Red Chrysanthemum (17 page)

Inside the room, Lord Mori lay in his bed, alone. His chamber was a hazy blur of light and shadow. Eyes closed, he breathed heavily in slumber. He rolled over on his side, his eyes blinked open, and he looked straight at Reiko.

“Who are you?” he said, drowsy and confused. “What are you doing here?”

Reiko turned away from the spy-hole. She stood, then whirled into unconsciousness, floated blind in its black oblivion. Moments or hours passed until her vision returned in a sudden splash of light. Around her spun lanterns and walls. She was inside Lord Mori’s chamber. Distorted voices and shrill laughter echoed. Blackness immersed her again. Then another splash of light struck her and revealed Lord Mori. He was naked, crawling and dragging himself away from her. His eyes were filled with terror.

“No!” he cried. “I beg you! Stop!”

Cuts on his torso spilled blood, which his hands and knees smeared on the floor as he struggled and wept. “Please!” The chamber reeled around him and Reiko, blurring the lanterns. Hysterical giggles drowned out his sobs. “Have mercy!”

Reiko screamed.

The sound broke her trance. She snapped back to the present with disconcerting abruptness. She gasped as she found herself at home. Rain pattered on the garden. Her heart pounded so fast that she thought it would explode. Reiko put her head down on her knees while shivers wracked her, cold sweat bathed her body, and the memories she’d dredged up from her unconsciousness filled her with horror.

There had been no dead boy in Lord Mori’s room.

Lord Mori had seen her, spoken to her.

She’d been with him, alert not unconscious, while he bled from his wounds and pleaded for his life.

These memories couldn’t be true! Yet they’d felt so much more real than those she’d related to Sano. A dreadful instinct told Reiko that those things had happened. The new memories prevailed over her earlier ones, like the sun outshining candle flames. What had she done that was so terrible that she would have invented a delusion to replace it?

Against her will, her mind conjured up answers:
Instead of just spying on Lord Mori, I confronted him. I asked him what had become of Lily’s son, accused him of stealing Jiro. He bragged that he’d killed Jiro and mocked my attempt to hold him responsible. I was so angry, I took justice into my own hands.

“No!”

The fervent denial burst from Reiko even as she saw herself drawing her dagger on Lord Mori. She clutched her head. “I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t have,” she whispered, frantic to convince herself. “I would never!”

Yet she felt direly uncertain of that. If she couldn’t trust her memory, how could she trust her belief that her honor would have prevented her from killing an unarmed, helpless man no matter what he’d done? And if there had been no dead boy, what else in her story might not be real?

How about Lily and Jiro? Had she invented them? Reiko was terrified not only because she might have committed murder. Her mind, which she’d always valued as her most important, dependable attribute, had betrayed her. And if Lily and Jiro didn’t exist, then why had she gone to the Mori estate?

Reiko thought of Lady Mori. Could there be any truth to the woman’s allegation that she and Lord Mori had been lovers? Nausea rose, sour and choking, in her throat.

“I couldn’t have! I would never!” she repeated, as if saying it would make it so.

But her suspicion of her guilt burgeoned even larger. With it came the knowledge that she couldn’t tell Sano about it. Now an awful new thought surfaced in her. If she could be a murderess, then Sano could be guilty of plotting treason. If she couldn’t be sure of herself, then how could she be sure of anyone else, even her trusted, beloved husband?

15

“Has anything been found yet?” Sano asked.

He was standing inside a walled compound within the Mori estate. Here, a large, fireproof storehouse with plaster walls and ironclad doors comprised the estate’s arsenal, which was headquarters for the search for the weapons Hirata had seen delivered to the estate. One of Sano’s soldiers stood guard.

“Nothing unusual.” The soldier opened the arsenal door, revealing the large stash of swords, daggers, spears, and lances that were standard equipment at any
daimyo’s
estate.

“No guns?”

“Just those.”

The soldier pointed to nine arquebuses laid atop an iron chest. Sano went in the storehouse and examined them. Their stocks were inlaid with gold designs, their steel barrels oiled to prevent rust.

Lord Mori’s chief retainer appeared in the doorway. “Those guns are heirlooms. They’ve been in the family for more than a hundred years.” Akera sounded irritated by Sano’s investigation and glad that it wasn’t going well. “Don’t expect anyone to believe they’re proof that my master was plotting a rebellion.”

