The Fire Kimono(38)

“Not your mother. I swear.”

“I agree, but our opinion isn’t good enough. Can you remember what happened in that estate the day Tadatoshi disappeared?”

“The last time I saw him was the day the Great Fire started. We’d all heard about the fire, and his father decided we should go across the river. Everyone was rushing to get ready. But not Tadatoshi. He just hung around.

“Your mother and I packed some things to take with us. We didn’t know how long we would be gone. It was hard to decide what to bring and squeeze it into small bundles that we could carry.” As she washed the gutted duck, Hana seemed to get lost in the past. “That was when we heard that Tadatoshi was missing. His sister told us.” Hana’s memory drifted forward. “Oigimi was burned very badly in the fire. She almost died.”

“I gathered that when I met her today,” Sano said. “She still has scars.”

“I heard she never married,” Hana said. “She’s had a hard, lonely life. But when she was young, she was a very pretty girl. Still, she’s lucky to be alive at all. Anyway, her father said everyone had to look for Tadatoshi. Your mother and I helped search the estate. When nobody found him there, his father sent us all outside to look. If we had to scour the whole city, then so be it—we weren’t leaving without his son.” Hana’s expression turned grim. “We never left. Everyone from his estate was trapped by the fire, inside the city. Almost everyone died, all for the sake of one boy.”

His household might have escaped the fire had Tadatoshi not disappeared. If he’d been kidnapped, not gone off voluntarily, those deaths weren’t his fault. But Sano wondered if they were the motive for Tadatoshi’s murder.

“There were crowds in the streets, running from the fire,” Hana said. “Your mother and I got separated from the other people from the estate, but we managed to stay together. After the fire, we went back to the estate. It had burned down. But we found your mother’s parents and moved in with them. Their house was all right. They lived in Asakusa, which was countryside far away from town back then.”

Here was another fact about the grandparents Sano had never known. “When I was young, were they still alive?”

“Your grandfather died when you were nine. Your grandmother a few years later.”

Sano suddenly remembered two occasions somewhere around those times, when he’d found his mother weeping. She’d refused to say why. Now he realized that she must have heard about her parents’ deaths. “Why didn’t I ever meet them? Why did she pretend they’d died before I was born?”

“That’s not for me to say. It has nothing to do with the murder. Forget it.” Impatient, Hana flung the duck on the chopping board. “What I’m trying to tell you is that your mother didn’t have the chance to kidnap or kill that boy.” She grasped Sano’s hand. He had another sudden memory from his childhood, of teasing a horse and Hana snatching his hand away before he could be bitten. “I was with her the whole time.”

Her gaze held Sano’s, bright and fierce and unblinking. Sano didn’t have to wonder if Hana had told the whole truth; he knew she hadn’t. He knew she was doing it for the noblest motive, to protect his mother … or was she?

Sano looked down at her hand, locked around his. There was blood from the duck under her fingernails. Maybe she knew, for the best reason of all, that his mother hadn’t killed Tadatoshi. The idea seemed ludicrous, yet not beyond possibility.

For now Sano said, “How well did you know Colonel Doi?”

Hana paused before replying. Her eyes gleamed and she smiled, as if at a sudden recollection, or inspiration. “Well enough to know he didn’t get along with his master.”

It must have been obvious to her that Sano was fishing for that answer, and he couldn’t complain because she’d taken the bait suspiciously fast. “What gave you that idea?”

“I overheard Doi and Tadatoshi arguing,” Hana said.

“When was this?”

“A few days before the fire.” Hana picked up a cleaver.

“About what?” Sano asked.

“I don’t know,” Hana said. “I came in at the end. But I heard Doi say, ‘If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.’”

Here at last was evidence against Doi. Not that Sano wasn’t pleased, but he said, “Are you sure that’s what you heard?”

Hana began to chop. Whack followed expert whack. Apart came the duck’s carcass. “I’m sure.”

Sano eyed Hana quizzically. “You remember a snatch of conversation from forty-three years ago.”