Chapter 62: The Seven W's

Hearing Heifu speak with such certainty, as if he already had a plan, Li Xian raised his eyebrows. "It seems the Constable already has a judgment in mind. I would like to hear the details!"

Heifu could see he was unconvinced, so he said, "If we search blindly across the hills and fields, it will be like fishing a needle from the sea — utterly impossible to find."

"But if we first define the scope of where the letter-thrower was, and when they acted, wouldn't that make it much easier to find them?"

In his previous life, Heifu had not spent three years at the police academy for nothing; he had learned some criminal investigation methods. The matter before him could not be approached with blind guesswork — he needed to use the "Seven W's" from criminal investigation to define the scope.

The so-called Seven W's are seven questions: At what time, at what place, by what person, based on what motive, using what means, against what target, causing what result? In short, they are called the "Seven Essential Elements" of a criminal case.

Therefore, the first thing he needed to determine was the time and place of the act.

Heifu stood up, walked over to Ji Ying, and patted him on the shoulder. "Ji Ying, you said you went to three hamlets today? Which ones were they?"

Ji Ying counted on his fingers. "I first went to Xiaojing Hamlet to the east, then ran over to Pinghu Hamlet to the west, and finally arrived at Chaoyang Hamlet to the south…"

"After you delivered the township's official document to Pinghu Hamlet, how many letters were left in your back-basket?"

Ji Ying thought for a moment. "One — a document written by the township's Assistant Field Officer to the Field Clerk of Chaoyang Hamlet."

"When was the last time you opened your back-basket?"

"It was when I took this official document to hand over to the Field Clerk of Chaoyang Hamlet…"

"At that time, there were no letters left in the back-basket, correct?"

Ji Ying shook his head. "None."

"And after that, you never opened the back-basket again?"

"Never again, not until I returned to the station…"

The more Ji Ying spoke, the more certain Heifu became. He said, "Now it's clear. This anonymous letter must have been secretly slipped in by someone during the time after Ji Ying delivered the last official document at the Field Clerk's place in Chaoyang Hamlet, up until he returned to the station."

Everyone nodded. That was the only possibility.

Heifu began questioning Ji Ying again. "After you delivered the document, how long did you stay in Chaoyang Hamlet? What places did you go to? Who did you talk with? After leaving Chaoyang Hamlet, where did you rest? Was there ever a moment when you set the back-basket aside? Who did you encounter on the road? Did you have any contact with them?"

Ji Ying answered each question. After finishing his official business, he had an acquaintance in Chaoyang Hamlet and went to his home to sit for a while, drank some water, and chatted. During that time, a neighbor of that household had given birth to a chubby baby boy, so Ji Ying went along to join the excitement. There were quite a few people at the neighbor's home offering congratulations; people were coming and going, and the scene was very chaotic. Ji Ying suddenly got a stomachache, so he set down his back-basket and went to the latrine…

After that, he stood at the hamlet gate talking for a while. A few hunters returning from outside the hamlet also stopped and greeted him…

What let Heifu breathe a sigh of relief was that Ji Ying confirmed repeatedly: after leaving Chaoyang Hamlet, he did not stop to rest, the back-basket never left his side, and although he encountered people on the road, there was no conversation — they merely brushed past each other in passing…

"Unless someone truly could, without anyone noticing, in the middle of the road, while Ji Ying was walking briskly, from several paces away, toss a letter into a covered back-basket."

"Otherwise, there is only one conclusion!"

Heifu said with certainty, "The letter-thrower could only have done it inside Chaoyang Hamlet!"

"That's right!" Ji Ying clapped his hands. "When I was in Chaoyang Hamlet, I did feel some movement behind me, but I paid it no mind at the time. Perhaps that was when the anonymous letter was slipped in!"

With this, the time and place of the letter-thrower's act were basically confirmed. Heifu looked at the others and asked, "Gentlemen, does anyone still have objections?"

"The Constable is truly formidable!"

Dongmen Bao, Yu Liang, and Xiao Tao were full of admiration in their eyes, and Old Man Pu also nodded in praise.

Even Li Xian, who had raised the question earlier, had to concede. "The Constable's thinking is meticulous. In his speech, he is like a Clerk in the county office adjudicating a case…"

Dongmen Bao immediately burst out laughing. "Heifu is the one who got all twenty questions right on the Legal Q&A! He's more than qualified to be a Clerk!" He had heard this when he returned to the county seat for leave; the others did not live in the county seat, so they hadn't known.

"All twenty questions correct… I never imagined the Constable was so accomplished." At this, Li Xian was stunned, and he too began to regard Heifu with deep respect.

"Just luck, just luck."

Heifu smiled modestly. To say that a police academy graduate like him had great skill in solving cases would be boasting, but having seen many case files and dossiers had indeed trained his logical thinking.

