Chapter 760 – On-Site Investigation

The resident officer stood meekly while Xu Ke gave him a thorough dressing-down—Xu Ke was entitled to do so. In the old time-space, he had been a policeman. Had his ambitions not lain with intelligence and the Navy, he would long ago have held a senior position at Police Headquarters, at least on par with Mu Min.

Police Headquarters had issued naturalized officers detailed workflow manuals and handbooks, simplifying many procedures to make them easy to understand. Yet one glance at the "Police Tower" told Xu Ke that this resident officer's work was nothing short of a shambles. By comparison, the officers at the district stations were far more competent. Clearly, having an elder around to supervise was what it took to keep things on track.

Now that a local soldier was on hand to be useful, he was far preferable to this "I-don't-know" policeman. Xu Ke ordered him to lead the way and gather information.

An Xi had already obtained the "adulterer's" confession at the county yamen prison—though, per Ma Jia's suggestion and modern jurisprudential principles, "suspect" was the more appropriate term.

As for the "adulteress"—now "party concerned"—Ma Jia had her placed in "protective custody" at the county yamen prison. He worried the husband's clan might attempt some stunt like catching the adulterers and drowning them in a pig cage; that would blow the matter out of proportion.

Now Xu Ke had come in person to collect evidence of the adultery. After considerable discussion, the Law Society's case handlers had realized the matter was trickier than it appeared. They consulted the relevant provisions of the Great Ming Code and the Grand Pronouncements and discovered that, regarding adultery, the Code specified that unless the adulterers were "caught in the act with irrefutable evidence," any accusation based on hearsay or after-the-fact knowledge was "not to be prosecuted."

Even if caught in flagrante, the punishment was merely "ninety strokes of the heavy bamboo" for both parties, and the adulteress was to be "sold or remarried at the husband's discretion; if the husband wishes to keep her, so be it." The only restriction was that she could not be sold to the adulterer.

Seen this way, the Great Ming Code's enforcement of adultery was not particularly severe—indeed, quite lenient. The vaunted "harshness" was simply that the law exempted the husband from liability if he killed the pair "on the spot." Any killing after the fact still carried legal consequences.

"I'd say that's fairly advanced legal thinking," An Xi had commented. "Emphasis on evidence."

"Advanced it may be, but it makes our case difficult." Xu Ke thought: under the Code, the "adulterer" had essentially done nothing wrong. The sailor had not "caught them in bed"; he had only heard rumors—in other words, no evidence. Per the Great Ming Code, the verdict would be "not to be prosecuted." That clashed with the "destruction of military marriage" tenor they had already set.

"No problem—he confessed." An Xi had personally interviewed both the "suspect" and the "party concerned." Both admitted to the affair: they had been carrying on secretly for about three or four months.

"A confession is good. But we want to establish a jurisprudential philosophy that values corroborating and physical evidence alongside confessions," Ma Jia had said. "Ancient societies prized confessions above all else, which is why torture and forced confessions proliferated—a habit that persisted into later eras. Our approach is to require both confessions and evidence."

Implementing a modern "zero-confession" investigative model was impractical in this time-space—the transmigrator collective simply lacked the technology and expertise. Advanced concepts required advanced foundations. Nevertheless, physical and corroborating evidence pointed toward progress; they were more persuasive to the common people than a confession alone. Ma Jia hoped to use this case to propagate that philosophy.

Guided by Fu Fu, Xu Ke first went to the suspect's home. Both the suspect and the sailor lived in East Village; both families were "shifting cultivators" from Fujian. The suspect's family had arrived earlier, settling here over a decade ago.

"I've heard the old man of his house came very early and did day labor in the village. He died a few years ago, leaving three sons. This fellow originally had two brothers; his mother should still be alive." As Fu Fu led the way, he recounted what he knew.

The roads in East Village had been graveled, and the streets were clean, but the overall condition was plainly inferior to West Village, where the settlers lived. No wonder natives and settlers clash, Xu Ke thought. Aloud, he asked: "And the sailor's family?"

"Also Fujianese shifting cultivators, day laborers…"

Xu Ke listened and mentally catalogued the information. He found it somewhat incredible: according to the interrogation record, the suspect was a lad of eighteen or nineteen, whereas the "party concerned" was nearly forty. Though her work over the past two years as a shop clerk in the East Gate Market had kept her fed and presentable—she didn't look too haggard—by contemporary standards she was a middle-aged woman. The sailor had mentioned she had borne three or four children. From the photographs in the case file, she possessed no particular appeal. As the shut-ins put it, "nothing to get hard over." If An Xi hadn't taken the confessions personally, with both parties admitting the affair, Xu Ke might have suspected a jealous husband making wild accusations.

