Mercury Poisoning

More than one woman had been killed and they had been found in a terrible state. The backs of their heads had been smashed in, their hands and legs bound, they knelt with their faces down, they lost the clothes on the lower half of their bodies…

Besides the part where the arms and legs were bound and the kneeling position, everything else sounded just like this case.

Zhao Zhi’s eye twitched immediately. Could it be that there were other victims besides Madam Wang?

This was… a serial murder case?

It was definitely a possibility. Just like the boat courtesan case in Luanze, the murder victims were all from a specific group of people whom the authorities did not particularly care about and few people around them took notice… It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to realize anything.

And if anyone realized it, rumors would definitely start flying and many people would find out. It wouldn’t be a small matter anymore.

Zhao Zhi’s gaze was frosty as he tapped his fingers hard against the table. “I need more details!”

Most of the time, he already looked authoritative even if he wasn’t angry. His frosty gaze made him look really frightening.

Ningyan shrank back behind Jiang Shaoyuan as she peeked out, “I’m… scared…”

Zhao Zhi frowned.

Jiang Shaoyuan saw that Zhao Zhi was not very pleased, so he patted Ningyan’s back hard enough to remind her that now wasn’t the time to act coquettish and hope to get away with it. “It’s alright, Prince Ping is a good man. Just tell him everything you know.”

Ningyan was still scared, but when she heard Jiang Shaoyuan mention that this man was actually the newly crowned Prince Ping, her heart instantly trembled.

“I didn’t know you were His Highness, Prince Ping…” She held a handkerchief and curtsied beautifully as she looked at Zhao Zhi with nothing but gentleness and charm in her eyes.

But Zhao Zhi wasn’t affected at all. He tapped his fingers on the table impatiently. “That doesn’t work on me. Get back to the topic.”

Ningyan had no choice. The first rule of this job was to never offend any customers, especially someone who had the potential to become a top paying customer.

“I… don’t actually know a lot, just hearsay, I just heard that this happened and two women died. One is named Hongyan and the other is Xinggu, and that their bodies were found in a horrifying state…”

It was true that she didn’t know a lot. Even after she tried to rack her brains and think of more details, she couldn’t come up with anything else.

Since Zhao Zhi wasn’t getting anything new out of her, he stopped her from talking and asked the rest in the room, “Have any of you heard about this?”

They all reacted differently.

Linglong was the first one to bow her head so that nobody could see her expression, but she was clutching her handkerchief so tightly that the handkerchief was getting crushed. She had clearly heard about this before, and that was why she was so worried and nervous.

Ji Bo and Jiang Shaoyuan exchanged glances. After a short pause, Ji Bo hugged Linglong gently and patted her back. “Prince Ping is here, there’s no need to be afraid.”

“Thank you.” Linglong forced herself to smile and suppress her nervousness as she also moved slightly away from him so that he couldn’t hold her anymore.

When Jiang Shaoyuan saw that nobody was going to respond, he spoke up first, “Regular patrons would probably have heard a thing or two, but almost nobody cares.”

After all, nobody really knew which rumors floating around brothels were true and which ones were fake. Most conversations after a night of drunkenness were usually about very weird and strange things, or just pure boasting. Few would take these words seriously.

Of course, Zhao Zhi understood that. He knew he wouldn’t get much more out of this group, so he stopped asking. He would have to conduct his own investigation later.

Once he had decided on that, he looked at Linglong. “You still don’t want to talk about what happened last night?”

Linglong’s face paled and she gripped her handkerchief even more tightly. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it or that I’m trying to cover up for anybody. I really couldn’t see clearly and so I don’t know who he is and where he appeared from…”

Zhao Zhi decided she needed a little help. “What about his accent? What did he say to you?”

Linglong paused to think, then shook her head. “He just told me “don’t be scared” and “be quiet”, and it was a whisper too. He didn’t say anything else and I didn’t notice any strange accent… I suppose he’s from around here?”

Zhao Zhi continued, “What about his clothes?”

Linglong replied, “I think his clothes were black? It was too dark and I was very scared, so I didn’t notice anything special about the fabric or what sort of clothing it was or anything like that…”

“What about the design? Was there anything that looked out of the ordinary? Was the material soft or stiff? Did anything scratch you or anything like that? What about accessories? Anything like jade pendants, gold rings, a bag, pouch or something like that?”

