The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 8 - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: The Fingers’ Owner

The enraged interloper was the father of the notorious triplets; his name was Bowen. The characters meant something like “the cultured specialist,” but he was far from the calm, composed person his name suggested. His tirade was so disruptive, in fact, that the competitors were forced to abandon their game. Bowen seemed cognizant of Jinshi and the freak, but he felt his situation was more important.

“These are your son’s fingers?” Luomen asked. The spectators had been sent home after all the commotion, and now only the event staff remained. Maomao couldn’t imagine the freak would normally have tolerated such an interruption to his game. Maybe he really was feeling unwell. Somewhere along the line, he’d fallen asleep with his face on the board.

His aide was currently tending to him in a corner of the theater. He looked at Maomao as if begging her to come and look after the strategist in her father’s place, but she gave him a glare that kept him quiet. Instead, En’en and Yao took over the strategist’s care. It was arguable whether they were “involved” in the event or not, but nonetheless, there they were. Unfortunately, that meant Maomao couldn’t very well slip away either.

Yao looked like she might swoon at the sight of the fingers on the table. She was getting used to dealing with injuries, but severed bits were still hard for her. Between the interruption and the condition the freak was in, the conclusion of the game seemed likely to be postponed.

“Don’t worry, I recorded the state of the board,” Lahan said to Jinshi. “We’ll continue when things have calmed down somewhat.” Jinshi didn’t look entirely comfortable with that. He’d been on the cusp of victory, even if he had been forced to exploit his looks and do every merciless thing he could to get there.

Then again, even the freak probably can’t come back from a deficit like that. Lahan seemed to be angling for his “honored father” to lose. He was the kind who would sell his blood father and grandfather, so what was one adoptive parent to him, if the price was right? Maybe I should be looking into this, Maomao thought—but no. It seemed likely to be a very long story.

She was more concerned with Bowen, who was still laying into her father; his own sons were restraining him.

“Perhaps you could explain what exactly is going on,” Jinshi said. The three intruders were obviously out of place, and if Bowen was going to turn violent, he could hardly be surprised if he was held back. Jinshi was sitting at the board, brought up short by this turn of events. His game was going for naught, and he looked like he was struggling to make sense of it. “Let’s hear it,” he said. “You may as well have thrown a bucket of cold water on me. I assume you have a good reason?” There was an uncharacteristic tremor of anger in his voice.

Hard to blame him, after all the prep he did for this.

Despite his own fury, Bowen retained enough of his faculties not to defy Jinshi. He was struggling to speak, though, so one of his sons spoke up from behind him.

“We can’t find my older brother. We can’t find er ge!”

Er ge: that is, “second brother,” the middle of the three sons. He’d been the one recently accused of assaulting a young woman. Since this man spoke of the second son as his older brother, he must have been the youngest son.

“No one’s seen him for three days. And then this morning, this package arrived at the house,” said the other son, who by process of elimination must have been the eldest. He opened the package again. The fingers belonged to a grown man—the absent second son, if what they were suggesting was true. The oldest had a red scratch on his palm—had he been hurt?

“Let me inspect those,” Luomen said.

“Who the hell are you?!” Bowen demanded, but Jinshi growled, “Shut up and let him look.” He gave Bowen a glare that silenced him.

Maomao wasn’t precisely involved here, but she knew the circumstances. The same was true of Yao and En’en. But there was someone else there as well. And I’m not sure about letting him stick around.

It was the so-called Go Sage who’d been observing Jinshi’s game. He sat on his chair, looking supremely disinterested. He appeared so far above it all, in fact, that Bowen and his sons said nothing to him. Perhaps they wished to—there were probably a great many things they would like to get off their chests—but with Jinshi watching, they knew they had to collect themselves and explain.

Bowen took a deep breath and took up the story. “Thanks to you, my son was arrested. Worse, people came out of the woodwork with accusations about things he’d supposedly done to them in the past.”

Well, whose fault was that? The two remaining sons each looked away. No doubt they’d endeavored to pin some of their own wrongdoings on the middle son. Bowen should take his complaints to the freak strategist—he was the one who’d dragged Maomao’s old man into this. Or maybe he’d wanted to, but lost his nerve, and decided to take it out on Luomen instead.

Personally, I’d be a lot more scared of picking a fight with my old man.

Bowen was a father worried for his son, but all this paternal anxiety had come a little late. He’d always excused and protected his boys from the consequences of their debauchery. Had he not realized the lesson he was teaching them?

“And you think one of them abducted him?” Luomen asked.

