Chapter 1450 - The Unremarkable Truth
"How could she leave the maidservant school? She wasn't a trainee awaiting assignment yet, was she? Taking leave would have been impossible."
"She didn't need leave. She always had clever tricks," Yang Jihong said. "She had hidden a ladder outside the wall. Everyone thought the bamboo grove there was impassable—but it actually wasn't."
After dark, Lin Xiaoya would secretly slip out. The routine bed check at night was just a glance from the doorway. With roommates covering for her, it was easy to get past.
Mu Min drew in a sharp breath. If this got out, it would be a scandal! The maidservant training class, which they had thought was impenetrable, actually had a secret passage allowing anyone to come and go. More importantly, Yang Jihong and other roommates had clearly known about this for some time but had never reported it.
"Besides the people in your dormitory, how many others knew about her secret passage?"
"I don't know. There might be others—she never told us." Yang Jihong shook her head.
Comrade Zhao Manxiong, what exactly is your supposedly all-seeing "Group of Ten" doing? How could such a serious security breach go undetected! Mu Min thought. Either that or you knew and deliberately kept quiet—sinister intentions indeed!
"What's the name of the naturalized citizen you corresponded with? Where does he work?"
Yang Jihong gave his name. As for where he worked, she wasn't sure, though Lin Xiaoya had mentioned he was a clerk in the Lingao County Administrative Office.
The rest of the story unfolded as Mu Min had expected. Lin Xiaoya retrieved the letters but lied, claiming they had been destroyed. Since they couldn't contact each other anyway, there was no way to verify. When she saw that Yang Jihong was reluctant to continue helping her, she played her trump card.
With no other option, Yang Jihong agreed to continue "helping." Lin Xiaoya promised that as long as she could get Yang Xinwu to sponsor her living expenses and tuition, she would return the letters.
"...But that night, she refused to return them. She said that since I was already pregnant, I would surely rise through my child in the future..."
"What?" Mu Min interrupted. "You're pregnant?"
Yang Jihong hesitated. "I haven't had my period for two months now..."
"Does Transmigrator Yang know?"
"Not yet—I was planning to wait until a doctor confirmed it before telling him."
"Continue."
"...She said she was afraid I might forget about this 'friend from humble times' once I rose in status. She wanted to keep the letters to remind me when the time came..."
"So you killed her?"
Yang Jihong shook her head heavily. "I didn't intend to—not until later when she said that if I didn't obey her, she would give the letters to the Chief and claim the child in my belly was a 'bastard'..." At this point, she couldn't help but cover her face and weep bitterly. After a while, she sobbed, "So I—"
Mu Min sighed inwardly. In the maidservants' worldview, bearing a transmigrator's child was their sole value. If the child were deemed a "bastard," they could forget about rising through motherhood—they couldn't even maintain their current lifestyle.
Lin Xiaoya's use of this as leverage was nothing short of ruthless—she had seized her opponent's vital point. No wonder Yang Jihong's retaliation had been so fierce.
"The letters?"
"I burned them."
"If that's the case, why should I believe your story? Perhaps this is just something you made up to exonerate yourself?" Mu Min wasn't someone who could be swayed by a suspect's words. There were plenty of Oscar-worthy performers in the world; sympathy was sympathy, but evidence was evidence.
Yang Jihong's face was ashen. "She only had one letter on her—there should be several more. I just don't know where she hid them."
"We'll continue searching. But even so, killing is still wrong."
Yang Jihong said nothing more, only wept continuously.
Mu Min ordered that she be taken away. Yang Jihong was a transmigrator's domestic secretary and possibly pregnant, so she couldn't be detained casually. She was temporarily placed under house arrest at the Administrative Office's Second Guesthouse with dedicated supervision. Additionally, Liu San was to take her pulse and determine whether she was actually pregnant.
Then Mu Min signed a detention warrant. She rang for the duty officer: "Send some people to secretly arrest this person from the Lingao County Office and hand him over to the Pretrial Section. Apart from Bureau Chief Xiong, don't alert anyone."
Next, she ordered that all of Lin Xiaoya's confiscated personal belongings be brought over for another examination. She then dispatched Wu Xiang to the maidservant school to conduct a thorough search of Lin Xiaoya's dormitory and the location where she had climbed over the wall.
In the end, the letters were found in an envelope Lin Xiaoya had hidden under her dormitory bed.
Wu Xiang was sweating from his forehead. "That girl was crafty. She used paste to stick the envelope to the underside of the bed frame, then covered it with another layer of brown paper. If we hadn't taken the bed apart entirely and climbed under to look, there was no way we would have found it!"
