A shadow darkened the threshold. There stood Lady Hosokawa, her expression disapproving. She must have guessed that the maid was giving Reiko a whiff of the family’s dirty linens. “There are other guests for you to attend to,” she told the maid. “Escort Lady Reiko out.”
Reiko soon found herself standing on the veranda in the cold. As she crossed the courtyard to her palanquin, she was elated to have gleaned so much information but troubled. Everything she’d heard placed the blame for the murders within the Hosokawa clan, and the logical culprit was either Myobu or Kumoi. She hoped Sano or Hirata would turn up evidence that implicated someone else.
11
Foul smoke from the crematoriums still lingered in the Asakusa Temple district when Sano and his troops arrived there. Once, pilgrims from all over Japan had flocked to Asakusa to worship and to patronize the shops, teahouses, and restaurants, but now people came to gawk at the ruined temples. Monks and priests guarded salvaged religious treasures from looters and lived in a tent camp that occupied the onetime marketplace inside the broken red torii gate.
Sano easily located Mizutani’s neighborhood, an enclave of houses that still stood. Throughout Edo, such enclaves poked up from the flattened ruins around them like anthills. Often there seemed no explicable reason why they’d survived when similar structures had collapsed. Here, two rows of houses faced each other across a narrow road. Their ground floors contained shops in which Sano saw empty bins and shelves. People in the living quarters on the upper stories peeked suspiciously at Sano’s party. Sano had heard that gangs had forced residents out of intact homes and taken them over. The police and army were spread too thin to stop it. In the new Edo, crime flourished.
A gaunt woman beseeched a man who stood outside a house at the center of one row. “Please, just a few coppers.” She held out a child wrapped in a torn quilt. “For my baby.”
The man was about sixty years of age, with the well-fed aspect of a rich merchant. His padded brown coat was made of cotton but looked new and warm. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”
“My baby is sick. He needs medicine.” The woman’s voice quavered. “Or he’ll die.”
Sano dismounted. He saw that the baby was emaciated, too weak to cry, its eyes bright with fever.
“If I give you my money, how am I going to live?” the merchant said. “Sorry.”
“But I’m your neighbor!” The woman burst into tears. “I took care of your wife when she was sick. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
The man shrugged. “Things are different now. It’s everybody for himself.”
Sano had witnessed similar scenes too many times. Although the earthquake had brought out the best in some people, who generously shared whatever they had with those less fortunate, others hoarded their goods. Perhaps the crisis only served to reinforce one’s natural character.
Weeping, the woman stumbled away. Sano sent his attendant to give her a few coins. She cried, “A thousand thanks, master! May the gods bless you!”
“That was a nice thing to do,” the merchant said. His face and hands had a soft, droopy texture that reminded Sano of a melting candle. A whiff of incense hovered around him. His shrewd eyes noted the Tokugawa crests on Sano’s garments. He seemed to realize he’d made a poor impression on a high government official and hurried to justify himself. “These people would take everything from me if I let them, and then where would I be? They already looted my shop.”
“I won’t criticize you.” Sano didn’t feel in a position to do so. No matter that he tried to help people in need; he, like this man, must look out for his own interests. He wasn’t only investigating the murders to serve justice or prevent a war; he had his family to protect. Sano introduced himself, then said, “I’m looking for Mizutani. Is that you?”
“None other.” The incense master’s smeared features arranged themselves in an expression of wariness combined with eagerness to please. “How may I be of service?”
“Tell me about you and Madam Usugumo.”
“What about her?” That Mizutani didn’t want to talk about her was obvious from the dismay in his eyes. “She’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“I haven’t seen her since before the earthquake. Her house fell into a crack in the ground.” The concern in Mizutani’s voice didn’t hide his glee. “I assumed she was buried and crushed inside.”
Maybe he knew because he’d poisoned her incense and spied on her while she and her pupils breathed the smoke and died, Sano thought.
Mizutani regarded Sano with sudden apprehension. “She is dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Sano said, “but it wasn’t the earthquake that killed her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s have this conversation indoors.” Sano wanted a look around Mizutani’s house.
Although leeriness molded his forehead into a frown, Mizutani ushered Sano inside the shop, which was empty but still smelled strongly of incense. “The looters took my stock and my equipment, you see,” Mizutani complained, leading Sano up the stairs. “Heaven knows what they thought they could do with it. Sell it, I guess. You can’t eat incense or mortars and pestles.” They entered the living quarters. “Please forgive me, it’s a little crowded. I’m storing the things I managed to save. Nobody wants incense lessons these days, but I’ve been lucky to sell incense for funerals.”
The room was jammed with iron trunks, ceramic urns and jars, and a workbench cluttered with tools, dishware, and scales. Small drawers in a cabinet overflowed with pellets and sticks of incense, barks, roots, and granules, pieces of deer antler and rhinoceros horn, and vials of liquid ingredients. The air was so saturated with their sweet, sour, bitter, and animal aromas that Sano could taste them. A crucible on a brazier contained black goo and emitted tarry smoke.
Mizutani cleared a space on the floor for him and Sano to sit. “May I offer you some refreshments?”
“No, thank you, I’ve already eaten.” Everything Mizutani had must be permeated with incense, and Sano thought it wise not to accept food from a suspect in a poisoning.
“How did Usugumo die?” Mizutani asked.
“She was murdered, with poisoned incense. She was playing an incense game with two ladies, her pupils. They died, too.”
Mizutani’s droopy mouth gaped. His teeth were yellow and the gums red, as if from an internal heat that had given his skin its melted-wax appearance. “Do you think I did it? Is that why you’re here?”
“Did you do it?” Sano asked.
“Me? No! Of course not!”
Sano counted too many denials. “Tell me about the arguments you had with Usugumo.”
“Who-” Mizutani pulled a face. “The neighborhood headman must have told you. That busybody.”
“What were the arguments about?”
Mizutani looked around, as if seeking an excuse for not answering. Failing to find one that he thought Sano would accept, he sighed. “She was stealing my pupils. The ungrateful wretch! Everything she had, I gave her!” Mizutani thumped his chest with his loose-fleshed hand. “Do you know what she was before she became an incense teacher?” He didn’t wait for Sano to say no. “She was a courtesan in Yoshiwara, that’s what!”
Yoshiwara was the pleasure quarter, the one place in Edo where prostitution was legal. The prostitutes, called courtesans, plied their trade in pleasure houses owned by merchants and regulated by the government. Samurai were officially banned from Yoshiwara but flocked there nonetheless. So did other men, from all classes, who could afford the high prices of the women, the drink, and the festivities. But the earthquake had wrecked the brothels and teahouses and put at least a temporary end to the glittering, glamorous world of Yoshiwara.
“I started going to Yoshiwara after my wife died. That was eight years ago,” Mizutani said. “I was lonely, I wanted female company, you see. It was fun for a while.” He smiled reminiscently, then sobered. “But it cost too much. Buying the right clothes to wear, the trips there and back in a boat. And the women are so expensive. Not just to sleep with-I had to throw parties for three nights in a row beforehand. Afterward, I had to buy presents for them if I wanted to have them again.”