The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria (30 page)

There was no evidence that Fujio had been in the house recently. The woman could have gone there by herself. Hirata even wondered whether she’d been hiding there at all. The stove and braziers had contained no sign of recent fire, the only food in the house was some old dried fruit, and the privy didn’t smell as if anyone had used it lately. The woman could have been taken there and immediately killed—by someone who wanted to frame Fujio.

Yet perhaps Fujio was guilty, but hadn’t expected the body to be found, and therefore had thought he wouldn’t need an alibi. The story about a secret mistress might have been the best he could do when caught off guard.

“I think you went to see Wisteria at your house yesterday,” Hirata said. “Maybe she didn’t like being alone, in the cold, and she complained. Maybe you were desperate because you had nowhere else to put her. There was an argument. Things got out of control. You killed her.”

“That never happened.” Fujio shifted his stance, planting his feet firmly on the ground.

“Or maybe you intended to kill her all along,” Hirata said, “because she saw you kill Lord Mitsuyoshi.”

“Treasury Minister Nitta did it.” Triumph tinged Fujio’s declaration. “I heard the news.”

“You killed Wisteria before you knew Nitta was convicted,” Hirata guessed. “You were afraid she would tell the police that you’re the killer, and you couldn’t let her live.”

“I didn’t kill Lord Mitsuyoshi,” Fujio said hotly. “And I didn’t kill Wisteria. Someone put her body in my house to make it look like I killed her!”

In Fujio’s eyes dawned the realization that this was exactly how it looked—and how a magistrate who tried him for the murder would interpret the crime scene. A visible current of panic tautened his slim figure. Hirata sprang forward to grab Fujio, at the same instant that the
hokan
turned and bolted across the rice fields.

“Hey! Come back here!” Launching himself in pursuit, Hirata called to the detectives: “Stop him!”

Fujio stumbled over dirt clods, his garments flapping, legs and arms pumping furiously. Hirata panted as he labored to catch up. But soon Fujio’s pace slowed; fatigue hobbled his gait. Hirata closed the distance between them and lunged, seizing Fujio around the waist.

The
hokan
fell forward and slammed to the ground. Hirata landed with a thud on top of him. Fujio lay limp and wheezing.

“You’re under arrest,” Hirata said.

After the treasury minister had died with his guilt or innocence undetermined, Hirata couldn’t risk allowing one of Sano’s only two other suspects to escape. And even if Fujio proved not to have killed the shogun’s heir, he was still the primary suspect in the murder of the woman at his house.

“Silly habit of mine, running away when I’m sure to get caught,” Fujio said, managing a wry laugh. “But this time it was worth a try.”

Although Sano usually traveled with an entourage to assist him and uphold the dignity of his rank, Edo Jail was a place he preferred to go alone.

Edo Jail, a fortified dungeon surrounded by deteriorating stone walls and watchtowers, reigned over the slums of northeast Nihonbashi. Inside, jailers tortured confessions out of prisoners, and convicted criminals awaited execution. The jail also housed Edo Morgue, which received the bodies of citizens who perished from natural disasters or unnatural causes. There Dr. Ito, morgue custodian, often lent his medical expertise to Sano’s investigations. Because the examination of corpses and any other procedures associated with foreign science were illegal, Sano wanted as few people as possible to know about his visits to Edo Jail.

Dr. Ito met him at the door of the morgue, a low building with flaking plaster walls. “What a pleasure to see you,” Dr. Ito said.

In his seventies, he had white hair like a snowfall above his wise, lined face and wore the dark blue coat of a physician. Years ago he’d been caught practicing forbidden foreign science, which he’d learned through illicit channels from Dutch traders. The
bakufu
had forgone the usual sentence of exile and condemned him to work for the rest of his life in Edo Morgue. There Dr. Ito had continued his scientific experiments, ignored by the authorities.

“However, I might have wished for a better occasion than another violent death,” he said.

“I, too,” Sano said. “I wouldn’t ask you to examine another body now if I had any choice.”

