Chapter 30

Wei Xiaotian's parents had meant what they said. Within a few weeks they came to Ning Shu with work.

The client was a business partner of theirs and a friend of many years, and when he heard about Ning Shu he could not wait to ask her to look at his house.

So the Weis stood host and took the client and Ning Shu to a private room at the hotel in town. The client's name was Tang Jiade, a middle-aged man of about the Weis' age. He did not look well. The bags under his eyes were heavy and there was no life in him.

Tang Jiade had assumed that the master his friends were introducing would be young and promising, but at the very least grown up. And here was a little girl. Surely this was too small? What could a girl that size read correctly?

He began by not thinking much of her.

Whatever Ning Shu asked him he answered carelessly. After the meal he still took her back to the house, entirely for the Weis' sake. Refusing outright would have been impossible.

But Tang Jiade had no hopes of it at all.

Ning Shu could see that he did not believe in her. It made no difference. A good many people had doubted her lately, and every one of them had come round in the end.

These days the facts teach people manners.

Tang Jiade's house stood where the village met the town, three storeys with a garden, done up nicely. Ning Shu could smell paint still faintly in the air. The house was new, and could not have been built long.

She came through the door and knew at once that something was wrong, and asked him, as though in passing, "I hear your wife had a bad labour last month?"

Tang Jiade blinked, and then decided the Weis must have told her.

"That's right. It started normally and then went wrong, and it dragged on most of the night, and in the end we lost the baby."

Ning Shu said quietly, "If you'd come to me sooner, you might have got clear of it."

Tang Jiade said quickly, "Is there something in the house behind it?"

Ning Shu had got as far as his bedroom by now. She pointed at the bed. "A chimney facing the bed brings hard labour, and in a room like this one it comes straight away."

"Ah."

Before Tang Jiade could take it in, Ning Shu went on. "The stove sits in the northeast and the door is cut in the northeast as well. That brings deafness in the children, and it sets a man's wife and his sister against each other."

The way Tang Jiade looked at her changed completely. The hard labour was something the Weis might have told her. But his wife quarrelling with his sister was family business. How could this girl know that?

"Master. You're right. My wife and my sister have been at each other over every little thing lately."

Ning Shu looked round the bedroom again. "There's a post at the head of your bed. That's what we call the hanging needle, and it costs a household its people. Without that post, even with your wife's labour going wrong, the baby could have been saved."

Ning Shu went into the sitting room, looked round it once and said, "Your front door and your back door open straight onto each other, which makes widows. And there's a fence pointing square at the wall, which we call piercing the heart, and it brings illness and death."

"Ah." Tang Jiade's face changed for good. "So there really is something wrong with the house. Master Ning, you have to put it right for me. Whatever it costs."

Ning Shu said, "It's easy enough. You only have to remember what I've told you. Lay the bed north to south, and never facing a window or pointing west."

The earth's own field runs north to south, and a body sleeping along the lines of it falls asleep more easily.

"Master, I follow you about the window, but why can't it point west?" Tang Jiade asked.

Ning Shu explained. "A bed head pointing west is unlucky, because the west has always been held to be the land of bliss, where people go after they die, and the living facing that way does their health no good at all. Put it in scientific terms, east to west is the way the earth turns, so sleeping westward sends the blood knocking at the top of your head and your sleep is never settled."

Tang Jiade said under his breath, "I see."

Ning Shu went on. "The hanging needle is easy to break as well. Take the post at the head of the bed down. For the two doors, pull the back door out and build it again, and whatever you do, don't have them facing each other. And for the fence, hang a mirror on it. That breaks it."

"I've got all of it down, Master. All of it. Thank you." Then Tang Jiade asked, "And when a master comes out like this, how is the fee reckoned?"

It was his first dealing with Ning Shu and he did not know her rate, which was why he asked straight out. It was not a polite thing to do.

Ning Shu said, "I don't set a price. Whatever the client thinks right."

"I understand." Tang Jiade got out his phone. "I'll transfer it. That's easier."

"Fine."

Ning Shu gave him her card number, and a few minutes later twenty thousand came through.

That was a fair price. Ning Shu had only walked round the house and given him some advice, and making ten thousand and more out of that was good going.