Mu Min examined the letters. By modern standards, what Yang Jihong had written could only be described as "thin gruel"—so innocuous they could be posted on a street corner for anyone to read. Far from any passionate "you and me" declarations, they didn't even use terms like "brother" or "sister" to address each other.
"Killing over this!" Mu Min sighed with emotion.
Yet in this era, never mind that Yang Jihong was now a transmigrator's "concubine"—even if she had only married a naturalized citizen or a native, as long as the family's socioeconomic status was passable, having corresponded with another man before marriage would already be a serious offense. The poor didn't care about such things only because they couldn't afford to.
Let alone 17th-century China—Mu Min recalled reading a similar story in Sherlock Holmes when she was a student. A few small notes could ruin a noblewoman completely—and that was late 19th-century Britain!
"No wonder she killed! Feudal thinking kills people." Mu Min couldn't help feeling sympathy for this pitiful girl. "Women are so unfortunate!"
Although this was a crime of passion, by the laws of any era, it didn't warrant death—especially if she was pregnant. Throughout history, this circumstance typically spared one from execution. But Yang Jihong's personal future in the "new society" was finished. Mu Min was well aware that the Senate's mainstream judicial philosophy was extremely harsh. Once convicted, she faced a long, severe sentence. Even after serving her time, she would be marked in the records, able to exist in the Senate's world only as an ordinary laborer.
Moreover, she would certainly lose custody of her child—the Senate wouldn't allow a child carrying transmigrator blood to grow up as the child of a convict. The maidservants' cherished hope of rising through motherhood was completely shattered.
Still, sympathy couldn't change the reality of murder. The only thing Mu Min felt relieved about was that the case hadn't implicated any transmigrators—at least giving her a positive assessment of the transmigrators' deteriorating moral standards, and more importantly, sparing her conscience from torment.
Mu Min began organizing the case file. Under normal procedure, once the investigation concluded, the case would be transferred to the Arbitration Court for judicial proceedings. However, this case was somewhat special. Majia had explicitly instructed her to send the materials to Xiao Zishan at the Administrative Office first after the investigation ended, so they could "discuss the case."
Xiao Zishan looked up from the file and gazed at Majia sitting across from him.
"How do you think this case should be handled?"
Majia wore a black cotton Zhongshan suit of Lingao manufacture, pressed very neatly, with a Hero fountain pen in his breast pocket. He had studied the file materials carefully and now spoke with confidence.
"The case itself is straightforward. In terms of the facts, it doesn't qualify as premeditated murder, and there were mitigating circumstances—it doesn't warrant death. I think we can convict her of intentional injury resulting in death. The minimum sentence under the Criminal Law we recently promulgated for this offense is ten years imprisonment. She's also pregnant—even under the Great Ming Code, she wouldn't receive the death penalty."
"That's not what concerns me. What I want to know is whether this case should be tried publicly or in secret. Should it be reported in the newspapers? You don't know how Ding Ding from the Propaganda Department has been pestering me—he says this matter has seriously affected his marital relations."
"Panpan probably won't let him in their bed anymore. Ha ha ha." Majia laughed. "Actually, now that the facts are completely clear, and there's nothing that damages the Senate's image, I think we can proceed with normal judicial procedures. Appropriate public reporting is also acceptable."
Xiao Zishan frowned. "But a transmigrator is involved after all..."
A case involving a transmigrator would inevitably stir up public curiosity—much like those tabloid books titled Secrets of Zhongnanhai. Even though everyone knew most of it was nonsense, they would still scramble to read it. It would inevitably become dinner table gossip.
"The Senate should maintain some mystique, but we shouldn't be overly secretive. We can hold a public trial, but with no advance coverage—only post-trial reporting."
Xiao Zishan nodded thoughtfully.
He knew that of the Arbitration Court's various courtrooms, only the East Gate Market's summary security court attracted many "trial spectators" due to its bustling location. Most courtrooms had very few attendees when in session. First, there were few idle people in Lingao—everyone was busy earning a living. Second, the Australians' court proceedings had none of the spectacle of shouting "Wei!" to display authority, nor the varied entertainment of slapping faces, spanking backsides, applying fingertip screws, or using clamps. Just a few people reading documents and talking to each other. After the initial novelty wore off, everyone found these trials dull and boring.
If there was no advance reporting or publicity, hardly anyone would attend this particular trial. As for newspaper coverage afterward, it could be appropriately reduced. Certain matters could simply be avoided. Impact would be minimized.
"Does the Executive Committee need to convene a meeting to discuss this?" Majia asked.
"So far, no one has moved for one. Will you?"
"Since no one has moved for it, I think the case should be directly transferred to the Arbitration Court for handling. I don't think we need to elevate the importance of this case. Making too big a deal of it might actually give certain people ideas."
(End of Chapter)