The Black Lotus disaster had taken its toll on Dr. Ito even though he hadn’t been at the temple that night, when over seven hundred people had died. Their bodies had been taken directly to a mass funeral outside town, but many nuns and priests had died from injuries or committed suicide in jail, and Dr. Ito had prepared their corpses for cremation. His horror at the Black Lotus carnage had put a halt to his work—the one solace that made his imprisonment bearable—and the spiritual pollution from so many deaths had weakened his health.

Dr. Ito smiled reassuringly and gestured for Sano to enter the morgue. “Justice for a murder victim takes precedence over personal feelings.”

Inside the morgue, a large room held stone troughs used for washing the dead, cabinets containing tools, a podium stacked with papers and books, and three waist-high tables. Upon one table lay a figure draped by a white cloth. Beside this stood Dr. Ito’s assistant, Mura, a man of some fifty years, who had bushy gray hair and an angular, intelligent face.

“We’re ready to begin, Mura-
san
,” said Dr. Ito.

Mura was an
eta
, one of the outcast class from which came the wardens, torturers, corpse handlers, and executioners of Edo Jail. The
eta
’s hereditary link with death-related occupations such as butchering and leather tanning rendered them spiritually contaminated. Most citizens shunned them, but Dr. Ito had befriended Mura, who performed all the physical work for Dr. Ito’s studies.

As Sano went to stand near the table, he battled an impulse to run away. He’d not yet recovered from the horror and nausea he’d experienced upon finding the body. He dreaded examining the corpse of a woman he’d known intimately.

Mura peeled off the white cloth from the corpse, beginning at the feet. The rigidity of death had passed, and the woman lay flat on her back, limbs straight. Her feet were bare, their skin a bluish white; dirt and cuts marked the soles. As her clothes came into view, Sano observed red-brown splotches on the kimono’s purple and green floral pattern. The woman’s fingernails were broken and crusted with dried blood. Mura uncovered her top half, exposing the hideous mutilation where her head should have been. The sweet odor of rotting meat struck Sano; his stomach lurched.

“Where did you find her?” Dr. Ito asked.

Sano related the details of the murder investigation, explained how he’d discovered the body, and described the scene.

“Was there blood around the body?” Dr. Ito said.

An indelible picture of the room haunted Sano’s mind. “Not much. Some spatters on the floor, the wall, the futon, and the mosquito net.”

He knew Reiko was worried about him, and he’d wished to act normal in front of her last night, but all his energy had gone toward keeping sickness and emotion at bay. Closing himself off from Reiko would drive them farther apart, but he couldn’t explain the murder’s extreme effect on him without telling her what would make matters worse.

“To determine exactly what happened, we must view the rest of her.” Dr. Ito gestured to Mura.

The
eta
fetched a knife and cut the kimono off the woman. He removed the white under-kimono, exposing her naked body. It was an ugly patchwork of huge red and purple bruises that had erupted under the pale skin on her abdomen, breasts, and ribcage. Smaller bruises blotched her neck, arms, and thighs. Sano inhaled sharply through his teeth; Dr. Ito murmured in dismay, and even the stoic Mura looked shaken.

“Please turn her on her side, Mura-
san
,” said Dr. Ito.

Mura obeyed, and they silently viewed the bruised back and buttocks. Then Dr. Ito walked around the table, his expression pitying as he studied the corpse. “This brutality indicates a male rather than a female attacker, because it required considerable strength. Those bruises were made by fists. The small ones on the arms and neck are fingerprints.”

“She fought back,” Sano said, observing the woman’s hands. “Her fingernails are broken and bloody because she clawed her attacker.”

In his mind he saw the blood on the floor and walls, smeared with two sets of handprints and footprints, one large, one small—the victim’s and the killer’s. If this was Wisteria, what responsibility did he bear for her death?

“Note these dark, deep bruises along her back. After she fell, he kicked and trampled her,” Dr. Ito said. “She probably died from the rupture of internal organs.”

“So he beat her to death.”

Sano wished more than ever that he’d bothered to find out what had become of Wisteria after their affair ended, and not just because he might have saved her life. His sense of responsibility extended to what she might have done, as well as what had been done to her.

“The removal of the head was performed after death,” said Dr. Ito, “because otherwise, there would have been copious blood in the room.”

“The dead don’t bleed,” Sano concurred, forcing a matter-of-fact tone even as he saw bits of gore clinging to mosquito net. “After he killed her, he laid her on the bed, then decapitated her.”

