The Fire Kimono(9)
“I need your help,” Reiko said.
“Of course. I’ll do anything for you. Is it a new investigation?” Asukai sounded excited, because her projects often led to adventure.
“In a way,” Reiko said. “I need you to find out anything you can about Lord Matsudaira’s business, whether he has plans to attack us, and what they entail. Ask everyone you know. Listen for rumors.”
Asukai pondered. “Chamberlain Sano has spies in and around Lord Matsudaira’s estate. Wouldn’t they hear about a plot before I could?”
“I’m afraid they might miss something.”
“All right. I know a few men who are retainers to Lord Matsudaira.” Asukai came from a big family with many connections; he was also popular and had lots of friends. “He’s not an easy man to serve. He’s under a lot of strain, and he takes it out on the people around him. They might be willing to inform on him, for the right price.”
“Money is no object,” Reiko said. Sano let her spend as much as she wanted, and although ladies didn’t customarily handle cash, his treasurer had orders to give her some when she had expenses. “I’ll give you whatever you need.”
Asukai rose and said, “I’ll get started. Rest assured that if Lord Matsudaira coughs, you’ll know.”
As late afternoon waned into evening, three groups of samurai on horseback departed from Edo Castle.
One rode out the front gate. Twenty troops, displaying his flying-crane crest on flags attached to their backs, accompanied Sano. The visor of his horned iron helmet shaded his face. They moved down the wide boulevard into the daimyo district.
The second group, identical to the first, left by a side gate. More troops escorted another Sano toward the Nihonbashi merchant quarter.
The third group consisted of three low-rank soldiers dressed in cotton kimonos, leather armor tunics bearing the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf crest, and plain helmets. They rode out the servants’ gate. While the first two groups went their conspicuous ways, the real Sano traveled incognito with Detectives Marume and Fukida. The decoys drew attention away from their secret journey.
Meanwhile, Hirata rode accompanied by his troops toward Kannei Temple. They escorted four bearers carrying a litter. On it sat the trunk in which the skeleton of Tokugawa Tadatoshi had traveled from its grave. At the same time, two porters clad in loincloths and headbands carried a barrel in the opposite direction.
The porters trudged through the Kodemmacho slum. The wind swept debris along the twisting roads and whipped the smoke from outdoor hearths and beggars’ bonfires outside miserable hovels. The setting sun reflected pink in open, reeking gutters. The porters skirted garbage dumps and plodded across the ramshackle wooden bridge over a canal that served as a moat for Edo Jail, a dingy fortress whose gabled rooftops lurked behind high, moss-covered walls studded with watch turrets. At the ironclad gates, the porters called to the sentries in the guardhouse: “Delivery for Dr. Ito.”
Shortly after the porters entered the jail with the barrel, Sano, Marume, and Fukida arrived, confident that nobody had followed them from Edo Castle. Any spies monitoring Sano’s comings and goings must have followed one or the other of his impersonators. When he and his men reached the gate sentries, the brawny, jovial Detective Marume said, “Let us in.”
The sentries saw the Tokugawa crests on their garments and obeyed, no questions asked. Sano’s group proceeded through the prison compound, unrecognized and unchecked by guards. They dismounted in a courtyard enclosed by a bamboo fence. There stood a low building with flaking plaster walls, barred windows, and a raggedy thatched roof: Edo Morgue, where the victims of floods, fires, earthquakes, and crimes were taken. The porters—men from Hirata’s detective corps—sat on the ground near the barrel, which they’d laid at the feet of Dr. Ito.
With his plentiful white hair and tall, upright figure, dressed in the traditional dark blue coat of a physician, Dr. Ito looked no different than when Sano had last seen him almost five years ago, even though he must be over eighty now. When he saw Sano, surprise and pleasure transformed his stern face.
“Sano-san! Was it you who sent me this gift?”
They exchanged bows, and Sano said, “Yes. I’ve come to beg your expert advice.”
Once a renowned physician, Dr. Ito had lost his profession, his family, his place in society, and his liberty after he’d been caught smuggling scientific knowledge from Dutch traders and performing medical experiments. The usual punishment for those offenses was exile, but Dr. Ito had received a life sentence as custodian of Edo Morgue.