Ah, he would never have the chance to be a people's police officer; he could only scratch that itch here in this ancient-era police station.

As it happened, this anonymous letter had come at just the right time — it was an opportunity for him to show his abilities. If he succeeded, not only would he get reward money and accumulate "merit points" as Constable, paving the way for future promotion, but he could also win the wholehearted respect of everyone at the station, making them follow his every command…

Of course, aside from that, there was another reason that was hard to speak aloud.

For someone with his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, receiving a letter but being unable to open it was intolerable… No matter what, he had to catch the letter-thrower, and then, right in front of them, tear the letter open and see what it said.

Thinking thus, Heifu put away his smile and said solemnly:

"The time and place of the act are now determined. The letter-thrower is very likely a person of Chaoyang Hamlet, and is still inside the hamlet at this moment! Tomorrow morning, I will take you gentlemen to Chaoyang Hamlet to have a look around. We must make that letter-thrower show their true colors!"

…

Early the next morning, Heifu divided the station personnel into three groups: Thief-Catcher Dongmen Bao and station runner Yu Liang escorted the commoner-rank Mao, who had been locked up at the station overnight, to the township seat; Xiao Tao and Station Attendant Old Man Pu stayed behind to guard the station; Heifu himself, along with Ji Ying and Li Xian, set out together, heading south toward Chaoyang Hamlet…

As the saying goes: it's not cold when it snows, but cold when the snow melts. Today turned out to be a sunny day. Most of the snow that had blanketed Anlu County the day before had melted, making the surroundings especially cold. The moment they stepped out, Heifu drew a breath of the chilly air into his lungs. The weather was both cold and damp, and Ji Ying shivered from the cold…

"Once this snow melts, the road to Chaoyang Hamlet will be even harder to travel. We'll have to take the side road around a small hill, then follow a footpath for several li — we'll definitely end up with muddy feet…"

According to Ji Ying, by the time they reached Chaoyang Hamlet, it would probably be close to noon.

So the three quickened their pace. After walking for half a shichen, they finally left the main road. They sat down to rest for a moment on a large rock at the fork in the road and ate something. The Qin state did not permit public servants to freeload meals at hamlet households, with chickens and ducks being slaughtered for them. Higher-ranking officials on assignment could eat public rations at stations, but lowly minor clerks like Heifu and his companions could only bring their own dry provisions.

"For breakfast, we'll just have some dried fish and rice-cake patties." Heifu had brought some specialties from Xiyang Hamlet. During the La Festival, Zhong had taught the neighbors the method of pounding rice cakes; many households had pounded rice cakes and given their family quite a few.

Li Xian accepted the food with thanks, while Ji Ying chewed without ceremony and mumbled a question. "Brother Heifu, there's still one thing I don't understand."

Heifu nodded. "Go ahead."

Ji Ying said, "Although you're certain that the letter-thrower is most likely someone from Chaoyang Hamlet, Chaoyang Hamlet is a large hamlet, with seventy households and nearly four hundred people. The ones I had contact with yesterday who had a chance to throw the letter number no fewer than twenty or thirty. With so many people, how do we pick out the letter-thrower?"

Heifu did not answer first, but instead looked at Li Xian and said, "What does Li Xian think? How should we narrow the search?"

Seeing Heifu's expression, Li Xian knew he was deliberately testing him. He swallowed his food and said, "Yesterday I took a good look at that letter. The wooden tablet used was somewhat short, with edges that were not very neat. It doesn't match either of the two standard tablet lengths the government uses for writing official documents, so it must have been made by the person themselves. Add to that the ability to write a letter and seal it — this is not something an ordinary commoner-rank person could produce…"

He thought for a moment, then added, "Right, I smelled it. The material of that wooden tablet should be yellow pear wood."

"Exactly!"

Heifu clapped his hands. "Someone who can trim a wooden tablet, write a letter, and knows how to seal a letter — this is no ordinary black-headed commoner. Even if they aren't a minor hamlet clerk, they must be someone literate, able to read and write… That reduces the number of people we need to look for considerably."

Although the Qin state took law as its teaching and officials as its teachers, and was considered to have a relatively high literacy rate among the seven states, that was still just picking the tallest among dwarfs.

For example, in Heifu's own Xiyang Hamlet, with over fifty households and three hundred people, only twenty or thirty were literate — mainly the hamlet clerks, plus the sons of those seven or eight households that held ranks. With a rank came a certain amount of land and wealth, and others to help with the labor; only then could they spare some time for their sons to learn to read and understand the laws and ordinances.

Xiyang Hamlet's 10% literacy rate was already considered very high among the townships and hamlets, and that was because the hamlet had a retired old clerk, Elder Lü Ying, who had taught many people. The neighboring Bian Hamlet was the same — Yan Zheng's family had taught quite a few fellow villagers to read.