Sano didn’t. Brushing past Akera, he said to his soldier, “Continue the search. It’s not to stop until this whole place is turned inside out.”

Yet his men and Hirata’s had been combing the estate all day yesterday and all last night. Now the morning sun was a pale, watery streak in a sky massed with clouds. Sano was losing hope that Lord Mori had been plotting treason; maybe politics had nothing to do with the murder. Sano also began to think that Hirata had been mistaken about the delivery he’d seen, because his detective skills had slipped since he’d begun his mystic martial arts training. Sano wondered how good a job Hirata would do on proving Reiko’s story. Yet Sano’s own inquiries weren’t going well at all.

He and Detectives Marume and Fukida had spent the whole night interviewing the Mori clan members, retainers, and servants. After learning nothing that would help Reiko, he’d left his men still at it while he went to check on other aspects of the investigation. Now, as he exited the arsenal, the detectives joined him.

“Have you found any witnesses or suspects?” he asked them.

They shook their heads. Fukida said, “No one I talked to admits to being inside the private quarters when Lord Mori died. Apparently no one saw or heard anything. Most of them claimed they were asleep in bed. The only ones up were guards on duty. And they all have partners to vouch for them.”

“Same here,” Marume said. “I take it that you didn’t have any luck, either?”

“None except bad,” Sano said. “Lady Mori’s attendants swear by her story that my wife was having an affair with Lord Mori. They claim they saw him and Reiko together.”

“What about Lady Mori herself? Is she sticking to her story?” Marume asked.

“I haven’t been able to talk to her again. Her doctor gave her a sedative potion last night, and she’s still asleep.” Frustration and weariness almost overwhelmed Sano. “I’m sure that many of these people know plenty about Lord Mori and his murder, but they aren’t talking. It could be they’ve been ordered to keep quiet.”

“We may need to use stronger interrogation techniques on them,” Fukida said.

Torturing witnesses didn’t appeal to Sano even though it was not only legal but a standard police tactic. Innocent people could be hurt, false confessions produced. He would do it if he must to save Reiko’s life and his own, but not until he’d exhausted all possible alternatives.

“They may be covering for themselves as well as trying to frame your wife,” Marume reminded Sano, “because if she didn’t kill Lord Mori, then who could have, except someone in this estate?”

“Someone from outside?” Fukida suggested.

“There’s no evidence that any other visitors were in the estate that night,” Marume said. “I interviewed the guard captain, and according to him, there weren’t.”

“According to him,” Sano emphasized.

“An assassin could have broken into the estate,” Fukida said.

“Then again, the idea that someone not only broke into the estate and killed Lord Mori but framed my wife for the murder seems farfetched,” Sano said. “Police Commissioner Hoshina is my favorite suspect, but could he have managed that?”

“Maybe with help on the inside,” Marume said.

Sano and the detectives compared notes. But nobody they’d questioned seemed to have any personal connection with Hoshina. The guards knew him by sight only because he’d visited Lord Mori once or twice. Hoshina had no apparent motive for killing one of Lord Matsudaira’s allies except to strike at Sano through Reiko. There was no evidence yet that Hoshina had known Reiko would be in the estate, conveniently at hand to frame for murder that night. Despair bred within Sano.

But he said, “Let’s check on the search for the boy that my wife came here to find, and the one she saw Lord Mori kill.” He stifled the thought that Reiko had invented them in an attempt to cover up what had really happened. He wished he could shut off the part of his mind that insisted on doubting a suspect whose story didn’t jibe with the evidence.

He and Marume and Fukida went to Lord Mori’s private quarters. Servants were busy neatening the rooms, putting away items that Sano’s troops had removed from cabinets during their search, shelving ledgers and stacking papers in Lord Mori’s office. One of the troops stood guard inside.

“Any sign of the boys?” Sano asked.

The man shook his head. “The only children in the estate are ones who belong to Lord Mori’s relatives.”

One of Sano’s soldiers came hurrying across the garden toward him. “Honorable Chamberlain! I think we’ve found something!”

“What is it?”

“A patch of dirt that looks like a big hole was recently dug and filled in.”

