Laura Rowland - The Perfumed Sleeve

As Tamura read the letter, he shook his head in amazement. “I had no knowledge of this.”

Was Tamura shocked, Sano wondered, because he’d prided himself on enjoying his superior’s confidence, only to learn of secrets kept from him? Or were there other reasons for discomfiture?

Quickly regaining his poise, Tamura said, “I did know that the senior elder feared assassination. However, he died peacefully in his sleep.” Tamura gave the letter back to Sano. “Many thanks for honoring my master’s wish. You have no further obligation to him.” He bowed and rose, concluding Sano’s visit.

Sano thought Tamura seemed a bit too hasty to get rid of him. Perhaps Makino had had good cause not to tell his chief retainer about the letter. Sano, Hirata, and the detectives stood, but held their ground.

“I’d like to see for myself that Senior Elder Makino wasn’t a victim of murder,” Sano told Tamura. “Please take me to him.”

Resistance swelled Tamura to his full height. “With all due respect, Sōsakan-sama, but I must decline. An official examination of my master would be a disgrace to him.”

“The senior elder knew what my inquiries would entail. He cared less about disgrace than that I should discover the truth about what happened.” Sano observed the angry crimson flush spreading across Tamura’s shiny cheeks. He conjectured that Tamura might prove to be his first suspect in a murder investigation. “Now, if you’ll show me to Senior Elder Makino?” Sano paused. “Or do you want me to think you have something to hide?”

Calculation flickered in Tamura’s eyes as he measured the threat posed by Sano against whatever was his actual motive for barring examination of the death scene.

“Come this way,” he said at last. His courteous bow and gesture toward the door smacked of disdain.

As they all trooped down the corridor, Sano experienced a growing sense that Makino’s death wasn’t as natural as it seemed. He anticipated that Tamura’s unwillingness to cooperate was only the first obstacle his inquiries would meet.

Senior Elder Makino’s mansion had the same layout as other samurai estates, with family living quarters at the center. A separate building, with half-timbered plaster walls, heavy wooden shutters over the windows, a broad veranda, and surrounding gardens, housed his private chambers. Tamura, Sano, Hirata, and the detectives crossed a covered walkway built above raked white sand studded with low shrubs and mossy rocks. Two guards stood outside the building. Inside, a corridor encircled the chambers. Tamura slid open a panel in the lattice-and-paper wall, admitting Sano and his men into a spacious room heated by sunken charcoal braziers. Across an expanse of tatami floor, a platform extended below a mural that depicted treetops and clouds. On a bed on the platform lay Senior Elder Makino, covered by quilt. But Sano’s immediate attention focused on the people in the room.

Two women knelt, one on either side of Makino’s head. A man crouched at his feet. All turned toward Sano, Hirata, and the detectives. Sano had a sudden impression of vultures feeding on a corpse, interrupted by a predator.

“This is Makino-san’s widow,” Tamura said, introducing the older of the women.

Although Sano estimated her age at forty-five years, her face’s elegant bone structure testified to the beauty she must have once possessed. A rich burgundy silk dressing gown embossed with medallions clothed her slim figure. Her hair fell in a long plait over her shoulder. She bowed to Sano, her features set in rigid lines of grief.

“That’s his concubine.” Tamura indicated the other woman.

She was small and very young-no more than fifteen, Sano guessed-yet voluptuous of body. Her scarlet kimono, gaily patterned with winter landscapes, looked out of place at a deathbed. But her round, pretty face was tear-streaked, her eyes red and swollen. As she bobbed a clumsy bow at Sano, she pressed a white kerchief to her nose.

“And that’s the senior elder’s houseguest.” Tamura nodded at the man by the foot of the bed.

The houseguest rearranged his tall, agile figure in a kneeling position and bowed. He was in his twenties, clad in a plain brown robe, and stunningly handsome. His bold, lustrous eyes appraised Sano. Lively spirits flashed behind the somber expression on his strong, clean features. He wore his oiled black hair in a topknot above his shaved crown. Recognition jarred Sano, but he couldn’t think where he’d seen the man before. He had a notion that the man wasn’t a samurai, despite his hairstyle.

“Leave this building,” Tamura ordered the three.

The concubine glanced at the houseguest. He jerked his chin at her, then rose and stepped off the platform. The concubine scrambled up, and together they hastened from the room. The widow glided after them. While Tamura stood by the door and the detectives waited at the end of the room, Sano and Hirata mounted the platform and gazed down at Makino.

He lay on his back with his legs straight and hands atop his chest under the quilt. A jade neck rest supported his head, which wore a white nightcap. His withered, sallow skin spread across his ugly face, delineating the skull beneath. Wrinkles wattled his scrawny neck above the collar of a beige silk robe; purplish shadows tinged his closed eyelids. He looked much the same as when alive, Sano thought. Except that Makino had never shut his eyes in the presence of other people because he was always on the lookout for threats, or for advantages to seize. And he’d had too much pride to let his mouth drop open like that. Sano experienced a mixture of sadness at the spectacle of human mortality and relief that his enemy was really dead.

“Who found him?” Sano asked Tamura.

“I did. I came to wake him, as usual, and there he was.” Arms folded, Tamura spoke in tone of resigned forbearance.

Sano noted the quilt draped smoothly over Makino, his head balanced on the neck rest, his body in serene repose. “Was he in this exact position? Or did anyone move his body?”

“He was just as you see him,” Tamura said.

Sano and Hirata exchanged glances, sharing the thought that Makino looked too neat and composed even if he’d died naturally, and that the person who discovers the body is often the killer. Now that he had more reason to doubt Tamura’s word, Sano felt his heart beat faster with the excitement that a new investigation always brought him along with qualms about his next step.

In order to determine how Makino had died, an examination of the body was imperative. But Sano couldn’t just strip Makino naked and look for wounds, as that would transgress Tokugawa law forbidding practices associated with foreign science, including the examination of corpses. Sano had broken the law often enough, but he couldn’t do it here, in the presence of Tamura, a hostile witness. He needed to get Makino away from the estate. Besides, even if Sano examined the body, he might not be able to tell what had caused the death. He needed expert advice. His mind raced, formulating a ploy.

“Are you done?” Tamura asked impatiently.

“I’m not yet satisfied as to how Senior Elder Makino died,” Sano said. “I must order you to delay reporting his death. No one will leave here.” Sano sent one detective to begin securing the estate and another to fetch more troops to help. He didn’t want the news to spread and visitors overrunning the premises before he could examine them. As Tamura gaped in outrage, Sano added, “And I must confiscate Makino-san’s body.”

“What?” Tamura’s outrage turned to incredulity. He stalked across the room to the platform and stared at Sano. “Why?”

“The funeral rites must be postponed until my investigation is done and the pronouncement of the cause of Makino-san’s death is official,” Sano improvised. “Therefore, I shall take him into safekeeping.”