“In the meantime, I’m going to visit Tadatoshi’s mother and sister,” Sano said. “Maybe they can shed some light on the crime.”
As much as he hoped that whatever they said would exonerate his mother, he feared it would dig her grave deeper.
Reiko spoke with Lieutenant Asukai in the garden, where she was watching Akiko play with the children’s old nurse. “My husband has enough to do without having to search for the spy,” she said, and explained how Sano’s mother had been charged with murder. “I think we should handle the problem ourselves.” She longed to help Sano, and there wasn’t much else she could contribute.
“I’m ready and willing,” Asukai said. “But how should we go about it? Have you ever unmasked a spy before?”
“No,” Reiko admitted, “but let’s try a little common sense. We can’t watch all the people in the estate. There are too many.” Sano’s retainers, officials, clerks, and servants numbered in the hundreds. “And this spy will be careful not to attract attention.”
“We might never catch him doing anything to betray himself,” Asukai agreed.
“So we must draw him out,” Reiko said.
“Good idea.” Asukai regarded her with admiration, then puzzlement. “How?”
“We’ll set a trap, using something that Lord Matsudaira would want as bait.” Inspiration lit Reiko’s brain. “I know! How about the secret diary in which my husband has listed the names and locations of all his spies?”
Asukai looked surprised. “Is there such a diary?”
“There will be.”
Reiko hurried into the house to her chamber. Asukai followed. She knelt at her writing desk, lifted the lid, and pulled out a book covered in black silk. The pages were blank. She prepared ink, dipped her brush, and wrote a long list of male names as fast as she could invent them. She wrote, after each, “spy,” the place where he was stationed, choosing random locales within Edo Castle, around town, inside daimyo estates, and among Lord Matsudaira’s numerous properties; she threw in cities all over Japan.
“There,” she said, closing the book.
Asukai laughed. “It would have fooled me. I’ll spread the word that it exists. Where are we going to hide it?”
“We have plenty of choices,” Reiko said. “This estate is riddled with secret compartments.” They’d been installed by the former tenant—the onetime chamberlain Yanagisawa. So had other unusual architectural features. Masahiro had found most of them. “I know just the place.” Reiko described the location, adding, “Make sure you spread that around, too.”
“And then we watch to see who goes for the bait?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Reiko said.
Asukai nodded as he caught her meaning, then said, “Here I go, to lay down the scent for our spy.”
Masahiro came in through the door as Asukai exited. “I heard that Grandma is here,” he said. “Where is she?”
“In the guest room,” Reiko said.
“Can I go see her?”
Both children were fond of their grandmother, Reiko knew. When Sano took them to visit her, she gave them little treats, told them stories, and never scolded them. “You can see her later,” Reiko said. “She’s resting now.”
“Why did she come?” Masahiro said. “She hardly ever does.”
Reiko didn’t want to frighten him with the details, so she said, “Grandma and your father have some business to take care of together.”
“Did she do it?” Masahiro asked.
“Do what?”
“The murder.”
“How did you know about that?” Reiko said in dismay.
“I heard the servants talking.”
Reiko sighed. There was no hiding anything from Masahiro. Even if she ordered the servants not to gossip in front of him—which she often did—he would absorb information from the air.
“Did she kill the shogun’s cousin?” Masahiro persisted.
He spoke of killing in such a nonchalant manner. Reiko worried that he’d become hardened to death and violence far too young. She regretted that he’d already killed, albeit in defense of her and their family, while they’d been in Ezogashima. But she couldn’t reprimand him for circumstances that weren’t his fault.
“Grandma hasn’t killed anyone,” Reiko said. “It’s all a mistake.”
But for the first time she wondered if it really was.
Of course she’d always believed her mother-in-law to be a good, harmless person. Of course she was obligated to share Sano’s faith that his mother was innocent. And Reiko knew too little about the crime to judge it based on facts. There was no denying, however, that the woman had lied, at least about her past. Why?