“We’ll have to find out who the spy is and get rid of him,” Hirata said, dabbing a cloth against his eye. It was red, swollen, and runny from Haru’s clawing. He said unhappily, “I thought I knew those men, and I’ve never had cause to question their loyalty to you. If the Black Lotus can corrupt a samurai’s honor, it must be strong-and dangerous.”

“We’ll continue looking into the sect until we discover the truth,” Sano said as they walked toward the mansion. “But at least we’ve got the person who’s responsible for the deaths we were assigned to investigate.”

Inside, they found Reiko in the parlor with Midori. The pretty maid O-hana was pouring tea for them. When Sano and Hirata entered the room, the women bowed. Midori and O-hana murmured polite greetings, but Reiko neither spoke nor looked at Sano. She sat rigid, her lips compressed. Sano braced himself for a confrontation.

Midori gazed up at Hirata with a joy that turned to surprise. She exclaimed, “What happened to your eye?”

“I got injured working on the investigation,” Hirata said proudly.

“Let me see.” Jumping up, Midori leaned close to examine the wound. “Does it hurt much?”

“Oh, it’s not too bad.”

A peculiar expression crossed Midori’s face, and she flounced away from Hirata. “Well, don’t let it drip on anything,” she said, her anxious concern turned to coldness.

Sano and Hirata both stared at her, bewildered. A muscle twitched in Reiko’s cheek. O-hana hurried over to Hirata.

“But of course it hurts,” she cooed. “Come to the kitchen, and I’ll make an herb poultice for you.”

As the pair left the room, Hirata glanced over his shoulder at Midori. She hesitated, then hurried after him. Sano knelt opposite Reiko.

“What’s the matter with Midori?” Sano asked.

Reiko gazed fixedly at the tea bowl in her hands. She shrugged. Hostility radiated from her.

“Where’s Masahiro?”

“In bed asleep.”

Her quiet voice was tight, and Sano saw on the surface of her tea the reflected lantern light quivering with the tension of her grip. Silence descended upon them, ominous as a coming storm; the faraway voices of the maids tinkled like wind chimes in a gale.

“How could you arrest her?” Reiko said, still not looking at Sano.

“How could you go to the temple and then to Shinagawa after I told you not to?” Sano said, offended by her discourteous manner and implied criticism of his actions. “You did go, didn’t you? That’s why you were out so late.”

Reiko ignored his questions, but Sano knew he was right. “You didn’t even tell me,” she said bitterly. “Had I not stopped at my father’s house, I wouldn’t have known about Haru.”

Sano forced down the anger that roiled in him. Although he thought Reiko should accept defeat with grace, he must be generous if he wanted to restore peace. “I’m sorry for not telling you, but I didn’t know what was going to happen when I questioned Haru, and afterward, there wasn’t time.”

“You knew you were going. You could have at least told me that much.”

With an effort, Sano ignored the rebuke, and his guilty notion that maybe he’d been unfair to his wife. “Do you know that Haru attacked Hirata and me?”

Reiko nodded, unrelenting.

“It was important to put Haru in jail where she couldn’t hurt anyone else,” Sano said. “If you’d been there, you would have agreed.”

“If I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened!” Now Reiko lifted her furious gaze to Sano and set down her tea bowl.

“You mean you would have prevented her from confessing,” Sano said as exasperation overcame his good intentions. “You would have foiled my attempts to get the truth from her. That’s why I didn’t tell you I was going to interview Haru.”

“I beg to disagree,” Reiko said with icy politeness. “I would have prevented you from bullying Haru into saying what you wanted her to say. That’s what you did, isn’t it? And that’s the real reason you didn’t want me there.”

Maybe he had been rough with the girl, Sano thought, but not excessively. “She said plenty on her own. She did her best to direct my suspicion toward Dr. Miwa and Abbess Junketsu-in. “ Sano described Haru’s stories about the doctor threatening Chie and the abbess trying to get rid of the woman.

“I think Haru was telling the truth about them,” Reiko said, convinced by her personal knowledge of the pair.

“Haru voluntarily incriminated herself,” Sano said. “It was my duty to arrest her.”

“Pardon me, but that was no confession.” Reiko rose. “You choose to believe so, but… ” She drew a deep breath in an attempt to calm down, then said in a forced conciliatory tone, “Please don’t persecute Haru just because you’re angry at me.”

“I’m not!” Sano shouted. He stood too, incensed at her suggestion that he would let a marital feud provoke him to accuse someone unfairly. “I’m trying to serve justice, and you’re obstructing it!”

“You’re rushing to judgment, and I’m trying to save you from a terrible mistake!”

Hirata came into the room, holding a thick, damp cloth pouch over his injured eye. A tearful Midori followed. They watched Sano and Reiko in dismay.

“You will stop trying to sabotage my case by meddling with witnesses as you did at the temple today,” Sano said.

“I’m not sabotaging you,” Reiko said. “I want justice, too, and I’ve found information that contradicts what Haru’s enemies have said about her. High Priest Anraku says her character is good.”

“That’s not what he told me,” Sano said, recalling his interview with Anraku that afternoon. “When I told him I’d arrested Haru, he said it was for the best and offered whatever help he could provide in concluding the investigation.”

Reiko’s expression went from shock to disbelief, then grim understanding. She said, “Anraku must have turned against Haru after I talked to him. The Black Lotus is protecting itself by sacrificing Haru. The sect must have committed the crimes, under Anraku’s orders.”

Her manipulation of logic annoyed Sano. “Either Anraku is a good character witness or he’s an evil slanderer. You can’t have it both ways. And he didn’t seem dangerous. A bit odd, but no more so than many priests.”

“You would think differently if you’d seen him with Lady Keisho-in,” Reiko said.

“You shouldn’t have seen him with Lady Keisho-in. I told you to stay away from her. While I’m trying to protect our family’s safety and livelihood, you deliberately endanger us!”

Reiko averted her gaze for an instant. In a swift change of subject, she said, “After leaving the temple, I went to Shinagawa.” She described poisoned wells, noxious fumes, a mysterious epidemic, more reported kidnappings, then an explosion and fire in a building owned by the Black Lotus. “Minister Fugatami believes the sect is working up to even more serious trouble. He’s going to speak to the Council of Elders tomorrow, and he invited you to attend the meeting.”

“That’s out of the question,” Sano said, appalled that Reiko had again attempted to involve him in Minister Fugatami’s crusade. “For me to publicly ally myself with a man of such shaky reputation in the bakufu would damage my standing in the shogun’s court and strip me of power to accomplish anything at all.”

“I beg you to go.” Reiko extended her hands to Sano in a gesture of desperate entreaty. “We must stop the Black Lotus’s attacks and make sure we find the real killer!”

“I already have found her,” Sano retorted. Reiko started to protest, but Sano cut her off: “Whatever facts Minister Fugatami has, he can present them at Haru’s trial. We’ll have no further discussion.”

A patter of footsteps penetrated the lethal atmosphere. Everyone turned as Masahiro trotted through the parlor door. Clad in a blue nightshirt, his hair tousled from sleep, he carried a small wooden container.

“Mama. Papa,” he said. Beaming at them, he rattled the contents of the container. “Play!”