frowned as he recalled the sooty, dimly lit room, but he had nowhere else to go but return there.
Through nearly half a year of being bedridden and rising intermittently, spending listless days, the money he had on hand had mostly been depleted.
In a distant foreign land, there was nothing to rely on but money.
Just as that money neared its end, his health had conveniently recovered.
His most pressing task now was to secure employment.
He had spent these past few days mustering his energy to search for work.
He visited the owner of Burton Art Store—who had previously commissioned him to paint a few times—and explained his situation, but with the poor economic climate, they could offer him no assistance.
At that moment, what suddenly came to Izumihara’s mind was Mr.A, a customer of the same store.
Mr.A was an esteemed landowner in Galway on Ireland’s northern coast who spent most of the year living in London.
It was said he had visited both China and Japan in his youth.
He was an enthusiast of Oriental art.
Izumihara had often encountered Mr.A at Burton’s store.
Mr.A had purchased from Izumihara a vividly colored portrait of a beauty painted on silk.
Recalling that occasion, Izumihara resolved to visit Mr.A.
The old man’s residence—unbefitting his rumored status—lay in P Town across the river, where he rented the entire second floor of an aged four-story building among similarly lined-up structures.
Izumihara wished to meet the old man and discuss securing a livelihood guarantee through painting.
But ill-timedly, Mr.A had been traveling for some twenty days already, and there was no telling when he might return.

Izumihara heard this from the landlady and was completely disheartened.
The faint glimmer that had begun to brighten his spirits was crushed as if by a giant hand, plunging everything into sudden darkness.

Izumihara had intended to return to his boarding house in Denby Town, but for some reason, instead of turning into the alleyway, he found himself walking along a wide, gently sloping embankment.
The street trees on both sides stretched out their branches and leaves, growing thick and lush.
When he raised his eyes, a flock of white gulls were flying crisscross over the tide-filled river.
The summer evening lingered long, and the sky remained bright.

Izumihara rested his weary body on a deserted public bench and blankly recalled past events.
It was precisely during such lonely moments that he would recall Gwinn—the woman who had abandoned him two years prior and run off somewhere.
She had snatched the bankbook during Izumihara’s absence and disappeared without a trace.
Izumihara detested her unfaithful actions, yet he remained convinced—even now—that what had transpired stemmed from a fleeting whim born of vanity, and that she had never truly been an evil woman at heart.
Izumihara had no idea what had become of the woman afterward, but just as he could not forget her, she too must have found herself unable to forget him in various ways.
The two of them had such deep, varied memories.

Izumihara had been sitting on the public bench, unaware of his surroundings growing completely dark, when he suddenly came to his senses and stood up.
He had passed under pale streetlights that had been lit without his noticing and walked out toward the bustling town where the low sky was dyed red.

From beside the barracks, he entered the avenue diagonally and soon emerged at V Station.
Though it meant a slight detour on his way back to the boarding house, there was an inexpensive café run by an Italian where one emerged onto the tramway after passing through the station grounds.
There, he thought he would have something light instead of dinner before returning.

V Station teemed with boarding and alighting passengers.
As he passed the bar and was about to walk by the large clock displaying timetables, Izumihara seemed to spot something in the crowd. He let out a groan-like cry and abruptly halted.
Even then, as if doubting his own eyes, he dashed forward a few steps toward the ticket gate.

"Yes—that’s definitely Gwinn."
He muttered under his breath.

There was a group of three people just exiting the ticket gate.
In the center was a young woman with jet-black hair wearing a dark green kimono; on either side were a plump woman nearing fifty and a tall middle-aged man.

“Wait—please! Just a moment!” Izumihara called out desperately from several yards away, but the trio continued walking down the corridor without so much as glancing back.
The people around Izumihara all turned at once, staring curiously at the small Japanese man who had let out a strange cry.
Izumihara threaded through the crowd in an instant and purchased a ticket to M Station.
No sooner had he hurriedly exited the ticket gate than he gave chase to the trio.