“Show me,” Sano ordered.

The soldier led him and the detectives to a grove of pine trees surrounding a privy, a small wooden shed attached by a covered corridor to the wing of the mansion that housed reception rooms. Sano and company walked under boughs that fragmented the dim gray sky above and sprinkled water on them. The sweet, medicinal smell of resin didn’t quite mask the stench of urine and excrement. Pine needles blanketed the sparse grass, except for a spot where another of Sano’s troops stood. Here the needles had been scraped away around an area of freshly turned earth some three paces square.

“My partner went to find a shovel,” the soldier said.

While they waited, Sano observed that the site was a good spot to bury a corpse. The reception rooms would be deserted at night, the privy unused. Restless with anticipation and impatience, he paced around the site. He noticed two people hovering nearby. They were Lady Mori and her son, Enju. Just the people Sano wanted to see.

He strode over to them. They bowed in greeting. Lady Mori appeared dazed. Her hair had been cut short, just below her ears, since yesterday. This was the custom for widows who’d sworn never to remarry. She wore an expensive lilac kimono, but the collar of her white under-robe was crooked and her sash carelessly knotted as if she’d dressed in haste. Her eyes were bleary from sleep and tears, her face swollen. In contrast, Enju was sleekly groomed, his expression alert.

“I’m glad you’re up,” Sano said to Lady Mori. “We can finish our discussion that was interrupted last night.”

Lady Mori sighed as if it was the last thing in the world she wanted, but she nodded. “Very well.”

“May I ask what is the meaning of this?” Enju said, glancing through the trees toward Sano’s men gathered around the plot of earth.

Here was the perfect entry to the topic Sano wanted to discuss. “We’re about to dig up one of Lord Mori’s secrets.” Sano wondered why mother and son had come out to see what he was up to. People suspected of murder did tend to take an interest in the investigations, especially when they were guilty and eager to learn how close he was to catching them.

Lady Mori regarded Sano through a fog of sleep potion and perplexity. “Secrets? What are you talking about?”

“His habit of entertaining himself with little boys that he rents,” Sano said.

“What… ?” She squinted her eyes, trying to focus them on Sano.

“What’s wrong with that?” he finished her sentence for her. “Sex with boys isn’t a crime, of course. Neither is keeping them instead of giving them back to their mothers. A samurai can do whatever he likes to commoners. He can even murder them for his own gratification. But making a habit of killing children goes beyond the bounds of propriety. That is a crime, even for a powerful
daimyo
such as Lord Mori was.”

A hint of emotion sparked behind the fog in Lady Mori’s eyes. Her mouth sagged open. Fear, shock, or simply offense kept her speechless. She backed away from Sano, toward her son. Enju held her arm, supporting her, demonstrating affection even though none showed in his gaze that swept her. Sano sensed love on her side, not necessarily on Enju’s. They gave an impression of estrangement even though the young man had behaved with filial devotion toward his mother as far as Sano had seen.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about.” Conviction steadied Enju’s voice as he spoke for Lady Mori. “My father did not entertain himself with children. He has certainly never hurt any.”

“Then why were boys brought into this estate at night?” Although Sano answered Enju, he looked to Lady Mori. “What did they do here?”

Lady Mori shook her head. “Perhaps someone else, perhaps one of the other men…”

“Not one of the other men,” Sano said. “Your husband. He enjoyed them in his private quarters. He took his pleasure from strangling them in his bed. And it looks as if he killed one and had the corpse buried over there, under the pine trees, the night he died.”

“No. It’s not true.” Flustered and aghast, Lady Mori said, “Where did you get these ideas?”

“From my wife,” Sano said.

“Ah. Lady Reiko. I see,” Enju interrupted. A glint of temper appeared in his eyes. “With all due respect, Honorable Chamberlain, but she misled you. She obviously didn’t want you to know the real reason why she was in my father’s chamber. So she made up a story to make him look bad and herself seem above reproach.”

Sano was reminded against his will of his suspicion that Reiko hadn’t been completely honest with him. He felt antagonistic toward Enju because he didn’t want to think the young man was right and he himself was wrong about Reiko’s innocence. Nor did he like realizing that if this were any other murder case, he might agree with Enju.