Red Chrysanthemum

13

The medium had vanished.

“Where did she go?” Sano asked Madam Chizuru, the chief lady official of the Large Interior, the women’s quarters of Edo Castle.

“I don’t know,” Madam Chizuru said. She was in her fifties, with a masculine build and a hint of whiskers on her upper lip. “Lady Nyogo wouldn’t say.”

They stood with Detectives Marume and Fukida in the corridor of the palace that led to the Large Interior. Two sentries guarded the heavy oak door, banded with iron and decorated with carved flowers, behind which lived the shogun’s mother, wife, concubines, their attendants, and the palace’s female servants. A loud babble of their voices, like twitters from caged birds, penetrated the door.

“When did she leave?” Sano asked, disturbed that the medium had fled before he could question her.

“About an hour ago,” said Madam Chizuru.

Right after her fraudulent seance. “When do you expect her back?”

“Not soon. She took a trunk full of clothes.”

“She intends to stay gone long enough to avoid you,” Detective Marume commented to Sano.

“If I were her, I’d do the same,” said Detective Fukida.

“Did anyone go with her?” Sano asked.

“Yes,” Madam Chizuru said. “Four bearers and two porters to carry her palanquin and her trunk.” Such an unwieldy procession couldn’t travel very far very fast. Determined to find out why the medium had incriminated him, Sano said to his detectives, “Let’s catch them.”

Speeding downhill through the wet passages, they found no sign of Nyogo. They stopped at the first checkpoint, whose guards told Sano, “Her escorts hurried her through as if wolves had been chasing them.”

At the main gate, the sentries couldn’t agree on which way Lady Nyogo had gone. Sano and the detectives stood beneath the gate’s roof, while pouring rain hid Edo from their view.

“We’ll send out search parties,” Sano said. “Then we’ll go back to the scene of the crime.”

He hoped that they would find clues to implicate someone else besides Reiko, especially since the first step in his attempt to exonerate her had failed.

The Nihonbashi merchant district was deserted except for soldiers on patrol and civilian sentries at neighborhood gates. Although the rain had paused, the air was so humid that the clouded sky seemed to engulf the earth. Hirata and Detectives Inoue and Arai rode along winding streets where water dripped down the tile roofs, off balconies, and through drain spouts. Lanterns glowed weakly in a few windows, their reflections shimmering in puddles. Hirata turned a corner, and a lone pedestrian came walking toward him. The man appeared in and out of view as he passed through the lights from the windows then merged into the shadows between them. He limped on a lame right leg, leaned on a wooden staff. Hirata jumped off his horse and hurried to meet him.

“Ozuno!” he called, surprised and delighted to see his teacher. “You’re here!”

“You have a habit of stating the obvious.” The priest halted. He carried a wooden chest hung from a shoulder harness decorated with orange bobbles. He didn’t look pleased to see Hirata.

Hirata was too glad to see Ozuno to care. “This is so convenient, that you’re in town. Now we can continue my training.”

Ozuno snorted. “Training isn’t a matter of convenience. But if you’re so eager for more lessons, then come with me. We have a lot of time to make up.”

“I can’t right now,” Hirata said, abashed. “I’m in the middle of an investigation. How about tomorrow?”

Now Ozuno looked gravely disapproving. “The trouble with tomorrow is that it may never come.”

“But my master is in danger, and I have to help him.”

“You must choose between your training and your duties. I won’t waste my effort on someone who merely dabbles in the martial arts instead of dedicating his life to them.” Ozuno started to shuffle away.

“Wait!” Hirata hurried after him. “I can’t quit my training.”.

“It wouldn’t be much of a loss if you quit,” Ozuno retorted as he kept walking. “You’ve been doing so poorly that I think I made a mistake accepting you as a pupil.”

Hirata was desperate to cling to his dream of becoming a great fighter and the teacher upon whom it depended. Exercising the authority that his rank conferred upon him, he grabbed Ozuno and commanded, “I forbid you to go! I order you to come live in my house and train me when my schedule permits!”

They stood in a blur of light that filtered through a window. Ozuno’s expression was fierce. “Take your hand off me,” he said in a voice quiet yet terrible.

