Yu Nurse anxiously entered the living room, looking as if she was about to face trial under the gathered gaze of everyone present.
Jian Jing voluntarily gave up her seat and asked Yu Nurse to sit down, handing her a cup of hot tea: "Don't be nervous, just tell the truth."
Yu Nurse nodded.
Jian Jing asked: "On the day of the incident, at 3:20 AM, the alarm on the monitor went off. You woke up and did what?"
"I immediately performed CPR on the patient," Yu Nurse answered very quickly.
Jian Jing: "At that time, what was the Chairman's body like? Was it stiff? Cold?"
Yu Nurse tried her best to think back for a moment and apologized: "I was extremely nervous at the time, constantly looking at the heart monitor. I didn't carefully sense those things you mentioned."
"That is to say, if the body temperature was slightly cold, the neck was slightly stiff, you wouldn't have noticed it?"
Yu Nurse hesitated for a moment: "That's probably true. I performed CPR over his clothes and didn't touch his skin much."
"Were his eyes closed at the time?"
"Yes."
Only then did Jian Jing say: "Let me explain, as I said before, rigor mortis occurs 1-3 hours after death, and judging the corpse temperature is even more subtle, dropping about 1°C every hour within 10 hours after death. Because his eyes were closed, corneal opacity was also difficult to determine in a timely manner."
Jiang BaiYan said: "So the Chairman didn't die after 3 o'clock?"
She corrected: "No, this can only prove that there may have been some discrepancy in the time of death, which is not impossible."
"What do you mean by this?" Jiang Lian asked.
"Patience, everyone." Jian Jing continued to ask, "Nurse Yu, in your half-awake state, did you vaguely hear some movement?"
Yu Nurse cautiously said: "I can't be sure. It seems there was something like that."
"Did you hear the sound of breaking glass?"
After thinking about it carefully, she shook her head: "It doesn't seem like it."
"Alright, you can leave now," Jian Jing said. "Next, let's go over everyone's testimonies."
She flipped through her notebook and slowly said: "Jiang Ou entered the Chairman's room around 12:20, then Jiang Xue, out of curiosity, entered around 12:30 and hurriedly left after about 5 minutes. At that time, Jiang Xue mistakenly believed the Chairman was already dead and panicked, so she went to find Jiang Madam. Correct?"
This was the result of the previous days of "questioning", which had received unanimous confirmation so far.
"Alright, I want to ask you two, when you entered the room, did you notice any broken glass or liquid on the floor?" Jian Jing asked.
Jiang Ou said: "I didn't see any."
Jiang Xue also said: "I didn't pay attention. There probably wasn't any."
"But around 3 o'clock there were shards of glass on the floor, right?" She verified.
Jiang BaiYan nodded: "Yes, I remember there were pieces of broken glass on the floor, right next to the tall cabinet by the door."
Jian Jing smiled and said, "Given Jiang Ou and Jiang Xue's relationship, I think the credibility of them both denying something should be quite high."
No one disagreed.
"So at least by 12:30, the medicine bottle hadn't been smashed yet. In other words, someone else entered the room in those nearly 3 hours between 12:30 and 3:20 AM," Jian Jing asked, "Who was that person? Does anyone want to admit it?"
Still no one spoke up.
"Alright, we can put that matter aside for now. I also have a testimony here that says Jiang Lian was making a phone call in the garden on the first floor at about 12:30, when Jiang Xue entered the room. Is there such a thing?"
Jiang Lian hesitated for a moment before nodding: "Yes, I made a call with my husband."
"Show me your video," she said.
Jiang Lian went upstairs to get her laptop and opened the video file. It clearly showed the recording time, starting from 12:50 and continuing until after 3 AM, with both sides arguing fiercely about something the entire time.
Jian Jing glanced at Jiang Lian. She looked relaxed, seeming to believe she was no longer a suspect.
She also looked at Jiang Qi. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed, as if worried and apprehensive.
Jiang Ou seemed somewhat impatient, constantly changing postures.
Jiang Madam had her arm around Jiang Xue's shoulder, seeming to support and comfort her.
"It looks very clear now," Jian Jing said. "The video has confirmed my speculation that you were the first person to enter the Chairman's room."
Jiang Lian immediately refuted: "Nonsense! Do you have any evidence? Who saw me go in?"
Jiang BaiYan sighed sorrowfully: "It's been a few days. Can't you see what position I'm in now?"
"I'm not falsely accusing you. Of everyone, only you were at the greatest risk."
Jian Jing calmly analyzed: "Jiang Qi was at odds with his father over his marriage, but that was in the past. Jiang Ou wanted the shares in the water company——the argument Jiang Xue overheard was with you right?——but the Chairman's attitude was clear that he had no plans to give it to him. So his early death was actually unfavorable to Jiang Ou, he no longer had a chance to persuade his father again.
"Only you had everything to lose. The Jiang Water Group was supposed to go to you, but your father didn't like your husband while you refused to give him up. Moreover, only the Jiang Water Group, which the Chairman had devoted his heart and soul to, would make him want to change his will even as death approached."
She was extremely certain: "So you know very well that the Chairman was going to change his will the next day, and it would definitely be detrimental to you. And this was a company your mother founded together with him, so you were even more afraid it would end up in Jiang Madam and Jiang Xue's hands. You had to find a way to stop it.
"It just so happened that you knew Dr. Tao had prescribed morphine for him and may have explained the dosage issue to you which you kept in mind. You thought you could use this method to silence him."
Jiang Xue eagerly stood up and said loudly: "I knew it was you!"
"That would be too early," Jiang Ou disagreed. "Even according to what you said before, if the monitoring device's plug was pulled out, Jiang Xue would have definitely discovered the screen wasn't lit when she went in."
