Then, after he’d left Nagasaki Jail and mounted his horse outside the gate, two soldiers approached him. “We have an urgent message from Yoriki Ota,” said the spokesman, and Sano guessed that the paunchy guard he’d seen earlier had told the soldiers where to find him. “The courtesan Peony is dead. Please come with us.”

17

十七

Arriving at the Half Moon Pleasure House with his escorts, Sano noted the brothel’s grim transformation since his last visit. Bamboo shades covered the window cages, although it was early evening and almost time for the festivities to begin. The crowds, evidently aware that a death had occurred, gave the Half Moon a wide berth. As Sano dismounted, he saw courtesans peering fearfully from the upstairs windows. A dōshin and three civilian assistants guarded the doorway, where the proprietor Minami stood, his scowling temple-dog face livid with anger.

“I can’t run my business with the house full of police,” he raged. “And no one wants to come inside while she’s still here. I want you to leave. Now!”

The dōshin merely folded his arms with an air of weary tolerance. Minami jumped aside and glared as Yoriki Ota pushed past him out the doorway. “I’m losing money,” Minami huffed. “I demand that you take your men and go, so I can clean up the mess and resume my business!”

“Be quiet, or I’ll arrest you,” Ota told him, then greeted Sano with a perfunctory bow. “So here you are. Come. I’ll take you to Peony.”

They entered the house. More dōshin and assistants lounged in the lamp-lit reception room, smoking and talking. In the dim corridors, frightened servants shrank against the walls to let Sano and Ota pass.

“How did she die?” Sano asked.

“Suicide. You’ll see.”

Yoriki Ota led Sano upstairs to the courtesans’ living quarters, a series of tiny chambers behind paper-paned walls. From somewhere came the sound of a woman’s hysterical weeping.

“She’s in there,” Ota said, stopping outside a door where another dōshin stood guard.

Gingerly Sano slid back the door. The fetid, metallic smell of blood and death poured out, polluting his skin, his lungs. Fighting nausea, he entered the room. The guard brought a lantern and hung it on the wall. Sano saw that the window had been opened to let in fresh air, but the cramped chamber was still hot and stuffy. Peony lay sprawled against the wall, knees bent, in the tangle of her blood-soaked garments. Flies alit on the thickly clotted gash that slanted down the left side of her neck and across her throat. More blood had dribbled from her mouth, caked her long hair into sticky strands, and fanned across the tatami. Her clouded eyes bore an expression of terrified shock. Her left hand gripped the plain wooden handle of a knife that protruded from the fatal wound.