Through his body thundered a blast of energy. It struck Hirata. He snatched his hand away and stepped backward as Ozuno’s shield pulsated waves of power at him. His fingers smarted, as if burned.

“You would arrest your teacher, hold him captive, and force him to train you against his will?” Ozuno said, his voice now laced with incredulity. “Merciful gods, there’s no end to your pigheadedness!”

“Forgive me,” Hirata said, anxious to placate Ozuno, regretting his own behavior. “A thousand apologies!”

“A single ‘farewell’ would be more to my taste.” Ozuno stomped down the wet street.

Hirata followed, horrified by the turn of events. “Do you mean it’s over? Just like that, after three years?”

“Three years are even more precious to an old man than to a young one. I shan’t waste more of my time on you because unless you change radically, you’ll never succeed at dim-mak.”

“Please give me another chance,” Hirata begged.

“Life is full of chances,” Ozuno said, limping faster, pounding his staff on the ground. “If by some miracle you make a major breakthrough, I’ll take up your training again.”

Hirata halted in defeat. “But where are you going?” he called to Ozuno’s receding figure. “Where will I find you?”

“Don’t worry,” Ozuno called over his shoulder as he disappeared through a neighborhood gate. “Should you ever be ready for another try, I’ll find you.”

Hirata and his men arrived in a rundown neighborhood crisscrossed by a malodorous canals. Voices quarreled inside the tenements whose thatched roofs sagged under the weight of the rain. A peasant emptied a bucket of slops into a street already mired in floodwater and sewage. Sullen men and boys loitered, smoking pipes and drinking cheap sake, on plank sidewalks above the filth. The desolate scene matched Hirata’s mood. He consoled himself with the thought that since his martial arts training had been suspended, at least he could focus on getting Sano and Reiko out of trouble.

This was where their trouble had started.

He dismounted outside the Persimmon Teahouse. A lantern within splashed light through the wet, tattered blue curtains. He and Inoue and Arai entered. The proprietor lounged glumly beside his sake jars; a man dozed, his head pillowed on a wooden drum; three women sat bickering together. When they saw Hirata’s party, they perked up.

“Welcome,” said the proprietor. “How about a drink?”

Hirata and his men accepted. The proprietor served them sake, then nudged the sleeping drummer. “Wake up! Entertain our guests.”

The women got to their feet, preparing to dance. Hirata said, “Never mind, thank you. I’ve come to talk to Lily. Is she here?”

“Lily?” The proprietor frowned. “There’s no one here by that name.”

Hirata looked at the dancers and drummer, who shook their heads. “I was told that Lily worked in this teahouse.”

“Whoever told you was mistaken.”

“She was a dancer here three months ago.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never had anyone called Lily,” the proprietor said.

Hirata stepped outside for a moment, looked at the insignia printed on the curtains, then said, “This is the Persimmon Teahouse, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But maybe you’re looking for another place with the same name in a different neighborhood. Maybe this woman Lily works there.”

Hirata didn’t think so. The directions he’d obtained from Reiko before leaving Edo Castle had been clear enough, and this place fit her description. Now he was disturbed that it seemed Lily didn’t exist, but not really surprised. The fact that he wasn’t surprised caused him even more distress.

All along he’d had private doubts about Reiko’s story. The idea that she’d gone to the Mori estate to look for a stolen child, then ended up naked and unconscious at the scene of Lord Mori’s murder through no fault of her own seemed far-fetched even for a woman as extraordinary as Reiko.

During his years as a police officer, Hirata had heard some mighty creative excuses from wrongdoers trying to slither their way around the law. He couldn’t help wondering if Reiko’s case was an example. His friendship with her urged him to deny that she was as guilty as she appeared, but his police instincts warned him against falling for a trick by a murder suspect who was far more intelligent than the average street criminal. Hirata felt torn between his wish to believe and protect Reiko and his reluctance to be a dupe and let a possible murderess thwart justice.

“Lily is about forty years old. She has a little boy named Jiro,” he said to the proprietor, dancers, and drummer. “Does that jog your memory?”

“No, master,” they said.

“The boy was stolen. Lily wrote to Lady Reiko, asking for help. Lady Reiko came here to see her. Do you remember?”

