And soon Koheiji’s darkest season would end. His star would shine once more.
As Reiko trudged behind the palanquin bearers, along the avenue outside the wall and moat of Edo Castle, she saw Koheiji jump out of the vehicle. Okitsu, who’d been walking alongside the maids and pouting, ran to him.
“Koheiji-san!” she cried petulantly. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain later,” he said, shaking her hand off his sleeve. “I have to get back to the theater.”
He whispered in Okitsu’s ear, then hurried away, cut between two squadrons of marching soldiers, and disappeared. Okitsu hesitated, obviously upset and wishing to go after him, then clambered into the palanquin. Reiko thought about the conversation that had just passed between Agemaki and Koheiji. Her keen ears had heard enough to know that the pair were engaging in a conspiracy of silence. Each appeared to have evidence that implicated the other in Makino’s murder. Questions teemed in Reiko’s mind. Was one of them the killer?
The conversation she’d overheard in Yanagiya suggested that it was Agemaki. Or were the actor and widow conspirators in the crime as well as in subterfuge?
Reiko remembered the scene she’d witnessed between Koheiji and Okitsu last night, which had almost convinced her that the guilty party was one or both of them. She felt as though her suspicion were a ball that kept bouncing from one person to another. Upon whom would it finally land?
Rain spiked with ice stippled the courtyard of Senior Elder Makino’s estate and clattered on the roofs of the surrounding barracks. In the courtyard, Sano greeted one of the detectives he’d assigned to watch the estate.
“Did Senior Elder Makino’s widow or concubine leave the premises yesterday evening?” Sano asked.
“Yes,” the detective said. “They went out separately, in palanquins, at around the hour of the boar.”
Sano glanced at Ibe and Otani, who stood nearby with their troops and Detectives Marume and Fukida, the only men they’d allowed him to bring along. Otani said, “That’s evidence that either woman had the opportunity to kill Daiemon.”
“For your son’s sake, you’d better find more evidence that they did,” Ibe said, his thin features stiff with cold and bad will toward Sano.
“What about Makino’s actor and chief retainer?” Sano asked his detective.
Otani said, “I’m warning you.”
“They both went out before the women did,” said the detective. “Koheiji hasn’t yet returned. Tamura came back after midnight and went out again a little while ago.”
“Forget you heard that,” Ibe told Sano. “Concentrate on the women, or else.”
Anger that the watchdogs had commandeered his investigation boiled up in Sano, but an image of Masahiro surrounded by their thugs stifled his retort. He longed to ask the detective for news of Reiko, but he couldn’t in the presence of Otani and Ibe. With great effort he banished the thought of his wife and son both in jeopardy and focused on the business at hand. “Where are Agemaki and Okitsu?” he asked the detective.
“They went out together early this morning. They’re not back yet.”
“I’m sure you can find something to occupy you here until they return,” Ibe said.
“Why don’t you search their quarters again?” Otani said.
He and Ibe escorted Sano to the private chambers, thwarting Sano’s hope of sneaking off to find Reiko or investigate the scene of Daiemon’s murder. Their troops followed, guarding Detectives Marume and Fukida. Sano and the detectives first searched Okitsu’s cluttered room. Otani and Ibe wandered off, but their troops stayed. If Okitsu had killed Daiemon, Sano found no sign of it. Sano moved on to Agemaki’s pristine quarters. There he and his men had just finished another fruitless search, when Ibe end Otani burst into the room. Ibe dragged the concubine; Otani brought the widow. Okitsu whimpered in terror, while Agemaki remained tranquil.
“Here they are,” said Ibe. “Pick one.”
Sano’s gaze flew to a group of maids who hovered fearfully outside the door. Reiko wasn’t among them. Sano said, “Take Okitsu to her room.” He thought her the weakest of the suspects, and giving her time to worry should goad her to reveal whatever secrets she might know about Makino’s murder. “I’ll question Agemaki first.”
The watchdogs’ troops took the concubine away. Ibe pushed the widow to her knees on the floor in front of the screen decorated with gilded birds. He and Otani stood on either side of her, their troops ranged around them. It was a situation designed to intimidate, Sano observed, but it wasn’t working. Agemaki seemed completely indifferent to the display of power surrounding her. He wondered if she’d been expecting another interrogation. Either she was innocent and felt safe in her virtue, or her stoicism was worthy of a samurai.
“When we talked yesterday, you told me that you last saw your husband before he went to bed the night he died,” Sano said. “You slept all that night in your own room. You were unaware of anything that happened because you’d taken a sleeping potion, and you don’t know how your husband died or who killed him. Is that correct?”
“That is correct.” A sigh accompanied Agemaki’s response.
“My investigation has uncovered facts that cast doubt on your story,” Sano said. “Is there anything that you forgot to mention-or that you’d like to change?”
He was certain that the murder hadn’t gone unnoticed by everybody except the killer. The thin walls of the private chambers, and the proximity of Makino’s room to the others, made it likely that someone else who’d been there that night had witnessed something. Someone, perhaps not just the killer, was withholding information, and it could be Agemaki.
“If so, now is the time to tell me,” Sano said. “I’d be more inclined to excuse a mistake than I might be later.”
Agemaki hesitated for an almost imperceptible instant before she murmured, “There is nothing else. I cannot alter the truth.”
Her hesitation spoke more truth to Sano than did her words. Now he knew she was hiding something. Yet people had other reasons to keep secrets besides being guilty of a crime. Those reasons included the desire to protect someone else.
“What are your feelings toward your husband’s concubine?” Sano said.
She gave him a sidelong glance from beneath lowered eyelashes. He thought he saw a glimmer of confusion cross her face. “Okitsu-san is like a little sister to me. We are the best of friends.”
Sano wondered how often a wife felt kindly toward her husband’s beautiful young concubine. “You didn’t care that Okitsu had won Senior Elder Makino’s affections?”
“Not at all.”
She wisely kept her response brief; if she felt any compulsion to protest too much or explain herself, she resisted it. But Sano wondered if Agemaki was more likely to have killed to protect her future from Okitsu than to have lied to protect Okitsu from the law.
“What about the actor Koheiji and your husband’s chief retainer?” said Sano. “Are you also friends with them?”
“No.”
A single word could convey many shades of meaning, Sano observed. In Agemaki’s reply he’d heard scorn for the idea that a lady of her rank would be friends with a hired entertainer or a family vassal. She wouldn’t have lied to protect them, either. If she’d withheld compromising information about Makino’s death, she aimed to protect herself.
The troops stirred, restless; Detectives Marume and Fukida watched Sano, ready to defend him if need be. Ibe and Otani gestured for Sano to speed up the interrogation.
“Yesterday you told me that your family is in service to Lord Torii,” said Sano. “But in fact, your father was a wandering rōnin. Your mother was an attendant at Asakusa Jinja Shrine, and so were you. Isn’t that true?”