Card Room (Rebirth)

Mrs Mei fell into her memories as she looked at the photo. She seemed to be remembering many good memories as a faint smile appeared on her face. Then her fingers shook violently and her eyes filled with tears, causing the girl in the photo to become fuzzy in her vision. The old lady carefully put the photo back into her pocket.

Her throat was hoarse like it had been worn down by sand. “After Ruirui died, Li Zhemin moved homes with his new wife. He never mentioned Ruirui’s name in front of his son, Li Mo. After so many years, he rarely goes to Ruirui’s grave. Isn’t this definitely a guilty conscience? Ruirui was definitely killed by him! So I killed him on the anniversary of Ruirui’s death!”

Xiao Lou looked at Yu Hanjiang and Yu Hanjiang happened to be looking back at him. The two people made eye contact, apparently not believing her words.

Mrs Mei was old and wasn’t in good health. How could she accurately inject insulin into Li Zhemin’s body?

Moreover, Li Zhemin’s murder was clearly a sophisticated plan. First, the murderer needed to investigate the situation of Li Zhemin’s diabetes. Secondly, they needed some medical knowledge to know how much insulin could kill a person. Furthermore, it took time to prepare the syringes and insulin.

How could a 70 year old lady with reduced mobility do all of this?

Yu Hanjiang looked at the old lady and spoke softly, “Aunt Mei, Li Zhemin is truly unforgivable but I recommend you don’t take the risk of taking the blame for the murderer. The police have many high-tech detection methods. We have found the murderer’s tools and there will be fingerprints on the syringe and there is also the source of the insulin. Once we check, we can always find out the truth.”

Old Lady Mei’s eyes were calm, a calm that seemed like she knew she was going to die and was prepared for it. She listened carefully to Yu Hanjiang’s words and said with a smile, “Young man, you should believe me. Even if the police check, the result will be the same. Only my fingerprints are on the syringe because only I touched the syringe.”

Xiao Lou questioned, “Auntie, you are so old and your grip on the syringe can’t be stable. How can you accurately inject the medicine into Li Zhemin’s body? If you do more than a few attempts, won’t even the sleeping Li Zhemin wake up?”

Mrs Mei smiled. “He couldn’t wake up.”

Xiao Lou wondered, “What do you mean?”

Mrs Mei coughed for a moment with her hands over her chest. “I gave him what he fed to Ruirui.”

Yu Hanjiang and Xiao Lou were both shocked. Li Zhemin had taken sleeping pills before bed?

Mrs Mei smiled. “Li Zhemin has a habit of drinking a bottle of milk before going to bed. The milk in his bag was something I gave him before getting on the train. Do you understand?”

Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang, “…….”

Mrs Mei put away her smile and spoke coldly. “Last night after 2 o’clock, he drank a bottle of milk to sleep. There were sleeping pills in it and he wouldn’t wake up no matter how noisy. I’m really old and have bad eyes. I poked him several times when giving him the injection yet he didn’t wake up.”

The sleeping pills weren’t visible on the surface and had to be tested to be found. Xiao Lou might be a forensic doctor but he couldn’t directly judge that Li Zhemin took sleeping pills before sleeping. It was no wonder that Li Zhemin slept like the dead no matter how noisy last night was. The old lady had long been prepared.

Yu Hanjiang whispered, “Where did you buy the insulin?”

“I asked Shu Ping to buy it. She has diabetes and can get a prescription for insulin.”

Xiao Lou asked incredulously, “Then why did Shu Ping buy a syringe for you when she is using an insulin pen?”

Mrs Mei laughed. “I made inquiries at a doctor and found that if I used a syringe and injected it into the skin, an overdose would lead to a risk of death. In particular, patients with high blood pressure and heart disease must pay attention to the dosage. It is much more convenient to kill someone with a syringe instead of an insulin pen so I specifically told Shu Ping to buy me the most traditional syringe and extractable insulin.”

Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang glanced at each other.

Mrs Mei had thought about it. Her words sounded reasonable on the surface but it was actually full of holes. Mrs Mei didn’t have diabetes yet she asked Shu Ping to help buy insulin. How could Shu Ping buy it for her without asking the reason? If Shu Ping bought it to help Mrs Mei, why did she hide in the restaurant when Mrs Mei went to the toilet?

Obviously, Mrs Mei was trying to take on all the sins. She was protecting Shu Ping. Perhaps the sleeping pill wasn’t done by her but Shu Ping.

