“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.