assassination plot, and Makino’s murder was an accident.”
“What?” Tamura exclaimed. The audience quieted, eager to hear the conversation.
“Makino collapsed during a sex game,” Sano said.
Koheiji exhaled a puff of relief that the truth had come out. “That’s right,” he said. “Makino dropped dead on Okitsu and me while we were giving him a little fun.”
“Quiet!” Bent on pursuing retribution, Tamura slashed his sword at Koheiji.
The audience gasped a collective breath. Koheiji drew his weapon and parried strikes; the audience cheered him on. But his sword was a mere theater prop. Tamura’s sword hacked off its wooden blade. Koheiji stared in dismay at the useless stub that fell from his hand.
“I don’t believe you,” Tamura said angrily to Sano. “You’re just trying to trick me out of my vengeance.”
“This is no trick,” Sano said. “The assassination plot was a fraud.”
Tamura glowered and raised his sword at Koheiji, who cried in desperation, “Get him out of here, will you please?”
Sano gestured for Hirata and the detectives to surround Tamura. As they moved in on him, Tamura ordered, “Get out of my way. Let me at him.” But indecision flickered in his eyes. Sano had shaken his certainty that Koheiji had murdered his master.
A gang of samurai jumped onto the walkway. Clad in tattered clothes, they appeared to be ronin. Sano saw that they wanted to join the action, and they were too excited-or too drunk-to worry about the consequences of interfering with bakufu business. Ibe’s and Otani’s men held them back from rushing onstage. Their leader, a brute with an unshaved face and a red head kerchief, yelled, “Fight! Fight!”
The audience took up the chant. The rhythm, accompanied by stamping feet and clapping hands, rocked the theater.
“Makino drank too much aphrodisiac and overexerted himself,” Sano said. “He’s as responsible for his death as anyone else is.”
Tamura stood paralyzed. His face reflected shock, then disgust, then acceptance that lustful habits, not murder, had been his master’s undoing.
“Now that you know I’m innocent, can you all just go?” Koheiji whined. “Can I please finish the play?”
“Fight! Fight!” chanted the audience. The brute in the red head kerchief wrestled with Otani’s and Ibe’s troops as they tried to force him and his gang off the walkway.
“I’m afraid not,” Sano told Koheiji. “You see, Makino wasn’t quite dead when he collapsed. You shouldn’t have tried to make his death look like murder by an intruder. The beating you gave him is what really killed him.”
Koheiji stared in open-mouthed, silent horror. Sano could almost see his face turn pale under its makeup. “Merciful gods,” he whispered. “I had no idea…” He shook his head, ruing his mistake. Sano watched him realize that someone must shed blood for Makino’s death, and he was that someone. He staggered under the knowledge that he’d come to the end of living by his impulses and wits, and this was one scrape from which they couldn’t save him.
“Then Makino’s death was a stupid blunder by this fool,” Tamura said. “It’s not worth avenging. And a fool isn’t worth bloodying my sword.” Crestfallen, he lowered his weapon. But Sano discerned that he was relieved-he lacked the heart to enjoy killing. Now he sheathed the weapon. “I renounce my vendetta,” he said and jumped off the stage.
The audience and the gang of ronin booed, furious to be cheated out of the carnage they wanted to see. Police moved through the theater, forcing the mob to clear the seats. Sano nodded to Detectives Marume and Fukida. They moved to Koheiji and grabbed his arms. He didn’t resist; he appeared too shattered by his misfortune. “You’re under arrest,” Sano said.
“My husband had discovered that Lord Matsudaira’s nephew and concubine were having a love affair,” Lady Yanagisawa told Reiko. “He’d learned about the signal that Lady Gosechi used to arrange secret meetings with Daiemon. He lured Daiemon to the Sign of Bedazzlement and sent me there to assassinate him.”
Lady Yanagisawa seemed unfazed that the detectives, as well as Reiko, were listening to her incriminate herself. Shocked by her admission even though already aware of what Lady Yanagisawa had done, Reiko said, “Weren’t you afraid? How could you do it?” A reason occurred to her. “What did the chamberlain offer you in return?”
“His love,” Lady Yanagisawa said.
