Futang Theatre, theater backstage, dressing room
As soon as we entered the theater, the theater building lost its grandeur during the day and the stands were so silent. Instead, it looked empty and ancient. The sunlight cast light through the windows, giving it a soul-stirring sense of tranquility.
They walked up the corridor to the backstage and immediately heard sobbing and sad cries.
The apprentices who were walking around looked impetuous and flustered. When they saw the security guards, they hid far away, for fear that they would find them.
"Where is your class leader?"
Zheng Ke grabbed a small waiter and asked. The waiter was shaking like a chicken and pointed to the dressing room on the second floor.
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu Caihe, you died so miserably!!"
Yue Guanchao heard the crying in the dressing room, looked at each other and quickly walked into the dressing room with Song Siyuan.
Famous actors are treated like movie stars and have their own dressing room on stage. The dressing room they enter is exclusive to Lou Yunxian, and the actors next to him don't even have to think about it.
Yue Guanchao took a quick look and saw that the surrounding space of the makeup pavilion was quite large, with a 20%-fold peony screen separating the front and rear makeup pavilions.
The front dressing room is the dressing area. There is a row of dressing tables. The warm yellow lights around the mirror make the room golden. There are many things on the table, such as wigs, hair and face, jewelry, makeup boxes, needles and threads, spray bottles and hair combs... used in folk arts. , everything is available.
There is a whole row of clothes hangers on the back of the dressing table, filled with costumes of various colors, most of which are often worn by Lou Yunxian. They are heavily embroidered and cost-effective.
The second half was blocked by a screen. When he walked into the screen, he saw that there was a mahogany imperial concubine couch, a Western-style sofa coffee table, a record player, and a wardrobe. When he pushed the door out, there was a balcony!
This makeup pavilion should be busy, but at the moment there is only the owner of the building.
Seven or eight other female apprentices were also there.
However, they were all lying on the ground, lifeless!
A young apprentice knelt on the ground, hugging the female apprentice and crying. It seemed that these two were still a pair of hard-luck mandarin ducks.
"What's going on? How come they died in the same way?"
As soon as Song Siyuan came in, she immediately opened the white cloth and took a closer look.
Oops~
These female apprentices' eyes were bursting with blood and tears, their mouths were cracked and smiling strangely, and they were lying neatly on the ground. It was clearly the way middle-aged women died.
"Master Lou, tell us, when did you discover them?"
As soon as Zheng Key asked, Lou Wenliang sighed:
"Last night around 12 o'clock, I went to the backyard to count the people and found that the lights in Caihe's room were not on yet. At this time in the past, the apprentices had already packed up the dressing room and went to bed. I thought they were in the dressing room, so I went backstage to take a look. , these people are..."
Lou Wenliang couldn't go on talking. Although they were apprentices who had never made it, they were still alive. His eyes were red and he shook his head in annoyance.
Zheng Ke continued to ask with an expressionless face:
"Is there anyone else here when you came?"
Lou Wenliang seemed to have thought of something and quickly reminded:
"Oh, Yunxian was still in the dressing room when I left. I went to the backyard at twelve o'clock and found that she was not in my yard either. I thought she was practicing her voice on the stage again, and even the apprentices couldn't rest, so I wanted to go there Urgent, and then these apprentices have become like this."
Zheng Ke smelled something suspicious, and Gu Jing Wubo's eyes finally became emotional:
"Then where did she go?"
Lou Wenliang shook his head unexpectedly: "I don't know about that. Sometimes she does disappear. She is the pillar of Futang Courtyard. I can't ask her in detail, so I just let her go."
"That means the death of the apprentice may have something to do with her."
Lou Wenliang was speechless for a moment. He couldn't admit this. If Lou Yunxian went to jail, his business would be over.
Zheng Ke wrote down the doubts in his notebook and looked at the security guard behind him: "When did that woman die?"
The security guard took out the record and said sternly:
"Captain, according to the duty record of the security officer branch, there was a watchman who wanted to go to the back alley for convenience. As soon as he arrived in the alley, he found that the woman was dead. He immediately went to the branch to report the crime. He went to the back alley at about 1 o'clock in the evening, including this The watchman went back and forth, and the time when he found the body was also twelve o'clock."
After listening to the security officer's words, Zheng Ke's eyes flashed with conspiracy:
"It's strange. The theater is at least three yards away from the back alley. How could he die so neatly? At twelve o'clock, let's take the body back first and complete the autopsy report to determine the time of death."
"Who are the identities of the deceased?"
The security guard read from the notebook:
"These apprentices are all children of poor people and have no famous names. After joining the troupe, the troupe master gave them stage names, Caihe, Caiping, Jun'en, Junli, Xiefang, Xieyuan, Yuanxin, and Yuanguo."
"They are the ones who usually handle Lou Yunxian's public and private matters. They also call her master, maid and apprentice."
When Zheng Ke heard this, he walked to the white cloth and opened the clothes of the corpses one by one. There were traces of beatings with thorn sticks on the calves, and scabs and new injuries were juxtaposed. The rest of the corpses were clean without any wounds.
Seeing this scene, his eyes flashed with distress, he lit a cigarette and continued to look at the last body.
Chen Yinmei's body was very strange. It was completely intact except for one more strangulation mark on her neck than other corpses.
A piece of the lining in the cheongsam was torn off, and the fingertips seemed to be scratched and scabbed. I don't know what it means. The clues are limited, so I can only suppress it for the time being.
However, no matter how miserable the old woman was, it was certain that these female apprentices had wounds on their bodies. He unconsciously looked sideways at Lou Wenliang!
