The Fire Kimono

8

“Did your mother tell you anything?” Hirata asked.

“Not enough, but it was a lot more than I’d bargained for,” Sano said.

He and Hirata sat in his office, eating a belated breakfast of rice gruel, fish, and pickled vegetables. Sano reluctantly described what his mother had said, ashamed to expose his ignorance about his family even to his closest friend.

Hirata, always considerate, didn’t react except to nod. When Sano finished, he said, “She’s given us some leads.”

Thank the gods for that much, Sano thought. “The broken engagement gives Colonel Doi a possible motive for incriminating her. He’s the prime suspect as far as I’m concerned. I’ll call in my informants and find out what they can tell me about his doings around the time when Tadatoshi disappeared. But there’s another potential witness-and maybe a suspect.”

“The tutor?”

Sano nodded, spooned up the last of his gruel, and washed it down with tea. “Not only was Egen a member of Tadatoshi’s household, he must have been close to the boy. Maybe he saw something or knows something about his disappearance.”

“Maybe he was responsible for it,” Hirata said.

“That could be,” Sano said. “Tadatoshi would have trusted Egen. It would have been easy for him to kidnap the boy.”

“Easier than for a lady-in-waiting,” Hirata said.

Sano thought of his mother vehemently denying that the tutor was the killer, then claiming she’d barely known him. Questions interlaced with suspicions in Sano’s mind. He must have another talk with her, whether she liked it or not. In the meantime, the tutor offered them a chance at salvation even if he wasn’t guilty.

“Maybe Egen could refute Doi’s story,” Sano said.

“He should, if only to protect himself,” Hirata said. “Doi accused him in addition to your mother.”

“Supposing he does, it would be his word and my mother’s against Doi’s,” Sano said, although he wondered if that would carry enough weight. Doi was a high-ranking soldier, backed by Lord Matsudaira. Sano’s mother was a mere woman, vulnerable to attack by Sano’s enemies. The tutor was a nobody. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First we have to find Egen. I want you to start looking.”

“If he’s still alive,” Hirata said, “I’ll find him.”

He and Sano rose. Sano noted the quizzical expression in Hirata’s eyes. Not once had Hirata asked whether Sano’s mother might be guilty; he was too loyal. But he obviously wondered. So did Sano.

“In the meantime, I’m going to visit Tadatoshi’s mother and sister,” Sano said. “Maybe they can shed some light on the crime.”

As much as he hoped that whatever they said would exonerate his mother, he feared it would dig her grave deeper.

Reiko spoke with Lieutenant Asukai in the garden, where she was watching Akiko play with the children’s old nurse. “My husband has enough to do without having to search for the spy,” she said, and explained how Sano’s mother had been charged with murder. “I think we should handle the problem ourselves.” She longed to help Sano, and there wasn’t much else she could contribute.

“I’m ready and willing,” Asukai said. “But how should we go about it? Have you ever unmasked a spy before?”

“No,” Reiko admitted, “but let’s try a little common sense. We can’t watch all the people in the estate. There are too many.” Sano’s retainers, officials, clerks, and servants numbered in the hundreds. “And this spy will be careful not to attract attention.”

“We might never catch him doing anything to betray himself,” Asukai agreed.

“So we must draw him out,” Reiko said.

“Good idea.” Asukai regarded her with admiration, then puzzlement. “How?”

“We’ll set a trap, using something that Lord Matsudaira would want as bait.” Inspiration lit Reiko’s brain. “I know! How about the secret diary in which my husband has listed the names and locations of all his spies?”

Asukai looked surprised. “Is there such a diary?”

“There will be.”

Reiko hurried into the house to her chamber. Asukai followed. She knelt at her writing desk, lifted the lid, and pulled out a book covered in black silk. The pages were blank. She prepared ink, dipped her brush, and wrote a long list of male names as fast as she could invent them. She wrote, after each, “spy,” the place where he was stationed, choosing random locales within Edo Castle, around town, inside daimyo estates, and among Lord Matsudaira’s numerous properties; she threw in cities all over Japan.

