To his surprise, Rikiju said immediately, ‘Peony’s dead. Drowned herself in Lake Biwa, but Little Abbess lives only a block from me. Why?’
She was beginning to take a little interest in the world around her, so Tora told her about the case. She was pleased. ‘Nice to know somebody cares,’ she said. ‘Even if it’s a little late for Peony. Men are bastards.’
Tora thought that ungrateful and said so. She tried to laugh, but choked and started coughing again. ‘You’re a friend, Tora,’ she finally managed. ‘Not the same thing. Thank you.’
Tora took his leave, slightly mollified because friends evidently didn’t count as men for her, but he worried. Rikiju did not look like she was getting better. He made her promise to send for a doctor and use the money he had left to pay for medicine.
Little Abbess lived in another tenement like Rikiju’s, but in larger quarters. She had two small rooms and had turned the larger into a seamstress’s shop. A striped curtain covered an opening to what was probably a kitchen area. The room was filled with stacks and piles of multicolored fabric scraps and lengths, mostly ordinary stuff, dyed hemp, some ramie, and linen, but also odd pieces of silk. Tora realized she made a living from buying old clothes and painstakingly removing the stitches. Then she would wash the fabric and sew new clothes from it for those who could not afford to buy lengths of new fabric.
Little Abbess was a squat, middle-aged woman with a bun of thick gray hair, who wore one of her own patched garments. She was busy convincing a middle-aged couple to buy the warm jacket the portly man was trying on. It was brown-and-white quilted ramie and had faded in places. The man’s tiny sharp-faced wife stood by, making disparaging remarks in hopes of getting a better price.
The seamstress abandoned her clients for a moment to bring Tora a patched cushion and ask him to wait a moment. She looked like a motherly type, unlike the harpy who pursed her lips and plucked at the jacket while her fat husband scowled at Tora.
Tora said, ‘By the gods, that’s a very handsome jacket. Looks warm, too. And just the color I like.’ He got up to feel the thickness of the fabric.
The fat man jerked it out of his hand and snapped, ‘It’s mine.’
With the purchase completed, Little Abbess turned to Tora. ‘If you’d like a jacket like that one, I could make you one.’
Tora would not be caught dead in such a thing. ‘Sorry, but I’m broke. Are you the one they call Little Abbess?’
‘Nobody calls me that any more,’ she said crossly.
‘Rikiju sent me. She says you worked for a courtesan called Peony?’
The woman’s face crumpled. ‘My lady’s dead.’
Tora sat down again. This was going to be easier than he had thought. ‘Tell me about her.’
But she was wary now. ‘Who are you? Why are you asking questions? Nobody cared when she needed help.’
‘I’m Tora.’ He tried one of his disarming smiles. ‘I work for Lord Sugawara. We investigate crimes the police can’t figure out, and we think your lady was murdered.’
‘Then you think wrong. She drowned herself. I saw her with my own eyes. Floating in the lake.’ She brushed away angry tears. ‘But you’re right about one thing. It was a crime the way they treated her. To me they are murderers, just as if they’d plunged a knife into her poor body.’
‘Are you sure she killed herself? What were you doing there?’
She eyed him for a moment, then said, ‘I have no time for this. I have a living to make.’ She whisked up a garment and sat down to sew.
‘You can talk while you’re working, can’t you?’
She said nothing, just glowered.
Tora wheedled, ‘Look, I’d buy something, only I’m down to my last few coppers.’ He held up the depleted string. ‘My parents were peasants, and I work for a few coppers just like you. I’m on your side, yours and Peony’s. We can’t let the bastards get away with abusing us. Just tell me if Lord Sadanori is responsible.’
Her head came up. ‘Lord Sadanori?’ She snorted. ‘If she’d stayed with him, she’d still be alive. Good looks aren’t everything in a man. Mostly, they’re poison where a poor girl’s concerned. Go pester someone else.’
Blast the woman. She was insulting. As a rule, Tora had an easy time chatting up females of all ages, but this one was charm-proof. He was not about to give up so easily on his theory, though. ‘What about a guy called Ishikawa?’
‘Never heard that name.’
‘Was your mistress afraid of Sadanori? Or of somebody else?’
‘No.’
‘But he kept her in a house here? A house he decorated for her?’
‘We both lived there, and he treated her like a princess.’
The curtain to the room was flung aside. An old man staggered in, leaning heavily on his stick. ‘You done, woman?’ he wheezed.
‘Just about, Grandfather Shida.’
Defeated, Tora rose. If she had told the truth about Sadanori, his master was right and he was wrong. At least she had confirmed that the Peony in Otsu and the famous courtesan Sadanori had courted were the same. At the door, he remembered to ask, ‘Your mistress had a son, didn’t she?’
She looked up, needle poised, eyes suddenly intent. ‘They found him?’
‘What?’ wheezed the old man. ‘Round? I don’t want my pants round.’ He gave the garment in her lap a poke with his cane.
Tora sidled back. ‘Maybe.’
She pushed aside the old man’s cane and got up, her face filled with sudden hope. ‘He’s alive?’ she asked. ‘You’ve heard something? Maybe even seen him? Please tell me he’s alive.’
‘What wife? I have no wife.’ The old customer limped forward and poked her shoulder with a sharp finger. ‘I want my pants. You promised them.’
Tora folded his arms. ‘I don’t know that I should tell you. You weren’t very nice.’
But she would not be teased. She grasped his arm with a painful grip and shook it. ‘You have to tell me, curse you. He’s all that’s left of her. She loved that child.’ And then the tears ran down her face, and she clutched him, sobbing and muttering in her grief.
‘Hah!’ cried the old-timer. ‘Making out in the middle of the day. Stop that.’ He stuck his cane between them and tried to wrench them apart. ‘Disgusting,’ he croaked, swinging the stick dangerously close to their heads.
‘Sit down and wait, old man,’ Tora roared. He caught the end of the cane and pushed. The man stumbled back and sat down hard on the floor.
‘Help,’ he squawked, ‘Help. They’re attacking me.’ He crawled to the door, where he became tangled in the curtain in his hurry. Once outside, he could be heard shouting for the constables.
‘All right,’ Tora said to the Little Abbess. ‘Don’t cry. I’ll tell you what I know, but you’ve got to help me.’
‘They were all I had,’ she mumbled, sniffling into her sleeve. ‘All I had in life.’
‘My master found a little boy in the rain, standing beside the road outside Otsu. He was about five years old and in rags. Skinny little fellow with big eyes.’ She watched him avidly, her face blotchy with tears and her mouth open. ‘The kid doesn’t speak, and my master took him for a deaf-mute.’ Her eyes dulled and she started to shake her head. ‘Wait,’ Tora said. ‘We figured out he can hear all right; he’s just not talking.’
With a sigh, she dabbed at her face and turned away. ‘My lady’s son could speak very well. He was always prattling away. He was a bright and lively child.’
‘This boy was living with fishermen in Awazu. He’d been mistreated.’
‘Awazu? That’s outside Otsu? I’ll go see for myself
Tora explained that the child was in better hands now, and finally she was satisfied and sat back down.