He Ningzheng and Steward Yu went downstairs still talking. Hongdou paused for a moment, then continued on into her room.
She wasn’t at all surprised that Duan Mingyi had gone back to her family home—at dawn, when the He household had been in chaos, she’d seen her briefly, and everyone had been unsettled by the fighting. As the eldest daughter of her family, it was only natural for Duan Mingyi to be worried about her own family. Besides, right now Hongdou’s mind was entirely consumed with worry over He Yunqin’s safety, with no room to spare for matters concerning the eldest branch of the family.
Back in her room, both Mrs. Yu and Yu Chongyi were startled. After stepping out and coming back, Hongdou’s complexion had grown much worse.
“What happened?” Mrs. Yu hurried over to her.
Yu Chongyi had known since the night before that He Yunqin wasn’t home, and now, with the fighting having broken out and He Yunqin still not back, seeing Hongdou’s expression, he was stunned for a moment before anxiety flared up in him. “Is something wrong on Yunqin’s end?”
Hongdou walked straight to the safe, took out the key, then stopped.
In just those few minutes, she’d made up her mind—even if she found the meeting place, so what? For the sake of its members’ safety, the organization would never reveal identity information to outsiders under any circumstances—trying to confirm Wang Bide’s position through this method simply wasn’t realistic.
To this day, there was only one thing that might be used to judge the truth or falsehood of Wang Bide’s words.
She turned to her brother. “Brother, come with me to the small parlor downstairs to make a phone call—there’s an outside line there, I need to ask Auntie something.”
According to He Yunqin and Wang Bide’s earlier analysis, the nurse’s sudden death, Bai Haili’s assassination, and Auntie’s attack might all have been carried out by the same group of people.
The nurse’s sudden death was so the killers could keep the house empty to continue searching for the gold. Bai Haili’s assassination, besides this same reason, likely also had to do with his own involvement in the gold bar dispute.
Among these incidents, only Auntie’s attack seemed abrupt and careless by comparison.
From Auntie’s own recollection, a few days before the attack, she had accidentally witnessed Miss Qiu meeting with Wu Ruhai’s contact from Nanjing. Based on this, they had once suspected that the person who tried to kill Auntie was Miss Qiu.
But Miss Qiu didn’t wear a size 39 shoe—even if she was connected to the murder case, she wouldn’t have been the one who actually carried it out at the scene.
So among the remaining clues, regarding the actual perpetrator at the scene, only two points were relatively clear:
First, the killer knew about Auntie’s secret, embarrassing habit of needing to use the bathroom frequently, and had hidden in the washroom in advance because of this—which meant the killer either knew Auntie personally, or had some channel through which to find out about this.
Second, Wang Bide had discovered that the mailing address for the imported drug used to harm the nurse was Tongfu Lane.
With these two points, there was indeed reason to suspect that the killer was a resident of Tongfu Lane.
The first point and the size 39 footprint were objective information that had already been verified. The second point was only Wang Bide’s one-sided account.
Things had come to such a point that, laughably, she couldn’t even fully trust Wang Bide—the only way to verify was through the first point, to check whether the second point had actually been fabricated or not.
And the way to verify it was, naturally, to press the sole survivor—Auntie—to recall once more the events of the days before the attack.
Yu Chongyi agreed almost without a second thought. “All right.”
Mrs. Yu caught up a few steps. “What exactly happened? Your aunt might still be at Ruide’s clinic—with the fighting breaking out so suddenly, I don’t even know if she’s made it back to the Pan mansion.”
This reminded Hongdou of something. Once downstairs, she first called Ruide’s clinic—but not only was Ruide not there, not even the nurse who usually answered the phone was there. The phone rang several times with no answer at all, and she had no choice but to hang up.
The telephone at the Pan mansion was installed in her aunt and uncle’s bedroom. When she called the Pan mansion, it likewise rang for a long time before someone picked up. Through the phone she could hear noise and commotion on the other end, clearly because the household was in an uproar over the fighting.
