Kobe looked despondent. He muttered, “Bitch! They did it, all right! That actor gave himself away. He’s the weak link, and we’ll beat it out of him. You’d think the woman would fall apart first, but she is the real demon. I was hoping to tie the case up before the New Year.”
Akitada nodded. He felt responsible. If he had checked the background of the people involved more carefully, this would not have happened. Yasaburo’s confusing references to daughters should have warned him. It had never been quite clear if he referred to Nobuko or both sisters. Kojiro had cleared up the discrepancy, but his information should have been checked, particularly since he had never met Nobuko’s sister. Harada had been vague also, probably because he never spent time with Yasaburo’s family and saw the girls only from a distance. It explained also why he had not recognized Nobuko in her makeup and costume.
Kobe growled, “Curse that man for producing two such daughters! What now?”
Akitada rose with a sigh. “We will go out and ask more questions.” He was still sore and tired easily, but he owed Kobe another effort and had made a promise to Kojiro. “I shall talk to Miss Plumblossom and the other actors again. Perhaps you could send someone to Kohata?”
Kobe nodded glumly. “I’ll go myself. A fine New Year’s Day, plodding through the mud for hours to talk to drunken farmers and locals. Not to mention that half-wit.”
The night air was thick with the scent of pine torches and greenery as Akitada walked south toward the river. A faintly lit haze of smoke hovered over the dark rooftops and towering pines. People were still celebrating with muffled cries and laughter, and here and there groups of drunken revelers staggered home. Some of them would tumble into the frozen canals and sober up quickly. Some perhaps would not have the strength to save themselves and would die an icy death.
Akitada shivered and walked faster, hoping to find Miss Plumblossom and the others still awake. He was encouraged by the sounds of lute and zither coming from the houses in the pleasure quarter, and by the many people crowding the streets.
Lights shone from behind the high paper-covered windows of the training hall, and he heard laughter. The old doorkeeper let him in, pointing toward the end of the hall. Apparently all the oil lamps and lanterns had been gathered around Miss Plumblossom’s dais. She held court on her chair, her maid on the dais beside her and a group of actors and acrobats clustered around. Tora and Genba sat on the floor at her feet.
They had been celebrating. Cups and pitchers of wine and trays of food littered the floor, and their faces were flushed. Tora and Genba jumped up guiltily when they saw Akitada.
“We were invited for a nightcap,” Genba said.
Tora asked, “Is something wrong, sir?”
“No, but we have run into a problem. Mrs. Nagaoka claims to be her sister.”
Something clattered and there was a gasp. Surprised, they looked at the maid, who had dropped her fan and raised a hand to her mouth, staring at Akitada with wide, horrified eyes.
“Yukiyo,” said her mistress severely, “you’ve been acting very peculiar ever since we got back. What is the matter with you?”
The maid snatched up her fan and hid her face again. “Nothing, nothing.”
“Nonsense, girl! You know something. I recall you asking a lot of questions about Danjuro and his wife. Out with it!”
The maid cried out and struggled to her feet, but Miss Plumblossom’s pudgy hand clamped around her arm. “Sit, girl! I’ll not have you cause more trouble after all I’ve done for you. You’ve made enough of a mess already. Look what you did to poor Tora! Is that any way to pay me back, you ungrateful girl? I took you off the streets when you were starving and gave you a home. I’ve been a mother to you.”
Yukiyo collapsed like a straw doll and wrapped her arms around Miss Plumblossom’s knees. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “By the gods of heaven and earth, I would do anything for you.”
Akitada tensed. That strange phrase about the ancient gods again! The upper-class speech belied the maid’s present status. And that peculiar gesture. She, too, had raised her knuckles to her mouth. His heart pounding, he asked, “Who are you really?”
Miss Plumblossom frowned. “Yukiyo? Is there something you haven’t told me?”
Yukiyo mumbled something unintelligible.
“What?” she asked. “You gave your word about what?”
Akitada stepped closer. “Are you Yugao?”
More whispers. Miss Plumblossom’s painted eyebrows rose.
Akitada urged, “Miss Plumblossom, if she is Yugao and protecting her sister Nobuko, she must testify. She is our only hope in bringing the murderers of three people to justice.”
Miss Plumblossom reached down and touched the sobbing woman’s head. “He is right, child,” she said.
“Answer my question!” Akitada cried impatiently. “If you are Yugao, your sister plotted the murders of your own father and her husband. If we cannot prove her identity, the killers will go free and the dead will have no peace.”
Yukiyo clutched Miss Plumblossom tightly and wailed. Miss Plumblossom looked old and sad, her rounded cheeks and double chin sagging. “Poor child,” she murmured, patting the weeping girl’s back, “poor child. Don’t grieve! You’ll always have a home with me, no matter what happens. You shall be the daughter I never had. Now sit up proper and wipe your face. You’re among friends and you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve done your filial duty. Which is more than I can say for that evil creature.”
They all held their breath. Yukiyo laid down her fan, and raised her disfigured face to Akitada. Struggling to speak through torn lips, she said tonelessly, “Yes, you found out the truth. I’m Yugao. I don’t know how you guessed. My own sister did not recognize me.”
Akitada smiled encouragingly. “You have a grace of gesture and an old-fashioned manner of speaking in common. Both of you called on the ‘gods of heaven and earth,’ for example, when most people would invoke the Buddha.”
“Our father did not want us to refer to Buddhist gods. When Nobuko first came here with Uemon’s people, I was so happy to see her. I thought we might live together, but she didn’t want me—and she was married to Danjuro. Danjuro … well, I was in love with Danjuro once, and the way I look now, I didn’t want him to know who I was. I begged Nobuko to keep my secret, and she agreed if I would keep hers. I thought then it was because she had run away from her husband. We swore by our mother’s soul.” She stopped, hid her face in her sleeve, and wailed again. Miss Plumblossom put an arm around her.
Akitada released his breath slowly and sat down. So there had been more than one mystery. How had the temple scroll put it? A Twofold Truth. The case was solved, but at what human cost! He said gently, “I understand, Yugao. It is a difficult thing to testify against your own sister even under normal circumstances, but you must do so in this case. You see, quite apart from your duty to your dead father, there are the living to be considered. Nagaoka’s brother Kojiro is a good man who was cruelly set up for the murder of the girl Ohisa. He would never be cleared of this suspicion except for your honesty. Think of it as a gift you make to the victims, dead and alive, a debt you pay to make good your sister’s crimes.”
Clutching Miss Plumblossom’s hand, Yugao-Yukiyo nodded her head.
Akitada looked at the graceful way she sat, her pretty shape, slender neck, and glossy hair all in stark contrast to the ruined face. “Will you tell us your story?”
She nodded again.
“My father always invited actors to perform for him at the farm, and when we got older it pleased him if we dressed up and acted small parts with them. We thought it fun, and the actors liked us because we were both pretty.” She flushed. “I was pretty then. Danjuro preferred my beauty to my sister’s. He asked me, not my sister, to be his wife and to go away with him. Father was furious when I told him. He ordered Danjuro and the others to leave. I cried for days. Then Danjuro wrote to me, and I ran away to be with him.” She shivered and pulled her robe more closely about her. “Only it wasn’t what I had expected. Danjuro didn’t marry me, and after a while he had other women. I was upset and acted poorly, and one day Uemon fired me. Danjuro told me to go home. But I couldn’t because my father had declared me dead. So I roamed the city, looking for work, and found there was only prostitution. After that nothing much mattered except the next meal. Until I met the slasher.”