Holmes of Kyoto – 02 – Pretty, Fairly Well-Off People with Problems

Miyashita Saori has been named Saio-dai, the centerpiece of the Aoi Festival chosen for her wisdom, grace, and social standing, and a tremendous honor for a woman in Kyoto to boot. But she’s received threatening letters warning her to bow out, and Holmes-san is the man you come to when you have a little mystery to solve.

Saori has a little sister Kaori, who attends the same school as Aoi, but I suspected her almost immediately of being the culprit. To put on my own deerstalker cap, it wasn’t just her beads of sweat or the camera seeming to linger on her; it was the mere fact Kaori was present to begin with. Surely Saori and her mother would’ve sufficed for the visit to see Holmes.

It takes Holmes a little longer than me to figure this out; or if he also figured it out immediately, he goes through more trouble to confirm it, attending Saori’s flower arranging class’s exhibit, then having Aoi discretely pump Saori’s jealous classmates for info. I never saw them as culprits; they were red herrings!

Seeing two vastly different flower arrangements purportedly by Saori get Holmes thinking about the two similarly different threatening letters. Eventually he gets Kaori and Saori to admit they wrote the first and second letters, respectively.

The first, because Kaori worried about the costs of Saio-dai preparation their struggling family business would strain to bear. Saori wrote the second one, hoping her mother would pull her out of the running so that her former friends would become friends with her again. (I also like how her Kansai “twang” came out when she was caught and flustered.)

Kaori had somewhat good intentions, but Saori was just being overly deferential to people she doesn’t really need as friends. Saori goes through with the Aoi Festival, as resplendent as expected, while Aoi becomes friends with Kaori.

And there you have it: Holmes not only spots counterfeit antiques, but solves the mysteries of non-poor people (with awesome Kansai accents) bored enough to create make ’em. Nothin’ wrong with that!