sense. “How did you find out?” Sano asked.
“I received a tip from an informer.”
“Who might that be?”
“His identity is confidential,” Yamaga said pompously. Beckoning the doshin, he strode up the steps and past Sano, who caught his familiar odor of wintergreen oil. Many samurai used the oil on their hair, but Yamaga’s valet must apply it with a trowel. Yamaga bumped shoulders with Sano on his way into Egen’s room. He and his men grouped around the corpse.
“So this is the witness who changed his story about your mother.” Yamaga had obviously heard about the fiasco and had just as obviously enjoyed it. He prodded Egen with his lance, as if to make sure the man was really dead. “Ugly fellow, wasn’t he? Look at those pockmarks all over him. But he got you good.”
He turned a suspicious gaze on Sano. “How did you find out about the murder?”
The commander wasn’t so busy gloating that he’d forgotten to ask the important question. Things had changed for the better in the police force since Sano’s day. “I discovered the body,” Sano said.
“Ah.” Interest flared in Yamaga’s not-too-intelligent eyes as he recalled that the first person at a crime scene is the first suspect.
The doshin began carrying out statues, lacquer chests, and dishware, helping themselves to the victim’s possessions. Things hadn’t changed so much in the police force after all.
“How did you happen to find the body?” Yamaga asked.
Sano had had enough questions from the gadfly. He had questions of his own. “That’s none of your business,” Sano said. “You’re dismissed. Get out.”
His tone reminded Yamaga that however shaky his political position, he was still the shogun’s second-in- command and Yamaga’s superior. After an insolent pause, Yamaga swept out of the room with his men, who snatched up a few last items. They all knew Sano still had an army strong enough to avenge insults against him-if Hirata didn’t break their necks first.
Yamaga faced Sano on the veranda. “Yesterday the victim turns evidence against your mother. Today he turns up dead. And here you are, when the body’s barely cold. That doesn’t smell like a coincidence.”
“It smells like a setup,” Sano said evenly. And part of the setup was informing the police about the murder so that Sano couldn’t hide the crime.
“I suppose you’re going to blame Lord Matsudaira.” Yamaga sneered. “But that theory is full of holes. The victim did Lord Matsudaira a favor. Lord Matsudaira had more reason to pay him his weight in gold than to kill him.”
Much as Sano hated to admit it, Yamaga was right. Yet every instinct told him that the murder was a strike at him, and if not Lord Matsudaira, who was responsible?
“Lord Matsudaira doesn’t benefit from this crime. But you? The chief witness against your mother is gone. Very convenient, I’d say.” Yamaga gleamed with vicious satisfaction. “Wait until Lord Matsudaira hears about this.”
“Whoever murdered Egen didn’t do it for my convenience.” Sano saw a flood of new troubles cascading toward him from the crime. “But why don’t you go and be the one to tell Lord Matsudaira right now?” Anything to get rid of Yamaga before Sano lost his temper and did something regrettable.
“You can’t stop me from investigating the murder. That’s my duty,” Yamaga said, as if he cared about duty or anything else besides serving his own interests and putting on airs. “I’m going to prove that your people killed that man. And wouldn’t that be something? The honorable Chamberlain Sano and his mother both convicted of murders within days of each other.”
Yamaga laughed. “And you won’t get away with yours even if your victim was a peasant. You’ll die as an accessory to the murder of the shogun’s cousin, even though it happened before you were born. The executioner can cut off both your mother’s head and yours with the same swing.”
22
Police Commander Yamaga and the doshin surrounded the guests at the inn and started badgering them with questions. Sano said to Hirata, “Let’s go.”
As he and Hirata and his troops strode out the gate to the street and mounted their horses, he added, “I doubt the killer is among the guests. He’s probably long gone by now, and people who’ve been drinking all night don’t make good witnesses. We’ll leave them to Yamaga and look for better ones elsewhere.”
Along the street, travelers accompanied by porters carrying baggage trickled out from the other inns. At either end of the street was a gate. Choosing at random, Sano led his entourage to the one on his right.
“Were you on duty last night?” Sano asked the watchman.
“No, master, my shift just started.”
“Where can I find the man who was?”
The night watchman, a teenaged peasant boy, was fetched. Sano asked him, “Did anyone come through here last night?”
“Yes, master.”
When Sano asked who, the watchman said, “Do you mean before or after closing?”
Neighborhood gates in Edo closed two hours before midnight, before the party at the inn had ended and Egen had died. The closing enforced a curfew that kept troublemakers confined and crime down. Tokugawa law forbade anyone to break curfew and pass through the gates-with certain exceptions. “After,” Sano said.
“Two samurai on horseback,” said the watchman. The police, the army, and government officials were authorized to bypass the gates after closing. “I let them in, and a little while later, I let them out.”
Sano revised his mental picture of the crime to include two men, one kneeling on Egen’s chest and holding him down, the other suffocating him with the pillow.
“What did they look like?” Sano asked.
“I couldn’t see them very well.” The watchman eyed the small lantern hanging from the roof of the gate. “It was dark.”
“Did they wear any crests?”
The watchman nodded and pointed at the gold flying-crane crests on Sano’s sleeves. “Ones like yours.”
Sano was disconcerted until he realized what had happened. “They impersonated my men,” he said to Hirata.
“Following Lord Matsudaira’s orders, no doubt,” Hirata said.
“Where did they go?” Sano asked.
The watchman pointed left down the cross-street. Sano, his troops, and Hirata rode along the suspects’ trail from gate to gate, rounding up and questioning watchmen. Some provided more details besides the crests. “They were excited,” said the man who guarded a street of shops that led to the Nihonbashi Bridge. “They were laughing and punching each other and saying, ‘We got away with it!’”
“They deliberately called attention to themselves,” Sano remarked to Hirata as they and their troops rode to their next stop. “They made sure nobody missed them.”
“Lord Matsudaira got double the use out of the tutor,” Hirata said. “The first time to implicate your mother in a murder, the second time, you. Clever.”
Near the border between the merchant district and the official quarter, a watchman said, “One of the soldiers had teeth like this.” He thrust forward his jaw to feign an overbite. “And the other walked like this.” He slouched his shoulders and loped.
Sano experienced a twinge of unease. He frowned because the suspects’ descriptions hit a chord in his memory.
“What?” Hirata asked.
“I’ve seen those soldiers before,” Sano said, “but I can’t place them.”
“But it’s obvious where they were going,” Hirata said.
Sano’s unease only grew as he and Hirata rode to the castle and up to the head of a line of people waiting to enter the main gate. They dismounted, and Sano said to the guards, “Show me the record of who came through last
