Sano Ichiro 11 Red Chrysanthemum (2006)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  A Tokugawa soldier rode by. Reiko hastily ducked inside a shop whose entrance curtains bore a picture of bamboo canes. Lieutenant Asukai followed her into a showroom filled with articles made from bamboo. Screens lined the walls; baskets sat on shelves; lanterns hung from the ceiling. All featured the intricate designs that had made the shop famous. Near the door was a display of its specialty—cricket cages. They weren’t the simple type in which children placed crickets they’d caught so they could take them indoors and listen to them sing. They were elaborate miniature houses, pagodas, and castles, made for wealthy connoisseurs. The talent that had gone into them had raised their creator from outcast to artisan to successful merchant, a transformation virtually impossible.

  The store was empty except for three clerks kneeling at a counter strewn with ledgers for recording sales and sorobon for calculating prices. One of the men rose and approached Reiko. “Welcome,” he said, bowing. “May I serve you?”

  It took Reiko a moment to recognize him. The last time she’d seen him had been at his parents’ home, when they’d asked her to investigate his prospective bride. Then his crown had been shaved in samurai fashion; now his hair was cropped short all over his head. Then he’d worn silk robes and two swords; now, cotton robes, no weapons. His face, which she recalled as handsome but childish, had a new, mature strength.

  “Greetings, Tsuzuki-san,” Reiko said.

  He took a second look at her, and emotions played across his features in a sequence too rapid for her to sort them out. Lieutenant Asukai put his hand on his sword, in case Tsuzuki should attack Reiko.

  “Well,” Tsuzuki said, smiling with sardonic merriment. “Funny meeting you again.”

  Reiko cautiously relaxed, but Asukai stayed close to her. She said, “My congratulations on your marriage.”

  “So you know about it. Did my mother tell you?”

  “Yes,” Reiko said. “I asked her where to find you, and she said your in-laws might know. I came to see them. But I didn’t expect you to be here.” She’d thought he and his bride had run away together, as star-crossed lovers did.

  He pantomimed a laugh: His smile opened and his eyes narrowed, without sound. “Oh, I’ve been here ever since my parents disowned me. My father not only cut me off with no money, but he got me kicked out of the army. Luckily, my wife’s parents were more accepting. They took me in even though I was a worthless ronin. Now I’m a clerk and apprentice.”

  Roaming around the shop, he touched several baskets. “These are my work. Not bad, eh?” Genuine pride underlay his self-mocking tone. “But it’ll be a long time before I can do anything like this.” His manner turned reverent as he pointed to the cricket cages. “My father-in-law did those.”

  Tsuzuki tilted his head and studied Reiko. “Say, why are you here? To see what became of me?”

  “That’s one reason. This is the other.” Reiko handed him the letter he’d written.

  As he read it, bitter nostalgia darkened his face for a moment before he smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” he said, giving the letter back to Reiko. “But I was so mad at you, I had to get it off my chest.”

  “You’re not mad anymore?” Reiko suggested.

  Again came his soundless laugh. “Oh, I was for a while. But pretty soon I started to think you did me favor.

  “I used to be a good-for-nothing lout. My friends were just like me. We didn’t care that we were wasting our lives. Now I’ve lost my gang as well as my family. I don’t get drunk every night, or pick fights, or gamble and run up debts. I earn my own living instead of mooching off the Tokugawa regime. And you know what? I used to think merchants were beneath samurai, but my in-laws are fine people.” His voice expressed genuine respect for them. “Finer man my parents, who care more about status and customs than what’s inside people’s hearts.”

  Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’d like you to meet someone.”

  A young woman hovered in a doorway that led to the rear of the shop. She cradled a baby in her arms. When Tsuzuki beckoned, she shyly approached.

  “This is my wife, Ume,” he said, “and our son.”

  Ume bowed; he introduced Reiko to her. As they murmured polite greetings, Reiko noticed that Ume was strong, robust, and beautiful, the child plump and rosy with good health. She also noticed the affection with which Tsuzuki regarded them.

