By contrast, at her Mingyue House, even counting the nanny, house manager, assistants, tutors, driver, bodyguard, and Auntie Zhou, who handled her weekly outfit coordination, there were fewer than ten people in total!
Once again, she was tempted by the allure of being the head of the household.
When she had cats and dogs of her own in the future, she would hire people specifically to look after them, too!
Qiuyun examined the list, then studied the people Sun Assistant Manager had marked in red and the notes beside their names.
Three potential targets for close contact quickly took shape in her mind.
She sent the information separately to Sun Assistant Manager and Assistant Qian, asking them to investigate the three people’s personal and professional connections in detail.
The next day.
A call came from Madam’s side. The investigation into the surveillance footage had hit a dead end, and she wanted Qiuyun to come over to see if she could offer any fresh ideas.
Qiuyun saw the young miss into the car. Jiang Chuling sensed that something was wrong. “Sister Xiaoqiu, is something happening at home?”
She opened the car door and let Little Heng climb in as well. “Something is going on, but it’s nothing major. We don’t have time to discuss it right now, though. How about I explain everything to you in detail after you get home from school tonight?”
Jiang Chuling was a reasonable child. As long as she knew she had the right to be informed, she didn’t mind whether she found out sooner or later.
“Okay!”
After seeing the young miss off, Qiuyun took the shuttle to the first auxiliary floor.
Yu Xiang was reclining on a large sofa. When she saw Qiuyun arrive, she hurriedly beckoned her over.
“I had several of my students, along with Sister Zhou and Xiuxiu, each review a section of the footage. We can only determine that the complaint letter was placed there sometime after the afternoon of March 25.”
She handed over the laptop and pressed the space bar. “Teacher Wang organized the cabinet that day. If there had been a complaint letter inside, she should have noticed it very easily.”
Qiuyun watched carefully.
The cabinet was a small, waist-high one-meter cabinet beside the desk. Teacher Wang had needed to find a folder at the very bottom. She had squatted down, taken everything out, and then organized the cabinet as she put everything back.
“Madam, may I see the footage of Teacher Wang discovering the complaint letter?”
Yu Xiang pulled it up.
On the surveillance footage, Teacher Wang bent over and lifted the files on top. When she pulled one of them out, the complaint letter came out with it.
That showed that the complaint letter had been placed separately rather than tucked inside a file.
Teacher Wang had rearranged every file when she organized the cabinet earlier. If there had already been a complaint letter inside, it really would have been difficult for her not to notice it at that time.
“Madam, may I see the complaint letter?”
Yu Xiang sent her a photograph. “Here.”
The contents of the complaint letter were remarkably solid—so much so that they could even be described as quoting extensively from authoritative sources and drawing on a wide range of knowledge. In short, it was far beyond the comprehension of an ordinary person.
Qiuyun offered her thoughts.
Yu Xiang frowned. “I thought the same thing. The letter has no creases, so it must have been tucked inside some file. There’s no way someone carried it around loose and folded it up. I reviewed the surveillance footage from March 25 until the day the letter was discovered. The colleagues who took files never went near the cabinet, while the colleagues who went near the cabinet never took any files! Sigh. I’m starting to wonder whether we’re looking in the wrong direction. That’s why I asked Sister Zhou and Xiuxiu to focus on reviewing the footage of the students who came into contact with the cabinet.”
Qiuyun asked, “It seems that the letter criticized certain points in your paper. I don’t really understand your field, Madam, but in your opinion, what level would someone need to reach to make those criticisms?”
Yu Xiang sighed. “The issue is actually a matter of academic debate. You know how there’s no absolute first place in literature or martial arts. Before I wrote that section, I held discussions with several professors at the university, and what I wrote was the result of our collective deliberation. The argument made in the letter isn’t exactly wrong, either. To reach that level, the person would need to be at least a doctoral student.”
So Yu Xiang had been reported for no reason at all.
A matter that was not really a problem had been denounced in highly charged language. Her special background had even been dragged into it, making it seem as though the accusations of academic misconduct had been confirmed.
Qiuyun hugged the laptop to her chest. “Then I’ll take another look.”
“All right, go ahead.” Yu Xiang stood up. “I’m going to water the plants in the garden and get some fresh air.”
Perhaps because she did not want her husband to worry, Madam had chosen not to tell him. Since the situation was still under control, Qiuyun would not go against her wishes.
She spent the entire morning reviewing the surveillance footage.
She even watched the footage of everyone who had gone near the cabinet twice.
The complaint letter was indeed a complete sheet of paper without a single crease. Only two teachers had both held files and approached the cabinet.
One was Teacher Wang herself.
But there was no reason for the culprit to cry thief while being the thief. Besides, Teacher Wang worked in the Academic Affairs Office and did not even know Madam, who belonged to the School of Literature. The moment she saw the complaint letter, she had handed it to the authorities. She had no motive to implicate herself.
The other was a teacher who had come to deliver some materials.
But that teacher had placed a single file directly inside the cabinet without making any unnecessary movements, and there was no paper stuck to either side of it.
Tsk.
Could the complaint letter have flown in by itself?
By noon, Sister Zhou and Xiuxiu had finished reviewing the footage of the students who approached the cabinet. They found several suspicious students, and Yu Xiang wanted their counselors to question them.
Qiuyun spoke up. “Madam, let’s not rush.”
“Why not?”
“You won’t get anything by questioning them,” Qiuyun said tactfully. “And college students are especially sensitive to feeling wronged. If the counselor happens to have a poor attitude, the student might lose his temper and post everything online.”
Besides, since they had already determined that the complaint letter had to have been written by someone at least at the doctoral level, even if that person had asked a student to put it there, the student probably would not have known what he was carrying.
Reporting a professor?
The student had not even graduated yet. What ordinary student would do something like that? Did he no longer want his diploma?
So simply asking them would definitely get them nowhere...
In a flash, Qiuyun caught a crucial detail in the logic!
The complaint letter was a single, uncreased sheet of A4 paper. There was no way the mastermind had handed it directly to a student and told the student to put it in the cabinet.
If he wanted to keep the student from knowing what was inside, he could only have slipped the letter between some documents so no one would see its contents.
Once the student had carried the materials in, all the mastermind needed to do was pull the sheet out from inside the cabinet, right?
There was a chance!
Qiuyun immediately asked Sister Zhou to pull up the footage of the suspicious students.
After each student placed a stack of documents inside, they fast-forwarded the footage at eight times the normal speed until the next person approached the cabinet.
Sure enough, after the second student put the materials away, a familiar face appeared.
It was Senior Brother Dai, whom they had met at Madam’s professor’s home that day.
Because he was wearing a shirt with the cuffs fastened and the hem tucked into his suit trousers, he had merely rummaged through the cabinet for a moment. No one, including Qiuyun and Madam, had suspected him.
After all, there was nowhere on his person where he could have produced a complete, uncreased sheet of A4 paper.
But now that they had this theory, it made perfect sense. Someone who wrote a complaint letter like this would naturally need to be familiar with the person being reported in order to know all those details. Senior Brother Dai was also from the School of Literature, and his field was directly relevant.
