The vices flourished here.
Smoke darkened the atmosphere like a perpetual twilight. The stench was concentrated, as if the outside air couldn’t penetrate. The fact that her father had sentenced people to this life made Reiko uncomfortable even if they’d deserved the punishment.
“Here it is,” Kanai said, stopping outside a hovel. Two features distinguished it from the others-a lean-to built on one side, and a sprinkling of white salt crystals at the threshold, to purify a place where death had occurred. “There’s not much to see, but look all you want.” He held back the faded indigo cloth hung over the doorway.
While the outcasts avidly watched, Reiko stepped inside. Murky daylight filtered through two windows. The sweet, metallic, and foul odors of rotting blood and flesh tainted the air. Reiko’s throat closed; nausea gripped her stomach. On the floor she saw dark patches where blood and viscera had been wiped up but had sunk into the packed earth. The hovel had one room plus an alcove formed by the lean-to; the whole space was smaller than her bedchamber at home. She could hardly believe that four people had lived here. It was empty except for a ceramic hearth in a corner.
Kanai spoke from the door: “The neighbors looted everything that wasn’t too heavy to move-dishes, clothes, bedding. People here are so poor, they don’t mind robbing the dead.”
Reiko saw that she wouldn’t find any evidence here. But although she felt the pollution of death seeping into her, and she was desperate to breathe pure air, she stayed, hoping to absorb clues from the crime scene. On one wall were jagged notches cut with a knife. Reiko counted thirty-eight, perhaps scores from card games. She sensed lingering emotions-rage, terror, despair.
“Pardon my curiosity,” Kanai said, “but why did the magistrate send you to investigate the murders?”
“I have some experience with such things.” Reiko forbore to mention her work for Sano.
The headman frowned in disbelief; women didn’t ordinarily investigate crimes. Then he shrugged, too indifferent to press for an explanation. “But isn’t the case already solved? Yugao has been arrested.”
“The magistrate and I both have doubts about whether she killed her family.”
“Well, I don’t,” Kanai declared. “As far as I’m concerned, Yugao is guilty.”
“Why is that?”
“I was here that night. I discovered the murders. I caught Yugao.”
Reiko had planned to search for the first witness at the scene after the murders; now luck had saved her the work. “Tell me what happened.”
The headman’s expression said he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just accept his word as truth instead of bothering herself with hinin business, but again he shrugged. “My assistants and I were patrolling the settlement. Constant vigilance is the only way to keep order.” Reiko noted his upper-class diction. “We heard screams coming from this area.”
Reiko pictured him and his men carrying torches through the dark settlement, the bonfires burning and the residents brawling in the night; she heard women screaming.
“By the time we reached this house, the screams had stopped. The man was lying there.” Kanai pointed at a blood-soaked patch on the floor. “I think he died first. He was in bed. His wife lay there, and his younger daughter there.” Reiko followed his pointing finger to two other spots, across the room, where the floor was stained reddish-brown. “They’d been chased. You can see the bloody footprints.”
Reiko also saw blood spattered on the plank walls and envisioned two terrified women running while a blade slashed them.
“All the victims had been stabbed many times all over their bodies. They had cuts on their hands because they’d tried to defend themselves.” Kanai entered the hovel, stood in the center. “Yugao was sitting here, surrounded by the corpses. There was blood smeared on her face. Her clothes were drenched with it. She was holding the bloody knife.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen murders before-they’re not exactly rare here-but this one shocked me. I said to Yugao, ‘Merciful gods, what happened?’ ” Emotion colored his dispassionate tone. “She looked up at me, perfectly calm, and said, ‘I killed them.’ Well, that seemed obvious. So I turned her over to the police.”
He’d confirmed what the doshin had said at Yugao’s trial. His description of that night brought it to vivid life for Reiko, who felt more inclined than ever to believe that Yugao was as guilty as she said. Yet Reiko couldn’t conclude her investigation based on the testimony of a witness who’d arrived at the scene after the murders were done.
“When you came here that night, did you see anyone around besides Yugao?” Reiko asked.
“Only some folks who’d come out of their houses to see what the commotion was.”
Reiko must later determine whether the neighbors had noticed anyone near the house before the murders, or fleeing it afterward. “How well did you know the family?”
“Well enough. They’d been here more than two years. They had about six more months left of their sentence.”
“What can you tell me about them?”
“The man’s name was Taruya. He once owned an entertainment hall in Ryōgoku. He was a wealthy, important merchant, but when he became a hinin, he got a job as an executioner at Edo Jail.” That was one of the lowly occupations assigned to the outcasts. “His wife O-aki and Yugao earned a little money by sewing. The younger daughter, Umeko, sold herself to men.” The headman pointed at the alcove. “That’s where she serviced them.”
“I need to know why Yugao killed her family, if she did,” Reiko said.
“She didn’t tell me, but she didn’t get along with them particularly well. They quarreled a lot. Neighbors were always complaining about the noise. Of course that’s nothing unusual here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my seven years in this hell, it’s that when people are miserable and cooped up together, fights are bound to break out. Some little thing probably tipped Yugao over the edge.”
Here Reiko saw a chance to answer at least one question. “Why did Yugao and her family become outcasts?”
“Her father committed incest with Yugao.”
Reiko knew that incest with a female relative was one of the crimes for which a man could be demoted to hinin, but she was nonetheless shocked. She’d heard gossip about men who satisfied their carnal lust on their daughters, but couldn’t understand how a father could do such a perverted, disgusting thing. “If Yugao’s father was the criminal, what were Yugao and her mother and sister doing here?”
“They were three helpless women without any money to their own names. They depended on Taruya to support them. They had to move here with him or starve to death.”
Which meant that the whole family-including Yugao-had shared his punishment. That seemed unfair, but Tokugawa law often punished a criminal’s family for his transgression. Reiko’s heartbeat quickened because she spied a possible motive for at least one of the murders. Had Yugao felt so soiled and shamed by the incest that she’d come to hate the father that tradition commanded her to respect and love? Had her hot temper ignited into murderous rage that night?
Reiko gazed around the hovel. Her imagination populated the room with a man and three women seated at their evening meal. The faces of Yugao’s father, her mother, and the sister were indistinct; only Yugao’s features were in clear focus. Reiko heard their angry voices rise in a quarrel fostered by living in crowded conditions, not having enough to eat, and their mutual disgrace. She envisioned them hurling blows, dishes, and curses at one another. And perhaps the crime that had condemned them to their fate hadn’t stopped. Reiko imagined the hovel in the dark of that night. She saw two shadowy figures, Yugao and her father, in a bed superimposed over the largest blood-stained patch on the floor.