Chapter 249: An Unremarkable Truth

“How could she leave the maid school? At that time, she was not yet a student waiting to be assigned. It’s impossible to ask for leave.”

“There’s no need to ask for leave. She always had clever ideas,” Yang Jihong said. “She hid a ladder outside the wall. Everyone thought the bamboo forest there was impassable, but it was actually possible.”

After dark, Lin Xiaoya would sneak out. The routine evening bed check was just a glance at the doorway. With her roommate covering for her, it was easy to get away with it.

Mu Min took a sharp breath. If this got out, it would be a scandal! The supposedly airtight maid training class actually had such a secret passage for coming and going at will. More importantly, Yang Jihong and her other roommates obviously knew about this for a long time, but never reported it.

“Besides the people in your dormitory, how many others knew about her secret passage?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there were others. She never told us,” Yang Jihong shook her head.

Comrade Zhao Manxiong, what is your so-called “Ten-Man Group” that claims to be omnipresent doing? You didn’t even discover such a serious security loophole! Mu Min thought to herself, or maybe you knew about it but deliberately didn’t say anything, with ulterior motives!

“What’s the name of the naturalized citizen you were corresponding with? Where does he work?”

Yang Jihong said his name. As for where he worked, she wasn’t sure, but Lin Xiaoya had said that he was a clerk in the Lingao County Office.

The rest of the story was as Mu Min had thought. Lin Xiaoya got the letters back, but lied that they had been destroyed. Anyway, they couldn’t contact each other, so there was no proof. When she saw that Yang Jihong was reluctant to help her, she showed her trump card.

Forced to do so, Yang Jihong had to agree to continue to “help.” Lin Xiaoya promised that as long as she could get Yang Xinwu to sponsor her living expenses and tuition, she would return the letters to her.

“…But that night, she refused to return them, saying that since I was already pregnant, I would surely be able to rise in status because of my child…”

“What?” Mu Min interrupted her. “You’re pregnant?”

Yang Jihong hesitated for a moment: “I haven’t had my period for two months…”

“Does Transmigrator Yang know?”

“Not yet. I originally wanted to wait for the doctor to take my pulse and confirm it before telling him.”

“Continue.”

“…She said she was afraid I would forget her, a friend from my humble days, and she wanted to keep these letters to remind me…”

“So you killed her?”

Yang Jihong shook her head heavily: “I didn’t intend to at first, until she said later: if I didn’t listen to her, she would give the letters to the Chief and say that the child in my belly was a ‘bastard’…” At this point, she couldn’t help but cover her face and cry. It took a while before she sobbed, “So I—.”

Mu Min sighed secretly. In the maids’ view, the bloodline of the child they bore for the transmigrator was the only value of their existence. If they were considered “bastards,” not only could they not expect to rise in status because of their children, but they could not even maintain their current life.

Lin Xiaoya’s threat was not without ruthlessness; it was a fatal blow. It was no wonder that Yang Jihong’s backlash was so fierce.

“Where are the letters?”

“I burned them.”

“In that case, why should I believe you? Maybe this is just something you made up to exonerate yourself?” Mu Min was not someone who could be easily moved by a few words from a suspect. There were many actors and actresses in this world. Sympathy was one thing, but evidence was evidence.

Yang Jihong’s face was pale: “She only had one letter on her. There should be a few more. I just don’t know where she hid them.”

“We will continue to search. But even so, murder is always wrong.”

Yang Jihong stopped talking and just cried.

Mu Min had her taken away—Yang Jihong was a transmigrator’s life secretary and might be pregnant, so she could not be imprisoned at will. Therefore, she was temporarily placed under house arrest at the General Office’s second guest house, with someone specially guarding her. In addition, Liu San was sent to take her pulse to check if she was really pregnant.

Then she issued a detention warrant. She rang the bell and called the duty officer: “Send a few people to secretly arrest this person from the Lingao County Office and hand him over to the pre-trial section. Don’t alarm anyone except for the county office director, Chief Xiong.”

Then she ordered all of Lin Xiaoya’s personal belongings that had been confiscated to be sent over for another inspection. She immediately sent Wu Xiang to the maid school to conduct a thorough search of Lin Xiaoya’s dormitory and the place where she climbed over the wall.

Finally, these letters were found in an envelope that Lin Xiaoya had hidden under her bed in the dormitory.

Wu Xiang’s forehead was sweating: “This girl is really cunning. She used paste to stick the envelope to the back of the bed board and then covered it with a layer of kraft paper. If we hadn’t taken the bed apart to check, we wouldn’t have been able to see it by just crawling in to have a look!”

Mu Min examined these letters. From a modern perspective, the few letters written by Yang Jihong were “bland,” and could be openly posted on the street for anyone to read. Let alone “you and I,” even the way they addressed each other was not “brother and sister.”

