The Great Joy was one of the quarter’s largest pleasure houses. “Who discovered the remains?” Sano asked, fearing that a valuable witness might have escaped before his arrival.
To his relief, the officer said, “A visiting samurai found the head; he’s down the road. He alerted the guards at the gate, who fetched us.” The officer indicated himself, and his four colleagues who stood in a circle around Sano and the trophy, holding off the growing crowd of spectators. “We found the body.”
Sano directed his attention to the surrounding scene. At this hour of the morning, the road to Yoshiwara was well traveled in both directions. Samurai and commoners moved toward the pleasure quarter, while last night’s revelers still straggled homeward. To the southeast, beyond the fringe of willows at Sano’s right where his horse stood, the San’ya Canal gleamed in the sunlight. Wild geese flew over the plowed but yet unplanted and unflooded rice fields on the opposite sides of the canal and the elevated dike where Sano stood. Ahead, tea stands lined the approach to Yoshiwara’s gate. Beyond them rose the walls and rooftops of the pleasure quarter.
“Has anyone reported seeing the murder?” Sano asked.
“No, sōsakan-sama.”
Anticipating another long search for witnesses, Sano wished he could have brought Hirata. But he’d left the young doshin to continue the as yet fruitless search for the suspect along the route leading from the banchō to the pharmacists’ street. More than ever Sano felt the lack of manpower. A curse upon Chamberlain Yanagisawa!
“I’ll talk to the man who discovered the head,” he told the officer, “and then you can show me the body.”
First, however, he bent to remove the label from the trophy’s pigtail, and saw characters inked in the same hand as those from the one on Kaibara’s head. “ ‘Endō Munetsugu, ’” he read, disconcerted.
This new development weakened his theory that the killer bore a grudge against the Kaibara clan. Like Araki, Endō Munetsugu had lived during the Sengoku Jidai and fought under Oda Nobunaga. But as far as Sano knew, the Endō and Araki-Kaibara families were not related. Nor had they owed allegiance to the same lord-the Endō had served not Tokugawa Ieyasu, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who had succeeded to power after Oda’s death. Despair replaced hope as Sano saw the scope of his case widen yet again. Another historical angle to complicate the investigation! Was the dead man Endō Munetsugu’s descendant? Was the killer obsessed with samurai from the past, and if so, why?
Sano tucked the label in his sash for later contemplation. Then, leading his horse, he accompanied the officers along the causeway toward Yoshiwara. Soon they reached the tea stands, each of which displayed a red lantern bearing the name of a pleasure house. There customers waited in line to buy sake or arrange liaisons with their favorite courtesans. Against the rear wall of the last stand on the canal side, a figure slumped dejectedly. Sano left his horse in the officers’ care and headed toward the samurai, who roused at his approach.
Dressed at the height of dandified fashion for a trip to Yoshiwara, he wore a white silk kimono and trousers, white surcoat, shoes, and wide-brimmed hat, and ivory-hilted swords. Beside him stood his white horse. But these affectations failed to evoke the intended glamour. The samurai looked much the worse for his experience.
“Ah, His Excellency’s sōsakan-sama.” Slurring his words, he lifted a glum face to Sano. “It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for hours.”
In his late twenties, he had a round, bleary-eyed face flushed by drink. He sat low on his spine with his legs sprawled awkwardly before him. A brown stain covered the front of his kimono; he’d evidently vomited on himself. Despite his sad condition, he held a sake decanter.
“Your name?” Sano asked.
“Nishimori Saburō. I serve Lord Kuroda.” Nishimori attempted to sit upright, then moaned, clutched his stomach, and bobbed his head in lieu of bowing. “Forgive me, but I’ve had the most terrible time. That head… ”
Shakily he gulped from the decanter, shuddered, coughed, and wiped his lips on his sleeve. “Have some?” he said, offering the decanter to Sano.
“No, thank you.” Sano winced inwardly at the stench of liquor and vomit. “Tell me how you found the head.”
Nishimori’s queasy expression indicated his reluctance. Then his eyes focused on the Tokugawa crest on Sano’s garments. “Oh, all right. Left Yoshiwara at dawn, first one out the gate. Had to get back to my post, and besides, my time was up.” There was a two-day limit on customers’ stays in Yoshiwara. “Glad to go, really. What money I didn’t spend on those overpriced women, I lost gambling. Then I get out here, and I find a… Now I ask you: Could there be a worse way to end what was supposed to be a good time?” His wet mouth pouted.
“Did you recognize the man?” Sano asked patiently.
“Can’t say as I did. One meets so many people, but not looking like that.”
“Did you see anyone nearby when you found the head?”
Nishimori closed his eyes. Saliva dribbled down his chin. “No.”
Sano deduced that the killer must have committed the murder and placed the bundori last night, after the Yoshiwara gates had closed. But what had the victim been doing on the road? Had the killer somehow lured him to his death? And from where had the killer come? Along the causeway from Edo, from a nearby village, or from Yoshiwara itself? Where had he prepared the bundori?
“I go looking for fun,” Nishimori complained, “and look what happens. I’m broke. Sick. A witness in a murder case.” With the decanter, he gestured toward Yoshiwara. “And they call that place lucky,” he said bitterly.
Sano pondered the allusion. Yoshiwara had originally been dubbed “reedy plain” for the land it occupied, but someone had changed the characters of the name to read “lucky plain,” because men went there hoping for luck. Now Sano wondered whether mere bad luck had situated the victim in the wrong place at the wrong time as the killer roamed in search of prey. Or had he been the target of a planned ambush?
Dismissing Nishimori, Sano rejoined the security force and continued toward Yoshiwara. Beyond the tea stands, before the road sloped down toward the pleasure quarter, stood the famous “Primping Willow,” where visitors stopped to groom themselves after their journey. Today the men gathered under the tree weren’t dusting off their garments or smoothing their hair. Avidly they peered into the field below the embankment.
“Here, sōsakan-sama,” the lead officer said. He skidded down the steep slope into the field.
Sano secured his horse to the willow and followed. Tall grass whipped his legs. At the foot of the embankment he saw two more Yoshiwara officers standing guard over a blanket-covered form. Ravens, crows, and gulls, drawn to the fresh kill, swooped and screeched overhead, periodically alighting nearby. In the field, rough dirt clods crumbled under his feet. He stopped a few paces from the body.
Blood darkened the surrounding earth. Sano could smell the cloying odors of death masking those of fertile earth and night soil. His stomach spasmed when the men, grim faces averted, gingerly peeled back the blanket.
The paunchy, headless man lay on his back, knees bent, arms splayed. Drying blood reddened his kimono, leggings, split-toed socks, and straw sandals. Already insects swarmed over the corpse; flies seethed thickly upon the severed neck. The unclean feeling of defilement stole over Sano. As he bent to examine the cut, he found relief in envisioning Dr. Ito’s face, and in imagining his friend at his side.
“A clean and expert single slash,” he said, “just like the last.”