The Iris Fan

9

Outside the large Interior, Sano tried the door as the spectators in the corridor behind him watched. The door was locked. Captain Hosono called to the guard on the other side, “Sano-san is investigating the attack on the shogun. Let him in.”

The guard obeyed. From the dim corridor behind him drifted women’s anxious voices and sweet, tarry incense smoke overlaying the odors of aromatic unguents and women’s bodies. The odors transported Sano nineteen years into the past, to the first time he’d entered the Large Interior. One of the shogun’s female concubines had been murdered during his wedding. That had been the first crime he and Reiko had investigated together.

So much had happened between them since then.

The last case they’d investigated together was the murder of the shogun’s daughter more than four years ago. At the end of that case Reiko had lost the baby and Sano had begun his campaign against Lord Ienobu. At first she’d been too ill and distraught to help Sano with his quest to prove that Lord Ienobu had murdered the shogun’s heir, then too upset because she thought it was a mistake. Sano missed their collaboration, and he knew he’d made life hard for her, but he couldn’t help feeling hurt and abandoned. Once he’d also had a corps of a hundred detectives. He was on his own now in a den of wolves.

As Sano stepped inside the Large Interior, Manabe joined him. “Lord Ienobu sent me to watch you.”

“Where is he? Where’s Chamberlain Yanagisawa?” Sano asked.

The expression on Manabe’s hard, burnished face said it was none of Sano’s business. Sano shone his lantern on the floor-polished cypress planks in which he could see his blurry reflection. There was no blood. Unable to tell where the attacker had gone, Sano headed into the labyrinth of passages and small chambers. Two male guards appeared, soldiers who preferred their own sex and wouldn’t touch the women. Peering in doorways, Sano saw women huddled on beds where they slept four or five to a room amid lacquer chests and cabinets, dressing tables and mirrors, and garments hanging on stands. There were countless places where bloodstained socks or clothing could be hidden. Sano noted the many charcoal braziers. The socks could be burnt to ashes by now. There were also hundreds of potential suspects.

A commotion arose outside the Large Interior. Sano heard his son, Masahiro, and Detective Marume arguing with the guard at the door. He called, “Send them in.”

“We heard what happened,” Masahiro said. “We came to help you investigate.”

Sano was glad to have helpers he trusted, but he felt the ever-present strain in his relationship with his son. As a child Masahiro had thought his father could do no wrong, but now he was old enough to know that his low station was Sano’s fault. After each demotion it had been harder for Sano to look Masahiro in the eye. Masahiro was always loyal, and he respected Sano’s dedication to honor, but he couldn’t help resenting the high price that he, too, must pay for honor. He’d grown aloof toward Sano. Now Sano welcomed the chance to work with his son and restore their harmony as well as solve the crime.

“You’re just in time,” Sano said. “The shogun has made me chief investigator and you my assistant.”

“That’s great!” Masahiro visibly warmed toward Sano; his eyes shone with excitement. He was old enough to understand the danger that the attack on the shogun posed for his family, but young enough to think of the investigation as an adventure and an opportunity.

“Luck is on our side for once.” Marume, scrubbed clean, looked delighted by the fact that Sano was back in favor with the shogun. “What do you want us to do?”

Their enthusiasm buoyed Sano’s spirits. “You search for socks and clothes with blood on them. Masahiro and I will question everybody.”

A tall, square woman, neatly dressed in a dark brown kimono, marched up to Sano. “If you are going to speak with the women or enter their rooms, you will do it under my supervision.” Her deep, stern voice was crusty with age. Her white hair, pinned atop her head, gave off a strong odor of peppermint-and-jasmine-scented hair oil. The bristly mustache on her upper lip was white, too. She must be in her sixties now, but Sano recognized her from that long-ago investigation.

“Madam Chizuru,” he said. “So you’re still the otoshiyori.”

The otoshiyori was the chief lady official of the Large Interior. Her most important duty was to keep a vigil outside the shogun’s chamber when he slept with a female concubine, to ensure that the concubine behaved properly. There had been little need for that service. Her other duties included keeping order in the Large Interior.

She looked surprised to see Sano. “So you’re a detective again.”

Sano had reason not to let her oversee the search and interviews. He knew something about her that he didn’t mention now. “Where were you when the shogun was stabbed?”

Her prim, dainty lips thinned in dislike. “I was in bed, asleep.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“No, I have my own room.”

“Then you’re a suspect.” Sano told Marume, “Put her under guard, apart from the other women. I’ll talk to her later.”

Cloaked in indignation, Madam Chizuru let Marume lead her away. Masahiro said, “That was fast.”

