Chapter 71: Revealing the murderer again

Translator: Abo Dammen

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Case Four: Sicilian Defense

Despite everything that had happened at the manor, it didn’t affect the lavishness of dinner in the slightest.

The main course was a perfectly roasted whole chicken, its skin golden and crispy, its aroma filling the air. The side dish was seasonal snow peas, accompanied by a pot of thick soup simmered in an earthenware jar.

The service was still slow. The servant’s movements were both nimble and sluggish—nimble because repeating the same tasks daily had formed muscle memory, sluggish due to advanced age, her actions naturally slowing down. 

Cai Jia was again last in line. Growing impatient, he picked up the napkin from his lap and started folding it into shapes. Seeing Xu Pei and He Yixun enter the dining room, he stopped and asked casually, “Did you open the vault?”

No one was genuinely concerned about this question, all focused on enjoying the delicious food before them. Because everyone knew the chess puzzle was difficult to crack; asking if others had opened it felt less like an inquiry and more like meaningless small talk.

“We opened it,” said Xu Pei.

The sounds of cutlery clinking against plates stopped simultaneously. In the vast dining room, only the rumble of the servant pushing the food cart remained. 

Lin Mei set down her knife and fork. “You opened it?”

She acted as if to get up and go to the study to confirm, but He Yixun stopped her. “Gu Yan’s body is inside. I’ve already had people cordon off the scene.”

“No way, he’s really in there?” Luo You instantly lost his appetite, saying listlessly, “Now the haunted manor’s roster is even stronger.”

“It won’t be,” Xu Pei said, pulling out a chair and sitting down, taking a sip of the hot soup. “The reason the manor is haunted is because someone is playing tricks. 

“As long as we catch him, it’ll be fine.”

“Huh?” Luo You widened his eyes in surprise, not following Xu Pei’s train of thought. “What do you mean?”

Lin Mei had dealt with Xu Pei several times before. Seeing his air of certainty, she asked, “Do you already know who the killer is?”

“Yes,” Xu Pei nodded. “All the puzzles have been solved.” 

Mental exertion is no less taxing than physical exertion. After battling the vault all afternoon, Xu Pei was already so hungry his stomach felt glued to his backbone. Facing the aromatic food, he wished he could wolf it all down in one go. But seeing that everyone was waiting for him to continue, he had to look at He Yixun beside him, hoping He Yixun would tag in.

However, a certain someone elegantly picked up his knife and fork, nodded at him, his trusting expression seeming to say: You can do it.

He wanted to eat, damn it.

Considering He Yixun didn’t like talking while eating, Xu Pei, under everyone’s watchful eyes, took a bite of a chicken leg. After swallowing the food, he finally spoke. “Let’s talk about the vault first. 

“The clues were indeed in the bookshelf. The book titles were all gold-stamped. By finding a specific angle, you could see the characters reflect light.

“The gold-stamping process for some characters was different, making their reflectivity brighter. By carefully searching, you could find one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and one number within the same set of books. For example, a five-volume set of Cell Biology might have three volumes where the ‘B’, ‘e’, and the volume number ‘IV’ shimmered, giving you the code Be4. This is the chess notation for the moves.

“By finding all the codes and playing out the entire game on the chessboard, the vault opens.

Xu Pei omitted some unnecessary details and continued, “In short, the bookshelf’s hints are essential to open the vault. The killer messed up the bookshelf to hide the clues. But what he didn’t know was that Luo En had a photo taken in the study.” 

“So that’s how it is,” Xing Yong mused. “You restored the bookshelf using the photo.”

Xu Pei found a gap to start eating his food. The guided crowd finally had time to think. Luo You suddenly realized something. “I know there’s a photo of my grandfather in the collection room! The butler can testify! So I’m not the killer!”

“It’s not you,” He Yixun remarked.

On the stage set against the dining room backdrop, a spotlight shone above each suspect. The cold, harsh light made every tiny detail impossible to hide. When Xu Pei and He Yixun reached this point, the light above Luo You’s head snapped off. He himself was plunged into darkness, his suspicion eliminated. 

Now, the people still bathed in the strong light were: Zhou Ye, Xing Yong, and Cai Jia.

Zhou Ye, being somewhat more familiar with Xu Pei, said, “Professor Xu, don’t just focus on eating. What happened next?”

