Free Red Chrysanthemum by Laura Joh Rowland Page A

I’ll kill you!” she shouted. “If I can’t have you, no one will!”
    Lord Mori recoiled in fright, but he uttered wild bellows of passion. Lady Mori knew her plan had failed because Reiko wouldn’t cooperate and he was too weak to defy her. Armies could overrun his provinces, and he would lie with Reiko again and again until they slaughtered him. Lady Mori had lost him forever. Sobbing, she fled to her room, where she drank wine until her grief faded into stupor. She slept until morning, when her maid awoke her and told her that her husband was dead.

6
    “You’re lying! My wife and Lord Mori were never lovers!” Sano had forced himself to hear Lady Mori’s tale until the end, but he could no longer hold back his violent denials. “The child she’s carrying isn’t his. And neither is our son!”
    He didn’t believe a word she’d said. This was slander of the most outrageous kind. But his inner voice whispered that he must objectively consider each witness’s statement even if it incriminated his wife.
    “I apologize for giving you offense, but I have told you the truth,” Lady Mori said sadly. “I swear on my honor.”
    “Your honor is worth nothing in this case,” Sano retorted, for here at last was another suspect besides Reiko. “According to your story, you were at your husband’s private chambers last night.”
    Lady Mori visibly braced herself against him. “Yes.”
    “You saw my wife on the veranda, spying through the window on Lord Mori.”
    “No. I was the one spying,” Lady Mori said, nervous but insistent. “She was inside, with him, just as I described.”
    Sano countered her with Reiko’s version of events: “You and my wife were friends. That night you invited her to dinner. You had a party.”
    Frosty politeness stiffened Lady Mori’s features. “There was no party. And she was not my friend, she was my husband’s mistress. It was he who invited her here.”
    Sano speculated on what might have happened that Reiko had been unaware of. “You suspected that she had an ulterior motive for befriending you. When she left the party, you followed her. You watched her watching your husband. Did you think she was spying on him for me, for political reasons?”
    Lady Mori shook her head. “I watched her seduce him. I heard her threaten to kill him.”
    “Maybe she had too much to drink at your party.” Sano didn’t know how much forethought had gone into framing Reiko, but he was acting on the assumption that she had been framed, and Lady Mori was looking to be the culprit. “You stabbed and castrated your husband while he was asleep. You arranged Lady Reiko to look as if she’d done it.”
    “No! That’s not how it was!” Lady Mori cried in horror. “I loved my husband. I would never have hurt him. And I never touched your wife. She murdered him.”
    Sano lost his temper because even though her story was ludicrous, many people might believe it. Some would welcome a chance to hurt him by persecuting Reiko. “Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “I want to know what really happened.”
    He seized Lady Mori, yanked her to her feet, and grasped her shoulders. She whimpered in protest. Her attendants gasped in horror at seeing their mistress treated as a common criminal. Hirata moved to restrain Sano.
    “Honorable Chamberlain,” he warned.
    Sano ordinarily didn’t believe in using force on suspects because it too often produced false confessions and he disliked abusing his power. He hated to intimidate a helpless woman. But he couldn’t let Lady Mori spread her slander about his wife. Not only could it doom Reiko, but it could destroy him. Sano remembered his talk with General Isogai and the two elders. The suspicion that someone connected to him had murdered one of Lord Matsudaira’s chief allies was trouble of the kind they’d warned him to avoid.
    “Tell me the truth!” he demanded, shaking Lady Mori.
    Her head snapped back and forth; she sobbed in terror. But she cried,