The Iris Fan

30

“What makes you think the boy was murdered?” Detective Marume asked. “Didn’t he have the measles?”

“Young, healthy people often recover from the measles,” Sano said. “The circumstances of his death are suspicious.”

“The only witness to the stabbing dies suddenly while Lord Ienobu, our favorite suspect, is in charge at the castle? You’re right,” Marume said.

Their voices echoed in dank, earth-scented air. They were walking single file, Marume leading, through Lord Mori’s secret emergency exit. All daimyo estates had at least one. This was a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel that started beneath the mansion and ran under the streets. The lantern Marume carried illuminated earthen walls shored up with planks and posts driven into a rocky clay floor. Sano felt as if he were marching to hell, but they couldn’t risk another trip through Lord Ienobu’s troops.

The tunnel angled sharply to the left. Water that smelled of sewage dripped down Sano’s neck. His feet sloshed in puddles from cesspools aboveground. Marume suddenly stopped. “Here we are, not a moment too soon.”

Breathing welcome fresh air, they pushed on the iron grille at the end of the tunnel. The grille swung outward. They emerged from a hole in a stone wall and skidded down the steep, slippery bank of a canal. They hurried along the footpath, then through a city lit by a moon that shone through the fog. Smoke from chimneys was the only sign of the citizens who hadn’t fled town. Sano and Marume took a circuitous route through alleys foul with accumulated garbage and night soil, avoiding the army troops who patrolled the main streets. They reached the slum district of Kodemma-chō. Its shacks, piles of debris left over from the earthquake, and roving stray dogs glowed eerily in the light from a fire burning within the high walls that surrounded Edo Jail. The smoke stank of charred human flesh.

“At least we don’t have to worry about Yanagisawa finding out where we’re going,” Marume said.

Sano had had to tell Yanagisawa. He wouldn’t have been able to leave the estate without cooperation from Yanagisawa and Lord Mori. At first Yanagisawa had objected because he’d thought Sano meant to betray him again. Sano hadn’t wanted to leave his family alone with Yanagisawa, but his instincts told him that investigating Dengoro’s death could change the course of events. He’d explained that he had to examine the body; he’d promised Yanagisawa evidence that would prove Lord Ienobu was responsible for the attack on the shogun and the elimination of the witness, and the evidence of his guilt should turn his allies among the daimyo and Tokugawa branch clans against Ienobu. After a heated argument, after warning Sano that his family would suffer if he didn’t behave himself, Yanagisawa had capitulated. Lord Mori had shown Sano the secret exit. Sano only hoped he could deliver on his promise.

“I never thought I’d be glad that Yanagisawa knows about my business here,” Sano said as he and Marume crossed the rickety bridge over the canal that served as a moat for the jail.

The sentries at the ironclad gates recognized Sano even though he hadn’t been there in more than four years. He paid them to keep quiet about his visits. They let him and Marume in. The smoke grew thicker, acrid, and nauseating as Sano and Marume walked through the prison compound, past the guards’ barracks and the dungeon, to a yard enclosed by a bamboo fence. Flames roared from a pit dug near the morgue, a low building with a thatched roof. Human shapes swathed in white cloth lay in a row on the ground-people who’d died of the measles and had to be cremated right away, lest they spread the disease. A man dressed in a leather cape, hood, boots, and gloves dragged a corpse over to the pit and pushed it in. The thud puffed cinders and ash up through the smoke and flames. Sano hoped Dengoro’s body wasn’t already burned up. Another man, stoop-shouldered in his fire gear, leaning on a wooden cane, watched from a safe distance.

“Dr. Ito?” Sano said.

Both men turned. The watcher said, “Who’s there?” and pulled off his hood. His shaggy white hair blew in the smoky wind. His face was deeply lined, his skin blotched with brown spots. Missing teeth slackened his mouth. Although Sano had known Dr. Ito must be at least ninety, he was shocked by the changes that time had wrought upon his old friend.

“It’s Sano-san,” the other man said, bowing to Sano and Marume.

Sano recognized Mura, Dr. Ito’s longtime assistant. His hair was white, too, his square face craggier. Mura took Dr. Ito’s arm. Ordinarily a man of Mura’s status would never touch a man of Dr. Ito’s. Mura belonged to the class of outcasts, who were considered spiritually unclean because of their hereditary link with dirty, death-related occupations such as butchering and leather tanning. They also collected garbage and night soil and worked as corpse handlers, torturers, and executioners. Dr. Ito was a renowned physician, but after he’d been caught practicing foreign science and sentenced to a lifelong custodianship at Edo Morgue, he’d been cut off from polite society. Mura had become his friend. Now Dr. Ito extended a groping hand into the air and Mura guided him to Sano, who experienced a stab of concern.

“Can’t you see me?” Sano asked.

Dr. Ito’s once-keen eyes were filmy with cataracts. “I’ve gone blind,” he said in the matter-of-fact tone of a man who has accepted his disability.

“I’m sorry.” Sano was grieved by his friend’s loss, the end of Dr. Ito’s life as a scientist. He felt selfish, having two more or less good eyes, his relative youth, and his health. No matter that he’d alienated his wife and son for the sake of an alliance with his worst enemy-he’d had a choice.

Dr. Ito smiled with the sardonic humor he hadn’t lost. “I hope you’re not here because you want me to conduct an examination of a murder victim. My days of practicing illegal science are over. I just pretend to supervise the morgue while Mura does all the work.”

