Torches were lit all around, illuminating the small courtyard as brightly as daylight.
Ning Yan was about to go inside as well when Pei Yan grabbed her and said in a low voice, “There are plenty of people already. They won’t miss one more.”
Ning Yan went in anyway. Aunt Ma had given her steamed buns twice. Their recent conversations still echoed in her ears. Now, all of a sudden, the woman was gone.
Ning Yan found it deeply regrettable. Besides, from what Chunhua had said, all five members of Aunt Ma’s family had been home.
Dozens of people searched the ruins carefully. Suddenly, someone shouted: “Come look! Th-this… is this…?”
The courtyard had contained four rooms.
Since Chunhua was married and no longer lived there, the west room had been empty. The middle room belonged to Aunt Ma and Uncle Xu. Between them was the main hall. Auntie Ma’s son, his wife, and their three-year-old child lived in the room on the east side.
They first found something resembling a human body in the middle bedroom. But it was completely charred black, with only the outline of a human form remaining. Right beside it, they discovered a second body.
A quarter of an hour later, in the eastern room, they found the remains of a family of three huddled together.
At the sight, everyone began to cry. There was no longer any possibility that someone had survived. The bodies were so badly burned that they were unrecognizable.
Xu Chunhua wept as though her heart would break.
As dawn gradually approached, Ning Yan crouched near the base of a wall. She picked up a pinch of gray ash, brought it to her nose, and sniffed.
“What do you smell?” Pei Yan asked.
“Doesn’t this seem like straw ash?” She motioned for him to take a look.
Pei Yan crouched beside her, pinched some ash between his fingers, and rubbed it thoughtfully. “It’s straw.”
Ning Yan motioned for everyone to step back.
The crowd obediently retreated. Together, she and Pei Yan examined the wall’s perimeter one section at a time. To be certain, she even called over an elderly farmer to verify her findings.
“Is this straw ash?”
“There are no chunks left, and the ash is very fine. It’s definitely straw,” the old man said with complete confidence.
Someone asked, “How could there be straw here?”
City dwellers didn’t own farmland. They all cooked with purchased firewood. No one used straw as fuel. For one thing, it was hard to buy. For another, it burned too quickly and took up too much space.
“How could there be straw?” The crowd noticed that Ning Yan and Pei Yan seemed to have discovered something unusual and gathered around them.
“At the moment, we can’t be certain,” Ning Yan replied. “But the presence of straw here is definitely not a simple coincidence.”
She circled to the back of the house to investigate further and found straw ash surrounding the entire building. Just as she was about to speak, someone called to her from beyond the crowd.
“Boss!” Jin Shu came running over. “Boss, have they found Aunt Ma yet?”
Ning Yan shook her head and pointed toward the ruins buried beneath the ashes.
Jin Shu immediately broke down, sobbing uncontrollably.
Qin San arrived as well, bringing Qiao Lu and several other constables with him. Their expressions soured when they saw Ning Yan there again, but with Pei Yan present, they had no choice but to behave.
“Let’s clear the bodies out first,” Qin San instructed his men as they began processing the scene.
Jin Shu crouched down beside Ning Yan and asked what she was looking for.
“The point where the fire started.” Ning Yan showed him the ash. “I suspect someone deliberately set this fire and murdered the family.”
Shock filled Jin Shu’s face. “Someone murdered Aunt Ma’s family?”
Imitating Ning Yan, he rubbed ash between his fingers and sniffed it. Then he said, “Boss, I smell tung oil.”
Ning Yan froze and looked at him. “You’re sure?”
Jin Shu didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he sampled several more spots, sniffing each one. Then he ran back and said with certainty, “Tung oil. I’m sure of it. I’ve had a sharp nose since I was little. My mother used to say even a dog’s nose wasn’t as good as mine.”
Ning Yan nodded.
“I’m tired,” Pei Yan said, yawning. “You investigate on your own. I’m leaving.” Without another word, he turned and walked away.
Ning Yan went to examine the bodies.
“You again.” The moment Qiao Lu saw her, his temper flared. “Why do you keep haunting every case?”
Ning Yan merely glanced at him and continued her inspection.
“I’m talking to you.” Qiao Lu moved to stop her. “You’re not part of the yamen. You have no authority to investigate a case.”