“I don’t remember any special design, the fabric… I can’t remember either… I didn’t take note of accessories and I don’t remember anything hitting me, so I suppose there weren’t any? Or even if he wore accessories, there were very few…”

Linglong stopped to think for a long time when suddenly her eyes lit up. “Oh! The sides of his belt,” she pointed to the left and right sides of her waist where a belt would sit, “had some gold embroidery, it was either coin or ripple or cloud shaped!”

After trying hard to recall, that was all she could remember. She looked a little apologetic because she really couldn’t think of anything else.

Meanwhile, Song Caitang was examining the body according to procedure while writing the autopsy report.

After facing so much fierce objections from the families of high profile victims all this time, the request to dissect this victim had gone the smoothest, since nobody stopped her from doing so.

But examining a body was like cracking a case. One had to spend time to carefully examine and check every inch of the body to get clues. You couldn’t figure everything out with just one look. It took quite a bit of time.

She lit the usual herbs, put on her usual garb, confirmed her notes on the victim’s external features and time of death, then finally picked out a scalpel and made a Y incision across the chest, cutting through skin and flesh…

Time ticked by slowly. The sunshine on the floor shifted quietly from the floor to the window and out, so while it was still bright outside, the room remained cold. But the burning herbs neutralized the smell of the blood in the room, so it didn’t make her feel uncomfortable even after a long time.

“I’ve finally got it.” Song Caitang put her scalpel down. “It’s mercury poisoning.”

“What poisoning?” Wen Yuansi happened to walk in just as she made that comment.

Song Caitang was surprised to see him. “Didn’t you head to Prince Ping’s residence to question the butler, Zhao Zhong?”

How was he back so quickly?

“He was very cooperative and answered all my questions. He said that he had spent most of his time with Marquess Anyang from afternoon till night time. But I didn’t get a lot of information or clues from him,” said Wen Yuansi as he walked further into the room. “Also, I did take quite a bit of time.”

Song Caitang glanced out of the window and realized that it was much later than she thought it was.

Wen Yuansi approached her and glanced at the body on the table. “You mentioned some sort of poisoning? That’s the cause of death?

“Yes and no,” Song Caitang nodded, then shook her head. “Madam Wang must have been poisoned first, which made it hard for her to fight back. Then she was hit hard in the back of the head, which eventually resulted in her death.”

“So, this poison is not fatal?”

Song Caitang shook her head. “Even without the hit in the head, Madam Wang would still have died, but she would have taken a longer time to die.”

The strike to the head merely quickened her death.

“Look at this,” Song Caitang pointed to the body, “her mouth, esophagus and stomach lining have clearly hardened and they have all turned a grayish white. The lining of the intestines are swollen as the poison was slowly reaching them, the kidneys are swollen and full of blood too… Her breath would have stunk, she would have felt stomach aches and there would be blood in her urine.”

“The damage to her liver and kidneys is fairly severe. Her central nervous system has been wrecked too, so this is a fairly strong and quick acting poisoning. Based on her symptoms and what we saw, I think… it’s mercury.”

“Mercury?”

“Quicksilver.”

Song Caitang knew that people from this era did not understand metals very well, but they had discovered mercury very early on and started using it. The pills that superstitious people loved making required the purification of the ingredients, which often included a red sand of sorts. That red sand was cinnabar, or naturally occurring mercury sulfide. You could extract pure mercury by heating it.

The fact that mercury was toxic was not common knowledge, but some people would definitely know about it.

Mercury is the only metal that exists in liquid form at room temperature. Both the liquid itself and its vapor are toxic, and breathing it in is worse than consuming it orally.

Song Caitang told Wen Yuansi everything she knew about mercury. “What did you notice when you first walked into the scene of the crime?”

“It was shut fast,” Wen Yuansi frowned slightly as he realized what she was getting at after she had explained the properties of mercury. “The door was opened only because the maids got someone to force it open. The windows were all closed tight, and…”

Song Caitang continued, “And there were a lot of candle holders, and the curtains were pulled back, right?”

Wen Yuansi narrowed his eyes. “So, the candles were there to vaporize the quicksilver, while the curtains were to make sure that the vapor wouldn’t be able to escape the room?”

“That’s right. Perhaps Madam Wang liked her room to be dark in the first place and had a habit of drawing her curtains when she went to bed, and that worked to the murderer’s advantage.”

After the poison had taken effect and the victim was dead, there was no need to keep the curtains down. The killer drew the curtains back again so that it wouldn’t look so strange.

Song Caitang felt that it wouldn’t be possible to put up the curtains later and the killer didn’t need to either. But she had to wait for Qi Yan to return with more information to confirm that.

