The Perfumed Sleeve Read online

  Surely there was an exception to every rule of Bushido. Surely his one lapse shouldn’t cancel out years of faithful service. Hirata believed that Midori and his baby daughter Taeko would have died on that island, instead of coming home alive and well, if not for his disobedience. Furthermore, everything had turned out for the best. Yet Hirata couldn’t fault Sano for reprimanding him, nor counter his detractors in good conscience.

  A master had the right to expect absolute loyalty from a retainer, and Sano had more claim on Hirata than even Bushido granted him. By making Hirata his chief retainer, Sano had raised him far above his origins as a humble police officer, patrolling the streets in the job inherited from his father. If not for Sano, he wouldn’t have Midori, Taeko, his post in the bakufu, his home at Edo Castle, or the generous stipend that supported his whole clan. Sano deserved to know that if his life were ever in Hirata’s hands, Hirata wouldn’t let him down again. Now Hirata lived with the consuming need to win back Sano’s trust and esteem, through a heroic display of loyalty and duty.

  “This bedding is so clean, fresh, and smooth that I doubt Makino slept in it,” Sano said. “But if he didn’t, then where is the bedding he did use?”

  Hirata opened a door in the cabinet. He saw, jammed inside a compartment, a large, wadded bundle of fabric. “In here.”

  He and Sano pulled out the bundle. They separated a crumpled gray-and-white floral quilt from the futon wrapped inside. From these wafted the odors of sweat, wintergreen hair oil, and the sour tinge of old age. Sano unrolled the futon, revealing yellowish stains on the middle.

  “Why hide this?” Hirata asked. “There’s no blood or other sign that Makino didn’t die a natural death.”

  Sano shook the quilt. Out fell a long rectangle of shimmering ivory silk. Hirata picked it up. It was folded in half, seamed down both lengths, and sewn shut at one end. The other end had an opening at each seam—one hemmed, the other ragged. Rich, embroidered autumn grasses and wildflowers in metallic gold and silver thread encrusted the fabric.

  “It’s a sleeve.” Hirata inserted his arm through the openings, held it horizontal, and let the long, flat wing droop.

  “Torn from the kimono of an unmarried woman,” Sano said, fingering the ragged armhole edge. The sleeve length and fabric design of a kimono indicated the owner’s gender and marital status. Single women wore longer sleeves and gaudier fabric than did wives. Hirata and Sano contemplated the sleeve, a symbol of female genitals and soft, yielding nature, often featured in poetry. “I wonder how it got in Makino’s bedding. Maybe he had company last night.”

  Hirata removed the sleeve from his arm and sniffed the fabric. “There’s a sweet, smoky odor on this.”

  Sano lifted the other end of the sleeve to his nostrils. “It’s incense. The woman who wore the kimono perfumed her sleeves.” This was a practice among fashionable women. They burned incense and held their sleeves in the smoke so that the fabric absorbed it.

  The odor nudged Hirata’s memory. “My wife uses this type of incense. It’s called Dawn to Dusk. It’s very rare and expensive.”

  Examining the sleeve, Sano pointed out an irregularly shaped stain that darkened the pale fabric. “If I’m not mistaken, here’s evidence that the woman was with Makino.”

  Hirata touched a fingertip to the stain. It was damp. When he lowered his face to the stain and inhaled, he recognized the fishy, animal scent of semen mixed with secretions from a woman’s body. He nodded, confirming Sano’s guess.

  “The stain is fresh,” he said. “Makino and the woman must have been together last night.”

  Sano and Hirata gazed toward the bed platform, visualizing the sex—and violence—that might have happened there. Hirata said, “Maybe Tamura isn’t as guilty as he seemed.”

  “And maybe the murder is a case of romance gone bad, not the assassination that Makino feared,” Sano said.

  Although it would be less dangerous to investigate a crime of passion than a political assassination, Hirata did not welcome a quick, easy investigation that would afford him little opportunity to win back Sano’s trust. But the selfishness of the thought immediately shamed him.

  “Could Makino’s concubine have been the woman with him last night?” he wondered, remembering the pretty, weeping girl. “Or was some other woman involved in his death?”

