Sano looked around and saw neither the servant nor the guards. Skidding down the hill, he waded through the thick grass around the villa. As he examined the head-high, stone-faced earthen wall around the garden, he heard from within it a woman’s high, quavery voice, singing a slow, melancholy tune:
“The green woods fade to brown, alas
Frost withers the peony and the rose—”
Sano smiled. The singer must be Madam Shimizu. Quietly Sano tried the heavy, weathered plank gate. It was locked. But the wall was covered with a network of vines; some had woody stems as thick as his wrist. Using these as a ladder, he climbed the wall. Cautiously he peered over the top.
He formed a quick impression of an overgrown garden, bordered on left and right by the verandas of the upper and lower buildings, and on the far end by a covered walkway connecting the two wings. Then he spotted a pavilion at the garden’s center.
Almost hidden by the vines that climbed the pavilion’s lattice wall and up its thatched roof knelt a woman. Sano could discern no more than her bowed head and blue kimono, but her plaintive song continued:
“Summer’s birds are flown,
Love has gone—
My heart dies, too.”
Sano took a hasty look behind him, then pulled himself atop the wall. He jumped, landing in an ivy-choked flower bed. Eagerly he started toward the pavilion. Then he halted as a door in the covered walkway banged open.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
The rōnin guards ran toward him, drawing their swords. Sano’s was already in his hand. He thought he could take these men without serious difficulty, but he wanted no more bloodshed. And if Madam Shimizu was terrified because she’d already witnessed one killing, then more wouldn’t improve her willingness or ability to answer his questions. Keeping his eyes on the rōnin, he addressed the woman in the pavilion.
“Madam Shimizu, I’m Sano Ichirō, the shogun’s sōsakan,” he called. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk to you.”
Scuffles and whimpers came from the pavilion.
Swords raised, the guards circled Sano. The elder glared fiercely; the younger looked nervous.
“You’re in trouble, aren’t you, Madam Shimizu?” Sano called. “You’re afraid; you’re hiding from someone. I can help you—but only if you call off your guards.”
Still no answer. Then the younger rōnin retreated a step. “He’s the shogun’s man—we can’t kill him! I don’t care how much she’s paying us to protect her. I don’t want to go to jail, or have my head cut off!”
“Shut up!” his brother shouted. “Do you want to go back to begging in the streets?” To Sano, he said, “Get out, or I cut you.”
He lunged at Sano—then fell back as the woman’s voice spoke softly but clearly:
“Stop.… It’s all right. He can stay.”
The guards shrugged, and went back into the house. Relieved, Sano sheathed his sword and looked toward the pavilion.
She stood in its arched entryway, a short, plump woman dressed in a vivid aqua kimono printed with butterflies. Sano’s initial impression of youth and beauty quickly faded as he walked toward her. Her hair, though looped up at the sides and hanging long at the back in the style of a young lady, was an unnaturally dark, lusterless black: dyed. The heavy white face powder and bright rouge didn’t hide the pouches under her eyes, or the slackness of her cheeks and jowls. Her bright, girlish clothes only emphasized her thick waist, double chin, and the empty space in the upper row of her blackened teeth. Sano’s lingering distrust of Aoi melted away in a flood of gratitude as he stared, amazed to find the mystery witness just as she’d described: a fat, aging woman clinging desperately to youth.
“Sōsakan-sama.” Madam Shimizu bowed, then peered coyly at him from beneath lowered eyelids; but her smile was strained, her tone weary and resigned. “I’ve been expecting you.… I’m glad you’re here at last.”
“I went to Zōjō Temple because my husband no longer loves me,” Madam Shimizu said.
Obviously distraught, she hadn’t invited Sano into the house. Instead she wandered aimlessly around the garden, leaving him to follow.
“For the past ten years, he’s never once looked at me … or spoken to me with affection.” Her speech was filled with long pauses and trailing endings, perhaps in deliberate imitation of highborn samurai women. Now her voice dropped to a whisper. “And no matter how much I beg, he won’t share my bed …”
Sano, embarrassed by this intimate confession, nevertheless recognized her urgent need to tell her troubles to someone, anyone. By simply listening, he would learn more than through formal interrogation. Considerately, he turned his gaze from her sad, ravaged face to the garden.
