“No!”
“Did Left Minister Konoe discover His Majesty’s plans?” Sano said. “Did His Majesty know that Konoe was a spy, and fear that Konoe would report his crime?” Now came the time to spring the trap. “Where was His Majesty on the night of Konoe’s murder?”
“Tomo-chan wasn’t in the garden. He didn’t kill the left minister!” Asagao’s desperate gaze sought help, but the courtyard was empty and still in the hot sunshine, and the building behind her as silent as if everyone had deserted it. In the trees, insects shrilled; a bird shrieked.
“How could you know where His Majesty was, when you were in the tea cottage with your father?” Sano rose and stood over Asagao. “That same story can’t provide alibis for both men. It looks as though I’ll be charging one or the other with treason and murder. You can help me decide which.”
“No!” Asagao tried to rise, but her legs tangled in her robes, and she fell against the cushions, helpless.
“Of course you want to save your father,” Sano said, hating what he must do to the consort. “He gave you life; he fed and sheltered you during your childhood. You wouldn’t like to see him hurt, and it’s your duty to protect him. But what about your duty to the emperor? His alibis for both murders are weak. He needs you to point my suspicion away from him… toward somebody else.”
“Please leave me alone,” Asagao implored. Sweat beaded her face; her pale lips trembled. “Don’t make me do this!”
Suppressing his pity for her, Sano said, “If His Majesty is found to have committed treason, a new emperor will take the throne and select a new chief consort. You’ll lose your status and special privileges. You could become a lady-in-waiting to your replacement, or marry a noble who’s willing to accept a cast-off consort as a wife. Or you could enter a nunnery.” These options represented utter humiliation to a woman of Asagao’s rank. “If that’s what you want, then by all means cast your lot with your father. If not, then perhaps you should reconsider the wisdom of protecting him at the emperor’s expense.”
Sano let the echo of his harsh words die. He waited for Asagao to choose which of the two most important men in her life she would betray. Loath to incur the consequences of implicating Japan’s sacred sovereign in the crimes, Sano didn’t want it to be Emperor Tomohito.
Asagao whimpered, hugging herself,
“Where were you when Left Minister Konoe died?” Sano asked.
For a long while he thought Asagao’s loyalty to her father would prevail. Then defeat drained the tension from her body; she began to weep. “I was in the tea cottage,” she said, “but my father wasn’t. I was with my friend Lord Gojo. We didn’t want anyone to know about us, so when the policeman came around asking everybody where they’d been that night, Gojo said he was with a friend he bribed to lie for him.”
A connection clicked in Sano’s mind. Lord Gojo was the man whom Reiko had watched flirting with Asagao in the Kabuki play. She’d been having an affair with him, not Left Minister Konoe. Asagao and Lord Gojo had been the two lovers in the tea cottage. She’d had an alibi she hadn’t wanted to use because it would have exposed her infidelity to Emperor Tomohito.
“I only said my father was with me because he asked me to.” Tears streamed down Asagao’s face; she wiped them on her sleeve. “I never saw him that night.”
She’d rejected the ties of blood for those of sex and power, sacrificing her father to protect Tomohito. Yet Sano felt no pleasure at breaking Right Minister Ichijo’s alibi. He hated himself for manipulating Asagao. The pursuit of justice too often required the basest means.
“Thank you, Lady Asagao,” Sano said, adding, “I’m sorry.”
Her bitter glare burned him. Shamed and depressed, he went to the door and called Asagao’s attendants. As they led her into the building, she turned to Sano. Between ragged sobs, she said, “My father wasn’t in the Pond Garden when the left minister died, but I know who was.”
A desperate guile shone in her reddened eyes. Sano had half-expected her to shield Ichijo by accusing someone else. Now, as she gasped for breath, he waited to see whom she would incriminate.
“It was the left minister’s former wife.”
“What?” Shock resonated through Sano. Kozeri, in the palace on the night of Konoe’s death? But Kozeri had an alibi-or did she? She hadn’t been at the scene of Aisu’s murder-or had she? Now Sano realized that this was the vital information he’d forgotten to obtain from Kozeri. Had his attraction to her rendered him so negligent? Sano unhappily acknowledged the possibility, but a kernel of doubt formed in his mind. It burgeoned into suspicion, then anger as he realized what Kozeri had done.
Asagao laughed, an ugly chortle. “Kozeri fooled you, didn’t she? Before the left minister died, I overheard him giving orders to his assistants. Ask Kozeri why he wanted the Pond Garden to himself that night. Ask her why she was there.”
Sano grabbed Asagao’s shoulders. “You tell me!” he commanded.
She looked disdainfully up at him. “Ask Kozeri how her first husband died. Ask her if she killed the left minister. Then ask her where she was when that other man died.” As the attendants bore Lady Asagao away, her mocking laughter drifted back to Sano.
30
Sano wanted to rush off and confront Kozeri with Lady Asagao’s allegations, but first he went to the imperial guardhouse to check the records of comings and goings at the palace on the dates of the two murders. Afterward he visited Kozeri’s family, a noble clan who lived in the kuge district of the palace. He learned enough to convince him that he’d made a grave mistake that he must redress after the meeting he and Chamberlain Yanagisawa had scheduled to share the results of their inquiries.
By the time he arrived at Nijō Castle, the sun had turned orange over the western hills; gongs signaled the onset of Obon rites. The smoke from altars diffused the light, so that the air seemed filled with scintillating topaz dust. The gate sentry told Sano, “The honorable chamberlain went out early this morning and hasn’t yet returned.”
Across the street, Sano saw Marume and Fukida loitering outside a teahouse. He’d assigned them and some other men to spy on Yanagisawa. Now he hurried over to the detectives. “Yanagisawa’s gone,” he said.
The pair looked surprised. “We never saw him come out,” Marume said.
Sano and the detectives checked with the men assigned to watch the other gates, but none of them had seen Yanagisawa.
“He slipped right past everyone,” Sano said in dismay.
Yanagisawa’s disappearance was more trouble on top of the problem of Kozeri. Sano didn’t want to believe Kozeri had deceived him, although he knew she had. Nor did he want to think about what might happen when he saw Kozeri again. Would he bring a killer to justice, or make matters worse? What in heaven was Yanagisawa up to now?
In the barracks of Nijō Castle, the guard captain told Sano that the chamberlain had been detained.
“Where?” Sano asked. “By whom?”
The captain looked nervous, as if wondering how much to tell Sano. “Uh, I just received news that the honorable chamberlain is at police headquarters. I sent some men to fetch him. He was arrested.”
Baffled, Sano said, “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Sano and his detectives rode to police headquarters. Around the main room, Yanagisawa’s troops stood guard. A score of yoriki and doshin lay prostrated, hands extended. Shoshidai Matsudaira knelt before the clerk’s platform, gazing fearfully up at the man standing there. With a shock, Sano recognized Yanagisawa. His clothes were dirty and disheveled. His bruised face wore a fierce scowl.
“This is a gross insult!” he yelled at the shoshidai. “If one of your yoriki hadn’t recognized me, I would be in jail now.” With scathing fury he chastised the assembly for treating him like a criminal.