  “We’ll have to check into both possibilities,” Sano said. “Meanwhile, let’s continue searching for evidence.”

  They set aside the sleeve, then Sano slid open the partition that separated the bedchamber from the adjacent room. It was a study, furnished with a desk surrounded by shelves containing books and a collection of ceramic vases. Scrolls and writing brushes lay scattered everywhere. Dirty footprints marked the papers and floor. A jar of ink-tinged water had toppled on the desk; multicolored shards of broken vases littered books fallen from the shelves.

  “No signs of a struggle in the bedchamber, but plenty here,” Sano said thoughtfully.

  Hirata stepped around trampled scrolls, to an area of floor that was bare amid the mess. There, large, reddish-brown stains soiled the tatami. “It’s blood,” Hirata said.

  “And that area of bare floor is roughly the size of a human body,” Sano said.

  “Makino could have been murdered here and moved to his bed afterward,” Hirata said eagerly. “If so, then maybe his death wasn’t just a simple love crime.”

  Sano replied in a neutral tone, “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  But hope sparked Hirata’s detective instincts. He stepped over to the window near the desk and slid aside the wooden grid of paper panes. Behind it were plank shutters. An iron catch that had secured them dangled loose.

  “This window has been forced.” Hirata touched the splintered wood on the shutters, where a blade or other hard, flat object inserted between them had torn away the catch.

  Sano joined him and inspected the window. “So it has.”

  He pushed open the shutters and revealed a small garden courtyard. A patch of grass, bordered by raked white sand, contained a flagstone path, a pond, and a stone lantern. Hirata and Sano peered at the evergreen shrub beneath the window.

  “Trampled branches,” Hirata said.

  “And footprints in the sand,” Sano said, pointing.

  “It looks as though an intruder broke into the study and attacked Makino,” Hirata said. “There was a violent struggle. The intruder killed Makino, then put him to bed as if he’d died there. Afterward, the intruder escaped.” Hirata anticipated a hunt for the assassin, during which he triumphantly restored himself to Sano’s good graces. “The evidence says so.”

  “The other evidence suggests a crime of passion,” Sano countered. “Both theories can’t be true.”

  Hirata could think of arguments in favor of the theory he preferred, but although he once would have felt free to debate with Sano, their bad blood now threatened to turn every discussion into a quarrel. “You’re right,” he said. “The evidence is too contradictory for us to be sure what happened.”

  “I’ll see if Makino himself can tell us how he died,” Sano said, and Hirata knew he meant he was going to Edo Morgue to examine the corpse. “While I’m gone, you interview everyone in the estate. Find out where they were last night. Also look for more signs that an assassin broke into the estate.”

  “Yes, Sosakan-sama.” Hirata had capably performed inquiries like this many times; but did Sano now doubt that he would do as told?

  Sano said, “For now, we’ll proceed under the assumption that Makino was murdered, and everyone inside the estate is a suspect. So are all of Makino’s enemies outside.”

  Hirata recognized the wide scope of the case, but his spirit leaped at the challenge.

  “The shogun must be informed about Makino’s death and the investigation,” Sano said. “I’ll request an audience with him this evening.”

  As he and Sano parted, Hirata made a vow to learn as much as possible before they reported to the shogun. And by the e
nd of the investigation, he would redeem himself as Sano’s loyal chief retainer and an honorable samurai.

  A bleak, sunless afternoon cast a pall over Kodemma-cho, the slum in the northeast sector of the Nihonbashi merchant district. Miserable shacks lined the twisting roads, along which filthy beggars warmed themselves at bonfires. Stray dogs and ragged, noisy children scavenged amid garbage heaps. Dispirited laborers, peddlers, and housewives plodded along open gutters streaming with foul water. They paid no attention to the samurai dressed in patched, threadbare garments who rode a decrepit horse through their midst.

  Sano, disguised as a ronin, kept his hat tipped low over his face as he headed toward Edo Jail, which raised its high walls and gabled roofs in the distance. Crossing the rickety bridge over the canal that fronted the prison, he paused, wary of spies. As his prominence in the bakufu had grown, so had his need for secrecy. No one must know that the shogun’s sosakan-sama frequented this place of death and defilement. And no one must associate this visit with his investigation into the murder of Senior Elder Makino.

