Yuyuan paid no attention to Hongdou at all, her gaze sweeping over everyone present, finally landing on the dignified-looking man beside her father, her tone indifferent: “What is this about?”

He Yunqin glanced at her, slightly surprised, but didn’t respond.

Seeing his daughter’s lack of manners, Pan Maosheng felt deeply ashamed, and hurriedly pulled Yuyuan aside, scolding her fiercely in a low voice. He then turned back, full of apology, to He Yunqin and Wang Bide: “It’s all my fault for poor discipline — my daughter’s words and conduct are unseemly, quite offensive. I hope Mr. He and Detective Wang won’t take offense. Please, follow me — this way is the eldest daughter’s room.”

As he spoke, he led the group toward the end of the hallway. Yuyuan turned around, still watching everyone’s every move.

Arriving at the door of Yuqi’s room, He Yunqin said to Pan Maosheng: “Mr. Pan, Mrs. Pan, Detective Wang and I will be searching your daughter’s room shortly. To search thoroughly, it’s inconvenient to have too many people inside — aside from Mr. Yu, would everyone else please wait outside the door?”

Pan Maosheng was startled for a moment, then, recalling the scene when the French Concession police had come earlier, hurriedly said: “Of course.” As he spoke, he opened Yuqi’s door.

He Yunqin walked into the room and looked around, then turned to see Hongdou curiously peering in from the doorway, and waved her over: “Miss Yu, come in and lend a hand.”

Yuyuan protested: “Why does Hongdou get to go in?”

Mrs. Pan angrily pinched her ear: “What’s gotten into you today, child? The more you study, the more you regress. When someone says it’s fine, there’s naturally a reason for it.”

Yuyuan said, unconvinced: “I want to help find my sister too.”

He Yunqin bent down and picked up something from the dressing table, saying flatly: “Miss Yu has had some basic training — she won’t disturb the scene.”

Yuyuan turned to look at Hongdou: “When did you get trained? How come I don’t know about this?”

Hongdou couldn’t be bothered to argue with Yuyuan, and stepped inside, thinking as she walked: He Yunqin rarely put on an aggressive, domineering front, yet no matter where he went, no matter how strong-willed the person he faced, he always seemed to quietly take charge without a word.

It was like this in front of her and her brother. It was the same in front of Wang Bide.

This time at her uncle and aunt’s house, he was still the one calling the shots.

And she had never liked being controlled by others — if it weren’t for finding her cousin, she certainly wouldn’t obediently listen to him.

She walked up behind him: “What does Mr. He need me to do?”

He Yunqin unscrewed a bottle of French perfume and handed it to Hongdou: “Is this your cousin’s?”

Hongdou took it and sniffed — a rich, sweet fragrance rushed to her nose. Discerning it carefully, she detected red rose mixed with a hint of green grass, and nodded: “Yes, she often wears this scent.”

“Every day?”

Hongdou lifted the bottle to look — it was already down to the last bit at the bottom — but since she hadn’t visited her uncle’s house in a while, she didn’t dare answer too confidently: “Probably.”

Yuyuan, arms crossed, answered coldly from outside: “This perfume was given to my sister by a friend. You can’t find many bottles of this style on the market. She loved it dearly and used it every day.”

He Yunqin looked up at her: “What friend?”

“I don’t know.” Yuyuan’s face reddened slightly, her flat tone loosening a bit. “So many people pursue my sister, how could I know them all?”

“Probably Yuan Ruoli.” Mrs. Pan said. “Yuqi never casually accepted gifts from others, but she not only accepted this perfume, she used it every single day. That shows she was quite fond of this person. It’s just that the child was worried we wouldn’t approve of her seeing Mr. Yuan, so she always kept it from us — otherwise we would have thought of Mr. Yuan as a lead sooner.”

He Yunqin borrowed a clean handkerchief from Wang Bide, sprayed some perfume onto it, and after the surface layer of alcohol had evaporated, handed it to Hongdou: “Put this away.”

Hongdou steeled herself, hurriedly imitating the way she’d seen them preserve evidence that night, carefully wrapping up the handkerchief.

Seeing her being so solemn and careful about it, He Yunqin couldn’t help finding it a little amusing, but afraid of showing it and annoying her, he crouched down to look at the gap between the dressing table and the wall.

Hongdou had just finished putting away the handkerchief when it dawned on her — was He Yunqin treating her as his assistant? That was actually more skillful than Wang Bide — when he ordered her around, he did it so subtly she wouldn’t even realize until afterward.

Seeing He Yunqin crouched on the ground studying something, she had no choice but to crouch down too.

