Xu Qian watched the Warden's retreating back and felt nothing close to optimism.
Time had slipped by. The case had gone cold, the evidence now almost impossible to salvage. Couldn't run fingerprints, and without them barely anything to work with. Those footprints on the wall certainly weren't left by Zhang Xian himself... Setting those aside, what else in this age could help crack a case? He ransacked his mind for an angle.
...
Magistrate Zhu was venting in the inner hall. A homicide was always a grave matter, and this dead man was tied by marriage to a Scrutinizing Secretary by the name of Xu. And just what manner of men were Scrutinizing Secretaries? Self-styled censors who bit whatever displeased them and snapped off memorials of impeachment at anything in their path.
The Registrar Xu, a lean-faced man with a wispy goatee, kept the Magistrate company, chuckling: "Push your men any harder, Your Honor, and they'll start angling for the exits."
They were all veterans down here, each knowing the other's little games by heart. In the grubby art of official cunning, the county clerks ranked no higher than grade-schoolers; the highest masters sat in the Imperial Court, and just below them the provincial governors who ruled their fiefdoms out beyond the capital.
"Angling?" Magistrate Zhu snorted. "In ordinary times, maybe. But the Capital Evaluation is upon us. If word gets back that I extracted a confession under torture, and a memorial lands on the throne, how am I to defend myself?"
Then came hasty footsteps. Warden Wang crossed the threshold, halted, and spoke in a reverent tone, voice brimming with excitement: "Your Honor, on the Zhang case this underling already has a lead. Issue the warrant, and I'll go take the man at once."
Magistrate Zhu and Registrar Xu exchanged a glance—a cold laugh from the former, the knowing smile of a man who'd seen this coming from the latter. Noting the odd set to their faces, Warden Wang pressed. "Your Honor? There's no time to waste."
Magistrate Zhu slammed a hand on the table, cursing: "You idiot. However late it is, you're angling for a scapegoat. Are you out of your mind?"
Extracting a confession under torture was a card one could play in ordinary times, but there was a catch: once a prisoner confessed, the testimony and case file had to go up to the Ministry of Justice, which verified the case before handing down sentence. With the Capital Evaluation looming, the capital's officialdom was strung taut with nerves—everyone tidying his own loose ends even as he spied on rivals.
Warden Wang hurried to explain himself: "Your Honor misunderstands. Underling genuinely believes we can seize the true killer. This is no idle scapegoat-fishing. Please trust me."
What do I even know of your ability... Magistrate Zhu was unconvinced, eyeing old Wang. "Then lay it out, carefully."
Warden Wang thought, at last it's my turn to shine before an audience.
"Your Honor, hear me out. There are many inconsistencies in the Zhang case..."
Old Wang reproduced Xu Qian's reasoning in full, laying it out before the two officials.
Magistrate Zhu began with a mocking smile, but as he listened, his spine straightened of its own accord, and by the end he said nothing, his face grown utterly grave. He was thinking.
"Brilliant!" Registrar Xu clapped his hands with a sharp crack, clearly fired up: "Sifting through the details thread by thread. He reasoned the whole affair out from these paltry hints. Even the Ministry's old hands couldn't have done better."
It still had to be verified, of course—but this chain of reasoning had, beyond doubt, pointed the whole bewildered yamen toward a direction.
Warden Wang smiled. "You flatter me."
Magistrate Zhu sneered: "Come now. Who taught you this?"
Warden Wang mulled it over a moment, then—suppressing the urge to pocket the credit—answered truthfully: "The fast-hand, Xu Qian."
A fast-hand wasn't a live-streaming stage, and Xu Qian was no performer; it was the rank given to the runners of the county's detective benches, the constable-clerks. Xu Qian... Magistrate Zhu was the first to react: "Ah, him."
Magistrate Zhu had shared a few drinks with Xu Pingzhi over the years, and there was a measure of friendship between them; a few years back, Xu Pingzhi had laid out twenty taels of silver to secure the coveted fast-hand post for his nephew. Under the Great Feng, a clerk's post could be passed down to one's son. An iron rice bowl, steady as a watchdog.
"Then it's no mistake." He smiled.
Registrar Xu's eyes flickered at the tax silver case that had once dragged the Xu family down. "How do you mean?" Warden Wang pricked up his ears.
The Magistrate smiled. "The robbery of the tax silver had the whole city up in arms. The Xu family stood first in line for blame and ought to have been held to account. Do you know why they managed to wriggle free?"
