In Darkness, Death Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - IN DARKNESS, DEATH

  Chapter 2 - THE BUTTERFLY

  Chapter 3 - THE TRAIL BEGINS HERE

  Chapter 4 - CAPTURING A NINJA

  Chapter 5 - LOOKING FOR PAPER

  Chapter 6 - A GIFT

  Chapter 7 - IN DISGUISE

  Chapter 8 - THE PAPERMAKER

  Chapter 9 - BLAZING SKiN

  Chapter 10 - PRAYERS FOR MOMO

  Chapter 11 - LORD INABA’S ENEMIES

  Chapter 12 - A FIGHT

  Chapter 13 - INTO THE CASTLE

  Chapter 14 - WAITING FOR THE EXECUTIONER

  Chapter 15 - ON THE NIGHTINGALE FLOOR

  Chapter 16 - THE NINJA’S STORY

  Chapter 17 - THE BUTTERFLY SOARS

  Chapter 18 - A PARTING

  Chapter 19 - AT THE SHRINE

  Chapter 20 - THE KANNUSHIS PEAKS

  Chapter 21 - ON MlWAYAMA

  Chapter 22 - THE FOX’S CONFESSI0N

  Chapter 23 - A NEW YEAR’S CELEBRATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A clue

  She reached inside her kimono. Drawing something out, she opened her hand to reveal a butterfly.

  It was made of folded paper, crumpled now and partly stained with dark blood. But unmistakably it had been intended as a butterfly, for the red paper wings were painted with black spots, just like a real butterfly.

  “It could help us find the person who killed Lord Inaba,” said Seikei.

  Hana smiled as if she knew Seikei was trying to fool her. “Oh, you’ll never find him,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was a ninja. That’s what the servants all say.”

  OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  SLEUTH

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL. England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,

  Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd. 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

  Published by Sleuth, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005

  Copyright © Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, 2004

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PHILOMEL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Hoobler, Dorothy.

  In darkness, death Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler.

  p. cm. Sequel to: The demon in the teahouse.

  Summary: In eighteenth-century Japan, young Seikei becomes involved with a ninja

  as he helps Judge Oooka, his foster father, investigate the murder of a samurai.

  1.Japan—History—Tokugawa period, 1600-1868—Juvenile fiction.

  [1. Japan—History—Tokugawa period, 1600-1868—Fiction. 2. Samurai—Fiction.

  3. Ninja—Fiction. 4. Ooka, Tadasuke, 1677?-1751?—Fiction.

  5. Mystery and detective stories.]

  1. Hoobler, Thomas. II. Title.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17953-6

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To our daughter, Ellen

  1

  IN DARKNESS, DEATH

  It was the hour of the rat; throughout the castle only shadows moved. As the moon made its lonely journey across the night sky, dark shapes slid across floors and walls, one step ahead of the light.

  And when one black form, quicker than the other shadows, slithered down a hallway, no guard sounded a challenge.

  Earlier that night, many guests had arrived for Lord Inaba’s party, and extra servants had been hired. No one had paid particular attention to a round-bellied wine steward who was somewhat clumsy, but seemed eager to please. He neglected no one in his efforts to keep the sake cups filled, even pressing Lord Inaba’s bodyguards to drink a little, though certainly not enough to affect their alertness.

  Now, however, the powder that the steward had slipped into the sake had had enough time to take effect. Guards, guests, servants, family, and Lord Inaba himself all lay as peacefully unaware as the dead.

  All except the shadow. Anyone who had been awake to see would have been surprised at how much more gracefully the round-bellied wine steward moved now.

  As he moved into the corridor that led to Lord Inaba’s room, the floor sang. The shadow paid no attention, for no one but he could hear. Two samurai guards sat on the floor in front of Lord Inaba’s door, their heads slumped down on their chests. The shadow touched each of them in turn and whispered into their ears. Then he stepped between them and drew a short sword from beneath his plain kimono. Men like Lord Inaba had enemies; his door would be barred to prevent entry. So the shadow pierced the decorated paper that covered the door frame, drawing his sword down it with no more noise than a falcon makes descending on its prey.

  He stepped nimbly through the sliced paper. The daimyo lord, lying on a large, thickly padded mat, did not stir. He had drunk many cups of sake that night as his guests toasted his return to Edo.

  The shadow wasted no time in carrying out his task. In a moment, the smell of death was in the room. Wiping his blade on a corner of the sleeping mat, the shadow said a silent prayer to ward off Lord Inaba’s angry spirit.

  The shadow untied his garment then, showing the source of his fat belly. Unwrapping coils of rope from around his waist, he stood, thinner now, to tie one end to a lantern hook on the wall. He lowered the rest of the rope out the window.

  Climbing onto the windowsill, he looked back inside the room, now polluted by death. He shook his sleeve and something fluttered out, landing on the floor near the widening pool of blood. And then he was gone.