He Yunqin looked for a while, and seeing something seemingly wedged in the gap, unsure what it was, said to Hongdou: “Go borrow a Western flashlight from Mr. Pan.”

He said this without even looking up, as if he’d grown more and more used to ordering Hongdou around.

Hongdou responded with a muffled sound and went outside to take the Western flashlight a servant had found.

He Yunqin switched on the flashlight and shone it into the back, frowning: “Didn’t you say the French Concession police searched this room? How did they miss this entirely?”

Wang Bide, who had been checking under the bed, put down the bed skirt at this remark and stood up with a cold laugh: “That’s how the local police always are. It’s already something that they bothered to come and go through the motions — do you really expect them to search carefully for evidence?”

Yu Chongyi flushed red, unable to argue, and simply went over without a word to help He Yunqin move the dressing table.

The moment the heavy piece of furniture was moved aside, the things wedged in the gap came rustling down.

He Yunqin used tweezers to sort through the pile — mostly scraps of paper, along with some old candy wrappers and discarded celluloid hair ornaments. Finally he picked out a crumpled piece of yellow paper.

He Yunqin unfolded the paper — a long, thin sheet of apricot-yellow paper, covered in some kind of illegible symbols scrawled like writhing worms and snakes.

“What is this?” Yu Chongyi asked in surprise. “It looks like a Daoist talisman.”

Mrs. Pan craned her neck to look from outside and said: “Oh, isn’t that the peace talisman from Flowing Cloud Temple?”

“Flowing Cloud Temple?”

Mrs. Pan said: “It’s a Daoist temple, in the suburbs — a run-down, obscure little place. Last time I was playing mahjong with our employer’s wife, she mentioned that the deity enshrined at that temple was very efficacious. It happened I’d been feeling stuffy in the chest around that time, so I took Yuqi to burn incense there. This peace talisman is what we got at the temple that time.”

Hongdou looked down — the talisman paper had already been crumpled and wrinkled, and had fallen behind the dressing table, showing that her cousin hadn’t taken this thing seriously at all.

He Yunqin let Hongdou fiddle with the talisman paper along with him, then thought for a moment and asked Mrs. Pan: “Is that temple large? How many Daoist priests are there in total? Is there a car service outside the temple?”

Mrs. Pan shook her head: “Counting even the one who sweeps the floor, there are fewer than ten people total. Every one of them is old and dim-witted — even writing a talisman, their hands shake. None of them manage much of anything either. Inside and outside the temple it’s dead silent — forget a car, there isn’t even a single bicycle.”

At this, Hongdou remembered what He Yunqin had said at home that afternoon, and raised her head to ask him: “Chen Baidie went to a Daoist temple the day before she disappeared too — I wonder if it’s the same one as this Flowing Cloud Temple?”

He Yunqin lowered his eyes to look at her, lost in thought, and didn’t answer.

Wang Bide shook his head: “To move a living, grown person through a busy area, you’d absolutely need a car. If the temple’s situation is really as simple as Mrs. Pan describes, at the very least they lack the tools for the crime.”

He Yunqin asked Mrs. Pan again: “Exactly where is that temple located? Are there any other residences nearby?”

Mrs. Pan said: “It’s right on Mingquan Mountain. That place is cool in winter and warm in summer — quite a few wealthy people live there.”

Hongdou remembered going to Mingquan Mountain once last year with classmates from her fellowship. The mountain was lush with trees, a tranquil place — indeed very suitable for recuperation.

Mr. Pan chimed in: “Our employer also has a Western-style villa built at the foot of the mountain, but our employer has too many properties in the city — there are several private residences just at the train station alone — so they don’t go to Mingquan Mountain much either. That villa sits empty for a good half the year.”

Train station? Hongdou was startled — earlier they’d only focused on investigating the Yuan family’s properties, forgetting that Nanbao Trading Company also had property at the train station.

He Yunqin said to Wang Bide: “Search quickly and thoroughly — if there’s nothing more to find, we’ll go. Mr. Yu, please verify with the telephone company the outside lines registered under Nanbao Trading Company’s properties. If any begin with the digit 7, tell me immediately.”

The group searched carefully once more, then came out of the Pan mansion. He Yunqin and Wang Bide got into the car, and Hongdou was about to follow Yu Chongyi up as well when Mrs. Yu stopped her: “Your brother and the others are investigating the case — what are you tagging along for? Don’t get in the way.”

Hongdou said solemnly: “I’m the assistant Detective Wang specially requested, how could that be getting in the way?”

Mrs. Yu, remembering what everyone had witnessed just now in Yuqi’s room, was half-convinced, and looked to Yu Chongyi as if for confirmation. Yu Chongyi hesitated, unsure, and glanced at the two men in the car.

