Chapter 512 The Missing Midwife
August 28th, moderate rain.
Awakened from his sleep by the sound of the dripping rain, Sun Shaozong carefully took his hand away from Xiangling's chest, lifted the quilt and sat up. Just as he was about to pull his clothes from the bedside and put them on, he suddenly felt something sticky on his hands.
I lowered my head and sniffed it, it had a slightly fishy sweet fragrance.
He wanted to ask the maid to fetch some water so that he could wash his hands before getting dressed, but he was afraid of waking Xiangling, so he simply walked to the window in his boots, pushed open the window sash, reached out, and rubbed his hands a few times in the rain.
Turning back to get a towel, he saw Xiangling sitting up with the quilt in her arms. She looked around blankly and suddenly asked in surprise, "Why don't you put on some clothes, Master?"
As he said this, he took Sun Shaozong's clothes and came over to serve him.
"You lie down, you lie down!"
Sun Shaozong hurried forward and pushed her back, snatching his clothes and saying, "She said she has finished her confinement, but she should be careful on this rainy and cloudy day - besides, I opened the window."
As he said this, he quickly dressed and took out his pocket watch to check. Seeing that it was already 6:15, he said, "I have to report to the government office today, so I won't have breakfast at home. Don't be in a hurry to get up. Have a good sleep first. After all, you have just been a vegetarian for half a year, and the sisters won't blame you."
Xiangling's face flushed immediately, and she stammered in embarrassment, not knowing what to say.
Seeing this, Sun Shaozong couldn't help but teasing, "Don't you like writing poems? Write about what happened yesterday. If it's good, I will reward you handsomely!"
As he said this, he laughed and went to the outer room. He first glanced at his daughter, and saw that the skinny person was sleeping soundly. He did not dare to stick his beard on her to tease her like he did to his son. He just put a finger on his daughter's palm and gently rubbed it a few times.
She quietly came out of her daughter's room and was about to call Shiliu or Furong to take out her usual raincoat, but she saw Qingwen standing alone in the corridor, sighing at the rain.
Tsk~
Sun Shaozong curled his lips and shouted, "What are you standing there for? Go and get my raincoat and hat!"
Qingwen was startled and quickly wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. She lowered her head and went into the main room. After a while, she came out with a full set of rain gear and went to the west wing in the rain.
Sun Shaozong took the straw raincoat and hat, and didn't bother to pay attention to her little thoughts of love. He directly ordered: "It's enough for the young master to have a wet nurse to watch over him. You can go to Xiangling's room and serve her first."
Qingwen's body trembled, and she understood in her heart that she was completely regarded as a maid in the mansion, rather than a passing guest who was destined to leave.
She couldn't help but look up at Sun Shaozong, and hesitated for a long time, but finally nodded obediently. However, as she nodded, her tears couldn't stop falling.
Sun Shaozong was already fully armed at this time. Seeing this, he strode into the rain without saying a word.
When he arrived at the front yard, Sun Shaozong hesitated for a moment and did not rush out. Instead, he went to the guest room in the west wing.
When Sun Shaozong arrived at the door of one of the guest rooms, he was about to push the door open when he saw Caixia coming out with a basin of water. When she saw Sun Shaozong, she bowed and said, "This servant greets you, Second Master."
"How's that boy?"
While Sun Shaozong was asking, he secretly wondered who arranged for this pedophile to be assigned to serve him.
Caixia said hurriedly: "Mr. Li just vomited once, and now he is asleep again."
It turned out that the person living there was not someone else, but the smart young man Li Xian whom he met when solving a case a few days ago.
Yesterday, this young man came to the house to congratulate Sun Shaozong. Sun Shaozong originally wanted to wait until the banquet was over before chatting with him alone - but who would have thought that Li Xian was forced by Xue Pan to drink a glass of liquor, and he immediately got drunk and passed out.
Hearing that Li Xian had not woken up yet, Sun Shaozong had no choice but to ask Caixia to take good care of him and left the house in a huff.
As the rain gradually got heavier, by the time we arrived at the government office, it was already past the time for roll call.
However, the gatekeeper naturally did not dare to make the Third Master unhappy over such a small matter, so without waiting for Sun Shaozong to speak, he quickly found the reserved blank space and asked him to write his name on it.
I walked through the accumulated water all the way to the Criminal Law Department.
The main hall was empty, without a single person in sight.
Sun Shaozong was stunned for a moment, then he remembered that Sun Chengye and Yu Qian had to pack their luggage and prepare to move out in the next two days, so he took a temporary leave.
But in this case, there will be no one to help sort out the accumulated lawsuits in the government in recent days .
After a slight hesitation, he turned around and went to the east wing to capture Lin Delu's able-bodied men.
"grown ups!"
Lin Delu followed Sun Shaozong closely and returned to the main hall of the Criminal Law Division. He knelt on his knees without caring about the muddy water near the threshold and said in a trembling voice: "My father-in-law and Zhao Liben are from the same hometown, so I used to be closer to him, but since you took charge of the Criminal Law Division, I have never..."
"Okay."
Sun Shaozong waved his hand impatiently and said, "Considering Zhao Liben's current embarrassing situation, let alone that you haven't done anything wrong behind my back, even if you really got on his pirate ship, what can you do?"
As he spoke, he slapped the table where Sun Chengye usually worked and said, "Hurry up and sort these files into categories, and send the ones that need to be processed urgently to the inner room."
