Читать книгу Murder at the Tokyo Lawn & Tennis Club - Robert J. Collins - Страница 9

CHAPTER 2

The fact that Shig's body was initially discovered by Nat Forrest, a junior member of the club and occasional partner of Shig's, delayed rational response to the tragedy for several minutes. Nothing would have changed the fact of Shig's death, of course, but the considerable turmoil introduced by Nat's immediate reaction to the situation would have been avoided.

Nat, not wearing his glasses, went as far as stepping into the bath with one foot before comprehending the circumstances as presented. His subsequent hysterical explosion from the bath area, the accompanying screams and gestures, and the long slide on the locker room floor ending with a head-banging crash against the building's main support beam created something of a diversion amongst the locker room denizens. In fact, the honorable Tatsuo Morimoto, club president, was still waving a towel over the semiconscious Nat Forrest five minutes later when a decision was made to call an ambulance—for Nat.

A few more minutes were spent by the locker room denizens discussing the peculiar behavior of foreigners and their unexpected outbursts. The club was composed of about fifty percent foreigners, but the Japanese members still found themselves wrestling almost daily with bicultural anomalies and mysteries. In all fairness, the Japanese members were an internationalized crowd—many had lived abroad and most had traveled abroad—nevertheless, there were still surprising and unpredictable behavioral developments.

In this case, an American was on the floor, clearly crazed, naked as the day he was born, and babbling about his foot, a headache, and "bodies underwater." What, when it comes right down to it, could be more difficult?

Matters didn't come to a head until a fourth-generation Japanese resident named Kim—still a Korean and make no mistake about that—wandered into the bath and rediscovered Shig.

The locker room denizens rushed to the bath area, Nat Forrest sat up and rubbed his head, and an ambulance's siren wailed in the background as all hell broke loose at the staid Tokyo Lawn Tennis Club.