Hirata and Ibe departed together. As Sano and Otani followed the widow down the corridor, Sano felt glad he’d established authority over his watchdogs, but his head had begun to ache. The widow led him and Otani to a smaller, vacant reception chamber. She gestured for them to sit in the place of honor before the alcove, which contained a verse on a scroll and bare branches in a black vase. She knelt and waited meekly.
Sano and Otani seated themselves. “My apologies for interrupting your husband’s funeral rites and intruding on you, Lady Agemaki,” Sano said. He recognized the name of a princess in The Tale of Genji, the famous novel of the Imperial Court, written some six centuries ago. Makino’s widow had a certain regal, refined air that suited the name to her. “But the circumstances give me no choice. I’m sorry to say that your husband was murdered.” Sano explained about Makino’s letter. “The shogun has ordered me to honor your husband’s wish that I bring his killer to justice and avenge his death. Now I need your help.”
Agemaki nodded, glancing at Sano from beneath lowered eyelids. “For the sake of my beloved husband… I will gladly help you.”
“Then I must ask you to answer some questions,” Sano said.
“Very well.”
“I understand that you live in Makino-san’s private quarters. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” Agemaki whispered. Her speech had a prim, formal quality.
“Were you there the night he died?”
“Yes… I was there.”
“When was the last time you saw him alive?” Sano asked.
Agemaki hesitated. Sano had a feeling, based only on instinct, that she was deciding whether to tell the truth- or how much of it. “I believe I last saw my husband soon after the temple bells rang the hour of the dog,” she said. “That was his usual bedtime.”
“What happened?” Sano said.
“We bid each other good night,” Agemaki said. “I retired to my chamber.”
“You didn’t sleep in his?”
An indefinable emotion fluttered the woman’s eyelashes. “No.”
If she was telling the truth, then she wasn’t the woman who’d had sex with Makino that night, Sano thought. The fabric and style of the torn kimono sleeve didn’t match her age or marital status. He had no reason to doubt her word, except an unfounded hunch.
“Did you speak to your husband after you left him?” Sano asked Agemaki.
“No… I did not.”
“What did you do next?”
“I went to bed.”
“Did you hear any sounds from your husband’s chamber?”
Agemaki slowly inhaled, then exhaled, before she answered, “I heard nothing.”
“Would you please show me your chamber?” Sano said.
“Certainly.”
She led Sano out of the mansion, across the walkway and garden to the building that housed Makino’s private quarters. Otani shadowed them, frowning as he tried to discern Sano’s purpose. Inside the quarters they followed the corridor past Makino’s chamber and turned a corner. As Sano had noted yesterday, the building was roughly square, with the rooms arranged around the courtyard. Agemaki opened the door to a room adjacent to Makino’s. Upon entering, Sano saw furnishings appropriate for an aristocratic lady-a dressing table with mirror and jars of makeup, an expensive brocade kimono on a stand, a screen decorated with gilded birds, lacquer chests and silk floor cushions. Sano noted the lattice-and-paper partition that separated the chamber from Makino’s.
“Are you sure you didn’t hear anything that night?” Sano asked Agemaki.
She stood by the door, hands folded in her sleeves. “I am quite sure.”
Sano wondered how she could not have heard Makino having sex on the other side of the flimsy partition or being beaten to death one room away. Agemaki murmured, “I took a sleeping potion. I slept very soundly.”
A reasonable explanation, Sano thought; but he pictured her sliding open the partition and stealing into Makino’s room in the dark of that night.
Her face suddenly contorted; tears flooded her eyes. She dabbed them with her sleeve. “I wish I had heard something,” she said, her voice broken by a sob. “Maybe I could have saved my husband.”
Sano pitied her even as he wondered if her grief was an act. “Have you any idea who killed him?”
She shook her head. “If only I did.”
“May I look around your room?” Sano said.
Agemaki gestured, granting him permission. He opened cabinets and chests, surveyed neatly folded garments and paired shoes. Otani stuck close by him, peering over his shoulder. While Sano searched for a murder weapon and bloodstained clothes, Agemaki watched mutely, indifferent. He found neither. Maybe she was the blameless, grieving widow she seemed.
“How long had you and Senior Elder Makino been married?” Sano asked her.
“Six years,” she said sadly.
Sano had known she wasn’t a first, longtime wife to Makino, whose sons were in their forties. She was too young to have borne them, and at least three decades younger than Makino.
“Were there any problems between you and your husband?” Sano said.
“… None whatsoever.”
“Had you quarreled recently?” Sano prodded.
“We never quarreled,” Agemaki said with pride. A fresh spate of weeping seized her. “We were devoted to each other.”
But they hadn’t shared a bed. And Makino had had a young, beautiful concubine, as did many rich husbands. Marital troubles often arose from such a situation. Sano wondered if Agemaki knew he was seeking a motive for her husband’s murder. If so, she would also know to deny any reason for killing him, as well as protect herself by appearing to cooperate with Sano’s inquiries.
“Who is your family?” Sano asked, curious about her.
“The Senge. They’re retainers to Lord Torii.”
Sano recognized the clan as a large, venerable one, and Lord Torii as daimyo of Iwaki Province in northern Japan. “Have you any children by Senior Elder Makino?”
Agemaki sighed. “I regret to say that I have none.”
“What will you do now that your husband is dead?” Sano doubted that Makino’s clan, which was notoriously venal and exclusive, would support a widow from a brief marriage who had no strong political connections to it. “Will you go back to your family?”
“No. My parents are dead, and I haven’t any close relatives. I will stay here until my official period of mourning is done. After that, I will live in a villa that my husband owned in the hills outside Edo. He left me the villa, along with an income to provide for me.”
Sano’s detective instincts roused. “How much is the income?”
“Five hundred koku a year.”
She spoke as if mentioning a trivial sum. Perhaps she didn’t realize that it equaled the annual cost of the rice necessary to feed five hundred men, a fortune large enough to maintain her in affluence for the rest of her life. But Sano had seen Makino’s villa, an opulent mansion with beautiful woodland surroundings and a breathtaking view. Even a gentlewoman, ignorant of finance, would recognize the value of such an inheritance.
“When did you learn that your husband had left you the property and income?” Sano asked.
“He showed me the document the day after we married.”
So she’d known before Makino died. The legacy hadn’t been an unexpected windfall. Agemaki might have decided long ago that she preferred freedom and inheritance over marriage to a decrepit husband. And perhaps she’d gained them by killing Makino the night before last. Yet there was no proof, and Sano still had other suspects to investigate.
“That will be all for now,” he told Agemaki.
As he and Otani crossed the walkway from the private quarters toward the main house, Otani said, “That woman doesn’t look capable of murder. She seems genuinely upset about Makino’s death. And if she’s responsible, she wouldn’t have told you about her legacy. Even an ignorant female must know that would direct suspicion
