Detective in the Red Chamber

The spring steel used in new firearms today is one of the important achievements of smelting with new technology at that time.

It was precisely because of these achievements that Prince Yizhong's prestige in the Military Weapons Supervision was unparalleled for a while, and he had many confidantes in the open and in the dark.

Although when he was imprisoned two years ago, the Military Weapons Superintendent had also cleaned them up and down, but in order to ensure the normal operation of the Military Weapons Supervision, it was not easy to catch them all, so there must be fish that slipped through the net.

Lu Yuan finally said helplessly, "Because the Shenji Battalion is closely tied to the Gunpowder Bureau, quite a few people were bewitched by it, so there is really no guarantee for humble positions, and these officers and soldiers must be fine."

tsk~

This Prince Yizhong has really done a lot of great things, no wonder he was imprisoned for more than a year, there are still so many dead people who are infatuated and want to rescue him.

In contrast, myself, who is also a time traveler, seems to be a bit...

Shaking his head slightly, putting the inexplicable sense of shame behind him, Sun Shaozong asked again, "Among the officials of the Gunpowder Bureau, are there any people who were promoted when Prince Yizhong was in power?"

"Should be gone."

Zhu Shan and Lu Yuan shook their heads at the same time, and Zhu Shan further added, "In fact, since the summer of the third year of Guangde, the officials in the Gunpowder Bureau have been gradually replaced. After Prince Yizhong was imprisoned, the original The old man is almost uprooted."

"On the contrary, there are still a group of officials at the bottom, and the craftsmen have not changed much, but they can't get close to the warehouse of Tianzihao."

Sun Shaozong asked a few more questions repeatedly, and felt that there was not much information that could be obtained, so he asked Lu Yuan to "invite" Du Ning's body out, and try to restore it to its appearance at that time, so as to conduct a more detailed investigation of the scene .

Chapter 321 Searching for a Gun【Part [-]】

It will take some time for the corpse to be transported from the yamen to the warehouse, so Sun Shaozong first investigated the crime scene.

This Tianzihao warehouse is about eight feet and 255 meters long from east to west, and about three feet five feet and 11 meters wide from north to south.

On the left side of the gate was a public case, on which were placed pen, ink, paper and inkstone, and three booklets with wooden covers.

Sun Shaozong flipped through it casually, and found that one of them was the record of Du Ning's daily inventory check, and the other recorded the time and purpose of other people entering and leaving the warehouse.

In the last booklet, some important to-do matters are recorded.

For example, the page on March 27 recorded Zhu Shanyou's important instructions on "maintenance of artillery in advance" - yes, this warehouse has always been used to store trial artillery before the arrival of new guns , and until now there are still several 'big' cannons placed in the innermost part of the warehouse.

As for the right side of the gate, there are four specially made lanterns hanging, and some slogans of 'fire prevention and theft prevention' are posted.

Sun Shaozong picked up a lantern and looked at it carefully, and found that it was made of double-layer copper mesh. Even if the candle inside fell off from the base, it would not be able to burn the candle outside because of the barrier of these two layers of copper mesh. thing.

"Which lantern was Dunin using last night?"

"It's this one!"

Zhu Shan hurriedly took out another lantern from under the public case, and put it in front of Sun Shaozong with both hands.

Sun Shaozong was not in a hurry to pick it up, but turned his head to look at the four hooks on the wall, frowned and said, "These are all dead, and you guys specially replaced them with new lanterns?"

"No way."

Zhu Shan smiled helplessly and said, "The most important rule in our Gunpowder Bureau is that according to the regulations drawn up above, if anything in the important warehouse is damaged, it must be replaced with a new one as soon as possible, otherwise it will be a crime of dereliction of duty."

It is estimated that this system was also established by Prince Yizhong at the beginning.

Sun Shaozong took the lantern and found that only the outer copper mesh was slightly deformed, but the inside was basically intact.

After observing carefully for a while, he asked about the height of Du Ning. He lifted the lantern in front to a height of about 1.2 meters, then let go of his palm and let it fall freely.

bang~

The lantern hit the bluestone floor, only rolled a half and a half, and then wobbled to a stop.

Sun Shaozong picked it up and saw that although the lantern was slightly deformed, it was much less damaged than Du Ning's.

So he raised it by twenty centimeters and tried again.

Then increase the height by thirty centimeters...

Then shake it a little harder...

It wasn't until the four lanterns on the wall were thrown that they were badly smashed, and then under Zhu Shan's bewildered eyes, Shi Shiran started the next step of investigation.

