courtesan and her entourage promenaded up to the door. He experienced a peculiar illusion that he’d been transported backward in time, and the courtesan was Lady Wisteria, arriving for her appointment with Lord Mitsuyoshi.
The illusion grew stronger when Hirata entered the ageya and found a party in progress. The guests weren’t the same men who’d been here when Mitsuyoshi died, and the hokan singing for them wasn’t Fujio, but Hirata recognized the courtesans he’d interviewed the morning after the crime. A magic door to the past had opened, and his heart beat quicker with a premonition that he would discover new, important evidence tonight.
The proprietor circulated through the parlor, chatting with guests. Hirata walked over to the squat, gray-haired man.
“Greetings,” the proprietor said, smiling uneasily. “How may I serve you?”
“I want to know if you or your staff have remembered anything more about the night of Lord Mitsuyoshi’s death,” Hirata said.
The man winced and looked around the room, obviously loath to spoil the festivities with talk of murder. “I already told you. I was busy with the guests. I didn’t see or hear anything unusual. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Hirata and the detectives questioned the courtesans and servants. One after another said they didn’t remember anything more. Hirata thought longingly of Midori, and their marriage seemed more impossible than ever. Then, as he pondered his next move, he felt someone watching him. He turned and saw, standing in a doorway leading to the rear of the house, a little girl dressed in a pine-leaf-patterned kimono. Their gazes met, and Hirata recognized Chidori, the kamuro who’d waited on Lady Wisteria. Fright blanched her face. She whirled and fled. Instinctively Hirata bolted after her.
She ran down a dim, cold hall and swerved to avoid a man rolling a wine barrel out of a storeroom. Hirata passed maids working in a kitchen as he called, “Chidori-chan! Stop!”
The hall ended at a closed door. Chidori tried to pull it open, but it stuck firm. She stood with her back pressed against the door and helplessly faced Hirata, her eyes and mouth round with terror.
“Don’t be afraid.” Hirata halted several paces from her and lifted his hands in a calming gesture. Loud music and laughter rang out from the party. “I won’t hurt you.”
Chidori must have gleaned reassurance from his manner, because her frozen stance relaxed.
“Why did you run?” Hirata said.
“I-I heard you asking questions,” she whispered.
An internal stimulus alerted Hirata that here was a witness with information he needed. “Do you know something about Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder that you haven’t told us?”
The kamuro looked away, biting her lips. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt!”
“I know you didn’t,” Hirata said, but he regarded her with consternation. Had she stabbed Lord Mitsuyoshi? Was this what she’d concealed, and the reason she’d run away just now? Her little teeth were stained with lip rouge, and tears slid down the white makeup on her thin cheeks. She was just a child.
“He told me that unless I did what he said, he would hurt me,” Chidori wailed.
“Who are you talking about?” Hirata said, puzzled.
A word escaped Chidori in a rush of breath: “Lightning.”
“Who is Lightning?” As he asked, Hirata’s pulse raced. This was a name that hadn’t yet arisen in connection with the murder. Chidori had implicated a potential new suspect who had so far evaded detection. Hirata crouched before the kamuro, placing his hands on her shoulders. The bones felt fragile as a bird’s. “Tell me,” he urged.
Chidori shook her head so hard that her limp hair flopped. “I can’t. He made me promise not to tell. I’m afraid of him.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you,” Hirata said.
She looked around to make sure nobody else was near, then mumbled, “He’s Lady Wisteria’s lover.”
“You mean one of her clients?”
“No. He never had appointments. He never paid for her. The master didn’t know about him and Wisteria. Nobody did, except me.” Now Chidori spoke eagerly, as if relieved to confess. “They made me help them meet in secret.”
Hirata rose upright as surprise struck him. “Is this man from Hokkaido?”
“I don’t know where he’s from.”
Still, Hirata thought he’d at last picked up the trail of the secret lover described in the first pillow book, which must be the genuine one. Whether the man came from Hokkaido didn’t matter-Wisteria could have altered details about him to disguise his identity.
“Tell me how you helped Lightning and Wisteria meet,” Hirata said.
“I was supposed to watch for him,” Chidori said. “He would come and stand in the street in front of the house, and whenever I saw him, I would tell Lady Wisteria. That night she would put sleeping potion in her client’s drink. I would go outside every so often to check her window for the signal. After her client fell asleep, she wrapped a red cloth around the lantern in her room so the light would look red. When Lightning saw it, he would go to the back door of the ageya. I would make sure no one was around, then let him in.”
And he’d made love to Wisteria while her clients slumbered, just as she’d written in the book, Hirata thought.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Chidori blurted. “Courtesans aren’t supposed to entertain men for free. I shouldn’t have helped Lady Wisteria break the rules. My master would beat me if he ever caught me disobeying. Once I told Lady Wisteria that I wasn’t going to help her anymore because I didn’t want to get hurt. The next time Lightning came-”
She shuddered, and her hands clutched the front of her kimono. “I pretended I didn’t see him. I didn’t open the door. In the morning, when I went to the market, he chased me into an alley. He said he was going to teach me a lesson.” Chidori turned her face away from Hirata, opened her kimono, and whispered, “He did this.”
An ugly red scar ran down the center of the girl’s bony chest to her navel. Hirata winced in sympathy. “So you knew his threat was serious. Did you let Lightning in the ageya the night of the murder?”
Eyes downcast in misery, the kamuro closed her robe and nodded. The illusion of venturing back in time recaptured Hirata. He pictured Chidori opening the door, and the blurred figure of a man slipping into the house.
“What happened when you let him in?” Hirata said.
“He said that if I told anyone he’d been there, he would kill me. Then he went upstairs. I went back to work.”
Hirata listened to the hokan performing a lewd song, and the party guests roaring with laughter. In his mind he saw Wisteria embrace her lover while Mitsuyoshi lay unconscious. He felt the residue of passion and violence left by the murder.
“That’s all I know,” said Chidori, and Hirata knew she was telling the truth. A sob burst from her. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“No,” Hirata assured her. “Lightning forced you to obey him. You’re not responsible for the murder.”
“But if I hadn’t let him in, maybe Lord Mitsuyoshi would still be alive.”
That was possible, but Hirata said, “His death wasn’t your fault. Whoever killed him is to blame.” The murderer could be Wisteria, Treasury Minister Nitta, Fujio, or some yet unidentified person, but Hirata would bet on Lightning. A man who would cut a little girl was brutal enough to have stabbed Lord Mitsuyoshi.
“Tell me everything you know about Lightning,” said Hirata. “Does he have another name?”
Chidori puckered her brow in an effort to recall. “Not that I ever heard.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s not very tall. But strong.” The girl spread her arms to indicate muscular bulk. Under Hirata’s questioning, she revealed that Lightning carried two swords, traveled on horseback, and wore his hair in a topknot, his crown unshaved. “And his eyes are funny-they move all the time.”
This description wasn’t much, but Hirata deduced that Wisteria’s lover was a ronin. “Can you think of anything else?” he asked Chidori.
“Lightning always comes to Yoshiwara with a bunch of friends. They look as mean as him.”
A minor detail from his first day on the case took on new significance for Hirata. He realized how Lightning fit into what he already knew about the crime.
