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[Continuing chapter 4]
Arms Master Lord Miyoshi looked ill: his jaw slack so as to draw down his face and shrink his cheeks, his eyes dull and their lids purple-grey. Hiroki saw no redness; the lord had not been crying, he guessed. Was it anger as much as shock, then, that made him appear this way?
“My lord,” said Lord Naitō as he, Lord Matsukata and Hiroki knelt before him, “we have summoned Hiroki as you requested. He is prepared to do as you wish.”
“You have my thanks,” the arms master said, in a voice barely audible. “Please tell me what else you need from me.”
What I need is something nobody can give, Hiroki thought. He now had three tasks to perform for his superiors, and even if Katsumi could help him with one of those, it was hard to conceive how he could have the time he needed to protect Lords Naitō and Matsukata and investigate Yanagimoto while also discovering a murderer. “A moment, please, Lord Arms Master,” he said, and closed his eyes.
As he thought he felt his spirit settle, become more centred. Knowing what he must do led to knowing how he could best go about it, which in turn led to the answer to the arms master’s question. “I will require your permission to speak to anyone in your household, my lord,” he said, “at any time I should have to. It may be necessary for me to visit the women’s quarters to examine the lady’s rooms, and so I also beg your permission to do this. I promise I will only do so if I can find no other way of obtaining the information I require.”
“Those are simple enough requests for me to grant. I will have my secretary draw up a —” A puzzled look overcame him and he settled back onto his heels, his breath coming out of him in a low, agonizing sigh.
“About that, my lord,” Hiroki said, keeping his voice as calm and respectful as he could. “Can you tell me why you suspect Kanegawa Akihiro of this murder?”
“Who else could it have been?” The arms master must have realized how unsatisfactory this sounded, because his face, already ill-looking, settled into something more appropriate to a stubborn child than to a powerful warrior. “Nobody else ever spent time with — with my sister.”
“My apologies, lord, but that isn’t true. I have only been here a few days and I can tell you of two other men who have visited Lady Tomiko in that time. One of those, Lord Hosokawa, was actually here this morning when we arrived.” And the other, he realized with a sharpening of his interest, had not been seen since his last visit here.
“Hosokawa-sama took his leave of Lady Tomiko this morning in my presence. And I wouldn’t suspect him even had I not seen him go,” the arms master said. “He would have no cause to murder my sister. As for the wakashū Togashi, he is a person of no consequence. And anyway he has not been here today.”
“That we know of,” Hiroki said. He waited a moment while the other men absorbed this. “How thoroughly are your walls patrolled, my lord? Could someone — someone familiar with this place, let us say — contrive to climb over the wall at the back of this compound without being seen?”
“I would have the head of any guard who let that happen.”
“As that may be,” Hiroki said. “It is not impossible, my lord. Is it?”
The arms master shook his head, but with obvious reluctance.
“I think that I will begin, then, by taking a walk around the back part of the wall, looking for any signs of passage over it. And then I think I should interview your secretary, if you will permit it.”
“You have my permission,” the lord said, “to interview anyone and everyone you think necessary. Just give me an answer, and quickly.”
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