“Other people thought so, too,” the wife said. “Yoichi-san’s relatives demanded that Haru give them the business and money he’d left her, or they would go to the magistrate and accuse her of arson. She didn’t want to give up her inheritance, but we convinced her that she must.”

“If the magistrate decided she was guilty, she would be burned to death,” Haru’s father explained.

“And so would we,” the mother added. In cases of serious crime, the offender’s family shared his punishment.

“So you kept your suspicions to yourselves,” Sano said. The couple nodded. “What happened then?”

“At first we pretended nothing had happened.” As if sensing disapproval from Sano, the proprietor said, “Haru was our only child. We loved her.” He swallowed hard. “But we couldn’t bear to look at her and think she might be a murderess. Haru must have guessed how we felt, because she changed. She’d always been a good girl, but-”

“Well, she never liked hard work,” Haru’s mother qualified, “and I had to keep after her to do her chores. She was sometimes rude to customers. I did the best I could with her, but she just had a bad character.”

So much for Haru’s story of happy, harmonious family life, Sano thought.

“After the fire, Haru began leaving the shop without permission and staying out all day and night,” the wife continued. “Many times she came home drunk. She stole from the cash box. Neighbors told us they’d seen her in teahouses with men. We scolded her and beat her, but we couldn’t control her. She just cursed at us. We began wondering if she’d disobeyed Yoichi-san and he’d punished her and made her angry, and that was why he died. We were afraid of what she might do to us.”

Commander Oyama had also made Haru angry, according to his son, Sano recalled.

“Finally we gave Haru some money and told her to leave.” The proprietor gazed out at the rainy street. In the dim light, he looked pale and sick. “For months afterward, I worried about what would become of our daughter. I blamed myself for her evils and wondered what I should have done differently. I mourned her and prayed for her. My wife and I tried to forget her and go on with our lives.

“But now I can see that we were wrong to keep silent about Haru and send her out into the world.” The proprietor spoke with remorse. “We should have known she would cause trouble again.” He turned a haunted gaze on Sano. “She set the fire at the Black Lotus Temple, didn’t she?”

“I’m afraid she may have,” Sano said.

She might also have progressed to murder by means other than arson. The new evidence against his prime suspect gave Sano no joy. He deeply pitied Haru’s mother and father. How terrible it must be to have a child go bad! Estrangement seemed almost worse than death, and parenthood fraught with hazards. Would Masahiro grow up to be an honorable samurai, or a wayward spirit like Haru? Sano also regretted coming to Kojimachi and hearing Haru’s parents’ story because he dreaded telling Reiko what he had learned about the girl.

Hirata splashed through the puddles in the courtyard of police headquarters, peering from beneath his umbrella at the crowd huddled in the dripping rain. He wondered what had brought so many people here in such bad weather. Under the eaves of the main building, he handed his umbrella to a servant; then he entered the reception room. It was packed with more people standing against pillars and seated on the floor, some puffing tobacco pipes, amid a loud babble of conversation. The warm, stuffy air was thick with smoke. Several doshin stood guard. Hirata elbowed his way up to the platform where the clerks sat elevated above the crowd.

“Why are all these people here?” he asked the chief clerk.

Uchida grinned. “They’re responding to your notice asking for information about the dead woman and boy at the Black Lotus Temple.”

“All of them?” Hirata, who had come to check on whether the notices had gotten any results, gazed around the room in astonishment.

“Every one,” Uchida said, “and the folks outside, too.”

The nearest bystanders spread the news that the man who’d issued the notices had arrived. The crowd surged toward Hirata waving hands and shouting pleas.

“Quiet!” Hirata ordered. “Stand back! I’ll see you one at a time.”

Doshin coaxed and shoved the mob into a line that snaked around the room, while Hirata sat atop the platform. He saw the shaved crowns of samurai among the many commoners. He tried to count heads and stopped at a hundred. Surely all these people couldn’t be connected with the two mystery victims.

The first person in line was a frail, stooped peasant woman. Looking anxiously up at Hirata, she said, “My grown son joined the Black Lotus sect last year. I haven’t seen or heard from him since, and I’m so worried. Is he dead?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” Hirata said. “The people in the fire were a woman and a little boy. That was explained in the notice.”

“I can’t read,” said the woman. “I came because I heard you were looking for anyone with family members who disappeared at the temple.”

“No. My inquiry doesn’t include adult males.” Hirata realized that his message had been distorted while spreading through the largely illiterate populace.

“Maybe my son is still alive, then.” Hope brightened the woman’s wrinkled face. “Please, will you help me find him?”

“I’ll try.” Hirata wrote down the woman’s name, where she lived, and her son’s name and age. Then he stood on the platform and addressed the crowd, explaining the purpose of his notice and describing the victims. “Everyone who’s here about missing persons who don’t fit those descriptions should come back later and make a report to the police.”

Rumbles of disappointment stirred the crowd, but no one got out of line. A man with the coarse appearance of a laborer stepped up to the platform. “My daughter is missing,” he said.

“How old is she?” Hirata asked.

Before the laborer could answer, a burly samurai shoved him aside and said to Hirata, “I refuse to wait any longer. I demand to speak to you now.”

“Get in line,” Hirata ordered. “Wait your turn.”

“My three-year-old son disappeared in the spring.” The samurai, whose garments bore a floral crest that marked him as a retainer of the Kane clan, stood firm. “His mother took him shopping in Nihonbashi. She lost him in the crowd. Storekeepers saw three Black Lotus priests putting a little boy into a palanquin. They stole my son.”

“They stole my daughter, too,” said the laborer. “She was playing outside. The priests and nuns are always in our street, inviting people to join the sect and giving the children candy. When they left that day, they took my girl with them.”

“How do you know?” Hirata asked, intrigued by the accusations.

“Other children have disappeared after the Black Lotus visited. Everyone knows the Black Lotus steals them,” said the laborer.

Shouts rang out along the line: “They took my child, too!” “And mine!” “And mine!”

Amazed consternation jolted Hirata. It hardly seemed possible that the sect was involved in so many disappearances. Had mass delusion infected these people?

“When I went to the temple to look for my son, the priests threw me out,” said the samurai. “I went to the police, and they said they would look into the matter, but they’ve done nothing. I came here hoping you could help me.”

Hirata took pity on the samurai, whose son’s age fell in the range Dr. Ito had specified for the dead boy in the cottage. He wrote down the samurai’s name and information, then turned to Uchida. “This is going to take forever. Will you help out?”