After the whole family was swept away, I lay down flat

Chapter 435 The Shadow of the Sun Family

"Is the Sun family involved in the fire at Wang's Grain Store in Liangzhou?"

Haitang looked at her brother in surprise: "What did you say? I thought it was Mrs. Ma who ordered someone to do it!"

Hai Jiao sighed and said with a wry smile: "I thought so too. How could I have thought that there was something else going on here?"

News came from the Shaanxi Dusi Yamen that Tu Rong hastily interrogated Mrs. Ma’s confidants, and everyone denied that the Wang family fire was related to Mrs. Ma.

Even if Mrs. Ma has done many shady things, she still needs the help of these close helpers. Otherwise, how could she, a noble lady who has lived in a deep house and compound for many years and has not even left Chang'an City, reach out to Liangzhou? ? Even though not everyone around her knew that she had been in contact with Hu spies, Mrs. Wang, as an in-law of the Zhou family, her death had greatly shocked the Zhou family. If there was Mrs. Ma's handiwork here, it would be impossible for all the confidants around her to be concealed. They all denied that this happened, so Tu Rong couldn't simply blame Mrs. Ma for this unsolved case.

Duke Zhen Guo also knew this very well. However, the third bedroom of the Zhou family seemed to have decided that this was Mrs. Ma's sin, and he did not correct her. Anyway, after Tu Rong finds out the truth, Mrs. Ma will not be able to escape the responsibility she bears. It wasn't her fault, and no one would blame her for nothing.

Since Mrs. Ma did not instruct anyone to go to Liangzhou to burn down Wang's Grain Store, what happened to those bad things she showed before?
According to the information Cao Gengyun learned from Xie Wenzai and his friends, Mrs. Ma’s close confidants claimed that Mrs. Wang wanted to use Zhou Shuyi’s connections in the capital to make friends with powerful people. When Zhou Shuyi did not agree, Mrs. Wang kept her grudge in her heart and went to the capital in private. The old shopkeepers who were provoking her dowry wanted them to introduce her to the stewards of powerful families in private. The old shopkeepers were too embarrassed to evict people directly, so they left them in the business to drink tea. As a result, Mrs. Wang met many servants of powerful families who had contact with Zhou Shuyi, so she climbed up on the ground and took the initiative to get to know people. She kept claiming to be a relative of Zeng's second wife, Zhou Shuyi, which caused Zhou Shuyi to be laughed at by the female relatives of other powerful families. So Zhou Shuyi wrote a letter back to her parents' home to complain to her mother.

Zhou Shuyi ordered her shopkeepers to purchase medicinal materials. Those medicinal materials were not bought for the border troops, but were used by Zhou Shuyi herself to maintain her body, and by the way, to replenish the body of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Yingchuanhou. Mrs. Yingchuanhou, the company commander's sister-in-law, also got a share. Zhou Shuyi got a secret recipe for health from her mother, Mrs. Ma. She used it well and also used it to make friends with ladies from other families. Those medicinal materials have such uses and have never been transported back to Chang'an.

It is also true that Zhou Shuyi ordered people to buy kerosene. However, the quantity she ordered was not large, at most it was enough to burn two or three houses, but Mrs. Wang happened to see it. Mrs. Ma's confidant claimed that the kerosene was prepared by her aunt Zhou Shuyi on the newly purchased mountain land in the capital to burn the land and create mountains. Tu Rong never believed a word of this, but this amount of kerosene was indeed not enough to do anything.

As the cousin of Marquis Yingchuan, he remembered a small incident: more than ten years ago, there was a fire in the Zeng family ancestral hall of Marquis Yingchuan, but it was quickly extinguished, and the building was not burned down. A few walls were just blackened. Afterwards, the Marquis of Yingchuan found traces of kerosene on the outside of the ancestral hall. It was not much, but it was very suspicious. Unfortunately, he could not find out who set the fire, so he could only drive two servants who had misbehaved out of the house. .

