The letter went out the following morning.
Wei Zhengnan composed it himself — this was not always his practice; for ordinary correspondence he made use of the household secretary, a quiet and efficient man named Lu Bocheng who had served the household for eight years and who had, I had observed, the rare virtue of forgetting what he read almost immediately after processing it. But for some communications Wei Zhengnan wrote by hand, and the letter to Madame Feng Ruolan was one of those.
I watched him write it from across the study, where I was reviewing the household accounts, which had fallen somewhat behind during the final intensive weeks of the investigation. He wrote without hesitation or revision — another thing I had noted about him was that he composed in his head before committing to paper, so what appeared on the page was already finished by the time the brush touched it.
"You are reading from the wrong angle," he said, without looking up.
