It all seemed mad. It all seemed deranged. Yet the criminal’s execution was so exceedingly brilliant that, clearly, he could be neither a halfwit nor insane. If this business seemed mad to us, was it only because we could not figure out his plan? Were the three successive murders just three points on the circumference of a bloody circle that the

I found out afterwards that Bankachi was a corruption of Ubagaichi, a place name literally meaning “the town for old women”. No doubt it must have had something to do with the legendary practice of abandoning old women in the mountains and leaving them there to die…

And in fact the wooden transom, or ranma, bore the inscription: “With the hand of a demon and the heart of the Buddha”.