Claws of the Cat Page 2

  “Mayuri owns the Sakura Teahouse,” Father Mateo said.

  Hiro didn’t need the explanation. Successful entertainers often bought or inherited houses when they retired, and although she was now too old to sing and dance for men’s amusement, Mayuri would have won hearts and emptied pockets in younger days.

  She stepped back from the door. “Come in.”

  The cedar floor of the entry gleamed like honey beneath her sock-clad feet. Hiro pitied the servant tasked with keeping it clean. He stepped out of his geta and onto the raised floor, but paused to let Father Mateo enter first. Hiro always reinforced the impression that Father Mateo deserved great deference and respect, while Hiro himself was merely a low-ranked scribe.

  A shinobi’s first and greatest defense was misdirection.

  Six tatami covered the entry floor. Most entries measured no more than four mats, and the extra space conveyed a sense of luxury and light. A decorative screen by the eastern wall showed merchants and samurai cavorting with courtly ladies.

  Hiro inhaled the scent of expensive cedar mixed with something faint and sweet that reminded him of distant flowers in bloom.

  Ahead and to the right, an open doorway led to the central foyer, but before Mayuri could lead them through Father Mateo asked, “Has there really been a murder?”

  Mayuri raised her painted eyebrows at his directness.

  Hiro pretended not to notice. The Jesuit tried to behave like a Japanese, but his Western nature showed through under stress. At least he hadn’t run his hand through his hair yet.

  Mayuri kept silent long enough to indicate her disapproval. “A samurai is dead.”

  “Surely Sayuri didn’t kill him,” Father Mateo said.

  Mayuri’s lack of reply said more than enough.

  “I don’t believe it,” the priest insisted. “May I see her?”

  Mayuri inclined her head in consent. “Follow me.”

  She led them into the square, twelve-mat foyer. Sliding doors on the eastern and western walls led to private rooms, three on either side, where the teahouse women entertained their guests. Unlike prostitutes, who needed only space for a futon, true entertainers required room to sing and dance as well as a hearth for serving meals and tea.

  Another door, in the northern wall, stood open to the informal room beyond, where the women gathered for meals and conversation or to wait for guests to arrive. Hiro averted his eyes. Polite people did not stare into private spaces and he had already seen enough to know the room held no imminent threat.

  Mayuri knelt on the floor before the second sliding door on the western side.

  As she arranged her kimono around her knees Father Mateo whispered, “Why is she kneeling?”

  “No proper entertainer opens an interior door while standing,” Hiro murmured. “Didn’t Sayuri do the same?”

  “I told her Christians kneel only to God.”

  Before Hiro could reply Mayuri looked up. “Sayuri will explain what you see, but be warned. You may find the scene … disturbing.”

  “You haven’t cleaned it up?” An edge of frustration clipped Father Mateo’s words.

  Hiro made a mental note to refresh the priest’s memory of etiquette. Dead samurai didn’t mind insults and accusations, but the living often felt differently.

  Mayuri sat up straighter and raised her chin. “Akechi-sama’s family has the right to see what happened.”

  Her powdered face betrayed no emotion, but the words told Hiro more than she realized. Teahouse owners protected their performers like samurai guarded their honor. Mayuri’s refusal to clear the scene meant she thought the girl was guilty.

  Mayuri fixed her eyes on the men. She clasped her hands, but not before Hiro saw them shaking.

  “Why are you waiting?” Hiro asked.

  “We have seen death before,” the Jesuit added.

  “Not like this,” she said, and drew back the door.

  Chapter 3

  The scent of copper wafted from the room.

  Father Mateo froze in the doorway. Hiro stopped short behind him, barely avoiding a collision. As he looked over the priest’s shoulder, he was grateful for the samurai tradition that forbade emotional responses to tragedy.

  Because Hiro had seen death like this before.

  The north wall of the room was spotted and streaked with blood. Circular droplets spattered the tokonoma and streaked the wall on both sides of the decorative alcove.

  A crescent-shaped pool of drying blood soaked the tatami in front of the tokonoma, and a wavering bloody trail connected the pool to a dead samurai lying faceup on a thin mattress beside the central hearth. He was naked except for a blood-drenched loincloth clinging to his hips.