Like her, it must have once been lovely. A huge cherry tree blossomed beside a pond; elaborate stone lanterns and benches graced a bower of luxuriant plant life. But this paradise had fallen into neglect. Withered vines clung to the buildings. Dead branches stuck out from the cherry tree like black bones. Rotting leaves, fallen blossoms, and green scum covered the pond. Shrubs were unpruned, lanterns and benches coated with moss and lichen, flower beds and lawn choked with weeds. If Mimaki and O-tama’s garden was a monument to love, this served as mute testimony to its loss.
Madam Shimizu’s thoughts seemed to follow his. “Do you see this garden?” Her soft voice quivered with pain. “My husband once employed gardeners to keep it beautiful. When we were young … before I bore our seven children … we spent many happy hours here.
“ ‘I can’t bear to be apart from you,’ he would tell me. He praised my beauty, and made love to me … there.” Madam Shimizu pointed to a spot beneath the cherry tree. Her plump hand was smooth and soft-looking, as if it had never done a day’s work. “But now I’m old and ugly.… My health is poor; I suffer from congestion. My husband never comes here anymore.” Sano saw tears tracing rivulets through the thick makeup on her cheeks. “He’s brought two young concubines into our house in Edo, and often visits the courtesans in Yoshiwara, too.
“Ours was a marriage of love … that’s rare, you know, in this world where marriages are arranged for the sake of money and family considerations. One doesn’t expect to find love, and so it hurts all the more to lose it.”
“I know,” Sano said, wishing he could cut her story short. With his own romance threatened, he didn’t want to hear about lost love. If he should lose Aoi … For the sake of the investigation, he let Madam Shimizu talk.
“In summer, we would take our pleasure boat out on the river to watch the fireworks. It’s a big boat, with a comfortable cabin … We would drink wine and delight in each other’s company.” Madam Shimizu dabbed her face with her sleeve; it came away stained with powder and rouge. “But no more. The boat has been docked for ten seasons. I decided to become a nun because I could no longer bear living without my dearest one’s love.…”
With relief, Sano turned the conversation to the night of the priest’s murder. “So you went to Zōjō Temple and asked for sanctuary. What happened there?”
“I took my best clothes as a dowry for the priests. I hired a palanquin … and reached the temple at sunset.” Madam Shimizu’s narrative faltered. She ceased her stroll around the garden and dropped onto a bench. Her fingers picked at the lichen that encrusted it. “Sōsakan-sama … if I tell you what I saw, will you promise not to tell anyone else?” She raised pleading eyes to him. “Please … before you object, let me explain why I’m in hiding. Why I want no visitors, and have hired rōnin to protect me.”
She shot a nervous glance around the garden as if she expected an attack at any moment. “After I left the temple, I went home to Nihonbashi. But the very next morning, three strange samurai came and asked to see me. They wouldn’t say why, or who they were, so the servants told them I wasn’t home. They left, but a few hours later, they came back.… I don’t know who they were, but I know why they came. They were sent by the Bundori Killer. He must have recognized me at the temple, or som
ehow found out who I was. Sōsakan-sama, he’s looking for me, he wants to kill me because he thinks I can identify him. Now do you understand why you mustn’t let anyone know I spoke to you?”
Sano sat beside her, wondering if the strange callers were really the killer’s minions, sent to eliminate a witness to the priest’s murder. If so, then which suspect had sent them? Matsui, who moved in the same social sphere as the Shimizu and might have recognized Madam Shimizu because he’d met her before? Chūgo or Yanagisawa, both of whom had access to the bakufu’s intelligence network—which no doubt included spies inside Zōjō Temple—and its files on Edo’s prominent citizens? Or was Madam Shimizu imagining threats where none existed? He would have to question her servants and try to trace the three samurai. But of one thing Sano was certain: If he wanted the Bundori Killer convicted, he couldn’t keep Madam Shimizu’s testimony a secret.