"Patience, everyone." Jian Jing didn't move an inch and continued: "You took action but regretted it afterward, right?"
Jiang Lian pursed her lips, her face pale, yet didn't say a word.
"Did you inject one or two doses? In any case, you regretted it soon and hurriedly left, calling your husband in the yard, saying you had lost your mind and the Chairman had been so good to you, raising and nurturing you, yet you wanted to kill him. But the wood had become a boat. You were also hoping against hope that nothing would happen to your father. You went back to the room pretending nothing had happened."
The living room was completely silent, everyone had different expressions.
Jian Jing smiled slightly and slowly revealed the follow-up: "The second person was Jiang Ou. I guessed you didn't go to discuss things with him, but to get something—a phone or camera?"
Jiang Ou kept his mouth shut tightly, unusually clam-like.
"Why would you do such a thing? Because you didn't know what would happen. Jiang Lian works in the group, the will probably concerned her. Jiang Qi built the communications company, so that should belong to him too. Only you had never done anything significant. How much your father would give you was entirely up to luck, and your competitors were Jiang BaiYan, Jiang Xue and Jiang Madam. There was too much uncertainty."
As Jian Jing told Jiang BaiYan earlier, the key to solving this case was understanding everyone's psychological state.
She carefully analyzed Jiang Ou's motives: "So in order to gain the upper hand, you used an unorthodox move by installing cameras in your father's bedroom to eavesdrop on his conversations with others."
Jiang Xue and her mother coldly glared at him.
"But you saw something terrible—your eldest sister trying to murder your father," Jian Jing said. "After seeing the video you must have been extremely shocked, but given the close relationship between you three siblings, your first reaction was to protect your sister. However, you were not capable of handling this yourself, so you could only look to Jiang Qi for help."
Jiang Ou said: "Say whatever you want, I'm not admitting anything anyway."
Jian Jing was immersed in the most pleasant moment of a detective, waving her hand tolerantly without paying him any attention: "Alright, the second one is over. Let's talk about the third person, Jiang Xue."
She stared with wide eyes: "What does it have to do with me?"
"Of course there is a connection," Jian Jing curved her lips. "When you entered the room, the Chairman should have been uncomfortable and seemed to be in critical condition. And you have always been gutsy, the Chairman also doted on you very much. Perhaps you wanted to get closer to see if he was really going to die, or perhaps you knew about the safe and wanted to open it to take a peek..."
Jiang Xue's face suddenly flushed red.
"Then, something unexpected happened — the Chairman woke up," Jian Jing revealed the answer, satisfied to see the change in everyone else's facial expressions.
She was like a child who had succeeded in some mischief, smiling contentedly as she added: "Of course it's also possible that he only seemed to have woken up. In any case, you were so frightened that you immediately ran away."
The reason why Jiang Xue had left in a panic was a key point of this case.
The change of the will was disadvantageous to Jiang Lian, but advantageous to Jiang Xue and her mother. Therefore, Jiang Xue could not have had any intention to kill when she entered the room on the night of the incident.
Then why was she so flustered?
It was possible that the Chairman was dying, but that was inconsistent with the time of death. Moreover, there was no reason for Jiang Xue to not alert Yu Nurse immediately to try to save her father.
She did not dare to speak up, proving that a major change in circumstances had occurred.
And the only person who could have caused Jiang Xue's situation to completely overturn was the Chairman.
"What would happen if the father saw his daughter trying to steal the will, or misunderstood that she was plotting murder?" Jian Jing vividly described Jiang Xue's psychology. "The answer is undoubtedly that she would lose her inheritance rights. You went to find your mother immediately and told her about the situation – Jiang Madam, you're next."
Jiang Madam had an indifferent look on her face.
"You were very clear that you wouldn’t get much from the Chairman, so no matter what, you had to secure your daughter's inheritance rights. To achieve this, you did not hesitate to commit murder."
Jian Jing's speech gradually accelerated: "You arrived at the scene of the crime around 1 a.m. — I really doubt whether you actually saw Jiang Lian there, it doesn’t seem to be on the way from your room downstairs, isn’t that right Jiang Qi? You inferred it, didn't you?"
Jiang Qi glanced at her without admitting or denying it.
"Jiang Madam, was the Chairman conscious or unconscious when you entered? It doesn’t matter,” Jian Jing continued without waiting for her to answer. “You had to do something, but as an accountant you didn’t understand the medical equipment. If you accidentally triggered an alarm and woke up Yu Nurse, things would become very messy. The simplest and most effective approach was to cut off the power supply to the room."
She spread her hands: "Just like that, the oxygen tube and monitoring device became useless. You knew he would definitely die tonight, and your daughter’s inheritance rights were preserved."
There was dead silence at the scene.
"Finally, Jiang Qi. You knew what your sister had done, so you would definitely try to cover for her. The best way was to frame her enemy and make the other party lose inheritance rights. That way, no matter which of you three siblings eventually obtained the shares, it would not go against your mother’s wishes."
Jian Jing looked at Jiang Qi: "You developed an internal system for Jiang Water Group, and Jiang Madam used to work there. Now all companies require fingerprint login, so that’s how you obtained her right index fingerprint — and only that one fingerprint, otherwise the thumbprint would have been even better. Then you used a 3D printer to produce a fingerprint replica, entered the room of Jiang’s father, opened the safe, and left her fingerprint."
"I suppose if I hadn't discovered the safe, you would also have guided the lawyer Li to find it, right?"
Jiang Qi had to speak up: "Miss Jian, you are very smart. I underestimated you."
"It's not time to praise me yet," Jian Jing made a pause gesture. "Because there is still a loophole here."
She looked around at everyone with a smile: "Who smashed the medicine bottle?"
