“A bride,” Bai Jin finished. “A bride returning from her first visit home after the wedding.”

“A bride would never make that visit alone. Whoever was with her must have been the groom.”

After saying this, Shi Ting turned toward Yan Qing and found her examining the deceased’s neck with one hand.

Yan Qing had no concern about compromising the evidence. With the technology available at this time, obtaining any useful biological material was essentially impossible. Without DNA analysis, gathering evidence was several times more difficult than she was used to.

Apart from Shi Ting, the other two stared. Neither could have imagined that this young woman — who looked both young and delicate — not only showed no fear in the presence of a corpse, but was willing to reach out and touch it with her bare hands.

“Miss, please —” E Yuan’s expression conveyed his sharp displeasure. In his view, what Yan Qing was doing was sheer recklessness. A body of this importance was not something to be casually handled.

His next words, however, were cut short by a single glance from Shi Ting. E Yuan did not understand why, but he dared not go against Shi Ting’s wishes.

“Do you have a magnifying glass?” Yan Qing asked suddenly.

At Shi Ting’s silent direction, E Yuan produced a magnifying glass with ill-concealed reluctance and handed it over without a word of grace.

He was curious, frankly. Given that he himself had not spotted anything, he rather wanted to see what this “layperson” could possibly find.

Yan Qing took the magnifying glass and examined the deceased’s neck. In less than half a minute, the faint furrow between her brows smoothed away. “My assessment is correct. The deceased was strangled to death and the scene was staged to look like a suicidal hanging.”

“That’s impossible.” E Yuan pointed to the pale brown mark circling the woman’s neck and was first to object. “The ligature groove on the deceased’s neck is clearly defined and shows the characteristic upward suspension pattern — a textbook sign of hanging. A living person wouldn’t just stand there and let someone put a scarf around her neck and throw her out a window. This is obviously self-strangulation by hanging.”

Bai Jin added, “There are no signs of a struggle at the scene. If someone else staged the hanging, the victim would certainly have fought back.”

“You are correct that the neck shows a ligature groove,” Yan Qing said. “But the groove you’re looking at is a secondary groove.” She turned the victim’s face to one side and pointed below the visible mark. “In fact, there is another one here.”

Bai Jin was not familiar with the terminology and asked without embarrassment, “When you both say ‘ligature groove,’ do you mean this red mark? I can see that one — but this second one you’re describing, I can’t see it.”

“Any pressure applied to the neck leaves a groove-shaped impression,” Yan Qing explained. “That impression is a ligature groove. The groove formed in a hanging is called a suspension groove. The one I’m referring to is more precisely described as a strangulation groove.”

Bai Jin looked toward Shi Ting, lowering his voice. “Seventh Brother, do you see it?”

“There appears to be a faint trace of something.” Shi Ting’s eyesight was famously sharp, but he freely acknowledged that forensic knowledge was not his strong suit.

“This will make it clearer.” Yan Qing took the alcohol from E Yuan and swabbed the area she had indicated in a careful circle. To everyone’s surprise, a ring of dark red began to gradually emerge where she had wiped.

Rather than explaining further, she extended her hand. “Please hand me a scalpel.”

“You cannot be serious.” E Yuan looked at her in disbelief. “You’re not planning to conduct an autopsy — here?”

Setting aside the panic such a thing would cause on the train, could someone of her slight build even hold a scalpel steady? And if she could, she would likely just slash randomly at the body.

“Give it to her.” Shi Ting’s gaze had remained on Yan Qing’s face. The way she looked when she was focused — completely absorbed, radiating quiet confidence — was striking in a way he could not easily dismiss. He found himself inclined to trust her.

E Yuan swallowed his frustration. Even as he handed the instrument over, he could not resist one parting remark: “If you cut yourself, don’t blame my scalpel.”

Yan Qing had no intention of performing a full autopsy here. She only needed to make one final confirmation of her hypothesis.

“The killer used the scarf to strangle the victim. This is why the strangulation groove is not especially pronounced — under the magnifying glass and with the alcohol, only a ring of redness becomes visible.” She gripped the small scalpel with practiced ease. Though it was not the instrument she was accustomed to, holding it again brought a wave of quiet feeling — she had not imagined there would come a day when she would pick up a scalpel once more.

The blade opened the skin and tissue at the neck. Her voice followed, slow and steady: “Dr. E, perhaps you could describe the differences between strangulation and death by hanging.”

Even Shi Ting wore a faintly puzzled expression at the perfectly matter-of-fact way she said it.

—