“What else could it be?!” Bowen demanded, pounding the table.

“Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

“How should I know? Is it my job to watch my son every damn minute?”

Maybe it should be, Maomao thought. She looked at the fingers. The severed ends were already turning black. We might have been able to reattach those if they were still fresh...

Then again, she found herself wondering if they’d been cut off after their owner’s death. She’d heard that the way a human body behaved when it was butchered differed depending on whether the person was alive or dead. She assumed her father could tell—and she thought his mournful expression as he looked at the fingers told the story.

There was something else too.

The nails have changed color. The nail bed had taken on a blue-black cast.

Quietly, Maomao tugged on Yao’s and En’en’s sleeves.

“What is it?” Yao asked.

“I just thought maybe we should at least serve tea. Help me out?”

“Oh, good idea.”

They didn’t really need three people to make tea, but Maomao knew that if she asked Yao, En’en would inevitably come along, and if she asked En’en, Yao would pout at being left out, so three people it was.

“Do we even have tea? I just remember a lot of ginger water,” Yao said.

“We have some, but I think maybe something a bit higher quality is called for,” En’en said with a glance at Jinshi. She knew who he was, so she wouldn’t serve anything less than fit. She had no special affection for him, but she was a capable enough lady of the court to show the proper respect.

“Is he going to stay here?” Yao asked, looking at Jinshi too.

“Sticking his nose into random matters is sort of his hobby, so I think we’re stuck with him,” En’en said. She truly was merciless. But even as Maomao thought what a callous thing that was to say, she remembered the many times she’d made similar remarks.

“We’ve got plenty of juice. Carafes full, all for Master Lakan. I’m not sure they’re meant for any of the players or spectators, though.”

“Juice?” Maomao scratched her chin. That might be perfect, actually. “Any grape juice?”

“Yes, I think so. Probably good stuff too—it was in a lovely glass bottle,” said En’en, peeking behind the stage.

“Let’s go with that, then.” Maomao went to the backstage green room.

“Uh, should we ask for permission first?” said Yao.

“You said he’s got plenty. He won’t miss one bottle. Especially not since he’s sleeping.”

“Well, if Maomao says it’s all right, I think we can trust her,” said En’en, and with her agreement they began searching through the many gifts and goodies for their chosen libation.

When they got back with a cup for each person, they found the discussion continuing to go nowhere. Bowen was still yelling, and Luomen was still listening silently. Jinshi didn’t appear to be doing anything at all; he was just sitting there, but from the way he played absently with the bowl of Go stones, he seemed to be thinking about his next move.

The Go Sage continued to wear an inscrutable expression. Maomao still didn’t know why he was there. Lahan was there, too, but he was hustling to wrap up from the tournament. Not just to clean up the actual venue, but trying to figure out what to write to all those who had reserved teaching games with the strategist (and had already paid for the privilege).

“Here you are.” Yao and En’en were passing out the drinks.

“Is this alcohol?” Lahan asked, suspicious, but then he gave the drink an exploratory sniff and realized it was just juice. He couldn’t hold his liquor any better than the freak strategist. The cups they’d used were really for wine, so they couldn’t blame him for wondering.

En’en went over to give a cup to Bowen’s eldest son—but the next thing they all knew, the cup was flying through the air. Red liquid splattered everywhere, the metal cup rattling as it hit the ground.

“Brother!” said the youngest son, a pained expression on his face. En’en didn’t so much as flinch, even though she was now drenched with juice. Thank goodness that wasn’t Yao, Maomao thought—the idea of what En’en would have done was fearsome to contemplate. She would certainly not have been the unmoved person she was now. Of course, she would never have put the young mistress within range of a known womanizer to begin with.

“Please pardon me,” she said evenly. “I didn’t realize it wouldn’t be to your tastes.” She began cleaning up. Maomao pointedly gave cups to Bowen and his other son. I knew it, she thought as she did so: the wrinkles in her father’s face had grown deeper, and his brow drooped sadly. He would never fail to notice something that had occurred to her.

Luomen exhaled quietly and stood up from his chair. “Do you dislike grape wine so much?” he asked the eldest son.

“No,” the man replied, but it took him a beat too long to answer; he sounded uncomfortable.

“I know it’s your favorite,” Bowen said, giving him a curious look, but then he went on, “But that’s not important now. Find my son! Or else I’ll—”

“There’s no need for threats. I already know where your son is.” Luomen shook his head and looked up.

“Wh-Where?! Tell me!”

“The boy you’ve lost—it’s your second son, yes?”

