Lu Zhenghai casually asked, "Do you know Nanny Yi?"
"Nanny Yi?" The middle-aged woman looked a bit bewildered.
"A month ago, on the afternoon of July 27th, did anyone in your shop notice anything outside? Roughly in the area near Tongfu Restaurant," Lu Zhenghai asked again.
Centurion Song stood by, somewhat speechless.
Although Sujin Pavilion was on the same street where Nanny Yi was assassinated, it was about four hundred meters from the assassination site, unless the proprietress had incredibly far-sighted vision.
Indeed, the proprietress smiled wryly and said, "Sir, you jest. How could this Maidservant possibly see? Besides, why would this Maidservant stand at the door looking around for no reason? Our shop primarily serves regular customers; we rarely solicit customers at the entrance..."
Lu Zhenghai nodded, then walked around, inspecting every corner of the tailor shop.
He didn't miss a single detail.
After quite a while, there was no progress.
There were no clues inside the shop, and the proprietress couldn't provide any either. So... Lu Zhenghai looked at the six tailors working in the shop: "All six of you, come over here as well. I have some questions."
The proprietress was a bit reluctant, feeling it would delay their work.
But Lu Zhenghai was wearing a flying fish robe; how could she dare to stop him?
The six tailors stood respectfully before Lu Zhenghai and the other two.
Lu Zhenghai questioned them one by one, asking with increasing detail.
He wanted to find out if any of them could be connected to the Grand Tutors Residence.
But after questioning for a long time, he still found nothing.
Damn it, Lu Zhenghai himself was getting a bit frustrated.
"It's time to go. Let's try the next place," Centurion Song couldn't bear to watch anymore.
Lu Zhenghai, however, acted as if he hadn't heard Centurion Song. Suddenly, something occurred to him. He abruptly looked up, staring intently at the proprietress: "Has your shop always only had these six tailors?"
The System absolutely cannot be wrong.
Since the current proprietress and the six tailors have no connection to the Grand Tutors Residence case.
Then, he had to consider the tailors who had left.
"Some tailors work for a while and then are poached by other tailor shops. Some apprentices, after gaining enough skill, go off to open their own tailor shops. And some people can't endure the hardship of being a tailor and leave after a while to pursue other professions," the proprietress answered truthfully.
Lu Zhenghai was not at all polite: "Show me the list of all the tailors who have left your establishment in recent years."
"Ah?" The proprietress was stunned.
Centurion Song was even more speechless: "Changqing, that's enough."
"Centurion Sir, whether it's Nanny Yi or Miss Pei, both are women, and it's possible they had contact with a tailor shop like Sujin Pavilion. It's still necessary to investigate thoroughly," Lu Zhenghai offered a barely plausible reason.
"Alright then," Centurion Song could only agree.
Soon, the proprietress brought over a ledger, which recorded all the tailors who had ever been employed, later dismissed, or voluntarily left the shop since its opening.
"It's quite detailed," Lu Zhenghai was pleased.
"Of course. This street of ours is the busiest street in the imperial city. To open a shop on this street, all procedures and processes must be very formal, and we dare not be negligent in the slightest, as Embroidered Uniform Guard often come to inspect," the proprietress whispered.
Lu Zhenghai flipped through the ledger, asking the proprietress about each of the tailors who had left.
At first, there were still no clues.
Until... "What about Li'er? When was she hired? And when did she leave?"
"Li'er, ah, she came three years ago in the summer. At that time, she wore coarse linen clothes and looked quite pitiful. After being hired by our shop, she worked very hard and was clever. Her tailoring skills were quite good within half a month. Unfortunately, about half a year later, she suddenly said she wanted to leave, without any warning."
"Where did she go after leaving Sujin Pavilion?"
"I don't know, but..." The proprietress first shook her head, then said mysteriously, "However, she definitely became prosperous. She came back many times afterward to order custom clothes from our shop. The fabrics she gave us were all Yun Brocade, Shu Brocade, and the like, and the styles she requested were all the most popular ones in the entire imperial city at the time."
"Oh?" Lu Zhenghai became interested: "Didn't you ask Li'er what she does now?"
"No... didn't ask," the proprietress mumbled, "Anyway, she became prosperous."
She was clearly a bit envious and jealous, so she wouldn't ask, to avoid giving Li'er a chance to show off.
However, a young Maidservant among the six nervous tailors, who were all looking down, hesitated and said, "S-Sir, I know."
"Tell me," Lu Zhenghai turned to look at the Maidservant.
The Maidservant said: "Li'er came by again over a month ago, asking our shop to make her a cloth doll. I was curious, so I asked her what the cloth doll was for. She said her Young Miss needed it."
"Who is her Young Miss?" Lu Zhenghai's breathing hitched; his intuition told him he had found a clue.
"She's the daughter of a high official's family," the Maidservant said with some indignation: "She wouldn't say who specifically, as if she was guarding against me, afraid that I would also go serve as a Maidservant for someone else and steal her livelihood."
"Can you describe what that doll looked like?" Lu Zhenghai stared intently at the Maidservant.
The Maidservant recalled, trying her best to describe it.
After a long moment, Lu Zhenghai and Centurion Song exchanged glances, both with the same four words in their eyes: Curse doll!
Lu Zhenghai turned and left.
Centurion Song and Zhou Hu followed behind.
After leaving Sujin Pavilion, Lu Zhenghai suddenly spoke: "Over a month ago, the timing matches. The doll Li'er asked the tailor shop to make doesn't look like a doll for children to play with; it looks more like a curse doll used for inserting silver needles and practicing Gu magic."
"It really is..." Centurion Song nodded heavily: "But what does this have to do with the Grand Tutors Residence case?"
Even if some Young Miss wanted to curse someone, it would likely be an internal struggle within the inner chambers or something similar.
How could it possibly relate to the Grand Tutors Residence case?
"Centurion Sir, what is Miss Pei's most prominent characteristic?"
"Most prominent characteristic?" Centurion Song's old face flushed: "Of course, it's her beauty, she looks like a fairy. The Twin Pearls of the Imperial City is not a joke."
"Miss Pei's most prominent characteristic is her beauty, and as the Grand Tutor's direct granddaughter, she is a renowned noblewoman in the entire imperial city. She inevitably has contact with other noblewomen. Is it possible that other noblewomen are jealous of her?"
The jealousy between women is often so inexplicable.
If you are too beautiful, I might be jealous.
If the man you marry is too formidable, I might still be jealous.
Centurion Song's breath hitched: "Jealousy? So, a cloth doll curse? When that didn't work, they thought of killing Miss Pei, but Miss Pei is too powerful and has too strong a background, so they couldn't do it. So they found a way to kill the person Miss Pei cared about most, which is Nanny Yi?"
Centurion Song was stunned.
If the truth really was like this, he would at least kowtow a few times to Lu Zhenghai.
If it were him, it would be impossible to inexplicably latch onto Sujin Pavilion among all these shops and insist on questioning it thoroughly.
It was completely insane behavior!
After all, there were so many shops on that street. If Sujin Pavilion was a shop for women... then the other clothing stores, fabric stores, cosmetics stores, and so on, on this street.
They were all shops for women too, yet Lu Zhenghai didn't question them with such intensity.
But, strangely enough, Lu Zhenghai actually found a clue at Sujin Pavilion.
How terrifying!
Could it be that a divine detective's intuition is so frightening?
Yes, Centurion Song ultimately attributed this unreasonable point to Lu Zhenghai's intuition.
How could Centurion Song know that without the prompt from the [intelligence system], Lu Zhenghai would not have clung to Sujin Pavilion so tenaciously?