This was an excellent episode of Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, well up to the series’ usual standard. I would say it was pretty atypical in a number of ways, though. Rather than languid it was a taut, lean narrative. Most of the straight-up detective episodes have been less compelling than the slice of life ones, but this one really held up. And while it had the usual bleed-overs at the beginning and end, it was a pretty traditional three-act structure. It’s possibly the first ep not involving Lakan (I’m quite disappointed not to have seen him all season) I would say that about.

As set up by last week, the clinic had a major role to play here – though a little different than one might have expected. The older lady who runs it shows up at the Jade Pavillion. Here name is Shenlü (Katsuki Masako) and the immediate assumption is that she’s there to lower the boom on Xiaomao for making medicine. But in fact, she’s there to solicit assistance for a serving girl she believes is ill somewhere within the Crystal Pavillion. She has a cough which “needs to be looked at” – and there are many reasons for that to be the case, not all of them compassionate.

The Crystal Pavillion is run with an iron fist by Shin (Kinoshita Sayaka), the imperious cousin of Lady Lihua. Maomao is smart enough to realize that she’s not going to get access without some trickeration. So she drafts the poor old doctor to get her inside, bearing a letter from Jinshi authorizing an audience with Lihua. The ruse is abandoned pretty quickly once the location of the sick servant (a storage shed) is deduced, and the doc bolts for safety.  And it’s quite a scene – the girl seems to be near death, I would guess with tuberculosis (which matches both the obvious symptoms and Maomao’s “weakly contagious” description).

All that is bad enough. The humanitarian issue is obvious, though probably not in violation of any rule apart from decency. The matter of contagion is another matter, not something Jinshi would want to overlook. But the girl isn’t all Maomao finds in the shed – there’s also a chest full of the various oils and such that were banned as potential poison ingredients. Shin shows a fair amount of cool under fire here, but she makes the fatal mistake of underestimating Maomao – neither the first or last character in Kusuriya who has and will.

What we know of Lihua is that she’s the most highly-bred of all the concubines, with the most powerful family. And that her house has way more ladies-in-waiting than the others. There are all kinds or reasons for suspicion here, but things don’t progress in the manner Xiaomao seems to initially expect. In fact when Shin is called on the carpet by Jinshi, Lihua takes command of the situation pretty forcefully. And in doing so, reveals (prompts Shin to, at least) that in fact it’s her own future child (and not, say, Gyokuyou’s) that Shin is aiming to eliminate. Things get very ugly very quickly, and for those with a mind for such things Maomao’s injury seems rather appropriate in what it calls to mind.

In a sense, this all coming down to family jealousy is a bit of a letdown. But there’s more to it than just that element. Lihua, as has already been suggested, confirms that she’s quite a formidable and clever woman – not least because her calculated outburst manages to get Shin’s life spared (she’s to be banned from the Rear Palace instead). And as Maomao points out to Jinshi and Gaoshun, it’s not as though Shin was likely to have conceived all this through her own volition – she found out that the ingredients in question could make an abortion drug from someone else. The big fish is still swimming free somewhere in the Rear Palace, and it’s on Maomao to reel them in.