Ning Yan had just stood up to respond when Yu Daolin suddenly appeared and fanned himself leisurely. “Who says she doesn’t have authority? She’ll soon be a member of the Xinglong Escort Agency.”
Qiao Lu stared at Ning Yan in astonishment, then looked at Yu Daolin for a few moments before letting out a cold snort and returning to his work.
Yu Daolin cupped his hands in greeting and smiled. “My apologies, Miss Ning. I spoke too abruptly.”
Ning Yan shook her head. “Chief Escort Yu, are you planning to investigate this case?”
Yu Daolin waved a hand. “Our investigations require a client to hire us and pay a fee. Common folk are poor. Asking them for money is practically asking for their lives.”
“Business isn’t easy.”
Ning Yan finally understood how the escort agency’s investigation business operated. Because the escort agency charged fees, many people, even after suffering an injustice, chose to grit their teeth and endure it. Nothing could be done about that.
The scene was crowded, and Qin San’s group didn’t waste any time. After hearing Jin Shu’s discovery that the straw ash contained traces of tung oil, they officially classified the case as homicide.
Their line of investigation wasn’t wrong either. First, they checked which nearby households had access to straw. Then they looked into whether Aunt Ma’s family had recently quarreled with anyone or made any enemies who might seek revenge.
The bodies were taken to the county yamen, while Ning Yan remained at the scene for a while before going home at noon to catch up on her sleep.
After conducting their inquiries, Qin San’s men returned that afternoon with a report. “Nobody around here burns straw. But someone saw Liu Laosan carrying home two loads of straw the day before yesterday. I went to check, but by the time I got there, there wasn’t any straw left in his courtyard.”
Qin San frowned. “He brought home straw the day before yesterday, and now it’s all gone?”
“I asked him about it. He admitted buying the straw and said he planned to burn it into ash for making salted duck eggs.”
“But he also claimed the straw was stolen last night.”
Qiao Lu was drinking tea. Hearing this, he slammed his teacup down and spat disdainfully. “He’s lying without even bothering to use his brain. Who steals straw? If someone wanted to start a fire, they already had tung oil. Why would they need straw too?”
He had a point. If someone had brought tung oil, the straw wasn’t really necessary. Going out of their way to steal straw would have been an extra, rather pointless step.
“I thought the same thing,” the constable replied. “So after leaving the Liu residence, I asked the neighbors next door another question. And guess what?”
Qin San and Qiao Lu both waited for him to continue.
“The neighbor said Liu Laosan had a huge argument with the victim, Xu Qingshan, just yesterday. Xu Qingshan went to collect some money that Liu Laosan owed him. Liu Laosan said he didn’t have it, and the two of them got into a shouting match.”
The previous year, Liu Laosan borrowed 100 copper coins from Xu Qingshan to treat his child’s illness, but he kept delaying repayment.
The two families had originally gotten along well. Later, however, their relationship soured over the debt. They had argued several times and were now enemies.
“That Liu Laosan has an older brother who’s an official somewhere with power and influence, yet he’s always crying poverty and refusing to pay back what he owes. He’s a rotten person!”
“Killing an entire family over a hundred coins… that’s vicious,” Qiao Lu spat.
Just then, the coroner entered and reported the autopsy findings. “All five victims were drugged unconscious first and then burned alive. There was ash in their nasal passages and throats.”
If a person is alive during a fire, they continue breathing, so ash enters their nose and mouth. If they are already dead before being burned, no ash will be found in the respiratory tract.
“Arrest him!” Qin San ordered. “Whether he admits it or not is no longer up to him.”
Once the torture instruments came out, guilty or innocent, anyone would confess.
Besides, Qin San was holding his breath over this case. He wanted to solve one himself and show Ning Yan that the constables of Zining County were more capable than she was.
Meanwhile, after waking from her nap, Ning Yan heard crying and commotion at the mouth of the alley. She opened the side gate and saw constables dragging a man away with ropes tied around him. The man shouted that he was innocent while his wife and children followed behind, weeping and pleading.
Neighbors on both sides whispered and pointed.
“Old sir, have they found the killer?” Ning Yan asked.
“They have,” the old man replied. “This time the yamen handled things quickly and efficiently. Not bad at all.”
Ning Yan was surprised. She hadn’t expected Qin San and the others to be so efficient when they were actually serious about their work.