Chapter 290: Arrogant and Showy, Walking in Splendid Clothes at Night
Gulou Hutong is located in the northwest of the outer city. It is relatively remote and the terrain is high and uneven, so there are not many residents. Most of them are local impoverished families. Last year, some disaster victims from Hebei who had some property moved in.
In places like this, public security is naturally not very good, and everyone is used to minding their own business and rarely pays attention to irrelevant bystanders.
Therefore, last spring, there was a tragedy in which an elderly man living alone drowned in his own water tank, and was not discovered until midsummer.
The reason why the case was reported so early in the morning was because someone had written six bloody words "You'll suffer the consequences if you do evil" on the door of the crime scene.
"Sir, since I didn't know you would handle this case personally, I have ordered people to carry away the body after inspecting the scene... Sir?"
Master Qi led the way in front and explained the situation in detail, but when they arrived in the yard and looked back, they could not see Sun Shaozong.
He hurried back and saw Sun Shaozong outside, staring at the bloody words on the door panel with burning eyes.
"grown ups."
Master Qi explained: "I have carefully observed that these blood words were written with the non-dominant hand. It is not easy to find the real murderer based on the handwriting. The only thing that can be confirmed at the moment is that the murderer has a certain foundation in calligraphy."
These words coincide with Sun Shaozong's previous speculation.
Sun Shaozong nodded, but still looked at him carefully for a long time before following Master Qi into the yard.
As soon as I entered the gate, I saw three bodies lying in a row under the dilapidated west wall. One of them was covered with a white cloth, but the other two were completely uncovered.
The reason for this difference was naturally the identities of the three men - as the son of an official, even if Ma Yingjue died, his treatment would be different from that of the two servants.
However, at first glance, the two servants did not seem to bear much resemblance to the portraits painted by Ma Chunfeng during his lifetime.
This was mainly because both bodies died of poisoning. Their faces were dark blue, their facial features were hideously distorted, and they were swollen to a considerable degree. It might be an exaggeration to say that they were unrecognizable, but it would be extremely difficult for ordinary people to distinguish their original appearance.
Only an old criminal investigator who is skilled in on-site investigation and knows how to use facial contours and the proportions of the distance between facial features to restore the basic appearance of the deceased can see the connection between the two.
From this, we can see that Master Qi's professional level is quite good.
"grown ups."
Master Qi led everyone to the corpse, first lifted the white cloth, pointed at the young dead man on the stretcher with eyes wide open and mouth open, and introduced: "This is Mr. Ma - when I examined his body, I found the words Changlong Laohao and the date of shipment marked on his boots, and then I found out his identity."
As he spoke, he bent down and carefully peeled open Ma Yingjue's collar, pointed at the purple fingerprints on it, and said, "According to the investigation, Master Ma should have died of asphyxiation caused by strangulation."
"Because when we arrived, his body was still tied to an armchair, and a soft cloth was stuffed into his throat, so there was no sign of struggle or resistance."
"Based on the surface characteristics of the body, he died between yesterday afternoon and evening."
At this point, Master Qi turned around and pointed at the two servants who were poisoned to death: "I have already compared the fingerprints of these two people. They do not match the marks on Master Ma's neck. We can basically rule out the possibility that they were poisoned after killing someone."
It's not that fingerprints are not taken seriously when investigating crimes these days, it's just that the means of extracting fingerprints are limited. Unless the fingerprints are clearly imprinted on the neck of the corpse like in this case, it is difficult to make a careful comparison.
Master Qi obviously wanted to show off his skills in front of Sun Shaozong. After analyzing the fingerprints, he began to analyze the cause of death of the two servants.
"There were three cups on the square table inside. There seemed to be some tiny white powder stuck to the bottom of two of the cups, but there was no similar residue in the wine pot. So I inferred that the poison must have been smeared on the cups beforehand."
At this point, Master Qi stepped forward and said, "Sir, would you like to go in and take a look?"
"Not for now."
Unexpectedly, Sun Shaozong shook his head and said confidently: "If my previous inference is correct, it should not be difficult to find the murderer."
“Not difficult?!”
Master Qi was shocked. The murderer seemed to have left fingerprints carelessly, but in fact he did not reveal much information.
Therefore, Master Qi analyzed all the details of the scene, but could not come up with many clues about the murderer. And how could Sun Shaozong just arrive at the scene...
Could it be that he was deliberately bragging in front of me?
Thinking of this possibility, Master Qi couldn't help but question, "I wonder where you are going to start to catch the real murderer?"
"This one——Qiu Yunfei, Zhao Wuwei!"
"I am here."
"Go to the government office right away and gather some people. Search all the shops Ask them if they had any regular customers yesterday. Who had been using the cheapest, low-quality pens, inkstones, and paper but suddenly started buying high-end stuff!"
Qiu Yunfei and Zhao Wuwei agreed and left.
Master Qi frowned beside him, and after hesitating for a long time, he couldn't help but question, "Sir, do you think that the murderer bought a new brush just to write those words?"
Although he tried hard to control himself, he still couldn't help showing an expression that said "are you kidding me?"
Sun Shaozong took out the note from his sleeve and handed it to Master Qi: "This is the blackmail letter that the murderer sent to the Ma family on the night of the 25th."
After Master Qi took a look at it for a few times, he explained: "It can be clearly seen from the note that the tip of the brush has signs of curling and splitting, which shows that it was an old brush."
"Besides, judging by the analysis of the paper and ink, the quality of this brush is not that great."
"The door panel is rotten and mottled, and the surface is extremely rough. It should be more difficult to write on than the inferior coarse paper. However, I have just observed it carefully and found that the messy marks are obviously less than the former, and there is almost no hair loss."
"This is clearly a new pen, and a very high quality new pen!"
"Considering the murderer's attainments in calligraphy and his long-term use of inferior study tools, it is reasonable that he would have a strong and urgent desire for these things."
Master Qi held the note in his hand and listened to Sun Shaozong's analysis. He couldn't help but sigh that he was indeed very meticulous in his observations, but...
"Sir, even if that's true, you can't be sure that he bought the four treasures of the study in a familiar store, right?" Master Qi questioned, "If he just picked an irrelevant store, wouldn't our efforts be in vain?"
Sun Shaozong smiled and said, "The reason why I made this judgment is because of those six bloody words."
As he said this , he turned around and pointed at the gate, and asked, "What was your first impression when you saw those six bloody words?"
“Arrogant!”
Master Qi blurted out: "The murderer is clearly provoking the government!"
"That's right."
Sun Shaozong nodded and said, "If there were no six words, the body might not be discovered by the neighbors until it was highly decomposed, and by then there would naturally be much less useful information."
"But the murderer chose to take the risk and write six bloody words on the door, so that the authorities would know immediately that three people died here, three people who deserved the punishment !"
"This is both arrogance and showing off!"
"Such a person with an arrogant disposition who loves to show off has been frustrated for a long time; he has a hand of calligraphy that he is proud of, but can only afford the cheapest writing brushes, ink, paper and inkstone!"
"Perhaps sometimes he is short of money and cannot afford to buy stationery - even if the store owner does not make fun of him, he will probably have a lot of resentment in his heart."
"When he suddenly gets a large amount of unexpected wealth and can't wait to take revenge on his past life, do you think he would choose to travel at night in fine clothes and go to an unfamiliar shop?"
"So my guess is about 70% correct!"
