You wouldn’t be so outspoken about your feelings if you knew you were a murder suspect, Sano thought. Kikunojo had just made his motive clear.

“What was he blackmailing you for?” he asked.

Kikunojo stood and untied his sash. He shed his outer- and under-kimonos. Beneath them he wore cotton pads over his chest, hips, and buttocks. These he removed to expose a slender but well-muscled body. Sano decided that Kikunojo would definitely have had the strength to kill Noriyoshi and Yukiko and throw their bodies into the river.

“There’s an odd story making the rounds,” Kikunojo said. “People are saying that Noriyoshi didn’t really commit suicide. That he was murdered. Have you heard?”

“I may have.” Even as Sano decided that Wisteria must have spread the story, he could appreciate Kikunojo’s trick. The actor had neatly avoided answering the question by throwing out an interesting fact. Such quick thinking bespoke a man intelligent enough to plan and execute an elaborate murder. “What was he blackmailing you for?” he repeated, refusing to fall for the trick.

Kikunojo took a man’s black silk kimono decorated with gold cartwheels and blue waves from the rack. This he put on over a blue under-kimono, tying it with a plain black sash. “I hardly think that’s any of your business,” he said.

He looked with feigned interest toward the door. Through a gap in the curtain, a portion of the stage was visible. The intermission entertainment had begun for those members of the audience who hadn’t left the theater. An actor dressed as a samurai performed the yariodori, a comic dance that poked fun at the retainers of daimyo. He waved and flicked his plumed war staff in the manner of a woman doing her spring housecleaning. The cheers presumably came from the commoners in the audience; the hisses and catcalls from the samurai.

“It is if Noriyoshi was murdered,” Sano said.

Kikunojo gave an exasperated sigh as he pulled a black cloak over his kimono. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’ve come here to find out.” When Sano didn’t reply, he said, “Oh, all right. Noriyoshi found out that I was seeing a married lady. Her husband would kill us both if he found out. You know how it is.”

Sano did. Kabuki theater had been founded about a hundred years before by a Shinto priestess from Izumo Shrine. But Kabuki had soon lost its religious associations. Courtesans took up the theatrics, and their lewd performances overstepped the bounds of propriety. Male admirers vied for their favors, often creating public disturbances. The government responded by banning female performers from the theater. Since then, all female roles had been played by men. But the troubles hadn’t ended. Onnagata proved just as adept at creating scandal as the courtesans. They attracted both women who found their masquerade titillating and men who simply liked men. Kikunojo, with his clandestine affair, was part of a tradition.

“The shogun can do as he pleases-with the wives and daughters of his ministers, yet,” Kikunojo continued. “But we ordinary adulterers get punished, if not by irate spouses, then by the authorities. What do you think of that, yoriki?”

Sano thought that Kikunojo had once again tried to divert the conversation. “Rank commands privileges, Kikunojo-san. Now, about Noriyoshi?”

Kikunojo shot him a look of grudging respect. “Noriyoshi kept asking for more and more money,” he said. “He bled me dry. Finally, about a month ago, I got to thinking: if he talked, who would believe him? It would be his word against mine, and who was he? So I took the chance. I said I wasn’t going to pay anymore, and I told him why.” Kikunojo took a white bridal kimono and red under-kimono from the rack and laid them on a square cloth with fresh socks and purple kerchief, the wig he’d removed, and a selection of makeup. “I should have done it a long time ago. Because he never talked, and he never asked for any more money.”

If Kikunojo had really stopped paying, where had the money in Noriyoshi’s room come from, Sano wondered. He saw a way to take advantage of the opening Kikunojo had given him.

“Suppose Noriyoshi was murdered,” he said. “Could you prove you were somewhere else when it happened?”

Kikunojo laughed as he tied the ends of the cloth around his possessions. “My good man, even if I’d wanted to kill Noriyoshi, I wouldn’t have had the time. The night he died, I had a rehearsal until well after midnight. We’re starting a new play tomorrow. After that… ” His smile eerily evoked the lovely Princess Taema. “After that, I was with my lady.”

“Would she corroborate that?”

The onnagata bent a pitying look on Sano. “Of course not. Didn’t I say she’s married? And don’t bother asking me her name, because I won’t tell you.”

Sano clenched his teeth together in annoyance. Getting facts from people during an unofficial murder investigation was proving difficult indeed. He had no legal means of forcing them to tell him anything, and any illegal methods he used would undoubtedly attract Magistrate Ogyu’s attention.

“Any more questions?” Kikunojo asked.

“One. Are you acquainted with Lord Niu’s daughter, Yukiko?”

Although Sano watched Kikunojo’s face closely, he saw no hint of uneasiness, only mild surprise at an apparently irrelevant question.

“Yukiko,” the actor said, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. “Yes, I think I’ve seen her. The whole Niu family attends the theater often.”

If Kikunojo had killed Noriyoshi and Yukiko, his admission could be a clever way of implying that he had nothing to hide. Besides, Sano could easily have learned that the Nius were Kabuki enthusiasts, and a lie would have aroused his suspicion. Sano tried to imagine how and why the murders might have taken place. Maybe Kikunojo had killed Yukiko because she’d somehow witnessed Noriyoshi’s murder.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to go now,” Kikunojo said. “I’m late already.” Then, very casually, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he added, “If you think that Noriyoshi got killed by someone he was blackmailing, then perhaps you should talk to a certain sumo wrestler named Raiden.”

Again Sano admired Kikunojo’s quick intelligence. What better way to divert suspicion than to direct it toward someone else?

“What did Noriyoshi have on him?” he asked.

Kikunojo shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Raiden.” He slid open the dressing room’s outer door, letting in a gust of cool wind from the street.

The prospect of seeing an onnagata walk casually out the door in male attire drew Sano’s interest momentarily from the investigation. “I thought you always appeared in public dressed as a woman,” he said.

“Sometimes I have to sacrifice my art for the sake of privacy,” Kikunojo explained. “If I were to venture outside in those”-he waved toward his kimonos and wigs-“people would recognize me. Some of my more persistent and adoring admirers might follow me. And I can’t have that. Not today-I have a very personal matter to attend to. A pity, though. I’ll have to get dressed all over again when I get there.” He slung the bundle over his shoulder.

Kikunojo was going to see his lady, Sano realized belatedly. Although why the actor needed to take along a bridal kimono was more than he cared to think about.

Lowering his eyes demurely, the onnagata smiled. “Sayōnara, yoriki,” he murmured, bowing low. Without makeup or costume, he became a woman before Sano’s eyes. Then the great Kikunojo turned and dashed into the street, a nondescript man quickly lost in the crowd.

On impulse, Sano followed him. Kikunojo had a motive for Noriyoshi’s murder and a connection with the Nius. He also had the intelligence to plan and the strength to carry out the murders. In male dress, he could move freely about the city without attracting attention. His presence at the rehearsal could be verified by the other actors, but had he really spent the rest of the night with a lady? Sano had to find out who she was. To do that, he could spend hours questioning the theater gossips-or let the onnagata lead him straight there.