It took some time before a servant finally found Yuyuan to come to the phone. Hongdou said, “Yuyuan, how is Auntie recovering? Is it convenient for her to come to the phone? I have something extremely important to ask her.”
Before Yuyuan could answer, someone could be heard shouting in the distance, “Yuyuan, who’s calling? Is it Hongdou? Quick, quick, help me over to answer the phone.”
It was clearly Auntie’s voice.
Hongdou and her brother exchanged a look of surprise. Could it be that Auntie had remembered something important she needed to tell them?
Mrs. Pan seemed to have jostled her wound, letting out a hiss of pain before forcing herself to endure it and speak. “Hongdou, your uncle and I were just about to call you. Your uncle just went to fight for tickets at the shipping company, and after all that fighting, could only get a few third-class tickets. You know Auntie still has this injury—how can I possibly sit in third class?”
Hongdou opened her mouth, but before she could answer, Mrs. Pan continued on in a rapid stream. “Is the He family about to set out for Chongqing soon? Auntie wants to discuss something with you—if there’s no room left on the He family’s plane, could you get us a few first-class boat tickets? This fighting has everyone’s hearts in their throats, no one knows what’s going to happen to Shanghai next—we’re all planning to go take shelter in Chongqing for a while. Your Cousin Yuqi and Yuan Ruoli are about to set off for Hong Kong right away, so it’s just the three of us left—we don’t need many tickets, just three will do.”
Hongdou said in surprise, “Cousin Yuqi is going to Hong Kong?”
“That’s right. There’s no time to arrange anything properly—the two families are planning to just put an announcement in the papers these next couple of days, and hold a proper wedding once the fighting’s over and they’re back in Shanghai. Yuan Ruoli went to a great deal of trouble just to get two second-class tickets—it’s really been unfair to Yuqi, if you think about it.”
Hongdou’s heart was a tangle of mixed feelings. Now that fighting had broken out, friends and family were scattering in every direction just to survive—Cousin Yuqi’s departure was perhaps only the beginning; more separations would surely follow. Gu Yun, for instance—she still hadn’t had the chance to confirm whether the Gu family was staying or leaving.
She forced herself to gather her spirits. “That’s wonderful news—Auntie, please pass along my congratulations to Cousin Yuqi and Mr. Yuan first. I’ll have Steward Yu send over a wedding gift to the Pan mansion right away. As for the tickets, I’ll check if there are any available—if there are, I’ll have him bring those over too.”
Mrs. Pan let out a breath of relief. “It’s not that Auntie’s being difficult—I’ve stayed in third class plenty of times before, but with this wound of mine, if I really had to be jostled around in third class for over ten days, it would definitely get worse. Oh, and by the way—before, at Dr. Ruide’s clinic, there were quite a few people keeping watch outside. Last night, because of the fighting, we moved back to the Pan mansion, and these people followed along too. Tell Auntie’s Yunqin that with things so chaotic now, the killer probably isn’t even thinking about me anymore—please ask these friends to go home, there’s no need to keep guarding outside the mansion.”
Hongdou said, “This matter is too complicated—we can’t just call it off, because it doesn’t only concern your safety, there are other considerations involved too. Right now I want to ask you something—in the first few days before the tea party, did you not encounter anything unusual at all?”
Mrs. Pan was stunned for a good while. “Didn’t I already tell you all about this? I ran into a woman talking with a man in a car belonging to the police department—that woman’s voice sounded a lot like Miss Qiu’s from your building.”
“Besides Miss Qiu, did you happen to run into any of our other neighbors from the building these past few days?”
Mrs. Pan was taken aback. “Other neighbors?”
Over this past year, because she hadn’t wanted Yuyuan getting entangled with Yu Chongyi, she’d rather risk falling out with her sister-in-law than go to Tongfu Lane. Recently, the most she’d done was go a few times for Hongdou’s wedding—how would she often run into other neighbors there?
