“I already told Chief Ohira. I didn’t see Spaen-san go. Don’t know where he went.” Face downcast, she spoke in terse mumbles, as if her puffy lips impaired her speech. “He was alive when I last saw him. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t have.” Harsh sobs wracked her body; she buried her face in her hands. “Because I—I loved him!”

Sano knelt beside her and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. Suspicion cooled his sympathy when he felt hard muscles: She had the strength to maim a man’s body.

Peony must have sensed his doubt, because she shrank away, weeping harder. Sano pulled her hands away from her face. He shook her until the sobs turned to gasps and she stared at him in fearful woe. Tears streamed down her cheeks; mucus oozed from her nostrils. Sano took a cloth from beneath his sash and wiped her face, feeling both pity and disgust. He sympathized with her suffering, but also understood how her ugliness invited abuse.

“Director Spaen was cruel to you,” Sano said. “He insulted you. He beat you. How can you expect anyone to believe you loved him?”

His accusing tone restored Peony’s composure. She held her head up and retorted, “It was a game. He would act mean to me in front of other people. Later, when we were alone, I would tie him up. Hit him. He would scream and cry, but he liked it. I liked it, too.”

“You mean it was Director Spaen the guards heard screaming, while you beat him?”

“Yes!” Peony’s slitty eyes dared Sano to disbelieve.

Sano knew that some people derived sexual pleasure from humiliation and pain. Peony’s story explained the bruises on Spaen’s body and the ropes in his room, as well as what the Deshima guards had observed. But was it a clever lie? Had she in reality suffered Spaen’s abuse, then taken revenge?

In answer to his unspoken questions, Peony untied her sash and dropped her kimono, revealing a strong torso with small, pointed breasts and a thick waist. Her sallow skin was unmarked. She turned to display her back, also unbruised and unscarred. “He never struck me.”

Yet shame could hurt worse than blows. “Cover yourself,” Sano ordered, disappointed by the evidence that weakened his case against her. “I want to know everything you did from the time you got to Deshima until the time you left.”

Peony’s defiance faded under his stern gaze. Pulling on her kimono, she huddled inside it, face hidden behind curtains of hair. “The palanquin left me at the gatehouse. I went inside. The guards searched me and wrote my name in the book. They laughed and said I was lucky the barbarian wanted me, because no one else did.”

“Did you take anything onto the island?”