“To give you advice.” I took hold of her limp hand. “I don’t think you killed your mistress, but your silence hurts you. The officers have no choice but to break you. All they know is that you tried to run.”
Soyi stared in blank exhaustion.
“There is much you could say,” I suggested calmly. “You know things others would not wish to have discovered. For instance … Matron Kim.”
Again, only silence. But I was not a police officer to her; I was not someone who would hurt her. A life among servants had taught me that no human being wished to remain silent and misunderstood.
“You must have overheard Inspector Han,” Soyi finally said.
“Yes, I overheard,” I lied, surprised by how honest I sounded. “You know how curious I am.”
“His commander is determined to beat me to death for the details.”
I sought something, anything to bring out her words. Then Inspector Han’s voice whispered to me, There is always a weakness.
“It is too late. Matron Kim spoke long of your blackmail,” I said. “She is trying to push all suspicion onto you.”
Shadows of anger clouded Soyi’s eyes.
“Matron Kim wishes you to seem darker than herself. She said that blackmail is vile, enough that you might be capable of much worse—such as murder.”
Soyi turned to me, her breath sickly hot. “She told Inspector Han everything?”
“He seemed shocked. When I heard this, I was just as disappointed…” I rubbed my eyebrows. The weight of my lies was making me falter. I didn’t know how Inspector Han did it with such ease. “But I realized you must have your own reason. Won’t you tell me your truth?”
Silence stretched, a moment of tangled thoughts, thick with hesitation. At last she licked her crusted lips. “Never liked me, Matron Kim. She wanted to dismiss me. But three years ago my young mistress ran away at night, returning the next day. No one knew but Matron and me.”
“That is what she confessed,” I said, withdrawing my hand so she wouldn’t feel the heat of my guilt. “You told Matron Kim you would gossip if she dismissed you, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was to survive.”
“I see…” There was little left to ask, but I knew I could not be done yet. The inspector wouldn’t have been. I rummaged through my thoughts. “Did she leave to meet a man?”
Soyi nodded, so slightly I barely noticed.
“The same man she went to on the night of her murder?”
“I do not know, but both times, she was going to meet a lover, that is for certain.” I let her pause to collect her memories. “A few months after her escape, I discovered her pregnant. Her mother sent us away to a temple, to hide her from family, acquaintances, everyone.”
Soyi turned her stare onto me. “I know Matron Kim wouldn’t have confessed it. You will tell the inspector, won’t you?”
“Do you wish me to?”
“You must tell him all that I said.” Eagerness gleamed in her eyes, as though she’d caught sight of a crack through which escape might be possible. In her excitement, her voice strained into a rasp. “Don’t let him believe that Matron Kim is an honest woman. She could be the killer, for all I know. She gave Lady O a paedo, a suicide knife.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was silver and encrusted with turquoise stones.”
“The murder weapon,” I whispered, remembering the sharp blade found beneath Lady O’s bloody corpse. Still, this meant nothing. It was common to gift young ladies with suicide knives, morbid ornaments dangling from their norigae pendant.
Shaking my head, I continued with my line of questioning. “And how long were you in the temple?”
“Months. It was at Yongjusa Temple in Suwon. My mistress wouldn’t tell me who the father was, but she did confess … Do you have water?”
“I’ll bring some soon. Go on.”
She licked her lips again. “She’d met the gentleman innocently. She’d wanted to see the Harvest Festival, and he had offered to accompany her. But it rained and they took shelter at an inn…” Soyi’s voice drifted off as a faraway look glazed her eyes, as though she were peering into her mistress’s intimate encounter. Then something like a laugh escaped her. “Everyone thinks Lady O was gentle and obedient, but those like her are the most rebellious. Whatever the case, she gave birth to a healthy and strong boy, whom we left in the care of the monks, yet after we returned to the capital, a few days later, Matron Kim told us the boy had died. Smallpox. My mistress mourned for a long time, until she met Lady Kang and was converted.”
I frowned. Lady Kang had told me she hadn’t known Lady O well.
“Examine her diary,” Soyi said. “It will be there. And other things too.”
I shifted uneasily. Inspector Han had obviously bluffed about having Lady O’s diary, to make Soyi confess. Hesitantly I replied, “We don’t have it.”
It was Soyi’s turn to frown. “Your inspector never read her diary? She wrote her every thought in it.”
“The police aren’t allowed to search her chamber.”
Soyi tilted her head to stare past the window’s wooden bars, out into the bright sky. The hope I’d seen there was gone now, replaced by empty submission. “I should have kept quiet.”
“Soyi, I shouldn’t have told you—”
“So you’ve got what you came for,” she said. “Since I’ve talked now, I suppose one secret is no different from another, and I still have one. Matron Kim would never reveal it even if you tortured her a hundred times.”
Soyi’s voice, now eerily devoid of emotion, filled me with a slow, quiet dread. Taking in a breath, I whispered, “I would hear it, if you would tell me.”
Soyi nodded. “Matron Kim never knew I returned to the temple a year ago, sent there by her daughter to perform gravesite rituals, but I found no burial site. The monks were surprised that I’d come looking for one, because the son of Lady O had not died. And on my return, when I told my mistress, she looked furious enough to kill someone.”
* * *
“So she does have a diary,” Inspector Han said after I finished speaking.
I had reported everything in a matter of minutes, and for a long moment afterward, he’d remained silent. I stared at the lone bird twirling above the tiled police bureau walls, deep in thought as I tried to guess the identity of the child’s father. Young Master Ch’oi Jinyeop, perhaps …
“What is your next move, sir?” I said.
“For now, let us go to the temple. If the father of the boy ever visited, we’ll learn it there.”
Us. Thrill and anticipation tingled down my spine, which only doubled when he added, “You are proving to be quite useful, Damo Seol.”
He walked away, his hands clasped behind his back, and then cast a look over his shoulder. “Keep this between us. No one but Commander Yi is to know where we are going, especially not Kyŏn.”
Even the mere sound of Kyŏn’s name made my stomach twist. “What will you do with him, sir?”
“Transfer him out of the bureau, but not yet. For now we must focus on Yongjusa Temple.”