Laura Rowland - The Perfumed Sleeve

Tamura’s expression said he thought Sano had gone mad. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. What law allows you to do this?”

“Bring me a trunk large enough to carry the body,” Sano said, eager to end the argument before it revealed his explanation as completely spurious.

Fists balled on his hips, Tamura said, “If you take my master, you’ll displease many people.”

Sano wondered whether Tamura was afraid of what he might see on the body. “If you stand in my way, you’ll suffer,” Sano said. “Get the trunk.”

They were at an impasse. Sano knew that Makino’s family and powerful friends-including Chamberlain Yanagisawa-could punish him for confiscating the body, especially if they guessed why he wanted it. But Tamura knew that Sano could have him stripped of his samurai status for disobeying orders. Hirata and the detectives moved closer to Sano, aligning themselves against Tamura. Evidently recognizing that the threat to him was more immediate than the one to Sano, the man visibly deflated. Surliness replaced his ire.

“As you wish,” he said to Sano, then slunk out of the room.

Sano expelled his breath. The investigation had barely begun, and already the difficulties were mounting. He beckoned his two remaining detectives, Marume and Fukida, and whispered to them, “Take Senior Elder Makino to Edo Morgue.”

The young, slight, serious detective and the jovial, brawny one nodded. They understood from past cases what Sano intended. They also knew the dangers involved and the caution necessary.

Tamura returned with two servants hauling a long wooden trunk. Marume and Fukida peeled the quilt off Makino, lifted his stiff body, placed it inside the trunk, and carried it away. Sano offered a silent prayer for its safe, secret arrival at Edo Morgue. Then he ordered Tamura, “Wait outside while I examine the senior elder’s chambers.”

As soon as Tamura was gone, the search for evidence of murder began.

“There’s no sign of a struggle,” Hirata said, walking around the chamber. “In fact, the room seems too neat. Just as Makino’s body did.”

Sano, pacing the platform, nodded. “Teapot, bowl, and lamp arranged in a precise triangle on the table near the bed,” he said, pointing. His finger moved to indicate the room below the platform. “Cushions, lacquer chests, and kimono stand pushed against the walls. Not a thing out of place.”

Hirata felt the tension between him and Sano, like a turbulence running under the smooth flow of their words and actions. Ever since Sano had reprimanded him for disobedience, he’d felt maimed and diminished, as though part of him had died.

He said, “And not an obvious mark anywhere on the tatami. If someone rearranged Makino’s body after he died, whoever it was could also have cleaned up signs of what really happened in here last night.”

“But maybe not all the signs,” Sano said.

He crouched by the bed where Makino had lain. Hirata began opening drawers of the cabinets along the wall. Misery weighed upon him as his mind wandered to the circumstances that had caused his troubles.

While pursuing the man who’d kidnapped their women and the shogun’s mother, he’d placed the safety of his pregnant wife Midori above his duty to Sano. Thus, he’d violated Bushido, the samurai code of loyalty. He’d not only lost the trust Sano had once placed in him, but his reputation had suffered too. Colleagues aware of his misdeed ostracized him. Half of Sano’s detectives sympathized with Hirata; the rest thought Sano should have thrown him out. The controversy had undermined Hirata’s authority and the harmony within the corps. Now, lifting folded robes from a drawer, Hirata covertly eyed Sano, who was inspecting the puffy silver-green satin quilt. Although Hirata deeply regretted the rift between them, and his lost honor, a part of him believed that his disobedience had been justified.

Surely there was an exception to every rule of Bushido. Surely his one lapse shouldn’t cancel out years of faithful service. Hirata believed that Midori and his baby daughter Taeko would have died on that island, instead of coming home alive and well, if not for his disobedience. Furthermore, everything had turned out for the best. Yet Hirata couldn’t fault Sano for reprimanding him, nor counter his detractors in good conscience.

A master had the right to expect absolute loyalty from a retainer, and Sano had more claim on Hirata than even Bushido granted him. By making Hirata his chief retainer, Sano had raised him far above his origins as a humble police officer, patrolling the streets in the job inherited from his father. If not for Sano, he wouldn’t have Midori, Taeko, his post in the bakufu, his home at Edo Castle, or the generous stipend that supported his whole clan. Sano deserved to know that if his life were ever in Hirata’s hands, Hirata wouldn’t let him down again. Now Hirata lived with the consuming need to win back Sano’s trust and esteem, through a heroic display of loyalty and duty.

“This bedding is so clean, fresh, and smooth that I doubt Makino slept in it,” Sano said. “But if he didn’t, then where is the bedding he did use?”

Hirata opened a door in the cabinet. He saw, jammed inside a compartment, a large, wadded bundle of fabric. “In here.”

He and Sano pulled out the bundle. They separated a crumpled gray-and-white floral quilt from the futon wrapped inside. From these wafted the odors of sweat, wintergreen hair oil, and the sour tinge of old age. Sano unrolled the futon, revealing yellowish stains on the middle.

“Why hide this?” Hirata asked. “There’s no blood or other sign that Makino didn’t die a natural death.”

Sano shook the quilt. Out fell a long rectangle of shimmering ivory silk. Hirata picked it up. It was folded in half, seamed down both lengths, and sewn shut at one end. The other end had an opening at each seam-one hemmed, the other ragged. Rich, embroidered autumn grasses and wildflowers in metallic gold and silver thread encrusted the fabric.

“It’s a sleeve.” Hirata inserted his arm through the openings, held it horizontal, and let the long, flat wing droop.

“Torn from the kimono of an unmarried woman,” Sano said, fingering the ragged armhole edge. The sleeve length and fabric design of a kimono indicated the owner’s gender and marital status. Single women wore longer sleeves and gaudier fabric than did wives. Hirata and Sano contemplated the sleeve, a symbol of female genitals and soft, yielding nature, often featured in poetry. “I wonder how it got in Makino’s bedding. Maybe he had company last night.”

Hirata removed the sleeve from his arm and sniffed the fabric. “There’s a sweet, smoky odor on this.”

Sano lifted the other end of the sleeve to his nostrils. “It’s incense. The woman who wore the kimono perfumed her sleeves.” This was a practice among fashionable women. They burned incense and held their sleeves in the smoke so that the fabric absorbed it.

The odor nudged Hirata’s memory. “My wife uses this type of incense. It’s called Dawn to Dusk. It’s very rare and expensive.”

Examining the sleeve, Sano pointed out an irregularly shaped stain that darkened the pale fabric. “If I’m not mistaken, here’s evidence that the woman was with Makino.”

Hirata touched a fingertip to the stain. It was damp. When he lowered his face to the stain and inhaled, he recognized the fishy, animal scent of semen mixed with secretions from a woman’s body. He nodded, confirming Sano’s guess.

“The stain is fresh,” he said. “Makino and the woman must have been together last night.”

Sano and Hirata gazed toward the bed platform, visualizing the sex-and violence-that might have happened there. Hirata said, “Maybe Tamura isn’t as guilty as he seemed.”