The flower girl did not understand all that, but Xuanji should have known better. Such a poem could have been interpreted as a ‘thought crime.’

‘So you have the poem with you?’

‘I think so, but it may take a while for me to find it,’ she said, blushing again. ‘My room is such a mess.’

‘I’m staying at Dingguo Temple. I’ll be there for a couple of days more. Can you send it to me when you get hold of it? Perhaps you may also bring some flowers for the temple.’

He fumbled in his inner pocket again.

‘Don’t worry about it, sir. The silver ingot you gave me more than covers that as well. But what were we talking about before shifting to the topic of the peony?’

‘She came to your flower garden the day before the discovery of the maid’s body in the nunnery backyard, right?’

‘Yes, she came that morning, the second day of the month. She must have done some other shopping on the way to my flower garden.’

‘For a special guest?’

‘I would think so. In her basket, I noticed a tiny package of swallow saliva nest. A slice of dried shark fin. And some high-quality rice paper along with a fox-tail brush pen.’

‘All so fancy and pricy!’

‘Usually, the shopping was a job for her maid named Ning, but it’s probably because of the expensive stuff that Xuanji did not trust her with it on this occasion. But I could not help feeling curious about such a shopping spree.’

‘Did she say anything about the maid?’

‘No, she did not. She was picking up the flowers with the shopping basket placed on the ground, and I took another look into the basket.’

‘What else did you see?’

‘She had a live bass, shrimp, and some fresh bean sprout. Not large quantities, not enough for a party, but more likely for one guest. A small bunch of fresh lychee. Oh, and an urn of Maiden Red, too.’

‘Maiden Red?’

‘It’s a convention among some well-to-do people to bury an urn of Shaoxing rice wine in the ground on the birth of a daughter in the family. When she grows up, the people will dig the urn out on her wedding day – the wine is almost scarlet in color after it has been kept underground all these years. That’s the origin of the name. But people don’t have to drink it only on that special occasion. It’s also an indication of the age of the wine, at least fifteen or sixteen years old, so mellow and smooth, and of course very expensive, too.’

Was there something else in the flower girl’s sensual description of the special shopping Xuanji did for that day?