Her mouth curved in a secretive smile; she sighed with pleasure. Reiko saw her suspicion confirmed. The chamberlain had taken advantage of his wife’s passion for him and promised to make the crime worth her while. After she’d rid him of his enemy, he’d rewarded her by bedding her as she had longed for him to do.
“I disguised myself as Gosechi. I wore my hair down,” Lady Yanagisawa said, stroking the black tresses that flowed down her bosom. “I put on the kind of bright, pretty clothes that Gosechi wears.” She touched her orange kimono. “I covered my head with a shawl. I carried a dagger that my husband gave me.” Her fingers curled around the hilt of an imaginary weapon.
“Why did you take Kikuko with you?” Reiko said.
Guilt shadowed Lady Yanagisawa’s features. Even if she didn’t care that she’d killed a man, she felt she’d done wrong by bringing her daughter on such an errand. “Kikuko has been difficult lately. When I tried to leave the house, she screamed and clung to me. She wouldn’t let me go. I had no choice but to take her along.”
Lady Yanagisawa shook her shoulders, casting off blame for her lapse of maternal responsibility. “We rode in the palanquin to the Sign of Bedazzlement. When we arrived, I told the bearers to wait for me down the street. I told Kikuko that she must stay inside the palanquin and be very quiet. She thought it was a game. I left her and hurried into the Sign of Bedazzlement.” Lady Yanagisawa drifted across the room as if in a trance, following the path along which the chamberlain had sent her that night. “There were other people in the house-I could hear them in the rooms. But the doors were shut. The corridor was empty. No one saw me.”
Reiko pictured Lady Yanagisawa’s furtive figure sneaking through the house of assignation, the dagger clutched hidden under her sleeve. Her eyes must have glittered with the same determination as they did now.
“I went to the room where my husband had told me that Daiemon and Gosechi met,” Lady Yanagisawa said, drifting to a stop in a corner. Lightning bolts painted on the mural converged toward her head. The detectives watched, impassive. “I covered the lantern with a cloth to make the room dim. I took off my cloak but kept my shawl over my head. Then I sat on the bed and waited for Daiemon. I began to worry that something would go wrong.” A spate of trembling disturbed her composure. “I almost got up and ran out of the house.”
The image of her huddling in her shawl, beset by last-moment anxiety, the knife shaking in her hands, filled Reiko’s mind.
“But I’d promised my husband. And it was too late to turn back. He was coming down the passage.” Lady Yanagisawa whipped her head around. Reiko could almost hear Daiemon’s footsteps echoing in Lady Yanagisawa’s memory. “He entered the room. He said, ‘Here I am.’ He sounded happy because he thought I was Gosechi. I didn’t answer. I was praying for courage and strength.”
Fear coalesced in her eyes; she mouthed silent words. “He knelt beside me on the bed and said, ‘Why are you so quiet? Aren’t you glad to see me?’ I turned toward him, willing myself to do what I must. He lifted the shawl off my head before I could stop him.” In Lady Yanagisawa’s eyes seemed to float a reflection of Daiemon, surprised to find a stranger in place of his beloved. “He said, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
“I drove the dagger into him.” Lady Yanagisawa held her fists one behind and touching the other; she thrust them violently forward. A crazed, inhuman expression distorted her face. “Daiemon opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The dagger was stuck in his chest. I saw that he realized he’d been tricked. He was furious. But then his eyes went blank. He fell against me. He was dead.”
This was more satisfactory a confession than Reiko had expected to get.
Lady Yanagisawa recoiled as if from the corpse dropping on her. “I pushed him away and stood up. His blood was all over me.” Her throat contracted as she swallowed her rising gorge. She rubbed her hands against each other and down her robes, as if feeling the warm, slick wetness of Daiemon’s blood. “I covered it with my cloak and shawl. Then I ran out through the secret passage to my palanquin. I climbed in with Kikuko. We rode away.”
Soon thereafter, the chamberlain’s men-who’d have followed Lady Yanagisawa-must have tipped off the police that Daiemon was dead.
“I started shaking. I couldn’t stop.” A visible tremor rippled through Lady Yanagisawa. “I vomited until there