Xu Ke asked, "He's a young fellow—why would he get involved with a woman pushing forty?"

Fu Fu gave a dry laugh. "Sir, around here men have always outnumbered women. The shifting cultivators from the mainland were poor to begin with, and most didn't bring wives. With no money, finding a bride was harder than reaching the sky—"

When he himself had been a bond-servant, Fu Bu'er had often dangled the prospect of Fu Xi, Fu Yue, and Fu Yijin as incentives for hard work. The scarcity of marriageable women was one of Hainan's chronic problems across all of its Ming-era counties.

"I see." Xu Ke nodded. That explained it.

As they walked, a growing clump of children and idlers fell in behind them. Word had spread that an elder was coming to "try a case"—and adultery cases were perennial crowd-pleasers. Everyone wanted a show.

They reached the far end of the village. Fu Fu pointed to two houses. Both were the standard local farmsteads: bamboo-and-timber frames, walls of mud-plastered bamboo mat, thatch roofs.

But poverty, too, had gradations. One roof's thatch had already turned black and sprouted weeds; the mud was cracked, exposing rotted bamboo in many places, outright holes in others. The door was woven reed, half open, revealing a pitch-dark interior. Even before approaching, the stench reached them. As for sheer dereliction, this was probably the poorest household in the village—no exaggeration.

The other house was much better. The thatch was fresh golden straw from the summer's rice harvest. The mud walls were coated with whitewash and neatly maintained. The door was wooden and currently locked. A wooden placard reading "Military Family" was nailed above it.

Without a word from Fu Fu, Xu Ke knew which was which. He glanced around. Not far off lay a pile of timber—apparently drying for someone's new construction. He walked over, sat on the lumber, and asked Fu Fu to summon whoever from both households was in the village, along with neighbors and friends.

"So you're going to try the case, sir."

"No, this isn't a trial—it's fact-finding," Xu Ke said. "Trials are held in court."

"You're questioning suspects, and that's not a trial?"

"These aren't suspects; they're witnesses." Xu Ke patiently explained the distinction, giving the soldier a bit of legal education. We should hold law-education sessions in the army, too, he thought.

Fu Fu nodded repeatedly. "I'll go fetch them."

Villagers had heard an elder was coming to "try a case," and a crowd gathered, creating a great clamor. Even the resident officer and Fu Bu'er came hurrying over to keep order. Xu Ke ignored the commotion and started by questioning the first person to arrive: the suspect's mother.

She spoke Hokkien. Fortunately, Fu Fu had dealt with shifting cultivators since childhood, understood the dialect, and served as impromptu interpreter and scribe.

Xu Ke sized her up. At first glance she looked sixty or seventy, but on closer inspection she seemed younger.

She dropped to her knees the moment she saw Xu Ke. He waved her up. "Stand and speak."

"This humble woman dares not." Perhaps aware that her son's offense reflected poorly on her, she could not even raise her head.

"Stand. We don't observe that custom."

Fu Fu chimed in: "When the Councilor tells you to stand, you stand. That's the Australian rule."

Once she was on her feet, Xu Ke asked a few basic questions and learned she was not yet fifty, yet her hair was already streaked with grey and her face deeply lined. Her dress was made of locally dyed blue cotton—extremely sturdy, coin-thick—but hers was so patched that some spots had faded to bare white fabric. Its age was plain.

Xu Ke asked about the adultery between the suspect and the party concerned. The woman did not dissemble; she laid it all out, admitting the affair:

It began because the party concerned had found work as a shop assistant in the East Gate Market—meals and lodging provided—and her husband was in the military. The house was left unattended.

"…She was afraid that with both husband and wife away, the house and vegetable garden would go to ruin, so she asked us, mother and son, to look after things. My boy helped tend her garden every day; he'd carry the vegetables to market, sell them, and split the proceeds with her half and half. Every week or two he would go to the East Gate Market to bring her money and produce…"

In the course of these deliveries, the relationship had gradually warmed.

"…She saw how poor we were and, under the pretense of helping us, came around often—seducing my son. We're from the same hometown and have been neighbors for years. If I had known what was on her mind, I never would have accepted her rice and money!" The more the woman talked, the angrier she became, clearly convinced that her son was blameless and it was all the vixen's doing.

"You have three sons. How did you end up so destitute?" Xu Ke found it strange. With three able-bodied workers, by current wage levels—even if they didn't work in a factory or on a construction site, just farm labor—the household shouldn't be so wretched.

(End of Chapter)