He could be telling the truth, Hirata thought-or improvising an explanation to protect himself.
“Tell me everything you did from the time Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder was discovered, up to last night,” Hirata said.
The hokan pondered with intense concentration, clearly recognizing his need to demonstrate that he’d been nowhere near his secret house. “I was performing in the Owariya when Momoko ran into the party screaming that Lord Mitsuyoshi was dead. The Yoshiwara gate was shut, and before it opened in the morning, the police came and locked everyone in the quarter. When they let us go, I went home.”
“What did you do there?” Hirata said.
“I had dinner with my family,” Fujio said, “then went to sleep.” He added with pointed emphasis, “I was in bed all night, beside my wife.”
Hirata intended to check this story with the hokan’s wife and in-laws, although they might confirm what Fujio said whether it was true or not, to protect him. “And in the morning?”
“I went to Yoshiwara. There wasn’t much going on, so I sat around the teahouses, drinking and playing cards with friends.”
“Were you with them the whole time?” Hirata said.
“Not every moment, but I was never out of their sight long enough to go to the hills.” Yet Fujio slowed his speech, as if he saw danger looming ahead in his tale. “That night I performed at a party. The sōsakan-sama met me there. After we talked, I entertained the guests until dawn. Then…”
From a distance echoed the ring of an axe, chopping wood. “Then what?” Hirata prompted, eager because they’d reached a critical time period. This morning he’d learned that Fujio had managed to shake the detectives assigned to watch him, and he’d been out of their sight from dawn until afternoon of that day, when they’d caught up with him in Yoshiwara.
“I visited a friend,” Fujio said reluctantly. “I was with… my friend until yesterday afternoon, when I went back to Yoshiwara to perform.”
“Who is this friend?”
“A woman.” Despite the cold, Fujio’s face was slick with sweat. “I can’t tell her name. She’s the wife of a patron.” He shook his head, deploring his own rakish behavior. “How do I get myself into these things?”
“If you want me to believe you were with this woman, she must verify what you’ve told me,” Hirata said.
“But I can’t let her,” Fujio protested. “Her husband is a prominent samurai. He has a bad temper. If he finds out about us, he’ll kill me.”
Tokugawa law permitted a samurai to kill a peasant and escape punishment. Fujio seemed caught between the threat of his mistress’s husband on one side and execution for murder on the other. The story sounded credible to Hirata, who began to doubt that Fujio had killed the woman. Fujio was clever; if he’d committed the crime, wouldn’t he have invented a better alibi? Furthermore, Hirata’s examination of the crime scene last night argued that Fujio could be innocent.
There was no evidence that Fujio had been in the house recently. The woman could have gone there by herself. Hirata even wondered whether she’d been hiding there at all. The stove and braziers had contained no sign of recent fire, the only food in the house was some old dried fruit, and the privy didn’t smell as if anyone had used it lately. The woman could have been taken there and immediately killed-by someone who wanted to frame Fujio.
Yet perhaps Fujio was guilty, but hadn’t expected the body to be found, and therefore had thought he wouldn’t need an alibi. The story about a secret mistress might have been the best he could do when caught off guard.
“I think you went to see Wisteria at your house yesterday,” Hirata said. “Maybe she didn’t like being alone, in the cold, and she complained. Maybe you were desperate because you had nowhere else to put her. There was an argument. Things got out of control. You killed her.”
“That never happened.” Fujio shifted his stance, planting his feet firmly on the ground.
“Or maybe you intended to kill her all along,” Hirata said, “because she saw you kill Lord Mitsuyoshi.”
“Treasury Minister Nitta did it.” Triumph tinged Fujio’s declaration. “I heard the news.”
“You killed Wisteria before you knew Nitta was convicted,” Hirata guessed. “You were afraid she would tell the police that you’re the killer, and you couldn’t let her live.”
“I didn’t kill Lord Mitsuyoshi,” Fujio said hotly. “And I didn’t kill Wisteria. Someone put her body in my house to make it look like I killed her!”
In Fujio’s eyes dawned the realization that this was exactly how it looked-and how a magistrate who tried him for the murder would interpret the crime scene. A visible current of panic tautened his slim figure. Hirata sprang forward to grab Fujio, at the same instant that the hokan turned and bolted across the rice fields.
“Hey! Come back here!” Launching himself in pursuit, Hirata called to the detectives: “Stop him!”
Fujio stumbled over dirt clods, his garments flapping, legs and arms pumping furiously. Hirata panted as he labored to catch up. But soon Fujio’s pace slowed; fatigue hobbled his gait. Hirata closed the distance between them and lunged, seizing Fujio around the waist.
The hokan fell forward and slammed to the ground. Hirata landed with a thud on top of him. Fujio lay limp and wheezing.
“You’re under arrest,” Hirata said.
After the treasury minister had died with his guilt or innocence undetermined, Hirata couldn’t risk allowing one of Sano’s only two other suspects to escape. And even if Fujio proved not to have killed the shogun’s heir, he was still the primary suspect in the murder of the woman at his house.
“Silly habit of mine, running away when I’m sure to get caught,” Fujio said, managing a wry laugh. “But this time it was worth a try.”
Although Sano usually traveled with an entourage to assist him and uphold the dignity of his rank, Edo Jail was a place he preferred to go alone.
Edo Jail, a fortified dungeon surrounded by deteriorating stone walls and watchtowers, reigned over the slums of northeast Nihonbashi. Inside, jailers tortured confessions out of prisoners, and convicted criminals awaited execution. The jail also housed Edo Morgue, which received the bodies of citizens who perished from natural disasters or unnatural causes. There Dr. Ito, morgue custodian, often lent his medical expertise to Sano’s investigations. Because the examination of corpses and any other procedures associated with foreign science were illegal, Sano wanted as few people as possible to know about his visits to Edo Jail.
Dr. Ito met him at the door of the morgue, a low building with flaking plaster walls. “What a pleasure to see you,” Dr. Ito said.
In his seventies, he had white hair like a snowfall above his wise, lined face and wore the dark blue coat of a physician. Years ago he’d been caught practicing forbidden foreign science, which he’d learned through illicit channels from Dutch traders. The bakufu had forgone the usual sentence of exile and condemned him to work for the rest of his life in Edo Morgue. There Dr. Ito had continued his scientific experiments, ignored by the authorities.
“However, I might have wished for a better occasion than another violent death,” he said.
“I, too,” Sano said. “I wouldn’t ask you to examine another body now if I had any choice.”
The Black Lotus disaster had taken its toll on Dr. Ito even though he hadn’t been at the temple that night, when over seven hundred people had died. Their bodies had been taken directly to a mass funeral outside town, but many nuns and priests had died from injuries or committed suicide in jail, and Dr. Ito had prepared their corpses for cremation. His horror at the Black Lotus carnage had put a halt to his work-the one solace that made his imprisonment bearable-and the spiritual pollution from so many deaths had weakened his health.