Laura Rowland: The Fire Kimono

Dr. Ito produced a large, round magnifying lens mounted on a wooden handle. He walked around the table, peering at the bones, pausing to study features through the lens. His eyebrows rose, and he pointed at a thighbone. “Observe this marking.”

Sano, Marume, and Fukida crowded around the table. The marking was large enough for Sano to see without the lens. It appeared to be a crack in which black dirt remained stuck.

“Here’s another,” Dr. Ito said, “and another.” He indicated similar markings on the ribs, the arm bones.

“They look like the cracks in oracle bones,” Fukida said.

The serious, scholarly detective was referring to the animal bones used in magic divination rituals. Fortune-tellers heated pokers in fire and applied them to the bones, causing cracks to form. By interpreting the shapes and patterns of these cracks in the “oracle bones,” they read the future.

“Could they be breaks from a fall or other accident?” Marume asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Dr. Ito said. “They are cuts. From a sword blade.”

Sano hadn’t expected the death to have been an accident. If it had, then why bury Tadatoshi in an unmarked grave and let everyone think he’d perished in the Great Fire? The breath gusted from Sano as the idea of murder entered the picture.

“Are you sure?” he asked, wanting to be absolutely certain before he opened a box of troubles.

“Yes. I’ve seen cuts like these many times.”

So had Sano seen many sword wounds, but in flesh, not on bared bones after the body had decomposed. Dr. Ito turned over hand and arm bones with his tongs, displaying more cuts. “He acquired these when he tried to protect himself.”

Sano envisioned a boy flinging up his arms as a sword slashed at him, the blade opening bloody gashes. His screams echoed across the years. “Then he was hacked to death.”

Dr. Ito nodded. “This is definitely a case of murder. I’m curious about the swords buried with Tadatoshi. Why would the killer leave them as a clue to his identity instead of letting him remain anonymous and forestalling an inquiry into his death?”

“That’s a good question.” As Sano gazed down at the skeleton, the sword cuts seemed to glow red and give off smoke like cracks burned into oracle bones. He had a disturbing sense that the message they portended for him was pure bad luck.

“My cousin Tadatoshi was murdered?” the shogun said in dismay when Sano delivered the news to him that evening. “How did you find out?”

He lay facedown in bed, covered by a quilt below the waist, while a physician inserted acupuncture needles into his bony, naked back. He suffered from muscle aches, joint pains, heart palpitations, and other ailments real or imagined, and he tried every treatment known to man. The chamber was hot from the many charcoal braziers he needed to keep warm, and smelled of medicines. Sano was thankful that he didn’t have to watch the herbal enema.

“I made some inquiries,” Sano said, deliberately vague on details. He was glad Lord Matsudaira wasn’t present to ask questions. “I’ve also assured that Tadatoshi’s remains have safely reached the mausoleum.”

Mura had repacked the skeleton in the barrel, and the porters had carried it to Kannei Temple. There, Hirata had sneaked the skeleton into the trunk. Tomorrow the priests would give Tadatoshi a proper cremation and burial.

“But he cannot rest in peace,” the shogun said, wincing as the needles stung him, “not until justice is done. Sano-san, find out who killed him.”

“Of course, Your Excellency.” Sano’s code of honor demanded justice for the murdered relative of the master he was duty-bound to serve even while he battled Lord Matsudaira for control of the regime. “Tadatoshi’s killer must be punished-if he’s still alive.”

“If so, I shall help you catch him,” the shogun said with uncharacteristic, decisive vigor. Lately he had spells during which he tried to take part in court business. Sano thought he’d become aware that he’d left too many important affairs to his officials and begun to regret how little control he had over the government. “Is there something I can do to, ahh, further your investigation?”

“Perhaps there is,” Sano said. “I need to understand Tadatoshi. Can you tell me what kind of person he was?”

The shogun puffed up with pride because Sano was truly consulting him, not just pretending. That didn’t happen often. He frowned in an effort to remember. “Well, ahh, it was a long time ago when I knew him. His father used to bring him to play with me. Many children were brought.”

Sano figured their parents had wanted to ingratiate them with their future ruler.

“Tadatoshi was rather, ahh, shy and quiet.” The shogun flinched as the physician twiddled the needles between his fingers, stimulating the flow of energy through nerves. “He liked to wander off by himself. Once he did it during a visit to me. The servants turned the castle upside down, searching for him. They found him in the forest preserve. But I’m afraid he’s, ahh, mostly a blur. I can’t recall what he looked like.”

At least Sano had the beginning of a portrait of the murder victim. Maybe Tadatoshi had wandered off one time too many, and met his killer. “Do you remember the day he disappeared?”

“I could never forget it,” the shogun said with passion. “It was the day the Great Fire started. There had been no rain for almost six months. A strong northern wind was blowing.”

He and Sano listened to the wind keening outside, rustling the trees. This winter and spring had also been abnormally dry and windy, and fires had broken out around town.

“Late in the afternoon, we heard that a fire was burning through the city,” the shogun continued. “Everyone was afraid the fire would reach the castle. My mother wanted to run for the hills, but we were told that the fire brigades would surely put out the fire before it could reach us.”

Edo’s fire brigades had consisted in those days of four small regiments levied from the daimyo. They’d proved grossly inadequate to combat the Great Fire. Now four squadrons of three hundred men each were managed by Tokugawa bannermen and assisted by the police. The townsfolk had organized their own brigades. Edo had learned its costly lesson.

“A servant from Tadatoshi’s house came and asked whether anyone at mine had seen my cousin,” the shogun said. “He’d wandered off. But we hadn’t seen him. The next day, a second fire started and came toward the castle. There was so much confusion that we forgot about Tadatoshi. It was days later when we heard he’d never been found.”

Days later, when the city lay in ruins, the Tokugawa regime had been too busy trying to feed and shelter thousands of homeless people to search for one lost child from a minor branch. Law and order had disintegrated. It had been a good time for somebody to kill Tadatoshi, bury him, and get away with it because he would be presumed a victim of the fire.

“Who might have wanted him dead?” Sano asked.

“I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Is there anyone else around who knew Tadatoshi?” Sano asked. “Perhaps his immediate family?”

The shogun’s face took on the queasy look that meant he feared being thought stupid. “I don’t know. I have so many relatives, it’s hard to, ahh, keep track of them all. And I see so few people these days.”

Lord Matsudaira controlled access to the shogun in order to cut him off from people who might tell him what Lord Matsudaira was up to and bully him into doing something about it.

“But I’ll help you find out about Tadatoshi’s family,” the shogun said, eager to make up for his ignorance. He called, “Yoritomo-san! Come here!”