II

Due to being delayed at the ticket window, Izumihara lost sight of the trio.
Soon, the train began to move.
Each time the train arrived at a station, Izumihara carefully leaned his head out the window, watching the crowd of alighting passengers to see if they might disembark.
The train arrived at its final destination of Margate Station without incident along the way; this occurred about an hour after darkness had fallen.
Before the train had come to a complete stop, he leapt onto the platform and hurried toward the ticket gate. However, as the car he had ridden in was second to last, by the time he passed through the gate, a group of people had already been let out into the station square.
However, since they were accompanied by women and thinking that he must surely have arrived before them, he stood in a conveniently shadowed spot, his eyes gleaming.

Izumihara spent his meager funds and came all the way to Margate, yet ultimately lost sight of Gwinn.
Perhaps her group had not gone far like this—after leaving V Station, they might have disembarked at a suburban station soon after, or perhaps they had alighted at the same terminal but blended into the crowd that exited before him.
Izumihara, who had been fired up with plans of what he would say—this and that—if he caught them, felt exhaustion wash over him all at once as his taut nerves slackened.
The people who had disembarked at Margate Station left the station grounds, and Izumihara was left alone in the station square—like the aftermath of a great wind having blown through.
He walked toward the coastal avenue without any particular destination in mind.

Grand five- and six-story hotels adorned with decorative lights stood in orderly rows along the avenue’s pavement, their imposing forms neatly aligned.
The figures of beautifully dressed women flickered in and out of view.

“Q Hotel... I stayed here that summer two years ago when I first came to England—the one and only time before or since.” Izumihara muttered as he suddenly looked down at his worn-out trousers with rounded knees, then walked briskly away as if fleeing the resurrected memory. A cool breeze rustled through the verdant leaves of street trees along the coastal avenue. At the concert hall, a lively performance was underway. Izumihara had walked that far, but judging by the train’s arrival time, he reasoned Gwinn’s group couldn’t possibly be at the coast and turned back. He had spotted Gwinn at London’s V Station that evening and pursued her all this way, yet now he felt uncertain—had that woman truly been the Gwinn he knew? Even if it were her, hadn’t she abandoned him? Since he neither intended to press charges nor demand compensation for the stolen bankbook, there was no reason to chase her further. Thinking this, Izumihara bitterly reproached himself for foolishly pursuing her like this.

Since having lunch at one o'clock, Izumihara—who had put nothing in his mouth since then—had grown increasingly aware of his hunger, so he decided to enter the backstreets off the main avenue and look for a decent restaurant.
He twisted through the backstreets lined with small shops and emerged onto a broad avenue leading to the coast.
After a pause, as he walked along the right-side paving stones lit by pale gas lamps, an automobile suddenly came speeding out of the darkness ahead and passed right by him.
The moment he looked up in surprise, he unmistakably recognized three figures inside the vehicle.
Needless to say, it was the group he had spotted at V Station—the woman in her fifties at the center flanked by a man in a morning coat and Gwinn seated together.
Gwinn occupied the right-hand seat nearest to where Izumihara stood.
The automobile grew distant in an instant and vanished into the darkness.

Izumihara stood frozen by the roadside in astonishment for a short while.
It was indeed Gwinn whom he had seen at V Station.
Even so—why would Gwinn come to this Margate where the city’s summer visitors gathered?
And though they had arrived in this town on the same train a full hour earlier, where could they have been until now?
What puzzled him most was how Gwinn’s attire now differed from what he had seen at the station.
She wore a crimson jacket over a white blouse—so vivid it stung the eyes.
But what drew Izumihara’s attention more than anything was her profile: lips slightly bitten, gaze fixed unwaveringly on empty space.
From their experience of living together, Izumihara knew her habits well.

"That’s it—Gwinn must be plotting something significant in this town," he thought. She might not know where she was headed, but judging from her attire, it was clear she would be staying here tonight. Even if he were to chase after the automobile now, there would be no point. Given that Margate wasn’t particularly large, he decided he would track down her residence tomorrow.