About ten feet and five feet away from the gate, two rows of long tables were placed against the wall, and countless wooden shelves were nailed to them. A total of 210 and eight Megatron-style muskets were neatly placed on these shelves.

That is, at the starting position of the long table on the left, the two empty shelves are particularly eye-catching.

And what was equally eye-catching was the pool of dark brown blood on the ground.

Sun Shaozong first carefully observed the messy traces near the empty shelf, and then squatted on the ground to search for a long time, circled the traces suspected to be caused by the collision of the lanterns one by one with a cinnabar pen.

"My lord, the body has been brought over."

At this time, Jia Shanyao and Lu Yuan led the four dragon guards, and hurriedly brought in a corpse, which was naturally the corpse of Du Ning, the Deputy Superintendent of the Gunpowder Bureau.

"Rearrange the body as it was when he was found yesterday."

However, Sun Shaozong didn't even look at it, he gave an order casually, and then seemed to slow down again, inspecting the gun racks on the long table inch by inch.

Seeing that he was so meticulous, Lu Yuan naturally didn't dare to fool around. He and Zhu Shan checked and made up for each other's omissions, and finally restored the body to its appearance at the time of the crime.

It can be seen that Sun Shaozong hasn't finished the 'slow motion' yet, and they don't dare to step forward to disturb him.

After waiting for about a quarter of an hour, Sun Shaozong came over with a serious face. He was not in a hurry to examine the corpse, but asked first, "Are there any tools for repairs in this warehouse? For example, hammers and axes." ?”

"It never did."

Zhu Shan immediately shook his head and said, "On weekdays, only Mr. Du comes in and out, even if something is really broken, he doesn't need to do it himself - there are craftsmen in our gunpowder bureau."

After finishing speaking, Zhu Shan was a little puzzled and said, "Your Excellency, you found something suspicious, otherwise why did you suddenly ask about it?"

Sun Shaozong did not answer his question, but instead asked, "You said before that even Du Ning, who is in charge of the warehouse, has to be searched and interrogated when he goes in and out on weekdays—then the search is once when he goes in, once when he comes out, or only once when he comes out. When you come out of the warehouse, will you be searched?"

"This one……"

Zhu Shan and Lu Yuan exchanged glances, and then hesitated, "According to the regulations, it is natural to check when entering and exiting, but generally only check the things outside the body when entering the door, and carefully search the body when coming out."

Sun Shaozong immediately asked again, "That is to say, if he brought some things in close to his body, no one would find out?"

"This... it should be."

Zhu Shan hesitated for a moment, but still nodded.

"Come on!"

Sun Shaozong immediately gave an order, and said, "Look through it carefully for me to see if there is anything in this warehouse that shouldn't be there!"

Jia Shanyao and the four dragon guards quickly responded, and then called a team from outside to start a carpet search according to Sun Shaozong's wishes.

And Sun Shaozong himself was not idle, he squatted in front of the corpse, and began to examine it carefully.

This Du Ning is about 40 years old, with a very thin body, but with a big face--in addition, there are obvious dark circles around his eyes, and he must not have slept very well recently.

The corpse was lying on the ground with its head in the south and its feet in the north. There was only about half a meter between the feet and the gun rack on the south side.

The fatal wound was a blood hole the size of a copper coin in the heart—as for the murder weapon, it was naturally the bayonet sent along with the corpse.

By the way, there is also a stand for the bayonet on the gun rack, but the third gun rack has only a musket and no bayonet. Obviously, the murderer stole two other complete muskets, together with the bayonet. Inside.

Both hands of the deceased showed irregular bends, and there were calluses and blisters that had been rubbed recently on the tiger's mouth-the blisters had begun to swell, and it was estimated that they had not been subjected to the same friction in the past one or two days.

In addition, the cuffs of the deceased's hands were stained with a lot of splattered blood.

Chapter 322 Looking for a Gun [Part [-]]

Note that the drop of wax oil in front of it was originally intended to be a mechanism, but there were obvious bugs in the writing, so I had to make a big change-the clue of the wax oil in the previous chapter has been deleted.

But he said that after staring at the blood on the sleeve for a while, Sun Shaozong got up and immediately ordered, "Come on, go and tie Luo Jing up for me, and put him in custody for the time being!"

"Leader!"

Yang Licai, who had been standing by the door all this time, immediately left the warehouse with his hand on his waist knife.

"Sun Qianhu."

As soon as he heard that Luo Jing was going to be taken down, Lu Yuan also became excited immediately, and said happily, "Could it be that Luo Jing did this? This guy is really a coward!"

