He saw tayu lounging in lavish chambers, and women of the lower ranks crowded into dingy barracks. He saw bathtubs of scummy water crammed full of naked females. Little girls toiled in kitchens, and courtesans wolfed down food in storerooms because they weren’t allowed to eat in front of clients. Most of the women looked sullen, miserable, or resigned to their lot. In one house, they quarreled bitterly among themselves, like caged cats; in another, a girl lay moaning on a futon while a maid washed blood from between her legs. An odor of squalid humanity pervaded the brothels, and Yoshiwara completely lost its glamour for Hirata. Everywhere he went, he crossed paths with Police Commissioner Hoshina’s men, engaged in the same mission, but Lady Wisteria was nowhere to be found. No one had seen her since her procession to the ageya last night. She’d apparently vanished without a trace, as had her pillow book.
Discouraged, Hirata made his way up Nakanochō. The quarter had grown colder and darker as the day waned. Snow continued to fall; white drifts lay alongside the buildings. Windblown flakes stung Hirata’s cheeks and glinted in the light from windows. The streets were empty, except for patrolling police, because all the visitors, still imprisoned in Yoshiwara by the locked gates, had sought shelter indoors. Hirata approached the gate, where two guards paced, muffled in cloaks and hoods. They halted and bowed to him.
“Were you on duty last night?” Hirata asked them.
One guard was lean with rough-hewn features, the other solid and swarthy. Both nodded.
“Did Lady Wisteria go out the gate?” Hirata said.
The swarthy man laughed in disdain. “Courtesans can’t sneak past us. They try, but we always catch them. Sometimes they disguise themselves as servants, but we know everyone here, and they can’t fool us.”
“Women have bribed porters to carry them through in chests or barrels,” the lean guard said, “but we search every container before it leaves. They know there’s little chance of escaping, but they keep trying.”
After what he’d seen today, Hirata didn’t blame the women. “But since Wisteria’s not in Yoshiwara, she must have gotten out somehow.”
He and the guards looked beyond the snow-laced rooftops at the wall that enclosed the pleasure quarter. It had a smooth, plastered surface, and alleys separated it from the buildings. “She would have had to climb on a roof, jump to the top of the wall, and cross the moat on the other side,” said the lean guard. “No woman has ever managed that.”
“What do you think happened to Wisteria?” said Hirata.
The men glanced at each other, then shook their heads. “We didn’t let her out,” the swarthy man said.
“We’ll swear to it on our lives,” said the other.
Their emphatic declarations didn’t hide their fear that they would be punished severely for the disappearance of a suspect in the murder. Hirata sympathized with them, for his own future was threatened. If he and Sano failed in their duty to catch the killer, he would be demoted, exiled, or forced to commit ritual suicide; he would never marry Midori. Hirata thought of their upcoming miai, and joy and apprehension entwined inside him.
He had fancied himself in love many times during his twenty-five years, but never felt such affection or longing for any woman until Midori. They had come to believe they’d been lovers in a former life, and their souls destined to reunite. And spiritual affinity engendered physical passion. Desire for each other made them all the more impatient for marriage. However, marriage wasn’t so easily accomplished as falling in love. Hirata hoped the meeting between his family and Midori’s would have happy results, and feared that the case would prevent his attending the miai.
Banishing personal worries, he concentrated on the problem at hand. Maybe Wisteria had turned invisible and spirited herself away; but Hirata favored simpler solutions. Whether she’d left the pleasure quarter alive or dead, someone must have devised a practical way to smuggle a courtesan out of Yoshiwara.
“Lady Wisteria was last seen by her yarite sometime after the hour of the boar,” Hirata said. “Who left Yoshiwara between then and the time Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder was discovered?”
The guards’ postures stiffened. “No one did,” said the lean man. “The gates are locked after curfew at midnight. Everyone who’s inside Yoshiwara then has to stay until morning. It’s the law.”
“But not everyone stayed last night, did they?” Hirata said, for he knew that enough money could buy a passage out of Yoshiwara after curfew. Seeing the guards’ expressions turn fearful, he said, “I won’t punish you for taking bribes, so just tell me: Who left the quarter last night?”
The men exchanged leery glances; then the lean man said reluctantly, “There was Kinue the oil merchant, with some servants and friends.”
Hirata knew that the merchant owned a major shop in Nihonbashi. “Who else?”
“A group from the Mori clan, and their bodyguards,” said the swarthy man.
This news piqued Hirata’s interest: The Mori were powerful gangsters, associated with trouble of all kinds.
“And Nitta Monzaemon, the treasury minister,” said the lean guard, “with his retainers.”
Hirata frowned, disturbed by the idea that high bakufu officials might be involved in Wisteria’s disappearance and Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder. “How did all these people travel?”
“Kinue’s party walked to and from the river ferries,” said the swarthy guard. “The Mori group rode the causeway.”
Because the law granted only samurai the right to travel on horseback, the merchant had gone on foot. The Mori, however, were rōnin-masterless samurai-and could therefore ride. It seemed unlikely to Hirata that Lady Wisteria had accompanied either party. Women didn’t ride, and if Wisteria had done so last night, she would have risked notice by patrolling soldiers. A woman walking with a group of men would have been just as conspicuous. But a desperate fugitive courtesan might have taken the risk, if she’d found willing accomplices.
“Treasury Minister Nitta’s retainers also rode,” said the lean guard. “But he had a palanquin waiting for him outside the quarter.”
Excitement warmed Hirata’s cold muscles. The palanquin made Nitta a more promising lead than the others. However Wisteria had gotten out of Yoshiwara, the palanquin could have afterward carried her off, in safety and privacy, to a destination known to the treasury minister. Hirata thanked the guards and trudged through the swirling snowflakes to find Sano.
The twenty other guests who’d attended last night’s party at the Owariya were high-ranking bakufu members and their retainers. During a lengthy search of Yoshiwara, Sano and his detectives located six of the men, as well as the courtesans who’d entertained them at the ageya, and learned that they’d stayed together during the time when the murder occurred. Apparently, none of these people had left the party to slip upstairs, and none had reason to kill the shogun’s heir. Sano then tracked down five more guests at the Tsutaya teahouse.
The Tsutaya occupied the ground floor of a building near the quarter’s rear wall. A cylindrical lantern over the doorway bore the characters of its name; light gleamed between the slats of the closed shutters across the front. Sano dusted snow off himself and entered. Inside the elegant room, an alcove held a porcelain vase of bare branches, and maids served drinks to the five men. Charcoal braziers emitted warmth, but when everyone turned to look at Sano, their unfriendly expressions chilled the atmosphere.
A man seated before the alcove spoke: “Greetings, Sōsakan-sama.” Sano knelt and bowed. “Greetings, Honorable Senior Elder Makino.” The senior elder was one of five officials who advised the Tokugawa on national policy and comprised the bakufu’s highest echelon. He had an emaciated body, and his bony skull showed through the tight skin of his face; a black kimono accentuated his deathlike pallor. His retainers, who doubled as secretaries and bodyguards, sat grouped around him.