“There,” she said, closing the book.

Asukai laughed. “It would have fooled me. I’ll spread the word that it exists. Where are we going to hide it?”

“We have plenty of choices,” Reiko said. “This estate is riddled with secret compartments.” They’d been installed by the former tenant-the onetime chamberlain Yanagisawa. So had other unusual architectural features. Masahiro had found most of them. “I know just the place.” Reiko described the location, adding, “Make sure you spread that around, too.”

“And then we watch to see who goes for the bait?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Reiko said.

Asukai nodded as he caught her meaning, then said, “Here I go, to lay down the scent for our spy.”

Masahiro came in through the door as Asukai exited. “I heard that Grandma is here,” he said. “Where is she?”

“In the guest room,” Reiko said.

“Can I go see her?”

Both children were fond of their grandmother, Reiko knew. When Sano took them to visit her, she gave them little treats, told them stories, and never scolded them. “You can see her later,” Reiko said. “She’s resting now.”

“Why did she come?” Masahiro said. “She hardly ever does.”

Reiko didn’t want to frighten him with the details, so she said, “Grandma and your father have some business to take care of together.”

“Did she do it?” Masahiro asked.

“Do what?”

“The murder.”

“How did you know about that?” Reiko said in dismay.

“I heard the servants talking.”

Reiko sighed. There was no hiding anything from Masahiro. Even if she ordered the servants not to gossip in front of him-which she often did-he would absorb information from the air.

“Did she kill the shogun’s cousin?” Masahiro persisted.

He spoke of killing in such a nonchalant manner. Reiko worried that he’d become hardened to death and violence far too young. She regretted that he’d already killed, albeit in defense of her and their family, while they’d been in Ezogashima. But she couldn’t reprimand him for circumstances that weren’t his fault.

“Grandma hasn’t killed anyone,” Reiko said. “It’s all a mistake.”

But for the first time she wondered if it really was.

Of course she’d always believed her mother-in-law to be a good, harmless person. Of course she was obligated to share Sano’s faith that his mother was innocent. And Reiko knew too little about the crime to judge it based on facts. There was no denying, however, that the woman had lied, at least about her past. Why?

Reiko considered the strain that had always existed between her and her mother-in-law, which she’d previously attributed to their different social backgrounds. But now Reiko knew that wasn’t the whole story. Perhaps she reminded the old woman of the young lady she herself had once been and the privileged life she’d lost. But it seemed just as likely that she’d been afraid Reiko would notice the discrepancies between her real and her supposed background and mention them to Sano.

Why conceal her background unless there was something in it that she wanted to hide?

“What’s going to happen to Grandma?” Masahiro asked.

“Nothing,” Reiko said. She was ashamed of her speculations about her mother-in-law. “Your father will prove she’s innocent. She’ll be all right.”

Reiko resolved to withhold judgment at least until she’d talked to the woman herself.

The search for the tutor took Hirata to the Ueno temple district. The buildings of the minor temple to which Egen had belonged forty-three years ago had burned down during the Great Fire. The government had relocated it, and scores of other religious orders, to Ueno, on the city’s outskirts. There, the fires in the temples’ crematoriums couldn’t threaten the town, and the smoke wouldn’t offend the citizens.

Hirata rode with a few detectives up Ueno’s Broad Little Road, one of many firebreaks created after the disaster. He recalled that their original purpose had been to provide bare space that would relieve overcrowding, prevent fires from spreading, and limit casualties. But land within such a big attraction as a temple district was valuable, and little empty space remained today.

Pilgrims and tourists flocked to the stalls of the marketplace that lined the road. Vendors did a thriving business in Buddhist rosaries and prayer scrolls, vegetables and fish grilled on skewers, china dolls and straw hats, sake and plum wine. Itinerant priests marched, beat drums, and juggled. Acrobats capered on a tightrope. Customers flowed to and from teahouses and brothels in the back streets.

Hirata found Egen’s temple inside a small compound enclosed by a bamboo fence. A few worshippers lit incense sticks and knelt before the altar decorated with gold lotus flowers and burning candles in the main hall where Hirata approached an old priest.