Seeing Sun Shaozong go into the inner room on his own, the explanation that Lin Delu had racked his brains to come up with was stuck in his throat. He knelt on the ground in a daze for a long time, then stood up with a sad face and went to check the files on the table.
Although he was panic-stricken and had difficulty concentrating, he was the chief steward of the Criminal Law Department after all, and most of the files here were sorted out by him and then submitted to him.
Therefore, not long after, Lin Delu walked into the inner room with two piles of case files and lowered his head.
"My Lord, as you instructed, I have arranged these cases in order of importance and urgency."
As he spoke, he placed the files on Sun Shaozong's public security and gave a general introduction to the order of priority.
Seeing that Sun Shaozong had no reaction, he was hesitating whether to explain a few more words, but he heard Sun Shaozong said without even raising his head: "Go down."
The courage that Lin Delu had just mustered up suddenly disappeared, and he walked out dejectedly.
Just as he was about to step in and out of the door, Sun Shaozong suddenly uttered four words: "This will not happen again."
Lin Delu was overjoyed. He turned around and kowtowed like crazy, swearing to heaven that he would never again hide the secret from Sun Shaozong and collude with others in private.
Sun Shaozong ignored him and just lowered his head to look at the files.
Those ranked at the top are basically either major murder cases or incidents that are against human ethics and have caused public outrage.
Sun Shaozong first glanced through it briefly, wrote his initial judgment on a blank appendix, and circled some doubtful points in red ink for further scrutiny when he looked through it a second time.
In this way, he reviewed seven cases in a row, and when he came to the eighth case, it turned out to be a case of missing persons.
The missing person is a middle-aged woman, now 36 years old. About seven days ago in the evening, she went out to buy vegetables with a basket and then disappeared.
The woman had never been found to have any mental problems, and she had a harmonious relationship with her husband and children. Her family had not encountered any unexpected changes recently. In addition, she only brought a dozen cents for groceries with her, so it was initially judged that it was unlikely that she ran away from home on her own initiative.
However, the people trafficked by human traffickers are usually young women. This middle-aged woman...
Could it be that she is well maintained, just like Aunt Xue?
Sun Shaozong turned to the column for simple portraits and immediately rejected this idea - although the facial features in the portrait may not be very accurate, the bucket-like figure cannot be wrong.
In this case, the chance of trafficking is not high.
As for revenge...
Sun Shaozong flipped through the pages and tapped lightly on the woman's occupation.
Midwife, this profession can be regarded as kind to others nowadays, and unlike doctors, it is not easy to encounter medical disputes. Logically speaking, the possibility of causing hatred should be small.
Seeking money?
Being a midwife is indeed a well-paid profession. According to the information in the files, the craft was passed down from her ancestors and she is quite famous in the capital. She must have accumulated quite a fortune.
However, the information also stated that this woman was a property fanatic. She had bought several houses and two shops, so she should not have much spare money left.
So why did she disappear?
Was he discovered to be doing something unspeakable, so he was silenced?
Or were you accidentally involved in some incident?
Perhaps we should send someone to investigate whether she has delivered babies for any wealthy families recently - for ordinary families, even if some dirty secrets were leaked, they might not necessarily lead to murder to silence the witness.
“Huh?!”
Sun Shaozong frowned and marked down all the doubtful points. He was about to continue reviewing other files when he suddenly discovered a detail that had just been overlooked.
This woman's home seems to be not far from Shuntian Prefecture, and is located to the side and rear...
Could it be her?
A person flashed through Sun Shaozong's mind, and he quickly opened the file again, found the column for portraits, and compared the short and fat woman in the portrait with the image in his memory. Sure enough they were about 60% similar.
Seeing this, Sun Shaozong immediately called Lin Delu in, threw the missing case file to him, and ordered: "Invite the woman's husband and children, and call Zhou Da and the female prisoner from the house arrest."
Lin Delu quickly agreed, looked through the case file for a few seconds, wrote down the missing woman's home address, and respectfully returned it to Sun Shaozong's desk. He then hurried to the east wing and assigned the tasks to the yamen runners below.
Because the house of confinement was burned down to a wasteland and was still under reconstruction, several female inmates in the house of confinement were temporarily transferred to the government jail to serve under Zhou Da.
Therefore, not long after, Zhou Da came with a few female prisoners in the rain. They didn't even have time to put on straw raincoats, and they were all soaked like drowned rats.
Fearing that the official documents inside might be soiled, Lin Delu did not dare to let them in and hurriedly went inside to invite Sun Shaozong out.
When Sun Shaozong got outside, he threw a towel to Zhou Da first. After Zhou Da wiped the rain off his hands and face with thanks, he threw the file to him and asked, "Is the missing woman in this file the one who helped the lewd nun give birth in the house of confinement when the heavenly dog swallowed the sun?"
Zhou Da flipped it open and took a few glances, but he was not sure, so he held it up and had a few female inmates pass it around to look at it again.
After gathering the opinions of several of his men, he said with certainty, "It was this old woman Wang. She was the one who delivered the monster!"
It’s indeed her!
Could it be that she discovered something at that time and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to gain benefits, so she was killed to silence her?
With Miaoyu's personality, she shouldn't be like this, but there's also Wei Ruolan involved - and Wei Ruolan's brother Wei Rushong is no pushover!