  The two guards stationed outside the jail opened the heavy, iron-banded gate for Sano. They knew who he was, but he paid them a salary to ignore his business and tell no tales. Once he’d ridden through the portals, Sano bypassed the fortified dungeon from which prisoners’ howls emanated. He dismounted outside Edo Morgue, a low structure with scabrous plaster walls, a shaggy thatched roof, and barred windows.

  Through the door emerged Dr. Ito Genboku, morgue custodian, followed by Detectives Marume and Fukida. The doctor wore a dark blue coat, the traditional garb of the medical profession; the wind ruffled his white hair. He and Sano had met five years ago, while Sano was a police commander investigating his first murder case, and had become friends.

  “Good afternoon, Ito-san,” Sano said, bowing. “I see that my detectives have arrived with the body I sent.”

  Dr. Ito returned the bow and greeting. “I was amazed when they told me who it was. I’ve never examined the corpse of such an important person.” Concern deepened the lines in Dr. Ito’s ascetic face. “You took a big risk sending it here.”

  “I know.” If Sano’s colleagues in the bakufu learned of his actions, there would be a scandal and he would be condemned for defiling Makino as well as for breaking the law against foreign science. Before him stood an example of what could happen.

  Dr. Ito, once a prominent physician, had performed medical experiments and obtained scientific knowledge from Dutch traders. While the usual punishment for such offenses was exile, the bakufu had consigned Dr. Ito to a life sentence as custodian of Edo Morgue. Here he could continue his scientific studies in peace, but he’d lost his family, his status, and his freedom.

  “We didn’t bring Makino straight from his house to the jail,” Detective Fukida said. “We brought him home first, removed him from the trunk, and put him in a palanquin, in a compartment under the floorboards.”

  “Then we rode out of Edo Castle in the palanquin,” Detective Marume added. “The checkpoint guards never suspected there was anyone in it except us.”

  “No one followed me, either,” Sano said.

  Dr. Ito smiled wryly. “Your subterfuges are most ingenious. I recall that the last body you sent was hidden in a crate of vegetables. You’ve been lucky so far.”

  “Well, we’d better examine Makino while my luck holds,” Sano said. “I have to get his body home before its absence raises any questions.”

  “I am ready to begin.” Dr. Ito ushered Sano and the detectives into the morgue.

  Its single large room was furnished with stone troughs used for washing the dead, cabinets containing tools, a podium stacked with papers, and three high tables. One table held a prone figure shrouded with a white drape. Beside it stood Dr. Ito’s assistant, Mura. In his late fifties, Mura had hair gradually turning from gray to silver and a square face with a somber, intelligent aspect.

  “Proceed, Mura-san,” Dr. Ito said.

  Everyone gathered around the table, and Mura folded back the drape. He was an eta—a member of Japan’s outcast class, whose hereditary link with death-related occupations such as butchering and tanning rendered them spiritually contaminated. Other citizens shunned them. They served Edo Jail as wardens, corpse handlers, torturers, and executioners. Mura, befriended and educated by Dr. Ito in defiance of class customs, performed all the physical work associated with his master’s studies. Now Mura and everyone else beheld Senior Elder Makino. He lay clothed in his nightcap and beige robe, his hands still on his chest, his thin ankles protruding. His knobby feet, shod in white socks, pointed at the ceiling. Permanent slumber shadowed his skull-like face.

  “Death spares no one, not even the most rich and powerful,” Dr. Ito murmured.

  Nor the most cunning and spiteful, Sano thought. He could imagine Makino’s outrage had he known he would end up in this place reviled by society. But Makino had asked Sano to investigate his death and left the methods up to Sano.

  “Where did he die?” asked Dr. Ito.

  Sano described the scene at Makino’s mansion, then said, “I have to return him in the same condition as when I confiscated him. Can you determine the cause of his death without dissection or other procedures that will show on his body?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Dr. Ito said. “Mura-san, please undress him.”

