is still out there, mistress. The longer we wait, the more evidence will be lost.”
Her lips tightened and her blank eyes showed remarkable restraint.
“Maid Soyi has confessed about your daughter’s affair during the torture session—about the son born out of wedlock, too. Now the duty of a mother is no longer to protect the honor of the deceased, but to appease her grieving spirit. Do you not wish to know the truth behind her death?”
“No. All I wish,” she said, her voice steady, “is for the police to stop harassing our family. I wish for no more reminders of the horror my daughter endured.”
Inspector Han pressed on. “When murder is committed, grieving relatives of the victim will plead for sangmy?ng, ‘requital for a life.’ They appeal to us to redress the grievance suffered by the deceased with the sacrifice of another life, that of the perpetrator. Yet you do not ask for justice. Instead you ask that we forget it ever happened?”
Long shadows crept around us as the purple sky deepened, clouds gathering. There would be no sun today.
“It is because I am afraid,” Matron Kim said. “I am afraid of what more I will discover about my daughter. What more she was hiding from me.”
“Your daughter died alone on the cold ground, bleeding. Her nose was sliced off—”
“Must you remind me?” A tremor shook her voice.
“Her slender throat was slashed without hesitation or remorse, deep enough to sever her vocal cords, silencing her cries for help. How will you face your daughter in the afterlife when you have kept us from finding the truth? How will you look into her sad eyes?”
Matron Kim’s eyes turned red-rimmed, and in that moment, I remembered she was a mother. And I remembered my own mother’s eyes, the last time I had seen her, red-rimmed like the matron’s. My last warm memory of Mother was of a wooden bowl of rice prepared for us all. We had all eaten together, and Mother had looked at me with those red eyes. I hadn’t known it was a farewell before she’d jumped off a cliff.
“This investigation is nothing more to you than a mere crime among the multitude.” Matron Kim’s upper lip curled slightly. “My daughter died on her birthday. I made a jeogori jacket for her as a gift, sewed the silk pieces together myself, and I knew the length and circumference of her arms, the length and breadth of her torso, all measured meticulously. I knew her. She was my daughter. And from the day of her death, all you saw was a crime to be solved. From that day, you disrespected my affection for my daughter, and even now, you speak to me with a cruel, impatient look in your eyes.”
Inspector Han stood tall, not slumping forward in guilt as my own shoulders did. Never had I thought of the dead Lady O as someone who had been precious, as my own family was precious to me.
“I promise I will find the one who killed your daughter,” Inspector Han replied. “Should I not live up to my promise, I shall bear the consequences.”
She lifted her grieving eyes to him. “How?”
“I will submit a formal report and resign from my post.”
Senior Officer Shim frowned. Everyone else exchanged wide-eyed glances. I could feel what they were thinking: Inspector Han was putting too much on the line, and they couldn’t understand why.
“Do I have your word, Inspector?”
“You do.”
Matron Kim nodded and the dagger in her eyes softened into a well of tears. “Everything in my daughter’s chamber remains as is,” she whispered. “I have not permitted anyone to disturb her room since her passing.”
* * *
“The medical exam is in a few months,” Aejung whispered as we entered the women’s quarter. “I’ve hardly had any time to study. How are we expected to pass it and return to being palace nurses when half the time we’re solving crimes?”
Hyeyeon shook her head. “You must sacrifice something to achieve your goal, Aejung. I sleep only three hours a day, so I only need to master Injaejikjimaek now. But you’ve mastered none of the five required texts.”
“That is because I’m focusing on the investigation for now,” Aejung retorted. “Inspector Han will be forced to resign otherwise.”
“So it’s true,” I whispered. “He does mean to resign if he fails.”
“Are there no such things as consequences in the countryside?” Hyeyeon asked. Her voice was elegant, yet her eyes sent me a cutting look. “Someone must take the blame.”