Later Sano would tell Masahiro why he thought his first suspect was a likely culprit. They began questioning the women, who all had roommates to confirm their statements that they’d been asleep during the attack on the shogun. Sano noticed things that had changed in the Large Interior since his previous case. The concubines were all homely. Lord Ienobu must have ensured that if the shogun should ever want a female bedmate, none of them would tempt him into fathering a new heir. And the shogun’s mother was gone. Lady Keisho-in had died a few years ago, at age seventy-six. Sano and Masahiro questioned female relatives of the shogun, and the ladies-in-waiting and maids. They, too, had alibis. So did the male guards.

“I think they’re telling the truth,” Masahiro said.

Sano agreed. With each moment that passed he felt increased pressure to find witnesses and evidence. Detective Marume called, “Hey, I can’t get this door open.”

Sano and Masahiro hurried around the corner. Manabe, their shadow, followed. They found Marume rattling the locked door of a chamber. “Break it down,” Sano said.

Marume heaved his shoulder against the door. The wooden panel fell into a room that exhaled warm, damp air. Sano saw a round, sunken bathtub filled with steaming water, surrounded by a floor made of wooden slats. “Who’s there?” he called.

No answer came. Sano, Marume, and Masahiro stepped inside the bath chamber. In the corner crouched a young woman dressed in a white cotton robe. She was small, slim, and beautiful, perhaps eighteen years old. Her long black hair hung in damp straggles. Her limpid eyes were huge with fright.

“Who are you?” Sano asked.

“Tomoe,” she whispered. “A concubine.”

So the shogun still had one beautiful concubine, Sano thought. “Why would you bathe at this hour?”

Cringing, Tomoe shook her head.

“Why did you lock yourself in?” Masahiro asked.

“I heard screams.” She shivered. “I was afraid.”

“Did anyone see you come in here?” Sano asked.

“No.” Her eyes pleaded for mercy. She looked like a fawn sighted on by a hunter. “Everybody else was asleep.”

Marume’s and Masahiro’s faces showed the same sympathy for the beautiful, vulnerable girl that Sano felt. Manabe waited in the doorway, his face impassive.

“If she was in the bathtub when the shogun was stabbed, she couldn’t have done it,” Masahiro said.

“She could have run in here after he was stabbed,” Sano pointed out.

“To wash off his blood?” Caught between his inclination to believe Tomoe was innocent and the need for objectivity, Marume examined the floor. “I don’t see any.”

Sano glanced at the sponge, a bag of rice bran soap, and a bucket on the wet floor by the drain hole in the wooden slats. He tried to picture Tomoe scrubbing and rinsing herself and bloody water trickling down the drain and failed. He couldn’t imagine her capable of stabbing anyone, but he was sworn to conduct an honest investigation; he’d dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth and justice. That was his personal code of honor, as important to him as Bushido.

“She’s a suspect,” Sano said. “We have to treat her like one.” Masahiro and Marume reluctantly nodded. Sano called to Captain Hosono, who’d joined Manabe at the door. “Put her under guard, away from everybody else. Marume-san, continue searching for bloodstained socks and clothes.”

Captain Hosono led the meek Tomoe away. As Sano and Masahiro headed down the corridor together, Masahiro said, “Aren’t we done questioning everybody?”

“No.” Sano opened a door, and they looked through it across the snowy night to a little house attached to the Large Interior by a covered corridor and surrounded by an earthen wall and a narrow garden of bamboo thickets.

Masahiro frowned. “Lady Nobuko. The shogun’s wife.”

There was bad blood between Sano’s family and Lady Nobuko. She’d lured Sano into investigating the death of the shogun’s daughter, and their troubles had begun then. Furthermore, her actions had almost gotten Masahiro killed. Masahiro clearly hadn’t forgiven Lady Nobuko. Now here she was again, at the center of another crime they were investigating.

“I’ll talk to Lady Nobuko by myself,” Sano said.

Masahiro opened his mouth to object. Sano silenced him with a stern look and said, “Go talk to Dengoro, the boy who was sleeping with the shogun during the attack.”

A hint of the usual tension between them returned. Sano knew that Masahiro’s chafing at his authority went deeper than just a young man’s natural desire for independence. After more than four years of watching Sano try and fail to prove that Lord Ienobu was guilty of murder and treason, Masahiro no longer trusted Sano’s judgment. That hurt.

“The boy couldn’t have done it, could he?” Masahiro said. “Don’t the bloody footprints mean it was someone from the Large Interior?”

Sano sensed that something else was bothering Masahiro, but they didn’t have time for a personal discussion. He also feared that Masahiro’s lack of faith in him would prove to be justified. They were several hours into the investigation, with no results in sight. Lord Ienobu’s threats loomed large.

“It’s too soon to rule Dengoro out, and he’s an important witness,” Sano said. “Maybe he’s remembered something.”