  Seikei wrinkled his nose. The coppery odor in the room brought back a disturbing memory. He had smelled it before when he had witnessed the death of the kabuki actor Tomomi. Of course, Tomomi had welcomed his death—had in fact led Seikei on a long, carefully prepared journey to see it.

  This death—the one that had taken place in this room—was different. Lord Inaba had not gone to sleep thinking that his throat would be slit in the night. He had guards throughout his castle to protect him from all harm. For some reason, none of them had stopped the assassin from entering the room—in fact, no one had even seen him.

  That much Seikei had learned from his foster father, Judge Ooka. Early that morning, the judge had awakened Seikei. “I have a mission to perform,” he said. That was all Seikei needed to know. He rose and dressed at once. The judge would not have awakened him unless he wanted Seikei to go along.

  And indeed, when Seikei went outside, he saw two horses already saddled and waiting. Seikei mounted his, pleased that he could now do so without needing a boost from Bunzo, the judge’s devoted samurai retainer, who had been assigned the unenviable task of teaching Seikei the skills a samurai
should possess.

  Seikei had never learned those skills before now, because he had unluckily been born the son of a wealthy merchant. No matter how prosperous, merchants were the lowest members of society—below artisans and craftsworkers, farmers, and of course, samurai warriors, who stood highest of all. Thus, it seemed to be Seikei’s destiny to remain a merchant, for each person must accept the place his ancestors occupied.

  But when Seikei had shown courage in helping to solve the mystery of the theft of a valuable jewel from an inn on the Tokaido Road, Judge Ooka had adopted him as his own son. It was a great honor to be accepted into a samurai family, and Seikei tried to be worthy of it.

  Sometimes he felt he was not succeeding. He doubted he could ever shoot an arrow as well as Bunzo or the judge, although on the few occasions Seikei had battled an opponent with a sword, he had not done badly. He could write verses well enough, but he found other samurai arts difficult, especially flower arranging.

  Seikei’s horsemanship had improved lately, somewhat earning him Bunzo’s respect. “You know,” Bunzo had told him yesterday, “I once thought we could lose you merely by putting you on the back of a strong horse. But now I see we will have to find some other way.”

  As the judge emerged from the house and mounted his horse—more nimbly than anyone seeing his round, heavy figure would have suspected—his housekeeper, Noka, followed. She carried a black lacquer bento box. Seikei knew what was inside: food for the journey. As she handed it to him, he felt embarrassed.

  “Isn’t there one for the judge?” Seikei asked.

  “He had his breakfast already,” said Noka. “But you’re going all the way to Edo, and I knew you’d be hungry.”

  Seikei thanked her politely, glancing at the judge, who was trying to hide a smile. Noka treated Seikei as if he were a child. A samurai should be willing to go for days without food, train himself to endure any hardship in the service of his lord.

  The judge knew just what Seikei was thinking. “If there is too much food in that box for you,” he said, “I will be glad to help you finish it.”

  Seikei handed him the box, secretly hoping the judge wouldn’t eat it all. They set off then, letting the horses go at their own pace, for the ground was frozen and covered with a thin layer of snow. It would take them most of the morning to travel from their home in the countryside to Edo, the city from which the shogun governed all of Japan. He often called on the judge to solve problems that no one else could. Recently the judge had organized a system of fire brigades to protect the city against the huge blazes that in the past had burned out of control for days.

  The judge’s chief duty, of course, was to help keep order by arresting criminals and determining the proper punishment for them. On more than one occasion, he had used Seikei to gather information for him. Seikei hoped this would be one of those times.

  After returning the bento box to Seikei—there were still a few tasty pieces of eel and some rice in it—the judge started to explain. “A messenger from the shogun arrived very early this morning. Yesterday, Lord Inaba was slain by an assassin while he lay sleeping in his residence in Edo.”

  Seikei nearly gasped. Lord Inaba was one of the most powerful daimyos, or lords, in the country. For an assassin to be able to get close to him was almost unthinkable. Seikei had many questions, but he knew better than to interrupt the judge.

  “Of course,” the judge continued, “this would be a serious matter at any time, but it is particularly grave because Lord Inaba had just arrived in Edo for his required visit. Thus, he was under the protection of the shogun. His death is a personal embarrassment to the shogun, and the fact that the assassin has escaped only makes it worse.”

  Seikei understood. To prevent any of the powerful daimyos from plotting to overthrow him, the shogun required them to spend one year out of every two in Edo, where he could closely watch their activities. The rule was popular with the city’s merchants, who gained rich customers forced to buy from them. However, it meant that the shogun had to guarantee the safety of the daimyos, their families, and the samurai who served them. If a daimyo—or any member of his household—were harmed while living in Edo, the shogun would be disgraced, unless he avenged the crime. That was the only way to preserve his honor, and as Seikei knew, to a samurai honor was more important than life itself.

