The Fire Kimono

by Laura Joh Rowland

  If she hadn’t.

  “That’s one reason we can’t make this story public,” Sano said.

  “Nobody will hear it from me,” Hirata said.

  “Nor I,” chorused Masahiro and the detectives. Reiko only nodded.

  “Here’s another reason,” Sano said. “Suppose Tadatoshi really was an arsonist. My mother admitted that she was part of a conspiracy to keep him from setting fires. We don’t know the rest of the story—she fell asleep before she could finish. What if she was determined enough to stop him that she did more than spy on him?”

  “Arson doesn’t give his murderer an excuse for killing him,” Hirata said. “It gives your mother a motive.”

  “Lord Matsudaira would certainly use that to his advantage,” Marume said.

  An idea occurred to Sano. “Tadatoshi never went to Miyako. Because of the Great Fire, Lord Naganori’s plan fell through. We still don’t know where Tadatoshi was or what he—and my mother—did during the fire.”

  Hirata frowned as he caught Sano’s drift. “The fire started by accident at Honmyo Temple, before Tadatoshi disappeared,” he reminded Sano. “He couldn’t have set it.”

  “The city was burning,” Sano said. “Everyone was terrified. My mother could have decided Tadatoshi was too dangerous to live. Maybe, when she went searching for him, she found him—and saw a chance to put him out of action for good.”

  “That would be Lord Matsudaira’s interpretation,” Fukida said. “He’d rush to foist it onto the shogun.”

  “So we keep the story quiet,” Marume said. “What else do we do?”

  “Tomorrow I’ll go back to Edo Jail and try to get the rest of the story from my mother. Maybe it will help us.” Sano was already dreading that it would do the opposite. “In the meantime, what have you learned?”

  “I’m sorry to say we haven’t located any of the people who lived at Tadatoshi’s estate before the Great Fire,” Marume said.

  “They’re all dead or scattered,” Fukida explained.

  “I haven’t found anything against Colonel Doi,” Hirata said. “So far he’s got the cleanest record I’ve ever seen.”

  “I think that’s suspicious,” Masahiro said.

  Sano nodded, proud yet not exactly pleased that his son had absorbed some basics of detective work. That road led to peril as well as the post of second-in-command to the shogun. “Nobody climbs as high as he’s done without getting dirt on his hands. But too clean a record isn’t evidence that Doi has a murder in his past.”

  “So we’ve come up empty,” Fukida said with regret.

  “Worse than empty.” Sano related what Lady Ateki, Oigimi, and Hana had told him about his mother.

  “Tadatoshi’s mother and sister not only recant their statements but throw dirt at her, and so does her own maid. That is worse,” Marume said. “But we’re not giving up, are we?”

  “Not while we still have another witness whose story I’m not ready to let stand,” Sano said.

  “The tutor?” Masahiro guessed.

  “Right,” Sano said.

  “Look out, Marume-san, the boy’s wits are quicker than yours,” Fukida joked.

  “I want a little talk with Egen,” Sano said.

  “Good idea,” Marume said. “Make the bastard eat his words.”

  “I feel responsible for what he did, because I found him,” Hirata said. “May I go with you?”

  “All right,” Sano said. “We’ll leave at daybreak. Marume-san and Fukida-san, you keep searching for other witnesses and for evidence against Colonel Doi.”

  “Will do,” Marume said.

  The men bowed and rose to depart. Reiko gathered empty wine cups. Sano thought it odd that she’d participated in the discussion not at all.

  “Aren’t you interested in the investigation?” he asked her later as they prepared for bed.

  Seated at her dressing table, Reiko brushed her hair. She looked in the mirror instead of at him. “Of course I am.”

  “You could have fooled me.” Sano tied the sash of his night robe. “While we were talking, you didn’t offer a single opinion or suggestion. That’s not like you. What’s wrong?”

  Outside, the wind scraped tree branches against the roof and tossed dry leaves against the walls of the mansion. It sounded to Sano as if malevolent external forces were trying to breach their safe, cozy chamber.