"Word has it that Gentleman Xu of the Imperial Blade Guard helped solve the case, and His Majesty, in his mercy, absolved his crime." That was something Warden Wang had just heard from Xu Qian.
Registrar Xu studied the Magistrate's expression, then probed: "Is there some inside story to that case?"
The particulars were above his pay grade; though the Magistrate was father-and-mother official over Changle County, he ranked barely a younger brother in a capital swarming with the powerful. Still, a seat needed a patron behind it or it would never hold firm.
Magistrate Zhu snorted. "Xu Pingzhi is a coarse martial man; in that case he was a scapegoat..." He cut himself short, reluctant to reveal more, then turned: "No. The one who truly turned the Xu family around wasn't him."
"Then who?" Warden Wang blurted. Registrar Xu's mind had already supplied the answer; he waited.
"It was Xu Qian. He solved the tax silver case. It's all recorded in the file—I have an examination peer serving in the Jingzhao Prefecture." Magistrate Zhu said: "A son answers for his father's faults, a father's debt lands on the child. He's only a nephew, but the reasoning is the same."
Registrar Xu drew in a sharp breath: "By the time the case broke, Xu Qian should've been locked up in the Prefecture's jail. How did he manage it?"
"Strange at first, too. Now it all comes clear," the Magistrate mused. Registrar Xu had reached the same conclusion and could hardly believe it: "From the case file alone?!"
From the file alone... Warden Wang's mind went blank. Tales like this occasionally surfaced when the three presiding officials talked among themselves. What stung was that Xu Qian had played such a part in the tax silver case and pulled the Xu family to safety—but the boy who'd first arrived was a headstrong, dogged greenhorn good only for plugging away in silence. How had he turned overnight into a miracle-working case-solver?
...
When Warden Wang returned to the rest room with the warrant in hand, Xu Qian was sprawled over the table, fast asleep. He'd turned over a hundred worries the night before and hadn't drifted off until after the Third Watch.
One of the others reached to shake Xu Qian awake. Warden Wang stopped him at once, voice low: "Let him sleep." He picked out two men at random: "You two, you're coming to the Zhang residence with me."
Three fast-hands, each with their white-clerk attendants, nine men in all, set off at a brisk pace from the Changle County yamen.
White-clerks were temporary hands, a form of corvée drawn from the common folk: no wages, no meals, no lodging—but they had one saving grace, never having to shoulder the blame.
Xu Qian was jolted awake by the cry of "Silence in the hall!" He wiped the drool from his mouth and walked out to the courtroom, where the suspects had been hauled in and the Magistrate was holding court. High behind his case desk sat Magistrate Zhu, flanked by a court bailiff and an attendant; below the desk, three shifts of yamen runners stood to left and right. Kneeling in the middle were two people: a young man in a blue robe embroidered with cloud patterns, and beside him a beautiful woman in a purple silk dress. The woman looked frightened and nervous; the young man seemed comparatively composed.
"Smack!" Magistrate Zhu struck his gavel and boomed: "State your names!"
The woman cast a nervous glance at the young man, who gave her a steadying look before straightening his back: "Your humble subject, Zhang Xian." The woman answered in a thin, reedy voice: "The consort, Yang Zhenzhen."
"Zhang Yourui—how did the two of you kill him? Confess, all of it!"
The woman flinched, long lashes trembling, panic written across her face.
The young man drew himself up, alarmed: "Your Honor, what are you saying? I would never murder my own father." "Where were you when it happened?" "In the study." "Why not share the bed with your wife?" "I was doing the accounts, Your Honor." "Any witnesses?" "In the dead of night, what witnesses would there be?"
Zhang Xian answered crisply, without panic—either a clear conscience, or a story rehearsed well in advance. Following his own chain of reasoning, Xu Qian leaned toward the latter. He had no alibi, true, yet neither did anyone have proof he'd killed. Reasoning was reasoning; without solid evidence, a doubtful crime must be treated as no crime at all...
The Magistrate turned to the woman: "Zhang Yang-shi, I ask you. You have been wedded to Zhang Yourui for ten years and borne no child. Why, then, are you pregnant now? Confess honestly—did you cuckold the dead man with your stepson and murder your husband?"
Zhang Yang-shi gave a start and burst into tears: "Your Honor, I am wronged. My health has never been good, and in recent years I've taken tonics every single day. Only with great difficulty did I finally conceive my husband's child. How can you brand me a husband-killer on this ground alone?"
She began to sob, whimpering.
Questioning like this would never drag out the truth. From afar Xu Qian studied the dewy-eyed woman for a moment, and a rather good idea stirred in his mind.