  Seikei waited for the judge to provide more details about the assassination, but for a time they rode in silence, except for the sound of the horses’ hooves. Snow began to fall, and Seikei imagined the two of them riding through a scene in a colorful print, like the ones he had seen for sale in Edo.

  Finally the judge remarked, “It is too bad that we could not examine the scene earlier. Lord Inaba was killed while he slept. By now his servants will have removed the body. That is unfortunate.”

  Seikei knew that the judge’s reputation as a brilliant investigator was well earned. People said he could tell a criminal just by looking at him. The judge once told Seikei that this wasn’t true, but because people believed it, some criminals confessed as soon as they were brought into the judge’s presence.

  The judge had taught Seikei that the best method of catching a criminal was to notice things carefully and think about what they meant. “A criminal disturbs the proper order of things,” he said, “like a stone that falls into a pond. If you follow the circles that ripple through the water, you will come back to the stone.”

  That was a simple explanation, but Seikei found that it was harder to do than it sounded. The judge had occasionally sent him to look for information that would help solve a crime, but Seikei had trouble determining what was useful and what was not.

  When they arrived at Lord Inaba’s castle, they saw that it was now guarded by samurai who wore garments decorated with hollyhocks—the symbol of the Tokugawa family, whose members had held the post of shogun for more than a century. Seikei wondered where Lord Inaba’s own guards had gone.

  He soon found out. After the shogun’s guards let them enter the castle, an angry young samurai greeted them. Greeted was not the right word, for he displayed a profound lack of politeness. “Are you the judge who is supposed to find the criminal who did this?” he asked abruptly, without introducing himself. “You’ve taken your time getting here. I have sent three messengers to the shogun and received nothing but excuses.”

  The judge bowed as if he hadn’t noticed the man’s rudeness. “I am Ooka,” he said, “a judge in the service of the shogun. I extend the shogun’s sincere regret at the death of Lord Inaba, your father.”

  The young man seemed a little surprised at being addressed in such a manner. He bowed in return—although still too abruptly, Seikei noticed—and said, “I am Yutaro, eldest son of the family Inaba.”

  “May we see the room where your father was struck down?” asked the judge.

  “It is still unclean,” replied Yutaro. “The priests have not yet come to perform the purification rites.”

  The judge nodded. Seikei knew that was good news to him. “We will risk it,” he said.

  As Yutaro led them up a flight of stairs, the judge asked, “Did your father have any enemies?”

  “None at all,” Yutaro answered quickly—too quickly to have thought about the question, it seemed to Seikei. “This is the work of a thief, and the lazy guards are to blame. They claim they saw nothing.”

  “I would like to question them,” said the judge.

  Yutaro shrugged. “I ordered the shogun’s men to take them away, for who could trust such bunglers? Perhaps they have been executed by now.”

  The judge paused. “Do you suspect the guards of deliberately betraying your father?”

  Waving his hand, Yutaro said, “What does it matter? They failed in their duty. The reason does not concern me.”

  They walked up several flights of stairs to reach Lord Inaba’s room. It was on the top floor of the imposing castle. “Do you sleep here too?” asked the judge.

  “No,” said Yutaro. “My fath
er reserved this part of the castle for himself alone. My mother is dead.”

  As they began to walk down the corridor toward the room where Lord Inaba had been killed, the floor-boards squeaked loudly—so loudly that Seikei took a step back. “This is a nightingale floor,” the judge explained. “The wooden planks are set in such a way that they ‘sing’ whenever someone steps on them. It is meant to alert the guards that someone is approaching.”

  “Little good it did,” said Yutaro angrily.

  “Where were the guards?” asked the judge when they reached the door where the paper had been slit.

  “Two of them were stationed directly in front of this door,” replied Yutaro.

  “So they could not have failed to see an intruder,” the judge said.

  “Certainly not,” said Yutaro, the rude tone creeping into his voice again.

  “How could they have missed seeing someone enter?” the judge asked, turning to Seikei.

  Seikei knew that the judge wanted him to think of an answer. “Maybe they left their posts,” Seikei said, “to investigate a disturbance somewhere else.”

  The judge nodded. “Or?”

  “They might have been asleep,” Seikei suggested. Although they would have had to be sleeping very deeply, he thought.

  “Both of them?” Yutaro asked sarcastically.

  The judge waved his hand to encourage Seikei to keep thinking. “Anything else?”

  Seikei frowned. The judge must see something he did not. What could it be? Then it came to him. It didn’t seem possible, but the judge had once told him, “When we do not know the answer, we must consider all possibilities, no matter how unlikely.”

  “Well,” said Seikei, “he could have been invisible.”

  Yutaro snorted with contempt. Seikei’s face felt hot. The judge merely smiled and said, “That is, indeed, a possibility.”

  He slid open the door. “Let us look further,” he said.