Sano Ichiro 9 The Perfumed Sleeve (2004)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Your pact with Koheiji is worthless now,” Sano said, playing the widow against the actor in the hope that she would affirm Koheiji’s guilt. “There’s no point in protecting him. Do you think he’ll protect you when I tell him that I know he killed your husband?” Sano infused his voice with pitying disdain. “Of course not. He’ll spill whatever information he thinks will save him. He’ll put the whole blame for the murder on you. While you go to the execution ground, he’ll spend the money Daiemon paid him.”

  A visible shudder passed through Agemaki as she saw the threat of death approaching. She crumbled to her knees.

  “Why let Koheiji go free while you suffer?” Sano said. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll be as lenient toward you as I can.”

  She breathed a long, tremulous sigh of resignation. Fear and distrust pooled in her eyes, but she nodded. Sano experienced relief because he’d broken her at last, and without violence. His heart beat fast with the thought that the solution to the crime was imminent.

  “That night, I took my sleeping potion before bed,” Agemaki said. “I always did, so I wouldn’t be disturbed by the sounds.”

  She paused, and Sano said, “What sounds?”

  “The sounds of my husband playing sex games with Koheiji and Okitsu.” Revulsion twisted Agemaki’s mouth. “Usually the potion made me sleep no matter how loud they got. But that night, I woke up. And I heard them. I heard that little whore Okitsu giggling, while Koheiji uttered filthy, obscene talk and my husband moaned.”

  Koheiji and Okitsu had lied when they’d said they hadn’t seen Makino that night, Sano thought. He watched Agemaki curl her hands into claws. Her bitter expression not only confirmed what Reiko had said—that Agemaki was rabidly jealous of the concubine—but also that she’d hated her husband for his infidelity and his depraved amusements.

  “I couldn’t bear to think of what they were doing, but I had to know. I couldn’t help myself.” Agemaki’s tone conveyed the torment she must have felt. “I got out of bed and crept down the passage. I peeked through the door to my husband’s bedchamber.”

  She expelled her breath in a shivering hiss. “I saw the three of them. My husband and Koheiji were naked. Okitsu wore the embroidered ivory silk kimono that my husband bought her. She was crouched on her hands and knees. My husband was kneeling in front of her, panting like a dog while she sucked his manhood and Koheiji coupled with her from behind.”

  Outrage shone in Agemaki’s eyes. “I wanted to rush in and scream at my husband and Koheiji and their whore to stop. I wanted to pull them apart. But I knew my husband would be furious if I did. Instead, I went back to my room. I took more sleeping potion. I got back in bed and dozed off, but I awakened again while it was still dark. The house was quiet and peaceful. But there was no peace in my mind. I lay in bed, worrying about the future.”

  Agemaki spoke in a tone fraught with distress: “My husband had barely bothered to speak to me these last few months, and when he did, he dropped hints that he was tired of supporting me. ‘That kimono you’re wearing was awfully expensive.’ ‘Do you really need so many servants?’ ” She mimicked his crabby voice. “I knew he was going to divorce me. And I knew that when he did, he would cut me off without a single copper. I would have to go back to Asakusa Jinja Shrine. I wouldn’t inherit the money he promised me when we married. I would have nothing. I would be nothing.”

  Fresh outrage blazed from her. Sano could almost see flames consuming the serene, prim guise she’d worn. “That night I decided I wouldn’t let my husband get away with humiliating me and reneging on his promise. I decided that if I must be ruined, then so must he. I got up and lit a lamp. I fetched a paper-cutting knife from my writing desk. I took the lamp and knife and crept into my husband’s bedchamber. I meant to cut his throat while he slept. But his bed was empty. I saw something glittering in the corner. It was Okitsu’s sleeve. It must have gotten torn off her kimono. My husband was gone. So I went looking for him. I found him in his study.”

  She stared downward, her expression startled, as if reliving the moment. Sano pictured her standing in Makino’s study, the burning lamp in one hand, the knife clutched in the other. “He was lying on the floor,” Agemaki said. “There was blood on his head, his face, and his clothes. His eyes and mouth were open. He looked like he’d had a bad shock.” Her gaze darted, as if taking in the scene impressed on her memory. “There was a bloodstained wooden pole on the floor near him. Papers were scattered everywhere. There was cold air coming through the open window. I bent over my husband and touched his face. It was cold. He wasn’t breathing. I knew he was dead.”

