The Perfumed Sleeve

24

The play was the longest Koheiji had ever performed. He sang and ranted; he strutted across the stage; he romanced beautiful women; he fought a thrilling sword battle. The audience wildly cheered and applauded him, but for once he didn’t care. All he could think about was his visit from the sōsakan-sama’s chief retainer and how his situation had gone from bad to dire. He’d reached the height of success, and all he cared about was averting the demons of destruction, whose hot breath he could already feel on his neck.

As soon as the play ended, Koheiji rushed to his dressing room, hastily scrubbed off his makeup, and changed his costume for everyday clothes. He ran out to the street and spied a palanquin for hire.

“Take me to Edo Castle,” he told the bearers as he leaped into the vehicle.

While it bounced and veered along the streets, he brooded upon how his life seemed an endless series of good and bad luck, as though he’d been born under a star that shone brightly then went dark in unpredictable phases. He’d had the good fortune to be born the son of a rich merchant, but then his father had died, leaving nothing but debts. Koheiji found himself out on the street at age nine, forced to beg, rob, and sell his body. He was always running from the police, fighting off bigger boys who tried to steal his money; he slept under bridges.

His luck had turned when the Owari Theater took him in. At first Koheiji had been overjoyed at having shelter, food, and a chance at a glamorous, lucrative career. But he’d soon become embroiled in the vicious gossip, dirty tricks, and bullying that the struggling actors used against one another. Koheiji had had no choice but to do worse to his competitors than they did to him. He’d pushed one especially talented rival down the stairs and broken his back, crippling him. He’d made a lot of enemies, but his reward was lead roles in the plays. His star brightened.

But new troubles developed. Even the lead roles at the Owari paid a pittance. Koheiji still had to sell himself for money to buy costumes and have fun. He’d spent too much in the teahouses and pleasure quarter. He’d begun borrowing from moneylenders, run up more debts, and borrowed more money to pay the creditors who hounded him. Then he made the fortuitous discovery that rich men would pay to see him having sex. His shows had paid his debts and increased his popularity. If only he’d never met Judicial Councilor Banzan!

The old coot had demanded that Koheiji beat him with a leather strap while the girl watched. When Koheiji began striking Banzan, a sudden, furious rage possessed him. Banzan seemed to personify everyone who’d ever done Koheiji wrong, everyone he’d been forced to please. Koheiji didn’t stop until Banzan was bloody and unconscious. He’d had to pay his foe, Ebisuya, for help cleaning up the mess he’d made. A new cycle of debt and borrowing plunged him into despair, until Senior Elder Makino rescued him.

Makino had become his patron and raised him to fame and fortune. But the brightest phase of his star gave way to the darkest after Makino’s death. Somehow Koheiji had always managed to blunder along until good fortune shone on him again, but now his adversaries weren’t just jealous actors; they were the sōsakan-sama and his henchmen, backed by the might of the Tokugawa regime. Two murders doubled the likelihood that he would be the one punished. If he didn’t act fast, his star would burn out for good.

Impatient, Koheiji looked out the window of his palanquin to gauge his progress toward Edo Castle. He saw, crossing an intersection ahead of him, a familiar palanquin and entourage. Koheiji called, “Let me off here!” He jumped from his vehicle, tossed coins to the bearers, ran after the palanquin, and banged on the window shutters.

They opened, and Okitsu and Agemaki peered at him from within the palanquin as he trotted alongside it. Okitsu smiled and cried, “Koheiji-san! I’m so glad to see you!”

“Get out,” Koheiji said, barely looking at her.

“What?” Confusion wiped the smile off Okitsu’s face.

Koheiji flung open the palanquin’s door and yanked Okitsu out. As she squealed protests, he climbed in, took her seat opposite Agemaki, then shut the doors and window.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “There’s bad news.”

Agemaki sat, prim and quiet as usual, her tranquil face averted from him. She waited for him to speak.

“First, I must thank you for not telling the sōsakan-sama about me and the night Senior Elder Makino died,” Koheiji said, his voice lowered to a loud whisper.

