Murder in the Forbidden City (Qing Dynasty Mysteries Book 1)

by Amanda Roberts

  “To speak her name in these walls is very nearly heresy,” she said stifling a laugh. “No, I am doomed to be alone. I have accepted this,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it easy.”

  “Let me help ease your burden,” Lady Li said. “Let me come back into your service, just for a short while.”

  The empress nodded and squeezed Lady Li’s hand. “Welcome home,” she said.

  9

  After Lady Li left her home, the Inspector finally found the time to visit Dr. Xue, who lived and worked in a hutong to the south of the Forbidden City.

  The doctor’s office was down a narrow alley, barely wide enough for two people to walk down side by side. Even though it hadn’t rained in days, the alley was perpetually wet from lack of sunlight and the used water and night buckets that were continually dumped out of the houses that lined it. Inspector Gong stepped carefully to avoid mucking up his boots.

  He entered the shop and was slapped in the face by a variety of smells. The heavy, musky scents of dried herbs and plants were not altogether unpleasant, but they quickly gave way to the smells of dried sea creatures, such as seahorses, sea cucumbers, and whole bins of dried fishes. As he stepped deep into the shop, closer to a door that led to a back room, the unmistakable scent of death began cloying at him.

  Inspector Gong found it unbelievable that Dr. Xue had lived here for so many years. After the doctor had earned enough money to purchase a wife, she insisted they live elsewhere, but he couldn’t afford to move them too far. He purchased the small house next door to his shop that was so close they shared a dividing wall.

  Dr. Xue was advising a young woman on which teas she should drink to increase her fertility. There was no separate consultation room and the doctor didn’t even lower his voice to try and protect the girl’s privacy from whoever was listening. The young lady was apparently not yet married, but wanted to make sure she was ready to conceive as soon as she was. The doctor mixed a few different herbs and other items together and told her to drink it twice a day in the weeks leading up to her wedding day. The young lady thanked him profusely, handed him some coins, and shuffled out as quickly as she could on her bound feet.

  “Will that potion actually work?” the inspector asked.

  The doctor jutted out his chin. “Are you calling me a hack?”

  “I just think that if you actually knew how to get women pregnant, you’d be a much richer man.”

  “Humph,” the doctor replied. “She doesn’t know if she needs help or not. She hasn’t yet tried. She just wants reassurance. I actually gave her something to calm her nerves and help her sleep. After she is married a few months, if she doesn’t get with a baby, then I’ll try to figure out why and give her something to help.”

  The inspector nodded. “That is clever.”

  The doctor waved him away. “I’m not as feeble-minded as I look.”

  “Of course not,” the inspector said.

  “What of you?” he asked. “I’m surprised your mother has not come in for a medicine to give you to make you want a wife and children.”

  “If she does,” the inspector replied, “don’t give it to her.”

  “You are old, you are successful, and you like women, yes? You aren’t one of those men who spends his evenings with opera singers, are you?”

  The inspector sighed. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know. I think I would just find married life boring. I enjoy what I do. What woman could compete with that?”

  “It’s not about the woman,” the old doctor said. “It’s about doing your duty, being a filial son. Your job is to have many sons, elevate the family. You can still work outside the home, go do whatever it is you do every day, as long as you put sons in a wife at night.”

  “You speak wisdom, Dr. Xue,” Inspector Gong replied. At this point, the inspector decided they had conversed enough that he could address the real reason he was there. “What about the woman I came to talk to you about?”

  “That woman…” he said, shaking his head. “Big trouble. You must get her out of here before her spirit finds the body.”

  “What do you mean?” the inspector asked.

  The doctor headed toward the door in the back of the room, the one that stank of death, and motioned for the inspector to follow him.

  The backroom was lit by many lanterns, but it was still dark. The smell was horrendous. The inspector covered his mouth with his sleeve to keep from vomiting. There were several slabs spaced out in the room. Some had bodies lying on them, some were vacant. Several shelves against one wall were full of jars of body parts. The inspector could hear the squeaking of rodents coming from somewhere.

