Yanagida also got to his feet, smiled at Akitada, his round face suffused with joy, and turning towards the altar, prostrated himself before the image. He began to declaim in a loud voice, "Life is impermanent, subject by nature to birth and extinction. Praise be to Amitabha! Only when birth and extinction have been eliminated is the bliss of nothingness realized. Praise be to Amitabha!…"
Akitada tiptoed from the room and sought out the last member of Yoakira's entourage, Lord Shinoda.
Shinoda had escaped the midday heat by perching on the edge of a stone bridge in his garden and dangling his bare feet into the shallow stream below. He looked old and frail, with a thick head of white hair and a neatly trimmed white beard and mustache.
Akitada, seeing the unconventional occupation of the old man, was afraid that this friend of Yoakira's had also passed into his dotage. He found out quickly, however, that unlike Abe, Lord Shinoda was in full possession of all his faculties.
"So you're the boy's master," he said after Akitada had introduced himself and stated his business. He waved towards the space beside him and said, "Take off your shoes and socks and stick your feet in the water. It's much too hot for formalities."
Akitada obeyed meekly. The water was blessedly cool after the hot, dusty road outside.
"Glad to hear Sakanoue put the boy in the university," remarked Shinoda, catching a floating leaf with his toe and flipping it out of the water. "Much the best thing under the circumstances. The family was unsettled by this business." He shot Akitada a sharp glance from bright black eyes. "Are you sure you didn't come to satisfy your own curiosity? You have that reputation, you know."
Akitada flushed, startled that the old man had heard of him. He said, "To be frank, I did not believe the story of a miracle even before the boy asked me to find out what really happened. But I certainly did not put the idea in his head."
Shinoda's expression became veiled, his tone distant. "I cannot confirm your suspicions."
An ambiguous answer. Akitada tried to read the other man's mind. Shinoda was his last chance to find out the truth. "There are aspects of the incident which trouble me," he said tentatively.
Shinoda shot him another look. "Really? You will have to tell me what they are."
Akitada met his eyes. "I wondered why all of you assumed immediately that the prince was dead. Without a body, I would have thought a thorough search of the hall, the temple and the surrounding woods, as well as of the prince's various residences throughout the country was in order. Instead you announced almost immediately that the prince was no more."
Shinoda looked down into the water. "There was a search, but we knew he was dead."
Akitada stared at him. "Are you telling me that you found his corpse?"
Shimoda raised his eyes. "Certainly not," he snapped. "How could there have been a miracle if Yoakira had merely died in the middle of his sutra reading?"
"Then how-"
Shimoda said impatiently, "Trust me, young man, we had sufficient proof of death as well as of a miracle. Surely you don't think that we would trick His Majesty with some hocus-pocus?"
"Of course not, but…" Akitada realized belatedly that the emperor's sanction of the miraculous event would present an insurmountable obstacle to his investigation. Shinoda was not being merely abstruse or obstructive. He was reminding Akitada of the dangerous ground he was treading. But Shinoda and the others had seen something that convinced them of Yoakira's demise. He said, "I won't question the miracle, sir, but what did you find that proved to you Yoakira had passed from this life?"
Shinoda did not answer. He pulled his skinny legs from the water and started drying them with the hem of his robe.
Akitada put a hand on the older man's sleeve. "Please, sir. I am not asking out of idle curiosity. It is a matter of some urgency… of the child's safety. What did you find?"
Shinoda stood up and looked down at Akitada. "Young man," he said severely, "if I believed for one moment that what you hint at is true, I would hardly sit quietly in my garden soaking my feet. Since you appear to be one of those restless people who cannot leave well enough alone, you will no doubt look elsewhere. I wish you luck!"
"Sir," cried Akitada flushing with anger and frustration, "you may be helping a murderer escape justice to murder again. Think of your duty to your friend! Only the boy stands in the way of Sakanoue seizing the estates."
Shinoda's eyes widened. "How dare you?" he demanded. "You, sir, are accusing us of covering up a murder. Let me inform you that Lord Sakanoue never entered the hall while my friend was alive. He sat with us until the chanting stopped, and then we entered together and found… Yoakira gone. Furthermore, afterwards he was more eager to search the grounds than any of us. He was absolutely tireless! As for you, to my mind there has already been far too much idle and irresponsible gossip. First it was demons, now murder. Beware, sir, beware!"
And with that he padded off angrily, barefoot and indifferent to the sharp gravel on the path.
Akitada got up, angry with himself that he had ruined his last chance. He brushed the dust from his best robe and put on his socks and shoes over wet feet. Feeling slightly refreshed, but mentally more confused and frustrated than ever, he walked home thinking over Shinoda's words.
The complete lack of cooperation from all three men, though for different reasons, had a troubling unanimity about it. Only Shinoda had given him an answer of sorts. He had seen something besides Yoakira's robe in the prayer hall, something which had proved to him and the others that Prince Yoakira had died there. What had he seen? Suddenly Akitada recalled vividly the admonition on the calligraphy scroll in the prince's mansion: "Thou must search the truth within, for thou shalt not find it without." He had wasted time talking to people in the capital, when he should have gone to the place where it had happened. Akitada now suspected that Abe and Yanagida had played an elaborate game with him. Yoakira's friends knew something they were afraid to reveal, afraid that it would feed more "idle gossip."
He was passing the university compound at that point and remembered Hirata's poor health. If only he could solve Oe's murder! That certainly would put an end to the stress his old friend was under.
On an impulse, he crossed Nijo Avenue. The grounds of the university were deserted and the heat hung heavily over the courtyards, baking the gravel and rising in shimmering waves above it. Not a branch stirred in the pines.
Akitada went to the Temple of Confucius and entered it. In the half light the hall was slightly cooler than the outside air. With the figures of the sages looming darkly above him, Akitada tried to get a sense of the atmosphere. On his visit to Yoakira's rooms he had felt the presence of the prince very distinctly. Here the walls and beams, the very floor-boards under Akitada's feet were imbued with the mystery of Oe's murder, permeated with the images of violent death. Yet Akitada did not sense the spirit of Oe as he had that of the prince in the Minamoto mansion. What had these statues seen? How many people had been here the night Oe died? The victim and his killer, of course. And Ishikawa. Akitada was certain of this. But he did not think that Ishikawa had killed Oe. And he could not have been an accomplice. Ishikawa, the blackmailer, would have been a poor choice indeed. Had he been an unwilling witness? Or could he have come upon the body of his professor afterwards and decided on a whim to suspend it from the statue? That would have been in character. But Akitada could not see Ishikawa risking arrest by manhandling a newly murdered corpse. Quite apart from everything else, Oe's blood would have got all over Ishikawa.