“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.”
She made her way through Edo Castle’s passages and checkpoints without incident. She’d learned from past experience that maids were virtually invisible. Soon she was seated in the swaying, jouncing kago while its bearers trotted toward town. A sense of freedom exhilarated her. She felt buoyed by hope, vibrantly alive.
Reiko tried to forget that she might not be free or alive much longer.
The trip to and from Ueno had taken Sano all morning and part of the afternoon. Now, eager for his confrontation with his enemy, he rode with his entourage through the Hibiya administrative district. He d never been to Police Commissioner Hoshina’s house- they weren’t exactly on visiting terms. He was almost as curious to see how Hoshina lived as determined to wring some facts out of him.
Hoshina had an estate near the edge of the district. It was one of the farthest from Edo Castle. Only a road and a drainage canal separated its perimeter wall from the Nihonbashi merchant quarter. This location could owe to Hoshina’s low seniority at court or the fact that police carried a taint of death from the executions they ordered. Furthermore, his position in Lord Matsudaira’s inner circle had always been shaky. But he’d made the most of his estate.
Sano and his men dismounted outside a gate with triple-tiered roofs and double doors hung on polished brass pillars. Hoshina’s family crest adorned a huge banner that drooped in the rain. Sentries wearing flashy armor greeted Sano in a polite but cold manner. A horde of troops accompanied Sano and his men into the estate. If Sano hadn’t already known he was entering hostile territory, there was no mistaking it now.
The troops led him inside a mansion so big that it dwarfed its ground. The corridors were floored with shining cypress, the coffered ceilings painted and gilded in the same style as the shogun’s palace. Servants hovered in rooms furnished with teak cabinets, metal filigree lanterns, and lacquer tables of the finest workmanship. The air smelled of expensive incense. Hoshina’s voice carried down the corridor toward Sano.
“That’s not big enough.”
“But if we make it any bigger, it will be practically right up against the wall,” said another man’s voice. “You won’t have any view.”
“I don’t care about the damned view,” Hoshina said. “I want a reception room that’s fine enough for important guests.”
“We’ll have to enlarge the foundation. That will cost a lot extra.”
“To hell with the cost. I won’t have people thinking that I’m some rustic from the provinces who doesn’t know how to entertain. I won’t have them laughing behind my back at me.”
Sano and detectives Marume and Fukida reached the threshold of a room of modest proportions, filled with gray, humid, outdoor air.
Inside, Hoshina stood with a samurai who held an architectural plan they were examining. The doors along one wall were open‘, revealing stone blocks set in the muddy ground, a base for an extension that would double the room’s size. Hoshina looked up from the plans at Sano.
“What are you doing here?” His face showed offense that Sano would visit him without invitation, and fear that Sano had overheard him and he’d exposed himself.
Sano felt a twinge of pity for Hoshina, who was so insecure, cared too much about other people’s opinions, and thought fine, expensive material things would make up for his lack of self-worth. But pity didn’t ease their mutual antagonism. And Hoshina’s human foibles didn’t make him any less dangerous.
Quite the contrary.
“I have news that you might find interesting,” Sano said.
Hoshina raised his eyebrows in hopeful, exaggerated surprise. He clapped his hand over his heart. “Your wife has been convicted of murder. She’s on her way to the execution ground. And you’re soon to follow.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Sano said. “What I’ve come to tell you is that I’ve had a talk with a friend of yours.”
“Who would that be?” Hoshina glanced at the architectural plans as if impatient for Sano to leave so he could go back to his business.
“Lady Nyogo,” Sano said.
Hoshina’s head snapped up. He tried to conceal his dismay, but failed. “How-?”
“It’s hard to keep a secret in Edo,” Sano said. “You should remember that the next time you want to hide a witness in a murder investigation. Especially one that has conspired with you to bear false evidence.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hoshina waved his hand at the architect and said, “You’re dismissed. Redo those plans.” The architect left. Hoshina said, “I never conspired with Lady Nyogo. I don’t even know the woman.”
“That’s not what she says. She told me all about how you planted her in the shogun’s court. Do you want to hear what else she said?”
“She said all she needed to at the seance. She revealed your plot to overthrow Lord Matsudaira.”
“She’s admitted that the seance was just an act,” Sano said, “and the story about me was pure fabrication. She also confessed that you put her up to it.”
“That’s sheer, ridiculous rot.” Hoshina made a sound of disgust. “What did you do, beat her until she told you what you wanted to hear?”
“Not at all,” Sano said. “I just convinced her that giving you up was in her best interests.”
Hoshina stared in consternation, but recovered. “She obviously lied about me to save her own skin from you. It’s her word against mine. She’s a peasant woman; I’m the police commissioner. Nobody’s going to believe her.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Sano said even though Hoshina had a point. “Your plan to use Lady Nyogo to manipulate the shogun worked a little too well. She’s got him eating out of her hand. All she needs to do is hold a seance and have one of his ancestors tell him I’m innocent and you forced her to make up that story from Lord Mori’s ghost.” Sano added, “Incidentally, you shouldn’t have been so quick to trust Nyogo. She was quick to betray you and offer to work for me.”