He finally found a shabby restaurant in a back alley.

As the dinner hour was well past, only a countable number of customers were seated here and there.
Across from him, three tables away, a balding man with a receding forehead was engrossed in reading a newspaper.
Behind the screen near the counter, a suspicious-looking woman with thick makeup and rouged cheeks occasionally glanced back at Izumihara while forcing a smile.
The woman held a long hand-rolled cigarette between her slender fingers, emitting a wisp of smoke.
At a corner table, two young men were talking eagerly with their heads close together.

Izumihara silently ate the food brought by the frizzy-haired waitress.

When he finished his meal, he paid the bill and went outside.
And in order to find a cheap inn, he trudged toward the outskirts of the town.

The downtown roads were narrow, and the scattered street lamps cast faint light upon the paving stones.
Despite the lingering twilight, night seemed to deepen abruptly once the sun set, and passersby grew sparse.
As Izumihara was about to turn the corner past the hardware store with its chained iron fence,

He heard a voice calling out "Excuse me" from behind.
Izumihara turned around with a start, and a large man wearing a bowler hat approached him with purposeful strides.

III

“Excuse me, but could you lend me a match if you happen to have one?”
The man peered intently at Izumihara’s face while softening his voice somewhat.
Izumihara searched his pockets and wordlessly handed the man the matches.
When he looked, it was the man who had been reading a newspaper at the table across from him earlier while he was having his meal.

“I believe I saw you earlier at the restaurant,” Izumihara said timidly.

“That’s exactly right.”
“You seem to be new to this area.”
“This area is quite dangerous—highwaymen often prowl here, I must say.”
“Last night, a young American here for the summer fell victim to them as well.”
“Where are you planning to go from here, I wonder?”

“I have no particular destination in mind. I am a Japanese painter and have only just arrived at the station.”

“I thought as much,” said Detective Gill, looking over Izumihara’s short stature and clothing. “From your appearance, you don’t seem like someone who’s come for a weekend seaside rest between Saturday and Sunday either.”

“I have no wish to stay at a first-class inn,” Izumihara replied. “I’m merely searching for cheap lodgings to endure a single night.”

“Well now, how about coming to my house? I can’t give you any special treatment, but there just happens to be an unused room on the second floor that I could let you have.”

The man, having anticipated Izumihara’s response, started walking ahead without waiting for a reply.

“As I mentioned earlier, there have been frequent highwaymen in this area lately, so while keeping watch, your behavior of going back and forth over there since earlier seemed suspicious.”
“I’m a detective from the Margate Police Station, I must say.”
“I can’t speak Japanese myself, but my wife has been to Tokyo, Yokohama, and Nikko, so she does speak it.”
“My wife will be delighted if I bring home a Japanese guest.”

Izumihara, half-swept along as if by smoke, followed behind the man as urged.
The detective’s house was one of the compact two-story houses lined up on a hill on the outskirts of the town.

Detective Gill and his wife welcomed their rare Oriental guest and urged him repeatedly not to hesitate to stay for two or three days if he wished.
Mrs. Gill’s Japanese was utterly negligible—she only knew phrases like “Thank you” and “Good morning”—but even so, it brought him joy to hear Japanese from a foreigner’s lips.
At first, Izumihara had been tense, but gradually growing more at ease, he ended up disclosing the reason he had come to Margate.

“That woman—are you saying she embezzled your money and fled two years ago? Is it certain she disembarked at Margate?”

“I was walking along H Town’s main street when I crossed paths with the automobile carrying their party. What struck me as peculiar was how her attire differed completely between when I saw her at V Station and just now. If they alighted at the station, stopped at an inn first, then set out again by motorcar—that would account for it. But tell me—are there any establishments resembling inns northward from H Street?”

“Of course there aren’t.
“From H Street through the entire K Town area is residential; inns are only along the coast.”
“And then what did you do?”
Gill seemed to grow interested and leaned forward.

