Laura Rowland - The Assassin's Touch

“A customer from the old days happened to stop by. He said Tama’s father drank himself to death, and Tama was left without a single copper to live on,” the teahouse maid had told Reiko. “She went to work as a servant in the house of a rich moneylender.”

The directions given by the maid had brought Reiko here. Maybe Tama could help her trace Yugao as well as shed light on the murders. Reiko watched through the window of her palanquin as Lieutenant Asukai dismounted, walked to the largest mansion on the street, and knocked on the gate. It was opened by a manservant.

“I want to see Tama,” Lieutenant Asukai said. “Send her out.”

Soon a woman emerged. Tama was so small that she looked like a child, although Reiko knew she must be near the same age as Yugao, in her twenties. Tama wore a plain indigo kimono; a white cloth bound her hair. She had a face as plump-cheeked and smooth as a doll’s. As she beheld Lieutenant Asukai and the other guards, fear widened her innocent eyes. He led her to Reiko’s palanquin.

Reiko said, “Hello, Tama-san. My name is Reiko. I’m the daughter of Magistrate Ueda, and I’d like to talk to you.” She opened the door. “Come inside so you don’t get wet.” She felt an instinctive urge to protect Tama, who seemed too sweet and defenseless to survive in the world.

Tama meekly obeyed. Inside the palanquin, she looked around as if it were some alien place. Reiko thought she’d probably never been in one before: Servants didn’t ride; they walked. She knelt as far from Reiko as possible and tucked her hands in her sleeves.

“Don’t be afraid,” Reiko said. “I won’t hurt you.”

Bashful, Tama avoided Reiko’s gaze. Reiko said, “I need to ask you some questions about your friend Yugao.”

Tama stiffened. She eyed the door, as if she wanted to jump out but didn’t dare. “I-I don’t know any Yugao,” she said in a whisper so soft that Reiko almost couldn’t hear it. Her face, honest and transparent, gave the lie to her words.

“I know that you and Yugao were friends,” Reiko said gently. “Have you seen her?”

Tama shook her head. Her eyes begged Reiko to leave her alone. She whispered, “No. Not since three years ago, when she…”

“Moved to the hinin settlement?” When Tama nodded, Reiko wondered if Tama was lying again. The girl’s nervousness made it hard to tell whether that was the case, or if she was just shy with strangers or afraid that her connection with a murderess would get her in trouble. “Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen to you,” Reiko assured Tama. “I just need to find Yugao. She escaped from jail yesterday, and she’s dangerous. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“Jail?” Tama gasped the word. Shock and dismay filled her eyes. “Yugao was in jail?”

“Yes,” Reiko said. “She murdered her parents and sister. Didn’t you know?”

Tama sat staring in open-mouthed horror: It was obvious she hadn’t known. Reiko supposed that crimes in the hinin settlement weren’t publicized. Tama buried her face in her hands and began to sob. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

Reiko took hold of Tama’s hands and gently pulled them down. Tama’s eyes were streaming and her face blotched with tears. She gazed helplessly at Reiko.

“I don’t know where Yugao is,” she cried. “Please believe me!”

“Have you any idea where Yugao could have gone? Are there any places that you and she went when you were children?”

“No!” Tama snatched her hands out of Reiko’s grasp. She wiped her tears on her sleeve.

“Try to think,” Reiko urged. “Yugao might hurt someone else unless she’s caught.” Tama only wept and shook her head. Reiko grabbed the girl by the shoulders. “If you know anything at all that might help me find Yugao, you must tell me.”

“I don’t,” Tama whimpered. “Let me go. You’re hurting me.”

Ashamed of bullying this innocent, helpless girl, Reiko let go of Tama. “All right. I’m sorry,” Reiko said. But even if she couldn’t find out where Yugao was, perhaps she could still make her hunt for Tama worthwhile.

“Tama,” she said, “there’s something else I need to ask you. Why would Yugao kill her family?”

The girl cringed in the corner of the palanquin, still and silent as a baby bird that hopes the cat will get bored and go away if it waits long enough.

“Tell me,” Reiko said, gentle yet firm.

Tama’s will crumbled under Reiko’s. At last she whispered, “I think… I think he drove her to it.”

“Who did? Do you mean her father?”

Tama nodded. “He… when we were children… he used to come into her bed at night.”

Reiko felt a flash of vindication at this evidence for her theory about Yugao’s motive for the murders. “Is that what Yugao told you?”

“No,” Tama said. “She didn’t have to. I saw.”

“How? What happened?”

With much prodding from Reiko, Tama explained, “I spent a night at Yugao’s house. We were ten years old. After we went to bed, her father came over to us and crawled in next to her.”

Reiko pictured the mother, father, sister, Yugao, and Tama lying on mattresses in the same room, as families did who lived in close quarters. She saw the man rise and tiptoe through the darkness to Yugao. She was shocked that he would commit incest with her in the presence of her friend and his whole family. The man deserved to be an outcast and hadn’t been wrongly accused by his business partner.

“He thought I was asleep,” Tama continued. “I shut my eyes and lay still. But I could feel them moving in the bed near me and the floor shaking while he lay on top of her. And I could hear her crying when he…”

Tama couldn’t be mistaken. Children of her class must often see their parents coupling, and she would have recognized that Yugao’s father had been doing with his daughter what he should have done only with his wife.

“Yugao must have hated her father for hurting her,” Reiko said to herself. “She must have hated him all these years.”

“But she didn’t. The next morning, I told Yugao that I knew what her father had done. I said I was sorry for her. But she said she didn’t mind.” Tama’s eyes reflected the surprised disbelief that Reiko felt. “She said that if he wanted her, it was all right because she loved him and it was her duty to make him happy. And she did seem to love him. She followed him around. She would climb on his lap and hug him.”

As if they were lovers instead of father and daughter, Reiko thought with a shudder of revulsion.

“And he loved her,” Tama said. “He gave her lots of presents-dolls, sweets, pretty clothes.”

With them he’d paid for Yugao’s cooperation, suffering, and silence.

“If there was anyone Yugao hated, it was her mother,” Tama said.

“Why?”

“She complained about how her mother was always scolding her. She didn’t like anything Yugao did. Once I saw her hit Yugao so hard that her nose started bleeding. I don’t know why she was so mean.”

Reiko deduced that the mother had been jealous of her daughter for stealing her husband’s affections. And since she couldn’t punish the man she depended on for a living, she’d taken out her anger on Yugao. “How long did this go on?”

“Until we were fifteen,” Tama said. “Then I think her father stopped.”

That would have been three years before the family moved to the hinin settlement. Reiko wondered if Yugao had held a grudge for so long. “How do you know? Did she say?”

Tama shook her head. “One day I went to visit Yugao. She was crying. I asked what was wrong. She wouldn’t tell me. But I noticed that her little sister Umeko had a new doll. And Umeko sat on her father’s lap and hugged him the way Yugao used to. He ignored Yugao.”