The Fire Kimono

19

The wind tore clouds into streamers in the night sky. Fires burned like flares across the city and lit the figures of men who sat in fire-watch towers, peering through spyglasses. Within Edo Castle, gusts blew torches carried by patrol guards into twisting tongues of flame. Servants snuffed the fires in the stone lanterns with sand and placed buckets filled with water at every gate. Inside the parlor of Sano’s mansion, drafts fanned smoke from the charcoal brazier on which Reiko heated sake.

Sano, Hirata, and the detectives sat waiting for their drinks. Masahiro played with his toy soldiers while Sano summarized the story his mother had told him at Edo Jail.

“So little Tadatoshi was an arsonist,” Marume said.

So my mother had a secret lover, Sano thought. That part of the story had shocked him as much as the part about Tadatoshi setting fires. He wouldn’t have believed his mother had been so unchaste, so wanton, had he not heard it from her own lips. But that wasn’t the only disturbing thing.

“Why do people set fires?” Masahiro asked, lining up wooden horsemen.

“Maybe because they’re possessed by evil spirits, as Tadatoshi’s father thought,” Sano said. “We may never know.”

Something else troubled Sano. It had to do with his mother taking the initiative to spy on Tadatoshi, her enlisting the tutor and Doi in her scheme to prevent him from endangering innocent people. Her actions not only contradicted Sano’s whole image of his docile, quiet mother, but they also flouted propriety and tradition.

“Is Lord Matsudaira possessed by an evil spirit?” Masahiro asked.

The detectives laughed. “That would be a good excuse for what he’s doing,” Fukida said.

Sano was impressed that his son had drawn a parallel between the arsonist in the murder case and the man who’d given him his first personal taste of evil. Masahiro was more astute than most nine-year-olds. But Sano regretted that his insight had come with a price-the loss of innocence.

“Lord Matsudaira is mad for power,” Sano said. “Power is a kind of evil spirit. So you could be right.”

“An exorcism might cure what ails him,” Marume said. “Too bad he’s not about to get one.”

Reiko poured sake into cups and distributed them. Sano and his men drank while Masahiro marched his toy armies.

“It sounds as if Tadatoshi got his comeuppance,” Fukida said. “Whoever killed him did everyone a favor.”

Sano noticed that Reiko was very quiet, waiting on the men, effacing herself as conventional wives did. It seemed strangely out of character.

“Your mother’s story explains why she was spying on Tadatoshi,” Hirata said.

While relating her story, Sano had paused to tell his companions what Lady Ateki and Oigimi had said about her today.

“It also explains why Doi threatened him,” Fukida said, alluding to Hana’s statement, which Sano had related earlier.

“But it won’t help her,” Sano said unhappily.

If the story was true, his mother was slated for execution because of a boy who’d deserved to die. Arson was a capital crime, punishable by burning to death, but even if Tadatoshi had been guilty of it, that made no difference.

“Lord Tokugawa Naganori is dead, and Colonel Doi and Egen have taken sides against your mother. Even if they knew Tadatoshi was an arsonist, they’re not going to admit it and help her out,” Hirata concurred.

“It’ll be her word against theirs,” Masahiro piped up.

“Good observation, young master,” Fukida said. “Chamberlain Sano, we’ve got a future detective here.”

The gods forbid Masahiro to follow in his father’s tracks, Sano thought. He looked to Reiko for her reaction. She appeared to be listening hard, yet she had a preoccupied air.

“Who wants to be the one to accuse the shogun’s cousin of arson?” Marume said.

No one volunteered. Maligning the murder victim’s character wouldn’t serve the defendant’s interests in this case. To speak ill of a Tokugawa clan member was treason. Should Sano report this story to the shogun, his mother could be put to death for it even if she hadn’t killed Tadatoshi.

If she hadn’t.

“That’s one reason we can’t make this story public,” Sano said.

“Nobody will hear it from me,” Hirata said.

“Nor I,” chorused Masahiro and the detectives. Reiko only nodded.

“Here’s another reason,” Sano said. “Suppose Tadatoshi really was an arsonist. My mother admitted that she was part of a conspiracy to keep him from setting fires. We don’t know the rest of the story-she fell asleep before she could finish. What if she was determined enough to stop him that she did more than spy on him?”

“Arson doesn’t give his murderer an excuse for killing him,” Hirata said. “It gives your mother a motive.”

“Lord Matsudaira would certainly use that to his advantage,” Marume said.

An idea occurred to Sano. “Tadatoshi never went to Miyako. Because of the Great Fire, Lord Naganori’s plan fell through. We still don’t know where Tadatoshi was or what he-and my mother-did during the fire.”

Hirata frowned as he caught Sano’s drift. “The fire started by accident at Honmyo Temple, before Tadatoshi disappeared,” he reminded Sano. “He couldn’t have set it.”