  “I’m glad you came,” he told her. “If not for you, things wouldn’t have turned out this well. I’m glad for a chance to thank you.”

  “I must thank you for keeping my family’s secret,” his wife said. “If there’s anything we can do to repay you, just ask.”

  It would have been proper for Reiko to tell the authorities that the family were eta, which would have resulted in them losing their business and being sent to the outcast slum. But she’d not wanted to destroy everything they’d worked so hard to achieve.

  “Please forget the letter I wrote you,” Tsuzuki said. “That’s not how I feel anymore. You don’t have to be afraid that I’ll hurt you.” He regarded Reiko with curiosity. “What else did you want?”

  “I’m not going to find it here.” Despair washed through Reiko because she’d finished her inquiries and they’d come to nothing. Owing Tsuzuki an explanation, she said, “Maybe you’ve heard that Lord Mori has been murdered and I’m the principal suspect?”

  “No, I haven’t. News from up high takes awhile to trickle down here.”

  “I’m looking for the person who killed Lord Mori and framed me,” Reiko continued. “I thought it might be you.”

  She’d been counting on that, but Tsuzuki was truly happy with his lot in life. She believed that he had indeed cut his ties with samurai society and would have had no way inside the Mori estate. Her search for the murderer must end at herself.

  “Well, I’m sorry I can’t oblige,” Tsuzuki said. “There must be other people who had it in for you. Who else did you run afoul of with your investigating?”

  “There’s Colonel Kubota.”

  “I know him. A powerful man, and pretty mean. What did you do to him?”

  When Reiko explained, Tsuzuki whistled in amazement. “You really know how to offend people. You’d better watch out for Kubota.”

  “There’s also the family of a clerk named Goro. He was executed for a murder that I investigated,” Reiko said. “But I haven’t been able to locate them.”

  Tsuzuki started to shake his head, then stopped. “Wait. Did he strangle a pregnant girl?”

  “Yes,” Reiko said. “How did you know?”

  “It was in the news broadsheets,” his wife said. “I remember.”

  “That’s not how I heard about it.” Tsuzuki lit up with surprise and glee. “Hey, I may be able to help you after all.” Irony twisted his mouth. “Who’d have thought I would ever want to? But listen to this:

  “One night about a year ago, in the old days, my gang had a party at Lord Mori’s. I drank a lot, and I passed out in the garden. When I woke up the next morning, I heard two women talking. One was complaining that her son, Goro, had been put to death for strangling a girl that he’d raped and gotten pregnant and throwing her body in a canal. The other woman said maybe he deserved it. But the first one insisted that he was innocent even though he’d confessed.”

  Reiko stared in astonishment. “His mother was inside the Mori estate? How can that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Tsuzuki said.

  “Who was the woman she was talking to?”

  “Sorry.”

  A wisp of memory from her visits to the Mori estate solidified in Reiko’s mind. She pictured the gray-haired woman who’d seemed familiar, whom she hadn’t been able to place. Revelation exploded in her mind like a bomb.

  She had an enemy inside that estate, one who’d been plotting retribution against her for two years, and had somehow ended up in the right position to exact it. The clerk’s mother was Lady Mori’s personal maid. Here was the connection between her past experiences and her present troubles.r />
  Ginkgo Street resembled an abscess in a line of rotting teeth. The fire had burned an entire square block in a poor neighborhood on the edge of the Nihonbashi merchant quarter, which was hemmed in by canals that had kept the blaze from spreading. Buildings were reduced to black fragments of walls, charred beams, broken roof tiles, and cinders. Ashes blackened the puddles through which Sano and his men rode. The odor of smoke lingered. The area was deserted; the rains had delayed the rebuilding. It was eerily silent, as though haunted by the spirits of people who’d died in the fire. It was a good place for fugitives to hide.

  Lightning crooked a finger down the heavens; thunder crashed. Drops pelted Sano as he noticed one building in better shape than the rest, located across the ruins by the canal at the northern edge. It looked to have all its walls and part of its roof, which was made of heavy, fireproof tiles.