Again, a chorus of denials.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” Hirata said. “Are you sure you don’t know Lily?”

“We’re sure,” the proprietor said.

As the dancers nodded, Hirata surveyed them closely. They were all too young to be Lily. They looked nervous, but he couldn’t tell if it was because they were hiding something or from fear of the authority that he represented. His mind buzzed with warning signals that someone wasn’t playing straight with him, but he didn’t know who it was.

“Come on, let’s go,” he told his detectives.

Outside, Arai said, “Those people could be lying.”

“But why would they?” Inoue said.

Hirata shook his head, at a loss for a good reason. He could see his distrust of Reiko in his men’s faces, although they didn’t voice it because they knew his deep-seated loyalty to her as well as Sano. He stifled the thought that he didn’t know them as well as he once did. Had both their characters been corrupted by power?

“We have to find Lily,” he said. “She’s the best witness who can confirm Lady Reiko’s statement.”

He marched down the street, stopped at the first door he came to, and knocked until it was opened by a man wearing a nightshirt and accompanied by a wife carrying a lamp. They blinked drowsily at Hirata.

“I’m looking for a woman named Lily,” Hirata said. “Do you know her?”

“No,” the man said, and shut the door.

At the next two houses Hirata got the same response. At the fourth house an elderly man answered and Hirata said, “Where’s the headman of this neighborhood?”

“That’s me.”

“Show me your record of everybody who lives here.”

The headman complied. The ledger that contained the neighborhood census of names, family relationships, occupations, and addresses showed no Lily or Jiro listed.

“Something is fishy, but maybe not here,” Arai said, hinting that it was Reiko’s story.

By this time Hirata was anxious to find out the truth and silence the voice in his head that said Reiko had sent him on a wild goose chase. “I want everyone from every house out in the street.”

He and Arai and Inoue pounded on doors, yelling orders. Soon they had a crowd of frightened people lined up outside their homes. Hirata told them, “I’m looking for a widow named Lily, who’s the mother of a boy named Jiro. Anyone who knows her whereabouts, step forward.”

Nobody did. Hirata walked up and down the lines, studying the women, as stronger doubts about Reiko nagged at him despite his tendency to take her word over that of strangers. Planting himself in the center of the road, he announced, “Tell me where Lily is, or somebody will get hurt.”

They cowered in speechless fright. Hirata pulled an elderly, white-haired man out of the line and flung him at the detectives, who caught him. “I’ll count to ten, and if you don’t answer, we’ll beat him up. One… two…”

A younger man hurried forward, fell to his knees before Hirata, and cried, “Please don’t hurt my father!”

“Tell me, or else,” Hirata said even though he’d often deplored the police’s harsh treatment of helpless commoners.

“But I don’t know! I swear!”

A little girl began sobbing. “Grandpa, Grandpa!” she wailed, reaching her arms toward the terrified old man while her mother tried to shush her.

Inoue and Arai looked to Hirata for instructions. Standard police procedure called for him to administer the beating he’d promised, then move on to another victim until someone talked. But the little girl reminded Hirata of his daughter. He had no stomach for violent coercion tonight, especially since he wasn’t sure that it would produce the desired result.

Maybe Lily had set Reiko up, enlisted everyone in the neighborhood in a conspiracy of silence, then disappeared. But how much easier for Reiko to invent Lily and Jiro from thin air. Hirata felt his precious comradeship with Sano and Reiko disintegrating. His new position and his martial arts training had weakened his ties with them. Would this investigation sever them for good?

In the meantime, he couldn’t justify beating up an old man. “Let him go,” he told the detectives.

They obeyed. The old man staggered into the embrace of his family. The other residents gazed at Hirata, fearful that he would turn on them. He said, “I’ll be back. If you do know where Lily is, next time I ask you’d better tell me, or I’ll throw you all in jail.”

He and Inoue and Arai mounted their horses and rode away. Inoue said, “What will Chamberlain Sano say about this?”

“He won’t thank us for digging his wife’s grave deeper,” Hirata said. “We’d better search the surrounding neighborhoods for Lily.” He added under his breath, “And pray that we find witnesses to verify that things happened the way Lady Reiko said.”