He tried to remember her. She had been thin, yes, but had she actually looked starved? Surely she had had enough customers, even without adding prostitution to her labors, to live better than this.

The tangled bedding also was quite old and had been mended many times, the stitches and patches grossly uneven. It must have been difficult to work by touch alone. The more he considered her struggle to survive, the more he was filled with wonder. That same spirit had caused her to fight against her killer even when it was hopeless.

He turned his attention to the trunk. It had intrigued him from the start, because it was lacquered and had once been expensive. He opened it, expecting more surprises, but it was nearly empty. Only a few pieces of rough clothing, neatly folded, lay on the bottom. He had no wish to paw through a dead woman’s private possessions, but made himself do a cursory check. A few cheap cotton scarves, two pairs of cotton trousers, and two cotton jackets, the sorts of clothes worn by peasant women, scullery maids, and outcasts, were all that she had owned. If she had plied a trade as a streetwalker, she had certainly made no attempt to look attractive to men. The trunk apparently also held her bedding in the daytime. How very different were the arrangements in most houses. Each member of Akitada’s family had four trunks, one for the clothing of each season. And bedding had a separate storage place.

Tomoe had been very poor.

Akitada was about to drop the lid again, when he noticed a faint bulge under the bottom layer of clothes. He pulled out a small black lacquer box, a box most beautifully decorated with a design of fish cavorting among waves. The pictures were drawn in gold lacquer and the fish scales inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It was an altogether exquisite piece.

He opened the lid, and found that the inside of the box was painted with flowers of the four seasons and that it contained cosmetics. A twisted paper held powder to whiten the face, and small compartments were filled with kohl to outline the eyes and paint eyebrows, tweezers to pluck eyebrow hairs so the new ones could be painted above them, rouge for the lips, and a vial of tooth-blackening liquid. They were the sorts of cosmetics used by highborn ladies or elegant courtesans. What possible use were they to a blind street singer? There was no mirror in the room, any more than the windowless space had needed any lamps. Had she stolen the box for resale? If so, why had she not sold it long ago?

Among the twisted papers containing various powders he found another puzzle. One of the paper packages felt hard under his fingers. He undid it and saw that it contained three pieces of silver, an astonishing amount of money for someone who lived on the edge of starvation.

He showed his find to the lieutenant, who was first excited, then angry.

“Those lazy louts should have found it when they searched the room. You were right, sir. The pieces of dung cannot be trusted with an investigation. When they told me the dead woman had no money, I wondered if she’d been robbed. I suppose this proves she wasn’t. So we are still working with an unpremeditated act, with a crime of passion?”

“Hmm.” Akitada flattened out the paper and saw some faint characters written on it, not with ink and brush, but with something like charcoal. The characters had become smudged from handling, but he thought they were names: Nobunari and Nobuko—the first male, the second female. Was the money theirs? Or had she simply wrapped the coins in a discarded piece of paper she had found somewhere? Paper was not readily available to someone who could neither read nor write. He corrected himself. It was theoretically possible for a blind person to write, provided that person had once had sight and had been taught. But a street singer? He shook his head and put the money back in its paper and replaced it. He closed the box and handed it to the lieutenant. “You had better take care of this,” he said. “It may turn out to be evidence. It either proves that robbery was not the killer’s aim—or that he was interrupted before he could ransack the trunk.”

The lieutenant pondered this. “I get your drift. You think your Tora arrived and the killer ran? Yes, I suppose it could have happened that way.” But he sounded dubious and peered into the open trunk, tossing the folded garments around. “Not much else in here except her rags. I suppose she put her bedding on top every morning. What do you make of her having such a fine box and the silver?”

“I don’t know. It’s strange.”

“Stolen, I expect.”

Though Akitada had just had the same thought, the lieutenant’s easy conclusion bothered him. “Not necessarily,” he said. “We must learn as much as possible about the victim and her past and current life. Now I would like to ask the mason and his family a few questions.”

When they got back to the main room, they found that the couple had crept out of their blankets and was sitting beside the central fire pit. The mason, middle-aged before his time, still wore his dusty jacket and short pants, and his hands and feet were encrusted with stone powder. His wife did not look much cleaner. Poor people had no bathing facilities, and the public baths charged too much money, but the contrast to their lodger Tomoe was striking. She had made a great effort to be clean, perhaps because her work required it, but Akitada rather thought that cleanliness had been important to her, a matter of pride.

“We are sorry to be so much trouble.” Akitada squatted down near the mason, though the man’s simian features did not promise much in terms of intelligent responses. After a moment, the lieutenant did the same.

“No trouble, no trouble,” the mason muttered, avoiding eye contact and bobbing his head.

“The lieutenant tells me that you heard your lodger cry out and sent for help. Is that so?”

“She was screaming. It was terrible. It was like demons were tearing her to pieces. I sent my son for the constables.”

Akitada thought of the blind woman struggling for her life, trying to reach the door and help. And these people had sat there, paralyzed with fear. Superstitions were common, but so were cowardice and ill will. He constrained his anger and said encouragingly. “You must have been very frightened.”

“Yes. We ran outside and hid. After a long time I went to listen at the door. I heard nothing. But I figured the demon must have heard us, and we went back outside.”

What a repulsive little toad this man was! In fact, Akitada felt nothing but revulsion for the couple. He looked from one to the other. “Did you hear or see anyone leave?”

They shook their heads.

“Did your lodger receive visitors in her room?”

The mason hesitated and looked at his wife. She glared back at him. The mason fidgeted and said sullenly, “I’m a busy man. I have no time to watch her.”

His wife gave a snort.

Akitada said, “Yes, of course. But perhaps your wife, being in the house most of the day, may know something?”

The woman smirked. “She looked down her nose at people. Men think that makes a whore special.” She snorted again. “Men are fools.” She glared at her husband.

Aha, thought Akitada, so the wife was jealous of Tomoe. He considered her with interest. She was a short, dumpy female with the sharp nose and close-set eyes of a rat and a permanent scowl of bad temper. The street singer had been no beauty, but to the stonemason she must have seemed a fairy compared to the mother of his children. Had she caught her husband with Tomoe and gone after her rival with her kitchen knife? If so, the mason would be bound to cover up for her.

As if she guessed what he was thinking, she said suddenly, “That fellow they arrested. He was here before, and they argued. He said he’d be back, and she’d better do something or he’d kill her.”