Yu Hanjiang was silent for a moment before saying, “Shu Ping wanted to kill Li Zhemin but you saw her dosing Li Zhemin’s milk and secretly taking out the syringe and insulin. Thus, you decided to take the blame for her… right?”

Mrs Mei’s eyes were red and her voice quivered. “No! I kill him. You can see my fingerprints on the syringe and insulin bottle and I personally injected it. It has nothing to do with Shu Ping!”

She swore that her fingerprints were on the syringe. Under normal circumstances, the murderer would deliberately erase their fingerprints but she deliberately left it. Apparently, it was to make the police think she was the murderer, so as to protect the real perpetrator.

Last night, Shu Ping hid in the dining carriage the first time Mrs Mei went to the toilet. According to Zheng Weiguo’s testimony, he heard Mrs Mei and Shu Ping speaking softly in the corridor.

What did they say? Perhaps Mrs Mei discovered what Shu Ping was going to do and took the initiative to take the syringe from Shu Ping, personally going to kill Li Zhemin. This way, Shu Ping could stay out of it and escape the law.

Or perhaps when Mrs Mei found Shu Ping, Shu Ping had already injected Li Zhemin. The old lady decided to be a scapegoat or Shu Ping and took the initiative to leave her fingerprints on the syringe.

In either case, she was trying to protect Shu Ping.

Xiao Lou asked, “Aunt Mei, your relationship with Shu Ping must be very good? You watched Ruirui grow up so shouldn’t Aunt Shu Ping be like a sister to you?”

This sentence touched the softness in her heart. Old Lady Mei’s mouth twitched slightly and her eyes reddened. “Little Ping was also a poor person. That year, Li Zhemin was actually secretly involved with Little Ping. Unexpectedly, the innocent Ruirui got involved in that type of event on his birthday. Her boyfriend slept with her best friend after drinking. Little Ping was furious and decisively broke up with him…”

Mrs Mei’s hands couldn’t stop shaking when she talked about the past. “In order to not make Ruirui sad, Little Ping didn’t tell her about the previous relationship with Li Zhemin. After Ruirui and Li Zhemin got married, Little Ping went to the hospital and found out that she was also pregnant. Of course, she refused to have this child. As a result, she suffered from massive bleeding and hurt her body during the operation. The doctor told her that she could no longer have children.”

Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang, “…….”

They didn’t expect that Shu Ping couldn’t have children. Li Zhemin was really harmful!

Mrs Mei was choked up. “She later married a doctor and the doctor often hit her. She had a hard few years and finally, her husband died. She adopted a daughter and slowly got better. All her thoughts were on her daughter and she focused on raising her daughter. Who would expect… her daughter and Li Zhemin’s son would actually get together!”

The thing with Li Mo and her daughter was the last straw that overwhelmed Shu Ping.

Mrs Mei started to cough violently again. Xiao Lou reached out a hand and helped pat the old lady on the back. “Auntie, you felt that Shu Ping’s many years weren’t easy and wanted to take the blame for her?”

Mrs Mei shook her head. “I was really the one who injected the insulin. I am the murderer.”

Yu Hanjiang frowned slightly. “That is to say, at 3:40 you went to the toilet and found Shu Ping about to kill Li Zhemin. Then you grabbed the murder weapon from her hand and did it yourself, so that she wouldn’t commit murder?”

Mrs Mei seriously corrected it. “Shu Ping just gave me the syringe and insulin. She didn’t intend to kill Li Zhemin. Don’t talk nonsense! I asked her for insulin and personally injected it into Li Zhemin’s body. Liu Yuming can also testify on this matter.”

If this was true, Shu Ping could only be considered as indirectly providing the crime tools. As long as she insisted that she didn’t know Mrs Mei would kill people and the insulin was for personal use, she could be cleared of any guilt. Mrs Mei was determined to bear everything.

Sure enough, the old lady smiled and said, “It isn’t worth them losing their lives for a scum like Li Zhemin. Letting me do it is fine. In any case, I won’t live long and I want to see Ruirui earlier.”

Xiao Lou endured the heartache and asked softly, “You say that you can’t live long… were you diagnosed with a terminal illness?”

Yu Hanjiang had ignored this detail. He thought the old lady was referring to her old age.