“That’s right!”

Even Maomao began to feel her mood growing heavier. As much fuss as Bowen was making, he really did believe his child was missing. But he was failing to understand one crucial thing.

He can’t actually tell his own sons apart!

Luomen pointed at the eldest son, the one who had slapped the wine cup away. “You had best come clean now. How long do you think you can carry on pretending to be your older brother before someone notices?”

Both remaining brothers paled.

Maomao searched her memories. It had been a little more than a month ago that they’d interviewed the three brothers. She’d been busy writing things down, but she recalled that the eldest brother’s complexion had been poor and that he occasionally twitched, reflexively clenching and unclenching his fist. She hadn’t given it much thought at the time; she’d simply assumed he was in ill health.

“What is going on here?” Bowen looked at his boys, genuinely uncomprehending.

“It was your eldest son who disappeared. I think you should ask these two for the details,” Luomen said.

“That’s preposterous! You think you can get out of this by talking nonsense?” He rose and made to grab Maomao’s father, but a soldier intervened and stopped him.

“He’s right! What you’re saying is ridiculous!” shouted the youngest son, but his face was twitching.

Before she could stop herself, Maomao stepped forward. “Far from it. It’s the truth—as you both know better than anyone.” Then she thought, Shit, now I’ve done it, and tried to take half a step back.

“Perhaps you could explain what you’re both talking about so that even one with my limited understanding can grasp it,” said Jinshi, finally rejoining the conversation. Beside him, the Go Sage nodded. Jinshi had probably figured nothing would get resolved without his intervention. Certainly, it made everyone stop and collect themselves.

“My profound apologies. I never expected you to be here, Moon Prince,” Bowen said.

“Well, I am. And you’ve interrupted my game. But so be it; the best thing for my curiosity at this moment would be to find out exactly what’s going on. I understand what you’re trying to say, but I’m going to need you to be quiet for a moment. This conversation isn’t getting anywhere like this. And you two, behind him, don’t get any ideas about slipping away.” On that point, Jinshi was very clear. “Luomen. If you find yourself hesitant to speak, perhaps you’d allow your apprentice to do so? She’s quite capable, and I believe she has arrived at the solution.”

Maomao couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“And as a good teacher, you’ll of course correct her answers if she’s mistaken,” Jinshi added.

“Maomao...” Her old man gave her a look that communicated that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to.

I could just leave this to him. But her father was a kind man, too kind. He would feel an excess of sympathy for the suspects—even if they were two worthless brothers. Luomen was quick-witted, and might come up with some sort of mitigating circumstance that Maomao hadn’t even thought of, something that would excuse the brothers from what they’d done. Or perhaps he would simply refuse to tell Bowen the truth. Just as he’d done in the case of the Shaonese shrine maiden...

Maomao stepped forward. “Very well.”

Pondering where to begin, she turned and looked at the fingers. Their owner was already dead. Whether of natural causes, or murder—well, perhaps that would be the place to start.

“I’d like to draw your attention to the fingernails,” she said. They were discolored, and several white lines were visible. Severed fingers, however, are not a pleasant thing to contemplate, even for grown-ups. Yao appeared agonized, but she looked.

“The nails’ coloration indicates contact with poison,” Maomao continued. “Arsenic or lead, most likely.”

Just like the owner of the makeup shop.

“Lead,” Maomao repeated, and looked at Bowen. “Your eldest son had a penchant for grape wine, yes?”

“Yes... I can’t deny it,” Bowen said.

“And might I speculate that his tastes tended...cheap?”

She thought back to the notes she had taken at her father’s request. The oldest son had spoken of going somewhere cheap to drink. And there was lots of cheap, delicious wine making the rounds of the city just then. Maomao had hoped to get a taste for herself, although sadly, she hadn’t been able to.

If I’d taken a sip when I had the chance...

Well, she might have put the pieces together.

Grape wine grew bitter if stored for too long. The same fermentation process that produced alcohol, if allowed to continue indefinitely, simply resulted in vinegar. Wine brought from afar, over long distances and long times, could turn sour—but the stuff going around the markets was sweet.

Maomao looked at Jinshi. “Wine mixed with lead becomes sweet, yes?” he said.

“That’s right, sir.” He clearly remembered their conversation.

From this point, Maomao would have to speculate. Her father wouldn’t be pleased, but she didn’t think he would contradict her either. “Over the last several months, caravans have been bringing copious amounts of grape wine from the west. With such quantities, some of it will inevitably have gone bad.”

