“I wasn’t always ugly.” Tears of shame oozed from her eyes, the only features left unspoiled.
Sano saw that her body was slender but voluptuous, her neck long and graceful, her breasts full above the sash that circled her small waist. If not for the smallpox, Namiji would have been attractive.
“Lord Tsunanori knew me before.” Having lost her veil, she’d also lost her guardedness. Vulnerability replaced insolence. “He’s never forgotten what we were to each other.”
“What were you?”
“I was his mistress.”
“There’s nothing special about that,” Sano said. “Men sleeping with their servants-it happens all the time.”
Protest burst from Namiji. “We were in love!”
“Women fooling themselves. That happens all the time, too.” Sano said, “Let me guess: Lord Tsunanori ended the great love affair as soon as you got smallpox.”
“I didn’t want him to catch it,” she said, rushing to defend Lord Tsunanori. “But he still loved me.” Breathless with her need to convince Sano and herself, she said, “He could have thrown me out on the street to die. That’s what other masters do with servants who get sick. But he sent me to a convent. He paid the nuns to nurse me. When I recovered, he let me come back to his house, even though I looked like this.” She spread her arms in a gesture of triumph.
The vain, selfish Lord Tsunanori had more character than Sano had thought. But Sano kept goading Namiji. “So Lord Tsunanori let his former mistress empty his chamber pot. How generous.”
“He gave me a home when no one else would have!”
“What other dirty work did you do for him?” Sano turned the conversation back to the most important issue. “Kill his wife?”
“No! I would do anything for him but that!”
“Why not that?” Sano recalled what Reiko had said the nurse had told her. “You knew he hated Tsuruhime. She treated you like filth. You decided to give her the same disease that made you ugly. You accomplished two things at once-you got Lord Tsunanori out of his bad marriage, and you got your revenge on Tsuruhime.”
“I didn’t kill her.” Namiji regained some of her insolence. “It was Yoshisato.”
“Yoshisato wasn’t seen scrubbing Tsuruhime’s bed with a contaminated sheet,” Sano pointed out. “Or burning the sheet after Tsuruhime came down with smallpox.”
“Whoever says they saw me is lying.”
Sano reversed course. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you didn’t infect Tsuruhime. If not you, it had to be Lord Tsunanori.”
Namiji looked startled, as if she’d been following a road she’d thought was straight and it had taken a steep, downward turn. Her expression turned aghast as she realized that she had to choose between confessing to the murder or incriminating her beloved master.
“I did it,” she said with pride and resignation. “I confess.”
Captain Onoda signaled the troops to take her away. Sano said, “Wait. Did Lord Tsunanori ask you to infect Tsuruhime with smallpox?”
“No. I did it on my own.” Namiji sounded dismayed that her confession had damned her but hadn’t put Sano off Lord Tsunanori.
Sano heard his men rioting; he felt time slipping away. But he wanted the complete solution to his last case. “Why are you still protecting Lord Tsunanori? He won’t protect you. He’ll let you take the whole blame for Tsuruhime’s murder.”
“He’ll take care of me.” She sounded desperate to believe it. “He always does.”
“Not this time,” Sano said. “Tsuruhime was the shogun’s daughter. He can’t save you. He can only save himself by letting you take the whole blame. You’ll be put to death. And he’ll take as many new mistresses as he wants.”
Namiji whimpered as she absorbed the truth about her fate.
“Don’t let him get away with it.” Sano couldn’t care that he was breaking a vulnerable woman. He needed this business done with. “Make him take his part of the blame.”
She curled forward, put her scarred face against the floor, and dissolved into agonized weeping. “It was his idea. He asked me to do it. He knew I couldn’t say no.”
Sano nodded to Captain Onoda. Onoda told the troops, “Take her to Edo Jail. Tell army headquarters what happened. They’ll issue an order for Lord Tsunanori’s arrest.”
The troops carried Namiji from the room. Sano felt none of the satisfaction he usually did when he finished an investigation. Success in the past had improved his fortune, but it wouldn’t this time. This time he was still a man condemned to die, never mind that he’d solved the murder of his lord’s daughter. He had yet to make his escape, his only chance of living to see another day and reuniting with his family.
“That was impressive,” Onoda said with sincere, regretful admiration. “It’s too bad things went so wrong for you, Sano-san. I hate to lose a good man.”
“Thank you.” Knowing he’d better get lost soon, Sano edged toward the door.
A guard ran into the room. “Captain Onoda, have you seen Sano-san’s wife and children?”
Alarm struck Sano’s heart like a ramrod.
“No,” the captain said. “Why?”
“I can’t find them. They’re not in the house.”
Sano’s nerves zinged with tension; his thoughts raced. “My wife probably took the children outside to play.”
“Search the grounds,” Onoda said.
“It’s being done now.”
Sano slipped out the door; he eased down the corridor.
Captain Onoda came after him. “Weren’t they with you a little while ago? I thought I heard you talking to them.”
Sano forced himself to stay calm. “Yes, they were. I’ll go see if they’ve come back.”
Captain Onoda regarded him with growing distrust. “I’ll go with you.”
At that moment Sano knew what he would have to do. “All right.”
They walked to his room. The door he’d shut was open; someone had already searched it. Onoda looked inside, turned to Sano, and said in a grieved tone, “They weren’t there, were they? You were pretending.”
His eyes widened as he saw Sano holding the dagger he’d pulled from under his trouser leg. Before he could move, Sano stuck the blade in his throat. Blood gushed. As Onoda fell, Sano caught him. Sano dragged the corpse into the room and laid it on the floor. He heard troops shouting, “They’re not anywhere! The other woman and children are gone, too!”
Sano had no time to regret killing a man who’d been kind to him. He ran to the cabinet, pulled out the bank of drawers, and pried up the floor panel. He stole Onoda’s long sword, tucked it under his own sash, then squeezed through the hole. He dropped into the space under the house and crawled. Running footsteps shook the floor above him. Soon the troops would discover Onoda’s corpse and the secret exit. Sano had to get out of the estate fast.
He’d practiced using the secret exit before and familiarized himself with the escape route in case he ever had to use it. Bursting through the gap in the latticework, he found himself face to face with two soldiers in the back courtyard. Their faces registered surprise for an instant before Sano drew the stolen sword and slashed them across their throats. Sano heard the other troops running toward him, yelling. He tore off his outer garments. Then he was out the gate.
38
“Didn’t you suspect that Korika killed Yoshisato?” Reiko asked.
“I suspected,” Lady Nobuko said bleakly. “I didn’t know until you showed me that hood.”
They sat in Lady Nobuko’s chamber, waiting for Masahiro to bring Korika. Reiko thought that by now the troops at home must have noticed that seven of their prisoners were gone. There couldn’t be much time left before they went hunting for Reiko, Masahiro, and the others. Reiko forced herself to sit still and wait for Korika, her sole hope of exonerating Sano.
“Why didn’t you ask Korika if she set the fire?” Reiko asked.
Lady Nobuko sighed. “Because I didn’t want to believe it.” Reiko recalled that Lady Nobuko had been disconcerted to learn that the fire was arson and that evidence had been found. That information had fed her suspicions about Korika. “I didn’t want to know.”