Sano felt a grudging admiration for Hoshina’s ingenuity. Hoshina had planted Nyogo inside the court to undermine his enemies’ influence with the shogun. Sano had underestimated Hoshina, whom he’d always deemed more rash man clever.
“The seance was my big chance,” Nyogo continued. “So I made up that business about you and your wife and Lord Mori.” She smiled, mischievous and proud of herself. For a moment she resembled the child she’d appeared to be yesterday. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it? Hoshina-san was very pleased.”
“No doubt.” Sano was as impressed by her inventiveness as by her performance. Now he knew the reason for that peculiar look he’d seen on Hoshina’s face when the shogun had suggested the seance. Hoshina had been hoping that Nyogo would perform to his advantage and afraid she would let him down. She’d acquitted herself so spectacularly that Sano’s interest in her went beyond the valuable information she’d just given him.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where did you come from?”
“My name really is Nyogo,” she said, “but I’m not a noble lady. My parents are fortune-tellers in the Ryogoku entertainment district. When I was young, they taught me their trade. I learned how to guess what people are thinking and what they want to hear. I pretend to be a little girl, because that way they trust me.”
“I see.” Intrigued despite his distaste for such fraud, Sano asked, “Then you branched out into doing seances?”
“Yes. My mother thought I would be good at it. And I am,” Nyogo said, matter-of-fact.
“How did you meet Police Commissioner Hoshina?”
“There was talk around the district that he was looking to hire a medium. He was offering lots of money. Anyone who wanted to apply should go to his house. I went. There were lots of other people. He tried us all out and picked me.”
Sano imagined Hoshina auditioning mediums, looking for the one who could play upon the shogun’s susceptibilities, who could further his own aims. “Well, I think he chose well.”
“Do you?” Nyogo’s eyes sparkled with cunning. She cocked her head and clasped her hands behind her back, in the pose of a small, beguiling child. “I could work for you instead of Hoshina-san, if you like.”
“Oh, you could, could you?” Sano said, impressed with her quick-thinking audacity.
“Yes. I can make the shogun think you’re wonderful and Hoshina is a traitor instead of the other way around. He listens to me-or rather, he listens to his dead ancestors who speak to him through me.”
Sano inwardly shuddered to think that the day had come when he must resort to such deceit to keep his place at court. “No thank you.”
“Are you sure?” Nyogo’s cheeks dimpled. “I can really help you.”
“I’m sure.” Even though deceit had kept Yanagisawa in power for some twenty years, Sano couldn’t trust a turncoat like Nyogo.
“You aren’t going to just leave me here, are you?” Fear turned her voice shrill, aged her face. “Police Commissioner Hoshina will find out I talked to you. He’ll kill me.” She extended her clasped hands to Sano. “You have to protect me. I beg you!”
“Don’t worry,” Sano said. “You’re coming with me.”
She was his only witness against Hoshina, his only source of evidence that he was not a traitor nor Reiko a murderess. He wasn’t about to let any harm come to Nyogo.
While his men took her to a good, safe hiding place, he would have a little talk with Police Commissioner Hoshina. It was high time they settled a few matters.
A ferryman rowed Hirata and Detectives Inoue and Arai across the Sumida River. The rain-stippled waters lapped high against their banks. The men huddled under the windblown canopy until the boat docked at the eastern suburb known as Mukojima-“Yonder Isle.”
Across the embankment spread a pleasure resort where crowds viewed the cherry blossoms in spring, the harvest moon in autumn, and the snow in winter. It was drenched and desolate now. Hirata and his men rented horses at a stable. They rode past the Mimeguri Shrine, into countryside that had once been the Tokugawa hunting grounds. The current shogun, a devout Buddhist sworn to preserve animal life, had banned hunting. Now vegetable gardens and rice paddies lay quiet and peaceful under the gray sky. Peasants no longer dominated by game wardens worked their fields. Hirata and his men dismounted near some matched huts.
They’d spent the morning on a hunt for people formerly employed at the Mori estate. Archives in the ministry that supervised the
After knocking on a few doors, Hirata found a middle-aged woman who said, “Dr. Unryu is my father. Please come in.” She led the way to a backyard where an elderly man crouched by a pond, dropping crumbs into the water. “Father, you have visitors.”
Dr. Unryu’s face was benign, creased with many wrinkles, and marked with age spots. He smiled and bowed. “Greetings.”
Hirata and his men joined Dr. Unryu by the pond. Gigantic orange carp surfaced amid lily pads and gobbled the food. “Those are nice fish,” Hirata said.
The doctor nodded, gratified. He strewed the remaining crumbs and rose shakily to his feet. “Breeding them is my hobby since I retired. I used to work for the Mori clan. I was their physician for twenty-eight years.”
“That’s why we’ve come to see you.” Hirata introduced himself and his men. “We’re investigating the murder of Lord Mori, and we need your assistance.”
“Murder? Lord Mori? How terrible.” Concern deepened the wrinkles around Dr. Unryu’s eyes, which were still clear and intelligent. “How did it happen?”
Hirata explained that Lord Mori had been stabbed to death, but omitted the details. “Everyone in the household is a suspect. That includes Lord Mori’s wife and stepson. I need to know about their relations with him.”
Dr. Unryu hesitated.
“How did he treat them?” Hirata prompted. “How did they get along?”
“When I left his employ, he told me to keep everything I’d seen or heard at his estate to myself,” Dr. Unryu said.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind your disobeying his order if it could help us catch his killer,” Hirata said.
Dr. Unryu shook his head; his brow creased in thought. “I presume that Enju is Lord Mori’s heir?”
“Yes.”
“Lord Mori has been paying me a pension since I retired. It’s not much money, but it supports my daughter and me. If Enju should find out I talked to you, he might take it away.”
“If Enju takes it away, I’ll pay it.” Hirata sensed that the doctor had information well worth the expense.
Reassured, the doctor nodded. “I should mention that I didn’t have much to do with Lord Mori, his wife, or Enju. They were blessed with good health; they didn’t need me very often. I mostly treated other people at the estate. But I recall two things that you might like to know about. The first happened the year before I retired. Lord Mori took ill with severe chest pains. It was heart trouble. He almost died.
“I was constantly at his bedside. So were his chief retainers. But Enju never came near him.” Disapproval inflected Dr. Unryu’s voice. “His heir should have comforted him, or at least paid the respects due to him. I thought it very strange that Enju didn’t.”
Hirata thought that Enju’s behavior didn’t jibe with his mother’s story about their idyllic family life.
“Neither did Lady Mori,” said the doctor. “Every day she asked me how her husband’s health was, but she never even spoke to him. And Lord Mori never asked for her or Enju. It seemed he knew they wouldn’t come.”
It sounded to Hirata as if the widow as well as the heir had been on bad terms with Lord Mori. Perhaps Lady Mori and Enju had been so sorry he’d survived that they’d done away with him themselves. But Hirata needed more than just speculations to back up this theory. A motive would help.
“Why do you think they acted that way?” he asked.
“I don’t know. None of the family ever confided in me.”
“What was the other event you remember?”
“Something from when Lord and Lady Mori had recently married.
Lady Mori and Enju had lived in the estate for just a short time. Enju was quite a lively, friendly little boy. He liked to watch me prepare medicines. He asked clever questions and seemed truly interested in the answers. But after a while he stopped coming to see me. I thought he’d found other things to do. Then one day Lady Mori
