Chapter 104 Bones
Hua Pozi's voice trembled, "Sir, could you please tell me what's going on? I can help my family get settled."
The bailiff looked at the Hua family and thought that this matter had little to do with the matchmaker, but he couldn't say much as the case was still unclear.
"Once you get to the county government office, you'll know what's going on. Don't dawdle, just leave."
The scene of Mrs. Hua being taken away by the yamen runners was witnessed by all the neighbors around the Hua family. As soon as she left, they came forward to inquire about the news, which made the other members of the Hua family even more panic-stricken.
Inside the county government office
Zhou Yanxiu sat upright in his official uniform, while Wang Xiaoqian stood quietly by the side listening to the tearful accusations of the woman in the hall.
Wang Xiaoqian had been in Dongping County for a few days, and every day he studied Qingtian Ji and Xiyuan Ji Lu with Zhou Yanxiu.
Or maybe it's just that everyone has their own expertise. Since Wang Xiaoqian came into the picture, many of the questions that Zhou Yanxiu didn't understand and was waiting for Mr. Nancheng to answer have now been answered.
Wang Xiaoqian is a complete homebody. When there is a case, he stays in the autopsy room in various places and never leaves the house. When there is no case, he stays in his room and never goes out. Naturally, he has no chance to come into contact with the best-selling novels in bookstores.
The Dongping County delegation directly opened the door to a new world for Wang Xiaoqian.
For the past few days, Wang Xiaoqian has been working day and night, comparing the contents mentioned in Xiyuan Ji Lu with the autopsy notes passed down by his master. Many contents urgently need to be verified through practical operations. Wang Xiaoqian originally wanted to return to Qinghe City in a few days, but he didn't expect that the case would come up by chance.
He listened carefully to the woman's accusations, occasionally asking, "Since you suspected your daughter was murdered, why didn't you report it to the police when it happened?"
The woman was stunned and burst into tears. "At that time, the Sun family brought people to our house to make a scene, saying that my daughter had run away and demanded that we return her. The child's father felt ashamed of such a thing and did not allow us to report it to the police. We, we didn't think that the child might be in trouble."
The woman cried fiercely, but Zhou Yanxiu in the court showed no expression. He slammed the gavel and said, "Three years have passed. Why are you reporting to the authorities now that your daughter was murdered? What evidence do you have?"
Evidence, evidence? The woman collapsed to the ground in panic. She didn't have any evidence. It was just something she heard someone say that day. After she went home, she had nightmares every day. In her dreams, her daughter was crying for help. She couldn't stand it anymore, so she hid from the man in her family and went to the police.
"I don't have any evidence, but my daughter is very well behaved. She wouldn't run away with anyone. Something bad must have happened to her, otherwise she wouldn't have disappeared for three years."
The girl has always been very filial to her mother.
She wanted to say these words when the incident happened, but no one listened to her. Everyone said that she raised a shameless daughter.
She regretted why she didn't insist.
The woman's reasons were not actually enough for the government to open an investigation, but the timing of her arrival was very clever. Zhou Yanxiu had some different ideas about investigating the case recently.
Even if it is not a murder case, but people have disappeared for no reason under his rule. Since the family members have reported it to the authorities, the government should also investigate.
Grandma Hua followed the yamen runner trembling all the way to the county government office, and at first sight she saw the woman kneeling in the hall.
This person was the one who had spoken for the Cui sisters in Huaihua Lane before. She was the matchmaker for the girl in this family, but she was chased away by the man three years after their marriage. But why did they report this matter to the police and what did it have to do with her?
She didn't hit anyone.
Zhou Yanxiu glanced at Hua Pozi, whose eyes were rolling around, and slammed the gavel in his hand. Hua Pozi fell to her knees on the ground, not daring to speak or look around.
"Is the person in the hall the matchmaker Hua Meipo? Mrs. Li Liu from Huaihua Lane is accusing you of colluding with the Sun family to accept money and murder their woman. Do you admit it?"
Before Hua Pozi had even warmed her knees on the floor, she was accused of conspiracy to commit murder and was stunned.
"Sir, sir, I'm wronged. I don't know anything about the Sun family. Didn't the Li family's daughter run away with someone? Yes, they said she ran away with a passing merchant. How could she be dead?"
When Liu thought about the dreams she had had in the past few days, she felt so angry that she vomited blood when she looked at Hua Pozi.
When Hua Pozi came to the Sun family to act as a matchmaker, she praised the family to the highest standards, saying that they were honest and hardworking, and that the elders in the family were reasonable.
She believed Hua Po's words and married her daughter to him, but what happened to her daughter in the end?
Zhou Yanxiu asked Hua Pozi a few more questions, which were nothing more than whether Hua Pozi knew that Sun Liang liked to beat people before the matchmaking, and whether she had accepted money from the Sun family and concealed the fact from the Li family.
Then there are some questions that Hua Pozi thinks are incoherent.
After waiting for a series of questions, Hua Pozi was already exhausted and her forehead was covered with cold sweat.
"The yamen will question you again in the next few days. If you remember any clues, report them immediately. You must not disclose what happened in court today. If you disrupt my investigation, you will be punished with a beating."
Mrs. Hua nodded rapidly and agreed.
Waiting for Hua Pozi to return home trembling with fear, before she could recover, she heard that the entire Sun family had been arrested and imprisoned by the government. Not only were all the members of the Sun family imprisoned, but even their neighbors were called to the county government office for questioning one by one.
Mrs. Hua didn't dare to sleep all night. She didn't expect that Mrs. Liu would be so crazy as to sue her and the Sun family for colluding to kill her daughter. It was obvious that she wanted to harm her.
Until the afternoon of the next day, Hua Pozi sent her son out to inquire about the news, and only then did she learn that the government had dug out a skeleton from under the fruit tree behind the Sun family.
She is most likely Sun Liang’s daughter-in-law, the daughter of the Li family.
When the news of this case spread, the entire Dongping County was shocked, simply because this small county had not heard of a murder case in many years.
Although Zhou Yanxiu wanted to suppress the case and wait for the investigation to make it public, the case involved a wide range of people and the fact that the bones were dug out from the Sun family could not be concealed.
The people were talking about it, but the case in the government office was at a stalemate.
The three members of the Sun family refused to admit that the skeleton was that of their daughter-in-law. They insisted that Li Ping had been unfaithful to her husband and had run away with a passing merchant.
As for the skeleton, the Sun family was even more certain, "Although the orchard belongs to us, anyone can enter. If someone buried someone there in the middle of the night, how would we know?
And who knows how many years those bones have been dead. Who can say they weren't buried here decades ago?"
Zhou Yanxiu looked at the autopsy report handed to him by Wang Xiaoqian. With his ability, he could only confirm that the skeleton was that of a female and the approximate age of the bones, but he knew nothing else.
Without any way to confirm that the skeleton was Li Ping, Zhou Yanxiu naturally couldn't convict the Sun family. The Sun family members were each more stubborn than the other, and Zhou Yanxiu couldn't pry Sun Liang's mouth open even after using torture.
As for the two old men, he just wanted to solve the case and he was not a cruel official. He could not torture them based on his own guesswork.
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