“I promised I would say nothing,” Agemaki murmured. “And I kept my promise.” She paused, then said, “Please allow me to thank you for not telling the sōsakan-sama about me.”

The morning after Makino’s murder, they’d agreed to protect each other. So far their bargain had held; their guilty secrets were safe from the sōsakan-sama, who hadn’t arrested either of them. But Koheiji wanted to ensure that Agemaki didn’t fail him now.

“It’s more important than ever that we honor our bargain,” Koheiji said. “Something has happened that puts us both in more danger than before.”

Agemaki turned her head slightly toward Koheiji, signifying interest, although her tranquil expression didn’t change.

“Daiemon was stabbed to death last night,” Koheiji said.

“How do you know this?”

“The sōsakan-sama’s chief retainer told me,” Koheiji said. “He came to see me at the theater this morning. I must warn you that he and his master aren’t finished asking questions yet. Now that they have two crimes to solve, I’m guessing they’re under twice as much pressure from their superiors. They seem to believe that whoever killed Makino also killed Daiemon. That makes you and me suspects in both murders.”

He watched to see what effect the news had on Agemaki, but she hid her emotions so well that he never knew what she was thinking. Koheiji despised her cold, remote demeanor. He preferred women like Okitsu, who were as transparent as water. But circumstances had thrown him and Agemaki together in mutual dependency.

“The sōsakan-sama or his retainer will surely call on you again,” Koheiji said. “And when they do, you must keep your silence about me.”

Shrouded by her impenetrable thoughts, Agemaki sat unmoving, hands clasped and eyelids lowered, as the palanquin jounced along the street. The voices of beggars pleading for alms and the smell of decaying garbage filtered through the shutters. Koheiji squirmed, eager for reassurance from Agemaki.

Her gaze slid toward him, not quite meeting his. She murmured, “When the sōsakan-sama does call on me, I may be forced to tell him what you did.”

For once Koheiji could read her mind. She thought that if the sōsakan-sama accused her of murdering Daiemon, she could save herself by breaking the bargain and revealing the knowledge that would condemn Koheiji instead. Koheiji had always sensed that Agemaki was smarter, crueler, and more self-serving than she appeared; now he was certain. But if she thought she could betray him, she wasn’t as clever as she believed. Even while she held his fate in her hands, Koheiji held hers.

“If you tell the sōsakan-sama what I did,” Koheiji said, “I’ll have to tell him all about you.”

She seemed unruffled by his counterthreat. A hint of a smile touched her lips. “Whose story do you think the sōsakan-sama would consider more important? Yours or mine?”

The tinge of superiority in her voice nettled Koheiji. The danger that her betrayal posed struck dread into him. He felt sweat dampening his armpits and smelled his sweet stench of nerves filling the palanquin. Maybe the sōsakan-sama would think that what Agemaki knew was indisputable evidence that Koheiji had killed Makino, while Koheiji’s story didn’t prove Agemaki had. Agemaki obviously believed so, and maybe she was right. Yet Koheiji mustn’t let her intimidate him.

“If you think the sōsakan-sama would listen to a former shrine attendant and whore like you rather than a Kabuki star like me, I think you’ve got a lot to learn,” he said. “But, hey, there’s a way to settle the question. Let’s go to the sōsakan-sama, together, right now. We’ll each tell him our story and see which of us he arrests.”

He was bluffing; he didn’t dare take such a gamble. But Agemaki swiveled and raised her head until their gazes met. Koheiji saw fearful uncertainty, and hatred toward him, in her eyes. She looked away first.

“Perhaps it’s best that we keep our bargain,” she said.

Gladness and relief flooded Koheiji. He drew his first easy breath since Hirata had interrupted his tryst in the theater. “Oh, indeed it is best,” he said. “That way, the sōsakan-sama will have to pick somebody else to blame for the murders instead of either of us.”

And soon Koheiji’s darkest season would end. His star would shine once more.

