Red Chrysanthemum (23 page)

Nyogo flung up her hands in self-defense. “If you touch me, he’ll punish you,” she insisted, although fear shone through her craftiness.

Sano shook his head. “He won’t know I did anything to you. You’re going to disappear without a trace. No one will ever know what happened to you. Except you, and me.” He pointed his finger at her, then himself.

Her mouth twitched. Calculation glinted in her eyes. “But if I cooperate with you… ?”

“Then I’ll spare your life,” Sano said.

Nyogo hesitated, then said, “That’s not enough. If I tell you what you want to know, my life is worth nothing. Force me to talk, and I’m a dead woman.”

“Die now, or take a chance on surviving later.” Sano stifled the pity he felt for her, a pawn of powerful men. “It’s your choice.”

She wilted and sighed. Sano was as much shamed because he’d coerced this deceitful but hapless woman as relieved that she’d capitulated. This was exactly the kind of thing the former chamberlain Yanagisawa would have done. Sano stepped back from Nyogo and said, “Who told you to lie about me?”

“It was Police Commissioner Hoshina,” she said reluctantly.

It was just as Sano had suspected. Satisfaction eased his guilt at how he’d obtained her confession. “He told you to say I was plotting to overthrow Lord Matsudaira?”

“… Not exactly. There wasn’t time before the seance for him to tell me what to say. But I’d been listening outside the shogun’s audience chamber. I had an idea of what was going on. And Hoshina-san had said I should use whatever chance I got to make you look bad to the shogun.”

“When did he say that?”

“Two years ago. When he brought me to the palace.”

Sano felt a grudging admiration for Hoshina’s ingenuity. Hoshina had planted Nyogo inside the court to undermine his enemies’ influence with the shogun. Sano had underestimated Hoshina, whom he’d always deemed more rash man clever.

“The seance was my big chance,” Nyogo continued. “So I made up that business about you and your wife and Lord Mori.” She smiled, mischievous and proud of herself. For a moment she resembled the child she’d appeared to be yesterday. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it? Hoshina-san was very pleased.”

“No doubt.” Sano was as impressed by her inventiveness as by her performance. Now he knew the reason for that peculiar look he’d seen on Hoshina’s face when the shogun had suggested the seance. Hoshina had been hoping that Nyogo would perform to his advantage and afraid she would let him down. She’d acquitted herself so spectacularly that Sano’s interest in her went beyond the valuable information she’d just given him.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Where did you come from?”

“My name really is Nyogo,” she said, “but I’m not a noble lady. My parents are fortune-tellers in the Ryogoku entertainment district. When I was young, they taught me their trade. I learned how to guess what people are thinking and what they want to hear. I pretend to be a little girl, because that way they trust me.”

“I see.” Intrigued despite his distaste for such fraud, Sano asked, “Then you branched out into doing seances?”

“Yes. My mother thought I would be good at it. And I am,” Nyogo said, matter-of-fact.

“How did you meet Police Commissioner Hoshina?”

“There was talk around the district that he was looking to hire a medium. He was offering lots of money. Anyone who wanted to apply should go to his house. I went. There were lots of other people. He tried us all out and picked me.”

Sano imagined Hoshina auditioning mediums, looking for the one who could play upon the shogun’s susceptibilities, who could further his own aims. “Well, I think he chose well.”

“Do you?” Nyogo’s eyes sparkled with cunning. She cocked her head and clasped her hands behind her back, in the pose of a small, beguiling child. “I could work for you instead of Hoshina-san, if you like.”

“Oh, you could, could you?” Sano said, impressed with her quick-thinking audacity.

“Yes. I can make the shogun think you’re wonderful and Hoshina is a traitor instead of the other way around. He listens to me—or rather, he listens to his dead ancestors who speak to him through me.”

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 way 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.”