Confronted with the packet of arsenic, Mei Wuzi’s eyes shifted quickly. “I was responsible for managing some of Master’s important props. Some of those props were wooden items that rot easily, so I used arsenic solution to preserve the wood. It works extremely well.”
“Arsenic solution can indeed be used to preserve wood.” Shi Ting nodded. “That’s a very convenient explanation. Unfortunately, we tested and examined all of Yi Zhimei’s props, and found not a trace of arsenic residue in any of them.”
Mei Wuzi had not anticipated that the Military Police Division had gone so far. His gaze flickered unsteadily. “Even if I had arsenic on hand — Master didn’t eat or drink anything in the six hours before he took the stage. How could I possibly have had any opportunity to poison him?”
“You didn’t need to poison him right before he went onstage.” Shi Ting placed a bottle of pills on the table. “Yi Zhimei suffered from a severe skin disease. Even in the sweltering heat of summer, he wore long-sleeved, long-legged clothing, because this condition had made him deeply self-conscious and miserable, and had driven profound changes in his temperament — making him volatile and quick to anger. Yi Zhimei, desperate to cure himself, sought remedies everywhere, even turning to folk medicine and home remedies. You saw this as an opportunity to kill him, and so you presented him with a folk remedy. This remedy could, to a certain degree, genuinely alleviate the skin disease — but it operated by unconventional means, because it required arsenic as one of its ingredients. However, as long as the dosage of arsenic was carefully controlled, it would not be lethal. Yi Zhimei agreed to take the pills for the sake of his illness.”
Shi Ting’s account unfolded as though he had witnessed it himself. Beads of sweat began to gather on Mei Wuzi’s forehead, and beneath the table, both his hands twisted incessantly at his clothing.
“You were responsible for sourcing the medicinal ingredients, and you and Yi Zhimei jointly agreed on the proportions. Yi Zhimei was so cautious about the risk of accidental poisoning that the pills the two of you prepared together contained no lethal quantity of arsenic.” Shi Ting took out an evidence bag containing a single pill. “This was found inside Yi Zhimei’s luggage. Its contents have also been tested — the composition differs significantly from the pills Yi Zhimei had been taking recently. My assessment is that this pill came from Yi Zhimei’s earlier supply of the normal formula, accidentally dropped into his clothing at some point and carried along inside the luggage, where it was preserved. After the pills were prepared, you purchased additional arsenic and, while Yi Zhimei was not watching, emptied out his medicine bottle and incorporated a larger concentration of arsenic into the pills.”
Mei Wuzi’s hands were shaking more and more violently. He had to press one hand down on the other to steady it.
“The lethal dose of arsenic is between 0.07 and 0.2 grams. But the arsenic content in the medicine pack alone was insufficient to be fatal. However, when realgar and arsenic interact, the combined toxicity becomes severe. Continuous ingestion over a week can be lethal. Furthermore, because someone deliberately increased the arsenic concentration, Yi Zhimei died from poisoning within three days of beginning the medication.” Shi Ting repeated Yan Qing’s analysis word for word.
“When we questioned you, we asked whether Yi Zhimei had any illnesses beyond his heart condition, and you were too guilty to tell us that Yi Zhimei also suffered from a skin disease. A matter as significant as this — how could you, as Yi Zhimei’s last and most devoted disciple, not have known? Mei Wuzi, the arsenic compound detected in the pills matches the arsenic compound found in your room. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I… I had no motive to kill him,” Mei Wuzi protested desperately.
Shi Ting shifted his gaze to the manager sitting nearby. The manager’s expression was unreadable — it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
“Manager, you might as well tell us everything you know.”
The manager wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
Shi Ting threw two ledgers in front of him. “These two ledgers — one belonging to Yi Zhimei, one belonging to you. The information recorded in both is identical, only the amounts differ. This indicates that you and Yi Zhimei were engaged in some kind of private, off-the-books transaction over an extended period. You are of course free to continue concealing this…”
Shi Ting glanced at his watch. “I imagine the person from Qingtong Club should be arriving very shortly. We can wait for him to speak.”
“I’ll talk. I’ll talk.” The manager, seeing that concealment was no longer possible, steeled himself and admitted: “Three years ago, we performed at the home of a wealthy family. The master of that household took a liking to Mei Wuzi, and offered a substantial sum for a private arrangement with him — a sum so large it exceeded what it would cost to hire our entire troupe. Yi Zhimei was instantly tempted.”
Mei Wuzi, upon hearing this, balled both hands into fists on his knees.
“Yi Zhimei approached Mei Wuzi and raised the matter, but Mei Wuzi refused. Yi Zhimei berated him and then punished him by making him kneel in the snow for an entire day.” The manager continued, “In the face of Mei Wuzi’s vehement refusal, the transaction ultimately fell through. Yi Zhimei was reluctant to let it go, but he could hardly drag Mei Wuzi there by force. Not long after, however, Mei Wuzi’s voice began to deteriorate. Sometimes he couldn’t produce any sound at all; other times it returned to normal. But in this condition he clearly could no longer perform. Yi Zhimei used the fact that Mei Wuzi could no longer generate income for the troupe as a pretext to stop paying him his wages. Without any income, Mei Wuzi was soon in serious financial difficulty, and Yi Zhimei seized the opportunity to introduce him to a wealthy comprador.”
Shi Ting looked at Mei Wuzi, who sat with his head bowed, a vein visibly throbbing at his temple. “Is that what happened?”