“I encountered that automobile in the middle of H Street, about twenty ken [thirty-six meters] from a shop with a blue electric light in its display window.”
“I don’t know where the automobile went after that.”

“The shop with the blue electric light is a hardware store called S.”
“Good—since tomorrow’s my day off, I’ll help search the inns for you.”
“At any inn we visit, I’m acquainted with the managers and head clerks, so checking their guests will be simple enough.”
“In my judgment, they must have stayed at an inn along Kaigan-dori.”
“We’ll start with the Royal Inn.”
Gill spoke with complete confidence.

That night, Izumihara ended up sleeping in an unfamiliar room belonging to someone he had just met, but when dawn broke, he got out of bed and got ready for the day.
True to his habits from his time at the London boarding house, he couldn't bring himself to sleep in.

After finishing their meal, Gill, not forgetting his words from the previous night, urged Izumihara and left the house.

Starting with the Royal Inn, they checked four or five inns' guest registers, but every attempt ended in failure. Finally, though thinking it futile, they stopped by the Redina Inn near the coast as a precaution. Gill discussed something with the front desk manager and soon had him show the guest register. Izumihara leaned over from behind Gill and scanned the register's pages. However, Gwinn's name was nowhere to be found on any of them. The two left there and made rounds of every targeted inn. It had drizzled since morning, but around ten o'clock began pouring in earnest. Weary from their fruitless investigation, it was finally Izumihara who proposed,

“Let’s just give up,” he said.
Gill agreed to this, and they decided to make the seaside inn they happened upon their final stop.
The tactful manager obligingly flipped through the hefty guest register himself and checked it thoroughly alongside them.

“There is no guest by that name here.”
“First of all, last night we had new guests, but no young ladies stayed here.”
While listening to the manager’s words, Izumihara casually directed his gaze to the full-length mirror hanging on the wall behind the front desk when he glimpsed the figure of a woman in a green dress reflected in the mirror.
He started and looked around, then noticed a woman in a green dress ascending the staircase at the far end of the hall opposite the entrance.
The woman had already reached the top step and, while lightly returning the manager’s greeting toward the front desk, disappeared from view at the top of the staircase.
The three people standing at the front desk found themselves wordlessly watching the woman’s departing figure.

“Who is that? Though I can’t tell for certain from this distance… That appears to be Gwinn—the one I’ve been searching for.”
Izumihara was the first to speak.

The manager looked at him as if to say this was preposterous,

“You must be joking! That lady is our valued guest known as Miss A. She has come to visit her father during his illness and has already been staying here for a week today,” he said with a laugh, then suddenly lowered his voice and—

“However, regrettably, her father’s condition suddenly deteriorated last night, and he ultimately passed away this morning.”
He spread out the guest register and thrust it under Izumihara’s nose.
There, under a date from about twenty days prior, were recorded the address and full name of a person named A.
Izumihara, as if doubting his own eyes, looked over the guest register again.
No matter how many times he looked, it bore the same name as Mr. A—the elderly man whose absence he had visited just last evening—and even the address matched that of the town residence.

“Is it true that Mr. A has passed away?”
Izumihara asked rapidly, his heart racing.

“Yes.
At first his condition didn’t appear particularly dire, but his heart had always been weak.
Last night Mrs. A and her nephew came from London and devoted themselves to nursing him,” said the manager.

“That’s most unfortunate.
If her father passed away while traveling, the young lady must be terribly distressed.”
Gill interjected from beside them.

“Therefore, as an inn, we are making every effort to provide every possible convenience.
They will be departing here on tonight’s eight o’clock train.
After all, with relatives and the pastor gathered here now, everything’s in an uproar.”
The manager spoke with deep emotion.
Izumihara, still unconvinced, was persistently questioning him about the young lady’s appearance when several guests noisily entered.
Gill led Izumihara out of the inn as if guiding him.

I simply couldn’t make sense of it.
If that woman in the green dress wasn’t Gwinn—whom I’d been searching for—but rather Miss A—who had been staying at this Seaside Inn for a week now—then who on earth did I see at V Station in London last evening?

“Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity.”

“Mistaken identity, you say?”
“I lived with Gwinn for a long time.”
“I don’t think I’m as slow-witted as you take me for.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but we British tend to think all Japanese look alike, so I figured maybe you Japanese see us the same way. Plus, green dresses are all the rage this year—most young women are wearing them.”

Izumihara remained silent for a while with an irritated look, but

“What I saw at V Station was undoubtedly the woman I’ve been searching for. In the automobile we encountered on H Street last night, Gwinn was indeed riding. However, the person I saw at the Seaside Inn just now was too far away for me to state anything clearly. Since Mr. A, who passed away this morning, is an acquaintance of mine, meeting his family members would immediately resolve our doubts. However, given that they’re currently occupied, I deliberately refrained from pressing the matter,” he said and began walking briskly. Detective Gill stared at his counterpart’s face with a look of exasperation, but after a moment’s thought, silently followed after him.

“Indeed, what you say may be correct.”
“When you saw Gwinn at V Station, you mentioned the other party consisted of three people, didn’t you?”
“The automobile we encountered on H Street carried that same trio, and didn’t the manager state earlier that Mrs. A and her nephew arrived from London last night?”
“Since Miss A had been attending to her father since a week ago, she couldn’t possibly have been at V Station.”

“Of course, Gwinn boarded the Margate-bound train from V Station with three others.”
“Miss A supposedly went alone last night to meet Mrs. A and her cousin at the station—isn’t that what they said?”
“The woman in the green dress changed into a crimson sweater inside the automobile, yet when Miss A left the Seaside Inn for the station last night, she wore a red sweater.”
“Can’t you imagine one of those two young women has been kidnapped?”

“Brilliant, brilliant! Then what?”
Gill asked with keen interest.

“The place where I encountered the automobile last night differs from the road leading from the station to the Seaside Inn.”
“Moreover, a full hour had already passed since the train’s arrival.”
“Isn’t it strange that they left Mr. A—who was in a dying state—at the inn, yet instead of going directly there from the station, they went speeding through an entirely different direction like H Street?”
“I find both Mrs. A and the man claiming to be her nephew suspicious.”

The two soon arrived before a general store with a wide frontage on H Street.

"This H Street ends in a T-shaped side street."
"How many side streets are there up to that point?"
Izumihara turned back to his counterpart and spoke.

"If we count from here, including the road at the dead end, there are three side streets running through left and right."

“Considering the speed of the automobile at that time, they couldn’t have come around the first corner.”
“They must have emerged from either the second or third corner via a left-hand side street.”
“If their hideout is in the right side street, going out to H Street to reach the Seaside Inn would be a major detour.”

The two soon entered the second side street.
It was a town where broken paving stones formed puddles here and there, continuing into a shabby row of houses.
There were houses with plaster peeling grotesquely from their entrance pillars, and others where large cracks ran through the walls.

“You there, kindly pay attention to the houses on the left.”

“Why the left side?”
Detective Gill asked back with a perplexed look at Izumihara’s words.

“Well, you see, it’s like this.
“I was walking on the right side of H Street when an automobile approached from ahead—Gwinn sat in the center with an elderly woman and young man flanking her.
“Isn’t it British custom for women to board automobiles first, followed by men?
“By analyzing where they boarded from houses in the second or third side street, we should determine whether those houses stand on the right or left.”

Izumihara began inspecting the houses on the left one by one as he said this, but every house had its street-facing windows locked tight, silent as abandoned ruins.
The two, feeling somewhat disappointed, returned along the same road when Izumihara suddenly stopped in front of a house.
He discovered a potted plant in the third-floor window of that house.
Potted plants are supposed to be taken in when it rains.
Looking around, there wasn’t a single house—apart from that one—that had left potted plants out on any of its windows.
Is it that the person living in that room forgot to take it in, or is there some reason they don’t want to open the window?
The red geranium flowers were mercilessly battered by rain laced with fierce winds.
On the paving stones lay a single hairpin.
It was Gill who discovered it and picked it up.
The two wordlessly exchanged glances, then looked up again at the high third-floor window.