“The temperature would have caused the mercury to vaporize and worsen the toxicity for the victim. But it wouldn’t be easy to clean up all of this.”

Song Caitang narrowed her eyes slightly, a tinge of slyness in her gaze. “The killer poisoned her, then killed her, then removed her skirt. The killer clearly hated her very much. If I hated someone enough to kill them, I would want to make sure they died. To make sure they died, I would use quite a bit of quicksilver.”

The killer had waited for a while, but when they entered the room, Madam Wang hadn’t died yet. The mercury would not have all vaporized yet, so there would be some left.

Wen Yuansi nodded grimly. “The killer must have blown out the candles when they drew the curtains, otherwise the brightness of the room would have attracted the attention of the servants.”

That way, any mercury left would stop vaporizing since the temperature was no longer high enough.

Song Caitang said, “Quicksilver at room temperature is a silver, shiny, heavy liquid. It’s not easy to carry that around.”

So, there was definitely some mercury left behind at the scene of the crime, even if it was just a little bit!

Wen Yuansi met Song Caitang’s eyes. Their eyes shone brightly as they thought of the same thing. “I’ll get my men to search the room immediately!”

The killer must have had a good understanding of mercury in order to use it to commit murder, so they would have been very careful with it and would not have left a lot behind. But as long as they could find even a little bit, that would be evidence!

After Wen Yuansi had given a runner instructions, he breathed a sigh of relief, then got anxious again. “But if the vapor is so toxic, then doesn’t that mean that you, me, and anyone who’s been to the scene of the crime, could be in danger?”

As he spoke, he scanned Song Caitang up and down, afraid that something bad might have happened to her.

“A long time had passed by the time we got there, and then doors had been open, so there was sufficient ventilation. I think we should be alright.” Song Caitang felt that those who had gone in once and spent very little time there would be fine, but those who hung around the area might have to be more careful. “Seal the room and don’t let anyone go near. If any mercury droplets are found, use paper to put them together and they will form one big droplet. To store it, put it into a tightly sealed bottle. Also, anyone who must go in and out of the room should do it quickly. Eat more egg whites, milk and soy curd.”

After she said all this, Song Caitang felt that it wasn’t enough to just tell Wen Yuansi. She wrote everything down properly and got Wen Yuansi to pass the note to everyone in his team.

He quickly sent orders to pass the message to everyone so that nobody endangered themselves unnecessarily.

“Not many people would be familiar with quicksilver.”

“That would be helpful in figuring out where to begin our investigation.”

Song Caitang was done examining the body, so she double checked the details in the autopsy report, then began to sew the body up and clean up for the day.

“There’s just one more thing that seems strange,” she furrowed her brows. “The killer just left the body in that state? Why?”

Wen Yuansi suggested, “Because the killer really hated her?”

Every killer had their own reasons for how they chose to kill a person. They still had no idea why the killer did it this way.

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.” Song Caitang shook her head. She couldn’t really complete that thought either. She just felt that there was something amiss.

“What’s wrong?” Qi Yan suddenly leaped in through the window. “You’re done examining the body already?! You didn’t wait for me??”

Song Caitang was in a good mood since the autopsy had yielded useful results, so she didn’t mind teasing Qi Yan, “Why should I wait for you? So that you could come and vomit all over the place?”

Qi Yan whined even more loudly, “You’re laughing at me! You despise me now! You’ve changed! You’re no longer the gentle beauty Song Caitang that I used to know!”

“Aww, thanks for the compliment,” she grinned at him.

Qi Yan folded his arms and suddenly shuddered. He felt that Song Caitang looked especially like someone else he knew. The way she flashed a grin at him…

Oh, she looked just like his Brother Zhi!

One Brother Zhi was bad enough, and now he had to face a second one…

Qi Yan quietly looked upward. He was going to have a rough time…

Wen Yuansi reminded him that they had a case to investigate, “So, did you get any clues?”

“Even though everyone says Madam Wang is a very clever woman who gets along with everyone, she has a very strange personality. She doesn’t like interacting with other people, especially the servants. She likes to be all by herself all the time and seems to have some secret dealings with someone…”

Qi Yan scratched his head. “I couldn’t gather much in such a short time, but I’ve already set up my networks and I’m sure we’ll get new information in due time.”

“Very good, you can also start looking in a different direction at the same time,” Zhao Zhi strolled in with a solemn look on his face.

Qi Yan stared at him. “Huh?”

“There might be more than one such case.” Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes. “We… might have run into yet another serial murder case.”