“For this, she killed someone!” Mu Min sighed.

In this time and space, let alone Yang Jihong being a transmigrator’s “concubine,” even if she had just married a naturalized citizen or a native, as long as their socio-economic conditions were slightly better, it would have been a serious crime for a wife to have corresponded with another man before marriage. The poor did not care, but that was because they could not afford to care.

Not to mention 17th-century China, Mu Min remembered reading a similar story in Sherlock Holmes when she was a student. A few notes could ruin a noblewoman’s reputation, and that was in the late 17th-century British Empire!

“No wonder she had to kill someone! Feudal ideology kills people.” Mu Min couldn’t help but sympathize with this poor girl. “Women are so pitiful!” Although she had killed in a moment of passion, according to the laws of any time and space, her crime was not punishable by death—not to mention she might be pregnant, and in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, this situation was usually exempt from the death penalty. But Yang Jihong’s personal future in the “new society” was over. Mu Min was well aware that the mainstream judicial philosophy of the Senate was very harsh. Once convicted, she would face a long and severe prison sentence. Even after her release, she would be blacklisted and could only exist as an ordinary laborer in the world of the Senate.

Moreover, she would inevitably lose the right to raise her child. The Senate would not allow a child with the blood of a transmigrator to grow up as the child of a prisoner. The maids’ most cherished hope of rising in status because of their children was completely shattered.

However, sympathy could not change the reality of the murder. The only thing she was glad about was that the case did not involve a transmigrator, which gave her a positive evaluation of the transmigrators’ deteriorating moral values, and more importantly, saved her from the torment of her conscience.

Mu Min began to sort out the case file. According to the normal process, after the investigation of the case was over, the case would be transferred to the Arbitration Tribunal to enter the judicial process. However, this case was a bit special. Ma Jia had clearly instructed her to send the materials to the General Office to Xiao Zishan after the investigation was over, so that they could “discuss the case.”

Xiao Zishan looked up from the case file and looked at Ma Jia, who was sitting opposite him: “What do you think is the best way to handle this case?”

Ma Jia was wearing a black cotton tunic suit made in Lingao, which was ironed very flat. A Hero fountain pen was stuck in his jacket pocket. He had already carefully studied the materials in the case file and was now confident.

“There’s nothing to say about the case itself. In terms of the case itself, it’s not premeditated murder, and there’s a reason for it. The crime is not punishable by death. I think it can be convicted as intentional injury leading to death. The minimum penalty for this crime in our recently promulgated Criminal Law is ten years in prison. She’s also pregnant, so even under the Ming law, she wouldn’t be sentenced to death.”

“I’m not concerned about that. It’s whether this case should be tried publicly or secretly. Should it be reported in the newspapers? You don’t know that Ding Ding from the Propaganda Department has been pestering me, saying that this matter has seriously affected their marital relationship.”

“Probably Panpan won’t let him in bed anymore. Hahaha.” Ma Jia laughed. “Actually, since the case is already completely clear and there’s nothing that affects the image of the Senate, I think it can completely enter the normal judicial process. Appropriate public reporting is also acceptable.”

Xiao Zishan frowned: “After all, it involves a transmigrator…”

The case involved a transmigrator, which would inevitably arouse the public’s curiosity. This was similar to the Secrets of Zhongnanhai and the like that were sold on the street in the past. Although people knew that most of it was nonsense, they still scrambled to read it. It would inevitably become a topic of conversation after meals.

“The Senate needs to have a sense of mystery, but it can’t be too mysterious. It can be tried publicly, but not reported before the trial, and reported after the trial.”

Xiao Zishan nodded thoughtfully.

He knew that of the several courts of the Arbitration Tribunal, except for the simple security court in Dongmen City, which had more “spectators” because it was located in a prosperous area, most courts had very few people attending when they were in session. For one thing, there were very few idle people in Lingao. Everyone was busy making a living. For another, the Australian yamen’s trials had neither the pomp of shouting “mighty tiger” nor the various scenes of slapping faces, spanking buttocks, and using torture instruments like finger presses. There were only a few people reading documents and talking to each other. After the initial novelty wore off, everyone felt that the trials were both boring and tedious.

If it was not reported or publicized in advance, very few people would go to see this interrogation. As for the newspaper report, it could be appropriately reduced. Some things could be avoided. The impact would be minimized.

“Does the Executive Committee need to hold a meeting to discuss this?” Ma Jia asked.

“So far, no one has made a motion. Do you want to make a motion?”

“Since no one has made a motion, I think this case should be directly transferred to the Arbitration Tribunal for handling. I don’t think it’s necessary to overstate the importance of this case. If it’s made too grand, it will cause some people to have ideas.”