  The Jesuit stepped through the door and Hiro followed. The coppery scent grew stronger, with undertones of salt. Hiro inhaled carefully but detected no smell of sweat. The dead man had not put up a very long fight.

  Rusty droplets spattered the dead man’s legs from thigh to knee. Multiple jagged slash marks gouged his ruined throat. They seemed to start on the right-hand side, about where neck met shoulder, and ended just short of the samurai’s left ear.

  Three vertical stab wounds marked the dead man’s chest, like punctures from short, thin daggers. A metallic glimmer in the center wound suggested a broken blade, but Hiro couldn’t see it well enough to judge the type. He fought the urge to step closer. Most Japanese considered death defiling, and though Hiro didn’t hold with superstition he wouldn’t risk his cover to satisfy his curiosity.

  He looked for the samurai’s clothes. A neatly folded blue kimono and obi lay on the floor before the alcove, just below the blood-spattered vase of hydrangeas that sat on the tokonoma shelf. The bloody drops that marked the clothing suggested it was folded before the attack.

  Hiro’s eyes were drawn to the vase. Hydrangeas symbolized love and heartfelt feelings. He wondered if the samurai lived long enough to see his feelings spattered on the wall. The amount of blood and the vicious wounds suggested his death came quickly and by surprise.

  A tiny girl, perhaps sixteen years old, knelt to the right of the tokonoma. Her long-fingered hands rested in the lap of her bloodstained kimono and her face tilted downward toward the floor. Her posture suggested patience but her shallow breathing betrayed her hidden fear.

  Father Mateo knelt before the girl. She looked up, and her smooth lips trembled as she raised her hands to hide her mouth. Tradition allowed her more emotion than a man, but not by much.

  Skin-colored tear trails lined her powdered cheeks and dark shadows hollowed her midnight eyes, but Hiro had rarely seen a more beautiful girl. In fact, he knew only one, and he usually tried not to think of her at all.

  “Father Mateo.” Sayuri regained control and lowered her hands. “I’m so glad you came. I worried you might refuse. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.”

  “Of course not,” Father Mateo said. “What happened?”

  Mayuri remained kneeling in the open door, so Hiro stood by the entrance. He never turned his back on potential threats, and at that moment everyone was a threat.

  “Akechi-san came to the teahouse as usual.” Sayuri nodded at the corpse, but kept her eyes on Father Mateo. “I entertained him several nights a week—just singing and dinner and talk, nothing you said was forbidden.”

  “This is a high-class house.” Mayuri sniffed. “The brothels are in Pontocho.”

  Hiro gave the woman a sideways look. The priest would interpret her words as defense of Sayuri, but Hiro heard only concern for the reputation of the house.

  “I haven’t come to condemn you,” Father Mateo said, and Hiro knew he meant it. The Jesuit’s capacity for trust and forgiveness never ceased to impress his shinobi guardian. On occasion, Hiro also found it irritating.

  “Akechi-san stayed very late,” Sayuri continued. “Most of the guests had gone home. I was tired and wanted to go to bed, but he wouldn’t leave. I said I needed to visit the latrine but he didn’t take the hint, so I went to Ma
yuri and asked her to intervene.”

  She looked to the doorway. Mayuri nodded.

  “Then I went to the latrine,” Sayuri said. “When I returned, Akechi-san said he wanted to spend the night. He was too drunk to ride home. I sang to him and he fell asleep. I must have been a little drunk myself, because I fell asleep shortly afterward.

  “When I woke up he was dead.”

  Sayuri’s lips quivered. A single tear rolled down her cheek. Her right hand rose to wipe it away and then returned to her lap.

  Hiro thought it a perfect performance—too perfect for the truth.

  “It’s not your fault,” Father Mateo said.

  “It must have been a shinobi,” Mayuri offered. “I was in my room all night, and I heard nothing.”

  “Shinobi,” Father Mateo repeated. “That’s the same as ninja, isn’t it?”

  Mayuri looked down her nose at the priest. After a very long moment she said, “Yes, though only a Chinese would pronounce the word that way.”

