I settled my attention on the lock again, leaning forward to peer into the hole. There was something inside that was forbidden to me, like so many of the secrets kept away from me growing up. All my curiosity about Lady O’s death returned, though this time alone, no longer accompanied by my desire to please Inspector Han. I narrowed my eyes and squinted. In my childhood days, I had always wanted the skill of opening secrets. I would carry around a thin knife to see which locks would open and which would not. The cheap ones I’d managed to open quickly. The harder ones were the locks slammed onto expensive chests.
Remembering the lacquer cabinet from earlier, I crawled over to it and rummaged through the sparkling ornaments until I found the perfect hair accessory. It had a lotus attached to a steel pin, which was curved in order not to fall out when inserted into one’s hair. Lady O was dead already, so I hesitated only a moment before bending the steel into a straight line. I returned to the table and inserted the pin into the lock, wiggling it around, scratching my knuckles in the attempt. No luck this time, but I kept trying. My fingers became bruised red as I pushed the pin this way and that, shaking and twisting it.
I heaved out a sigh, the curiosity so unbearable that it turned into physical pain. Surely, whatever Lady O had hidden, it would peel off the skin of lies and reveal what lay within. I was tired of chasing after an elusive truth, tired of being surrounded by suspicion and speculations, tired of this investigation that seemed to choke up in smoke everything it touched.
I exhaled another sigh and looked around the room. Blankets were strewn across the floor, shaken out during the inspection, and all the drawers were pulled open, as were the lids of every chest. Aejung had searched every nook and cranny, so there was no point searching again.
I tugged at the locked drawer in frustration, shaking the brass handle. Why couldn’t it open smoothly like the other drawer? I wrenched at the handle of the left drawer, and the angry force sent the entire compartment flying to the ground. Brushes scattered everywhere. Then something hard struck a porcelain vase nearby, a high-pitched clinking sound.
I looked over my shoulder. An iron key rested on the floor.
I scrambled forward and grabbed the key, my hand trembling. Lady O must have hidden the key under the pile of brushes, perhaps in the far corner of the drawer. My heartbeat accelerated as I crawled back to the drawer. I took in a deep breath, then let it out, and at last inserted the key into the lock. I rotated it. Click. Swallowing a shout of excitement, I pulled open the drawer smoothly.
Piles of paper greeted me, but there was a lump in the way the sheets lay. I looked beneath and found a few sheets of folded paper tied together with a string. When I untied it and unfolded a page, I saw writing and ink blots. Could these be the letters from Scholar Ahn? They had to be. The one common thing all girls hid from their mothers were the boys they fancied.
The sound of distant footsteps reached my ear.
I clutched the letters against my frantic heartbeat. There was a feeling digging into me, sharp and persistent, as I stared down at the letters written on white mulberry paper. White. I dug through my mind, through the layers and layers, trying to pick out whatever was hidden in the whiteness. And I managed to draw out a sliver: Ryun. But I had no idea why.
I thought back to the day I had first talked at length with him, all the way to the moment when we had returned to the capital, bloody and bruised. I retraced each step, then returned to the beginning again, focusing on each detail about him, his every expression, our conversations—
My thoughts skittered to a halt. White. White meant mourning. Ryun had mentioned that he’d visited the House of Bright Flowers with a police uniform for Inspector Han, who had still been in his white mourning robe. Senior Officer Shim had also told the commander that Inspector Han had first arrived at the House dressed in a white robe. Yet in Maid Soyi’s first testimony, she had mentioned that on the night of the murder she’d recognized a man (who had turned out to be Inspector Han) by his blue uniform.
Panic licked down my back, a hot trail of sweat. I realized why Shim’s statement had bothered me from the beginning. He should have said, “Inspector Han arrived at the House dressed in his uniform,” not in his mourning robe. For the inspector had been wearing his blue uniform when he’d first left the House, when he’d encountered Maid Soyi before drunkenly stumbling back to Madam Yeonok. She must have changed him out of his soaked and muddy blue uniform into a spare white robe.
So why, in Shim’s memory, did he recall Inspector Han wearing only white?
Was it possible that Shim had only seen Inspector Han in the white robe? This meant he couldn’t account for Inspector Han’s presence at the House of Bright Flowers until dawn, long after the murder had occurred.
Then who could say Inspector Han had been present at the House just before midnight—the time of Lady O’s death? The only possible witnesses were the gisaengs, the keepers of secrets.
Blue robe. White robe.
Perhaps these letters would prove my worst fears correct. Perhaps this was why Inspector Han was so determined to collect all evidence, so that he might burn it.
“No, no,” I whispered to myself, trying to shake off the feeling that snaked around me. Suspicion. It had returned, and this time, it coiled around me in a death-tight grip. Even then, I wanted to believe, I wanted to give Inspector Han the benefit of the doubt. “Please, don’t be involved.”
My hands shaking, I skimmed through the opened letters and was bombarded by shapes I did not understand, and for the first time, I felt it deeply—the anger and frustration of not being able to read. The feeling of being kept away from the truth by an impenetrable wall called ignorance.
There was nothing I could do. For half a second, I considered setting the letters back down. I’d give them over to the inspector. He might be lying about his alibi, but surely he had his own reasons for making Officer Shim give a false testimony. I wavered, yet it was the memory of Inspector Han that held my wrist still.
The truth is far more important, he’d told me. Do not have feelings involved when investigating a crime.
I grabbed my sash belt and untied it, tugged at the collar of my uniform. A light breeze came in from the doors, which had been left open, tickling my bare collarbones as I tried to loosen my breast band, desperate to shove the letters inside. Letters that might shine a light on what Inspector Han was hiding, if he were indeed hiding anything at all. I’d find someone to read them for me.
“What are you doing?”
The letters fell from my grasp and slapped onto the floor. It was Hyeyeon, staring at me with an arched brow.
“I—I was—” I stammered, my mind racing. “A bug crept into my uniform.”
* * *
The search was completed with my discovery, and Hyeyeon declared that there was nothing else of value to the investigation to be found.
Once we were all gathered in the courtyard of Matron Kim’s mansion, Inspector Han opened the letters I’d discovered, four of them in total, positioned so that he could observe them all at once. “Three of the letters must have been written by Scholar Ahn. But this letter…” He briefly raised it up to Senior Officer Shim. “This last letter was the one Maid Soyi delivered to her mistress, which led to her death.” He studied the letter again. “The writing style is certainly different.”