“Then, there’s actually a major contradiction here,” Xu Pei said, putting down his fork. “The murderer didn’t know about the photo, indicating he was an outsider, not living in the manor. But according to our earlier reasoning, he knew how to open the vault, which could only mean he was an insider of the manor.”

“So, not an outsider, yet not an insider either? Is it a ghost then?” Cai Jia said. 

“No,” Xing Yong said. “It means the murderer didn’t know how to open the vault. They were an outsider. Then there’s no contradiction.”

He Yixun had mentioned this possibility before. Xu Pei said, “That is indeed one line of thought. For example, the murderer simply didn’t want the Progressive Society to get the money, and would strike whenever he saw someone open the vault.

“But the problem is, how could he ensure only one person was present when the vault was opened? If a room full of people were there, would he kill everyone? It’s hard to imagine someone formulating such a plan, that whenever Lin Mei gathers a group of experts, he just kills them all.

“Therefore, I still lean towards what Cai Jia said,” Xu Pei paused. “It was done by a ghost.” 

“Huh?” Luo You was confused. “Pei Pei-ge, you just said there were no ghosts!”

“Let me list a few conditions. See what you can come up with,” Xu Pei said to Luo You. “There’s a dog hole in the manor, allowing free entry and exit. Most of the manor’s staff have been dismissed, making it hard to detect someone coming and going through the dog hole. There’s a large fortune in the manor’s vault.”

Luo You’s eyes widened more and more, as if he had arrived at the answer. But before he could speak, Lin Mei frowned and asked, “Are you saying someone came to the manor to steal?”

“Correct,” He Yixun nodded. 

“So the footsteps I heard were from that thief?!” Luo You said, as if a light bulb had gone off. “And I thought there really was a ghost!”

Upon hearing the word “thief,” the spotlights above Zhou Ye and Xing Yong also switched off simultaneously. The surroundings darkened, and everyone’s gaze focused on the habitual thief, Cai Jia.

“Hey, hey, are you kidding me?” Cai Jia exclaimed. “I do enjoy cracking safes, but how would I know there’s a dog hole there, or that the staff had been dismissed? If I hadn’t seen that post, I wouldn’t even know there was a vault under this manor.”

“That’s right,” Luo You said, puzzled. “I started hearing those footsteps not long after Grandpa’s funeral. Aunt Lin hadn’t even sent out the summons then. How could he have known about these things?” 

“That’s because he was already very familiar with this manor.”

After saying this, Xu Pei looked at Cai Jia. “Am I wrong, Mr. Vidley?”

Cai Jia raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly, a flash of depth passing through his eyes, then he let out a scoff and said in a tone of absurdity, “What are you talking about?”

“What first made me suspicious was during dinner last night; your table manners were excellent. Upright posture, excellent use of knife and fork, even your napkin was folded very standard, which clearly was a habit formed over the long term. In contrast, look at Xing Yong. When he cut his steak, the knife scraping the plate was very grating, and he tucked his napkin into his collar. That’s the wrong way to use it. The contrast between you two was particularly striking.” 

Ahem. Xing Yong cleared his throat awkwardly. “Was it really?”

“Come on, table manners are a basic skill for courting rich women. How could I not know them?” Cai Jia countered.

“True, that alone isn’t enough to prove anything, so I didn’t think much of it at the time,” Xu Pei said. “But when I saw the portrait of the Duke of Vidley in the main hall, I kept feeling it looked somewhat familiar. Combined with clues like the dog hole and the haunting, I came up with a bold idea: you are a descendant of the Duke of Vidley. You know this manor like the back of your hand.”

Cai Jia said mockingly, “You really have quite the imagination.” 

Actually, Xu Pei connected all the clues during his brief ‘recharge’ earlier, when Cai Jia came to the study.

He was preparing to leave, which was normal. As he said, if Lin Mei wasn’t considering his messy proposals, why would he stay here?

But why did he come to take a look at the study before leaving? The study was a crime scene, a place normal people would avoid.

Moreover, when he found the bookshelf restored, he stayed. Given that it was generally acknowledged that this vault was very hard to open, and even the cryptographer Zhong Qiaoyi took a full day to solve it, did he really believe Xu Pei and He Yixun could open it? 

Or was he more concerned about the progress of opening the vault than anyone else?