By this point Mrs. Pan understood the gravity of the matter as well, and steadied herself, racking her brain with all her might to recall what had happened these past few days. She thought so hard that she didn’t respond for a long while.
After a good while, she finally said, “I already told you before—that day I’d gone to buy pastries at the bakery for Yuyuan, and that’s how I happened to pass by that police department car. While I was paying at the counter, the customer in front of me left behind a bag of pastries. I meant to remind the shop assistant, but there were too many people and I didn’t get around to it—I just took my own pastries and left—”
At this point she suddenly paused. “Wait a moment. I remember there was a short man in the shop who kept staring at me, and when I looked over at him, he ducked into the back.”
A short man? Hongdou pondered silently. Xiang Qisheng, though thin, wasn’t short in stature. Among all the men in the building, only the Peng tailor was short.
“You didn’t get a clear look at his face?”
“No.” Mrs. Pan’s voice carried hesitation. “This man was working in the back, and the moment he saw me, he ducked out of sight. It was just that one instant—I didn’t get the chance to see his face at all.”
“He left the moment he saw you?” Hongdou’s brow furrowed. “Did he know you?”
“I don’t know. If you hadn’t kept asking, Hongdou, I wouldn’t have even remembered this—the man was just so unremarkable. Oh, right, I heard from Yuyuan that the pastries for the tea party were supplied by that very bakery, so whether this man was a shop worker or a customer, I still haven’t figured out to this day.”
Hongdou felt increasingly certain in her own mind—the tea party required an invitation to enter, and the killer had been able to come and go freely through the back door, which meant whoever was behind him must have arranged things in advance. Posing as a bakery worker delivering pastries would make for excellent cover.
A tailor from a tailor shop suddenly turning into a bakery worker—only someone as scatterbrained as Auntie would fail to grow suspicious.
Mrs. Pan added, “Honestly, of all our neighbors in that building, the only one I have any real impression of is Miss Qiu on the third floor. As for the others, I probably wouldn’t even recognize them if they stood right in front of me.”
After hanging up the phone, Hongdou and Yu Chongyi went back to their room. This matter involved the struggles of several different factions—it could no longer be reasoned through as an ordinary murder case. Though she still didn’t dare be certain of the killer’s identity, the scattered clues, pieced together, left her unable to help suspecting these two neighbors.
And this suspicion happened to align exactly with Wang Bide’s own reasoning.
She went back to her room, opened the safe, and took out that stack of documents.
Page by page, she flipped through them, and when she reached the seventh house, it was, as expected, entirely blank. He Yunqin had only marked a general area on the map of the International Settlement—no building plan, no specific location. Clearly, whether it was a house or a factory, even he himself couldn’t say for certain.
Even as her hopes fell, she couldn’t help but feel some relief at the same time. The location of the seventh house remained a mystery—if Wang Bide were after the gold bars, he’d naturally be greatly disappointed by these materials. Friend or foe, this alone would tell.
But how could she bear to let Wang Bide cross through gunfire alone just to deliver a message? To warn He Yunqin, there had to be some foolproof plan.
Suddenly she remembered that her brother had served as a police officer in the International Settlement for a long time. Suppressing the anxiety in her heart, she pointed at that area on the map and asked her brother, “Brother, do you know what factories or how many Western-style houses are in this area?”
Duan Mingfeng and Duan Mingbo parked their car in front of the Sima Light Bulb Factory. What their sister had said the day before was right—the Duan family had enjoyed nearly a century of prestige, and now it was on the verge of collapse. If it truly fell apart completely, how could they, as the pillars of the family, face the old and young who depended on them? The family’s businesses had already reached the end of their rope, powerless to do more. As for the buildings—if there were any hidden layers or compartments, he’d be able to spot them at a glance. Whether it succeeded or not, they had to at least try.
They took out the building plan and looked it over against the factory, and seeing the gate crowded entirely with common people collecting relief grain, they paused for a moment and were just about to drive the car away, when suddenly someone called out, “Brother Duan.”
Author’s note: Second update around 10:30.