  When Reiko didn’t answer his question at once, he knelt behind her. Their worried faces reflected in the mirror together. Their eyes met, and Sano belatedly recalled that Reiko had wanted to speak with him and he’d put her off. He had an idea as to why.

  “What happened between you and my mother today?” he asked.

  Reiko lowered her eyes and concentrated on brushing a tangle out of her hair. “I talked to her about the murder, as you said I should.”

  “And?” Sano braced himself. This was a day for news he didn’t want to hear.

  “I asked her about the alibi that Hana gave her. She changed her mind and said Hana was with her, and she couldn’t have killed Tadatoshi.”

  Sano rubbed his temples, wondering if the flow of bad news would ever stop. “As I said earlier, Hana has changed her mind, too. She admitted she’d lost track of my mother for eight days during and after the fire.” And he was more inclined to believe Hana’s new story than his mother’s. But he didn’t like Reiko’s expression, which made it clear that she, too, thought his mother was the liar yet again.

  “What else?” Sano said.

  “I asked her a few questions about her family.” Reiko spoke with slow, tentative effort, as if prying pearls from a sharp-edged oyster.

  Sano’s muscles tightened. This was a sensitive topic, which he’d been loath to raise with his mother. “What questions?”

  “When she became estranged from them. And why.”

  “What did she say?” Although Sano craved the answers, he felt a dread of the unknown.

  “They broke off contact a few months after the Great Fire. As to why …” Reiko brushed her hair a few more strokes, obviously aware that discussing his mother’s family was hard for Sano; she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad, secondhand news. “She offered me several answers to choose from: It’s not important, she doesn’t remember, or her relatives are dead.” Reiko’s reflection in the mirror lifted her painted eyebrows, then let them drop.

  “You think they’re all lies?” Sano said, automatically rising to his mother’s defense, even though he felt a spark of anger at her for withholding facts that concerned him. His anger extended to Reiko, who was here while his mother wasn’t.

  A sigh of sympathy, edged with frustration, issued from Reiko. “I don’t know.”

  But Sano thought she did. He also thought she knew more than she’d told him. “What else did you learn?”

  “This has been a difficult day. Maybe we should finish our conversation tomorrow.”

  The spark of Sano’s ire heated into a flame. “I’m tired of people hedging with me. First my mother, now you. Can’t women ever just speak the straight truth?”

  “All right,” Reiko said sharply, then drew a deep breath. “I think your mother was involved in something bad that happened during the Great Fire, that her family knows about, that she wants to keep a secret. I’m sure it has to do with her and the murder.”

  “What gave you those ideas?” Sano said, his temper growing hotter. The same ideas had occurred to him, but he’d tried to ignore them, and didn’t like hearing them voiced by his wife.

  “When I suggested contacting her family, she was horrified.”

  “Is that your only justification for this theory?”

  “No,” Reiko said. “There was the way she acted.”

  Sano saw Reiko’s argument taking on a familiar shape that had vexed him in the past and incensed him now. “You mean your theory is based on your intuition.”

  She looked sad rather than offended by his derogatory tone. “My intuition has been right in the past.”

&n
bsp; “Not this time,” Sano said, wishing he felt as certain as he sounded. “You don’t even know my mother. You’d barely exchanged ten words with her before this. Don’t make snap judgments.”

  “Maybe you don’t know her any better,” Reiko said gently.

  That Sano couldn’t deny. “Certainly her background was news to me. But I know her as a person.” He was less and less sure that he did.

  Reiko turned away from the mirror and faced him. With an air of a gambler spreading her cards before her opponents, she said, “Your mother got angry and blew up at me, for the first time ever.” A shadow of the awe, fright, and shock Reiko had felt crossed her face. “There’s another person inside her that she’s kept hidden.”

  Not just from you, but from me, Sano thought. His anger at the deception goaded him to say the thing that he and Reiko had been avoiding. “You think my mother is guilty.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Reiko shook her head, not in denial but apology. Sano was horrified because her judgment added weight to his own burden of suspicion. His temper flared.