  Sano saw a problem. “How can we get his clothes off him and put them back on again when his body is stiffened into position? We can’t cut or tear them.”

  “He isn’t entirely stiff,” Detective Marume said. “Fukida-san and I discovered that when we moved him to the palanquin.”

  Mura straightened Makino’s arms at his sides. The wrists and fingers stayed rigid, but the elbows moved easily.

  “The elbow joints were broken after the stiffness had set in to the upper extremities,” Dr. Ito explained.

  Enlightenment struck Sano. “They were broken so that his body could lie neatly in bed. Even if that doesn’t mean Makino was murdered, it proves my suspicion that someone tampered with the death scene before I got there.”

  Mura untied Makino’s sash and parted his robe, exposing the emaciated corpse with its visible ribs and shriveled genitals. He gently worked the sleeves off Makino’s arms.

  “Here is more proof of your suspicion.” Dr. Ito pointed to a reddish-purple discoloration that ran along the left side of the corpse. “Blood pools beneath the skin on the parts of a dead body that lie nearest the ground. That means Makino lay on this side at some point after he died.”

  “And before being placed flat in bed,” Sano said.

  Dr. Ito told Mura to turn over the body. As Mura flopped the corpse onto its stomach, Sano’s attention was riveted on Makino’s back. Red and purple bruises marked the shoulder blades and rib cage.

  “It looks as though he was beaten,” Sano said.

  “And with violent force,” said Dr. Ito. “Observe the raw tissue where the blows broke the skin.” He wrapped a clean cloth around his hand, then palpated Makino’s ribs. “Some of the ribs are broken.”

  “Did the beating kill Makino?” said Sano.

  “Certainly the blows could have caused fatal internal injuries,” Dr. Ito said. “I’ve seen beatings less severe than this kill men much hardier than Makino was.” He turned to Mura. “Please remove the cap.”

  Mura bared Makino’s bony, age-speckled scalp and thin gray topknot. Sano saw another bruise that had dented Makino’s skull and split open the skin behind his right ear.

  “If I must hazard a guess as to which injury killed him, this will be my choice.” Dr. Ito contemplated the damaged skull, then added, “It probably bled much, as head wounds do. But there’s no blood on Makino. He appears to have been washed, then dressed in clean clothing.”

  “The head injury would account for the blood on the floor of Makino’s study,” Sano said. “The beating supports the theory that he died there, of an attack by an intruder.” Sano perused a mental picture of the study. “Bu
t I didn’t find a weapon. And the theory doesn’t explain why his body was moved, cleaned, and put to bed, while the evidence of an assassination was allowed to remain.” Sano had more reason for his reluctance to accept the scenario. Reporting that Makino had been assassinated would throw the bakufu into even greater turmoil.

  “Maybe the killer didn’t have time to restore order in the study,” Dr. Ito said. “Maybe he needed to escape before he was caught, and he fled with the weapon.”

  Sano nodded, as unable to discount these ideas as prove them. “But there’s still the sleeve to consider. I can’t help thinking it’s an important clue. I also have a hunch that sex, not necessarily politics, was involved in the murder.”

  Dr. Ito walked with his slow, stiff gait around the table, scrutinizing Makino’s corpse. He suddenly halted and said, “You may be right.”

  “What do you see?” Sano said.

  “A different sort of injury. Mura-san, please spread the buttocks.”

  The eta pried them apart with his fingers. The crack between the cheeks stretched open. Raw, abraded flesh circled Makino’s anus and extended into the orifice.

  “When I was a physician, I saw this symptom in men who had been penetrated by other men during sex,” Dr. Ito said. “It’s most common in boys and young men.” Good looks, and relatively low status, made them fair game for older, wealthier, more powerful men who practiced manly love. “However, it does occur in older males.”

  Accepted custom for manly love dictated that an elder partner should always penetrate a younger one. Ideally, the one penetrated should also be of inferior social status. When a man reached age nineteen, he should assume the role of the elder and never again experience penetration himself. But some men so enjoyed penetration that they continued receiving it as long as they lived. This was the case with the previous shogun, often criticized for his unseemly violation of custom.