Red Chrysanthemum

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Sano inwardly shuddered to think that the day had come when he must resort to such deceit to keep his place at court. “No thank you.”

  “Are you sure?” Nyogo’s cheeks dimpled. “I can really help you.”

  “I’m sure.” Even though deceit had kept Yanagisawa in power for some twenty years, Sano couldn’t trust a turncoat like Nyogo.

  “You aren’t going to just leave me here, are you?” Fear turned her voice shrill, aged her face. “Police Commissioner Hoshina will find out I talked to you. He’ll kill me.” She extended her clasped hands to Sano. “You have to protect me. I beg you!”

  “Don’t worry,” Sano said. “You’re coming with me.”

  She was his only witness against Hoshina, his only source of evidence that he was not a traitor nor Reiko a murderess. He wasn’t about to let any harm come to Nyogo.

  While his men took her to a good, safe hiding place, he would have a little talk with Police Commissioner Hoshina. It was high time they settled a few matters.

  A ferryman rowed Hirata and Detectives Inoue and Arai across the Sumida River. The rain-stippled waters lapped high against their banks. The men huddled under the windblown canopy until the boat docked at the eastern suburb known as Mukojima—“Yonder Isle.”

  Across the embankment spread a pleasure resort where crowds viewed the cherry blossoms in spring, the harvest moon in autumn, and the snow in winter. It was drenched and desolate now. Hirata and his men rented horses at a stable. They rode past the Mimeguri Shrine, into countryside that had once been the Tokugawa hunting grounds. The current shogun, a devout Buddhist sworn to preserve animal life, had banned hunting. Now vegetable gardens and rice paddies lay quiet and peaceful under the gray sky. Peasants no longer dominated by game wardens worked their fields. Hirata and his men dismounted near some matched huts.

  They’d spent the morning on a hunt for people formerly employed at the Mori estate. Archives in the ministry that supervised the daimyo class had yielded the name of the Mori clan physician who’d left the estate two years ago. Physicians to high society were a small, exclusive group, and Hirata had tracked Dr. Unryu, through his friends, to this village.

  After knocking on a few doors, Hirata found a middle-aged woman who said, “Dr. Unryu is my father. Please come in.” She led the way to a backyard where an elderly man crouched by a pond, dropping crumbs into the water. “Father, you have visitors.”

  Dr. Unryu’s face was benign, creased with many wrinkles, and marked with age spots. He smiled and bowed. “Greetings.”

  Hirata and his men joined Dr. Unryu by the pond. Gigantic orange carp surfaced amid lily pads and gobbled the food. “Those are nice fish,” Hirata said.

  The doctor nodded, gratified. He strewed the remaining crumbs and rose shakily to his feet. “Breeding them is my hobby since I retired. I used to work for the Mori clan. I was their physician for twenty-eight years.”

  “That’s why we’ve come to see you.” Hirata introduced himself and his men. “We’re investigating the murder of Lord Mori, and we need your assistance.”

  “Murder? Lord Mori? How terrible.” Concern deepened the wrinkles around Dr. Unryu’s eyes, which were still clear and intelligent. “How did it happen?”

  Hirata explained that Lord Mori had been stabbed to death, but omitted the details. “Everyone in the household is a suspect. That includes Lord Mori’s wife and stepson. I need to know about their relations with him.”

  Dr. Unryu hesitated.

  “How did he treat them?” Hirata prompted. “How did they get along?”

  “When I left his employ, he told me to keep everything I’d seen or heard at his estate to myself,” Dr. Unryu said.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind your disobeying his order if it could help us catch his killer,” Hirata said.

  Dr. Unryu shook his head; his brow creased in thought. “I presume that Enju is Lord Mori’s heir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord Mori has been paying me a pension since I retired. It’s not much money, but it supports my daughter and me. If Enju should find out I talked to you, he might take it away.”

  “If Enju takes it away, I’ll pay it.” Hirata sensed that the doctor had information well worth the expense.

  Reassured, the doctor nodded. “I should mention that I didn’t have much to do with Lord Mori, his wife, or Enju. They were blessed with good health; they didn’t need me very often. I mostly treated other people at the estate. But I recall two things that you might like to know about. The first happened the year before I retired. Lord Mori took ill with severe chest pains. It was heart trouble. He almost died.

  “I was constantly at his bedside. So were his chief retainers. But Enju never came near him.” Disapproval inflected Dr. Unryu’s voice. “His heir should have comforted him, or at least paid the respects due to him. I thought it very strange that Enju didn’t.”

  Hirata thought that Enju’s behavior didn’t jibe with his mother’s story about their idyllic family life.

  “Neither did Lady Mori,” said the doctor. “Every day she asked me how her husband’s health was, but she never even spoke to him. And Lord Mori never asked for her or Enju. It seemed he knew they wouldn’t come.”

  It sounded to Hirata as if the widow as well as the heir had been on bad terms with Lord Mori. Perhaps Lady Mori and Enju had been so sorry he’d survived that they’d done away with him themselves. But Hirata needed more than just speculations to back up this theory. A motive would help.