  “There’s not a crumb of solid evidence against my mother, and you decide she’s a murderess. And you dare to think of yourself as a detective!”

  Reiko set down her hairbrush with exaggerated care. “I tried to warn you. I tried to say this was a bad time to talk.”

  “You’ve never liked my mother, have you?” Sano demanded.

  “Let’s stop before we say things we’ll both regret.”

  Sano couldn’t stop. “You looked down on her because she was a peasant.” He leaped to his feet as his self-restraint broke under the pressure that had been building since his mother’s arrest. “And you don’t like that she’s turned out to be as highborn as you.”

  “I did like her,” Reiko said, goaded to defend herself.

  “Did, but don’t anymore?” Sano laughed bitterly. “She fooled you. And you hate it.” As much as I do.

  Reiko rose, her hair falling around her shoulders in a black cape. It sparked in the dry air. “You’ve got to admit that her deception doesn’t make her look good.”

  Sano was forced to admit it to himself, but he wouldn’t give Reiko the satisfaction of hearing him say so. “Doesn’t make her look good, but doesn’t mean she’s guilty. Which you should know if you were a real detective!”

  He saw Reiko flinch, watched the spasm of pain twitch her mouth. He’d hurt her, and he was glad and ashamed. Now anger lit her eyes, which were liquid with tears. “I know I’m not a real detective, and I never will be. But I know better than to take the part of a suspect who’s lied again and again, I haven’t made the mistake of losing my objectivity!”

  They glared at each other, but their fury soon turned to mutual distress. Sano realized that on top of all their other troubles, now they were at odds. Their current situation seemed even worse than last winter in Ezogashima.

  In Ezogashima, they’d been together in adversity.

  Now they were each alone.

  Hirata lay alone in his bed, gazing at the crescent moon through his open window. He heard the estate settling down for the night, the patrol guards’ footsteps, the servants’ voices growing fewer and quieter as time passed. But Midori didn’t come. Hirata sensed her presence with the children in their room down the hall. She was sleeping with them, as she must have last night. Hirata felt baffled, angered, and hurt by her desertion.

  What was she doing? How dare she treat her husband like this?

  He could order her to sleep with him, but he didn’t want to give Midori the satisfaction of knowing he wanted her. And he was too proud to beg.

  How long did she intend to keep it up?

  As Hirata imagined more solitary nights, loneliness washed through him. He recalled his years of wandering, when he’d gone months without thinking about Midori and then suddenly missed her so much he’d thought he would die. Now that he’d come home, they were even more estranged. His ire surged to the defense of his wounded heart.

  If Midori wanted to play games, so would he. He would fight fire with fire in this battle of theirs. Hirata folded his arms. When he won, she would revert to her old self and love him again. That decided, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  At the temple in Shinagawa, sunrise colored the sky pink and the trees came alive with birdsong. Fifty priests in saffron robes, who filed toward the worship hall for their morning prayers, turned at the noise of pounding hooves. A squadron of mounted troops galloped across the temple grounds. The riders wore the Matsudaira crest on their armor. They clattered to a halt before the priests. The elderly abbot detached himself from his flock and approached the invaders.

  “Greetings,” he said, bowing. “How may we serve you?”

  The captain leaped down from his horse. “We’ve heard reports that there are rebels operating out of this temple. We’re here to investigate.”

  Yanagisawa froze in his position at the back of the line. He’d known that Lord Matsudaira had troops scouring the country for underground rebels. It had been only a matter of time until they arrived here, but he’d hoped to launch his comeback before that day came.

  “There must be a mistake,” the abbot said. “We’re a peaceful, law-abiding sect.”

  Currents of fear raced through Yanagisawa. He fought the urge to run and mark himself as a criminal.

  “Then you won’t mind if we have a look around and interrogate your people,” the captain said.

  Yanagisawa saw his face and panicked. The captain was Nagasaka, once a commander in his army, who’d defected to Lord Matsudaira. What Yanagisawa had feared had finally happened: Someone who would recognize him had come hunting rebels. He ducked behind a tree, barely avoiding Nagasaka’s gaze.

