Chapter 5: The Antique Shop (V)

The coroner was small and thin. He shook as though he had lost his soul, like a flag shuddering in the wind, as he knelt on the ground.

Lord Qin believed that he was the murderer, so he posed his questions ruthlessly. Unable to stand the bombardment, the coroner ultimately said, “I didn’t kill Madam Liu.”

“If you didn’t kill her, then why did you attempt to hide the wounds on her body?”

The coroner hesitated before finally saying, “The night that Madam Liu died, I met with her and did… that…”

When he heard it, Lord Qin angrily said, “What a disgrace! What a disgrace!”

Wu Chou’s face had turned green. He didn’t even have the energy to insult the coroner.

Everyone in the hall had their own thoughts. The citizens observing had already begun to talk about Madam Liu’s coquettish nature and the worthlessness of Wu Chou. For a long time, there would not be a lack of topics to discuss.

The coroner just wanted to clear his suspicion quickly. He didn’t hesitate like Wu Chou had and confessed, “I went to the shop at midnight and stayed for around two hours. In the process, I accidentally left some red marks on Madam Liu’s body. The next day, I heard that she was dead. I was afraid that the suspicion would fall on my head, so I covered those marks with a medicinal solution, but I truly didn’t kill anyone!”

Ming Yue bit her teeth. What an act of stupidity! To think that he did this as a coroner! Not only did he erase the traces of his own act, but he also erased clues that might have traced down the murderer of Madam Liu. He had acted purely out of self-interest and completely disregarded the truth.

Su Yunkai’s face did not display any reaction. He continued to listen to the hearing, keeping his thoughts to himself.

“I’m really not the murderer. I just didn’t want the evidence traced to me. I have a witness. My wife can prove that I was at home when Liu Peizhen died. Please forgive me.”

Lord Qin immediately ordered people to find his wife and ask her if the coroner had been home at that time. Not only did the coroner’s mother and son testify, but also his neighbors claimed that they had heard his voice.

Confirming that he wasn’t the murderer and seeing that both Su Yunkai and Mingyue hadn’t made a noise, Lord Qin was disappointed. The new evidence had led to nowhere. Where was the culprit? If he couldn’t find him, this case would ruin his track record. He was displeased. “Li Zhizhang, you have not fulfilled your duties as a coroner. You even covered up the truth and broke the law. Come, put him in jail!”

The coroner knew that his sentence was already determined by the magistrate sending him to the prison, but he still held some hope. As he was seized by the yamen officers, he unwittingly cried injustice. But it was too late. He could only stay in prison and regret what he had done.

Ming Yue watched him being dragged away, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be happy.

Her grandpa said that although coroners were deemed of the lowest class by the government, they shouldn’t perpetuate that notion by looking down upon themselves and actually doing lowly things. Instead, coroners should do their duty without fear of being spurned.

Li Zhizhang was an experienced coroner who had worked with the county magistrate multiple times. He had even been praised by her grandfather. To think that he would cheat on his wife with another married woman and neglect his duties…

Ming Yue sighed. Hearing her, Su Yunkai looked over at her face. Her expression was one of indescribable emotion. Even her bright eyes had become a little gloomy.

Finishing his interrogation of the coroner, Lord Qin began to interrogate Wu Chou. Seeing the scholar’s expression of delight upon witnessing the coroner’s punishment, Lord Qin felt only disgust. Wu Chou had known about his wife’s behavior but refused to confront the issue. Instead, he had idled about all day long. He truly was a scholar who lived in vain. Now biased against him, Lord Qin spoke with an even less polite tone. “Wu Chou.”

Wu Chou regained his composure. Although he was appeased by the turn of events, he didn’t forget to respectfully bow, “Your honor.”

“Let me ask you again. Where were you last night?”

“In my room.”

“Did you ever exit?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you truly hear nothing?”

Wu Chou paused. Lord Qin continued, “Now that it has already come to this, do you still want to be treated as the murderer just because you are unwilling to tell the truth?”

After that, the crowd’s discussion grew louder and louder. Wu Chou could hear the voices of the people. They said that he was a coward, a good-for-nothing, accusing him of knowing about his wife’s behavior but failing to interfere. There were all sorts of insults that hurt his self-esteem. However, the more he heard it, the less he cared.

After he exited yamen, those words would spread throughout Nanle County anyway.

Thus, in the end, he didn’t have much to hide.

He raised his head and said, “I heard . . . . Your honor stated that Liu Peizhen had died near 4 AM. In actuality, I began to hear things starting from midnight. There had been a pause, but not long after, there was a sign of a fight. After that, the voices stopped. There was another series of noises before it was finally silent for the night. It was only until I got up in the morning to leave that I saw that Liu Peizhen had died so horribly.”

“Tell me specifically when there were pauses and when there was noise.”

Wu Chou responded, “There was movement at 11:30 PM and it stopped before 1:00 AM.”

This matched with the times that the coroner had gone to the shop. Lord Qin had no problems with his statement.

“Later, when it was nearly 2 AM, there were sounds. It was about an hour before the movement stopped. Near 4 AM, there was another sound from the front hall. At that time, I was almost asleep. I was groggy and the sound of rain on the tiles of the roof was too noisy, so I didn’t bother to go check. I had assumed that she was engaging in her shameless behavior again. Who would’ve thought that when I checked in the morning, she was dead…”

Wu Chou, who had no more face left to speak of, spoke tonelessly, which made people outside the hall sigh. It’s no wonder that at first he had refused to speak of this. Even if he didn’t commit any crimes, he would no longer be able to raise his head in Nanle County.

Lord Qin asked, “Why do you remember the times so well?”

