In the city marketplace, Bannojo learned of Okiku’s death. He rushed to the house and slew the treacherous Ofuji. Just then Jimbei arrived. Accompanied by wild music, the chanter’s cries, and shouted encouragement from the audience, the brothers drew their swords and fought. Hirata, almost oblivious to the drama, felt his own excitement rise as Lady Ichiteru’s hand crept stealthily to his groin. This shouldn’t be happening. It was wrong. She belonged to the shogun, who would have them both killed if this dalliance became known. Hirata knew he should stop her, but the thrill of forbidden contact held him immobile.
Ichiteru’s finger circled the tip of his manhood. Hirata swallowed a moan. Around and around. Then she grasped the rigid shaft and began to stroke. Up and down. Hirata’s heart thudded; his pleasure mounted. Onstage, the wronged husband, Jimbei, delivered the fatal slash to his brother. Bannojo’s wooden head flew off. Up and down moved Ichiteru’s hand, her movements expert. Tense and breathless, Hirata approached the brink of climax. He forgot the murder investigation. He no longer cared if anyone saw.
Then Jimbei, overcome with grief, committed seppuku beside the corpses of his wife, brother, and sister-in-law. Suddenly the play was over, the audience applauding. Ichiteru withdrew her hand.
“Farewell, Honorable Detective… this has been a most interesting meeting.” Eyes modestly downcast, fan shielding her face, she bowed. “If you need my further assistance… please let me know.”
Hirata, denied the release he craved, gaped in helpless frustration. From Ichiteru’s demeanor, the incident might never have taken place. Too confused to speak, Hirata rose to leave, struggling to recall what he’d learned from the interview. How could a woman he wanted so much be a cold-blooded killer? For the first time in his career, Hirata felt his professional objectivity supping.
From behind the stage curtain, the chanter’s solemn voice intoned, “You have just seen a true story of how treachery, forbidden love, and blindness caused a terrible tragedy. We thank you for attending.”
11
Eta corpse handlers placed the shrouded body on the table in Dr. Ito’s workroom at Edo Morgue. Sano and Dr. Ito watched as Mura unwrapped the white folds of cloth from Lady Harume. Her eyes had dulled, and encroaching decay had blanched her skin. The foul, sweet odor of rot tainted the air. She still wore the soiled red silk dressing gown; blood and vomit still smeared her face and tangled hair. Hirata had indeed made sure that no one tampered with the evidence. Having known what to expect, Sano experienced only a momentary pang of revulsion, but Dr. Ito seemed shaken.
“So young,” he murmured. As morgue custodian, he had examined countless bodies in worse condition; yet lines of pain deepened in his face, aging him. He said in a bleak voice, “I had a daughter. Once.”
Sano recalled that Ito’s youngest child had died of a fever at about the same age as Harume. He’d also lost contact with his other children upon his arrest. Sano and Mura stood silent, heads bowed in respect for their friend’s grief, so seldom expressed. Then Dr. Ito cleared his throat and spoke in his normal brisk, professional manner. “Well. Let us see what the victim can tell us about her murder.”
He walked around the table, studying Harume’s corpse. “Dilated pupils; muscular spasm; vomiting of blood-symptoms that confirm my original diagnosis of poison by Indian arrow toxin. But perhaps there is more to learn. Mura, would you please remove her garment?”
Despite his unconventional nature, Dr. Ito followed the custom of letting the eta handle the dead. Hence, Mura performed most of the physical work of examinations, under his master’s supervision. Now he took a knife and cut the robe away from Harume’s rigid form. The dark nipples and tattoo contrasted harshly with her waxen pallor. Her limbs were smooth and shaved hairless, her skin without blemish. Sano felt rude to violate the privacy of this woman who had obviously taken care over her personal grooming.
Dr. Ito bent over the corpse’s midsection, frowning. “There’s something here.” He spread a white cotton cloth over Lady Harume’s abdomen, then pressed his hands against her, the cloth shielding him from the polluting contact with death. His fingers palpated and squeezed.
“What is it?” Sano asked.
“A swelling. It may be an artifact of the poison, or some other unrelated abnormality.” Dr. Ito straightened, his expression grave as he met Sano’s eyes. “But I’ve treated many female patients in my medical career. Unless I’m mistaken, Lady Harume was in the early stages of pregnancy.”
A heavy weight of dismay thudded inside Sano’s chest like an iron clapper in a temple bell. Pregnancy would have serious ramifications for the murder case, and for Sano as well.
Dr. Ito’s gaze conveyed unspoken concern and understanding, but he was not a man to shy away from the truth. “A dissection is the only way to tell for sure.”
Sano drew a deep breath and held it, containing the fear that burgeoned within him. Dissection, a procedure associated with foreign science, was just as illegal as when Dr. Ito had been arrested. During other investigations, Sano had risked banishment and disgrace for the sake of knowledge. So far the bakufu hadn’t discovered his involvement in taboo practices-even the most avid spies avoided Edo Morgue-but Sano feared that his luck would run out. He dreaded verification of Harume’s condition, and the consequential danger. However, a pregnancy offered myriad possible motives for Harume’s murder. Without exploring these, Sano might never identify her killer. And he never evaded the truth, either. Now he exhaled in resignation.
“All right, " he said to Dr. Ito. “Go ahead.”
At a nod from his master, Mura fetched a long, thin knife from a cabinet. Dr. Ito removed the cloth from Lady Harume’s abdomen. In the air over it, he sketched lines with his forefinger: “Cut here, and here, like so.” Carefully, Mura inserted the sharp blade into the dead flesh, making a long horizontal slash below the navel, then two shorter, perpendicular cuts at each end of the first. He drew back the flaps of skin and tissue, exposing coiled pink bowels.
“Remove those,” Dr. Ito instructed.
A strong fecal odor arose as Mura cut away the bowels and placed them in a tray. Nausea clutched Sano’s stomach; the unclean aura of ritual contamination enveloped him. No matter how many times he observed dissections, they still sickened his body and spirit. He saw, within the cavity of Lady Harume’s corpse, a fleshy, pear-shaped structure about the size of a man’s fist. From this extended two thin, curved tubes, the ends fanning out in fibrous growths resembling sea anemones, meeting two grapelike sacs.
“The organs of life,” Dr. Ito explained.
Shame exacerbated Sano’s discomfort. What right had he, a man and stranger, to look upon the most private parts of a dead woman’s body? Yet growing curiosity compelled his attention while Mura sliced into the womb, then laid it open. Inside nestled a frothy inner capsule of tissue. And curled within this, a tiny unborn child, like a naked pink salamander, no longer than Sano’s finger.
“So you were right,” Sano said. “She was pregnant.”
The child’s bulbous head dwarfed its body. The eyes were black spots in a barely formed face; the hands and feet mere paws attached to frail limbs. Threadlike red veins chased the skin, which stretched across ridges of delicate bone. A twisted cord connected the navel to the womb’s lining. The vestige of a tail elongated the diminutive rump. As Sano stared at this new wonder, awe overcame him. How miraculous was the creation of life! He thought of Reiko. Would their troubled marriage succeed and produce children who would survive, as this one had not? His hopes seemed as fragile as the dead infant. Then professional and political concerns eclipsed Sano’s domestic problems.