  “That must be where Lily is hiding,” Sano said. He pulled back on the reins. “We’d better not let her see us coming.”

  He and his men jumped off their horses. Sano, Marume, and Fukida ran along the road, past the burned houses, to approach the building from the front. Hirata, Inoue, and Arai stole through the ruins toward the back. Sano slipped around the corner, treading softly on the footpath by the canal, above houseboats battened down against the storms. The building rose above piles of debris. The roof had caved in; the remains of a balcony dangled from the front. During a lull in the thunder, a high-pitched, frantic scream shrilled from the building.

  “What was that?” Sano said.

  He and the detectives were already running toward the doorway. A samurai stepped out of it. Sano bumped smack into him. He slipped on the muddy path and went down on one knee and hand. He looked up at Sano. Their gazes met in surprised recognition.

  “Captain Torai,” Sano said.

  Dismay showed on Torai’s face. Marume said, “What are you doing here?” At the same moment Sano noticed bright red splotches on the white collar of Torai’s under-robe.

  Torai scrambled upright and fled in the opposite direction. An awful suspicion gripped Sano. “Stop him!” he ordered Marume and Fukida.

  They bolted down the path after Torai. Sano hurried into the house. Dim, cavernous space smelled of dampness and burnt wood. The faint light that came through holes in the ceiling illuminated rain dripping onto dirty, warped floorboards. Partitions divided the house into sections where different families must have lived. These were open to Sano’s view as he ran past them; the doors had been removed. All were empty except for wet debris. Sano hastened down the passage to a chamber away from the worst damage to the roof. In a corner lay a faded quilt, a bundle of clothes, and a basket of rice balls— signs of habitation.

  “Lily!” Sano called.

  His voice echoed through the house. No answer came. Sano spied a straw sandal lying on the floor, its toe pointed at the threshold where he stood. He turned. A line of red splotches led farther down the passage. As he followed them, he smelled iron in the dank air. The splotches grew larger, running into the puddles, then into a pool of blood that spread, glistening crimson, across the floor of the last room.

  In the center of the pool a woman lay like a broken doll. Her coarse, black hair was thick with blood, her cheap floral kimono drenched red. Her hands were flung up. Bloody gashes marked their palms. Her head was beneath a window whose paper panes had burned. Light from it bathed her white face, her open mouth revealing teeth awash in more blood. Her eyes seemed to stare in terror at her last sight, the attacker who’d cut her throat from ear to ear.

  Horror at this violent death, pity for the victim, and fury at her murderer rose up in Sano. Shouting a curse, he pounded his fist against the door frame.

  Hirata, Inoue, and Arai joined Sano. “What happened?” Hirata said. They saw the corpse and exclaimed in unison. Lightning flashed outside, searing the gory spectacle of death into Sano’s eyes. “Is that Lily?”

  “As far as I can tell,” Sano said. Her age and gaudy clothes matched Reiko’s description. His triumph at learning her whereabouts turned to the disappointment of utter failure.

  Bending down, Hirata touched the blood. “It’s still warm. She must have been killed just now.”

  “Yes,” Sano said. “We were too late. He beat us to her by only a few moments.”

  “Who?” Hirata asked.

  “Captain Torai.” Sano explained how he’d met Captain Torai coming out of the building. “There was blood on his clothes. He ran. Fukida and Marume are chasing him.”

  “So it was Torai who threatened the people around the Persimmon Teahouse into keeping quiet about Lily.”

  “With help from his friends, on Police Commissioner Hoshina’s orders, no doubt.”

  “But why did he go to the trouble of tracking her down and killing her now?” Hirata asked.

  “To tie up a loose thread,” Sano said. “Hoshina wants to make very certain my wife is convicted and I’m ruined at our trials today. The last thing he wants is for me to bring in Lily as a witness for our defense and make Lord Matsudaira change his mind about us. Which I could have done, if we’d found her trail sooner. But there’s still hope. Even though we’ve lost Lily, there’s one witness left.”

  “Captain Torai?”

