"What if he didn't appear at the same time?" Zhou Yu'an unbuttoned Mrs. Tan's underwear and gently pressed her abdomen. Corpse spots will appear within half an hour to an hour after death. Corpse spots are usually purple-red, and their location is related to the posture of the corpse.
If the deceased is lying on his back, corpse spots usually appear on the pillow, top, back, waist, sides of the buttocks and the back of the limbs, and occasionally on the sides of the corpse.
If the body is moved at this time, the spots on the body will gradually disappear or shift, and will not stabilize until six hours later. Judging from the corpse spots on Mrs. Tan's body, her body had not been moved, but the degree of decay of the corpse was slightly different from rigor mortis and the formation of corpse spots.
The room was a little cold, so she rubbed her hands subconsciously, looked in the direction of the wind, and found that several windows in the room were open.
Mrs. Tan was afraid of the cold. It was not yet autumn when she first met Mrs. Tan. Mrs. Tan not only wore a thin cotton coat but also held a heater. Looking past the stoves, Zhou Yu'an noticed a detail that he hadn't noticed when he entered the room just now.
There is charcoal in the stove, which means that Mrs. Tan has used the charcoal stove. There were water stains on the stove wall, and the water stains looked like splashing. The stove had been doused.
Mrs. Tan, who was afraid of the cold, would not do this, and the maids did not dare. The murderer had no need to do so, unless extinguishing the charcoal stove meant something else to him.
Thinking of this, Zhou Yu'an asked the yamen servant: "Did you open this window?"
The officer shook his head: "We haven't touched anything here."
"Is that a servant of the mansion?"
The housekeeper who heard the question quickly shook his head: "No, the window is open, but it was not opened as wide as before. Maybe it was blown by the wind."
Except for Tan Liu, who is in charge of cleaning, and Linglong, who is returning to his hometown to see his mother off, the remaining three servants are all in the miscellaneous room. The steward sent someone to call them, and soon they all arrived.
Two young men and a maid, both fifteen or sixteen years old. The maid's name is Bitao, and she serves her outside the house. After Linglong returned home, she was supposed to take Linglong's place and serve in the room. Mrs. Tan thought she was clumsy and did not let her in. She was in her room when the incident happened.
The two young men, like Bitao, were drinking in the house when the incident happened. It was not until there was no movement in the house that they chose one of them to go to the young master through guessing.
"When the incident happened, you only heard Mr. Tan and Mrs. Tan arguing in the house, but you didn't go outside to check?"
"No, I don't dare." The servants shrank their heads: "It's common for the master and his wife to quarrel. Not to mention us, even Miss Linglong doesn't dare to come near."
"You always wait until they finish arguing before going to the study to find the young master?"
"It's not every time, it depends on the situation." Servants, you look at me and I look at you, "The master and the wife quarrel at different times. Sometimes it's just a small quarrel, just a few words and forget it. When this happens, we all Pretend to be deaf and dumb. We are not allowed to interfere with the master's affairs, let alone discuss them. If there is a big quarrel, Miss Linglong will come forward. If even Miss Linglong can't deal with it, we will ask the young master. Most of the young masters are He can just inform him in his own yard, there is no need to go to the young master to tell him."
"last night?"
"Miss Linglong was not here last night, and the master and his wife had a very loud quarrel. We heard the crackling, so we went to find the young master."
"You didn't stand guard outside the yard?"
"No, we are in our own room." The servants lowered their heads.
"So, you didn't see Master Tan leaving the yard?"
"I saw this!" The servants hurriedly arrived: "Chuntao is in her room, we are in our room, and saw the master going out through the window. What we told the master before was also true, but it was not What I met at the door was what I saw in the house. The master and his wife were not allowed to hear or see the quarrel, so we can't tell outsiders."
"Did you see what you saw? Mr. Tan's face, or a profile or back?"
"There are silhouettes and backs. Although we didn't see the master's face, we heard the master scolding the wife, and the master told us not to talk to the wife. When the master left, the wife was still crying in the room, sobbing and meowing. Similar."
"Cat?" Zhou Yu'an thought of the voice Tan Liu said.
"It's not a cat, it looks like a cat." The servants waved their hands quickly: "Madam doesn't like cats, and she doesn't allow us to keep cats."
"Do you know why Madam doesn't like it?"
"It is said that the Second Madam likes the one who died in the house." The servants whispered: "I heard that the Second Madam had difficulty in giving birth. She gave birth to a child all day and night. The Madam asked someone to bring a skinned cat. Went in, and the second lady gave birth to the child. As a result, the second lady died. They also said that the cat was the same as the second lady was when she was alive, and it hurt as if it were her own child."
Second lady, difficult childbirth, children, cats...
"Have you ever seen the child that the second lady gave birth to?"
"I haven't seen it before. I said the master was saddened by it and kept it outside." Seeing the housekeeper looking this way, the servants quickly shut up.
Things gradually became clearer.
Mrs. Tan did die due to an old illness and a sudden fright, but it was not Mr. Tan who was killed who frightened her to death, but the thing outside the window.
As for what the thing outside the window is, only the murderer and the dead Mrs. Tan know.
Mr. Tan was not missing, but was murdered. The blood stains left at the scene were most likely his. Only one area of the scene had been cleaned, which was the spot where the flowerpot had fallen.
When picking up the fragments just now, Zhou Yu'an observed them carefully. This observation overturned the previous conclusion. The flowerpot was not the murder weapon, but evidence to cover up the traces at the scene.
Herbs are also grown in flower pots. This herb likes shade and dryness. Excessive watering will cause its roots to rot. Although she doesn't like herbs, Mrs. Tan is very strict about this kind of thing, and there is no chance that the soil will be too wet. When she touched the soil, she found ice slag in the soil. Combining the charcoal stove and its windows, she came up with a new inference - the murderer put ice cubes in the broken flowerpot, and used methods such as opening windows and cooling down to delay Tan's death. The time of decay of the lady's body.
The murderer took into account all the details he could in the shortest possible time, such as delaying the decay of the body so that he could escape suspicion of being the murderer. For example, if the windows are only slightly open, the officials responsible for investigating the case will not pay attention to them. Even if they see them, they will preconceptionally think that they were opened by servants. For another example, he put ice cubes in a flowerpot and threw the flowerpot on the ground. This not only covered up the traces of the crime that had not yet been cleaned up, but also used the ice cubes to delay the decomposition of the body. What's even more perfect is that when the ice cubes After it melts, everyone will think that what is on the ground is just a pool of blood stained with soil, or soil stained with blood.
It's a pity that Skynet is sparse and not leaking.
The temperature dropped sharply in the second half of the night, which not only delayed the decay of the body, but also delayed the melting of the ice. The early gust of wind blew the windows completely open.
Now, there is only one last question left, where is Mr. Tan’s body?
I was lost in thought and accidentally stepped on a fragment of the flowerpot. My feet slipped and I threw myself forward. When she came back to her senses, she was already lying firmly in someone's arms - her face was pressed against his chest, and her ears were filled with the sound of his heartbeat.