Zhu Shan felt that things were a bit strange, although Luo Jing was a bit domineering on weekdays, Zhu Shan would not believe that he had the guts to do this.

In addition, I heard before that between the Fusi of Nanbei Township, they often fight against each other...

"Sun Qianhu."

He couldn't help but cautiously inquired, "Did Luo Jing really do this?"

"of course not!"

Sun Shaozong first gave a negative answer, and then said, "But he is responsible for monitoring, but he allowed the spies in important positions to lurk in the Gunpowder Bureau for many years without any investigation. This crime of dereliction of duty will never go away." of!"

"A spy in an important position?!"

Zhu Shan was taken aback, and then turned his skeptical eyes to Lu Yuan. At present, besides him and Luo Jing, Lu Yuan is the only one who can be called an important position in the Gunpowder Bureau.

Unexpectedly, when he looked over at this moment, he found that Lu Yuan was also looking over suspiciously——Emotional Lu Yuan was also suspicious of him.

"You two don't have to doubt each other."

At this time, I saw Sun Shaozong pouted at Du Ning's body, saying, "The spy I'm talking about is not someone else, but this guy on the ground."

"what?!"

"No way?!"

Both Zhu Shan and Lu Yuan were dumbfounded, and then couldn't help questioning, "Sun Qianhu, if Du Ning is really a spy, who killed him?" "

But Sun Shaozong pouted again, "Of course this guy on the ground did it too."

Zhu Shan must be smarter, and suddenly said, "You mean, Du Ning committed suicide?!"

"Yes."

Sun Shaozong nodded and said, "At present, there are two loopholes that can prove my inference."

"First of all, the lantern he used that day. After repeated tests, I had to exert at least a considerable amount of force to cause the outer copper grid to change into that appearance—that is, the lantern was thrown to the ground by Duning on his own initiative. Instead of simply dropping it from your hands."

"This……"

Zhu Shan couldn't help questioning again, "Maybe he found the murderer and threw the lantern over?"

Sun Shaozong shook his head and said, "If it was thrown out, how could it land on his left hand side? What's more, if it is a horizontal force, it should leave more rolling marks, instead of like this——"

As he spoke, he pointed to the marks on the ground, circled the marks with cinnabar, and continued, "It won't be like now, just bounced on the ground once, rolled two and a half times, and then obediently stopped."

"So it is basically certain that he took the initiative to throw the lantern on the ground!"

"And no matter how you look at it, it doesn't look like a normal person's reaction after encountering an attack in the dark."

"As for the other flaw, it's the marks on his hands and sleeves."

As Sun Shaozong said, he turned up the wrist of the corpse with all his strength, pointed to the abnormally bent fingers, and said, "This kind of stiff distortion, I call it a corpse spasm. Generally, the joints of a corpse that has this kind of condition will Muscles stiffen instantly, fixed at the moment of death."

"And looking at him, it's obvious that he wanted to grab something before he died, but unfortunately he didn't have time to do so."

"But did he really catch nothing?"

Sun Shaozong pressed his hands together again—the corpse was completely stiff at this time, that is to say, he was so powerful that he could use brute force to force the corpse to submit obediently, which is extremely difficult for ordinary people.

When the two hands were brought together, the bloodstains on the two sleeves overlapped, and from some shape details, it was obvious that the bloodstains on them were splashed at the same time.

"Obviously, when the wound was bleeding profusely, these two hands were once closed together!"

"And this level of tightness, I'm afraid it won't allow a third hand to intervene in it!"

"It's the bayonet..."

Sun Shaozong picked up the bayonet on the ground, and pushed the buckle on the handle into the middle of the two hands. Although it was not a perfect fit, it was just right.

"If he was in this posture when you found the body, it can be said that the murderer released the murder weapon immediately after the attack, and then he grabbed the murder weapon."

"But his hands were clearly closed together, but when he was discovered, they were hanging on his sides again!"

"Two possibilities!"

Sun Shaozong stretched out two fingers and talked eloquently, "The first possibility is that the murderer forcefully opened his hands after he grabbed the bayonet."

"The second possibility is that before he died, he didn't want people to know that he had held the bayonet tightly, so he suppressed the severe pain and let go of the bayonet—but he couldn't change under the severe pain and tension. , the convulsive grip that the hands naturally present."

"Considering the murder weapon was left at the scene, I really don't see the need for the murderer to break his fingers, so—"

Sun Shaozong spread his arms and said, "I can only infer that he directed and acted this good show himself!"

This reasoning cannot be said to be unreasonable.

only……