The Fire Kimono(46)

“But not as good as we might wish.” Reiko tasted the acid in her own voice. She knew that her jealousy was irrational and unbecoming, but she had better reason to be displeased with her mother-in-law. The trouble wasn’t over, Etsuko had done little to abate it, and Reiko was having a hard time treating Etsuko gently, as Sano wanted her to do. “Did my husband also tell you that Hana has given you an alibi?”

“I believe he said something to that effect.”

This was an example of the formal speech that sometimes slipped into Etsuko’s conversation, that Reiko had thought didn’t jibe with her humble background. “But when I talked to you yesterday, you said there wasn’t anyone who could vouch that you were someplace other than near the shrine when Tadatoshi was murdered. Then Hana said she could; she was with you. Which is the truth?”

Akiko broke away from them, ran to the flower bed, and bent to sniff the blossoms. A shadow of anxiety dimmed Etsuko’s expression. “I wasn’t in my right mind yesterday. I was confused. If Hana says we were together, then we were.”

How glibly she’d explained the discrepancies between their stories, Reiko thought; and how shrewd of Etsuko to pick the one that served her better. Sano would probably excuse his mother and believe the alibi. He couldn’t see her intelligence through her humble guise.

“Very well,” Reiko said, “but there’s a problem with that alibi, even if it’s real.”

“Oh?”

“Devoted servants will lie for their employers,” Reiko said. “Lord Matsudaira knows that, and he’ll be sure to point it out to the shogun.”

“We’ll just have to pray they believe Hana,” Etsuko said, clearly less assured than her words.

“We need to do more than pray,” Reiko said. “What would really help is someone else to vouch for your whereabouts during the murder. Can you think of anyone?”

“There’s no one. I told you yesterday.” A tinge of sharpness crept into Etsuko’s voice.

“What about your relatives?” Reiko said, introducing this topic that Etsuko had seemed unwilling to discuss.

Etsuko hunched her shoulders; she took on a tense, cornered air. She looked across the garden at Akiko smelling flowers, as if she wished she could escape Reiko and join the child. “They weren’t with me during the Great Fire.”

“Maybe they can still help,” Reiko said. “The Kumazawa are high-ranking Tokugawa vassals. They might have some influence with the shogun.” Etsuko and Sano needed all the powerful allies they could get. “Shall I ask my husband to contact them?”

Reiko was avidly curious about the Kumazawa, her husband and children’s new blood kin. She wanted to meet them. But Etsuko cried in panic, “No! Please!”

“Why not?”

“… I—I don’t want to see them. And they … they won’t want anything to do with me.”

“When did you last see your relatives?” Reiko asked.

Etsuko shook her head. She inched away from Reiko, who followed. “A few months after the Great Fire.”

Tadatoshi had died during or shortly after the fire; Etsuko and her family had become estranged at around the same time. Did the estrangement have bearing upon the murder? Reiko began to believe so. Something bad had happened back then, and it wasn’t just the Great Fire. “Why did you lose contact with your family?”

“I don’t remember … it was so long ago … the people closest to me are all dead now … it doesn’t matter …” Etsuko’s evasions trailed off in a shaky sigh.

Reiko felt her patience dwindling fast. “I think it does matter,” she said, for a new idea had occurred to her. “I think they know something about you that you don’t want anyone else to know. Am I right?”

“No. With all due respect, Honorable Daughter-in-law, you’re talking nonsense.” The fear that shone in her eyes belied Etsuko’s words.

“Is it something about the murder?” Reiko persisted.

Etsuko turned her back on Reiko. “I won’t put up with this,” she said, her voice tight.

“You’ll have to put up with much worse if my husband can’t clear your name.” Reiko kept her own voice low so Akiko wouldn’t hear her, but her own temper snapped. “You’ll be executed. Or maybe you don’t care. But what about your son? What about your grandchildren?”

She gestured angrily toward Akiko, who picked a flower, oblivious to her elders. Reiko realized that this was her first quarrel with Etsuko, and that Sano wouldn’t approve, but ten years of peaceful if strained relations between her and her mother-in-law had just ended. “Do you want them to die? Don’t you owe it to them to be honest, to cooperate?”