“What are you getting at? Get to the point!” Bowen said.

“I thought I told you to be quiet,” Jinshi snapped.

Maomao didn’t want to skip straight to her conclusion—she wanted to lay out how she’d gotten there. “The bad stuff would be bitter—unsaleable. The dealers, who bought it on the cheap, would try to find some way to move the product. And what if there happened to be a ready supply of something that would make the alcohol sweet on hand?”

Maomao looked at her audience. Her father knew the answer, but chose not to say anything. En’en probably saw what Maomao was driving at as well, but she was busy studying Yao, who was deep in thought.

It was Jinshi who responded. “We’re ahead of that problem. The dealers who were using the makeup powder to sweeten their wine have been arrested. The only supply left should be whatever made it to market before they were taken in.”

“Prompt work, sir.”

He issued the ban, so of course he would connect the dots.

By mixing the lead into the wine, the wine would get sweeter. The merchants could combine two things that they couldn’t sell to make something they could: cheap, tasty wine that delighted customers. Clients might have been less pleased had they realized they were being poisoned.

If they drank enough of it, the poison would begin to show in their fingernails. The eldest son had seemed out of sorts when Maomao had seen him. If he’d continued drinking the stuff after that, it could only have made things worse. The middle son, meanwhile, had been the picture of health, and as far as Maomao remembered, his fingers had shown no signs of imbibing the poisonous wine. Even if her recollection wasn’t quite perfect, her old man certainly would have remembered.

“Human fingernails grow at a rate of roughly three millimeters a month. When I recorded his testimony, this young man’s fingernails must already have been showing those white streaks,” Maomao said.

She looked at her father. He looked uneasy, but nonetheless spoke. “One of the three young men we spoke to hid his fingers. The others showed no irregularities in their fingers or nails.”

“Was there something irregular about the second son’s fingers?” Jinshi asked.

“No,” Luomen replied. “Hence, we can at least conclude that the severed fingers do not belong to him.” That much, he said unequivocally. The fingers were something he could be certain about.

“Your eldest son seems to have been in considerable ill health these past months. My understanding is that he was frequently absent from work.” This interjection came from Lahan, who had evidently looked into the soldiers’ backgrounds at some point.

“It’s always possible the fingers belong to some entirely unrelated individual, but given the circumstances, I think it’s reasonable to suppose that they’re your elder brother’s,” Maomao said, looking at the two men who shared his face. “Perhaps someone mistook him for the second son and kidnapped him? In which case, why not simply tell them that they had the wrong man?” She gave them an exaggerated expression of puzzlement.

The two men said nothing, but looked at each other while avoiding Maomao’s gaze.

“Are you ready to admit that you’re behind this?” she said at length.

“Them?! You think they did this?!” Bowen exclaimed. At least he was easy to read.

“I do. Which raises the question, what did they stand to gain from staging such a spectacle? Perhaps it has something to do with their involvement in their own brother’s death.”

At that, everyone started talking at once. Only Luomen was quiet, looking gravely at the remaining two triplets.

“Wh-What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense!” said the alleged eldest son, probably in reality the middle boy. He was trying to feign ignorance—because he knew that if he admitted Maomao was right, it would all be over. Bowen continued to look at him with disbelief.

“I have a question,” someone said. It was the Go Sage, raising his hand for attention.

“Yes?” No one else said anything, so Maomao called on him like a teacher in a classroom.

“If one triplet started impersonating another, is it plausible that the third triplet wouldn’t notice?”

“Excellent question. No matter how alike the three of them may look, I don’t think they could deceive each other as to who was who. Even if they could confuse their own father...” That was a swipe at Bowen.

Of course, the truth would probably have come out eventually—sometime. No matter how much three people might look like each other, it didn’t mean they were identical in every way.

“May I take it, then, that the youngest brother was aware that the middle brother had become the oldest brother?”

“I’d say so.” Maomao kept one eye on the brothers. They seemed to want to object, but couldn’t find the words.

“Why?”

I think you know the answer to that, Maomao thought. One didn’t get to be a Go master by being stupid. The answer to his question was easy enough to explain to the others. She suspected it had all been deliberate.

“Because if the second son disappeared, all their sins could be expunged. Yes?” She looked at the eldest brother—no, the middle brother. He glared at her, but there was nothing he could say; he just clenched his fists.

“Is... Is this true?” Bowen looked at the boys.

“Can you really not tell? Can you really not discern one of your sons from the others?” Maomao said.

Bowen stared at them fixedly, silently.