Calculating the time, it seems that this is about the time when Zhou Shuyi buys kerosene. Are the two things related? But as Zhou Shuyi, the second daughter-in-law of the Zeng family, what reason did she have to burn down her husband's ancestral hall?
Tu Rong asked more carefully at that time, but the ladies and servants really couldn't tell anything more. That was an old thing that happened more than ten years ago, and it happened in the capital. When they stayed in Chang'an, they only heard some second-hand news from Zhou Shuyi's letters or from old sisters and relatives who came to the capital. Sex is not guaranteed. In the end, it was the old lady whose maiden name was Xiang Rui when she was young, who had been Mrs. Ma’s confidant for many years, and who recorded in a pamphlet the story of how she led the Hu spies, who mentioned a clue: Zhou Shuyi bought The path of kerosene is quite secretive and unknown to outsiders.

It turned out to be a business started by a veteran who went into battle with the third wife of the Zhou family in the early years and returned home from the army. Because his hometown is in Shanxi and is not under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Frontier Army, he only supplied kerosene to the Northwest Frontier Army during the border war 20 or 30 years ago. It was originally used by the border army generals when they attacked and defended the city. But because of the long distance and inconvenient transportation, when the demand for kerosene in the northwest was not large, he never bought it from him, so he usually had more contacts with Datong. Zhou Shuyi relied on the old lady's relationship to get in touch with the other party. The process of buying kerosene was also very secret and no one knew about it. The woman named Xiang Rui didn't know why she wanted to hide it from others, but Mrs. Ma personally gave her orders, so she just obeyed.

At that time, the person who was sent by Mrs. Ma to Shanxi to buy kerosene and transport it to the capital was Xiang Rui's sister's son, and he was very close to her in the past. It's a pity that this younger generation was not lucky. He was originally in a high position and was specially used to run errands for Mrs. Ma and Zhou Shuyi, mother and daughter, between the capital and Chang'an. However, on the way out of Beijing more than ten years ago, he was encountered and disappeared by a bandit. Her god-sister cried her eyes out over this, and the old lady also lost her respectable job in the yard. Now she can only rely on her daughter and son-in-law to make a living in the village.

In addition to the medicinal materials and kerosene, the servants and ladies also honestly explained the situation of the merchants from the Western Regions. They didn't think there was anything wrong with this businessman back then. Mrs. Wang reminded Mrs. Ma that his origins were suspicious, and everyone was wary of him. But later they saw that he had entered the capital alone and seemed to have climbed into the powerful, so they felt relieved. . He sent heavy gifts and asked Zhou Shuyi to help introduce the powerful, but the latter did not refuse.

It's just that this person suddenly disappeared one day. His whereabouts are unknown since then, and he doesn't know whether he is dead or alive. There were rumors that he had offended a powerful person and was taken away. No one who heard the news dared to ask questions. Zhou Shuyi inquired about it and it seemed that the person he had offended was the Sun family. She did not dare to be careless, fearing that the Sun family would know that he had dealings with her family, so she specially ordered all the shopkeepers and clerks under her to not reveal any information about him and their family. friendship.

Because Mrs. Wang had seen this merchant from the Western Regions going to her business, Zhou Shuyi specially sent people to chase Mrs. Wang who had just left Beijing, just to tell her not to talk too much in front of outsiders. Unexpectedly, after chasing her all the way to Chang'an, she failed to catch up and even made her gossip a lot with the people in the fourteenth room. After Mrs. Ma learned about it, she kept talking about it, repeatedly asked the fourteenth room not to say anything, and sent people to chase him to Liangzhou.

Who would have known that by such an unfortunate coincidence, before Madam Ma's people arrived in Liangzhou City, the Wang Family Food Store would have been destroyed by fire. When Mrs. Ma received the news, she was also shocked. While she was thankful, she was also worried that Mrs. Wang would tell others about this before she died. You know, when Mrs. Wang stopped in Chang'an, she often spoke ill of her daughter Zhou Shuyi to her relatives!

That's why Mrs. Ma ignored the fact that the mother of the fourteenth eldest daughter-in-law was ill and still called people to her home to repeatedly question Mrs. Wang's words and deeds.

All the confidants around Mrs. Ma unanimously denied that the mistress had anything to do with the Wang family fire. She just asked Mrs. Wang not to tell people in the capital that the merchants from the Western Regions had a relationship with Zhou Shuyi. After Zhou Shuyi made friends with the Sun family's female relatives, this matter became even more irrelevant. Mrs. Ma would not be willing to do anything for such a trivial matter. Murder and arson.

(End of this chapter)