Red Chrysanthemum

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Sano listened in horror that grew with every word she spoke. It sounded as if Reiko had entered the chamber of her own volition, surprised and attacked the helpless Lord Mori.

  Reiko shuddered and continued, “The other vision was even worse. I was in bed with him. He was on top of me. We were—” She clawed her arms as if to tear the flesh that had touched Lord Mori’s, shaking her head violently.

  Imagination completed the awful picture in Sano’s mind. His horror multiplied beyond belief. It seemed that his wife had seduced Lord Mori that night, just as Lady Mori had claimed.

  “Then I had the dagger in my hands. I lunged at Lord Mori. I stabbed him.” Reiko pantomimed. Sano flinched. “And then—” She retched and emitted strangled gasps. “Then I was kneeling over a puddle of blood. The red chrysanthemum was in it. I was holding Lord Mori’s manhood.” Again Reiko pantomimed. Sano could almost see the severed, bloody organs in her palms. “And then I said—I said, ”Serves you right, you evil bastard!“ ”

  She flung herself facedown and wept so hard that her body went into spasms. “So you see, it’s true. There’s no escaping it. I killed him! I deserve to be punished!”

  Sano was so aghast that he couldn’t speak. Earlier he’d regretted that he didn’t have solid evidence to prove how the murder had really happened. Now he did. Reiko’s own memories were the strongest evidence against her. Yet he felt a strange sensation of relief because Reiko had finally been honest with him. Now that the air between them was clear, he was more inclined to give her the benefit of doubt than before.

  “Maybe those visions don’t mean what they seem to,” he said.

  She sat up and regarded him through red, swollen, disbelieving eyes. “What else could they mean?”

  “Maybe you only imagined the things you saw in them.”

  “I couldn’t have. They felt so real.” Reiko was despairing yet adamant. “They did happen. I know they did, no matter how much I want to believe they didn’t.”

  “Maybe they were dreams. Dreams can seem very real. There could have been poison in the wine you drank, that gave you such powerful hallucinations that you thought they were memories of things that really happened.”

  “But we don’t know that! How can we be sure that I didn’t do what I remember doing?”

  “I know you.” Sano took her damp, cold, frail hands in his. “I know you couldn’t have killed Lord Mori.”

  A shadow passed over her face, like clouds dimming a landscape already laid to waste by storms. “It’s not as if I’ve never killed before. Why not this time?”

  Sano shied away from the idea that his wife had grown so accustomed to taking lives that there were no moral obstacles to prevent her. “Those other times, you killed to defend yourself or protect other people. That wasn’t murder. And you had no reason to kill Lord Mori. You said so yourself.”

  “Maybe I confronted him because he strangled the boy. Maybe I asked him what he did with Lily’s son. Maybe I wanted to punish him for killing them both.” Reiko exhaled a sigh of desolation. “Or maybe there was no boy, no Lily, no Jiro. Those are the parts of my story that don’t seem real to me now. Maybe I killed Lord Mori because we were lovers and he jilted me.”

  She regarded Sano with suspicion in her eyes. “Or maybe I did it to punish him because he tried to betray you.”

  “No,” Sano said, dismayed that she should think there was truth to the story from the seance in spite of the fact that the medium had confessed to fraud. “That’s not so. And even if you can’t remember everything that happened that night, you surely couldn’t have forgotten everything that led up to it.”

  “Couldn’t I?” Reiko’s face was a mask of self-doubt and fear. “I feel as if I’ve gone insane. I don’t know what I’m capable of anymore. All I’m sure of is that I killed Lord Mori.”

  “What I’m sure of is that you didn’t,” Sano said with growing, passionate conviction.

  But she shook her head. “It’s my duty to die. It’s your duty to do as I asked you.”

  “Never!” Sano drew Reiko close. He felt shivers coursing through her as she leaned against him.

  “This is worse than all those other times we’ve been in trouble, isn’t it?” she whispered. “We’ve done the things that saved us then, but this time we’ve failed. This time is really going to be the end for us, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Sano said, determined to keep up their spirits.

  Reiko lifted her face to his. Her eyes, wide with panic, beseeched him. “What can we do?”

  He summoned his confidence, tried to infuse it into her. “We trust in ourselves. We don’t give up trying to find out the real truth about the murder.”

  “But both our investigations have reached dead ends. What if this is the one crime we can’t solve, when it matters the most?”

  He felt their child move inside her body, heard Masahiro’s voice in the distance. “Don’t even think about that.”

  They sat silent, drawing comfort from their closeness. Sano wished he could stop time, could preserve this moment while they were still safe together, could shut out the dangerous world. But a manservant came to the door and said, “Excuse the interruption, but Sosakan Hi-rata is here to see you.”

  Sano didn’t want to leave Reiko, and this was one instance when he didn’t welcome seeing his friend, but he couldn’t put it off. “I’m coming,” he told the servant.

  Reiko clung to him, her face as panicky as if she thought he would never return, and he said, “You’d better put on some dry clothes. I’ll be with you soon.”

