“He’s right.” Koheiji’s surly expression said he hadn’t forgiven Ibe, but he moved to closer to him, glad of any ally under the circumstances. “I’m innocent.”
“That’s for me to determine,” Hirata said. Ibe was undercutting his authority as well as intruding on his business. “Stop interfering, or I’ll-”
“Throw me out?” Ibe smirked. “You can’t, because I’m here under orders from Chamberlain Yanagisawa.”
Hirata gritted his teeth.
“Besides, I’m just trying to keep you from wasting your time on an innocent man,” Ibe said.
“Listen to him,” Koheiji eagerly urged Hirata. “He’s doing you a favor.”
Hirata eyed Ibe with contempt, for he knew that Ibe had other, less altruistic reasons to steer suspicion away from the actor. He asked Koheiji, “What did you do after you performed that evening?”
“I went to take off my costume and makeup.”
“Show me where.”
Ibe rolled his eyes, signaling that he thought Hirata was wasting more time. As the actor led him and Hirata out of the theater, the concubine lingered.
“You come, too,” Hirata told her.
She reluctantly trailed them into the private quarters. There, Koheiji showed Hirata the room he occupied on the opposite end of the building from Makino’s. The actor had furnished his lair as a theatrical dressing room. A table under a lantern held brushes and jars of face paint. On wooden stands hung kimonos assembled with cloaks, surcoats, trousers, and a suit of armor. Wooden heads on shelves wore helmets.
“I specialize in samurai roles,” Koheiji said.
That explained his hairstyle-the topknot and shaved crown usually reserved for the warrior class. While Ibe examined the armor and Okitsu hovered at the door, Hirata looked inside a trunk. It contained swords, daggers, and clubs.
“Those are my props,” Koheiji said.
Hirata lifted out a sword. Its blade was made of wood, as were the other weapons, so they wouldn’t cut anyone during simulated fights onstage.
“There’s no blood on those,” Koheiji said.
“How do you know what I’m looking for?” Hirata said.
The actor shrugged and smiled. “It was just a guess.”
Hirata sensed that Koheiji enjoyed matching wits with him. He grew increasingly sure that Koheiji knew more about the murder than he would admit. But although a club from the trunk could have killed Senior Elder Makino, the actor seemed too smart to leave incriminating evidence in his room. Hirata opened the cabinet. He beheld compartments crammed with clothes, shoes, and wigs; stacks of handbills displayed Koheiji’s portrait and advertised his plays.
“Please allow me,” Koheiji said.
He carefully lifted out and displayed garments for Hirata’s examination. Hirata supposed that if Koheiji had gotten blood on his clothes while beating Makino, he’d have destroyed them, but Hirata had to look anyway. He predicted that the clever actor would soon offer an alibi in an attempt to clear himself.
“You won’t find any proof that I killed Senior Elder Makino,” said Koheiji, “because I didn’t. In fact, I couldn’t have. I was here, in this room, all night. And I have a witness to prove it.”
There he went, Hirata thought. “Who might that be?” He could already guess.
“Okitsu,” the actor said, proving him right. “She can vouch for my innocence.”
Hirata turned to the concubine, who huddled in the doorway. “Is that true?”
She gulped and nodded. Hirata beckoned her, and she crept toward him like a child expecting punishment.
“You were here, in this room, with Koheiji-san, the night Senior Elder Makino died?” Hirata said.
“Yes, she was,” Koheiji said.
“Let her speak for herself,” Hirata said.
Okitsu quailed under his scrutiny; she replied in a barely audible whisper, “I was here.”
“All night?” Hirata said. If Koheiji needed to invent an alibi, he shouldn’t have picked such an unconvincing partner. Perhaps he’d not had any other choice.
“She came while Senior Elder Makino and his men were still drinking after their dinner,” Koheiji said. “She stayed until morning, when Tamura-san found the senior elder dead, and we heard all the commotion.”