  The doctor pulled back a sheet that was covering one of the bodies. Inspector Gong hardly recognized the girl. Her skin was green and her cheeks were sunken in. Her mouth was slightly parted and her teeth were tinged black. He could see several small stab wounds in her chest that had suppurated and the doctor had cut her open and sewed her shut again so there was a long gash from her neck to her belly button.

  “It is not such a bad job in the spring, autumn, and winter,” the doctor explained. “But in these warm months, the bodies turn bad quickly.”

  “What can you tell me about her and her death?” the inspector asked, lowering his arm.

  “She was young and healthy, but someone hated her,” the doctor said. “She was killed by a woman, but a woman full of rage.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “How do you know that?”

  “She was being poisoned by gu,” he said.

  “You must be joking,” the inspector said, his mouth agape.

  “I never joke about my work,” the doctor said. “See the blackening of her teeth?” He pulled the cover down further and the Inspector noticed her belly was quite round. “She is swelling here. A sign of gu poison. And…” he picked up a knife and made a small cut to the inside of her arm. Black liquid oozed out. “Gu,” the doctor said firmly.

  “But why?” the inspector asked. “Surely there are easier poisons to get than gu. Where would a woman in the Forbidden City even find gu?”

  “I have heard that the empress is fond of using poisons to get rid of people she doesn’t like,” the doctor said. “She can get her hands on anything.”

  “Yes, we have all heard the rumors,” the inspector said. After the death of the emperor, people whispered that the empress had a hand in his death. After she had the council executed and took the role of regent for herself and Prince Kung, some people were sure of it. The inspector had never put much faith in the rumors though. The emperor had been ill for years. After his humiliating defeat by the foreign powers and the burning of the Summer Palace, he simply couldn’t return to the Forbidden City. From what the inspector knew about the emperor and from what Prince Kung had told him, the inspector assumed the emperor had died of shame.

  “Do you sell gu here?” the inspector asked.

  “Certainly not,” the doctor said. “It’s not just poison, it’s black magic. Evil stuff.”

  “How is it made exactly?” the inspector asked.

  “You take one of each of the poisonous animals—a scorpion, a toad, a snake, a centipede, a spider—and put them in a sealed jar. After many days, the jar is opened, and whichever animal is still alive is the most poisonous, but it is now more poisonous because it ingested the poison of the others. The victor is killed, dried, ground up. The black powder the animal becomes is the gu.”

  “But you said it was more than poison. You said it was evil.”

  The doctor nodded. “Such a death for the creatures is cruel. The poison is painful. You have to want the victim to suffer. It curses the victim. Causes a gu ghost, one who has to wander for eternity.”

  “It is also hard to come by,” the inspector guessed.

  “Indeed,” the doctor agreed. “It is hard to make, hard to get, expensive. Only someone with extreme hate and the means could po
ison someone with gu.”

  “But she was also stabbed,” the Inspector said.

  “The girl was not given enough gu to kill her quickly. She was getting sick, suffering. But I do not know if this was intentional. Did the killer want the girl to suffer or did she simply not give her enough poison? I do not know.”

  “So maybe Suyi didn’t die quickly enough, or she found out what was going on so the killer resorted to stabbing.”

  “That seems likely,” the doctor said.

  “You said she was killed by a woman. How are you so sure?”

  “Women use poison, both to kill themselves and others. It is usually a clean death, no blood, no ugly corpse. But men can also use poison, or eunuchs, so how do I know it was a woman? Look at the stab wounds.”

  The inspector looked closely at the wounds in her chest. Again, he noticed they seemed small. He didn’t notice their size before because there was so much blood. He had assumed the murder weapon had been a knife, but now he realized it had to have been a much smaller weapon.

  “What do you think caused them?” he asked.