  Sano conjectured that Koheiji had staged Makino’s assassination to look like an attack by an intruder and thereby hide his guilt. But how had Makino ended up lying in his bed as though he’d died of old age while asleep? Postponing his questions, Sano let Agemaki continue her story.

  “At first I was thankful,” Agemaki said. “Someone had broken into the house, killed my husband, and saved me the trouble. He couldn’t divorce me. I would inherit my legacy.” Her eyes glowed briefly with happiness, then darkened. “But I was still filled with anger toward him. I wanted him to suffer even more than he had. And I’d lost my chance at revenge.

  “That was when I decided that I would humiliate him as best I could. I opened the partition that separates my husband’s bedchamber from his study. I dragged him into the bedchamber.”

  This at least explained how Makino had gotten there, Sano thought, if not everything.

  “I took off his clothes and rolled him over on his stomach. Then I fetched a jade phallus from a collection he had. I rammed the phallus into his rear end. I wanted him to look as if he’d died while playing one of his games. I wanted all the people who curried his favor to see what a disgusting fool he was. And I wanted Okitsu blamed for his death. That would be my revenge on her, for stealing my husband. I fetched her torn sleeve. It stank of sex and her incense perfume. I laid it beside him.”

  She smiled fleetingly at her cleverness. “But I worried that someone might guess that an intruder had killed him. I hurried back to the study and closed the window, but the latch was broken. I couldn’t fix it.”

  And she hadn’t noticed the trampled bushes outside, Sano deduced.

  “Then I thought I heard someone coming. I didn’t want to be caught. So I blew out my lamp. I carried the wooden pole through my husband’s room to my own. I waited until the house was quiet, then went outside and threw the pole into the water.” Agemaki gestured, indicating the pond beneath the chapel. “Then I went back to bed. I fell asleep at once. The next thing I knew, Tamura came into my room. He told me that my husband had died in the night. I pretended to be surprised. But when Tamura took me to him, I really was surprised.”

  A soft, incredulous laugh issued from Agemaki. “He was lying in his bed, dressed in a clean night robe, as peaceful as could be. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to him.”

  Hirata said, “Tamura must have fixed him up.”

  Sano nodded. He could imagine Tamura duped into thinking Makino had died during a sex game and wanting to preserve his dignity. Tamura must have removed the phallus from Makino, then dressed him and put him to bed, breaking his bones in the process. He’d overlooked the torn sleeve and the signs that an intruder had broken into the study, and he’d been unable to hide Makino’s injuries; yet if not for Makino’s letter to Sano, the murder would have gone undetected. So would the rearranging of the crime scene.

  “Then Koheiji came into the room,” said Agemaki. “He said, ‘When a man as important as Makino dies, people may suspect he was murdered. There may be questions asked. You and I need to get our answers ready.’

  “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he said—” Agemaki paused, obviously afraid to say what had happened next.

  “You’d better tell us the whole story before Koheiji tells us his version,” Sano warned her.

  Agemaki inhaled a deep breath for courage. “Koheij
i reminded me about a banquet held in this house a month ago. I’d given him wine to serve to my husband. He said he’d seen me pour some powder into the cup, and he’d guessed that I’d poisoned the wine. He knew I wanted him to serve it to my husband, and he would die, and Koheiji would be blamed. Well, my husband didn’t die then. I’d always wondered why not. Koheiji said he’d given the wine to a servant and told him to throw it away. But instead, the servant drank it. He became very ill the next day. He almost died.”

  This was her guilty secret, Sano understood. She’d tried to kill her husband long before his murder.

  “Koheiji said, ‘If I were to tell what you did, you could get in a lot of trouble. People would think you’d succeeded in killing your husband this time,’ ” Agemaki said. “I asked him, ‘What do you want?’ He said, ‘You know that Okitsu and I entertained Makino last night. You must have heard us. I could get blamed for his death just on account of being near him. I want you to promise that you won’t tell anyone. In exchange, I won’t tell anyone you tried to poison Makino.’ ”

  “And you agreed,” Sano said, remembering what Reiko had overheard.