  “Why do you think they acted that way?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. None of the family ever confided in me.”

  “What was the other event you remember?”

  “Something from when Lord and Lady Mori had recently married.

  Lady Mori and Enju had lived in the estate for just a short time. Enju was quite a lively, friendly little boy. He liked to watch me prepare medicines. He asked clever questions and seemed truly interested in the answers. But after a while he stopped coming to see me. I thought he’d found other things to do. Then one day Lady Mori summoned me.

  “She said Enju had been having bad dreams, waking up and screaming at night. And he’d been wetting his bed. She asked me to cure whatever was wrong with him. When she brought him to me, I was shocked at how much he’d changed. He was quiet, sullen. When I tried to examine him, he didn’t want me to undress him or touch him. He cried and fought so hard that I couldn’t perform an examination.”

  “What did you do?” Hirata asked.

  “I gave him tea brewed from mantis egg case, dragon bones, and oyster shells for incontinence, and licorice, sweet flag root, and biota seeds for nervous hysteria.”

  “Did he get better?”

  “I had only Lady Mori’s word for it. After I’d treated him for a few days, she told me to stop; that was enough.”

  “Did you ever find out what was wrong with Enju?”

  “No. But I had a distinct feeling that Lady Mori knew.”

  Hirata thanked Dr. Unryu. As he and the detectives rode away from the village, Arai said, “Something must have been pretty wrong between Enju and Lord Mori, if Enju wouldn’t even visit Lord Mori on what looked to be his deathbed. Do you think it had anything to do with his murder?”

  “I’m sure.” Hirata had a strong albeit unfounded hunch. It might have been the cause of the argument between Lord Mori and Enju, involving something Enju had been ordered to do but didn’t want to, overheard on the road.

  “What do you think Enju’s childhood problem was?” Inoue said. “Could it be related, too?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe,” Hirata said. “It sounds as if something bad happened to him after his mother married Lord Mori. But whatever it was, Enju lied about his relationship with his stepfather. He has a little explaining to do. So does Lady Mori.”

  21

  “With all due respect, Lady Reiko, but maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Lieutenant Asukai said.

  In the back entry w
ay of the private chambers, Reiko put on a shaggy straw rain cape. “I can’t just sit home and wait any longer. I must help my husband find out who killed Lord Mori.” After her clash with Colonel Kubota had failed to prove that it wasn’t him, she felt more desperate to solve the mystery. “And I know of more people who need to be investigated.”

  “Tell Chamberlain Sano or Sosakan Hirata. Let them investigate,” Asukai suggested.

  “They have enough to do already.” Reiko slipped her feet into thick-soled wooden sandals that would raise her above the puddles in the streets. “If my clues don’t lead anywhere, it’s better that I wasted my time than theirs.”

  Concerned and protective, Asukai said, “Let me go find your suspects and bring them here to you.”

  “It will be quicker if I go myself.”

  “I could talk to your suspects for you. Just tell me what to ask them.”

  Yet Reiko thought this was no time for a solo test of his untried detective skills. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve made up my mind.”

  “You shouldn’t leave the compound,” Lieutenant Asukai persisted. “If Lord Matsudaira finds out, he won’t like it.”

  “He won’t find out,” Reiko said, bundling her hair up inside a cotton kerchief.

  “If people should see you—”

  “They’ll never recognize me.” Reiko clapped a wicker hat on her head, picked up an umbrella and a basket. She looked for all the world like a maid going on an errand.

  Lieutenant Asukai frowned, troubled enough to oppose his mistress. “It’s dangerous outside.” He stood between Reiko and the door. “And it’s not just your own safety you’re risking.”

  “If we don’t solve this case, I’ll be executed. My baby will never be born,” Reiko said. And she couldn’t bear to think that it might be the child of a murderess. She must prove otherwise. “Either help me, or please stand aside.”

  Resignation drained the fight from Lieutenant Asukai. He opened the door to the wet, gray day, but he said, “You can’t take your palanquin. People will know it’s you inside. And you can’t walk far in your condition.”

  “There’s a place down the boulevard from the main gate where I can rent a kago.” The basket-chairs, suspended from poles and carried by men for hire, were a cheap form of public transportation. “You and my other guards will meet me there and follow me at a distance.”

  She made her way through Edo Castle’s passages and checkpoints without incident. She’d learned from past experience that maids were virtually invisible. Soon she was seated in the swaying, jouncing kago while its bearers trotted toward town. A sense of freedom exhilarated her. She felt buoyed by hope, vibrantly alive.

  Reiko tried to forget that she might not be free or alive much longer.

  The trip to and from Ueno had taken Sano all morning and part of the afternoon. Now, eager for his confrontation with his enemy, he rode with his entourage through the Hibiya administrative district. He d never been to Police Commissioner Hoshina’s house— they weren’t exactly on visiting terms. He was almost as curious to see how Hoshina lived as determined to wring some facts out of him.