Hirata signaled the actor to shut up. “A murder investigation is a very serious matter,” he sternly told Okitsu. “Anyone who lies will go to prison. Do you understand?”
Whimpering, Okitsu nodded. Her face was so pinched with fear that Hirata felt sorry for her. “Now tell me,” he said, “where were you that night?”
Okitsu flashed an anxious glance at Koheiji. “I was here,” she blurted. “Just like he said.”
Perhaps she felt more loyalty toward him than fear of punishment for lying. “What were you doing?” Hirata asked her.
She glanced again at Koheiji, and panic shone in her eyes.
“Never mind him.” Hirata gave the actor a glare that warned him to keep quiet, or else. “Just answer me.”
“I… I don’t remember,” Okitsu said, looking everywhere except at Hirata.
“It wasn’t very long ago,” Hirata said. Koheiji must not have prepared her with a story to explain how they’d spent that night. “You can’t have forgotten.” Or maybe she’d just forgotten what he’d told her to say.
“I don’t remember,” Okitsu repeated in a timorous voice.
Hirata stood directly in front of her so she couldn’t look to Koheiji for cues. “Well, then, did you leave the room at any time?”
“… I don’t think so.”
“Then you might have left?”
“No! I didn’t!” Fresh panic filled Okitsu’s eyes.
“Was Koheiji-san ever out of your sight?”
She shook her head so hard that her plump cheeks quivered.
“Did he force you to lie for him?” Hirata said.
“No!” Okitsu wailed. “I wanted to.” She hastened to correct herself: “I mean, I’m not lying!”
“Hey, stop it!” Koheiji burst out. “You’re confusing her so much that she can’t talk straight.” He hurried to stand beside Okitsu and put his arm around her. She clung to him. “It doesn’t matter what we were doing,” Koheiji told Hirata. “The important thing is that we were together, and she’ll swear I didn’t kill Senior Elder Makino.”
“I believe them,” Ibe told Hirata. “We’re finished here.”
“Maybe you are, but I’m not,” Hirata retorted. He would bet his yearly stipend that Ibe didn’t believe the pair’s alibi any more than he did. “And you don’t dictate where this investigation should go.”
“Chamberlain Yanagisawa does,” Ibe said, “and he expects me to keep the investigation on the right path. So I’m telling you to stop bothering these people and move on to more likely suspects.”
Suspects in Lord Matsudaira’s camp, Hirata knew he meant. “If and when any more likely suspects turn up, then I’ll investigate them,” Hirata said. His patience toward Ibe snapped. “For now, just shut up.”
Offense flared Ibe’s nostrils. “Rudeness to me will do you no good,” he said with a mean smile. “When the chamberlain hears that you’re resisting supervision, he’ll punish your master as well as you.”
Now Hirata regretted speaking so bluntly. “My apologies,” he muttered, although his spirit rebelled at having to placate his adversary, and in front of onlookers.
Ibe sneered, pleased that he’d subdued Hirata, yet not mollified. “Be a dog who barks up a tree while his quarry hides elsewhere, if you like,” he said, “but be warned: Chamberlain Yanagisawa expects fast results from this investigation. If he doesn’t get them, your head can say goodbye to your body.”
But Hirata couldn’t yield to Ibe’s pressure to pin the murder on the Matsudaira faction. With great effort he pretended Ibe wasn’t there. He contemplated Koheiji and Okitsu, who stood united opposite him. The alibi that Okitsu had given Koheiji didn’t protect only him, but her as well. If the alibi was a fraud, as Hirata believed, then Koheiji could have had opportunity if not reason to kill Makino, but so could she.
“Let’s have a look at your room,” he said to her.
She glanced at Koheiji. The actor nodded, smiled in encouragement, then gave Hirata a smug look. He clearly thought Hirata would find nothing dangerous to Okitsu-or himself. Okitsu led the group to her room, which was on the same side of the building as Koheiji’s. Movable partitions allowed passage from her room to his through a bath