Wu Chou’s eyes suddenly became fierce and he shrieked, “It’s hard not to remember such things that would hurt a man’s dignity. Liu Peizhen, as a married woman, had no sense of shame. I was willing to marry a widow like her, but she still fooled around. By relying on her family’s wealth and power, she opened a shop to sell goods, but in fact, she was actually selling herself. What a cheap woman!”

He screamed his voice hoarse, as though he were releasing all of his discontent from the previous years. There was no sound in the hall. Even those who criticized him earlier had closed their mouths.

Suddenly, there was a laugh in the silence, full of mockery. Wu Chou, who was at the top of his anger, followed the sound and glared, “What are you laughing at?”

Su Yunkai returned him a cold glance, “You blame your late wife for all your mistakes in public. Do you think you are in the right? When you married Liu Peizhen, you knew that she had married before and that her family had power. After the marriage, you knew that she had affairs with other men. At that time, you should’ve taken over the business in the shop instead of continuing to let her openly appear in the public. But you did not. You swallowed your shame and slacked around at home. What face do you have to blame her?”

Wu Chou immediately didn’t have a response. He knew where he was wrong and felt a twinge of guilt. But having someone else expose him made him burn with humiliation. “What do you mean by this?! How is it right for her to be so flirtatious?”

Seeing that he retaliated, Ming Yue resisted the urge to slap him in the face. “Since you hate her so much, then you shouldn’t’ve married her to begin with. However, once you married her, you should’ve acted like a proper husband. She was in the wrong, but so were you. Both of you should bear the responsibility. Furthermore, your wife just died, yet you have no pity. Instead, you’re here insulting her even after her death. You can’t be called a man at all.”

Their words were like knives, cutting at Wu Chou. 

Lord Qin forgot to stop them. He even wanted to cheer the two young people on. Although he had thought them annoying during the autopsy, the words they just said resonated deeply with him.

It wasn’t until the advisor reacted and signaled for him to continue the interrogation that Lord Qin spoke. “The court doesn’t permit unnecessary noise from unrelated persons. If you continue to make a commotion you will be pulled out for twenty flogs.”

Wu Chou’s self-esteem was currently nearly in the gutters. His momentum was gone and he wasn’t even in the mood to be happy about the coroner being sent to prison.

Lord Qin said, “Wu Chou, do you know who else had relations with Madam Liu?”

Wu Chou sneered, “There are too many to count…But I do know someone who commonly comes in the middle of the night.”

“Who?”

“He has a wine shop in the south of the city. When he gets busy, he will usually stay in his pub for food and for rest instead of returning home. His wife is as fierce as a tiger. He has always been afraid of her. So when he meets with Liu Peizhen, he is secretive and does it in the middle of the night. Yesterday was the Lantern Festival. He must have found an excuse to stay in the pub for the night. It is very likely that he was the one who came in the middle of the night.”

“What is his name? Where does he live?”

Wu Chou thought a little and said, “Ge Song. He lives in the eighth house on Ge Family Village’s Swallow Street. His shop is in the south of the city. It is called the Jiuxian^[1] Pub.”

—

Bai Shui led a group of officers to the south of the city to catch this Ge Song, but the shop was closed. The neighbors informed the officers that Ge Song had returned to his village. Swallow Street was an hour away, so Ming Yue decided to go back for a bath and lunch before returning to the yamen.

Ming Yue and Su Yunkai left together. The sky was still dim and the dark clouds had not yet been lifted, which made their faces appear lackluster.

Seeing that she was carrying a bunch of willow branches, Su Yunkai couldn’t resist asking, “Are you the second Lord Qin?”

Ming Yue laughed upon hearing that he was joking about Lord Qin, “Not at all. This is what Lord Qin forcibly gave to me to ward off the bad luck. Otherwise, he would refuse to let me stand next to him for the next hearing. Half of this is yours.”

Sun Yunkai smiled helplessly. “This Lord Qin…is a stubborn old man.”

“To be fair, he can’t be blamed for being so superstitious. He is already fifty years old and has been an official in this small place for half his life. Now that he finally has the chance to get a promotion, it is no wonder that he is afraid of anything disrupting his career. If he really was hopeless, he would have found a way to get out of this case a while ago.”

Thinking about it carefully, Su Yunkai felt that she spoke true and agreed with most of her statement. As she spoke, she also gave him half of the branches that she held against her bosom.

It was early spring. The willow branches had just grown jade-green sprouts. There was still some sap at the ends that hadn’t yet dried. Ming Yue’s already stained clothes became even dirtier as she carelessly carried the twigs in her hands. Su Yunkai pursed his lips and looked at the unconcerned girl, but she didn’t appear to realize any problems with her behavior. In her ignorance, she was innocent, and he was even less equipped to reprimand her.

“Oh right, which inn are you staying at? I’ll find you later and take you around to eat some good food.”

“Penglai^[2] Inn.” Just as he responded, Su Yunkai stopped walking and frowned, “How do you know that I live in an inn? Do I not look like a local?”

“Nanle County is a small place. I’ve never seen you before.”

“Then what if I’m someone who just happened to be passing through here?”

“You didn’t bring any baggage.”

Su Yunkai wanted to continue his questioning, but she smiled at him with the splendor of flowers in spring, and he forgot his question.

“Okay, see you later! I’m leaving now.”

With that, she left with her branches in tow. The branches extended past the outline of her figure and wavered with each step she took. Even from behind, she looked like a willow just waking up in the spring wind, brushing past his heart.

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[1] Jiuxian (酒仙) means wine immortal, a fitting name for a pub. ↩

[2] Penglai (蓬莱) is the name of a mythical abode of immortals in Chinese mythology. Find out more here. ↩

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