“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind your disobeying his order if it could help us catch his killer,” Hirata said.

Dr. Unryu shook his head; his brow creased in thought. “I presume that Enju is Lord Mori’s heir?”

“Yes.”

“Lord Mori has been paying me a pension since I retired. It’s not much money, but it supports my daughter and me. If Enju should find out I talked to you, he might take it away.”

“If Enju takes it away, I’ll pay it.” Hirata sensed that the doctor had information well worth the expense.

Reassured, the doctor nodded. “I should mention that I didn’t have much to do with Lord Mori, his wife, or Enju. They were blessed with good health; they didn’t need me very often. I mostly treated other people at the estate. But I recall two things that you might like to know about. The first happened the year before I retired. Lord Mori took ill with severe chest pains. It was heart trouble. He almost died.

“I was constantly at his bedside. So were his chief retainers. But Enju never came near him.” Disapproval inflected Dr. Unryu’s voice. “His heir should have comforted him, or at least paid the respects due to him. I thought it very strange that Enju didn’t.”

Hirata thought that Enju’s behavior didn’t jibe with his mother’s story about their idyllic family life.

“Neither did Lady Mori,” said the doctor. “Every day she asked me how her husband’s health was, but she never even spoke to him. And Lord Mori never asked for her or Enju. It seemed he knew they wouldn’t come.”

It sounded to Hirata as if the widow as well as the heir had been on bad terms with Lord Mori. Perhaps Lady Mori and Enju had been so sorry he’d survived that they’d done away with him themselves. But Hirata needed more than just speculations to back up this theory. A motive would help.

“Why do you think they acted that way?” he asked.

“I don’t know. None of the family ever confided in me.”

“What was the other event you remember?”

“Something from when Lord and Lady Mori had recently married.

Lady Mori and Enju had lived in the estate for just a short time. Enju was quite a lively, friendly little boy. He liked to watch me prepare medicines. He asked clever questions and seemed truly interested in the answers. But after a while he stopped coming to see me. I thought he’d found other things to do. Then one day Lady Mori summoned me.

“She said Enju had been having bad dreams, waking up and screaming at night. And he’d been wetting his bed. She asked me to cure whatever was wrong with him. When she brought him to me, I was shocked at how much he’d changed. He was quiet, sullen. When I tried to examine him, he didn’t want me to undress him or touch him. He cried and fought so hard that I couldn’t perform an examination.”

“What did you do?” Hirata asked.

“I gave him tea brewed from mantis egg case, dragon bones, and oyster shells for incontinence, and licorice, sweet flag root, and biota seeds for nervous hysteria.”

“Did he get better?”

“I had only Lady Mori’s word for it. After I’d treated him for a few days, she told me to stop; that was enough.”

“Did you ever find out what was wrong with Enju?”

“No. But I had a distinct feeling that Lady Mori knew.”

Hirata thanked Dr. Unryu. As he and the detectives rode away from the village, Arai said, “Something must have been pretty wrong between Enju and Lord Mori, if Enju wouldn’t even visit Lord Mori on what looked to be his deathbed. Do you think it had anything to do with his murder?”

“I’m sure.” Hirata had a strong albeit unfounded hunch. It might have been the cause of the argument between Lord Mori and Enju, involving something Enju had been ordered to do but didn’t want to, overheard on the road.

“What do you think Enju’s childhood problem was?” Inoue said. “Could it be related, too?”

“I don’t know, but maybe,” Hirata said. “It sounds as if something bad happened to him after his mother married Lord Mori. But whatever it was, Enju lied about his relationship with his stepfather. He has a little explaining to do. So does Lady Mori.”

“With all due respect, Lady Reiko, but maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Lieutenant Asukai said.

In the back entry way of the private chambers, Reiko put on a shaggy straw rain cape. “I can’t just sit home and wait any longer. I must help my husband find out who killed Lord Mori.” After her clash with Colonel Kubota had failed to prove that it wasn’t him, she felt more desperate to solve the mystery. “And I know of more people who need to be investigated.”

“Tell Chamberlain Sano or Sosakan Hirata. Let them investigate,” Asukai suggested.

“They have enough to do already.” Reiko slipped her feet into thick-soled wooden sandals that would raise her above the puddles in the streets. “If my clues don’t lead anywhere, it’s better that I wasted my time than theirs.”

Concerned and protective, Asukai said, “Let me go find your suspects and bring them here to you.”

“It will be quicker if I go myself.”

“I could talk to your suspects for you. Just tell me what to ask them.”

Yet Reiko thought this was no time for a solo test of his untried detective skills. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve made up my mind.”

“You shouldn’t leave the compound,” Lieutenant Asukai persisted. “If Lord Matsudaira finds out, he won’t like it.”

“He won’t find out,” Reiko said, bundling her hair up inside a cotton kerchief.

“If people should see you-”

“They’ll never recognize me.” Reiko clapped a wicker hat on her head, picked up an umbrella and a basket. She looked for all the world like a maid going on an errand.

Lieutenant Asukai frowned, troubled enough to oppose his mistress. “It’s dangerous outside.” He stood between Reiko and the door. “And it’s not just your own safety you’re risking.”

“If we don’t solve this case, I’ll be executed. My baby will never be born,” Reiko said. And she couldn’t bear to think that it might be the child of a murderess. She must prove otherwise. “Either help me, or please stand aside.”

Resignation drained the fight from Lieutenant Asukai. He opened the door to the wet, gray day, but he said, “You can’t take your palanquin. People will know it’s you inside. And you can’t walk far in your condition.”

“There’s a place down the boulevard from the main gate where I can rent a kago.” The basket-chairs, suspended from poles and carried by men for hire, were a cheap form of public transportation. “You and my other guards will meet me there and follow me at a distance.”

She made her way through Edo Castle’s passages and checkpoints without incident. She’d learned from past experience that maids were virtually invisible. Soon she was seated in the swaying, jouncing kago while its bearers trotted toward town. A sense of freedom exhilarated her. She felt buoyed by hope, vibrantly alive.

Reiko tried to forget that she might not be free or alive much longer.

The trip to and from Ueno had taken Sano all morning and part of the afternoon. Now, eager for his confrontation with his enemy, he rode with his entourage through the Hibiya administrative district. He d never been to Police Commissioner Hoshina’s house- they weren’t exactly on visiting terms. He was almost as curious to see how Hoshina lived as determined to wring some facts out of him.

Hoshina had an estate near the edge of the district. It was one of the farthest from Edo Castle. Only a road and a drainage canal separated its perimeter wall from the Nihonbashi merchant quarter. This location could owe to Hoshina’s low seniority at court or the fact that police carried a taint of death from the executions they ordered. Furthermore, his position in Lord Matsudaira’s inner circle had always been shaky. But he’d made the most of his estate.