“Asi, do you remember when I visited you recently and mentioned that my mother had been acting strangely?” Xie Qingyao asked.
Jiang Si nodded.
Xie Qingyao wiped away her tears. “At the time, I suspected my father might have taken a mistress. It was during our conversation that you made me realize something was amiss. When I returned home, I discovered my mother’s unease was due to my father’s peculiar behavior, especially his strange actions at night. My mother thought he was possessed, which is why she wanted to invite Daoist Priestess Liu to perform an exorcism. After Priestess Liu’s death, my mother became very depressed. I urged her to consult a good physician for my father. It was only after we invited a renowned doctor that we learned my father wasn’t possessed, but rather suffering from sleepwalking…”
Jiang Si listened silently, her brow furrowing.
“It wasn’t good news, so I didn’t mention it to you. My father had already started taking the medicine prescribed by the doctor. Who would have thought—” Xie Qingyao couldn’t continue and began sobbing into her hands.
“Something’s not right—” Jiang Si’s frown deepened.
In her previous life, the Earl of Yongchang had also developed sleepwalking at this time. Because he hadn’t been examined by a doctor, it had led to the embarrassing incident of him sleeping with pigs. But even though the Earl had slept with pigs, he certainly hadn’t killed Madame Earl in his sleep.
In this life, the Earl’s sleepwalking had been diagnosed early, and he was taking prescribed medication. No matter how she thought about it, he shouldn’t have accidentally killed his wife.
“What’s not right?” Xie Qingyao stopped crying and looked up at Jiang Si with a pale face.
“Did the senior maid witness your father killing your mother?” Jiang Si asked.
Xie Qingyao’s eyelashes trembled, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “My parents always slept in the same room, and several senior maids usually attended to their morning toilette. This morning, when they entered, they saw my father sitting beside my mother, unresponsive, holding a blood-stained candlestick. And my mother was already—”
Jiang Si grasped the key point: “But they didn’t see your father stabbing your mother with the candlestick, did they?”
Xie Qingyao was taken aback. “Asi, what do you mean?”
Jiang Si squeezed Xie Qingyao’s hand firmly. “Qingyao, people say that hearing is deceiving, but seeing is believing. However, sometimes even our eyes can deceive us. Those maids saw that Madame had been killed, and your father was sitting there with a bloody candlestick. They naturally assumed he had killed her. But if you think carefully, they didn’t witness the act of murder, did they?”
Xie Qingyao was confused. “But only my parents were there. No one else could have entered without being seen by so many people—”
Of course, she didn’t want to believe the cruel fact that her father had killed her mother with his own hands. It wasn’t just her who couldn’t accept it; her father had been trying to atone for his actions with his own life since regaining consciousness. If not for the people restraining him, he might have already followed her mother…
The thought made Xie Qingyao feel hopeless and on the verge of tears.
The pain she and her brother felt wasn’t just from losing their mother, but also from the unbearable knowledge that their father had killed her.
Now Asi was telling her that her mother might not have been killed by her father.
Xie Qingyao found it hard to believe, yet deep down, she clung to a glimmer of hope. This hope made her even more anxious, and she stared intently at Jiang Si. “Asi, why do you say this?”
Jiang Si calmed herself.
Faced with her friend in this state, she had no choice but to remain composed.
“I’ve heard about sleepwalking before. People with this condition may exhibit unusual behaviors in their sleep, like getting up and wandering around or performing certain actions. But ultimately, even though these actions are done while sleeping and seemingly unconscious, they reflect subconscious thoughts. Qingyao, do you believe your father ever harbored thoughts of killing your mother?”
“Not!” Xie Qingyao vehemently denied it. “My parents were so loving. How could my father ever have such thoughts!”
“Every effect has a cause. If we both believe that your father could never have had thoughts of harming your mother, then the result of your mother’s death shouldn’t be attributed to your father—”
Before Jiang Si could finish her analysis, Xie Qingyao excitedly grasped her hands. “Asi, you’re right! My mother couldn’t have been killed by my father! Thank goodness, thank goodness—”
Jiang Si sighed quietly.
Her analysis was primarily based on the drastically different outcomes between her previous life and the current one. But nothing was absolute. Whether Madame Earl of Yongchang was killed by the Earl would ultimately depend on evidence.
Xie Qingyao wiped her tears and hurriedly headed for the door.
Jiang Si quickly stopped her. “Qingyao, where are you going?”
“I’m going to tell my father that he didn’t accidentally kill Mother and that the real murderer must be someone else!”
“Qingyao, if you tell your father this, he’ll surely think you’re just trying to comfort him.”
Xie Qingyao looked helpless. “What if the father doesn’t believe me? Asi, please help me. I’m so afraid something will happen to father. I’ve already lost my mother; I can’t lose my father too.”
Jiang Si thought for a moment, then said softly, “Qingyao, can you take me to the room where your mother was killed? I’d like to have a look.”
Xie Qingyao shuddered but eventually nodded. “Alright, follow me.”
The Earl and his wife resided in the main courtyard. By now, Madame Earl’s body had been prepared by the elderly female servants and moved to the mourning hall. Her resting place was eerily quiet, with only two maids standing guard.
“Young Miss,” the two maids greeted as soon as they saw Xie Qingyao approach.
Xie Qingyao, usually kind to the maids, was in no mood for pleasantries. She reached for the door and pushed it open.
One of the maids couldn’t help but say, “Young Miss, the Young Master said no one was allowed to enter—”
Xie Qingyao gave the maid a cold look. “Stand aside!”
Seeing Xie Qingyao’s firm attitude, the maid wisely stepped aside, allowing her to push open the door and enter with Jiang Si.
Before they even entered the inner chamber, the strong smell of blood hit them.
Jiang Si wrinkled her nose in discomfort.
Such a potent smell of blood would likely mask any other scents.
The blood smell was even stronger in the inner chamber. The folding screen had fallen to the ground, and the rain-blue gauze curtains were haphazardly pulled aside, stained with splatters of blood.
On the bed, the brocade quilt was crumpled in a corner, and the sheets had turned a dark red. The event had been so sudden and horrific that no one had yet attended to cleaning up.
“My mother must have been sleeping on the outside,” Xie Qingyao pointed to a bloodstain on the outer part of the bed, tears welling up again.
“Generally speaking, wouldn’t your father choose to sleep on the outside?” Jiang Si asked instinctively.
After marrying Yu Qicheng, that scoundrel had never spent a night in the study. As soon as it got dark, he would make his way to the inner chamber. Back then, he had told her that he wanted to sleep on the outside to avoid disturbing her if he needed to get up at night…
“I don’t know,” Xie Qingyao looked at Jiang Si in confusion. “We’d have to ask the senior maid who attended to Mother at night.”
Jiang Si’s face flushed.
It seemed she knew a bit too much…
“Is this question important?” Xie Qingyao, desperate for any lead, immediately called in one of the maids guarding the door. “Chunfang, did Mother usually sleep on the inside or the outside?”
“Madame—” Chunfang instinctively glanced at the bed, the glaring bloodstains making her lips tremble. “Madame used to sleep on the inside, but later—”
She glanced at Jiang Si, unsure whether to continue.