In other hamlets, a literacy rate of 5% was already quite good.

This reduced the number of people Heifu and his group needed to investigate to single digits. The letter-thrower surely knew this sort of thing was against the law, but still took a chance. When they made their move, they absolutely could not let anyone see, so it must have been the person themselves who dropped it in.

Heifu could even guess where the culprit had struck: it must have been a moment when Ji Ying was off guard and no one else was around…

It must be understood that criminal investigation is, by its very nature, a process of tracing backward from the aftermath to the before, of discovering causes from results, and of unearthing suspects from events. Its mode of reasoning is retrospective, and its method is a hypothesis-testing-and-elimination approach that constantly closes in on the truth.

The only thing the letter-sender left behind was a single wooden tablet. A layman might be utterly baffled and have no idea where to begin, but Heifu could deduce a great many facts from this object.

But that was not enough. The difficulty of criminal investigation lies in discovering the inner connections between things beneath a chaotic and tangled surface, and in sifting through fragmented, ambiguous clues — discarding the false to retain the true, and discarding the crude to retain the essential.

So for the rest of the journey, Heifu began to question Ji Ying in detail about everyone he had come into contact with yesterday inside Zhaoyang Hamlet — who they were, and when and where each encounter took place.

Ji Ying was a remarkable character himself. He was a native of this township and by nature loved making friends, so he knew a great many people. After becoming a postal runner, he frequently traveled between the various hamlets and got to know even more. Of those he had interacted with yesterday, he could actually name the greater half. Even when he could not recall a name, he could remember whose relative or family member they were, so by following those threads one could always track them down.

"That is excellent!" Heifu was both surprised and delighted. If those names could be confirmed, then his stratagem could be put into action.

"When we arrive at Zhaoyang Hamlet shortly, we shall act as if nothing is amiss — merely a routine inspection by the newly appointed Hamlet Chief taking up his post."

He instructed the two of them: "We shall first go ask the hamlet gatekeeper whether anyone from other hamlets came here yesterday. Then we shall pay a visit to the Hamlet Head to investigate thoroughly just how many people in the hamlet are literate — who can read and write!"

"What if this matter was done by one of the hamlet clerks himself?" Li Xian suddenly asked.

Heifu pondered briefly. "In that case, when we question him, he will give himself away. And then, you two shall proceed thus and so…"

As soon as Ji Ying heard Heifu's plan, he clapped his hands in praise. Li Xian also clicked his tongue in wonder, deeming it feasible.

As they spoke, the small path came to an end, cut off by a low wall. Amid the dense mountain woods, a tranquil hamlet settlement, its chimneys trailing wispy smoke, appeared before them…

Zhaoyang Hamlet — they had arrived!

PS: Regarding "wei" and "nuo" — many people have asked, so I will give a unified reply here.

Both wei and nuo were respectful responses used in the Warring States and Qin periods, which is why we have the idiom wei-wei-nuo-nuo (obsequiously compliant). Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi explains it very clearly: both wei and nuo mean "to respond"; a slow response is called nuo, a rapid response is called wei. Wei carries a heavier tone of deference and is spoken with a hurried air; nuo carries a slightly lighter tone and is spoken more slowly.

Wei was generally used when a subordinate responded to a superior, a disciple to a teacher, or a minister to a ruler. For example:

The Master said, "Shen! My Way is bound together by one thread." Zengzi said, "Wei." — Analects, "Li Ren"

The King of Qin knelt forward and petitioned, "Sir, how might you favor me with your instruction?" Fan Sui said, "Wei, wei." — Records of the Grand Historian, "Biographies of Fan Sui and Cai Ze"

Nuo was more often used between equals, or when a superior responded to a subordinate. For example:

The Queen Dowager said, "Nuo. Do with him as you please." — Strategies of the Warring States, "Strategies of Zhao IV"

Lord Mengchang, displeased, said, "Nuo, sir, you may rest now." — Strategies of the Warring States, "Strategies of Qi"

In this book, I have basically followed this usage. In truth, mixing them up does no harm. The Han Feizi, "Eight Wickednesses," says: "Jesters and dwarves, the attendants and favorites at one's side — these are men who, before the ruler gives an order, are already wei-wei, and before he dispatches them, are already nuo-nuo; they anticipate his intentions, read his expressions, and discern his mood in order to preempt the ruler's own mind."

That is for the Spring and Autumn, Warring States, and Qin periods. As for the Han dynasty, I have not studied it deeply, so that is another matter.

As for "hai"? I am sorry, but although some people cannot accept hearing this, that was indeed a fabrication made up in The Qin Empire, with no basis whatsoever in historical sources. Perhaps Old Sun was drawing on modern Shaanxi dialect. As a result, many people online now use "Qin hai, Han nuo" to make their case, and some novels uncritically copy it, throwing around "hai" at every turn.

(End of chapter)