  “What choice did I have except to protect Koheiji so that he would protect me?” Agemaki’s voice was plaintive with self-justification. “That’s why I lied to you. It wasn’t because I’d done any harm to my husband. I desecrated his body, but he was already dead when I found him.”

  In her eagerness to persuade, she leaned toward Sano. Her features sharpened with the cunning that had raised her from her humble station as a shrine prostitute to the rank of wife to a high bakufu official. “Koheiji assassinated my husband. You said so yourself. He’s the murderer, not I. That’s why he was so anxious to keep me silent. If he had an accomplice, it was that little whore Okitsu. She was with him and Makino that night.”

  Agemaki’s eyes gleamed with malevolent pleasure at the chance to incriminate her rival. “She must have helped Koheiji kill my husband. She should be punished along with him.”

  “Arrest the actor first,” Ibe told Sano. “The girl can wait her turn.”

  Sano envisioned the murder case as an onion whose layers he’d peeled only to find more layers concealing the solution at the heart. What Agemaki had told him, and the evidence that Daiemon had hired the actor to assassinate Senior Elder Makino, wasn’t the whole story.

  “The girl has information I need,” Sano said, then addressed his detectives: “Bring in Okitsu.”

  * * *

  32

  Reiko found Gosechi in a minor, seldom-used sanctuary inside the main hall of Zōjō Temple.

  Lord Matsudaira’s concubine knelt alone before the altar, a roofed enclosure with carved gold columns. Her bronze silk cloak and long, lustrous black hair gleamed in the light from the candles burning in front of the gold Buddha statue. She was small and slender. With her back to the door and her head bowed, she seemed isolated in private thought, oblivious to the chanting of other worshippers in the main sanctuary or gongs pealing outside. Reiko quietly approached her, through shadowy dimness saturated with the odors of incense and burnt wax.

  “Gosechi-san?” Reiko said.

  The woman turned. Reiko saw that she was very young and stunningly beautiful. Her face was wide at the brow and tapered at the chin, blessed with petal-soft skin and dainty features. Reiko could understand how she’d attracted both Lord Matsudaira and his nephew. Her eyes, as open and innocent as a child’s, brimmed with grief, and confusion because a stranger had addressed her.

  Reiko introduced herself, then said, “I’m the wife of the shogun’s sōsakan-sama.” She knelt beside Gosechi. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there are urgent matters that I must discuss with you.”

  Wiping tears on her sleeve, the girl murmured, “Perhaps some other time... if you would be so kind.” Her voice was raw from weeping. “Please don’t take offense, but I’m very upset right now.”

  “I understand,” Reiko said with pity. “You’re mourning for Daiemon.” She hated that she must disturb Gosechi after she’d just suffered what appeared a devastating loss.

  The alarm in Gosechi’s eyes confirmed that she’d had an illicit affair with Daiemon and still feared the consequences should Lord Matsudaira find out. “No—I mean, yes, I’m sad because he died. He was my lord’s nephew.”

  “He was more than that to you, wasn’t he?” Reiko said gently. “You and he were lovers.”

  Gosechi shook her head in vigorous denial, but her face crumpled. She wept into her hands while her body convulsed in paroxysms of grief. “I loved him more than anything else in the world,” she said between sobs and gasps. Reiko sensed relief in her, as though she found solace in speaking at last to someone who knew her secret. “I can’t bear that he’s gone!”

  Reiko put her arm around Gosechi while she continued weeping. After a long while, Gosechi grew calmer. She said in a soft, desolate voice, “I knew I was wrong to love Daiemon. I should have been faithful to Lord Matsudaira. I owe him so much. My parents couldn’t afford to support me. They sold me to a broker who supplies women to the pleasure quarter. If Lord Matsudaira hadn’t bought me, I would have become a prostitute. He’s kind and generous to me. He loves me. He deserves my loyalty.”

  Lord Matsudaira was also thirty years older than Gosechi and probably more like a father than a lover to her, Reiko thought.

