“Please excuse me,” he said to the audience.

Dropping his samisen, he fled out the curtained exit, amid protests from the samurai. Sano hurried after Fujio, but so did the courtesans, who clustered at the exit, crying, “Come back!”

By the time Sano pushed past them into the corridor, Fujio was gone. A door stood open to the night. Sano sped outside and found himself in a shadowed alley that ran along Yoshiwara’s eastern wall. He saw the hokan running past stinking privy sheds, toward the back of the quarter. Sano took off in pursuit, his feet skidding on the damp, slimy paving stones.

A small crowd of women gathered in the distance. They surrounded Fujio, crying, “Come with me, master, and I’ll make you happy!”

This area of Yoshiwara was known as Nichome-“Wicked Creek”-a name derived from a legend about a warrior attacked by an ogre. Here, low-class courtesans, desperate for customers, would accost men, pull them into squalid brothels, and service them in rooms shared by many couples. Now they clutched at Fujio, who shouted, “Let go!”

Sano caught up with the hokan, grabbed him by the front of his coat, yanked him away from the women, and shoved him against the wall. The women scattered in fright. Fujio flung up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“No need to hurt me, Sōsakan-sama,” he said, flashing the smile that had charmed many female admirers. “Whatever business you have with me, we can settle it without a fight.”

Sano released Fujio, but stood ready to catch him should he flee again. “Why did you run when you saw me?”

“I was afraid,” Fujio confessed sheepishly.

“Afraid that you were wanted for the murder of Lord Mitsuyoshi?”

“Well, yes.” Fujio laughed, making a joke of his predicament, though Sano perceived how much he wished he’d gotten away. “If you’re looking for the killer, you’ve got the wrong fellow.” His mobile face assumed a humble, sincere expression. “But I’ll be glad to help in any way I can.”

There was something irresistibly likable about Fujio, and Sano couldn’t be angry at his obvious attempt to beguile his way out of trouble. “In that case,” Sano said, “you can tell me what were your relations with Lord Mitsuyoshi.”

“He was a patron of mine. I performed for him and his friends here, and in town.” A hokan lived on money from his patrons and depended on them to recommend him to new customers. “So you see that Lord Mitsuyoshi was worth more to me alive than dead,” Fujio said, turning his palms up as he smiled. “I wouldn’t kill him, and I didn’t.”

His nimble, eloquent hands pantomimed innocence, and Sano remembered hearing that Fujio had once been a Kabuki actor. “But you hated Lord Mitsuyoshi because he was your rival for the affections of Lady Wisteria,” Sano said.

“That would have been true once, when I was madly in love with Wisteria. She made me jealous by carrying on with samurai in front of me. But someone is telling you ancient history.” Condescension tinged Fujio’s smile. “I ended that affair last year, when I married the daughter of the proprietor of the Great Miura. Now I couldn’t care less about Wisteria.”

He leaned nonchalantly against the wall. “But it’s interesting that she should disappear on the same night when her lover was murdered in her bed. Do you know where she’s gone?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Sano said.

“Sorry. I’ve no idea.”

“Then you won’t mind if I search your home?”

Fujio’s eyebrows shot up. “Not at all.”

When asked where his home was, the hokan readily said he lived in Imado, a nearby village. But Sano had a distinct feeling that Fujio was hiding something, even if it wasn’t the missing courtesan.

“Where were you and what did you do on the night Lord Mitsuyoshi died?” Sano said.

“I performed at a party. But you’ve already found out that I was in the house where Lord Mitsuyoshi died, haven’t you? That’s why you came for me. Nothing stays a secret for long in this place.” Fujio slumped in gloomy resignation; then he brightened, raising a finger. “But I was entertaining the guests from the time dinner was served at the hour of the dog, until after midnight, when we learned that Lord Mitsuyoshi was dead.”

“Did you leave the room at any time?”

“No, master.”

Though his position as the focus of people’s attention provided him a good alibi, Sano again sensed that Fujio was dodging. “Are you sure you never took a break?”

A peculiar look came into the hokan’s eyes, as if he’d just realized something that simultaneously disconcerted and gratified him. He said, “I went to use the privy in the back alley. But you needn’t take my word for it. Treasury Minister Nitta saw me. He was standing in the alley outside the back door of the Owariya.”

Surprise jolted Sano. Before he could respond, Fujio said, “Nitta put you onto me, didn’t he? He’s the one who told you the old gossip to get me in trouble. Aha, I thought so. But I bet he didn’t say he saw me in the alley, because he would have had to admit he was there, too. He must have just killed Lord Mitsuyoshi when I saw him.” Fujio grinned in triumph.

But perhaps Fujio was the killer and sought to incriminate Nitta the way Nitta had tried to incriminate him, Sano thought. “Why would the treasury minister kill the shogun’s heir and try to frame you?” he said. “Because he loves Wisteria and was jealous of you and Lord Mitsuyoshi for having her?”

The hokan dismissed the idea with a flick of his hand. “Oh, Nitta likes exclusive use of his courtesans, but this isn’t about love-it’s about money.” He jingled the leather coin pouch he wore at his waist. “How do you think Nitta covers the huge expenses he runs up in Yoshiwara? The last night I spent with Wisteria, she said Nitta has been stealing gold from the treasury.”

“How did she know?” Sano said, shocked by this accusation of embezzlement, which constituted treason.

Fujio shrugged. “She didn’t say. But I think she blackmailed Nitta, and he killed her to keep her quiet.”

Blackmail was a new motive for the murder, and Sano knew he must check into it, though he wouldn’t put it past Fujio to have improvised the story on the spot. Sano dreaded confronting Nitta, and the upheaval that an investigation of treasury affairs would cause in the bakufu. Still, this development offered a possible explanation for the missing pillow book.

“I also think Wisteria wrote about Nitta’s embezzlement in that book she always carried around with her-the one everybody says is missing,” Fujio said, echoing Sano’s thoughts. “Nitta probably destroyed the book so that his crime wouldn’t come to light after she was dead.”

Now Sano needed more than ever to find the book. “That’s an interesting story,” he said. “How does Lord Mitsuyoshi fit into it?”

“He was in Wisteria’s bedchamber, and probably drunk by that hour. When Nitta got there, he thought Mitsuyoshi was asleep, and he killed Wisteria. But then he discovered that Mitsuyoshi was awake and had seen the whole thing. Wisteria was a peasant, and Nitta could have gotten away with her murder, but he was afraid that if the bakufu found out what he’d done, his stealing would be discovered. So he killed Mitsuyoshi to get rid of the witness.” Fujio nodded, certain of his reasoning.

“How would he have gotten rid of Wisteria’s body?” Sano said.

“Oh, well, he probably ordered people to help him and keep silent afterward,” Fujio replied.

The story was plausible, though based on dubious assumptions. Willing to play along for now, Sano said, “How do you explain the hairpin that was used to stab Lord Mitsuyoshi? Why should Nitta choose it instead of his sword? Or would you like to change your story and blame the murder on Wisteria’s yarite because the hairpin belonged to her?”

“No, no, no.” Fujio waggled his hands. “Momoko didn’t do it. Even though she’s a mean old hag, according to what I hear. Do you want to know what she does when she shaves courtesans?” Yoshiwara custom dictated that all prostitutes must shave their pudenda. “She yanks out hairs one by one, from the most sensitive spots.”