“If you’ll sign a confidential statement that I can show the magistrate, you won’t have to come forward as a witness,” Sano proposed. After the killer’s capture, she would have no reason for fear. He suspected she had other motives for shunning publicity, which this plan might satisfy.
After a long moment’s thought, Madam Shimizu said, “Yes … all right.” With a sigh, she resumed her story.
“The abbot at the temple accepted my dowry and gave me a room in the guest quarters … but I couldn’t sleep. I missed my husband terribly, and wondered how he would feel when he found me gone. Would he be glad, or unhappy? I wondered if I was making a mistake. Might he come to love me again someday if I waited long enough? Finally I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again.… Around midnight, I sneaked out of the guest quarters. I didn’t care if I had to walk all the way back to Nihonbashi, alone, in the dark. I just wanted to be near my husband … even when I knew him to be asleep in the arms of his concubines. And …”
Fresh tears spilled from her eyes, washing away more powder to reveal the sallow skin beneath. “I was too proud to let him know I’d tried to leave him, and couldn’t,” she whispered.
So here was her real reason for wanting confidentiality. Sano felt a burst of anger toward the faithless husband, and pity for the wife who still desired his respect even if she couldn’t have his love.
“I understand,” he said gently. He waited for her to compose herself, then prompted, “So you left the guest quarters. What then?”
“There were priests patrolling the grounds. I stayed in the shadows close to the buildings so they wouldn’t see me.” She pantomimed her furtive escape, hands groping, her expression fearful but determined. “I went into the main precinct … the moon was out, and there were a few lanterns burning, but it was still very dark, and I was afraid. And then …”
Madam Shimizu twisted her hands in her lap. “When I ran around the main hall on my way to the front gate, I tripped and fell on something.… It was a dead priest!” A strangled sob burst from her, and her plump body shivered. “I screamed and jumped up. His head was gone … there was blood on his robes … and a sword sticking out of his chest …”
Sano looked at her in surprise. He’d seen no sword in the priest’s body, and no one at the temple had mentioned finding one. If Madam Shimizu was telling the truth, then what had become of it?
“I knew the Bundori Killer had killed the priest,” she went on, wiping away more tears. “I was afraid he was somewhere in the temple grounds, and that he would kill me, too. I should have called for help, or run back to my room to hide. But all I could think of was how much I wanted to go home.… I needed a weapon to protect myself with, so I—I pulled the sword out of the priest’s body.”
With both hands, she grasped an imaginary sword hilt and yanked, averting her face and grimacing at the remembered friction between steel and flesh. “I stuck the sword under my sash. Then I went to the temple bell. I picked up the mallet and hit it as hard as I could. Then I ran to the gate.”
So the abbot had correctly guessed that the mystery woman had rung the bell. The Bundori Killer, to overcome the priest’s unexpected resistance, must have used both his swords in the fight—and then forgotten one when he left with the head. A small fire of hope lit inside Sano. Perhaps this was the clue he needed. He started to ask where the sword was now, but Madam Shimizu hadn’t finished.
“And that was when I saw the killer,” she said dully, drained of emotion now.
“You saw the Bundori Killer?” In his excitement, Sano almost forgot about the sword. Here at last was his murder witness.
Madam Shimizu nodded, sniffling. “He was outside the gate when I got there … unwrapping a bundle. I could see that it was a head.… The lanterns were burning beside the gate, and I was but ten paces from him. The bell was still ringing, and I could tell he was in a hurry to be gone. I screamed, but he didn’t hear me, he couldn’t have, the noise was so loud. Then he looked around and saw me.”
“Madam Shimizu,” Sano said, keeping his voice quiet, though his heart was pounding and his mouth had gone dry, “this is very important. What did the killer look like? Describe him as best you can. Take your time.”
“I didn’t get a good look. I think he was tall, but I’m not sure … it was dark … he wore a hooded cloak, and his face was in shadow.… And when he looked at me, I turned and ran.” She grabbed Sano’s arm; her nails bit into his flesh. “But he must have seen my face, sōsakan-sama. He thinks I can identify him. He’s looking for me now. That’s why you must protect me!”
