“Don’t worry! My secretary is quite good with herbal remedies, and so is my wife. They will have you feeling better in no time.”
“Tha’s very good of you,” mumbled Harada. He looked at Akitada uneasily. “Er, who are you? I seem to have forgotten.”
“Sugawara. You are in my house. I brought you here because you seem a bit feverish.”
“Hmm,” said Harada, and fell into a dry coughing fit which left him shaking and gasping.
The door opened and Seimei came in.
“Another patient for you,” said Akitada. “This is Professor Harada. He was manager for Nagaoka’s father-in-law, Yasaburo, who was arrested for Nagaoka’s murder. Our guest is a witness in the case. I brought him here because he is too sick to go anyplace else.”
Seimei was immediately all interest and attention. He knelt, greeting Harada with a bow, before peering at his face intently. Harada peered back. Seimei bowed again and touched Harada’s forehead. “A fever is burning your life force and you must be put to bed immediately, sir,” he informed the sick man. Then he turned to Akitada. “Shall I put Professor Harada in Miss Akiko’s room?”
“Yes. And see what you can do for him.” Harada had closed his eyes and was either asleep or unconscious. Akitada took Seimei aside and gave him a sketchy outline of Harada’s misfortunes, adding, “He has suffered more misery than one man deserves.”
Seimei shook his head with pity, but remarked, “As to what he deserves, sir, we do not know what he may have been guilty of in his previous life.” Seimei was a strong believer in karma as the ultimate leveler of human lives, punishing transgressions and rewarding virtues in subsequent lives.
“How is Tora?” Akitada asked.
Seimei smiled. “Much improved, though he won’t say so in front of the ladies.”
“The ladies?”
“Oh, yes. He has visitors every day.”
Akitada scooped the sick man up again, and carried him to another wing of the house where his sister Akiko’s room had stood empty since her marriage to Toshikage. There, Seimei spread bedding from a trunk. Together they divested Harada of an odd assortment of patched blankets and robes and tucked him under the quilts.
The small room Tora shared with Genba was crammed full of people. Tora, covered by a quilt and leaning on an armrest, reclined on a mat in its center. Next to him sat Miss Plumblossom, enthroned on an upturned water barrel on which someone had placed one of the silk cushions from Akitada’s room. Apparently she refused to sit on the floor like everyone else. Slightly behind her was her maid, her scarred face hidden behind a fan, and on Tora’s other side knelt a very pretty young girl with sparkling eyes. Genba’s bulk filled the rest of the room. All of them looked up at Akitada’s entrance, smiled, and bowed.
“Well!” Akitada looked around. “I hope I see you all well. Especially you, Tora.”
“Pretty well, pretty well,” Tora said with an expression of patient suffering. “The company helps, but the nights are bad, and I can’t seem to move without much pain.” The pretty girl by his side took his hand and stroked it, murmuring, “My poor tiger.”
The rascal, thought Akitada, and sat down. He kept a straight face and told Miss Plumblossom, “I am happy to see that you have made your peace.” Sitting down had put him at a distinct disadvantage, because the formidable Miss Plumblossom now towered over him.
She was untroubled by the impropriety. “The four of us have come to an understanding,” she informed Akitada, and smiled with fashionably blackened teeth. “Yukiyo, the foolish girl, will make up for falsely accusing poor Tora by helping him find the slasher. Between us we’ll get the bastard, if it’s the last thing we do.” She nodded emphatically and her red hair ribbons bounced.
Akitada looked at Tora, who looked back uneasily. “It’s what I’d planned to do all along, sir,” he pleaded. “In fact, that’s one reason I went to Miss Plumblossom’s. I’ve finally got a case of my own to solve.”
Akitada opened his mouth to point out some small problems—such as the fact that Tora needed rest, or that, once he was well, he had certain duties to perform, or that the slasher had so far escaped the superior manpower of the police as well as the watchful eyes of people. Something about Tora’s face made him keep his thoughts to himself. “Excellent!” he said heartily. “I wish you the greatest success. Given your experience and special talents and Yukiyo’s description of the man, you will triumph where Superintendent Kobe has failed.”
Tora flushed with pleasure, but Miss Plumblossom said, “The silly girl says she couldn’t see in the dark. All she’s sure of is that he was smallish and thinnish but very strong. Humph!”
“After such a vicious attack, it is a wonder she recalls anything. Perhaps in time she will remember more.”
The maid mumbled something.
“Oh, yes. She says she smelled him,” interpreted Miss Plumblossom with a toss of her head. “As if we could go around smelling people.”
“What sort of smell was it?” Akitada asked, interested in spite of himself.
Tora moved impatiently. “Never mind, sir. We’ll get it all sorted out. How was your trip? Catch any murderers?”
“Superintendent Kobe has arrested Nagaoka’s father-in-law, and I brought home a guest, a Professor Harada. He used to work for Yasaburo. He is pretty sick, but may be able to give us some information. Seimei is tending to him now.” Akitada looked curiously at the pretty girl. “Is this young woman by any chance a member of Uemon’s Players?”
“Yes, Gold’s an acrobat. She’s fantastic.” Tora smiled proudly at the girl, who returned the adoring look.
“In that case, Gold,” said Akitada, “you may be able to answer a question. You stayed at the temple where the woman was murdered, didn’t you? On the fifth day of last month?”
“Yes, sir. Tora’s already asked me about that. I saw nothing, and neither did any of the others, sir.”
Akitada hid his disappointment. “You did not leave your room after dark?”
“No. We had performed that afternoon and I was tired. Besides, it was raining.”
“You slept alone?”
“No. My sister and Ohisa shared the room. They came to bed later, but my sister also saw nothing.”
“And Ohisa?”
“Ohisa took off before either of us awoke.”
“Took off?”
Gold made a face. “Ohisa used to be Danjuro’s girl. Danjuro is our lead actor, and all the women are wild about him.” Tora glowered and she added with a smile, “Except me. I can’t stand the arrogant bastard. Anyway, he dumped Ohisa and she left in a snit, just like that. We would’ve been short a dancer if Danjuro’s new girlfriend hadn’t stepped in.”
“And none of the others saw anything suspicious?”
She shook her head. “They would’ve told me. We talked about the murder all the way back to the capital.”
Akitada thanked her and turned to Genba. “I trust everything was quiet in my absence?”
Genba nodded. “But there was an odd little man here a little earlier. He asked for you. Something about a screen he’s supposed to paint for your lady, so I took him to her. I hope that was all right?”
“Heavens, Noami!” Akitada jumped up. “He is a very unpleasant person. I had better see him before he upsets my wife.”
He met Tamako in the corridor outside her quarters. She had heard of his arrival and was coming to look for him.
“I am glad you are back safely.” She bowed in her restrained and formal manner, but her eyes searched Akitada’s face.
“I looked in on Tora first and found him surrounded by admiring females, plotting how to catch the slasher.” Seeing her incomprehension, he explained, “A man who has been mutilating and killing young women in the city.”
Her eyes grew round. “How very horrible,” she breathed. “I had no idea such things were happening. Is it safe to go out?”