household?”
Startled by his erroneous assumption, Reiko kept silent. His hands quickly felt along her body. He found the dagger strapped to her thigh under her skirts, tore it off, and threw it aside. A dreadful moment passed while Tamura contemplated her.
“Well, it doesn’t matter whose spy you are,” he said. “Whatever you’ve seen or heard here, you won’t be telling anyone.”
He drew the short sword at his waist. Panic shot through Reiko. He meant to kill her! Yasue grabbed her hair, tilting back her head, exposing her throat for Tamura’s blade. As Tamura advanced on her, Okitsu and Agemaki watched, their faces vacant with shock or confusion. Reiko felt her heart racing fast and hard, and the vertigo that heralded a bad spell. Through her mind flashed images of the ambush on the highway; screams echoed in her ears. Aghast that this should happen when she most needed her strength and wits, Reiko fought the evil magic. She jabbed her elbow into Yasue’s stomach. The old housekeeper grunted and let go. But even as Reiko lunged for the door, Koheiji caught her.
“Hey, Tamura-san,” he said, “how about if I have a little fun with her before you kill her?”
His cheerful voice was edged with malice. He yanked on her clothes. The flimsy cotton fabric tore, exposing her shoulders and bosom. As she struck out at him, Koheiji laughed and dodged. He seized her in a crushing embrace, grinding their bodies together. His snarling face was close to hers. As Reiko turned her head, pushed on his chest, and strained away from him, she saw the others ranged around her and Koheiji.
Okitsu pressed her knuckles to her mouth and closed her eyes. Tamura frowned in disgust but said nothing; Agemaki’s expression was blandly indifferent. Yasue’s beady eyes glittered with vicarious lust and excitement. None of them intended to stop Koheiji.
“Help!” Reiko shouted, in the desperate hope that Sano’s detectives were near and would come to her rescue.
“When you watched me with Okitsu yesterday, you wanted some of what you saw, didn’t you?” Koheiji said, panting with his effort to quell Reiko’s thrashing arms and legs. “Well, I’ll give it to you now. You can die happy.”
Reiko felt the hardness in his groin pummeling her. She dug her fingernails into his arms, but he held fast; he was too strong. The liquor on his breath and the heat of his body revolted Reiko. She screamed in terror as he forced her down on the floor. This was what she’d feared most of all-a reprise of that terrible scene in the Dragon King’s palace. The actor’s handsome, cruel face above her dissolved into the Dragon King’s strange, crazed visage. The thought of Senior Elder Makino, savagely beaten to death, flashed across Reiko’s dazed consciousness.
Had Koheiji killed Makino? Was this man ravishing her the murderer she and Sano sought?
Koheiji tore open her skirts. The panic and vertigo dizzied Reiko, weakening her as she fought him. But her instinct for survival ignited her resistance. Her wish to see her husband and child again, and her determination not to surrender to evil, infused her with new strength. She heaved forward and slammed her head into Koheiji’s face. Pain exploded through her brow. Her vision went momentarily black. Koheiji yelled, and the sound revived her. The vertigo was gone, her mind clear. She saw Koheiji recoil from her. Blood poured from his nose and mouth.
“Hey, you like to play rough?” Koheiji said, grinning and licking the blood on his swollen lips. “Well, so do I.”
As he remounted her, Reiko shoved her knee hard into his groin. He howled in agony, rolled off her, and lay curled around his injured manhood. Reiko jumped to her feet. Tamura stepped between her and the door, his expression murderous, his sword held ready to slash.
“Get her!” Yasue shrilled.
Reiko saw a charcoal brazier on the floor near her. She snatched it up and hurled it at Tamura, striking him across his knees. He staggered. Soot and live, glowing coals flew out of the brazier. Fire blackened Tamura’s robes where the coals touched them. He dropped his sword and beat his hands against himself to extinguish the flames. Reiko raced toward the door.
“Stop her!” Tamura shouted, coughing amid a cloud of smoke.