Mei Wuzi said nothing. His lips had been bitten until they bled.
“From that point on, wherever Yi Zhimei traveled he would arrange clients for Mei Wuzi. Those clients were extremely generous with money, and Yi Zhimei profited greatly as a result. However, Yi Zhimei’s private dealings were discovered by me, and I went to confront him about it. Yi Zhimei was afraid I would interfere with his business, so he promised me a cut of the proceeds. Seeing how lucrative it was, I agreed. On the night before Yi Zhimei died, the argument between us was also about an unequal division of proceeds from Qingtong Club.”
“And Mei Wuzi — was he always a willing participant?”
“What do you think?” Mei Wuzi’s voice came low and laden with hatred. “I am a performer. I am not someone to be sold, and least of all to be sold to men the same as myself. But what choice did I have? They stopped paying me, denied me food and lodging, and at the slightest resistance beat me. When they beat me, they used a particular kind of cane designed to inflict excruciating pain without leaving any marks on the skin — because they still needed to sell me to those men, and they couldn’t afford to leave me visibly bruised and broken.”
“If you were unwilling, why didn’t you run?”
Mei Wuzi let out a cold laugh. “Run? And go where? My voice was ruined. I couldn’t perform. And apart from performing, I have nothing — if I ran, how would I survive? Yi Zhimei didn’t just poison my voice. He forced me to accompany those men, and at any sign of disobedience I was beaten. The man from Qingtong Club — I had heard of him. Brutal, bloodthirsty — countless people had died at his hands. And the price he offered Yi Zhimei was three times what anyone else had ever paid. Do you understand what that means?”
Mei Wuzi’s eyes were shot through with red. “It means that if I went to Qingtong Club, I would never come back. He would kill me with his own hands. Yi Zhimei deliberately concealed this from me, and when I found out, my fury was beyond anything I had ever felt. I could endure everything before — but this time, he was trading my life for money. I had reached the end of my patience. If I didn’t kill him, they would have killed me.”
He pressed both fists against the tabletop. “You are correct — it was I who increased the arsenic concentration in the pills. It was I who poisoned him. Everything I did was done in self-preservation.”
With that, he suddenly lunged at the manager, seizing him by the throat with both hands. “And you — if I hadn’t died, you would have been next.”
With Mei Wuzi’s hands locked around the manager’s neck, several officers immediately rushed forward to pull him off. But Mei Wuzi’s eyes were blazing with a savage, crazed fury, the veins in both arms standing out sharply, every ounce of his strength seemingly concentrated in his grip.
The manager’s eyes were beginning to bulge, his face turning a sickly blue, before the combined effort of the officers finally managed to pry Mei Wuzi’s hands loose.
The manager crumpled limply into his chair and erupted into violent coughing.
From a few seats away, Jin Shanghua edged pointedly aside, and from his lips came a cold, contemptuous laugh. “Sins will have their reckoning.”
A Jiu remained unmoved. As far as he was concerned, none of what was happening here had anything to do with him — he was nothing more than a bystander.
Mei Wuzi was handcuffed. Even as two officers held him down, he continued straining to get at the manager.
“It was Yi Zhimei who sold you to those wealthy men — not me,” the manager spluttered between fits of coughing, trying to justify himself. “I only collected a share of the money.”
Mei Wuzi was still fighting against his restraints, and though his body was pinned, he could do nothing but let out a guttural, animalistic snarl from the depths of his throat.
The Yi Zhimei case had been resolved. The true killer had been brought to justice.
“Sir, may we go now?” the remaining members called out one after another.
Shi Ting raised his hand and signaled to the officers to release them.
The manager and A Jiu left first. Jin Shanghua walked out last, and just as he was about to step through the door, Shi Ting called out to him.
Jin Shanghua halted. Without turning around, he said, “Is there something else, sir?”
“Yi Zhimei is dead. You’ve had your revenge.”
“That goes without saying — I was only too glad for him to die.”
Shi Ting’s voice turned cold. “It wasn’t Yi Zhimei who ruined Mei Wuzi’s voice. If Yi Zhimei had wanted to coerce Mei Wuzi, all he needed to do was threaten to drive him out of the troupe. Mei Wuzi, who had nothing in the world but his performing, would have yielded naturally — there would have been no need to poison his voice first and then threaten him afterward.”
Jin Shanghua’s brow furrowed, and the depths of his eyes stirred with concealed turbulence.
“You poisoned Mei Wuzi’s voice simply to frame Yi Zhimei for it. You planted the seed of hatred for Yi Zhimei in Mei Wuzi’s heart and let it ferment over time. As for how Mei Wuzi came to know about the Qingtong Club buyer — I suspect that was also something you ‘inadvertently’ let slip. And our investigation has found that the buyer from Qingtong Club was not nearly as brutal and bloodthirsty as Mei Wuzi described.”
Jin Shanghua’s eyelid began to twitch incessantly.
“You deliberately spread that information to fill Mei Wuzi with terror. Combined with the years of accumulated hatred for Yi Zhimei, it drove Mei Wuzi to conclude that killing Yi Zhimei was his only way to survive. The medicine found in your room was almost certainly the same medicine you used to ruin Mei Wuzi’s voice all those years ago — it was never intended for Yi Zhimei, because you knew Yi Zhimei was exceedingly cautious and careful. You schemed with extraordinary patience, and in the end, used Mei Wuzi’s hands to eliminate your greatest enemy.”
—