Sowing Ghosts 18.2

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[continuing chapter 18]

Perhaps it was simply the shock of hearing the accusation spoken aloud, but Kanegawa Akihiro’s rigid composure — and posture — shattered and collapsed.

“It was the end of everything,” he said, sobbing into his hands. “Her decision destroyed me. If she told our lord what we had been doing I would be disgraced or even executed for the part I had played in negotiating with a clan the Miyoshi oppose.”

“And you were overcome?” the arms master asked. “You lost your self-control in your anger?”
Kanegawa nodded, wordlessly. Hiroki frowned at the lord.

“I am sorry, my lord, but this was not the spontaneous action of a passionate man driven past his ability to control himself.”


“But you yourself just said that Kanegawa had lost his self-control,” the lord said.

“No, my lord. I said he abandoned his self-control.” Hiroki turned his head to Kanegawa. “You wrestled with the problem the night after Lady Tomiko told you of her decision. Then, the next next morning, you asked to see her. Perhaps she thought you wanted to try to dissuade her from the course of action she had chosen.

“What you wanted, though, was to kill her, so she would remain forever silent concerning your part in this affair. This was not a crime of passion,” Hiroki said to Lord Miyoshi. “Whatever it may have been, it was not spontaneous.”

“You don’t know what I was feeling,” Kanegawa said. “You couldn’t know.”

“Oh, but I could. I do.” Hiroki glanced at the arms master for a breath before turning back to stare at Kanegawa. “I wanted to believe that you hadn’t done it, and I let my desire cloud my judgment. I thought your desire to fight was an honourable one, and because of this I could not think of any valid reason for your having murdered your friend.”

He reached into his sleeve for the papers Jitsuko had given him. “You yourself, Kanegawa, provided me with the information that allowed me to understand why you had done what you did.” He held up the papers and asked a guard, “Please give these to my lord.”

Kanegawa’s eyes widened when he saw the scorched papers, but his mouth remained clamped shut.
“What is this?” the arms master asked after looking at the papers. “This brushwork is worse than a child’s.”

“It is, in fact, the work of the young woman Aki, your sister’s maid,” Hiroki said. “Kanegawa Akihiro’s brush is known throughout both shogunates, I would guess, and very early in this affair he seems to have decided to use Aki as a means of deflecting suspicion from him. He wrote up the messages he wanted sent, then had Aki copy them until he had something that was more or less comprehensible. The last piece of paper you hold is what remains of one of Kanegawa’s original notes” — that was the one in which Kanegawa told Kita Hayato: I am confident you can do this. They are searching the city for a samurai with a scar on his head; because they are from the provinces they should be easy to spot. It is important you succeed in this. These men must not live to complete Miyoshi Takahashi’s commission and solve the crime. Do this for me, Kita, and I will help you as soon as I can. — “which he had ordered Aki to destroy. It was only because someone else in the women’s quarters wanted paper in which to press cherry-blossoms that I was able to see the note this evening and reach the conclusions I have.” Kanegawa’s eyes closed and he sighed.

Hiroki turned back to the arms master. “Kanegawa told her he was teaching her reading and writing, but he never really did try to teach her to read. The last message Aki wrote out for him contained her death-sentence. Because she could not read what she had written, she could not know. But I am sorry to have to tell you, Kanegawa, that we were able to kill your hired assassin before he could murder Akamatsu Noritoyo and Lady Inaki Sakiko — the only persons other than you and Aki who knew that Lady Tomiko was preparing to renounce the world.”

“Who is Kita?” Lord Miyoshi asked Kanegawa, waving the papers he held clutched in his hand.

“A rōnin,” Kanegawa said. “Looking for honourable service, as I was.” He swallowed, and then the words emerged in a torrent.

“When I realized that you had hired these men, my lord, to discover Lady Tomiko’s killer, I lost my head. I wrote to Kita Hayato, instructing him to kill them quickly. But he failed to do this. I was desperate and so I thought to — to do as this Yoshino Hiroki says. But I swear, my lord, that this was an act of desperation. Everything that has happened came out of that first moment of fear and madness.”

“That is what I told myself,” Hiroki said to him. “Even when I knew that you had killed Lady Tomiko, Kanegawa, I wanted to believe that everything you did afterward was something you were driven to by the trap you felt closing around you.

“But I was wrong about that, and it took another death, tonight, to make me realize how mistaken I was.”

“Another death?” Lord Miyoshi asked.

“That of Lady Tomiko’s wakashū friend, Togashi Shokan.”

“What did his death have to do with anything? He was killed by Hosokawa, his former lover, and with just cause. Your investigation proved he had nothing to do with my sister’s murder.”

“That is the point exactly, my lord.” Hiroki turned back to Kanegawa. “If Togashi had nothing to do with the murder, why did we find his hakama in your privy?”

Hiroki heard the sharp intake of breath; it didn’t matter who had done it, so long as the others began to realize.

“The only reason those hakama were in the privy is because they were put there for us to find. And why would a man put them there after committing a murder unless he had planned to do this thing, and wanted somebody else to be blamed for it?”

Next    Characters    Chapter 1    Chapter 2    Chapter 3    Chapter 4    Chapter 5    Chapter 6
Chapter 7    Chapter 8    Chapter 9    Chapter 10    Chapter 11    Chapter 12    Chapter 13    Chapter 14
Chapter 15    Chapter 16    Chapter 17    Chapter 18