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it would be Mycroft Holmes. My brother-in-law’s complex, imaginative, and apparently ubiquitous information-gathering machinery left the official Intelligence of any nation in the dust. If Japan’s secret police were up to that level of creativity, I was prepared to be impressed.
    “Why would one of my brother’s agents not have identified herself?”
    “Because it’s your brother.”
    “Hmm. And if she’s not his?”
    “Who else—oh. Your blackmailer?” I felt a headache coming on. “Because she came aboard just after he and his wife did?”
    “Because two unusual events are often linked.”
    “Oh, Holmes. Do you have any reason whatsoever to suspect that the Earl of Darley is a crook? Any evidence that he ever was, for that matter? Or that Haruki Sato is not what she appears?”
    “None,” he replied serenely.
    I rested my head back against the deck-chair and closed my eyes. I was well accustomed to my husband’s need to manufacture work for himself, but doing so two days into what might be considered a holiday did not bode well for the coming weeks. “Do you want to stop the lessons?”
    “I see no reason to do so,” he said. “She is a more effective teacher than the stoker.”
    “And lessons with her won’t leave you black with coal dust.”
    Neither of us needed to add the additional reason: keeping her close kept her under observation.
    I attempted to push the conversation past this random assortment of criminal suspicions. “Do you think we’ll have enough of the language to stumble through on our own?”
    “I imagine we shall find schoolboys in every village, following us about, eager to practise their English.”
    “Yes, I don’t suppose there’s much point in trying to go incognito.”
    “Not unless you’re willing to act the hunchback day in and day out.” He and I would have to lose six or eight inches to pass for even a tall Japanese—to say nothing of arduous makeup. “I’m too young to begin a lifetime of back problems, thank you. We’ll have to resign ourselves to attracting attention wherever we go.”
    “Perhaps not.”
    “You have an alternative? Other than amputating our legs?”
    “We will be conspicuous no matter what. The trick is to be easily dismissed thereafter.” He had something in mind: I waited for it. “Russell, I propose we become Buddhist pilgrims.”
    I snorted at the picture of Sherlock Holmes in pilgrim garb, chanting his rosary.
    “You believe me uninterested in Nirvana?” he asked.
    “I was thinking more about the Buddhist tenet that all things are illusion.”
    “That is one doctrine I might have difficulty espousing,” he admitted.
    “Surely we’d stand out even more in those white pilgrim robes? Do they wear robes?”
    “A short jacket and trousers, white, plus a hat and staff. In which we would no doubt attract notice. But once the locals had marvelled over us, their minds would be at rest.”
    “English Buddhists?”
    “Mad Westerners are all over.”
    With that, I had to agree. And having just left India, where to be a foreigner is to become a magnet for every beggar, cab-driver, and tout for miles, I had no wish to repeat the rôle. “If we don’t want to go as ordinary tourists, I’d guess pilgrim is worth a try. Surely it won’t be difficult to memorise a few prayers and hymns.”
    “There is a group of touring American Buddhists down in Third Class, robes and all.”
    “ Third Class?”
    “Practicing humility, one supposes.”
    Inwardly, I sighed. Outwardly, I put on an attempt at enthusiasm. “Oh, good.”
    Abruptly, he stepped away from the railing and made for the companionway. “You’re going down now?” I asked him in surprise.
    “Miss Sato has just left the ship. The Darleys went twelve minutes ago.”
    Oh, dear. I called out at his back, “Holmes, there may be servants.”
    “I enquired. The earl, his wife, and his son are all doing without on this voyage.”
    “Really?”
    “So I am told.”
    “Well,