It is an often-experienced fact that one forgets to put away potted plants while it is raining.
Though a woman’s hairpin—easily lost—on the paving stones hardly warranted particular suspicion, the two men, standing in a town desolate as death despite the daylight and finding no solid ground to grasp, had come to cling even to such trifles.
Gill climbed the stone steps worn hollow at the center and knocked on the house’s door.
There was no response.
At that moment, a man who had appeared at a distant street corner noticed the two figures and hastily retreated from the spot.

Gill kept knocking on the door.
A shrill sound reverberated through the town.
At once came the noise of a door opening beside the entrance, and a woman in her fifties—dressed in threadbare clothes—thrust out her sullen face.
Gill abruptly demanded who was on the third floor.
The woman retorted in a hurling tone that no one lived there.

“I can’t take your word for it—I’ll inspect the third floor myself,” he declared, showing a business card bearing his official title.
Though visibly shaken, the woman deliberately barred the doorway,

“There’s a patient lying down, so you can’t go up.”
“What business do you have?” Her persistent blocking only deepened the two men’s suspicions.

Detective Gill harshly rebuked the woman and clattered up the stairs.
Izumihara followed close behind.
Twisting the key left in the corridor lock, they opened the third-floor front room to find a girl in a green dress bound to a chair, limbs tied fast as she shrank into the corner.
In that instant, Izumihara was certain this woman must be Gwinn.
But he was mistaken; though her build and features bore uncanny resemblance, she proved entirely different. Stunned by sudden intruders, she stood frozen wordlessly for a moment—until understanding these men meant rescue,

“Thank you very much,” she said. “I have been confined in this room by villains since last night. What has become of Father? Please take me to H Inn right away. I am A,” she gasped, “and I came to this area to care for Father.”
Izumihara quickly rushed over and untied the woman’s bonds. Speaking of Miss A, he had thought she was the woman seen earlier at the Seaside Inn, but now that he saw this young lady confined in the room, there was no doubt that Gwinn was the one impersonating Miss A at the inn.
Miss A concisely recounted to Gill the events from last night onward. According to her account, she had received a telegram the previous night from Mrs. A, who was her stepmother, and had gone to meet her at the station. There, along with Mrs. A, was her cousin Rickett. He had persistently clung to Miss A, constantly trying to ingratiate himself with her. Mr. A had long been aware of Rickett’s ill character and had prohibited him from entering the house. Despite this—that they had come to meet her at the station alongside Mrs.A—MissA distinctly remembered confronting them with vehement words; beyond that she knew nothing until regaining consciousness to find herself bound hand and foot and confined here.

“I didn’t want to bring my cousin Rickett to the inn, so I called Mrs. A over to the automobile standing nearby and consulted with her.”
“That must have been when they made me inhale some narcotic.”
“Please take me to the inn immediately.”
“Even now, something terrible might be happening to Father.”

Having learned through the manager’s account that Mr. A had passed away, the two exchanged silent glances.
The police automobile arrived before the house without delay thanks to Gill’s telephone call.

Taking along the reluctant innkeeper’s wife, the group sped off in an automobile toward the Seaside Inn.

When they arrived at the inn's entrance, the group noisily entered the front desk area.
The manager stood dumbfounded, staring at Miss A's face as she led the way, but—

“This is terrible! You are undoubtedly Mr. A’s daughter. But the young lady in the fifth-floor room...!” he exclaimed.

“She’s an imposter!”

“She’s a fraud!” The men present all shouted and were about to head toward the elevator when, in an instant, a fierce commotion erupted outside. It was a report that a young woman had fallen from a fifth-floor window onto the paving stones and met a gruesome end.