As Reiko trudged behind the palanquin bearers, along the avenue outside the wall and moat of Edo Castle, she saw Koheiji jump out of the vehicle. Okitsu, who’d been walking alongside the maids and pouting, ran to him.

“Koheiji-san!” she cried petulantly. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain later,” he said, shaking her hand off his sleeve. “I have to get back to the theater.”

He whispered in Okitsu’s ear, then hurried away, cut between two squadrons of marching soldiers, and disappeared. Okitsu hesitated, obviously upset and wishing to go after him, then clambered into the palanquin. Reiko thought about the conversation that had just passed between Agemaki and Koheiji. Her keen ears had heard enough to know that the pair were engaging in a conspiracy of silence. Each appeared to have evidence that implicated the other in Makino’s murder. Questions teemed in Reiko’s mind. Was one of them the killer?

The conversation she’d overheard in Yanagiya suggested that it was Agemaki. Or were the actor and widow conspirators in the crime as well as in subterfuge?

Reiko remembered the scene she’d witnessed between Koheiji and Okitsu last night, which had almost convinced her that the guilty party was one or both of them. She felt as though her suspicion were a ball that kept bouncing from one person to another. Upon whom would it finally land?

Rain spiked with ice stippled the courtyard of Senior Elder Makino’s estate and clattered on the roofs of the surrounding barracks. In the courtyard, Sano greeted one of the detectives he’d assigned to watch the estate.

“Did Senior Elder Makino’s widow or concubine leave the premises yesterday evening?” Sano asked.

“Yes,” the detective said. “They went out separately, in palanquins, at around the hour of the boar.”

Sano glanced at Ibe and Otani, who stood nearby with their troops and Detectives Marume and Fukida, the only men they’d allowed him to bring along. Otani said, “That’s evidence that either woman had the opportunity to kill Daiemon.”

“For your son’s sake, you’d better find more evidence that they did,” Ibe said, his thin features stiff with cold and bad will toward Sano.

“What about Makino’s actor and chief retainer?” Sano asked his detective.

Otani said, “I’m warning you.”

“They both went out before the women did,” said the detective. “Koheiji hasn’t yet returned. Tamura came back after midnight and went out again a little while ago.”

“Forget you heard that,” Ibe told Sano. “Concentrate on the women, or else.”

Anger that the watchdogs had commandeered his investigation boiled up in Sano, but an image of Masahiro surrounded by their thugs stifled his retort. He longed to ask the detective for news of Reiko, but he couldn’t in the presence of Otani and Ibe. With great effort he banished the thought of his wife and son both in jeopardy and focused on the business at hand. “Where are Agemaki and Okitsu?” he asked the detective.

“They went out together early this morning. They’re not back yet.”

“I’m sure you can find something to occupy you here until they return,” Ibe said.

“Why don’t you search their quarters again?” Otani said.

He and Ibe escorted Sano to the private chambers, thwarting Sano’s hope of sneaking off to find Reiko or investigate the scene of Daiemon’s murder. Their troops followed, guarding Detectives Marume and Fukida. Sano and the detectives first searched Okitsu’s cluttered room. Otani and Ibe wandered off, but their troops stayed. If Okitsu had killed Daiemon, Sano found no sign of it. Sano moved on to Agemaki’s pristine quarters. There he and his men had just finished another fruitless search, when Ibe end Otani burst into the room. Ibe dragged the concubine; Otani brought the widow. Okitsu whimpered in terror, while Agemaki remained tranquil.

“Here they are,” said Ibe. “Pick one.”

Sano’s gaze flew to a group of maids who hovered fearfully outside the door. Reiko wasn’t among them. Sano said, “Take Okitsu to her room.” He thought her the weakest of the suspects, and giving her time to worry should goad her to reveal whatever secrets she might know about Makino’s murder. “I’ll question Agemaki first.”