“That is why I came,” Sano said, “but never mind. It probably wasn’t a murder. The boy had measles. Chances are, examining his body wouldn’t have revealed anything else.” He didn’t want Dr. Ito to think he’d let Sano down. “I’m glad just to see you again.”

“I am glad, too, but I have heard that things have not gone well for you.” Dr. Ito’s expression mixed concern with pleasure. “Associating with me is an additional hazard.”

“Not as much of a hazard as before. Yanagisawa knows.” Sano gave a brief summary of recent events.

Dr. Ito chuckled. “No matter how old one gets, surprises never cease.” He grew somber again. “Even if Yanagisawa isn’t a problem, you are running the risk of capture by Lord Ienobu’s troops. I would hate for you to have taken the risk for nothing. Let us examine this boy who died. What was his name?” Sano hesitated, wondering how much good an examination by a blind scientist would do. Dr. Ito said, “Mura can show you the body. Perhaps there is evidence to be found without doing an autopsy.”

“Dengoro. He was one of the shogun’s male concubines,” Sano said.

Mura walked to the row of swathed corpses and lifted the smallest one; it lay closest to the fire pit. Marume whistled. “We got here just in time. I’ll wait out here.”

Sano followed Mura into the morgue. Dr. Ito trailed them. He knew his way so well that he didn’t bump into the waist-high tables, the stone troughs for washing the dead, or the cabinets filled with equipment. Mura laid the corpse on a table, lit lanterns on stands around it, then asked Sano, “Can you cover your nose and mouth? That’s what we do when we work with the bodies of people that had measles.”

“To keep out the evil spirits of disease,” Dr. Ito explained. “I have a theory that diseases are caused by something other than evil spirits, but I have not yet devised a means of proof.” He added wistfully, “I probably never will.”

Sano had already been exposed to the shogun, but he tied his kerchief around the lower half of his face. Mura, after covering his own face and exchanging his heavy leather gloves for thinner ones, unwrapped Dengoro. The boy’s body, dressed in a green night robe, was stiff and shrunken, the gray skin blotched with darkened red measles rash. Eyes closed, mouth slightly open, his delicate face wore a peaceful expression. Sano felt sorry for this child whose innocence had been destroyed before the end of his short life. At least Dengoro didn’t look as if he’d died violently.

That was good for Dengoro, bad for Sano’s hope of proving that Lord Ienobu was responsible for the attack on the shogun and the witness’s death.

Mura took up a knife and cut the robe off the body. Dengoro’s skin was smooth, unmarked except for the measles and a scab on a skinned knee. Mura turned the body over, with the same disappointing results.

“Any wounds or blood on him?” Dr. Ito asked.

“None,” Sano said.

“He could have been poisoned,” Dr. Ito said. “That’s a common way of making a murder look like a natural death. Examine his mouth.”

Mura laid the body on its back and used a bamboo stick to push back the flaccid lips. Sano peered at grayish-pink gums, tongue, and throat. “No burns or swelling.” Had his instincts steered him wrong? Were they, like his physical strength, compromised by age? Suspicious timing didn’t mean Dengoro’s death was in fact murder.

“An autopsy might or might not reveal signs of poison,” Dr. Ito said. “Some poisons are undetectable.”

Loath to subject Dengoro to an autopsy on the off chance that evidence would turn up, Sano said, “Let me take a closer look at him before Mura does any cutting.” He held a lantern near the body while he examined Dengoro, starting at his head and moving downward. Something on Dengoro’s thigh caught his attention-what looked to be a smudge of dirt in an odd place. His instincts quickened in spite of his cautioning himself not to imagine clues. He asked Mura for a magnifying glass and held it over the smudge. Enlarged, it took on a blue color and revealed a distinctive pattern of curved lines and whorls. Sano’s heart thumped.

“What is it?” Dr. Ito sounded impatient because he sensed that Sano had found something he couldn’t see.

“A bruise shaped like a fingerprint.”

Recollection shone in Dr. Ito’s blind eyes. “I’ve seen that before. Once.”

“Fourteen years ago,” Sano agreed. “During my investigation into the series of deaths of high-ranking officials. They were murdered by dim-mak.”

Dim-mak, the touch of death. It was the ancient martial arts technique of delivering a light tap that the victim might not even feel but was nonetheless fatal-sometimes immediately, sometimes days afterward. The speed of death was directly proportional to the force the killer used. The energy from the tap traveled through the victim’s body to the brain and caused a hemorrhage that oozed blood until the victim dropped dead.

“Very few people have ever mastered the technique,” Dr. Ito reminded Sano. “Could this be the same killer as in your previous case?”

“No. He’s dead. I’m sure because I killed him.” This investigation seemed like a tangle of sharp-edged vines from which he’d been trying to fight his way out. Now a tendril he hadn’t noticed glowed with the red-hot light of revelation and slipped free of the tangle.

“Do you know of anyone else who is capable of dim-mak?” Dr. Ito asked.

“Yes.” The clue that Sano had never expected seemed to pulse like a cut vein, pumping out poisoned sap that burned his flesh. It wasn’t going to prove Lord Ienobu was responsible for the attack on the shogun, turn his allies against him, or stop the war. It explained so much, and in hindsight made perfect sense; yet it pointed Sano in a direction he was so loath to go.

“Hirata.”