  Hiro’s gaze returned to the corpse. The samurai’s oiled pigtail had come loose from its leather band. Strands of graying hair hung around his face and trailed on the floor.

  Hiro shook his head. Not even a dead samurai deserved the shame of ruined hair. Then he noticed something worse. The killer had gouged out the corpse’s eyes. The empty sockets were crusted with drying blood.

  Hiro had seen many corpses, but that was a first.

  He looked over the corpse very carefully. Once again he noticed the glimmer of polished metal in the dead man’s chest. This time he decided to look more closely.

  He faked a cough and raised a hand to his stomach. “I am sorry. May I get some air?”

  Mayuri frowned as Hiro started across the room toward the sliding veranda door.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she snapped. “I don’t want the scene disturbed.”

  Hiro wondered if she was lying or just didn’t realize that the body had been moved.

  As he passed the corpse he eyed the cuts in the samurai’s chest. Drying blood obscured the wounds, but the parallel slits seemed identical in diameter and almost but not quite equidistant, like slashes from a tiger’s claws. A fragment of metal glinted in the center wound. As Hiro suspected, the killer’s blade had broken.

  He saw no more before he reached the door, pushed it open, and stepped outside. Long thatched eaves extended over the porch, supported by round pillars at ten-foot intervals along the veranda’s edge. Beyond the porch lay a narrow yard punctuated with cherry trees. Beneath them, flowers bloomed in ornamental gardens. Granite lanterns and a black stone Buddha stood between the flower beds. Bright green moss covered the Buddha’s rounded belly.

  Aside from a scattering of leaves on the grass, most likely dislodged by the previous night’s brief but violent storm, Hiro saw no sign of disturbance in the garden. No footprints marked the grass and the only broken flowers were bent down by the force of rain. No bloody footprints stained the veranda, either. Hiro hadn’t expected any. The prints in the room stopped at the door, with the last ones positioned roughly side by side. Whoever made them had stopped to put on shoes, or at least remove bloody socks. The trail ended there.

  To the right, a small rectangular building protruded beyond the end of the teahouse. Hiro stepped to the edge of the porch and peered around the eaves. The outlying building had a thatched roof and an open door on the narrow end. Lanterns hanging outside the entrance and slatted windows near the roof suggested a latrine.

  A pair of ancient cherry trees stood between the latrine and the garden wall that separated the Sakura from the house next door. The larger tree stood almost thirty feet high, with the smaller one only three or four feet shorter. They reached over the wall toward the neighboring house like giant thieves determined to pick the neighbors’ pockets.

  Hiro returned to the open doorway and looked back into the room. Mayuri had disappeared and the interior door was closed. Father Mateo knelt beside Sayuri. Their heads were bowed in prayer.

  As Hiro stepped across the threshold, shouting echoed through the walls. It came from the front of the teahouse—angry, demanding, and male.

  Hiro hurried to place himself between the priest and the inner door. Unless he missed his guess, the dead man’s relative had arrived.

  Chapter 4

  The door slid open. A young samurai stormed into the room with his hand on the hilt of his katana. He took two steps toward the hearth and froze in shock.

  The stranger stood half a head shorter than Hiro, with a shaved forehead and long black hair pulled back in a samurai knot. He looked very young, no more than nineteen, and slender, with a narrow face and a thin mustache that looked more like a shadow on his lip. He wore baggy hakama trousers and a wide-shouldered surcoat of bright patterned silk, and he swaggered more than appropriate for his age.

  His clothes and attitude suggested a dōshin, or local policeman, come to investigate a disturbance.

  Hiro wondered who had called him. Although all policemen were samurai, only commoners needed the help of magistrates and police. Samurai families enforced the law themselves.

  The stranger’s nose reddened. The flush spread all the way to his half-shaved scalp. His pigtail quivered and his hand trembled on his sword. His eyes remained locked on the corpse.

  “What happened here?” he gasped.

  Mayuri had not stood up after opening the door. She bowed her head to the floor at once, and when she pushed herself to a kneeling position she looked very small and vulnerable. Fear thawed her icy exterior like boiling tea on snow.

