"How did you wake up this morning?"
The Fat Man answered without hesitation. "The Sleepwear Woman's screaming woke me up. She was shouting that someone was dead."
"Right. What did you see when you ran out?"
"Everyone was gathered in front of a door, and there was a huge pool of blood on the floor in front of it." He explained as he recalled the scene.
"What about the Sleepwear Woman?"
"She..." The Fat Man thought carefully for a moment. "She was slumped on the floor, like she was terrified. She kept screaming until Hat Man slapped her across the face. Then she quieted down."
"Do you remember where she was?"
"I do." The Fat Man paused, as if something didn't quite make sense to him, but he answered honestly. "At the back of the crowd, opposite the door where the incident happened."
He described the scene at the time with remarkable clarity.
"What's wrong with that?" he asked.
"Plenty," Jiang Cheng said calmly. "She was in the wrong place."
"The room where it happened had no number on the door, but if you count the rooms in order, it should have been Room 414. That means it was closest to Room 407, one of our four rooms."
"It was already light out. By all reason, the Sleepwear Woman should have spotted the huge pool of blood outside Room 414 as soon as she stepped out, and screamed immediately. How could she have waited until she reached the door of Room 414 to start screaming, then collapsed there?" Jiang Cheng looked at the Fat Man. "She isn't blind."
The Fat Man stared at Jiang Cheng in disbelief.
There was no denying that it made little sense.
"That's just the first point." Jiang Cheng didn't give the Fat Man a chance to speak. He continued on his own. "Second, she was a newcomer, and her only roommate had left the night before without anyone knowing where she'd gone. So who gave her the courage to be the first to open the door and go out? Wasn't she afraid there might be a ghost waiting outside?"
Jiang Cheng went on, "If I were her, I'd never do that. I wouldn't dare."
"Th-third point?"
Jiang Cheng paused for a few seconds, then spoke slowly. "Someone had tampered with the Qipao Woman's body. Someone came before us."
The Fat Man thought for a moment, then looked up. His lips had just parted when Jiang Cheng said, "I know what you're going to say. You think the ghost might have done something to the body too, right?"
The Fat Man nodded.
In their previous mission, a ghost had taken Sister Nuan's body and hung it upside down on a cross. The clerk, Xie Yu, had been scared to death by a ghost, then dragged away wrapped in a blanket and had his corpse mutilated.
"But the strange thing is, the Qipao Woman had only one injury on her body: her jaw had been twisted out of place." Jiang Cheng pondered for a moment before continuing. "Yet the frog closures at the collar of her qipao had changed."
"Frog closures?" The Fat Man frowned. "Changed?"
"Right." Jiang Cheng nodded. "There were three frog closures at the collar of the Qipao Woman's dress. The first time we saw her, she'd fastened only the top two. After someone came running out of Room 405 before bedtime, she was startled and came out too. At the time, she still had only the top two fastened. The lowest one was undone."
"But on the Qipao Woman's body, all three closures were fastened neatly."
"I don't think a ghost would feel like fastening the last closure for her after killing her." His gaze shifted toward the dormitory. "So the most reasonable explanation is that someone carefully examined her body after she died, but overlooked that inconspicuous closure when putting her clothes back in order. In their haste, they fastened it along with the others."
"Doctor," the Fat Man said, "first of all, I agree with most of your deductions. But this one closure..." He paused. "Couldn't the Qipao Woman have fastened it herself?"
"No," Jiang Cheng replied firmly.
"Why not?"
Jiang Cheng took a deep breath and held his hands in front of his chest, demonstrating an ungainly gesture. "Simple. If she fastened the third closure, it would squeeze her so tightly she could barely breathe."
The Fat Man's eyes lit up. In an instant, he recalled the Qipao Woman's astonishing figure.
Her face was utterly ordinary, but as for her body...
A moment later, the Fat Man nodded emphatically. "Doctor, you're right. I completely agree."
"If all of that was just reasoning based on common sense, then this last point is hard proof that the Sleepwear Woman is guilty." Jiang Cheng suddenly seemed taller in the Fat Man's eyes. He heard Jiang Cheng continue, "There was blood on the soles of her shoes. I happened to notice it when she was slumped on the floor."
"I understand that," the Fat Man said excitedly. At last, he felt that he and Jiang Cheng were on the same wavelength. "Given the way she acts, she'd never dare step in blood. And she hadn't gone into the room before we arrived, so that act of hers falls apart. She's the one who tampered with the body before we got there!"
"No." Jiang Cheng shook his head. "The blood on her soles isn't the most important thing. It could be explained as an accidental step in the blood, or an unconscious reaction to being terrified. That's not hard proof."
The Fat Man's enthusiasm faded. "Then what is?"
"There's blood on the soles of her shoes, but not along the edges." Jiang Cheng carefully loosened his stiff neck. For the first time, he realized that explaining a case to the Fat Man was harder than solving it himself. "The edges of her shoes are spotless. She cleaned them."
The Fat Man put the pieces together. A few seconds later, he looked enlightened.
That was right. Jiang Cheng was right. Blood on the soles of their shoes was no big deal. His own shoes, and Jiang Cheng's, were surely stained with blood too.
Not just the soles, he realized as he looked down. There was a layer of red along the edges of his shoes as well.
Jiang Cheng's too.
Everyone who went into the room would have gotten blood on their shoes, to some degree. After all, the Qipao Woman's blood covered the floor, and in places it had even formed pools.
But deliberately cleaning the blood off the edges of one's shoes was a different matter.
She had something to hide.
Why else would she do that?
The old questions had been sorted out, but new ones surfaced. The Fat Man bit his lip, then looked up. "Why would the Sleepwear Woman do that?"
The downsides of killing a teammate were obvious, especially when the Qipao Woman wasn't even a newcomer.
"Fatty," Jiang Cheng said quietly, "don't you think the Sleepwear Woman reminds you of someone we know?"
"Who?" The instant the Fat Man asked, a figure sprang to mind. He stammered nervously, "You mean that woman from last time?!"
"Mm." Jiang Cheng glanced at him. "She said her name was Chen Xiaomeng, but I suspect it was fake."
Before you continue