“And see how the neck is hacked and ragged at the edges.” The concern in Dr. Ito’s eyes said he guessed that something troubled Sano. “Whoever did this must have been in a violent frenzy of rage.”

From the jail drifted the howls of the prisoners. Sano envisioned Wisteria, her beautiful face contorted in terror, trying to ward off a shadowy attacker. He heard her scream as fists hit her, saw her clutch the wall as she went down under a storm of blows and kicks…

With an effort Sano said, “Now that we know how she died, we just have to figure out if this really is Lady Wisteria, and whether Fujio killed her.”

“Let us first determine whether this woman matches the missing courtesan’s description.” Dr. Ito paused, clearly on the verge of asking Sano what was wrong; but either Sano’s expression stopped him, or courtesy precluded prying. “How old is Wisteria?”

“Twenty-four years,” Sano said. Her age was the one thing she’d told him that he thought he could take as fact.

“This woman was young,” Dr. Ito said, studying the corpse. “Her flesh is smooth and firm. Twenty-four years is a reasonable estimate of her age.”

The similarity in age could be a coincidence, Sano thought; but the spreading hollow in his stomach said otherwise.

“What is Wisteria’s physical size and shape?” Dr. Ito said.

“She’s small.” Sano raised his hand at shoulder height, assailed by a memory of embracing Wisteria. He tried to compare his knowledge of her naked body to the dead woman’s, but the absence of a face, as well as the bruises and the pall of death, made recognition impossible. He swallowed and forced himself to continue: “She’s slim, with narrow hips and small breasts.”

“As is the victim.” Dr. Ito glanced at the part of the woman’s body where Sano had avoided looking and said, “Her pubis is shaved. She was a prostitute.”

So many points of resemblance indicated that the dead woman was Lady Wisteria, even if they weren’t final proof. Sano felt his hope that Wisteria was still alive yield to desolation; he turned away from the body.

“Cover her, Mura-
san
,” Dr. Ito said quietly.

Whatever lies Wisteria had told or evils she’d committed, she’d been a proud, courageous woman. Sano recalled her aloof behavior the last time he’d seen her. Might she have had a premonition that her remaining time on earth was short?

“Do you think the
hokan
killed her?” Dr. Ito asked.

“It’s hard to imagine Fujio being capable of such brutality. Hirata went to question him this morning. We’ll see what happens.”

Sano stared grimly out the window as he pondered the consequences that the second murder held for him. His investigation could now continue, because even if the shogun believed that the killer of his heir had already been punished, he would expect Sano to solve the case of the decapitated woman. New inquiries might turn up new evidence to prove who had killed Lord Mitsuyoshi. Yet this prospect caused Sano dread as well as satisfaction.

“Mura-
san
, please leave us,” Dr. Ito said. The
eta
complied, and Dr. Ito stood near Sano. “Can I be of further assistance?” he said gently.

The need to confide overcame Sano’s reserve. “I knew her,” he blurted, then told Dr. Ito his secret. “It’s hard to be objective when the victim could be someone who was once my lover,” he admitted. “But if I go on with this investigation, I’ll have to keep my mind open to the possibility that the dead woman is Lady Wisteria“and that Wisteria was a murderer.”

Dr. Ito nodded in somber understanding. “If the treasury minister was innocent, then Wisteria, Fujio, and Momoko are the only suspects left. Wisteria may have stabbed Lord Mitsuyoshi.”

“In other words, my former lover killed my lord’s heir.”

Sano felt sicker than ever. “There’s another problem. My wife doesn’t know any of this. I never told her about Wisteria and me because I thought it wouldn’t matter. But if Reiko keeps on with her inquiries, she may find out that I freed Wisteria and think I haven’t told her because I have something to hide.”

Fraught with anxiety, Sano clenched his hands around the window bars. Never had he expected his minor omission to grow into a major threat to his already shaky marriage. “I wish I’d told her at the start. What should I do now?”

“A tiny pebble rolling down a mountain can start a landslide,” Dr. Ito reminded him. “I suggest you tell your wife as soon as possible, because the longer you wait, the worse your problems may get.”

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