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.”
As the inspector studied the letters, Hyeyeon walked forward and bowed her head. She said something to him under her breath. I couldn’t hear anything. Whatever she said made him walk slowly down the line of officers and damos. He paused before me. I stood frozen. Inspector Han sized me up for long, agonizing moments. Then he moved on.
TWELVE
BLUE ROBE, WHITE ROBE.
My great fear was that Senior Officer Shim had lied for Inspector Han. He’d told the commander that he’d been with the inspector at the House of Bright Flowers before midnight—the time when the murder had occurred. But Shim had gotten the color of the inspector’s robe wrong. This had to mean something.
Shim’s possible lie filled my thoughts as I hid by the gate the following day, observing Inspector Han in his office. All the sliding doors were open, allowing the cool summer breeze in and out of the pavilion. I stood straighter, alert, as he looped strings around his ears, which secured over his eyes a pair of circular glasses framed by wood. Spectacles. I had heard about such contraptions before but had never seen them. They made him look peculiar.
Inspector Han then laid out on his desk four crinkly pages, which he flattened out by adding a stone weight to each corner. Then he leaned forward and observed the calligraphy, studying it closely. It must have been the letters we’d found in Lady O’s chamber. Why did a frown wrinkle his brow?
Ever since the discovery of those letters, I had lost sleep wondering about them. No longer could I restrain my curiosity. I arrived by the steps that led up to the pavilion and bowed. “Excuse me, sir. But…” I reminded myself that I had the right to know. I had told Inspector Han about the Catholic connection to the murder. I had accompanied him on the journey to Mount Hwa, fighting off bandits for him. “Is it true that the last letter was not written by Scholar Ahn, but someone else?”
Silence.
I tried again, clutching my skirt, trying to hold on to my courage. “I heard that everyone’s handwriting is unique. Will you be looking for someone with a similar handwriting, sir?”
“You have no business asking.” He was still studying