Laura Rowland - The Perfumed Sleeve

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.