The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Mother's Table

Shouzhi's mother lived in the east lanes, in a house with a blue door and a persimmon tree.

She opened the door before they knocked.

"You're thin," said Tan Xiuying, to both of them.

She was a small, upright woman of fifty-seven, with grey hair in a plain bun and a bone pin.

Her faded blue jacket had a pincushion pinned to the shoulder.

She looked at Shouzhi from his cap to his boots.

She looked at Qinghe from his curls to his shoes, with exactly the same expression.

"Come in. Wash your hands. Shouzhi, take his pipa, he's not going to play it on the doorstep."

"Mother, this is Yan Qinghe."

"I know who it is. The musician from the Plum Lantern. Madam Hui sells me my thread."

Qinghe bowed, very correctly.

"Madam Tan," he said. "Your son talks about you."

"Does he?" She sounded surprised. "What does he say?"

"That you sewed his coat."

"And is it a good coat?"

"It's the best coat in Shuangjiang."

"Good boy," she said, and took him by the sleeve into the kitchen.

Shouzhi stood in the doorway and felt like a bag of rice.

The kitchen was small and bright, with a clay stove, a scrubbed table, and a shelf along the east wall.

On the shelf stood a row of blue-and-white bowls, a tea tin, and a jar of salt.

At the end, where it had always stood, was a little brown clay jar with a slit in the lid.

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