  Hoshina had an estate near the edge of the district. It was one of the farthest from Edo Castle. Only a road and a drainage canal separated its perimeter wall from the Nihonbashi merchant quarter. This location could owe to Hoshina’s low seniority at court or the fact that police carried a taint of death from the executions they ordered. Furthermore, his position in Lord Matsudaira’s inner circle had always been shaky. But he’d made the most of his estate.

  Sano and his men dismounted outside a gate with triple-tiered roofs and double doors hung on polished brass pillars. Hoshina’s family crest adorned a huge banner that drooped in the rain. Sentries wearing flashy armor greeted Sano in a polite but cold manner. A horde of troops accompanied Sano and his men into the estate. If Sano hadn’t already known he was entering hostile territory, there was no mistaking it now.

  The troops led him inside a mansion so big that it dwarfed its ground. The corridors were floored with shining cypress, the coffered ceilings painted and gilded in the same style as the shogun’s palace. Servants hovered in rooms furnished with teak cabinets, metal filigree lanterns, and lacquer tables of the finest workmanship. The air smelled of expensive incense. Hoshina’s voice carried down the corridor toward Sano.

  “That’s not big enough.”

  “But if we make it any bigger, it will be practically right up against the wall,” said another man’s voice. “You won’t have any view.”

  “I don’t care about the damned view,” Hoshina said. “I want a reception room that’s fine enough for important guests.”

  “We’ll have to enlarge the foundation. That will cost a lot extra.”

  “To hell with the cost. I won’t have people thinking that I’m some rustic from the provinces who doesn’t know how to entertain. I won’t have them laughing behind my back at me.”

  Sano and detectives Marume and Fukida reached the threshold of a room of modest proportions, filled with gray, humid, outdoor air.

  Inside, Hoshina stood with a samurai who held an architectural plan they were examining. The doors along one wall were open‘, revealing stone blocks set in the muddy ground, a base for an extension that would double the room’s size. Hoshina looked up from the plans at Sano.

  “What are you doing here?” His face showed offense that Sano would visit him without invitation, and fear that Sano had overheard him and he’d exposed himself.

  Sano felt a twinge of pity for Hoshina, who was so insecure, cared too much about other people’s opinions, and thought fine, expensive material things would make up for his lack of self-worth. But pity didn’t ease their mutual antagonism. And Hoshina’s human foibles didn’t make him any less dangerous.

  Quite the contrary.

  “I have news that you might find interesting,” Sano said.

  Hoshina raised his eyebrows in hopeful, exaggerated surprise. He clapped his hand over his heart. “Your wife has been convicted of murder. She’s on her way to the execution ground. And you’re soon to follow.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Sano said. “What I’ve come to tell you is that I’ve had a talk with a friend of yours.”

  “Who would that be?” Hoshina glanced at the architectural plans as if impatient for Sano to leave so he could go back to his business.

  “Lady Nyogo,” Sano said.

  Hoshina’s head snapped up. He tried to conceal his dismay, but failed. “How—?”

  “It’s hard to keep a secret in Edo,” Sano said. “You should remember that the next time you want to hide a witness in a murder investigation. Especially one that has conspired with you to bear false evidence.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hoshina waved his hand at the architect and said, “You’re dismissed. Redo those plans.” The architect left. Hoshina said, “I never conspired with Lady Nyogo. I don’t even know the woman.”

  “That’s not what she says. She told me all about how you planted her in the shogun’s court. Do you want to hear what else she said?”

  “She said all she needed to at the seance. She revealed your plot to overthrow Lord Matsudaira.”

  “She’s admitted that the seance was just an act,” Sano said, “and the story about me was pure fabrication. She also confessed that you put her up to it.”

  “That’s sheer, ridiculous rot.” Hoshina made a sound of disgust. “What did you do, beat her until she told you what you wanted to hear?”

  “Not at all,” Sano said. “I just convinced her that giving you up was in her best interests.”

  Hoshina stared in consternation, but recovered. “She obviously lied about me to save her own skin from you. It’s her word against mine. She’s a peasant woman; I’m the police commissioner. Nobody’s going to believe her.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Sano said even though Hoshina had a point. “Your plan to use Lady Nyogo to man
ipulate the shogun worked a little too well. She’s got him eating out of her hand. All she needs to do is hold a seance and have one of his ancestors tell him I’m innocent and you forced her to make up that story from Lord Mori’s ghost.” Sano added, “Incidentally, you shouldn’t have been so quick to trust Nyogo. She was quick to betray you and offer to work for me.”

  “According to you.”

  But Hoshina was clearly disturbed that his plan might have backfired. He gazed at the unfinished extension, as if wondering whether he would live to complete it. Then he turned to one of his guards; a glance passed between them. The guard started out of the room.

  “In case you’re going to the convent to silence Lady Nyogo, don’t bother,” Sano said. “She’s not there anymore.”