  “Something small, narrow, and sharp,” he said. He reached into a basket of tools near the body and pulled out something long and thin. “I found this among my wife’s things,” he said. “It fits these wounds almost perfectly.

  The inspector took it and held it in his hand. A hairpin. Han and Manchu women wore elaborate hairstyles and decorated them with jewels, flowers, butterflies, and so on. One of the most common ways the hair ornaments were attached to the hair or the batou was with a long silver hairpin, about the length of a woman’s hand. The inspector stuck the hairpin into one of Suyi’s wounds and noted the downward trajectory.

  “You are sure she was killed by a woman?” he asked. “The killer was taller than she was. Could have been a eunuch.”

  “She wasn’t wearing shoes when you brought her in,” he said. “You know those ridiculous elevated shoes the Manchu women wear. There is no way to know how tall the killer was, if she was wearing shoes or not.”

  The inspector nodded. “So that means our killer could still be any woman inside the Forbidden City.”

  “My money is still on the empress,” the doctor said.

  “Be careful,” the inspector said. “You could lose your head just for saying such a thing.”

  “Bah, who would come for an old man like me? But it is awfully strange. Her death was so violent, so painful. Small wounds take time to bleed out. Wouldn’t she have been loud? Look at her hands. She fought back. She would have screamed. How could something like this happen without the empress knowing? How could it happen without her permission?”

  The inspector didn’t want to believe it, but it all made sense. He didn’t know why the empress would want to kill her, but the empress was rumored to use poison, would have the means to get it, and could have ordered it done and easily covered up her own involvement. She could have ordered any other lady-in-waiting or maid to carry out the deed for her. The inspector then realized he had sent Lady Li to serve at the empress’s side! What if the empress discovered why she was really there? She could be in danger!

  “Ai-yo!” he gasped.

  10

  The empress’s chief eunuch, An Te-hai, showed Lady Li to her quarters. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong the Magnificent, who ruled China during the 1700s, Lady Li’s room would have been home to at least four imperial consorts. But now, with no proper emperor, only one empress, three widowed concubines who had also served the empress’s husband, and a few aged widows still living decades after the deaths of their husbands, even a lady-in-waiting like Lady Li could have a palace to herself.

  Lady Li’s palace was basically one large room divided into smaller sections: a sleeping area, an office area, a sitting area where she could chat with guests, a large chair on a raised dais where she could receive messengers, and so forth.

  When they arrived at her palace, a eunuch and a maid were waiting for her.

  “I am Eunuch Jinxi,” the young man said as he kneeled before her. He was quite young. Lady Li wondered how Eunuch Bai could know this boy well enough to trust him with her confidence. He could not have been serving at the palace when he was there. She was aware that without their manhood, eunuchs did not age as normal men and often looked young well into their later years, but this boy could not have been more than a teenager. She trusted Eunuch Bai with her life and wanted to trust his judgment in this, but she wasn’t sure she could. Lady Li sighed but did not voice her concerns.

  “I am Chu,” the maid, also not yet twenty, said as she too kneeled.

  “Has my position fallen so low that I am given only the most inexperienced servants?” Lady Li asked Te-hai.

  Te-hai smiled as he inclined his head. “No, my lady. The empress has seen fit to only give you the smartest, quickest, and most beautiful of servants.”

  Eunuch Jinxi and Chu blushed at Te-hai’s praise.

  Lady Li had no idea if what Te-hai said was true or if he was only trying to compliment her, but she let a smile escape one side of her mouth, which put Eunuch Jinxi and Chu at ease.

  “You’re dismissed,” she said to Te-hai.

  He gave a quick, half-hearted bow before turning to leave. Lady Li remembered Te-hai from years ago. He had served the empress when she was nothing more than a sixth-rank concubine. No one else in the empire had benefited from the empress’s rise more than him. Undoubtedly, the empress trusted him implicitly, and he was most likely utterly devoted to her, but was he abusing his position? He seemed very sure of himself and used to taking liberties. Even though he was the empress’s confidant, she would have to keep an eye on him. But for now, she would have to figure out how much she could trust her own servants.

