Bundori: A Novel Of Japan

Mimaki rose. As they exchanged bows, Sano noted with surprise that Mimaki, at sixty, looked not at all like the impetuous lover of a courtesan young enough to be his daughter. He was stout and ordinary-looking, with eyes that drooped at the corners and a narrow mouth tucked tightly between fleshy cheeks and chin. His tanned skin and muddy hands gave him a peasantlike appearance despite his shaven crown and high rank.

“I understand you wish to see O-tama on official business,” Mimaki said. His grave manner showed no jealousy.

“That’s correct.”

“Alone?”

Sano nodded. “I would prefer it, yes.”

Now Mimaki’s suspicious scrutiny, plus the fact that he was working in his garden instead of in his office, matched Sano’s expectation of a man preoccupied with his private life, into which he welcomed no intruders. But then Mimaki nodded, perhaps dismissing Sano as a rival.

“Very well.” He turned to the housekeeper. “Prepare Mistress O-tama for a visitor.”

The housekeeper hurried into the house. Mimaki and Sano followed more slowly.

“You may address O-tama under the following conditions,” Mimaki said as they walked down the corridor. “You will stay no less than ten paces from the screen. If you try to move the screen or step behind it, I’ll kill you. Is that clear?”

Shocked at this threat, delivered with no change of expression, Sano could only nod.

A door opened as they reached it, and the housekeeper slipped out, bowing them into a room that was bare except for a large wooden screen with thin mullions framing diamond-shaped paper panels. Light from the windows silhouetted a shadowy figure behind it.

Sano knelt in his designated place. Mimaki stepped behind the screen. Now two shadows appeared on its translucent paper, and Sano heard whispered conversation. Then Mimaki emerged, his face transformed almost beyond recognition. His eyes glowed; his mouth had relaxed into a smile at once joyful, sensual, and secretive. When he turned to Sano, his former gravity returned.

“Remember what I said.” Then Mimaki left the room.

Sano, uneasy about interrogating a suspect he couldn’t see, hesitated before speaking. How would he know if O-tama was telling the truth?

From behind the screen, she spoke! “It’s an honor and a pleasure to meet you, sosakan- sama.”

Hers was one of the loveliest voices Sano had ever heard. High and sweet, it lilted and sang, tickled and warmed the inside of his chest. Sano smiled, despite the seriousness of this interview. Even so fresh from Aoi and so sure about his feelings for her, he couldn’t remain immune to O-tama’s charm. Many a man must have fallen in love with her voice alone.

“The pleasure is mine,” Sano replied, meaning it.

A maid appeared and set tea and cakes before him. “Do make yourself comfortable,” O-tama said. “And don’t let Mimaki-san’s rules bother you. He doesn’t mean to insult you; he’s just very protective of me. And I can tell from your voice that you’re an honorable, decent man.”

Her manner, though flirtatious, as, Sano suspected it would be toward any male, showed genuine affection for her master. Mimaki needn’t fear losing her, and probably for this reason had allowed the interview. So then why the screen, the threat?

“If you hadn’t come today, I would have invited you,” O-tama continued. “Because I’ve heard of your great talents, of course, but also because I have important information for you.”

“You do?” Sano said, taken aback by this reception, so unlike those he’d received from the other suspects. To give himself time to think, he lifted his tea bowl and drank, letting her continue.

“I like peace and privacy, and usually ignore the world,” O-tama said. “My dear Mimaki- san is my life. But I’ve followed these terrible murders with great concern. After the first and second, I guessed what was happening, and with the priest’s murder, the pattern became obvious to me. Yet still you, of whom I’ve heard tales of great courage and ability, hadn’t caught the killer. I decided I must come forth and tell you what I know.

“Sosakan-sama, forgive my unwomanly boldness. I can’t name the Bundori Killer, but I can tell you why he kills-and why he must be one of three men.”

“Who are they?” Sano stalled, suppressing his eagerness. For a murder suspect, she seemed too forthcoming. Was this a bluff, designed to divert his suspicion? If only he could see her!

He peered through the screen, but could discern only the silhouette of her head, hair piled on top, rising above what looked to be heaped cushions. Age had probably filled out her face and figure, perhaps coarsened her skin and hair, but her voice suggested that she’d retained youth’s fresh vitality. Certainly her master’s continuing possessiveness meant she must be lovely still. Sano regretted more than just his inability to assess her honesty.

“These men are bound to me by our common history,” O-tama explained. “I know their motives as no one else can. Because they’re my cousins: Chugo Gichin, Matsui Minoru, and Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu.” O-tama’s lilting voice danced over the names. “You’ve met them?”

“I have,” Sano said warily.

“You’re not surprised, so I believe you already suspect my cousins. How clever of you! But you’ve made no arrest. Does this mean you don’t have any evidence against them, and that’s why you came to me?”

The former yuna was intelligent as well as charming. Sano saw no use in denying the obvious, or pretending another reason for the call.

“Yes,” he conceded. After his experiences with Chugo, Matsui, and Yanagisawa, he knew how little he could expect to gain from direct interrogation. All the suspects were on their guard now. With O-tama, he decided to let the conversation go where she led it and hope she betrayed some sign of guilt or innocence.

O-tama’s bubbly laugh evoked images of flowing water and sensuous frolic. “Then I’d be most delighted to give you at least part of the evidence you need to deliver the Bundori Killer to the execution ground. Shall I begin?”

Sano, awed by the contrast between her gaiety and the grim promise she offered, let his silence give his assent.

“The roots of the murders lie in events that took place more than one hundred years ago,” O-tama began.

At last, a confirmation of his theory, albeit from a questionable source-a onetime prostitute, Fujiwara descendant, and murder suspect. “You mean General Fujiwara’s attacks on the Araki and Endo clans,” he prompted.

But O-tama’s shadow shook its head. “No, sosakan-sama. I’m speaking of Oda Nobunaga’s murder.”

Confused, Sano said, “I know the attacks occurred after Oda’s death. But there’s nothing in the archives to suggest that this was anything but a coincidence.”

O-tama laughed again. “Sosakan-sama, a man of your intelligence must know that much of history is never recorded. What I tell you comes not from moldy old scrolls, but from this secret legend handed down from General Fujiwara through our family: The general attacked Araki and Endo because he sought revenge on them for their part in Oda Nobunaga’s murder.”

A sense of incredulity provoked Sano’s immediate protest. “But Araki and Endo didn’t kill Oda; Akechi Mitsuhide did. The facts are documented and undisputed.” Was this remarkable woman claiming that her family myths superseded the official historical record?

Evidently she was. “Our legend says that Akechi didn’t act alone. Araki and Endo conspired with him to murder Oda so that their lords, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, could seize power.

“Ah, I sense your doubt, sosakan-sama. But even in the records, there are facts that support the legend. Such as this: Why was Oda alone in a temple on the night he died, with only a handful of men?”

“His allies, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, were away at the time,” Sano said impatiently, thinking this visit a waste of time. She wasn’t the Bundori Killer, she knew nothing of the murders or the motive behind them, and he hadn’t come to debate historical points with her. “There’s no evidence of their complicity. Ieyasu was on holiday at Sakai. Hideyoshi was fighting the Mori clan at Takamatsu Castle. He’d asked Oda for reinforcement troops, which Oda sent… ”