The watchdogs’ troops took the concubine away. Ibe pushed the widow to her knees on the floor in front of the screen decorated with gilded birds. He and Otani stood on either side of her, their troops ranged around them. It was a situation designed to intimidate, Sano observed, but it wasn’t working. Agemaki seemed completely indifferent to the display of power surrounding her. He wondered if she’d been expecting another interrogation. Either she was innocent and felt safe in her virtue, or her stoicism was worthy of a samurai.

“When we talked yesterday, you told me that you last saw your husband before he went to bed the night he died,” Sano said. “You slept all that night in your own room. You were unaware of anything that happened because you’d taken a sleeping potion, and you don’t know how your husband died or who killed him. Is that correct?”

“That is correct.” A sigh accompanied Agemaki’s response.

“My investigation has uncovered facts that cast doubt on your story,” Sano said. “Is there anything that you forgot to mention-or that you’d like to change?”

He was certain that the murder hadn’t gone unnoticed by everybody except the killer. The thin walls of the private chambers, and the proximity of Makino’s room to the others, made it likely that someone else who’d been there that night had witnessed something. Someone, perhaps not just the killer, was withholding information, and it could be Agemaki.

“If so, now is the time to tell me,” Sano said. “I’d be more inclined to excuse a mistake than I might be later.”

Agemaki hesitated for an almost imperceptible instant before she murmured, “There is nothing else. I cannot alter the truth.”

Her hesitation spoke more truth to Sano than did her words. Now he knew she was hiding something. Yet people had other reasons to keep secrets besides being guilty of a crime. Those reasons included the desire to protect someone else.

“What are your feelings toward your husband’s concubine?” Sano said.

She gave him a sidelong glance from beneath lowered eyelashes. He thought he saw a glimmer of confusion cross her face. “Okitsu-san is like a little sister to me. We are the best of friends.”

Sano wondered how often a wife felt kindly toward her husband’s beautiful young concubine. “You didn’t care that Okitsu had won Senior Elder Makino’s affections?”

“Not at all.”

She wisely kept her response brief; if she felt any compulsion to protest too much or explain herself, she resisted it. But Sano wondered if Agemaki was more likely to have killed to protect her future from Okitsu than to have lied to protect Okitsu from the law.

“What about the actor Koheiji and your husband’s chief retainer?” said Sano. “Are you also friends with them?”

“No.”

A single word could convey many shades of meaning, Sano observed. In Agemaki’s reply he’d heard scorn for the idea that a lady of her rank would be friends with a hired entertainer or a family vassal. She wouldn’t have lied to protect them, either. If she’d withheld compromising information about Makino’s death, she aimed to protect herself.

The troops stirred, restless; Detectives Marume and Fukida watched Sano, ready to defend him if need be. Ibe and Otani gestured for Sano to speed up the interrogation.

“Yesterday you told me that your family is in service to Lord Torii,” said Sano. “But in fact, your father was a wandering rōnin. Your mother was an attendant at Asakusa Jinja Shrine, and so were you. Isn’t that true?”

He saw Agemaki’s throat contract as she swallowed: He’d shaken her composure. But she said calmly, “My father was a samurai retainer to the Torii clan.”

“Your friends at the shrine say not.”

Her gaze briefly touched his; pride flashed like a torn banner in her eyes. “I know better than they do.”

“Very well.” Sano understood that her background was her vulnerable spot. That he’d exposed it might open her up to more revelations. He strode closer to her. “You were a prostitute, a woman of uncertain parentage and few prospects.”

Agemaki flinched at the words as though he’d flung nightsoil on her expensive robes. Sano knew of other women in her position who liked to forget the past and pretend that their existences as wives of rich, powerful men were the only lives they’d ever known. He hoped he was tormenting a criminal, not an innocent victim.

“Senior Elder Makino brought you to his house… as his concubine. He was still married to his first wife then, wasn’t he?” Sano said.

“Yes.” Involuntary movement shifted Agemaki’s body.

“What happened to his first wife?”

“She died,” Agemaki whispered.

“How did she die?”

“From a fever.”

“According to the Edo Castle physician, you nursed her when she took ill,” Sano said, bringing into play the information Hirata had given him.