  “None other. He’s been in on Hoshina’s plot to cover up evidence in the murder investigation. He knows all about it. I’ll bring him before Lord Matsudaira and the shogun and tell them he murdered an important witness.”

  “The blood on him should help convince them,” Hirata said.

  “They won’t care about the death of a peasant woman, but they won’t take kindly to being tricked,” Sano said. “I think Torai will finally betray Hoshina to save his own skin. That should help clear my wife.”

  “And good-bye to Hoshina in the process,” Hirata said.

  “That should knock some wind out of the campaign to make me out as a traitor,” Sano said. “But let’s go give Fukida and Marume a hand, because first we need to catch Captain Torai.”

  27

  Eager to find Sano and tell him she’d made a major discovery, Reiko headed toward Edo Castle with her entourage. As she neared the main gate, someone ran up to her palanquin and looked in the window.

  “Reiko-san!” It was Osugi, her old nurse, drenched by the rain. “I’m so glad I’ve caught you!”

  “What’s the matter?” Reiko said, surprised.

  “Don’t go home,” Osugi said, trotting alongside her.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s at the house.”

  “Who?”

  “That man who came to see you yesterday. Colonel Kubota.”

  Reiko started. “What’s he doing there?”

  “He came to arrest you. He’s got a lot of soldiers with him. They’re waiting for you to come back.”

  “But why?” Reiko said, as much mystified as disturbed. She called for the bearers to stop. Her procession halted some fifty paces from the gate. “How could he just barge in like mat? Why didn’t the guards keep him out?”

  “He has orders from the shogun,” Osugi gasped out. “You’re going to be tried for murder at the hour of the monkey. He came to take you to the palace.”

  “What?” Shock and disbelief stunned Reiko. “I’ve heard nothing about this. The shogun and Lord Matsudaira gave my husband permission to investigate the murder. He’s not finished yet. Why should they have set my trial today?” Today, when she and Sano had no evidence with which to prove her innocence.

  “I don’t know.” Osugi began to sob in terror.

  And the time of the trial was some two hours away. Why had Colonel Kubota come to take her so soon, and why him of all people? The whole thing made no sense to Reiko, until she realized what must have happened.

  Sano’s fall from power had begun. Last night his allies had deserted him; today Lord Matsudaira had turned on him. Lord Matsudaira had convinced the shogun to stage a trial that would surely end with her convicted of Lord Mori’s murder and sentenced to deat
h. Sano couldn’t protect her anymore because he himself was wide open to attack.

  “Don’t go home,” Osugi pleaded. “That man is up to no good. Don’t let him take you!”

  Colonel Kubota must have gotten wind of what was going on and led the troops that would bring Reiko to the palace. He’d gone to fetch her early because he wanted time before her trial to punish her for ending his marriage. A shudder ran through Reiko as she imagined what form his revenge would take.

  Lieutenant Asukai ran up to her. “What’s going on?”

  As Reiko explained, she saw her horror appear on his face. He said, “What are we going to do?”

  They looked up at the castle that loomed in the rainy distance, bristling with watch towers, full of armed soldiers who’d surely been told that the chamberlain’s wife had gone missing and were on the lookout for her return. It was no longer home to Reiko but a death trap.

  “If my husband is in there, I’ll never get to him before I’m caught,” she said. And Sano couldn’t investigate Lady Mori’s maid, solve the crime, and exonerate Reiko before Colonel Kubota got his hands on her.

  “You’re right,” Lieutenant Asukai said. “We have to take you someplace safe.”

  A plan occurred to Reiko. Under any other circumstances it would have been foolhardy, but now she had nothing to lose. “I know one place they’ll never look for me.”

  There she would find out the truth about Lord Mori’s murder.

  Sano, Hirata, Inoue, and Arai rode up to a gate that led out of the neighborhood where Captain Torai had killed Lily. It was the last of six gates through which Torai could have escaped. Sano and his men had already checked the others, and had neither picked up his trail nor seen any sign of Marume and Fukida. Sano asked the sentry, “Did a samurai run through here a little while ago, with two others chasing him?”