'That rosary belongs to her.' Sano's gaze took in the leather cord that suspended Tengu-in from the ceiling, the brown jade beads now embedded in flesh, a holy object now profaned. 'I saw her praying with it when I was here the first time.' He pictured the frail old woman struggling to tie the rosary to the rafter and around her neck.
Hirata continued, 'She kicked away the basket, and…'
He didn't need to finish the sentence. Everyone could imagine the basket tumbling to the floor, the rafter creaking under the sudden weight, the crack of Tengu-in's neck snapping, her body swinging.
Sano looked around the room, at the bed. 'I don't see any signs of violence.'
'I asked the abbess, the novice, and the nuns if they'd seen anyone inside the convent who didn't belong here,' Reiko said. 'They said no. And I don't think they did this.'
'Then it was suicide,' Sano concluded.
He'd considered the possibility that Tengu-in had been killed by the man who'd kidnapped her. That would have prevented her from ever revealing clues to his identity. Now Sano was as disturbed about her death as he would have been had it not been suicide. The suffering that the rapist had caused Tengu-in had led to her death.
'This isn't just a matter of kidnapping and rape anymore,' Sano said grimly. 'This is murder.'
Hirata, Reiko, and the detectives nodded solemnly. Everyone knew that the investigation had just taken on more urgent importance. Sano thought of Chiyo and Fumiko, still suffering the consequences from the crimes. Would they choose suicide, too?
He gave the nun one last look, then said to Marume and Fukida, 'Take her down.'
Marume stepped up on the table. He gingerly supported Tengu-in's body while Fukida drew his sword and sliced through the rosary. Beads fell from the cut cord, pattered and rolled on the floor. Marume eased the nun down and laid her on the bed. Reiko pulled the quilt over her, and covered her face.
The abbess entered the room. 'May we prepare her for her funeral?'
Her face was so drawn by grief that Sano hated to deny her request. 'Not just yet,' he said. 'I'm sending her to Edo Morgue.'
'Edo Morgue?' Surprise lifted the abbess's eyebrows to her shaved hairline. 'But surely there's no need.' Her voice expressed distaste for the morgue and offense that Sano would send a woman of Tengu-in's rank to a place mainly associated with dead commoners.
'She was a victim of a crime. Therefore, it's the law,' Sano said. 'Formalities must be observed.'
He couldn't tell the abbess the real reason he wanted the nun's body sent to Edo Morgue. And she couldn't refuse. Her mouth tightened with displeasure, but she nodded. 'When the formalities are done, will you send her home so that we can lay her properly to rest?'
'Yes,' Sano said, although he might have to break his word.
Hired porters carried the nun's corpse on a litter to the morgue, which was located inside Edo Jail. Sano went there by a circuitous, less public route.
After sending Reiko home, he rode to her father's house in the official district near Edo Castle. Inside, he changed his silk garments for the plain cotton clothing he kept there for occasions when he wanted to travel incognito. Then he rode through the city on an oxcart with three convicted criminals. Escorted by troops who belonged to his father-in-law the magistrate, he climbed off the cart inside the gates of Edo Jail.
The troops led Sano past the dungeon to the morgue, a low building with a roof made of sparse, decomposing thatch. The damp weather had given the morgue a new film of green mold since Sano had last seen it, a touch of life in this squalid place.
Sano's arrival coincided with that of the porters bearing Tengu-in's body on the litter. Dr. Ito, custodian of the morgue, stepped out of the building. He was in his eighties, a tall man with thick white hair, his eyes shrewd above the high cheekbones of his narrow, ascetic face. He wore the traditional dark blue coat of his profession. The porters carried the litter into the building, then departed. The troops left to wait outside the jail until Sano was ready to be taken back to the magistrate's estate. As Dr. Ito recognized Sano, his bushy white eyebrows lifted in surprise.
'Greetings, Sano-san. I never expected to see you again.'
It had been more than a year since they'd last met. Dr. Ito was a criminal, a former physician to the imperial family who'd been convicted of practicing foreign science he'd learned from Dutch traders. Exile was the usual punishment, but Dr. Ito had instead received a lifetime sentence as Edo Morgue's custodian. Here, he could conduct his studies and experiments on a never-ending supply of bodies. Sometimes he and Sano worked together. But Sano couldn't afford to let his friendship with Dr. Ito become known to more than a few trusted people. Associating with a criminal and collaborating in forbidden foreign science could land him in deep trouble.
'I need help with another investigation,' Sano said, indicating the shrouded corpse on the litter.
'I'm glad to be of service,' Dr. Ito said, 'but how did you get here this time?'
Sano always took pains to conceal his identity and his clandestine visits to the morgue. As he explained, Dr. Ito shook his head in wonder; his face crinkled with amusement.
'Your ingenuity is beyond compare,' Dr. Ito said. 'Were you hit by any rocks?'
The public enjoyed stoning criminals on their way to jail. 'A few,' Sano admitted. 'Luckily, they were small.'
'I suppose that these times call for extreme measures.'
Since Yanagisawa had returned to court, Sano had been especially careful not to do anything that could be construed as improper. Perhaps Yanagisawa was biding his time until he caught Sano in a misstep.
'Yanagisawa's spies will be wondering where I've gone and looking for me,' Sano said. 'We'd better get started.'
'Right away.'
Dr. Ito ushered Sano into the morgue. Its windows were open to admit fresh air, but the room smelled of decayed meat and blood. Sano greeted Dr. Ito's assistant, who was cleaning the stone trough used for washing corpses. Mura, a gray-haired man in his fifties, had a square face notable for its intelligence. He was an eta, a member of the hereditary class that was linked with death-related occupations such as butchering and leather tanning. Considered physically and spiritually contaminated, the eta were shunned by other citizens. But Mura and Dr. Ito had become friends across class lines. Mura did all the manual work associated with Dr. Ito's examinations. A man of few words, he stationed himself beside the body that lay under its gray shroud on one of the waist-high tables.
'Uncover the deceased,' Dr. Ito said.
Mura drew back the cloth, revealing Tengu-in To Sano she looked shrunken, an effigy of herself, no longer human.
'A nun?' Dr. Ito asked, clued by the hemp robe she wore.
'From Keiaiji Convent,' Sano said, then explained about the three kidnappings.
Dr. Ito moved closer to her, bent over her neck, and studied the reddish-purple ligature mark. 'She appears to have been hanged.' He peered at the round indentations along the mark. 'With a rosary, I deduce. There are no fingerprints on her neck, and no wounds on her hands as there would be if she fought an attacker. I would say this was a suicide.'
'That's what I thought,' Sano said.
'But if it was, and if you know how she died, then why risk an examination?'
'Because I wasn't able to get any information from her about the man who kidnapped her, and neither was my wife. She was so distraught that she couldn't tell us. I'm hoping her body can.'
'It's unlikely after all this time has passed since the kidnapping, but we shall see.'
'Don't cut her unless it's absolutely necessary,' Sano said. When he returned her body to the convent, he didn't want to face awkward questions about what had happened to it at Edo Morgue.
'We shall hope that a visual examination will suffice,' Dr. Ito said. 'Mura-san, remove her clothes.'
Mura fetched a knife, carefully slit the nun's robe down the front, and peeled back the fabric. Naked, Tengu-in was a skeleton clothed in translucent white skin that the sun had never touched. Sano could see her rib cage, her joints, the blue tracery of her veins. Her breasts were small, flat, empty sacks, her stomach concave, her sex a cleft screened by gray pubic hair.
But he saw no trace of any foreign material on her, not even when Mura turned the body. Dr. Ito said,
