The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Rong Mingde's Coat
Shouzhi did not take her wrists.
He stood there with his own hands hanging, and the whole Doors rulebook went out of his head.
"Put them down, Mother."
"Shouzhi, you're a constable."
"Put them down."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she lowered her hands and folded them on the table, and he saw they had begun, very slightly, to shake.
Qinghe went down on both knees on the kitchen floor.
He did it without a sound.
This time his hands were open and empty.
"Madam," he said. "Nine men, on your penny."
"I know what I bought, child. Get up."
"I won't."
"Then kneel, and be useful, and pour the tea."
He poured it with a hand that rattled the cup against the pot.
Nobody drank.
"Tell me about him," Shouzhi said. "About my father. All of it, from the start."
"You never wanted to hear it."
"I'm asking now."
She nodded, as though he had finally passed a small examination.
"Your father was the most boring honest man in Tongling County," said Xiuying.
"He kept the Doors' books in a hand like a row of fence posts."
"When he found Ding's grain ledger, he copied the guilty page by candlelight, because he was a man who copied everything."
"He sewed the copy into the lining of his old constable's coat, with my thread."
"Then he took the original upstairs."
"To the magistrate's study."
"To the magistrate's study," she said. "Where he was thanked, and given tea, and arrested by dawn."
Her voice did not rise.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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