Mrs Mei looked at Xiao Lou with some surprise and nodded. “Yes, I have terminal bone cancer, the same disease as Ruirui’s father. I won’t last more than half a year. In the beginning, I insisted on Li Zhemin joining the company. This is probably karma.”

Xiao Lou’s mood was complicated and he didn’t know what to say.

Yu Hanjiang was also silent. He had seen many murderers but in the face of this 70 year old lady with advanced bone cancer, he couldn’t continue to coldly interrogate the other person. Wasn’t it really done by her hand? In terms of evidence, morality and the law, Mrs Mei was the one who directly led to Li Zhemin’s death.

She had only six months left in her life and this would be gone in a flash. The last thing she could do was probably take the life of the scum Li Zhemin for Shu Ping.

Xiao Lou personally escorted Mrs Mei from the office. The old lady coughed and faltered while walking but her eyes were very firm.

Once she went to Room 3, Shu Ping came out of the room and held the old lady with red eyes.

Mrs Mei smiled and patted Shu Ping’s shoulder, whispering to her, “Little Ping, you should think clearly about what to say and what not to say. Don’t forget that you still have a daughter to take care of. Your daughter is so excellent that she wouldn’t want her mother to become a murderer.”

Shu Ping choked up and nodded. She turned to look at Yu Hanjiang and Xiao Lou and the exquisitely beautiful woman’s face was restored to calm. She slowly stated, “I am the last one to be investigated?”

Xiao Lou took her to the office.

For this interrogation, Shu Ping was strangely cooperatively. She took the initiative to confess before Yu Hanjiang could even open his mouth. “I’m sorry, I lied to you before. I never introduced my daughter to Li Zhemin’s son. His son took the initiative to chase my Xiaomeng.”

Yu Hanjiang asked in a low voice, “What happened in the early hours of the morning? Say it in detail.”

Shu Ping took a deep breath and calmly replied, “At 3:10, I got up to go to the toilet. I touched my ears and found that an earring was missing. I thought that I lost it in the restaurant at dinner and went to the restaurant to look for it. However, the restaurant was too dark. I looked for a long time and couldn’t find it. I went back to the 6th carriage. Around 3:30, Liu Yuming went to the toilet with the light and I was in the toilet opposite him.”

“Due to a bad stomach, I stayed in the toilet for around 10 minutes. Then I came out and happened to meet Mrs Mei in the corridor. She asked me to give her the syringe and insulin I had bought and I gave it to her.”

“She returned to her room and I found the door of Room 2 open. I had wanted to teach him a lesson so I stole his insulin pens from his bag. I don’t know what happened next.”

Apparently, Shu Ping and Mrs Mei had already thought of an explanation in the early hours of the morning.

The reason for getting up in the middle of the night to steal insulin was too far-fetched but if she and Mrs Mei insisted then the police couldn’t arrest her. In fact, the inference of Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang was more reasonable. Shu Ping got up early in the morning to commit a crime, saw Mrs Mei and hid in the restaurant. This was followed by encountering Liu Yuming and she hid in the toilet. The third time, she finally failed to hide and collided with Mrs Mei.

Then Mrs Mei grabbed the syringe and insulin and killed Li Zhemin himself. Shu Ping had carefully planned the crime and definitely wouldn’t leave her fingerprints on the syringe. She could say that the new syringe was unopened until it was given to the old lady. On the syringe, only Mrs Mei’s fingerprints could be detected.

Mrs Mei had turned herself in. The motive was sufficient, the process was clear and there was enough evidence. There were also several time witnesses. The murderer of this case could only be Mrs Mei.

Xiao Lou remembered her words.

—It isn’t worth them losing their lives for a scum like Li Zhemin

—Letting me do it is fine.

— Your daughter is so excellent that she wouldn’t want her mother to become a murderer.

Mrs Mei was once the company’s personnel director. She recruited Li Zhemin into the company despite his score not being high because she felt that Li Zhemin had excellent eloquence and ambition. He was a young man worthy of training.

Unexpected, Li Zhemin only used his eloquence to do oily things. Li Zhemin’s ambition was actually an ambition to climb up unscrupulously.

Mrs Mei had been feeling guilty until this trip. She was diagnosed with advanced bone cancer and had little time left to live. Before she died, she decided to kill Li Zhemin with her own hands.

Li Zhemin was the scum she had brought into the company in the first place. Finally, she was also responsible for taking him away.