  “This is highly irregular.” The abbot remained calm, but Yanagisawa knew he was terrified because he was harboring a fugitive. Now he tried to stall and give Yanagisawa a chance to escape. “His Excellency the shogun won’t approve.”

  “I have Lord Matsudaira’s orders,” Nagasaka said. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to lose by cooperating.”

  He beckoned the priests, said, “Line up over here,” then told his men, “Search the whole place. Guard the gates. No one leaves until we’re done.”

  As the priests obeyed, Yanagisawa slipped away through the garden. Troops moved to secure the premises. He had to reach his cottage before they did.

  He ran toward the wooded area at the back of the temple that sheltered the cottage. As he veered around the pagoda, he heard troops coming. He raced a zigzag course, ducking behind the giant temple bell, the sutra hall. He almost bumped smack into a soldier, then another, then another. The sun brightened the sky and dissolved the shadows that protected him. At last he plunged into the woods, down the gravel path. Relief filled him as the cottage appeared in view.

  The door was open. The sound of voices inside halted Yanagisawa in his tracks. He dove into the bushes outside the cottage and listened, breathless with exertion, his relief turning to terror.

  “Someone’s been living in here,” a man said.

  “Probably a guest,” said another man. “So where is he?”

  Yanagisawa heard thumps, scuffling, and dragging noises. A third man said, “Hey, look at this big hole in the floor.”

  They’d found his escape hatch that led to a tunnel under the temple wall. Yanagisawa’s heart sank.

  “He must be a rebel. Why else would he need a secret passage?”

  “If he went down there, maybe we can still catch him.”

  “If he hasn’t, we should seal up the other end. We’ll go down. You tell Captain Nagasaka.”

  Yanagisawa cursed under his breath as he heard two men climbing down the hole. The third soldier exited the cottage and walked past him. More troops crashed through the woods. Yanagisawa ran in desperate panic.

  The troops multiplied into a horde around him. They swarmed the temple precinct; they occupied buildings. As he swerved to avoid them, he glimpsed Captain
Nagasaka and a few troops with the priests outside the worship hall. The soldier from the cottage panted up to Nagasaka and spoke. Nagasaka rapped out orders to the troops. They hurried to join the search for the rebel turned fugitive.

  Yanagisawa’s strength was failing. His legs buckled; he couldn’t breathe enough air. He collapsed behind the kitchen building. His heart felt ready to explode. He couldn’t run anymore. Then he saw the well. He crawled to it, lifted the lid off the square wooden base, and climbed inside, bracing his back and feet against the sides of the rock-lined shaft. He reached up and pulled the lid closed.

  He heard the troops stampede into the kitchen grounds, heard their shouts.

  His exhausted muscles quaked. He slid down the shaft. The rocks scraped his back raw. He plunged into water up to his neck before he managed to fix himself in place. He held his breath and listened.

  Troops strode past the well, their footsteps echoing down it. The water was freezing cold. Yanagisawa began to shiver. His teeth chattered; he clenched his jaws. Eons passed before he heard someone say, “There’s nobody here.”

  “He must have gotten away,” said Captain Nagasaka. “The abbot claims he’s just an itinerant priest, but I don’t think so. We’ll keep looking.”

  The herd moved off. Chilled to the bone, Yanagisawa felt only a fleeting relief. Lord Matsudaira’s men would come back in case their quarry should return. The temple was no longer safe for him. And the next close call could be even closer.

  Sano rose hours before dawn. Disturbed by his quarrel with Reiko, he’d lain awake beside her for hours, knowing that she was awake, too. Neither of them had spoken, lest they quarrel some more and say worse, unforgivable things, and they weren’t ready to make peace. Sano kept replaying their argument and thinking of things he should have said, as he supposed Reiko was also doing. Finally, he gave up pretending to sleep and went to his office, where he worked through the mountain of correspondence and reports on his desk in an attempt to keep control over the administration of the country. When his staff arrived, he conducted brief meetings into which he crammed as much business as possible. Then he, Hirata, and his troops headed to Kodemmacho.