IV

Upon hearing that, Izumihara was the first to rush out of the inn.
On the rain-soaked paving stones lay a woman in a green dress, her skull crushed in a gruesome death.
Crimson blood thickly stained from her face down to her nape.
That was the unmistakable altered form of Gwinn, who had been Izumihara’s lover.
Izumihara, with the help of the people who had gathered, carried her into a room at the inn and administered first aid, but the woman had already stopped breathing entirely.

“There,” said the group of officers, leaving Izumihara behind as they went up to the fifth floor where Mrs. A sat with her face buried in her hands, trembling uncontrollably in terror.
In the bedroom lay Mr. A, already cold and departed.

Mrs. A was promptly taken into custody by the police.
Some claimed Gwinn had seen the officers’ automobile arrive at the inn and—realizing escape was impossible—attempted suicide by leaping from the fifth-floor window; others whispered meaningfully that Mrs. A must have pushed her to death.
Izumihara could not bring himself to heed either account, yet even though she had betrayed him, seeing his former lover meet such a gruesome end before his eyes brought unbidden tears.
Izumihara remained by the corpse’s side, tending to it without quite knowing why.

Rickett, the nephew, vanished without a trace after that.

Through the confessions of Mrs.A, who had been taken into custody by the police, and the innkeeper’s wife from the lodging where MissA had been confined, the following facts became clear.

The cantankerous Mr.A had come alone to the coast in a carefree manner, and during his stay at the inn, his chronic heart condition flared up, plunging him into critical danger.
Through notification from London, his daughter had come to provide nursing care.
The daughter was the child of Mr.A’s deceased first wife, while the current Mrs.A had been living separately in London for several years.
Mr.A’s condition grew worse with each passing day.
Knowing that informing her father would incur his displeasure yet finding no improvement in his condition, the daughter felt compelled to secretly send a letter to Mrs.A.
On the eve of Mr.A’s passing came a telegram from Mrs.A stating she would arrive at nine o'clock at the station and requesting to be met.
The daughter secretly slipped out from the inn to go to the station only to fall into their trap and be confined in a house belonging to one of Rickett’s associates on the outskirts.
Using Gwinn—Rickett’s mistress who bore an uncanny resemblance to the daughter—as their instrument, Mrs.A stripped the daughter of her sweater to dress Gwinn in it, then boldly stormed into the Seaside Inn while passing Gwinn off as the genuine MissA.

The direct cause of Mr. A’s death was heart paralysis.
However, according to the physician’s diagnosis from the previous day, no one had believed such a sudden change would occur.
The attending physician kept tilting his head in puzzlement, speculating that he might have suffered some extraordinary psychological shock.
However, given that the patient was elderly and extremely debilitated, it was concluded that even if someone had intentionally opened the window by his bedside to let him inhale the cold night air, it would have had a severe impact.

Mrs. A responded to the authorities' interrogation,

“I didn’t oppose bringing my nephew Rickett and the late Gwinn together,” she said pointedly, “but Yosuo somehow took a strong dislike to Gwinn, declaring he wouldn’t give a single penny if she married into the family.”
“Gwinn loved Rickett all too fiercely and clung to him constantly—lately even my nephew seemed to find her rather tiresome.”
“The previous night, exhausted from nursing duties, we retired after one in the morning.”
“Then an hour or two later, I suddenly became aware of Yosuo and Gwinn arguing loudly about something,” she continued with calculated significance, “but I was too spent to rise and simply fell back asleep.”

Dead men tell no tales, and Gwinn’s death remained entirely a mystery. However, were Mr. A to die, the property would naturally pass into Miss A’s hands. Therefore, it was sufficiently recognized that they had confined the real Miss A, used Gwinn—who bore an uncanny resemblance to her—as a substitute during that time to stage their act, and conspired among the three to embezzle the property.

Rickett was later arrested at the London docks. He had a prior record of fraud. They were served warrants under charges of embezzlement and unlawful confinement and were each sentenced to execution.

Even after Izumihara returned to his familiar London boarding house, he could not stop recalling Gwinn’s fleeting life during that time.