Sowing Ghosts 4.5

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[Continuing chapter 4]

For some time after she had gone Hiroki stared, thinking, at the doorway through which she had vanished. Have I changed so much? She has hardly changed at all, he thought. Could it be that she had simply willed herself to forgetting she had ever had a son? Despite his best efforts this was not something he had ever accomplished where his own son was concerned.

He shook his head, as if the violence of the motion would drive all thought of the boy from his mind, and allowed himself a tiny smile. There was some relief, at least, in the thought she truly had not recognized him. The alternative would have been extremely uncomfortable — and it would have made his tasks in the capital next to impossible to accomplish.

He pulled his thoughts back to the empty shell of what had been, just hours ago, the Lady Tomiko of the friendly laugh and the unexpected kindness to visitors. He thought a silent blessing for her soul and prayed that her journey through the hells would be a quick one. Then, almost grateful to be distracted from the newly opened wounds to his own spirit, he knelt onto the mat as nearly as he could bring himself to the body.

The bruising on Lady Tomiko’s neck had spread, but where it was darkest and ugliest it was a line too narrow to have been caused by an obi sash as worn by either sex. Any thoughts Hiroki had had of the killing having been done by a woman vanished at the sight of that vile mark. There were plenty of cords on a man’s clothing that could have done such an injury, but nothing a woman wore — or carried with her, for that matter — could have been used.

The strangling could have been done with a sleeve-cord, if the killer had been a warrior dressed for battle. It could have been done with the cord tying a scabbard to the obi if the killer had carried his long katana into the house. But nobody so dressed could have gained access to any part of the Miyoshi mansion, with the exceptions of Lord Miyoshi or his bodyguard.

He shifted, and found himself pulled off-balance when the bottom of one trouser-leg caught between two mats. Freeing himself, he moved one mat down to look at Lady Miyoshi’s hands. The fingernails were clean, polished — unbroken. The palms, opened up as if in supplication, were unmarked. She had not struggled, then. What does that mean? He had to conclude that he didn’t know.

As he shifted to look again at the injuries to Lady Tomiko’s throat his eye was caught by a flash of colour. Something was caught in the narrow gap between two tatami.

It was a strip of cloth, of a light purple colour. Bending his head to the floor he could see splinters; he tried to pick out the cloth but found it gripped tightly. He got onto his haunches and drew his dagger from its sheath. By wedging its blade into the space between the mats he was able to make enough space to get his fingers into the gap and work lose the fabric.

One edge of the cloth was hemmed, the other ragged where it had torn. Some of the white-silk embroidery had come loose, the threads waving like the tentacles of tiny jellyfish in a violet ocean. It was, Hiroki decided, part of the hem of a kimono or hakama that had been caught — as had his own hakama — between mats.

The wearer of this piece of fabric, however, had been in too much of a hurry to leave the room to notice the fabric of his long, wide trousers catching and tearing.

Hiroki tucked the purple strip into one of his sleeves and returned to the central mansion. There he told Lord Naitō there was no question that Lady Tomiko had been strangled, and that she had died quickly. It was too much to think that she had not felt pain, but he hoped it had at least been brief.

“What will you do now?” Lord Naitō asked him. “We still have not heard from Tetsuo, though with this rain I cannot really be surprised at this.”

“No. I believe, Lord Naitō, that we will be able to work more effectively if we begin again tomorrow. I want to talk to some of the servants,” Hiroki said. “I want to know more about the clothing Kanegawa wears. I have other lines of enquiry I want to pursue, but I am tired and dirty and unfortunately corrupt. I must visit a shrine for purification before I can do anything else.”

“If you must do this purification ritual,” Lord Naitō said, “then I am afraid you must indeed go to a shrine. We have asked, and there is no priest here who can help you.”

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