The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria by Laura Joh Rowland

Mitsuyoshi had obtained appointments with Lady Wisteria. Nitta was furious. Then, when he came to Yoshiwara yesterday, expecting to spend the night with Lady Wisteria, the proprietor of the Owariya told him that Lord Mitsuyoshi had requested her, and asked him to yield.”
    Yielding was the procedure by which one client preempted another’s appointment with a courtesan. When a client had engaged a courtesan, and a second client asked for her company on the same night, the ageya would, under certain circumstances, ask the first client to yield his appointment to the second. The imposition might displease the first client; however, the polite code of behavior required him to concede if the second client was a special customer of the courtesan, or of higher social position than the first.
    “How do you know all this?” Sano asked Makino.
    “I make it my business to know all about my colleagues.” In other words, Makino employed spies in the households of the treasury minister and other officials. “I also overheard Nitta arguing with the proprietor of the Owariya last night.”
    “What did he say?”
    “Nitta objected to giving up Wisteria,” said Makino, “especially since this was her third appointment with Lord Mitsuyoshi, and she would finally bed him. But Nitta didn’t dare offend the shogun’s heir apparent by refusing to yield. Instead, he consented, and he joined our party. He sat in a corner, drinking and sulking. When Wisteria arrived and met Lord Mitsuyoshi in the next room, Nitta watched them through a hole in the partition. When they went upstairs, he stormed out of the house. Obviously, he couldn’t bear to stay while Wisteria pleasured another man right above his head.”
    “Did you see the treasury minister after that?” Sano said.
    “No. I stayed at the party; he never returned.”
    But Nitta might have sneaked back to the house, gone upstairs, then stabbed the man who’d done him out of a night with his beloved. “While you were at the party, did you hear any unusual sounds from upstairs?” Sano asked Makino.
    “I heard nothing whatsoever. The music was loud, and so were my fellow guests.”
    Sano wondered what had become of Wisteria. Was she also dead by the hand of her patron? The idea dismayed Sano, as did the possibility that he might soon find himself for the first time investigating the murder of a former lover.
    “That ends my story,” Makino said. “May I ask when I and my fellow captives might be allowed to leave Yoshiwara?”
    “As soon as my men have finished taking everyone’s names,” Sano said.
    The senior elder eyed him with veiled expectancy. “I’ve handed you a possible culprit in the murder. I trust that is a fair reward for your discretion?”
    “Your evidence doesn’t prove Treasury Minister Nitta’s guilt,” Sano said, "or explain how Lady Wisteria got out of Yoshiwara.”
    The door of the teahouse opened, and Sano turned to see Hirata, ruddy-faced and windblown, standing on the threshold. “Excuse me, Sōsakan-sama,” Hirata said, bowing, -but I’ve discovered something of possible importance.”
     
    ***
     
    Walking down the street together, Sano and Hirata compared the results of their inquiries. “Jealousy gives Treasury Minister Nitta a motive for wanting Lord Mitsuyoshi dead,” Sano said, “and his attachment to Lady Wisteria is a reason for him to remove her from Yoshiwara.”
    Ahead, beyond the rows of teahouses and brothels, the guards had opened the gates. Men emerged from the buildings and streamed out of Yoshiwara. The sky resembled an ink-wash spreading across damp paper; blustering wind and veils of falling snow promised an arduous evening’s journey home.
    “Nitta could have taken Lady Wisteria away in the palanquin,” Hirata said. “He seems as good a suspect as the yarite.”
    Unless she confessed under torture, thought Sano. He wondered uneasily where Hoshina was. “We’ll interrogate Nitta tomorrow-if he hasn’t fled town with