Crushed by disappointment, Sano chastised himself for expecting too much. “What did you do then?” he asked.
“I should have gone back inside the temple … I could hear people running and shouting … I would have been safe with the priests. But I wasn’t thinking clearly … so instead I ran into the forest. Oh. Forgive me.”
She withdrew her hand and, with a pathetic attempt at dignity, sat up straight. “The killer chased me. I ran, and he almost caught me … but he fell over a rock, and I got away. I hid in a hollow tree. Then I saw lights coming through the forest and heard men calling. The killer ran away. I stayed hidden until dawn, and everyone was gone. Then I ran all the way home to Nihonbashi.”
Sano shook his head in gloomy awe as he listened. His witness had been there all the while he’d been questioning the temple’s residents and searching the forest. She’d inadvertently prevented the killer from retrieving the only clue he’d left at any of the crime scenes, then stolen it.
Bracing himself against further disappointment, Sano said, “What did you do with the sword?”
Madam Shimizu lifted her useless-looking hands, then let them plop into her lap. “I carried it with me on the way home, just in case I met the killer. Then I didn’t know what to do with it. First I wanted to throw it away. Then I thought I should have my husband give it to you … but I didn’t want him to know what had happened. So I brought it here with me.”
“And you have it still? May I see it?” Too excited to remain seated, Sano stood.
“Yes. I’ll get it for you.” Madam Shimizu rose, but instead of entering the house, she walked to the big cherry tree and reached inside a hole in its gnarled trunk. “This was once our special hiding place,” she said wistfully. “My husband would leave gifts and poems for me to find …” Blinking her tears away, she extracted a long, thin bundle wrapped in oiled silk, which she offered to Sano. “I didn’t want this in the house … it’s a wicked thing. So I put it here, where no one would ever look.”
Sano stood perfectly still, the bundle balanced on his palms. Here at last was the physical evidence he’d sought. Prolonging both anticipation and dread, he didn’t open it at once. To which suspect would the sword lead him? Then, unable to delay any longer, he undid the wrappings.
Dried blood encrusted the thin, curved blade of the short sword: Madam Shimizu hadn’t bothered to clean it. Upon first examination, Sano felt a twinge of disappointment. The hilt was modern and ordinary, bound in black silk braid in an overlapping crisscrossed patter
n with gold inlays in the diamond-shaped gaps. There were no identifying crests or other marks on either hilt or blade. Then Sano noticed the flat guard that separated them.
Made of black cast iron, this was shaped like the upper part of a human skull. The blade passed through the vertical nose opening; two smaller holes on either side formed empty eye sockets. The jawline sported five gold teeth. The artist’s symbolic rendition of death was skillfully executed, grotesquely beautiful—and familiar. Sano’s heart leapt as he remembered faded characters on a crumbling scroll:
Wielding his two swords, which had guards wrought in the image of death’s-heads, the great General Fujiwara cut down Endō’s soldiers, leaving carnage in his wake …
Grasping the sword’s hilt in one hand and the cloth-wrapped blade in the other, Sano forced them apart. There, on the exposed tang of the blade, he saw incised the tiny characters that confirmed this as General Fujiwara’s sword. One of the matched pair he’d used against the Araki and Endō clans, handed down through the generations to his worthiest descendant—the Bundori Killer.
The sword’s various possibilities flicked through Sano’s mind. He might find witnesses who could establish the ownership of the unique, distinctive weapon. This evidence, combined with Madam Shimizu’s signed statement, would be enough to convict Matsui or Chūgo in the magistrate’s court. Such an investigation, however, might take longer than the two days left to Sano. And what if the killer was Chamberlain Yanagisawa, to whom the sword would most probably have passed, from General Fujiwara’s eldest son?
Yanagisawa would never go to trial if neither shogun nor bakufu accepted his guilt. Sano would be executed as a traitor for acting against Yanagisawa, who would survive to kill and corrupt unchecked. Sano would bring everlasting disgrace instead of honor upon his family name, and lose his chance to slay the evil spirit.
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