“Ning Chen. You mean Zhang Mingjie is carrying on with Squire Zhang’s concubine?”

One of the silver coats asked it.

“Nonsense. Squire Zhang is worth ten thousand strings of cash, and Zhang Mingjie is his only son. What kind of woman could he not have?”

“Taking up with his father’s woman — morality won’t allow it and the rites won’t allow it… Zhang Mingjie is a man who has read books and knows right from wrong. How could he do a thing that corrupt?”

The silver coat who had been jeering at Ning Chen all along jumped in to argue it.

His name was Feng Qizheng, and he thought nothing of Ning Chen from the bottom of his heart.

Ning Chen gave him a flat look and said, “Whether there is anything between them or not — look into it and you’ll know, won’t you?”

Gao Ziping thought about it. “There’s something in what Ning Chen says. We have nothing to go on at the moment. There’s no harm in looking.”

Then he sent two silver coats out to do it.

Ning Chen said, “Gao the Silver Coat. Let me go?”

The two men who had been named gave Ning Chen a look with no pleasure in it.

Ning Chen noticed the look and didn’t understand it.

What he did not know was that field work carried an allowance… and that what he had just said sounded like reaching for another man’s credit.

“Ning Chen. You’ve only just arrived and you don’t know your way around yet. Don’t go this time.”

Gao Ziping said it.

Ning Chen nodded, then turned to the two silver coats and bowed over clasped hands. “I’ll trouble you both. Take down what Zhang Mingjie and the concubine tell you, word for word, exactly as they say it.”

The two men made a cold sound and left.

Since nobody was paying him any attention, Ning Chen went back to the file out of boredom.

Two hours later the two silver coats came back.

Gao Ziping asked, “Anything?”

They shook their heads.

“Gao the Silver Coat, asking like that is no use at all. We have no evidence, it’s all guesswork… Zhang Mingjie and Squire Zhang’s concubine are broken up with grief. We couldn’t press them.”

Gao Ziping was disappointed.

Ning Chen put the file down and came over. “Gentlemen. Might I see what the two of them said?”

The pair kept their faces still, as though they had not heard him.

Ning Chen rubbed his nose. “Look, you two really don’t have to do this… I know you think I’m here to be gilded, and I truly am not… I hate what I am myself. Some things aren’t mine to choose.”

“We’re colleagues. Working the case is my job too. All I want is to help you get to the bottom of it… You really don’t need to look at me as though I got your daughter pregnant and walked away.”

Both silver coats went off like powder.

“Ning Chen, you—”

Gao Ziping waved a hand and frowned. “Enough… Ning Chen is making sense. We’re colleagues, and we all want the case broken. Give him the statements.”

One of them threw the statements at Ning Chen with no goodwill in it at all.

Ning Chen caught them, shook his head at the situation, and went off to one side to read.

When he had finished, a confident smile came onto his face.

He held the statements up and said it without a hair of doubt in him. “Those two are the killers.”

They stared at him.

Feng Qizheng laughed coldly. “What makes you so certain? This is a man’s life. It isn’t you young gentlemen flying your hawks and running your dogs and fighting crickets.”

Ning Chen handed the statements to Gao Ziping. “Gao the Silver Coat. Read these two properly. The answer is hidden in them.”

Gao Ziping read them through, and the others crowded around to look as well.

When they had finished they were all of them baffled.

Gao Ziping said, “Ning Chen. There’s nothing wrong with these statements.”

Ning Chen said, “There is.”

“What is it? Say it. Don’t keep us hanging.”

Ning Chen said, smiling, “These two gentlemen said a moment ago that the pair of them were broken up with grief over Squire Zhang’s death.”

“That’s right. Is there a problem with it?”

Ning Chen said, “There certainly is. When a man has had a fright, or is in the depths of grief, his speech comes apart. What people call not being able to make the front of a sentence meet the back of it.”

“Now look at what these two said. Clear, orderly — near enough traced from the same template.”

Gao Ziping and the rest went still, and then started comparing the two statements at once.

Set side by side, they told it almost identically, and only the people in them differed.

Which meant they had gone over their story together and prepared it in advance.

Gao Ziping swept a hand. “Bring them in.”

Ning Chen said quickly, “Gao the Silver Coat. Wait.”

Gao Ziping looked at him. “What is it?”

Ning Chen said, smiling, “I’d question the concubine’s personal maid first. Adultery is a thing you can hide from anybody except the maid who dresses you… And when two people meet like that, somebody has to keep watch. It has to be the person closest to you, the one you trust most.”

The way Gao Ziping and the others looked at Ning Chen changed, and there was some respect in it now.

As young as that, and this steady, and this quick… He had done nothing but listen to them discuss the case and he had found the thread. That was impressive.

Gao Ziping nodded to Ning Chen, then took his men and left.

By the time Ning Chen had caught up with it, he was the only one there.

He smiled without much humor. Getting them to accept him was going to take more work yet.

Ning Chen stayed almost until the end of the day, and Gao Ziping and the others did not come back.

Letting off, they called it here. It meant knocking off work. Only the word was different.

As a matter of fact Gao Ziping and the rest had already brought the pair in, and were questioning them in the cells.

When the hour came, Ning Chen left.

He had crossed into another world entirely, and he was still refusing to work late.

Ning Chen rode the big black horse — no, Diaochan now — jogging along toward the Ning residence.

People in the street turned their heads to look at him, some with fear in it and some with dislike.

Ning Chen knew perfectly well that what they feared and disliked was not him. It was the coat.

“Out of the way. Get out of the way—”

“Stop—”

“Don’t run—”

All at once the street was hens flying and dogs jumping.

Ning Chen looked back. Two boys in rags were running for all they were worth, terror on both their faces.

Behind them a crowd of men was chasing.

By their dress they were constables out of the capital magistrate’s office… running down a fugitive, by the look of it.

Ning Chen swung the horse across the road at once and blocked the middle of it.

He leveled the bright long sword at the two boys coming toward him and said it hard. “Halt. Run again and I’ll kill you where you stand.”

The two boys stopped and looked at him in terror, their faces the color of earth.

The constables came up behind and went over them in a rush, and had them both.

A big constable came forward and bowed over clasped hands. “We’re from the capital magistrate’s office. Thank you for your help, my lord.”

Ning Chen nodded once and was ready to go, and then he noticed the look in the two boys’ eyes. Fear, refusal, anger… a complicated look.

Ning Chen pulled the horse up and asked it in passing. “What have those two done?”

The big constable said quickly, “Theft, my lord… We’ve closed on them several times and they’ve gotten away every time. We have your lordship to thank for this one.”

“We didn’t steal anything. We came to lay a complaint… My lord, we truly did not steal. We’ve been wronged.”

One of the boys shouted it.

The big constable said heavily, “Are you dead? Get their mouths shut.”

Ning Chen’s eyes narrowed. “Stop.”

The big constable’s face changed a little and he bent quickly. “My lord. These two are sly and cunning and there isn’t a true word in either of them… Let this small man take them back. A taste of the rod and they’ll be honest enough.”

(End of Chapter 45)