  “Chu, may we have some tea?” she requested.

  “Of course, my lady,” Chu replied with a deep bow before quickly scurrying away.

  This gave Lady Li a moment to evaluate Eunuch Jinxi alone. She said nothing, but watched him closely. The boy was calm and poised. After a moment, though, he glanced at her and looked her in the eye. It was only for a moment. Had Lady Li blinked, she might not have caught it. For a servant to look his mistress in the eye was considered a great insult, and she could have punished him severely for it, but she did not. She knew that his glance meant no offense, but was a message. In that brief second, she knew he was trying to put her mind at ease. He was trying to tell her that, yes, he had been sent by Eunuch Bai to help her, and she could trust him.

  The boy had such expressive eyes. His whole face was quite lovely. It must have broken his mother’s heart to have him cut, to know that her beautiful boy would never give her equally beautiful grandchildren.

  Lady Li cleared her throat. “So, Eunuch Jinxi,” she said, “what are we to do now?”

  “Whatever you wish, my lady,” he replied. “Perhaps you would like to send a letter to your family, let them know you have settled in.”

  And to Eunuch Bai and Inspector Gong, Lady Li thought. Perhaps this would be Eunuch Jinxi’s first test of loyalty. Was he telling her that he was ready to be tested? Was he trying to earn her trust? Or was he trying to catch her? If she did write the letters, would he turn them over to someone else? Someone she didn’t trust? I’m getting paranoid, Lady Li thought to herself.

  “Perhaps you can answer some questions for me first,” Lady Li said as she took a seat in the informal sitting area.

  Eunuch Jinxi got down on his knees so she wouldn’t have to look up at him. “What does my lady wish to know?” he asked.

  “You are aware that Lady Yun was my kin?” she asked.

  “Yes, my lady,” he said. “My condolences for your loss.”

  “Can you tell me which palace she lived in?” she asked.

  “Yes, my lady,” he said. “She was housed in the servant quarters very near the empress’s palace. Her quarters were much meaner than yours, but the empress favored her very much and wanted her nearby.”

  At this mom
ent, Chu returned with a tea tray and placed it on the low table next to Lady Li. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said. “I wasn’t sure which tea you preferred, so I brought several: jasmine, pu’er, black. Forgive my stupidity and for not asking.”

  “It is nothing,” Lady Li replied. “I am used to my own servants who have been with me for many years knowing what I like. I’ll take the jasmine for now.”

  Chu nodded and placed the jasmine petals into a pot and then filled it with hot water. “Lady Yun also preferred jasmine tea,” the girl said.

  “How do you know that?” Lady Li asked.

  “I was her servant as well, my lady,” Chu replied as she poured the tea into a small cup.

  There were endless levels of servitude and rank in the Forbidden City. Maids had maids who had maids, and almost everyone had someone they could order around. Even Chu would be able to bark orders at the kitchen maids when she requested the tea tray prepared.

  “Is that why you were assigned to me?” Lady Li asked, sipping the tea.

  “You’d have to ask Jinxi that,” she replied. “He requested I be assigned here.”

  “Is that a fact?” Lady Li asked of no one in particular as she eyed Jinxi. He didn’t respond, but Lady Li was sure he was smiling to himself.

  “Did you know her very well?” Lady Li asked Chu.

  “Not as well as I would have liked,” she said. “She was good to me, never beat me or yelled at me, but she was real careful about rules and boundaries. She didn’t really confide in me the way some of the ladies do with their maids.”

  “Did she have friends among the other ladies?” Lady Li asked.

  “I don’t think so, my lady,” she said. “She was favored by the empress, so I think the other ladies were jealous of her. The empress was probably the only person I would call her friend.”

  When Lady Li had served the empress years ago, she knew some of the other ladies were jealous of her. But no one had ever tried to murder her over it. There had to be a stronger motive than jealousy at play.