Near a residence distinguished by characters carved on a wooden sign outside, she called for her bearers to stop, put her hand out the window, and signaled her escorts, who rode behind her. Lieutenant Asukai dismounted, ran up to the gate, and knocked. As he spoke to someone hidden by the leafy bamboo, she fought the despair that threatened to overwhelm her.

Last night she’d promised Sano that she wouldn’t give up hope. Last night they’d gone to bed together knowing that it could be the last time. They’d made love, careful of the baby. Afterward, safe and cherished in Sano’s arms, Reiko had been able to think mat everything would turn out all right. But when dawn had come, defeat had slithered under her skin, cold and poisonous as a snake, hissing, You murdered Lord Mori. You will pay. Now she was forcing herself to go through motions that seemed pointless.

From behind the bamboo fence emerged a thin, gray-haired lady.

Asukai led her up to Reiko’s palanquin, opened the door, and said, “Please get inside.”

The woman saw Reiko, and dismay crossed her shriveled features. Reiko thought about how glad people were to see her when they wanted her help, and how they preferred to avoid her after she’d done what they’d asked but things hadn’t turned out the way they wished.

“Please don’t go, Madam Tsuzuki,” she said. “I only ask a moment of your time.”

The woman reluctantly climbed into the palanquin and knelt as far from Reiko as possible. She said, “I heard what happened to you.” She avoided Reiko’s gaze. Her gentle voice didn’t soften her obvious hostility. “What are you doing here?”

“I didn’t kill Lord Mori,” Reiko said. “I’m trying to find out who did and prove my innocence. I need your help.”

Obligation to Reiko weighed like a visible burden upon Madam Tsuzuki. She looked unconvinced, but she said, “My apologies. I shouldn’t judge you when I don’t know anything but rumors. And I shouldn’t blame you for what you found out about the girl who was engaged to my son.”

She and her husband, an Edo Castle guard, had asked Reiko to investigate the girl’s family. Although samurai usually married within their class and knew all about their prospective in-laws, the son had fallen in love with a woman whose parents were artisans. Owners of a lucrative business, they were eager to marry their daughter into the samurai class. The Tsuzukis had been willing to accept a social inferior into their clan because of her rich dowry. This was a not uncommon practice by which commoners rose in the world and samurai improved their finances. But first the Tsuzukis had wanted to make sure that the girl and her family were of good character.

Reiko had questioned their neighbors and learned that they’d moved to Edo from Osaka ten years ago. The man had started as a peddler, then opened a small market stall, which he’d built into his current large shop. They were well respected, but nobody knew anything of their past. They never discussed their life in Osaka, where Reiko had sent one of her attendants to inquire about them.

“It’s not your fault that the girl turned out to be eta,” Madam Tsuzuki said.

Reiko had discovered that the family were outcasts, shunned by society because their hereditary link with death-related occupations such as butchering and leather tanning rendered them spiritually unclean. Most eta were doomed to a miserable existence cleaning streets, hauling garbage, or working at other dirty, menial jobs, but the man had had rare ambition and talent. He’d moved himself, his wife, and their daughter to Edo, where no one knew about their disgraceful origins, and changed their names. But Reiko had given her attendant an example of the man’s distinctive work to show around Osaka, and an eta he’d met in the street had recognized it. The results of her investigation had put an end to the wedding plans: A samurai couldn’t marry an outcast.

“You did me a service,” Madam Tsuzuki said, “but why do you think I can be of service to you?”

“It’s about your son,” Reiko said.

Tears filled the woman’s eyes and ran down her face. “He married her anyway. His father and I disowned him. He is dead to us.”

Reiko pitied this woman who’d lost her son due to his defiance of a strict, centuries-old taboo. She regretted that her well-meant efforts had caused a family tragedy. “Where is he?”

Instead of answering, Madam Tsuzuki asked, “What does he have to do with your problems?”

“He sent me this,” Reiko said, taking a letter from beneath her sash.

The woman averted her gaze from her son’s handwriting. Pain closed her eyes. Reiko read aloud, “ ‘Lady Reiko, you are an evil, meddlesome witch. You have ruined our lives. Someday I will hurt you as much as you have hurt us.” “

Madam Tsuzuki turned a look of horror on Reiko. “You can’t think that my son is responsible for what happened to you?”

He was as good a suspect as Colonel Kubota and better than the family of the clerk that had been executed for murder because of Reiko. “He belonged to a gang that included men from Lord Mori’s retinue.” Such samurai gangs spent their idle hours roving the town, drinking, brawling, and chasing women. “They were a way into the Mori estate. And he’s intelligent enough to invent an elaborate murder scheme.” Besides, the fact that he’d been disowned gave him all the more reason to hate Reiko. “What do you think? Could he have done it?”

“I don’t know.” Madam Tsuzuki shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know what my son is capable of or who he is anymore. I haven’t seen him in a year, since he told us he was going to marry that woman against our wishes and his father told him to leave our house and never come back.”

“Where did he go?” Reiko said.

“I don’t know. But her family might. Ask them.”

Sano, Hirata, and their detectives and entourage gathered in the neighborhood where Reiko had claimed she’d met Lily and all her problems had begun. Rain dripped off sagging roofs and balconies; mildew and green moss infected damp, dingy, plaster walls. The streets were deserted, but as Sano and his men dismounted and tied their horses to posts, people peeked out windows at them.

“There’s the Persimmon Teahouse,” Hirata said, pointing at the drab storefront overhung with a wet blue curtain.

Sano gave it scant attention as he walked by. “Never mind that for now.”

“Do you want us to round up all the residents for questioning?” Hirata asked.

“That probably won’t work any better than before.” Sano kept moving, past shops and a little shrine.

“What are we looking for?” Detective Marume asked.

“I’m not sure,” Sano said. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

He attuned himself to his surroundings. Instinct told him that the answers were here. He opened his mind to all stimuli. He smelled nightsoil bins in an alley, heard voices chanting prayers inside houses, tasted garlic in charcoal smoke that wafted from a kitchen. He felt new hope as he continued along the street, alert for whatever he’d come to discover.

His men followed him silently. They came to a shop halfway down the block, whose door was open a crack. It seemed to beckon Sano. He went up to the storefront, stood under the overhanging eaves, and looked inside while Hirata and the detectives peered over his shoulder.

It was a stationer’s shop, filled with writing brushes, ink stones, ceramic water jars, scroll cases, and stacks of paper. An old man knelt at a desk. Opposite him sat a young woman. “The baby was sick with a cold, but he’s better,” she said. “My husband is working hard. I’m well, but I miss you.” The old man wrote down her words as she continued dictating, “Good-bye for now. With love from your daughter, Emiko.”

Sano pictured a different, older woman sitting in her place; he heard another voice: Dear Lady Reiko, please excuse we for imposing on you, but I need your help. The old man was probably one of the few literate people in his neighborhood. Shops like his were patronized by folks who needed letters written or read for them. Sano felt the tingling sensation of excitement that told him he was on the right track. He slid the door open wider and stepped into the shop.