  She nodded. Sano tore himself away. He found Hirata alone in the audience chamber, looking tired but elated.

  “I’ve discovered something that might be important,” Hirata said.

  Once more Sano was struck by how Hirata had changed. His image seemed brighter than the single lantern in the room could account for, as if his rigorous training had reduced his flesh so that the energy inside him showed. But although the change might be good for Hirata, it hadn’t been for the investigation.

  “What is it?” Sano asked.

  Hirata frowned slightly at the coolness in Sano’s manner. “It’s Enju. His alibi has a lot of room for doubt. And there’s reason to think that he and Lord Mori weren’t the most loving father and son in the world.”

  He described how Enju could have arranged for someone to impersonate him traveling on the highway. He went on to the doctor who’d said that living at the Mori estate had changed Enju for the worse, and neither the young man nor his mother had attended Lord Mori during his near-fatal illness.

  Sano was momentarily distracted from his problems concerning Hirata. “So your discoveries have brought us back to the family.”

  He’d been so focused on Hoshina, he had to remind himself that Lady Mori, if not Enju, had been at the estate that night and invited Reiko there herself. Although he still favored Hoshina as the source of his troubles and Reiko’s, he couldn’t dismiss Lord Mori’s closest relations. Especially when incriminating them could exonerate Reiko.

  “Lady Mori and Enju should be investigated further,” Sano said.

  “I can do that tomorrow,” Hirata offered.

  Here was the time to tackle the difficult issue. Sano said, “We’ll discuss that later. We have something else to talk about first.”

  “What?” Hirata said, obviously wondering if something disastrous had happened—or if he’d done something wrong.

  Sano decided not to tell him about Reiko’s revelations. “I examined the guns from Lord Mori’s warehouse. I found a possible connection between some of them and Police Commissioner Hoshina.” As he explained about the craftsmen’s marks and the weapons missing from the police arsenal, surprise blended with dismay in Hirata’s expression. “I must ask you why you didn’t notice the marks.”

  Hirata opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then flopped his hands. “I guess I should have. I don’t know where my mind was.”

  But they
both knew it had been on esoteric martial arts techniques. Sano mustered the stomach for what he needed to say. This sort of personal exchange was more difficult than a sword-fight. “You missed an important clue. If I hadn’t taken a look at those guns myself, it might have gone undiscovered.”

  Hirata hesitated, clearly torn between the impulse to apologize and the urge to defend himself. “But you did look. You found the connection to Hoshina. And it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. You haven’t arrested him yet? You’re still under suspicion?”

  “True,” Sano said, “but if you’d found it yesterday, it might have made a difference. Since then, Lord Matsudaira has found out about my notes in the warehouse. The evidence implicating Hoshina might have convinced him yesterday and gotten me off the hook. Today it’s not enough because his trust in me is almost gone. I can’t risk a major move against Hoshina now.”

  And if Sano had known about the guns this morning, he would have had more leverage to use on Hoshina, could even have forced a confession from him.

  Now Hirata stared in horror because Sano’s fortunes had declined so drastically and his slip had cost Sano a valuable chance. “But maybe we can still find a way to beat Hoshina. Maybe one mistake isn’t so bad.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if this were your only mistake, but it’s not. First there was that anonymous tip.” Sano wondered which of them felt worse. “Nobody can know what would have happened if you’d traced it earlier, but you might have discovered that Lord Mori was plotting a coup before he was murdered, and he might have been executed before someone could frame Reiko or implicate me in the plot.”

  The defiance went out of Hirata, and he fell to his knees. Ashen and mortified, he bowed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say, except that I will commit seppuku to make amends.”

  Sano was both alarmed by and opposed to this plan. Although ritual suicide was required of a samurai who neglected his duty to his master, Sano thought death was often too quickly chosen, an avoidance of facing and correcting one’s transgressions. He couldn’t allow Hirata such a harsh punishment for mistakes, no matter how serious, after everything Hirata had done for him over the years. Nor could he bear that both his wife and his friend were ready to take their own lives.

  “Get up,” Sano said. “I forbid you to commit seppuku. What I want is for you to stop trying to dedicate yourself to your martial arts and serve me at the same time.”

  Hirata lurched to his feet. Even though his bad leg had mended, his movements still lacked grace. “I can do both,” he said in a tone that rang with more desperation than conviction. “I’ll prove it.”

  “That won’t work,” Sano said, even though their history pushed him toward giving in. “You know as well as I do.”

  Misery exuded from Hirata. “If you order me to give up my training, I will.”

  Now Sano faced a dilemma. He knew that even though Hirata’s samurai honor had been compromised by a divided mind, Hirata wouldn’t disobey a direct order. But he couldn’t deny Hirata the thing that was making him a whole man again. He couldn’t afford to pay the price of another slip himself, when Reiko, their unborn child, and Masahiro would also pay. But although he could dictate Hirata’s actions, he couldn’t enforce the kind of loyalty he needed.

  “The choice is for you to make,” Sano said. “If you choose your training, I’ll release you from my service.”

