He and the detectives were already running toward the doorway. A samurai stepped out of it. Sano bumped smack into him. He slipped on the muddy path and went down on one knee and hand. He looked up at Sano. Their gazes met in surprised recognition.

“Captain Torai,” Sano said.

Dismay showed on Torai’s face. Marume said, “What are you doing here?” At the same moment Sano noticed bright red splotches on the white collar of Torai’s under-robe.

Torai scrambled upright and fled in the opposite direction. An awful suspicion gripped Sano. “Stop him!” he ordered Marume and Fukida.

They bolted down the path after Torai. Sano hurried into the house. Dim, cavernous space smelled of dampness and burnt wood. The faint light that came through holes in the ceiling illuminated rain dripping onto dirty, warped floorboards. Partitions divided the house into sections where different families must have lived. These were open to Sano’s view as he ran past them; the doors had been removed. All were empty except for wet debris. Sano hastened down the passage to a chamber away from the worst damage to the roof. In a corner lay a faded quilt, a bundle of clothes, and a basket of rice balls- signs of habitation.

“Lily!” Sano called.

His voice echoed through the house. No answer came. Sano spied a straw sandal lying on the floor, its toe pointed at the threshold where he stood. He turned. A line of red splotches led farther down the passage. As he followed them, he smelled iron in the dank air. The splotches grew larger, running into the puddles, then into a pool of blood that spread, glistening crimson, across the floor of the last room.

In the center of the pool a woman lay like a broken doll. Her coarse, black hair was thick with blood, her cheap floral kimono drenched red. Her hands were flung up. Bloody gashes marked their palms. Her head was beneath a window whose paper panes had burned. Light from it bathed her white face, her open mouth revealing teeth awash in more blood. Her eyes seemed to stare in terror at her last sight, the attacker who’d cut her throat from ear to ear.

Horror at this violent death, pity for the victim, and fury at her murderer rose up in Sano. Shouting a curse, he pounded his fist against the door frame.

Hirata, Inoue, and Arai joined Sano. “What happened?” Hirata said. They saw the corpse and exclaimed in unison. Lightning flashed outside, searing the gory spectacle of death into Sano’s eyes. “Is that Lily?”

“As far as I can tell,” Sano said. Her age and gaudy clothes matched Reiko’s description. His triumph at learning her whereabouts turned to the disappointment of utter failure.

Bending down, Hirata touched the blood. “It’s still warm. She must have been killed just now.”

“Yes,” Sano said. “We were too late. He beat us to her by only a few moments.”

“Who?” Hirata asked.

“Captain Torai.” Sano explained how he’d met Captain Torai coming out of the building. “There was blood on his clothes. He ran. Fukida and Marume are chasing him.”

“So it was Torai who threatened the people around the Persimmon Teahouse into keeping quiet about Lily.”

“With help from his friends, on Police Commissioner Hoshina’s orders, no doubt.”

“But why did he go to the trouble of tracking her down and killing her now?” Hirata asked.

“To tie up a loose thread,” Sano said. “Hoshina wants to make very certain my wife is convicted and I’m ruined at our trials today. The last thing he wants is for me to bring in Lily as a witness for our defense and make Lord Matsudaira change his mind about us. Which I could have done, if we’d found her trail sooner. But there’s still hope. Even though we’ve lost Lily, there’s one witness left.”

“Captain Torai?”

“None other. He’s been in on Hoshina’s plot to cover up evidence in the murder investigation. He knows all about it. I’ll bring him before Lord Matsudaira and the shogun and tell them he murdered an important witness.”

“The blood on him should help convince them,” Hirata said.

“They won’t care about the death of a peasant woman, but they won’t take kindly to being tricked,” Sano said. “I think Torai will finally betray Hoshina to save his own skin. That should help clear my wife.”

“And good-bye to Hoshina in the process,” Hirata said.

“That should knock some wind out of the campaign to make me out as a traitor,” Sano said. “But let’s go give Fukida and Marume a hand, because first we need to catch Captain Torai.”

Eager to find Sano and tell him she’d made a major discovery, Reiko headed toward Edo Castle with her entourage. As she neared the main gate, someone ran up to her palanquin and looked in the window.

“Reiko-san!” It was Osugi, her old nurse, drenched by the rain. “I’m so glad I’ve caught you!”

“What’s the matter?” Reiko said, surprised.

“Don’t go home,” Osugi said, trotting alongside her.

“Why not?”

“He’s at the house.”

“Who?”

“That man who came to see you yesterday. Colonel Kubota.”

Reiko started. “What’s he doing there?”

“He came to arrest you. He’s got a lot of soldiers with him. They’re waiting for you to come back.”

“But why?” Reiko said, as much mystified as disturbed. She called for the bearers to stop. Her procession halted some fifty paces from the gate. “How could he just barge in like mat? Why didn’t the guards keep him out?”

“He has orders from the shogun,” Osugi gasped out. “You’re going to be tried for murder at the hour of the monkey. He came to take you to the palace.”

“What?” Shock and disbelief stunned Reiko. “I’ve heard nothing about this. The shogun and Lord Matsudaira gave my husband permission to investigate the murder. He’s not finished yet. Why should they have set my trial today?” Today, when she and Sano had no evidence with which to prove her innocence.

“I don’t know.” Osugi began to sob in terror.

And the time of the trial was some two hours away. Why had Colonel Kubota come to take her so soon, and why him of all people? The whole thing made no sense to Reiko, until she realized what must have happened.

Sano’s fall from power had begun. Last night his allies had deserted him; today Lord Matsudaira had turned on him. Lord Matsudaira had convinced the shogun to stage a trial that would surely end with her convicted of Lord Mori’s murder and sentenced to death. Sano couldn’t protect her anymore because he himself was wide open to attack.

“Don’t go home,” Osugi pleaded. “That man is up to no good. Don’t let him take you!”

Colonel Kubota must have gotten wind of what was going on and led the troops that would bring Reiko to the palace. He’d gone to fetch her early because he wanted time before her trial to punish her for ending his marriage. A shudder ran through Reiko as she imagined what form his revenge would take.

Lieutenant Asukai ran up to her. “What’s going on?”

As Reiko explained, she saw her horror appear on his face. He said, “What are we going to do?”

They looked up at the castle that loomed in the rainy distance, bristling with watch towers, full of armed soldiers who’d surely been told that the chamberlain’s wife had gone missing and were on the lookout for her return. It was no longer home to Reiko but a death trap.

“If my husband is in there, I’ll never get to him before I’m caught,” she said. And Sano couldn’t investigate Lady Mori’s maid, solve the crime, and exonerate Reiko before Colonel Kubota got his hands on her.

“You’re right,” Lieutenant Asukai said. “We have to take you someplace safe.”

A plan occurred to Reiko. Under any other circumstances it would have been foolhardy, but now she had nothing to lose. “I know one place they’ll never look for me.”

There she would find out the truth about Lord Mori’s murder.