Wang Bide, having heard the entire exchange between mother and daughter clearly from the car, had already raised both bushy eyebrows. This Yu Hongdou — pretty and seemingly innocent-looking on the surface, yet her talent for bald-faced lying was hardly inferior to He Yunqin’s.

He had already experienced Hongdou’s eloquence firsthand and had no intention of letting her have her way this time, so he rolled down the window, about to openly refute her claim. But He Yunqin, sitting behind him, refused to let him have his satisfaction, speaking first: “Mr. Yu, Miss Yu, get in the car quickly.”

Yu Chongyi hurriedly pulled Hongdou over, and under Wang Bide’s glare, got into the car.

At the police station, Yu Chongyi got out of the car and went inside to check on Nanbao Trading Company’s phone lines.

Hongdou took out the perfume-scented handkerchief and sniffed it, asking He Yunqin: “Chen Baidie specifically used lipstick to write down that string of numbers — that suggests the number was extremely important. If she was afraid of forgetting it, why did she wipe it off afterward?”

He Yunqin leaned back, stretching out his long legs: “The night Chen Baidie went missing, she only made one phone call to order a car. The number on the mirror might have been written down earlier. Perhaps she’d already memorized it by heart, or perhaps she changed her mind at the last moment — in any case, she must have found the lipstick mark unsightly and naturally wanted to wipe it clean.”

Hongdou still didn’t understand: “By rights, the servants would clean the room every day. Earlier, when the number was still clear, the servants would have known the mistress kept it there for a reason, and naturally wouldn’t have disturbed it. But later Chen Baidie wiped it off herself — so why would the servants still leave that smudged mess untouched? Yet when we went to check, that smeared lipstick mark was still there. That shows the servants hadn’t had a chance to clean the room before discovering Chen Baidie was missing. Following this reasoning, Chen Baidie probably wiped off the number the very night before she disappeared, and the servants discovered her missing the next day, so naturally had no heart to clean the room. I keep feeling that Chen Baidie’s actions — writing down the number, then wiping it off — must be connected to her benefactor.”

He Yunqin took out a cigarette from his trouser pocket: “Miss Yu makes a lot of sense.”

Hongdou noticed a teasing tone in his voice, clearly perfunctory, and raised her fine eyebrows: “Am I wrong?”

This man was really strange — every time the topic of Chen Baidie’s benefactor came up, his expression cooled, and a perfectly good conversation would grind to a halt. It was baffling.

Remembering that the doorman at Chen Baidie’s residence had recognized He Yunqin that night, a thought flashed through her mind — could He Yunqin himself be Chen Baidie’s benefactor?

That would explain why he didn’t like discussing it, and why he’d taken the initiative to get involved in this case.

The more she thought about it, the more reasonable this explanation seemed. Except — she’d heard He Yunqin had gone abroad to study in his teens, and was now at most twenty-four or twenty-five, while Chen Baidie had already been famous for several years. The two of them should have quite an age gap — could it be a case of an older-woman romance?

She also remembered how this man had even gone to see Miss Qiu on the third floor. Though Miss Qiu knew how to use makeup to conceal her age, she couldn’t be under twenty-seven. Perhaps He Yunqin simply liked women older than himself.

And then there was Duan Mingyi — though close to him in age, she was still his sister-in-law after all…

Too many gossip tabloids read secretly behind her mother’s back over the years — now they came flooding uncontrollably into her mind, impossible to hold back.

He Yunqin, noticing Hongdou had been quiet for a while, glanced at the rearview mirror and saw her expression subtly complicated, unsure what wild thoughts were racing through her head. Somewhat amused, he said: “Chen Baidie’s benefactor isn’t me.”

Hongdou was startled — how did this man even know what she was thinking?

He Yunqin rubbed the bridge of his nose, also feeling that his last remark had been unnecessary, and was about to find some way to smooth things over without leaving a trace, when Yu Chongyi returned, walking up to lean against the car window: “I checked. None of Nanbao Trading Company’s properties have a line beginning with 7. The villa at Mingquan Mountain doesn’t have a phone installed yet. But I also took the liberty of checking the other wealthy residences at Mingquan Mountain — every single one with a phone installed has a number beginning with 7.”

He Yunqin stubbed out his cigarette: “Mr. Yu, I don’t know about the others, but as for Chen Baidie alone — your Commissioner Bai has practically turned all of Shanghai upside down trying to find her, yet more than ten days have passed without a single trace. To keep several people hidden this long without being discovered, there must be some explanation for it. Go file a report with your superiors now, and head to Mingquan Mountain to search as soon as possible — focus especially on Flowing Cloud Temple and Nanbao Trading Company’s villa. Detective Wang and I will go keep watch on Lu Jingheng.”