“She wanted me to take care of her.” As self-defensiveness overrode her feminine reticence, Agemaki explained, “She wouldn’t let anyone else. She trusted my healing skills.”

“But she got worse instead of better,” Sano said.

He watched Agemaki twist and rub her hands together, as if washing them. He was interested that she seemed more upset now than while discussing Makino’s murder. She must have been prepared for questions about his death but not his first wife’s or her own past. Maybe she’d not expected the subjects to come up. A person’s ability to dissemble stretched only so far.

“I did my best to save her,” Agemaki said, “but she was too ill.”

“According to the Edo Castle physician, you were the one who mixed her medicines,” Sano said. “You fed them to her. What did you put in them besides healing herbs?”

“Nothing!” Agemaki’s head came up; her eyes glittered.

“Did you poison her?” Sano said.

“I didn’t!” Panic crumbled Agemaki’s sedate mien. The guise of the demure, grieving widow deserted her. “It wasn’t my fault that she died! Anyone who says otherwise is lying!”

Sano wished he could tell whether she’d killed Makino’s first wife and feared due punishment, or if she was panicking because she was innocent and wrongfully accused. He’d seen similar reactions from guilty as well as innocent people.

“You gained by the death of Makino’s first wife,” Sano reminded Agemaki. “Makino married you. But then he took a new concubine. History repeats itself. You knew that Okitsu could replace you just as you’d replaced his first wife. Did you kill him to prevent him from divorcing you, marrying Okitsu, and cutting off your inheritance?”

Agemaki relaxed her body, stilled her hands, and spread a mask of false serenity across her features. “I did not.”

“Lord Matsudaira’s nephew, Daiemon, was in this estate the night your husband was murdered,” Sano said. “Did you see him?”

“No. If he was here, he must have come while I was asleep.”

“You’re not investigating Daiemon,” Otani said with a dark frown at Sano. “No more questions about him.”

“While you were asleep, or while you were beating your husband to death?” Sano said, ignoring Otani. “Did he catch you in the act?”

“Careful, sōsakan-sama,” said Ibe.

Agemaki repeated quietly, “I didn’t see him. I did nothing for him to see.

“Last night Daiemon was stabbed to death in a house of assignation,” Sano said even as the watchdogs glared at him. “What were you doing then?”

“I went out for a ride in my palanquin.” Agemaki seemed indifferent to the news of Daiemon’s death.

“Where did you go?” Sano said.

“Nowhere in particular. Just around town.”

“Enough of this,” Ibe told Sano.

Sano nodded. He’d learned what he’d wanted to know. Agemaki had been in the city last night. Perhaps she was Daiemon’s missing paramour-and killer.

“I’m satisfied that she killed Makino’s first wife,” Ibe said.

“And Makino as well,” Otani said. "Once a murderer, twice a murderer.”

“Go ahead and arrest her,” Ibe told Sano. “If you’re so anxious to solve Daiemon’s murder, let her take the blame for that, too.”

Agemaki sat frozen between the watchdogs, like a cat who thinks that if she doesn’t move, predators won’t notice or attack her.

Sano said, “The evidence against her is indirect. It’s not sufficient for me.”

“It’s sufficient to convict her in the Court of Justice,” Ibe said.

Sano knew that for a fact, but he also knew that virtually all trials in the Tokugawa justice system resulted in conviction, even if the defendant was innocent. Agemaki might be guilty of multiple murders-or not. He was by no means certain which. Even while the watchdogs held his son hostage, Sano refused to let them rush him into a faulty decision.

“You gave me a choice of two suspects,” he told them. “I’ll interrogate Okitsu before arresting anyone.”

A silent consultation ensued between Ibe and Otani. “Suit yourself,” Ibe said at last. “But don’t tax our patience.”

As they and their troops ushered Sano and his detectives out of the room, Sano looked backward at Agemaki. She stayed kneeling and immobile, her head bowed, the bare nape of her neck white and vulnerable, as though waiting for the executioner’s sword to descend.