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 somehow 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.