“Maomao...” Luomen said.

“My apologies,” she said and stepped back.

“In that case, the remaining two brothers must know where their oldest is,” Jinshi said. At his remark, they found themselves compelled to speak: such was the power of his beauty.

“Wh-What happened to our brother...” It was the third son who spoke. “I... I didn’t do it! It was er ge!”

“Wha?! Traitor!” The second son grabbed the third by the collar.

“This is all your fault!” cried the youngest brother. “It was your mistake—grabbing some girl! Why couldn’t you have picked someone who couldn’t make trouble for us?!”

“You’re one to talk! You can’t find a mark who doesn’t become a problem for us!”

Talk about your sibling rivalries.

“I take this to mean the two of you killed your oldest brother,” Maomao said.

“Not me! He killed him!”

“No, he did it!”

It was impossible to tell who was accusing whom, anyway. Luomen, meanwhile, was staring at the fingers again; he had noticed another detail. In addition to the white lines, there was dirt under the nails. Maomao gave the fingers a questioning look. At first, they simply seemed dirty, but on closer inspection, she could see it was skin under the nails.

“I don’t think there’s any more talking your way out of this.” Maomao took the hand of the second son. He had a red scratch running the length of his palm, all the way to his wrist. As if someone had scratched him with their nails.

“I... I didn’t kill him! He fell on his own!” the second brother said, his face contorted. He was staring at the spilled grape juice.

“The wine—it was the wine! There’s been something wrong with da ge...” the third son hesitantly explained.

Between the two of them, the story came out: the eldest brother had been unwell lately, and in poor humor to boot.

“He would suddenly fly into a rage or start shouting. But he wouldn’t stop drinking.”

Sometimes toxicity could manifest as instability in the personality. The state of the fingernails suggested advanced lead poisoning.

“Let da ge do what he wanted, I thought. It was nothing to do with me. But he set up such a racket that I grabbed my brother and we went to see our elder brother in his annex.”

Their elder brother was in his room, throwing a fit. When the other two came in, he sprang at them.

“I shoved him away before I knew what was happening, but he came at me again.” That was when he’d gotten the scratch on his palm. “I was trying to keep him off me... That’s all I was doing!”

The man’s brother had fallen backward and hit his head on a table.

“What in blazes?!” Bowen demanded, grabbing his second son. “Do you realize what you’ve done?!”

“What I’ve done? This is because you left us to fend for ourselves!”

Neither man precisely sounded laudable.

“I was going to call someone. But er ge, he said...” The third son looked at the second.

Let’s tell everyone I died. And I’ll become our elder brother.

They would need proof to make it happen. They buried the body, keeping only the fingers, which they cut off. All they had to do was write a threatening letter; any number of suspects would suggest themselves to investigators. The entire matter would be cloaked in confusion.

And so they did just that, cutting off their brother’s fingers and sending the letter to their own household.

But they had to pick the fingers to send. Maybe it didn’t matter—whether they’d sent his head or his feet, it would have been possible to spot the symptoms. Perhaps not if they’d chosen his ears.

They would have been found out eventually. They must really have felt their backs were against the wall. Maomao knew this was where she should feel compelled to pray for the repose of the deceased, but in this particular case, she couldn’t let go of the feeling that he’d reaped what he’d sown. Her father, though, was gazing at the fingers, still distinctly grieved.

“You both are a disgrace! An embarrassment!” Bowen yelled.

“No more than you!” said the second son, pounding the table. “When you realized you couldn’t protect all of us, you decided to pin everything on me! But da ge was the worst of us! And you! You’re no better! Who gave you an alibi every time you got handsy with Father’s concubines?!”

So that’s why the youngest son went along with this, Maomao realized.

“Is this true?!” Bowen demanded, rounding on the third boy.

“Oh, it’s true!” the second son continued. “Our three-year-old sister you lavish so much love on? She’s his child! Oh, how you’ve doted on your ‘first daughter’—but she’s your first grandchild!”

“Er ge! You swore not to speak of that!”

“Is this true?! I want answers!”

This is absurd, thought Maomao, and in all likelihood the others were thinking the same thing. To cut off a guy’s fingers after he’s dead... Maomao was of the belief that once someone was dead, he was dead; he wouldn’t know what happened to his former body. Still, the sight of those fingers brought home what a reprehensible story this was.

He’s not the one I feel the sorriest for, though.

That would be one particular nobleman, who was now looking quite frustrated, having made extensive preparations, used every means fair and foul to achieve his goal, and might even have done it, had his game not been interrupted.