Wei Shuxuan stepped into the restaurant again and went straight up to the second floor. The waiter rushed after her and blocked her way. "What are you two doing? If you're here for food or accommodation, please go downstairs..."
"Which room is the one overlooking the street on the second floor?" Wei Shuxuan grabbed the waiter and asked.
The waiter was frightened by her look and stammered, "What do you want to do? Help! Robbers!" Then he broke free from Wei Shuxuan's grip, rushed to the railing and shouted, "Boss! Robbers! Help! Come quickly!"
Wei Shuxuan closed her eyes impatiently, pulled the waiter back, and said patiently, "See those constables at the door? We're from the government!"
The waiter's legs trembled.
The boss quickly ran up and bowed obsequiously, asking the two of them.
Wei Shuxuan told him to open the door of the wing room overlooking the street. The boss hesitated and didn't want to open it, afraid of disturbing the guests inside.
Wei Shuxuan kicked the door open with one foot. Xin Zizhao disapproved of her rather rough action. Just because she was dressed in men's clothing didn't mean she could really act like a man!
Wei Shuxuan squinted slightly at the situation inside. "Tsk, they probably won't mind being disturbed."
The boss's face turned pale instantly when he saw what was inside. He collapsed on the ground. When he saw clearly what was in there, he was so scared that he bent over and vomited, his whole body shaking.
Wei Shuxuan walked straight in. Xin Zizhao stepped over the boss, took out a handkerchief and covered his nose.
The corpses of two men and a woman were found. The two men were lying on the ground, with two long trails of blood behind them. They were facing the door, as if they had tried to escape but didn't have the strength to crawl out. Each of them was missing an arm and a leg.
The woman by the window seemed to have tried to escape through the window, but unexpectedly, her neck was chopped off. Her head fell out of the window, and only her body remained, still clinging to the window in a standing position. The blood had soaked their clothes and had congealed and turned black after a night. The room was filled with a strong smell of blood, which hadn't turned foul yet because of the cold weather.
Wei Shuxuan squatted down beside the two men, examined their necks, and asked Xin Zizhao, "Take a look. Are they also poisoned and rendered mute?"
Xin Zizhao ignored her and walked to the window to look at the woman's posture. There was a faint look of interest on his face.
Wei Shuxuan frowned, puzzled by his sudden interest. "What are you looking at a corpse with such a lewd expression for? Do you think this corpse is good - looking?!" Wei Shuxuan had seen the forensic doctors in the bureau get excited when they saw strange - shaped corpses. She wondered if this guy had a necrophilia.
Xin Zizhao said, "So it's true that a person's body will become as stiff as a rock after death."
Wei Shuxuan said, "Isn't this common sense?" Rigor mortis is a normal reaction after death.
"I've never seen it with my own eyes, only read a little about it in medical books." Xin Zizhao poked the corpse of the woman by the window with interest. Then he turned to ask Wei Shuxuan, "Have you seen it before?"
"Ah." Wei Shuxuan let out a helpless sigh and didn't intend to answer. This used to be just an ordinary thing for her!
This was obviously the first crime scene. Wei Shuxuan thought the murderer was really cruel. Torturing the victims like this must mean the murderer had a deep hatred for them.
Wei Shuxuan found some silver on the two men. It seemed that the murderer wasn't after money. Then she found a yellowed and creased piece of paper on the woman, which was a prescription with many names of medicinal herbs written on it.
Not understanding it, Wei Shuxuan showed it to Xin Zizhao. Xin Zizhao just glanced at it and frowned slightly.
"What's wrong? Is there something wrong with it?"
"Normally, a prescription would specify the dosage of the medicine, but this one only lists the names of the herbs. Moreover, the medicinal properties of these herbs conflict with each other, so they can't cure any disease at all."
Wei Shuxuan frowned and looked at the prescription from all angles but found nothing. That meant this prescription wasn't an ordinary one. There might be something hidden in it.
Wei Shuxuan put the prescription away first. Then she looked at the furnishings in the room and the splatter of blood.
She found traces of someone climbing on the window and bloody footprints in the room, and determined that the murderer had climbed in through the window, killed the people, and then climbed out.
She also found the murder weapon under the bed, which was an axe.
However, there was no such thing as fingerprint comparison in ancient times, so they couldn't directly identify the murderer.
Wei Shuxuan looked at the boss who was still sitting limply at the door. She walked over, grabbed him by the collar, and asked fiercely, "You should know who stayed in this room last night, right?"
The boss was so frightened that his legs trembled. He rolled his eyes nervously, trying to recall, and then answered fearfully, "It was Mama Zhang from Cuiqing Tower. She always comes here for a day every month. I don't know who those two men are."
Wei Shuxuan frowned slightly and turned to Xin Zizhao. "What kind of place is Cuiqing Tower?"
Xin Zizhao lowered his eyes as if thinking for a moment. Then he looked up and said calmly, "I don't know."
Wei Shuxuan turned her gaze back to the boss. The boss stammered, "It's a brothel."
"A brothel?" Wei Shuxuan was surprised for a moment. So the dead woman was a madam?
"Where is this place?" she continued to ask.
The boss nervously reported a location. Only then did Wei Shuxuan let go of him.
The boss scrambled away.
Hearing that there was a murder in the restaurant, many curious villagers came to watch. Wei Shuxuan told the constables to take the corpses back to the yamen, sealed the room, and asked the boss to bring out the employment contracts of all the waiters in the restaurant.
The poisoning of the three victims was definitely not an accident. Someone must have poisoned them in advance and cooperated with the murderer to kill them.