“The city was burning,” Sano said. “Everyone was terrified. My mother could have decided Tadatoshi was too dangerous to live. Maybe, when she went searching for him, she found him-and saw a chance to put him out of action for good.”

“That would be Lord Matsudaira’s interpretation,” Fukida said. “He’d rush to foist it onto the shogun.”

“So we keep the story quiet,” Marume said. “What else do we do?”

“Tomorrow I’ll go back to Edo Jail and try to get the rest of the story from my mother. Maybe it will help us.” Sano was already dreading that it would do the opposite. “In the meantime, what have you learned?”

“I’m sorry to say we haven’t located any of the people who lived at Tadatoshi’s estate before the Great Fire,” Marume said.

“They’re all dead or scattered,” Fukida explained.

“I haven’t found anything against Colonel Doi,” Hirata said. “So far he’s got the cleanest record I’ve ever seen.”

“I think that’s suspicious,” Masahiro said.

Sano nodded, proud yet not exactly pleased that his son had absorbed some basics of detective work. That road led to peril as well as the post of second-in-command to the shogun. “Nobody climbs as high as he’s done without getting dirt on his hands. But too clean a record isn’t evidence that Doi has a murder in his past.”

“So we’ve come up empty,” Fukida said with regret.

“Worse than empty.” Sano related what Lady Ateki, Oigimi, and Hana had told him about his mother.

“Tadatoshi’s mother and sister not only recant their statements but throw dirt at her, and so does her own maid. That is worse,” Marume said. “But we’re not giving up, are we?”

“Not while we still have another witness whose story I’m not ready to let stand,” Sano said.

“The tutor?” Masahiro guessed.

“Right,” Sano said.

“Look out, Marume-san, the boy’s wits are quicker than yours,” Fukida joked.

“I want a little talk with Egen,” Sano said.

“Good idea,” Marume said. “Make the bastard eat his words.”

“I feel responsible for what he did, because I found him,” Hirata said. “May I go with you?”

“All right,” Sano said. “We’ll leave at daybreak. Marume-san and Fukida-san, you keep searching for other witnesses and for evidence against Colonel Doi.”

“Will do,” Marume said.

The men bowed and rose to depart. Reiko gathered empty wine cups. Sano thought it odd that she’d participated in the discussion not at all.

“Aren’t you interested in the investigation?” he asked her later as they prepared for bed.

Seated at her dressing table, Reiko brushed her hair. She looked in the mirror instead of at him. “Of course I am.”

“You could have fooled me.” Sano tied the sash of his night robe. “While we were talking, you didn’t offer a single opinion or suggestion. That’s not like you. What’s wrong?”

Outside, the wind scraped tree branches against the roof and tossed dry leaves against the walls of the mansion. It sounded to Sano as if malevolent external forces were trying to breach their safe, cozy chamber.

When Reiko didn’t answer his question at once, he knelt behind her. Their worried faces reflected in the mirror together. Their eyes met, and Sano belatedly recalled that Reiko had wanted to speak with him and he’d put her off. He had an idea as to why.

“What happened between you and my mother today?” he asked.

Reiko lowered her eyes and concentrated on brushing a tangle out of her hair. “I talked to her about the murder, as you said I should.”

“And?” Sano braced himself. This was a day for news he didn’t want to hear.

“I asked her about the alibi that Hana gave her. She changed her mind and said Hana was with her, and she couldn’t have killed Tadatoshi.”

Sano rubbed his temples, wondering if the flow of bad news would ever stop. “As I said earlier, Hana has changed her mind, too. She admitted she’d lost track of my mother for eight days during and after the fire.” And he was more inclined to believe Hana’s new story than his mother’s. But he didn’t like Reiko’s expression, which made it clear that she, too, thought his mother was the liar yet again.

“What else?” Sano said.

“I asked her a few questions about her family.” Reiko spoke with slow, tentative effort, as if prying pearls from a sharp-edged oyster.

Sano’s muscles tightened. This was a sensitive topic, which he’d been loath to raise with his mother. “What questions?”

“When she became estranged from them. And why.”

“What did she say?” Although Sano craved the answers, he felt a dread of the unknown.

“They broke off contact a few months after the Great Fire. As to why…” Reiko brushed her hair a few more strokes, obviously aware that discussing his mother’s family was hard for Sano; she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad, secondhand news. “She offered me several answers to choose from: It’s not important, she doesn’t remember, or her relatives are dead.” Reiko’s reflection in the mirror lifted her painted eyebrows, then let them drop.

“You think they’re all lies?” Sano said, automatically rising to his mother’s defense, even though he felt a spark of anger at her for withholding facts that concerned him. His anger extended to Reiko, who was here while his mother wasn’t.