Looking at it this way, Cai Jia’s suspicious points shot straight up.

“Before Luo En died, this manor was heavily guarded. You probably only got the idea to come and case the place after Luo En’s death. Then you discovered there were almost no people in the manor and started your ’empty the vault’ plan. But you didn’t expect Lin Mei to suddenly issue the summons, gathering experts to open the vault. Of course, you didn’t want your ‘golden goose’ to be taken away, so you showed up here.”

“I think even if you hadn’t been selected, you would have infiltrated into this manor.” 

“Wait,” Cai Jia interrupted Xu Pei. “Let’s just assume there really is such a person, a descendant of the Duke of Vidley. But isn’t the dog hole accessible for coming and going? How can you be sure it wasn’t this person who lurked in, killed someone, and then escaped?”

From beginning to end, Xu Pei didn’t believe it was someone other than those present who had infiltrated into the manor through the dog hole.

He was just about to speak when He Yixun, who had finished eating beside him, wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “I had someone look into you.”

“Your first arrest for theft was at age fourteen. Your record before that is blank.” 

Hearing that he had been investigated, Cai Jia visibly tensed for a moment. But upon hearing his record was blank, he relaxed and said dismissively, “And I thought you’d dug up my family grave.”

“The deposits in your bank account never exceed 50 thousand. What money did you use to buy your sports car?”

This was another point that He Yixun and Xu Pei had overlooked.

Cai Jia was a thief. Sudden wealth for someone like him meant either theft or fraud. It was rather negligent of He Yixun not to have thought of investigating this earlier. 

“Can’t I have found a new rich woman to be with?” Cai Jia rebuked.

“Who?” He Yixun asked.

Cai Jia tensed up again, because personal connections are extremely easy to check. If the police just made some inquiries, they would find out this rich woman didn’t exist.

“Why should I disclose my privacy?” Cai Jia retorted in an unfriendly tone. 

“Fine,” He Yixun said unhurriedly. “To answer your previous question: why isn’t it an outsider who infiltrated in, killed, and then escaped.”

“As Professor Xu said earlier, planning a murder in advance wouldn’t work. So the murderer must have acted on impulse. You didn’t infiltrate into the manor beforehand to mess up the bookshelf, nor did you keep a constant watch on Zhong Qiaoyi like Gu Yan did. You must have been quite confident that others didn’t have the ability to solve the chess puzzle.

“But then you discovered Zhong Qiaoyi was on the right track and getting closer and closer to opening it. So you came outside the study and monitored her progress all night.

“The murder was probably inspired by Gu Yan—he killed Zhong Qiaoyi. You just needed to deal with him, and you could pin everything on him. You likely took advantage when Gu Yan was busy dealing with the body, quietly climbed in through the window, and stabbed him to death with a knife. 

“Gu Yan was stabbed twenty or thirty times. The murderer must have been stained with a large amount of blood. But according to the scene, the murderer only had a small amount of blood on his right heel, which was all wiped off after he walked into the grass. This contradicts the situation at the scene.

“If someone really infiltrated in, killed, and then escaped, it’s impossible they would leave only that little trace. Unless… he went back to his own room to clean up.”

The bloodstain was the point that Xu Pei and He Yixun realized they had overlooked after seeing Gu Yan’s tragedy.

With such a large amount of blood loss, having only that little blood on the heel was clearly abnormal, indicating the scene was fabricated. 

And the murderer’s intention in fabricating the scene was simply to guide the police towards thinking he had escaped towards the lawn. If the murderer really escaped that way, why would he “forge” his actual path?

In short: I killed someone and ran towards the lawn, and the scene I forged points out that I ran towards the lawn. Isn’t that self-contradictory?

From this, it can be concluded that the murderer did not run towards the lawn, but rather climbed back through the window to his room.

“Alright, even if the murderer isn’t an outsider, how can you be sure it’s me? Just because I look like that portrait?” 

“Because you changed your clothes the next morning,” Xu Pei said. At the time, he had thought this guy was really particular. “And only you changed clothes.”

Cai Jia’s expression froze.

“I wonder if searching your sports car now,” Xu Pei, finally full, took a sip of soup to finish, “would turn up a bag of blood-stained clothes?”

Cai Jia fell completely silent, his face turning pale then red, unable to utter any more words of explanation.