---

That afternoon Ning Shu took Gouwa to the only western restaurant in town and bought him a steak. Gouwa could not manage a knife and fork, so he gave up and used chopsticks, picking the steak up and putting it in his mouth.

Ning Shu did not forget to tell him to mind himself. He was not a child any more and he could think about how he looked in public.

Gouwa laughed and did not care in the least.

Life went along smoothly. Ning Shu did not have many friends in her class. She was particularly close to Lin Qiaoqiao, who was from the same village. Lin Qiaoqiao was the proud sort, set on getting out of the country and into the city, with plenty of ambition and a great deal of energy about everything.

Lately, though, there had been talk going round the school about her and Zhou Pingyang, the best-looking boy in the next class.

Lin Qiaoqiao denied it flatly. For one thing the village was old-fashioned and she was still young, and if the talk got home her parents would never live it down. For another, by her own account she was going to the city and would not be stuck in this poor corner of nowhere for ever, so she had to work.

To be fair about it, Zhou Pingyang was a decent enough boy, presentable and good at his lessons.

What Ning Shu noticed was that the talk itself had got under some of the girls' skins.

And two days after that, coming back from games, Xu Qingying announced that she had lost a Swiss watch worth a good deal of money. She said her father had brought it back from abroad and it was worth tens of thousands.

Once this was reported to the form teacher it was taken seriously at once. The teacher came to the classroom and worked on the class, by threats and by promises, to get whoever had taken the watch to own up. The pupils looked at one another and nobody would stand up.

Then Xu Qingying's deskmate said, "Sir, I think we should search everybody's bag. Qingying lost the watch this afternoon, so if somebody in the class took it, it'll still be in a bag now."

That did not go down well with several of them, and Xu Qingying said, very reasonably, "Searching everyone's bag isn't really right. It's an invasion of their privacy."

That won a lot of the class over, and they all said how sensible Xu Qingying was.

And then Xu Qingying said, "My watch went missing during games. Most of the class were out on the field for that lesson. Only one person didn't go."

And every eye in the room went to Ning Shu's deskmate, Lin Qiaoqiao.

Ning Shu knew that Lin Qiaoqiao had stayed behind because of her period, and had asked Ning Shu to pass on her excuse.

With the whole class looking at her, Lin Qiaoqiao said quickly, "I was in the classroom, yes, but I didn't take your watch."

Xu Qingying's deskmate pressed her hard. "Qingying's watch was in her desk. It was there before games and gone after. If you didn't take it, who did?"

"You've got no proof. How can you accuse somebody like that? I was in the classroom, but I didn't take your watch."

Then the teacher asked, "Apart from Lin Qiaoqiao, who else was in the classroom?"

They all looked at one another. Every one of them could vouch for the others having gone to games. Lin Qiaoqiao had been alone in the room.

"Lin Qiaoqiao, if you weren't at games, what were you doing in the classroom?" the form teacher asked.

Lin Qiaoqiao went red and held it in. The town was old-fashioned, and she was not going to say in front of all these people that she had her period, especially when a good many of the girls in the class had not started theirs yet. She could not get it out.

The way she opened her mouth and shut it again started a good many of them thinking that she had taken Xu Qingying's watch.

"Sir, Lin Qiaoqiao did not take Xu Qingying's watch." Ning Shu stood up. "She wouldn't do a thing like that."

Ning Shu knew what Lin Qiaoqiao was. She was proud. She would never have stolen for the sake of a watch.

"You say she didn't take it. Show us the proof," Xu Qingying's deskmate pressed.

Ning Shu said coldly, "There has never been any rule that a person under suspicion has to prove herself innocent. If you want to say she stole it, go and find the proof. And if you can't find it, don't throw accusations about."

Which was fair enough. If everyone accused of something had to prove their own innocence, then throwing dirt at people would cost nothing at all. Anybody could point at anybody, call them the culprit, and tell them to go and find the evidence to clear themselves.

There is no such rule.

Xu Qingying's face was getting worse and worse. She said, "During games she was the only one in the classroom, and she won't say why she stayed behind instead of going to the lesson. Why shouldn't I suspect her?"

And at that Lin Qiaoqiao, red in the face and past bearing it, hauled her own bag out. "Search it, then. And if you don't find anything, you can stand up in front of the whole school and apologise to me."