‘I wonder if it isn’t time for the moon to rise? It must be after one.’

‘Not for a long while yet. The papers said the moon would rise at one thirty-five.’

‘I only hope it doesn’t cloud over just then …’

Tomo went downstairs to tell the servants to bring fresh supplies of food. On her way to the kitchen she glanced into the room where Takao was supposed to be sleeping and saw Maki bent forward beside the quilts where Takao lay in bed, talking intently in a low voice to Suga and Yumi.

They broke off abruptly at the sight of Tomo, the expression on the faces of all three so comically confused that Tomo had an immediate intuition, like an electric shock, of what was wrong.

On her way back from the kitchen she found Suga lurking like a shadow at the foot of the stairs.

‘Ma’am …’ she said in voice of suppressed pain.

‘What’s the matter, Suga? What were you talking about with Maki?’ Even as she spoke, by a kind of tacit agreement, they took themselves out onto the deserted veranda.

The light from the unshuttered rooms on the second floor upstairs threw the garden shrubs into dim green relief and the loud voices and laughter reached them with stratling immediacy. The late-night autumn air struck the skin like a cold spray of water.

‘Ma’am, I was really shocked … that the young mistress …’

Suga got so far, then her voice expired in a kind of wheeze. Fighting against the darkness that threatened to steal over her vision, Tomo put both arms around Suga’s trembling shoulders.

‘I know … You mean, something happened that time at Enoshima…’

‘Yes, Maki … Maki saw with her own eyes …’

Her teeth chattering all the while, Suga repeated what she had heard from Maki that evening. Miya had kept Yukitomo company over his saké and had herself drunk her fill, then, complaining that the noise of the waves scared her, she had had her bed laid out in the same room as Maki and Takao and, too far gone even to be got out of her kimono and into her nightwear, had finally been put to bed by Maki and a maid so that they could clear the things away in the main room.

Yukitomo went to bed in the back room, separated from the others only by a pair of sliding doors. Tired from the day’s exertions Maki had slept soundly, but awoke with a start to find the night still dark and the waves beating on the rocks below, roaring with the ferocity of a storm. Peering at the next bed by the faint light of the bedside lamp, she found the quilts in which Miya supposedly lay in a drunken stupor quite empty, while from the room at the rear, fitfully between the roar of the waves as they advanced and retreated, she could hear Miya’s voice strangely seductive and nasal, whether crying or laughing she could not tell … Several times Maki had doubted her own ears and told herself it was all a dream, but the intimate sounds from the rear room had continued, murmuring on and on till close to daybreak.