  And their nine years as master and retainer, the most sacred bond in the samurai code of honor, would end. Sano felt a shattering sensation in the air.

  The ghastly look in Hirata’s eyes said he felt it, too. A wide, lonely distance opened between them. Hirata said in a cautious voice, “May I investigate Enju and Lady Mori tomorrow?”

  He was begging for another chance to demonstrate that he could serve duty as well as his personal interests. Sano said, “You can come with me while I investigate them.”

  Comprehension lowered Hirata’s gaze. “Well.” His tone was subdued. “In that case, shall I come back in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  They bade each other a polite farewell. Sano watched Hirata walk away through the wreckage of trust broken, of nine years’ friendship negated at the worst possible time. First Reiko’s terrible confession; now this estrangement. Standing alone in the damp, drafty chamber, Sano felt as though his world were crumbling from within even as hostile external forces assailed it.

  25

  Soon after daybreak, Sano joined detectives Marume and Fukida and the rest of his entourage in his courtyard. The wind moaned through the castle as they mounted their horses. Lightning stitched an incandescent seam through storm clouds. Thunder purred like a tiger creeping down the hills toward town.

  Hirata arrived with detectives Inoue and Arai. In through the gate behind them rode a host of samurai who wore the Matsudaira crest on their armor.

  “Greetings, Honorable Chamberlain. Are you going somewhere?” the leader said in a manner that bordered on insolence.

  Sano recognized him as one of Lord Matsudaira’s top retainers. “As a matter of fact I am.” He was going to re-interrogate Lady Mori and her son. “What brings you here, Kubo-san?”

  “A message from Lord Matsudaira.” Kubo gave Sano a bamboo scroll case. “I suggest that you read it before you go.” He and his men turned and departed.

  Apprehension stole through Sano. He knew better than to expect good tidings in formal messages delivered by disrespectful envoys. He read the scroll and frowned because the news was even worse than he’d expected.

  “What does it say?” Hirata asked.

  Sano read aloud: “ ‘This is to inform you that a special court will be convened this afternoon at the hour of the monkey. You will be tried for treason and your wife for the murder of Lord Mori. Come prepared to defend yourselves. Your judges will be His Excellency the shogun, Police Commissioner Hoshina, and myself. We will question witnesses, examine evidence, establish your guilt or innocence, and decide your fate accordingly.

  Hirata and the detectives looked as dismayed as Sano felt. “Why all of a sudden?” Hirata said.

  “My position has weakened overnight,” Sano said.

  “But our investigation’s not finished,” Hirata said. “We haven’t anything to prove you’re innocent.”

  “That’s exactly the way Lord Matsudaira wants it,” Sano said. “He’s decided I’m a liability.” His allies must have put out the word that they’d deserted him. An official without allies was powerless, a pariah. “He wants to cut me loose before my bad air can contaminate him.”

  Understanding and anger showed on Hirata’s face. “And he’s going to let Hoshina help him. Hoshina must be overjoyed.”

  “Indeed,” Sano said, “because there’s no doubt about the verdict in this trial.”

  “You can get the shogun on your side,” Marume said.

  But he didn’t sound any more hopeful of that than Sano was that the shogun could stand up to both Lord Matsudaira and Hoshina working against Sano.

  “If only I could have brought Hoshina down before this happened.” Anguish filled Hirata’s eyes because his mistakes had lost Sano the chance.

  “There’s no time to waste on talking about what could have been,” Sano said. “We have only a few hours to prepare some kind of defense for my wife and me.”

  “Do you still want to interrogate Lord Mori’s widow and stepson?” Fukida asked.

  Sano thought a moment. “No. I can predict that if they killed Lord Mori, they’ll lie. Even if I force them to confess, Lord Matsudaira and Police Commissioner Hoshina won’t accept that as proof of my wife’s innocence. It’s time for a radically different approach. Come with me.”

  “Where?” Hirata asked. “To do what?”

  “I’ll explain on the way,” Sano said.

  “Aren’t you going to tell Lady Reiko what happened?”

  “I can’t,” Sano said, “She’s already left the house. I’ll leave a message for her. Let’s solve the cri
me before she gets home, so it won’t matter what a close call we had.”

  A hired palanquin carried Reiko through the bancho, the district where the rank and file of the Tokugawa vassals lived. Live bamboo fences enclosed hundreds of small, rundown residences. The vassals were poor compared to their landed superiors and the rich merchant class, and the rains had reduced their neighborhood to a swampy slum. They rode and Reiko’s bearers trudged through ankle-deep puddles swimming with manure. Reiko kept the window of her palanquin open a mere crack so she could see where she was going. This was a place where she mustn’t show her face because people might recognize her.

  Near a residence distinguished by characters carved on a wooden sign outside, she called for her bearers to stop, put her hand out the window, and signaled her escorts, who rode behind her. Lieutenant Asukai dismounted, ran up to the gate, and knocked. As he spoke to someone hidden by the leafy bamboo, she fought the despair that threatened to overwhelm her.