Lu Yucheng took out a portrait from the hidden compartment; it was a picture of their mother.
The woman in the painting is dressed in a jade-green gauze dress. She has an exceptionally beautiful face, black hair like clouds, skin as white as porcelain, a graceful figure, phoenix eyes, and a gentle and dignified smile at the corner of her mouth.
Those eyes seemed to speak.
My mother is an extremely beautiful and gentle woman.
"Did Mother have any maids accompanying her in her dowry?"
Lu Yucheng slapped his forehead. He had been so angry about the divorce papers at the Prince An's mansion that day that he had completely forgotten about it.
"Your mother has two personal maids, didn't they go to the Prince An's residence with you?"
"No, and I don't think I've ever seen them before."
Lu Xiaoyun had never mentioned these two people to him.
Lu Yucheng's expression changed: "When my father and I returned to Shengjing before, we asked about them, but my stepmother either said they went to light the eternal lamp for my mother or returned to the Lin family in Jiangnan. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen them for more than ten years."
"Li Feng, go to Uncle Qing and get the roster of the servants in the manor."
Although more than ten years have passed, the names of the servants in the mansion must still be recorded.
Whether they were sold, sent to the estate, or returned to the Lin family, there are records.
Zhu Yu asked, "Could it be that he has already met with misfortune?"
Lu Yucheng shook his head: "It shouldn't be. Our Zhenguo Duke's Mansion has strict family rules and we don't allow servants to be beaten or scolded easily. The probability of both of them getting into trouble is not high. Maybe after Mother's accident, the maternal grandparents' family took her away."
Zhu Yu felt it wasn't that simple. If that were the case, Fang Shi could have just said it directly instead of making excuses to keep it from her brother every time.
Before long, Li Feng returned, bringing not only the roster but also Uncle Qing.
"Uncle Qing, what brings you here?"
Lu Yucheng quickly invited Uncle Qing to sit down.
After Uncle Qing sat down, he held the servants' register, turned to the page that recorded the two of them, and handed it to Lu Yucheng with both hands.
"When I heard Li Feng say that the young master and the eldest young lady wanted this, and when I remembered that the eldest young lady had been sorting through the late madam's dowry these past few days, I figured it must be about the late madam's two maids who came with her. The list wasn't very detailed, so I came along."
Uncle Qing was an old servant of the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion, and he had a deep impression of these two men. What two loyal servants they were!
The page that Uncle Qing turned to clearly recorded that the two maids who accompanied the late Madam Lin to her dowry died by suicide in the fourth year after the late Madam Lin's passing.
"Self-harm?" Zhu Yu looked up at Uncle Qing in confusion and asked, "Uncle Qing, why does it say 'self-harm' here?"
Uncle Qing shook his head and sighed, "Alas, those two were also loyal servants. After the late Madam passed away, they were heartbroken, and their bodies visibly grew thinner day by day. They were in a daze all day long, and no matter how much medicine they took, there was no improvement."
Lu Yucheng frowned and thought for a moment before saying, "But I remember when I was eight years old, I went back to Shengjing with my father. Although the two of them looked very thin, they didn't seem like people who would commit suicide."
But he never saw them again after that.
“They were holding my younger sister in their arms and told me not to worry, that they would take care of her until she was fully recovered so that my father and I could take her back to southern Xinjiang. How could this be? My father and I had only been gone for two short months when they both started to harm themselves?”
Zhu Yu nodded: "If they wanted to follow Mother in death, why didn't Mother follow her when she first passed away, but instead harmed herself four years later?"
This doesn't make much sense.
Uncle Qing sighed, "Alas, life is unpredictable. As the two watched the young lady grow up day by day and look more and more like the late Madam, their expressions became increasingly strange."
"After the Duke and the young master returned to the southern border, they were both ill for quite some time. The madam also sent a doctor to see them. But the doctor said that they were both depressed and couldn't get better because they couldn't resolve their inner conflicts."
“But the late Madam has already passed away, how can we untie this knot in our hearts? So Madam asked the old Madam for permission to send them to stay on the estate for a while, so as to prevent them from taking such good care of the young lady and causing her any harm. Once they have recovered, we can bring them back.”
Zhu Yu said, "So you mean Grandmother also knows about this?"
“I know. Unfortunately, less than a month after we sent them to the estate, not only did they not get better, but we received terrible news that they had both committed suicide by jumping into a well. Several people on the estate witnessed this, so it can’t be fake.”
Lu Yucheng asked urgently, "Which estate?"
"It's about twenty li past Xizilin, in a village called Liucun. After the incident, for a while, the villagers kept saying they would hear strange noises in the middle of the night. The servants were too afraid to stay there anymore. The lady said that the village was unlucky, so after discussing it with the old lady, they sold it."
Uncle Qing shook his head: "As for who it was sold to, I don't know. I only know that it was sold to a wealthy family. The servants of that family bought it, but they were unwilling to reveal the owner's name."
Zhu Yu's eyes flickered slightly. He knew about this estate; it had been sold to Zhu Zhi.
Zhu Zhi sold it some time ago because he needed to raise 200,000 taels of silver for disaster relief in Mucheng.
As luck would have it, he had Lu Xiaoyun buy the estate, along with the farmland next to it.
Zhu Yu felt increasingly uneasy about the matter and decided he had to go to the estate with Lu Xiaoyun.
After Uncle Qing left, Zhu Yu thought of something and said to Lu Yucheng, "Brother, do you think the two of them might have been poisoned?"
"Poisoning?"
"Otherwise, how could they suddenly become unwell after Mother passed away? Sending them to the estate might just be a cover-up."
“These two maids were brought by my mother, not proper servants of the Duke of Zhenguo’s mansion. They haven’t committed any major offenses, so even Madam Fang and my grandmother can’t just deal with them arbitrarily. Even if they die of illness, they can’t be disposed of like the servants in the mansion.”
According to the laws of the Great Zhou Dynasty, if a servant accompanying the bride dies, the bride must give the order before burial can proceed. If the bride dies before the servant, then the bride's maternal family must send someone to inspect and confirm that the death was not unnatural before burial can take place.
That's why the roster records that they both drowned themselves in the well.
Only in this way would the people sent by the maternal grandfather not suspect that the two women had committed suicide because they missed their mother too much when they saw how emaciated they were.
He needs to investigate this thoroughly; perhaps the fact that his mother gave birth to the original owner and then died wasn't an accident.
"Brother, where is Mother Wei?"
Lu Yucheng checked the time; it was 3:45 AM. "He will be tortured in the backyard at noon today. Father's intention is to beat him to death in the Begonia Courtyard."
Zhu Yu looked over at Lu Yucheng.
Lu Yucheng immediately understood, nodded to Zhu Yu, and went to the backyard.
After returning to Tongjia Courtyard, Zhu Yu immediately wrote a letter, recounting everything that had happened that day, as well as his and Lu Yucheng's suspicions, and asked Qi Yu to deliver it to the Prince An's residence.
Lu Xiaoyun received the letter and read it carefully.
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