While on a business trip to Kobe Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of
a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected.
But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo a softly-spoken government bureaucrat
perplexed. How did it come about that his wife who was shy and withdrawn and only left their
house twice a week to go to haiku meetings ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo
neighborhood?When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his
wife's death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by a house known to be a meeting place for
secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past he must eventually conclude that
she led a double life...