  “But Daiemon was so handsome, and so charming,” Gosechi said. “I fell in love with him the first time we saw each other. And he was smitten with me, too. We couldn’t help ourselves.” Her face briefly shone with the memory, then saddened again. “We used to meet in secret. If Lord Matsudaira had known, he would have killed me. He would have expelled Daiemon from the clan. But every moment we spent together was worth the danger.”

  Fresh tears flowed down Gosechi’s cheeks. “But now that Daiemon is gone, I feel so alone, so lost. I feel so guilty because I deceived Lord Matsudaira. I’ll never be happy again until my death reunites me with Daiemon. That I must hide my love for him makes the pain of missing him even worse.”

  Reiko hated to exploit a suffering, vulnerable woman, but she was bound by love, honor, and duty to help Sano solve the crime. She said, “There’s a way that you can make amends to Lord Matsudaira for deceiving him and honor your love for Daiemon.”

  “Oh? What is it?” Gosechi looked puzzled but hopeful.

  “Help me find out who killed him,” Reiko said. “Help my husband deliver his killer to justice.”

  Gosechi nodded, brightening as a new sense of purpose distracted her from her pain. “But how can I?”

  “You can answer some questions,” Reiko said. “Did you and Daiemon meet at the Sign of Bedazzlement?”

  Gosechi’s face crumpled again at the mention of the place where her lover had been murdered. “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “Did you meet him there the night he died?”

  The girl shook her head. “We had no plans to see each other then. I was at home with Lord Matsudaira.”

  “Then why would Daiemon have gone to the Sign of Bedazzlement?”

  “The only reason I can think of is that—” A sob wracked Gosechi.

  “He was meeting another woman?” Reiko said.

  Gosechi fixed her desolate gaze on the altar. The tears sliding down her cheeks glistened in the candlelight. “I didn’t want to believe that Daiemon was unfaithful to me. I couldn’t believe he’d found someone else. But recently…” She sighed. “We didn’t see each other as often. He said he was busy with politics, but I couldn’t help being suspicious.”

  “Have you any idea who the other woman is?” Reiko said hopefully.

  “None,” said Gosechi, “although I tried to find out.” She covered her face with her hands, then dropped them onto her lap. “I’m ashamed of what I did. It makes me look so jealous. I asked a bodyguard of mine to follow Daiemon if he should leave the estate that night. I told my bodyguard to spy on him and the woman, discover who she was, and tell me.”

  “Did
the bodyguard obey your orders?” Reiko said as excitement burgeoned inside her.

  “I don’t know,” Gosechi said. “After I learned that Daiemon was dead, I couldn’t bear to ask who’d been with him on the last night of his life.”

  “Can we ask now?”

  “I suppose we must.” Gosechi rose lithely to her feet. “Come with me.”

  She led Reiko from the sanctuary. In the dim passage outside loitered a young samurai, who bowed to Gosechi, then stood as tall as his meager height allowed. He had a homely, good-natured, intelligent face that looked upon Gosechi with slavish devotion. Reiko understood at once why Gosechi had assigned him the task of spying on her lover. He was obviously in love with her and would do anything she wanted.

  “Hachiro-san, this is Lady Reiko. I want you to tell us if you followed Daiemon as I asked you to do,” Gosechi said.

  The young man hesitated, his expression worried. “Yes—I followed him. But I’m afraid that what I saw will upset you.”

  “It’s all right,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “I must hear.”

  Hachiro nodded and began his tale. “Daiemon left the estate on horseback soon after the hour of the boar that night. He seemed in a big hurry. I had to ride fast to keep up with him, but I stayed far enough behind that he wouldn’t notice me.” Reiko envisioned one horseman shadowing another through the torchlit passages of Edo Castle. “He went into town,” continued Hachiro. “He rode around and around, looking over his shoulder, as if he wanted to make sure nobody was watching him. Finally, he ended up at the Sign of Bedazzlement. I knew the place because…”

  The bodyguard paused, blushing unhappily. Reiko deduced that he’d recognized the house of assignation because he’d escorted Gosechi there to her trysts with Daiemon.

  “Daiemon left his horse in an alley, then went into the building,” Hachiro said. “I was afraid to follow him in there because he might see me, so I watched from a teahouse across the street.”