“Your mother and I packed some things to take with us. We didn’t know how long we would be gone. It was hard to decide what to bring and squeeze it into small bundles that we could carry.” As she washed the gutted duck, Hana seemed to get lost in the past. “That was when we heard that Tadatoshi was missing. His sister told us.” Hana’s memory drifted forward. “Oigimi was burned very badly in the fire. She almost died.”
“I gathered that when I met her today,” Sano said. “She still has scars.”
“I heard she never married,” Hana said. “She’s had a hard, lonely life. But when she was young, she was a very pretty girl. Still, she’s lucky to be alive at all. Anyway, her father said everyone had to look for Tadatoshi. Your mother and I helped search the estate. When nobody found him there, his father sent us all outside to look. If we had to scour the whole city, then so be it-we weren’t leaving without his son.” Hana’s expression turned grim. “We never left. Everyone from his estate was trapped by the fire, inside the city. Almost everyone died, all for the sake of one boy.”
His household might have escaped the fire had Tadatoshi not disappeared. If he’d been kidnapped, not gone off voluntarily, those deaths weren’t his fault. But Sano wondered if they were the motive for Tadatoshi’s murder.
“There were crowds in the streets, running from the fire,” Hana said. “Your mother and I got separated from the other people from the estate, but we managed to stay together. After the fire, we went back to the estate. It had burned down. But we found your mother’s parents and moved in with them. Their house was all right. They lived in Asakusa, which was countryside far away from town back then.”
Here was another fact about the grandparents Sano had never known. “When I was young, were they still alive?”
“Your grandfather died when you were nine. Your grandmother a few years later.”
Sano suddenly remembered two occasions somewhere around those times, when he’d found his mother weeping. She’d refused to say why. Now he realized that she must have heard about her parents’ deaths. “Why didn’t I ever meet them? Why did she pretend they’d died before I was born?”
“That’s not for me to say. It has nothing to do with the murder. Forget it.” Impatient, Hana flung the duck on the chopping board. “What I’m trying to tell you is that your mother didn’t have the chance to kidnap or kill that boy.” She grasped Sano’s hand. He had another sudden memory from his childhood, of teasing a horse and Hana snatching his hand away before he could be bitten. “I was with her the whole time.”
Her gaze held Sano’s, bright and fierce and unblinking. Sano didn’t have to wonder if Hana had told the whole truth; he knew she hadn’t. He knew she was doing it for the noblest motive, to protect his mother… or was she?
Sano looked down at her hand, locked around his. There was blood from the duck under her fingernails. Maybe she knew, for the best reason of all, that his mother hadn’t killed Tadatoshi. The idea seemed ludicrous, yet not beyond possibility.
For now Sano said, “How well did you know Colonel Doi?”
Hana paused before replying. Her eyes gleamed and she smiled, as if at a sudden recollection, or inspiration. “Well enough to know he didn’t get along with his master.”
It must have been obvious to her that Sano was fishing for that answer, and he couldn’t complain because she’d taken the bait suspiciously fast. “What gave you that idea?”
“I overheard Doi and Tadatoshi arguing,” Hana said.
“When was this?”
“A few days before the fire.” Hana picked up a cleaver.
“About what?” Sano asked.
“I don’t know,” Hana said. “I came in at the end. But I heard Doi say, ‘If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.’”
Here at last was evidence against Doi. Not that Sano wasn’t pleased, but he said, “Are you sure that’s what you heard?”
Hana began to chop. Whack followed expert whack. Apart came the duck’s carcass. “I’m sure.”
Sano eyed Hana quizzically. “You remember a snatch of conversation from forty-three years ago.”
“A samurai threatening to kill his master isn’t something you see every day,” Hana said. “It stuck in my mind.”
“How convenient that it should pop up now.”
“Well, it did,” Hana insisted. “That’s what Doi said. And I’ll swear to it in front of the shogun.” She laid down her cleaver beside the neatly dismembered duck.
Hirata entered the kitchen compound and called, “Sano-san, the shogun is here to see you.”
“The shogun?” Sano was surprised, not just because Hana’s mention of the shogun had coincided with his arrival. “Here?” The shogun rarely came to visit. Sano couldn’t remember the last time. “What for?”
“He didn’t say, but we’d better not keep him waiting.”
The shogun sat on the dais in the reception room, with Yoritomo. Servants fanned up fires in charcoal braziers and positioned lacquer screens to shield him from cold drafts. Sano knelt on the floor and bowed, relegated to the subordinate position in his own house. Hirata followed suit. “Welcome, Your Excellency,” Sano said.
“Greetings,” the shogun said, as casually as if he visited every day.
Yoritomo, a frequent visitor, looked uncomfortable, his handsome face tense. He murmured a greeting.
“May I offer you some refreshments?” Sano said.
Refreshments were politely refused, offered again, and accepted. Servants laid out enough food for a banquet. As everyone sipped tea and the shogun and Yoritomo picked at sashimi, cakes, and dumplings, Sano said, “May I ask what brings you here, Your Excellency?”
“I wanted to talk to you. Away from my cousin.” The shogun glanced around nervously, as if Lord Matsudaira might be lurking nearby.
Sano was glad not to have Lord Matsudaira present, but also curious. “May I ask why?”
The shogun knitted his brow. “I know my cousin wants what’s best for me. But whenever he’s around, things become difficult and troublesome. Have you noticed?”
“I may have,” Sano said, trying not to look at Hirata.
“He has the greatest, ahh, respect and affection for me, but sometimes I feel as if he’s-” The shogun’s tongue worked inside his mouth, as if tasting unpleasant words. “As if he’s mocking me. Do you think so, too?”
Here was Sano’s chance to repay Lord Matsudaira for all the times Lord Matsudaira had maligned Sano to the shogun. Sano felt sorely tempted, but prudence forestalled him. If the shogun found out that Lord Matsudaira wanted to take over the regime, Sano’s own role in the power struggle might become exposed. And the shogun might forgive Lord Matsudaira, his blood kin, but never Sano the outsider, the upstart.
“Perhaps Lord Matsudaira has so much on his mind that he’s not aware of what impression he’s creating,” Sano said.
This evasion quelled the shogun’s fears. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m, ahh, too sensitive.”
Sano heard Yoritomo let out his breath. Hirata sat silent, stoic and watchful.
“But at any rate, I came to ask you what, ahh, progress you’ve made in your investigation,” the shogun said. “And I’d just as soon my cousin didn’t join us.”
So would Sano. “I’ve interviewed Tadatoshi’s mother and sister. They don’t believe my mother killed him. In fact, they gave her a good character reference.” The shogun wouldn’t notice that the word of two women was weak compared to Colonel Doi’s without Lord Matsudaira to point it out. “They also identified someone who wanted Tadatoshi dead.” As he related their story about their relative wanting to advance his son up the line in the succession, Sano was glad that Lord Matsudaira wasn’t there to harp on the fact that the man was conveniently dead for Sano to frame.
“Ahh, a new suspect,” the shogun said, impressed.
But Yoritomo looked unhappy instead of pleased that Sano had made headway toward clearing his mother. Sano wondered why.
“And I’ve discovered that my mother has an alibi for the murder,” Sano continued. “Her maid was with her before Tadatoshi disappeared and during the whole time after.”