A sigh of sympathy, edged with frustration, issued from Reiko. “I don’t know.”

But Sano thought she did. He also thought she knew more than she’d told him. “What else did you learn?”

“This has been a difficult day. Maybe we should finish our conversation tomorrow.”

The spark of Sano’s ire heated into a flame. “I’m tired of people hedging with me. First my mother, now you. Can’t women ever just speak the straight truth?”

“All right,” Reiko said sharply, then drew a deep breath. “I think your mother was involved in something bad that happened during the Great Fire, that her family knows about, that she wants to keep a secret. I’m sure it has to do with her and the murder.”

“What gave you those ideas?” Sano said, his temper growing hotter. The same ideas had occurred to him, but he’d tried to ignore them, and didn’t like hearing them voiced by his wife.

“When I suggested contacting her family, she was horrified.”

“Is that your only justification for this theory?”

“No,” Reiko said. “There was the way she acted.”

Sano saw Reiko’s argument taking on a familiar shape that had vexed him in the past and incensed him now. “You mean your theory is based on your intuition.”

She looked sad rather than offended by his derogatory tone. “My intuition has been right in the past.”

“Not this time,” Sano said, wishing he felt as certain as he sounded. “You don’t even know my mother. You’d barely exchanged ten words with her before this. Don’t make snap judgments.”

“Maybe you don’t know her any better,” Reiko said gently.

That Sano couldn’t deny. “Certainly her background was news to me. But I know her as a person.” He was less and less sure that he did.

Reiko turned away from the mirror and faced him. With an air of a gambler spreading her cards before her opponents, she said, “Your mother got angry and blew up at me, for the first time ever.” A shadow of the awe, fright, and shock Reiko had felt crossed her face. “There’s another person inside her that she’s kept hidden.”

Not just from you, but from me, Sano thought. His anger at the deception goaded him to say the thing that he and Reiko had been avoiding. “You think my mother is guilty.”

It was a statement, not a question. Reiko shook her head, not in denial but apology. Sano was horrified because her judgment added weight to his own burden of suspicion. His temper flared.

“There’s not a crumb of solid evidence against my mother, and you decide she’s a murderess. And you dare to think of yourself as a detective!”

Reiko set down her hairbrush with exaggerated care. “I tried to warn you. I tried to say this was a bad time to talk.”

“You’ve never liked my mother, have you?” Sano demanded.

“Let’s stop before we say things we’ll both regret.”

Sano couldn’t stop. “You looked down on her because she was a peasant.” He leaped to his feet as his self-restraint broke under the pressure that had been building since his mother’s arrest. “And you don’t like that she’s turned out to be as highborn as you.”

“I did like her,” Reiko said, goaded to defend herself.

“Did, but don’t anymore?” Sano laughed bitterly. “She fooled you. And you hate it.” As much as I do.

Reiko rose, her hair falling around her shoulders in a black cape. It sparked in the dry air. “You’ve got to admit that her deception doesn’t make her look good.”

Sano was forced to admit it to himself, but he wouldn’t give Reiko the satisfaction of hearing him say so. “Doesn’t make her look good, but doesn’t mean she’s guilty. Which you should know if you were a real detective!”

He saw Reiko flinch, watched the spasm of pain twitch her mouth. He’d hurt her, and he was glad and ashamed. Now anger lit her eyes, which were liquid with tears. “I know I’m not a real detective, and I never will be. But I know better than to take the part of a suspect who’s lied again and again, I haven’t made the mistake of losing my objectivity!”

They glared at each other, but their fury soon turned to mutual distress. Sano realized that on top of all their other troubles, now they were at odds. Their current situation seemed even worse than last winter in Ezogashima.

In Ezogashima, they’d been together in adversity.

Now they were each alone.

Hirata lay alone in his bed, gazing at the crescent moon through his open window. He heard the estate settling down for the night, the patrol guards’ footsteps, the servants’ voices growing fewer and quieter as time passed. But Midori didn’t come. Hirata sensed her presence with the children in their room down the hall. She was sleeping with them, as she must have last night. Hirata felt baffled, angered, and hurt by her desertion.

What was she doing? How dare she treat her husband like this?

He could order her to sleep with him, but he didn’t want to give Midori the satisfaction of knowing he wanted her. And he was too proud to beg.

How long did she intend to keep it up?

As Hirata imagined more solitary nights, loneliness washed through him. He recalled his years of wandering, when he’d gone months without thinking about Midori and then suddenly missed her so much he’d thought he would die. Now that he’d come home, they were even more estranged. His ire surged to the defense of his wounded heart.

If Midori wanted to play games, so would he. He would fight fire with fire in this battle of theirs. Hirata folded his arms. When he won, she would revert to her old self and love him again. That decided, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.