Okitsu collapsed, but Yasue and Agemaki chased Reiko. Agemaki caught her sleeve. Reiko grabbed Agemaki by the arm, whipped her around, and flung her away. Agemaki tumbled knees over head. Yasue charged at Reiko, hands spread, screeching like a crow gone berserk. Reiko picked up a lacquer tray table and bashed her across the face. The housekeeper fell, stunned. Tamura had his sword back in hand. Out the door Reiko raced.
“She’s getting away!” Koheiji cried in a strangled voice.
Reiko heard Tamura’s footsteps pounding after her as she sped down the corridor. She burst through the door and ran down the steps into the garden. Trees, shrubs, and boulders were monochrome shapes beneath the dull silver sky of late dusk. Icy rain lashed her; the cold instantly chilled the skin bared by her torn robes.
Tamura shouted for the patrol guards. He called to Reiko, “It’s no use running. You won’t get out of Edo Castle alive.”
Fortunately, Reiko didn’t need to get out of Edo Castle, only to reach her home in the official quarter, a few streets distant. Answering shouts came from the patrol guards; their hurrying footsteps drew close. Reiko dashed between buildings, around corners, groping in near darkness. Across a courtyard she spied a crooked pine tree. Behind it loomed the outer wall of the estate. Reiko launched herself up the tree’s low branches and climbed through cold, prickly needles. She crawled onto the top of the wall, lowered herself feetfirst over the outer side, then dropped down.
In the private quarters of his estate, Sano sat drinking hot tea with Hirata in his office. Outside, temple bells tolled, summoning priests, monks, and nuns to evening prayer rites; the distant gunfire subsided as darkness fell. The watchdogs had left Sano to make their reports to Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa, but their men still occupied the house. Through open partitions that divided several rooms adjoining his office, Sano watched the maids feeding Masahiro his supper in the nursery. Two thugs sat near Masahiro, guarding him. The little boy didn’t chatter or laugh as usual; he and the maids were quietly somber. Detectives stood in the corridor, ready to protect the household from the unwanted guests. An ominous gloom infected the estate.
“What have you learned?” Sano asked Hirata in a low voice that wouldn’t carry to the thugs in the nursery or elsewhere on the premises.
Hirata also kept his voice low as he described his visits to Tamura and Koheiji. “After I left them, I checked their stories about what they were doing at the time of Daiemon’s murder. The other actors at the Nakamura-za say that Koheiji left the theater for more than an hour during the rehearsal last night. He didn’t tell them where he went, or why.”
“Then he lied when he told you he was at the theater the whole night,” Sano concluded.
“Yes. He was gone long enough to kill Daiemon,” Hirata said. “And Tamura’s alibi is almost as weak. His men confirmed that he went to the army camp, but I think they were lying.”
“Did you find out whether anyone in the camp saw him?”
“By the time I got there, all the troops had gone to the battlefield. But neither Tamura nor Koheiji admitted anything about the night Makino died. And there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to connect either of them to Daiemon’s murder.”
Disappointment and fatigue, combined with his fears for Reiko, weighed upon Sano. “The same can be said for the women as for the men.” Sano told Hirata the results of his inquiries. “Agemaki stuck to her story about sleeping through Makino’s murder without seeing or hearing anything. Okitsu changed hers to include a glimpse of Daiemon standing over Makino’s corpse with the murder weapon in his hand, but I think she invented that.”
“By herself, or with help from someone?” Hirata said.
“The latter, I suspect, and I have a good idea who that someone is.”
Hirata nodded in accord. Sano continued, “I spent the afternoon establishing the women’s movements of last night. Agemaki’s palanquin bearers say they carried her around town for a while, then took her to a teahouse. She went inside and drank, while they went to a gambling den around the corner. They picked her up and took her home about an hour later. The teahouse isn’t far from the Sign of Bedazzlement.”
“She could have sneaked over there while the bearers were away gambling,” Hirata noted.
“When I questioned the owner of the teahouse, he said Agemaki is a frequent customer. She went out to the alley for a while, but he assumed she’d gone to the privy,” Sano said. “Later, I visited the Sign of Bedazzlement, under protest from the watchdogs. The proprietor didn’t recognize her name or my description of Agemaki. If
