AWB Chapter 230 Murder Case
Chapter 230 Murder Case
Zhang Ruomei was busy with the affairs of her mother-in-law and concubine's daughter, and Chen Cui was not having an easy time either.
Her eldest daughter-in-law is about to give birth to her second child, and the estimated due date is in March. She has to take care of many things at home.
Originally, the second daughter-in-law could have taken over, but she didn't want to take care of it at all and simply refused on the pretext that she was not good at managing things.
Chen Cui felt that Zhang Hongjuan was trying to avoid suspicion and didn't want to get involved in housework for fear of creating a rift with her sister-in-law, so she had to bear the responsibility herself.
There are already enough things going on in Beijing, and things are not peaceful back home either.
At the end of the month, Changping received a letter from the magistrate of Yinping County, saying that his cousin Liu Changrong was arrested by the county government for murder.
At about the same time, letters from Liu Youcai and Liu Wende from my hometown also arrived.
The emphases of the descriptions in each letter vary, but none of them can erase the fact that Liu Changrong did kill someone.
The Yinping County Magistrate only said that your mother's relative was involved in a murder case and was detained for some reason. The facts have not yet been clarified and the case will be retried later.
What Liu Youcai said in the letter was quite pertinent. He said that Liu Changrong was desperate because he lost all the money in the gambling house and wanted to borrow money to make up for his losses. However, the other party refused and instead asked him to repay his past gambling debts.
Not only did Evergreen refuse to repent, it also acted like a bully in other people's casinos, making outrageous remarks, not only refusing to pay back the money, but also forcing others to lend it more money to make up for its losses.
There are no honest people who are capable of doing casino business. If the backers are not strong and ruthless enough, they cannot run this kind of business.
Since they dared to lend money to Evergreen, they must have already found out about his background. If he didn't have three capable cousins, who would lend so much money to this farm boy!
But they gave you this face because of the three Beijing officials of the Liu family, not to let you act arrogantly here for no reason. Over the past year, they have allowed him to sign an IOU of more than 700 taels, but have not urged him to repay the debt. It can be said that their gambling house has done its utmost.
For a farm boy like Liu Changrong who has nothing, if he didn't have his three cousins to rely on, the gambling house would have sent people to collect the debt and seized the Liu family's house deeds and land deeds when the debt was less than 100 taels. Now he has been tolerated until now, but he still doesn't know how to restrain himself.
Liu Changrong, the debtor, took advantage of the fact that the gambling house was afraid of his three cousins. Not only did he not restrain himself, he also threatened the people in the gambling house, insisting that they lend him more money. He was the one who started the fight this time.
Liu Changrong pushed and shoved the manager of the gambling house. When the man fought back slightly, he could not resist. In panic, he pushed the man against the corner of the table, hitting his temple and dying on the spot.
The death of the manager aroused the viciousness of the boss behind the gambling house.
Boss Xiong has been running a casino business locally for many years. He is the only one who comes to cause trouble for others, and no one dares to cause trouble for him.
This time, not only did someone cause trouble in his casino, but also beat his people to death. This is simply intolerable!
If he swallowed his anger this time and did not pursue the matter, wouldn't it mean that anyone could bully him in the future? How could he survive in the underworld and gain a foothold in Yinping in the future?
Boss Xiong no longer cares about the so-called three brothers of the Liu family who are officials in Beijing. He wants to vent his anger first and pick up the face that has fallen on the ground.
Moreover, he had inquired carefully. Although it was true that Liu Changrong and the three brothers were cousins, their relationship had been very distant for many years, even worse than that of ordinary clan members. People might not be willing to stand up for this useless cousin.
Therefore, Boss Xiong used his connections in Longnan Prefecture to put pressure on the current Yinping County Magistrate, Lord Zhuang, to try the case and sentence the criminal as soon as possible and bring him to justice.
At this time, Lord Zhuang was in a bit of a dilemma. The county magistrate was not as good as the current one. Even though the three brothers of the Liu family were all officials in Beijing, they could not control him. However, the Tongpan in the mansion often interacted with him.
Moreover, there are too many things that can be done in this lawsuit, and the final verdict will really be decided by him.
For the same crime of murder, there are six ways of sentencing, namely murder, intentional killing, fighting killing, manslaughter, killing for fun, and manslaughter by negligence, which are collectively referred to as the "Six Killings".
For example, if he wanted to curry favor with the magistrate, he would be directly convicted of intentional homicide, that is, "intentional killing", and the criminal would be sentenced to beheading and would surely die.
But if he wanted to make friends with the promising Liu brothers through this incident, it could also be said that Liu Changrong committed manslaughter, or "overkill", and could be sentenced to exile, and then he could pay money to redeem himself later.
Even if he wanted to give the Liu family some face so that they could make friends with him in the future, he couldn't do good deeds silently. He had to see the attitude of the victim.
So, he put the case on hold, wrote a letter to Beijing, explained the matter to Liu Changping of the Liu family, and waited to see his attitude.
As for the letter Liu Wende wrote to Changping, he tried his best to make Changrong sound as innocent as possible, saying how the gambling house set him up and lured him into gambling, and that the death of the gambling house manager was also a frame-up and had nothing to do with Changrong.
In short, this was all someone else's conspiracy. The purpose was to use this incident to attack the three Changping brothers and discredit them. Changrong was the innocent victim and was suffering on behalf of their brothers. They wanted Changping to rescue Changrong safely and so on.
When Chen Cui saw Liu Wende's letter, her hands were shaking with anger. Her family in the capital city followed the rules and were careful with their words and actions, for fear of bringing trouble to her son and causing him trouble.
But Liu Wende's family is so bad that they abused their names in their hometown, not only did they do evil things, but also caused deaths. They let Changping clean up the mess, and they refused to admit their mistakes and had to come up with a high-sounding excuse. This is really!
At this time, the three brothers gathered in the hall, worrying about this matter. This matter must be dealt with quickly. The longer it was delayed, the more variables there would be, and the more unfavorable the impact would be on them.
Chang Fu clenched his fists in anger and said, "Brother, they brought this upon themselves. Don't worry about what uncle said in the letter. Let Master Zhuang make the judgment according to the law. Even if Chang Rong is executed, it cannot be blamed on us."
Chang'an frowned. If only it were that simple. Didn't you see that although the letter written by Youcai explained the course of events truthfully and acknowledged Changrong's mistakes, he still hoped that they could take the lead in this matter and eliminate the impact it brought?
Over the years, Liujiaping has become a famous place in Yinping County because it produced three Jinshi (imperial examination) scholars. Every county magistrate who took office would look at Liujiaping differently, simply out of respect for these three people.
Liujiaping was also said to be a place with outstanding people and talented people. If news came out at this time that there was a murderer, and the murderer was the cousin of the Jinshi, in the eyes of the old people, the reputation of this village would be greatly ruined!