Yu Chongyi was taken aback: “Does Mr. He mean that Chen Baidie and my cousin might be hidden at Mingquan Mountain?”

He Yunqin said: “The murderer has left too few clues — everything is still just conjecture. But it’s worth trying regardless. Mr. Yu, go to Mingquan Mountain right away. If there’s any news, come find us immediately.”

At the Grand Theatre, He Yunqin parked the car off to the side in an inconspicuous corner.

Hongdou looked across the street, and before long, sure enough, she saw the Lu family’s car arrive.

After the car stopped, Lu Jingheng got out and personally opened the door for Li Lulu and a few other girls. Once they were out, he bowed slightly with great gentlemanly grace and led the girls inside, then came back out and said something to the driver.

The driver nodded and slowly drove the car away.

This movie looked to be about an hour long. Hongdou ate some of the pastries He Yunqin had bought her, growing sleepier the more she ate. Looking up, she saw He Yunqin leaning back against the seat with his eyes closed, seemingly dozing. Wang Bide took out his flask and drank quietly, clearly still alert. Glancing across the street again, the show still hadn’t let out.

She was just debating whether to take a nap in the back seat when Lu Jingheng and Li Lulu and the others came out.

The driver was very punctual, arriving a quarter hour before the theater let out, and seeing the young master emerge, hurried out to open the door.

Lu Jingheng seemed to have spent quite a bit of effort pursuing Li Lulu — after dropping her off at the Li family home, he patiently drove the other students back to their residences one by one before finally heading toward the Lu family’s home on Yiyuan Road.

Wang Bide said with no small amount of sarcasm: “This wastrel took a big loss at your hands a few months back, and behaved himself for a while. Now that he’s recovered, he’s back to being twice the philanderer he was before — count the women he’s pursued lately, probably no fewer than ten. Who knows how long this one will last. If you ask me, the only one he’s ever truly put his heart into all these years is your family’s young mistress.”

He Yunqin gave a short laugh: “Whoever he pursues has nothing to do with me. As long as it doesn’t drag me into it, that’s fine.”

Hongdou was so startled she dropped a piece of pastry. Based on past experience, He Yunqin and Lu Jingheng must have some kind of grudge, yet He Yunqin really didn’t seem like the type to bother scheming against a wastrel like Lu Jingheng. To have put so much effort into making the other man suffer in silence for months — this grudge must run quite deep. It seemed, going around and around, it always came back to Duan Mingyi.

She suddenly remembered that scandalous newspaper piece about He Yunqin and Duan Mingyi — the news had appeared out of nowhere, then spread through Shanghai like wildfire. Could it be that Lu Jingheng had deliberately spread it?

He Yunqin couldn’t be bothered to respond further to Wang Bide.

The car followed along the whole way, always keeping a discreet distance from the Lu family car.

When they arrived at the Lu mansion, the car door opened and Lu Jingheng swaggered out, about to go inside. But just as he took his first step, as if the driver had said something to alert him, he turned back in surprise, and finally spotted the car parked in the secluded spot behind them.

Lu Jingheng stared hard in this direction and seemed to recognize He Yunqin, his face filling with anger as he started to charge over — but just then, several more cars came speeding down the road, screeching to a halt right in front of the Lu mansion.

The car doors opened, and the first person out was Commissioner Bai, followed by a number of policemen, with Hongdou’s brother among them. They made quite a show of it, surrounding Lu Jingheng completely.

Wang Bide glanced at He Yunqin: “Even Bai Haili himself has shown up — they must have found something significant at Mingquan Mountain.”

Sure enough, the group of policemen handcuffed Lu Jingheng and were about to push him into the police car when Lu Jingheng shouted: “Bai Haili, what is the meaning of this? You were just at my house playing mahjong with my father yesterday, and now you turn on me in an instant? What crime have I committed? My father is right inside — do you dare say this to his face?”

Commissioner Bai sneered coldly: “Young Master Lu, this time you’ve made too big a mess even I can’t cover for you! We just found Chen Baidie’s bloodstained clothing at the Lu family villa at Mingquan Mountain. We have every reason to suspect you’re involved in Chen Baidie’s disappearance. Young Master Lu, instead of ranting here, you’d best confess now how you kidnapped Chen Baidie, Pan Yuqi, and the others — otherwise not even the Jade Emperor himself could save your life!”

Author’s Note: Happy New Year’s Eve!!!