“I’m looking for a monk named Egen who belonged to your order before the Great Fire,” Hirata said. “He worked as a tutor to Tokugawa Tadatoshi, cousin of the shogun.”

“I haven’t been here that long,” the priest said, “and unfortunately, the fire destroyed all our records.”

“Is there anyone here who might remember Egen?”

The priest took Hirata to an elderly monk who was meditating in the sunny garden outside the dormitory. The monk was as lean and tough as a rope. He had no teeth, and his ears and nostrils were filled with tufts of gray hair, but he wore a serene, content expression. When Hirata asked him if he’d known Egen, he smiled and said, “Ah, yes. We were friends. We entered the monastery and took our vows at the same time.”

Hirata thought it too good to be true that the old man had remembered so promptly. “Are you sure?”

The monk smiled. “At my age it’s easier to remember what happened fifty years ago than what I had for breakfast this morning. When you get old, you’ll see.”

“My apologies for doubting you,” Hirata said. “Can you tell me where Egen is now?”

“I’m afraid not. He left the order.”

“Oh. When was that?”

“The same year as the Great Fire.”

Hirata felt his hopes deflate, but he said, “When was the last time you saw him?”

“It was some twenty days after the fire.” The monk’s eyes chased recollections through the past. “The temple had burned down. My brothers and I had run for our lives. We tried to stay together, but we got separated. When the fire finally went out, I walked through the ruins, looking for the others. That was the only way to find anyone.”

Hirata remembered his parents talking about the fire’s aftermath and the thousands of people roaming the city in search of lost loved ones. Many of his family’s relatives had died.

“I managed to find eight of my comrades. We were all that was left of the fifty monks and priests from our temple,” the monk said sadly. “By that time, the bakufu had begun putting up tents for everyone who’d lost their homes.”

A city of tents had grown up in the ashes of the great capital. They’d been hurriedly stitched together from any fabric available-quilts, kimonos, canopies. Hirata saw it in his imagination, a sea of patchwork.

“People rigged up poles beside their tents and flew banners with their family names or crests,” the monk continued. “We put up the name of our temple, hoping our brothers would come. The only one who did was Egen. We were overjoyed to see him. We wanted him to stay with us and help us rebuild the temple. But he wouldn’t. He said he was leaving the order, leaving Edo.”

“Did he give a reason?” Hirata asked.

“He would only say that something had happened,” the monk said. “We asked him what, but he wouldn’t tell us.”

Hirata wondered if his reason had anything to do with Tadatoshi’s disappearance and murder. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he had a definite place in mind.”

Hirata envisioned the highways, the cities along them, and the villages off branch roads winding through mountains and forests. Even in this rigidly governed land, a man could get lost.

“Did you ever see Egen again?” Hirata said.

“No.”

“Have you heard from him since?”

“Not a word.”

Discouragement filled Hirata, but he couldn’t give up. “Do you know of anyone who might have information about Egen?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“How old would he be now?”

“About the same age as me. I am sixty-four.”

Hirata thanked the monk, who wished him good luck on his search. When he joined his men outside the temple, he said, “We’ve got a big manhunt on our hands. Arai-san, organize troops to ride along the highways and post notices asking for information about Egen.”

Arai looked doubtful. “There’s a lot of area to cover.”

“We’ll cover it as best we can,” Hirata said. “If we’re lucky, Egen is still alive and he’ll turn up.”

If not, Sano and his mother might be doomed.

“And we can always hope that Egen has returned to Edo,” Hirata said. The city was a magnet for all sorts of people, even those with reason to stay away. Maybe Egen had decided that after all this time, it was safe to come back even if he was responsible for Tadatoshi’s murder. “Inoue-san, you’ll help me mount a search in the city. We’ll start by checking the temples in case Egen has joined another order.”

As Hirata rode back toward town, he recalled his conversation with Midori. Working day and night for the foreseeable future wasn’t the best way to fix their marriage. And the odds were his search for Egen would fail. The tutor was one grain of rice among millions.