  “I apologize a thousand times, Akechi-sama,” she said, using the highest honorific to show respect. “We did not … we hoped you would see … an assassin is to blame.”

  The samurai whirled and pointed at Mayuri. “He was murdered in your teahouse. You are to blame.” He turned to the dead man and dropped to his knees. “Find something to cover my father.”

  Hiro’s mind buzzed a warning. Membership in the Kyoto police was generally inherited, with positions passed from retiring father to son. A dead samurai meant trouble for Sayuri. Dead policemen were trouble for everyone, especially with an arrogant dōshin son.

  He wished he and Father Mateo had arrived later, or not at all.

  Mayuri bowed to the floor again, but not before Hiro saw the terror in her eyes.

  Sayuri stood and lifted the dead man’s kimono.

  The dōshin whipped his head around and snapped, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Sayuri froze, eyes wide. The silk kimono unfolded in her hands and slipped toward the floor. She clutched it to her chest to keep it from falling.

  The young man’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears but his fists were clenched at his sides. “How dare you defile his kimono with bloody hands!”

  The kimono was already ruined, but Hiro suspected the dead man’s son wasn’t thinking very clearly. With good reason.

  Hiro held out his hand for the garment. “I’ll do it.”

  The young samurai blinked and his eyebrows rose in surprise. They lurched downward again as he noticed the foreign priest. He jumped to his feet. He stood barely as tall as Sayuri but his rage made him seem much taller.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  Hiro bowed. “I am Matsui Hiro, interpreter and scribe. This is Father Mateo Ávila de Santos, a priest of the foreign religion, from Portugal.”

  The young man’s face turned purple. He rounded on Mayuri. “How dare you allow a foreign ghost in this room!” He shifted his glare to Hiro and his hand returned to the hilt of his katana. “Remove him at once, before I remove his head.”

  Hiro admired the way the youth channeled his grief into anger, but recognized the threat of a violent outburst. Keeping himself between the samurai and the priest, Hiro retrieved the kimono from Sayuri and spread it over the body. He took care not to touch the corpse.

  When he finished, he said, “The priest is under shogunate prot
ection. Ashikaga Yoshiteru personally invited him to live and work in Kyoto.”

  “That gives him no right to defile my father’s body.”

  “The presence of a priest does not defile the dead,” Hiro said. “He has not touched your father. He came to comfort this woman, who shares his faith.”

  Hiro switched to Portuguese. “We should leave.”

  “What did you say?” the samurai demanded. “Speak Japanese!”

  “Father Mateo does not speak our language well.” Hiro hoped the priest would play along. “I told him that you wanted him to leave.”

  The young man narrowed his eyes at Hiro. His hand remained on the hilt of his sword, and he trembled like a wild boar preparing to attack.

  Adrenaline rushed through Hiro’s limbs, though he kept his hands at his sides. He didn’t want to kill a policeman if he could avoid it.

  Father Mateo seemed unaware of the danger. “I’m not leaving,” he said in Portuguese. He nodded at Sayuri. “She needs our help.”

  Hiro turned his head just enough to catch the Jesuit’s eye. “We need to go now, immediately.”

  “I’m taking Sayuri with me.” Father Mateo beckoned to the girl and started for the door.

  The gesture needed no translation.

  “Stay where you are!” the young man barked.

  Sayuri froze, mouth open and eyes wide.

  Father Mateo drew a breath. At the last moment he seemed to remember that he didn’t know Japanese well. He closed his mouth and said nothing.

  “She claims she didn’t kill your father,” Hiro said. “There is no reason for her to stay.”

  “Please, Nobuhide.” Fresh tears appeared in Sayuri’s eyes and her knuckles whitened as she gripped her hands together. “Don’t kill me.”

  Nobuhide ignored her. “This is the woman my father spent his evenings with. Her kimono is stained with his blood, and I see only a woman’s footprints on the floor.”

  He pointed at the trail of tiny prints that led from the silk-draped body to the door. Hiro agreed that they looked feminine, but wasn’t as quick to make damning assumptions based on circumstance.