The Chinese Bell Murders

by Robert Van Gulik

  The judge raised his hand and ordered the headman:

  'Report on this!'

  'This old monk,' the headman of the constables announced, 'was indeed found in a small cell that had been barred and locked on the outside. There was a small grated spyhole in the door and we heard him calling us in a weak voice. I had the door rammed in. He offered no resistance but asked to be brought before Your Excellency.'

  Judge Dee nodded slowly and said to the old monk:

  'Proceed!'

  'One of my two disciples,' the monk continued, 'who originally inhabited this temple with me, was poisoned by the abbot when he threatened to report him to the high priest of our sect. The other, who is present here before Your Honour's tribunal, pretended to have turned against me. He spied upon the abbot and his henchmen, secretly reporting to me all he discovered. Unfortunately he did not succeed in collecting any evidence. The abbot kept his nefarious doings secret to all except his own group of favourite satellites. Thus I ordered my disciple to bide his time and not to report to the authorities, since that would only make the abbot kill us and thus destroy the last chance to expose this awful desecration of this holy abode. He, however, will be able to point out to Your Honour those renegades who joined with the abbot in his lecherous deeds.

  'The other monks are either true believers or just lazy persons who were attracted by the luxurious and easy life in this temple. I pray Your Honour to be allowed to intercede on their behalf.'

  On a sign of the judge, the constables took the chains off the old abbot who led the headman to another elderly monk. He walked with the headman along the rows of kneeling monks pointing out seventeen young fellows, who were immediately dragged in front of the bench.

  Made to kneel down they began screaming and cursing, some shouting that Spiritual Virtue had compelled them to violate the ladies. Others begged for mercy, some loudly demanded to confess their crimes.

  'Silence!' barked Judge Dee.

  The constables' whips and clubs descended on the heads and shoulders of the monks till their shouts had changed into suppressed moans.

  When order had been restored Judge Dee said:

  'The other monks will be freed from their chains. They will immediately resume their religious duties, under the direction of His Reverence Complete Enlightenment.'

  When the courtyard had been cleared, the crowd of spectators, by now augmented by people from the northern suburb who had come to see what the commotion in the temple meant, pressed forward to the stairs of the terrace, muttering curses against the monks.

  'Stand back in an orderly manner, and listen to your magistrate!' Judge Dee shouted.

  'The despicable criminals assembled here have been gnawing like rats at the roots of our peaceful society and thus are guilty of a crime against the State. For has not our peerless Sage, Master Confucius himself, said that the family is the foundation of the State? They violated decent married women who came here in a devout spirit to pray to the goddess. Women who were defenceless because of their responsibility for the honour of their family and the legitimacy of their offspring.

  'Fortunately, however, these villains did not dare add a secret entrance to all of the six pavilions; two were found to be without. Since I am not an impious man and since I profoundly believe in the infinite grace and mercy of the Powers on High, I wish it to be clearly understood that the fact that a lady passed the night in this temple does not necessarily mean that the child subsequently born to her is illegitimate.

  'As to these criminals, I shall interrogate them during the afternoon session in the tribunal and there they shall be given an opportunity to speak for themselves and confess their crimes.'

  Turning to the head of the constables Judge Dee added:

  JUDGE DEE DISMISSES A WICKED MONK

  'Since our jail is too small for accommodating these rascals you will temporarily place them in the stockade outside the east wall of the tribunal. Convey them there with the utmost despatch!'

  As Spiritual Virtue was being led away he shouted at the judge:

  'You miserable fool, know that soon you will be kneeling before me in chains and it will be I who pass judgement on you!'

  Judge Dee smiled coldly.

  The constables lined the twenty men up in two rows often, bound them together securely with heavy chains and then drove them on prodding them with their clubs.

  Judge Dee ordered Sergeant Hoong to conduct Apricot and Blue Jade to the front courtyard and send them back to the tribunal in his own palankeen.

  Then the judge called Chiao Tai.

  'When the news of these events has spread through the town,' he observed, 'I fear that an angry mob will try to attack these monks. Ride as fast as you can to the garrison headquarters and tell the commander to send a company of lance knights and mounted archers to the stockade immediately. They are to form a double cordon round the palissade. Their headquarters are not far from the tribunal so the soldiers should be there before the prisoners.'

  As Chiao Tai hurried away to execute this order the general remarked:

  'A wise precaution, Magistrate!'

  'Gentlemen,' Judge Dee said to the general and the three other witnesses, 'I regret that I have to intrude still further on your valuable time. This temple is a treasure house of gold and silver. We cannot leave here before everything has been inventoried and sealed in your presence. I anticipate that the higher authorities will order all the property of this temple confiscated, and the tribunal will have to append a complete list of all assets to the official report on this case.

  'I assume that the almoner of this temple has an inventory, but all items will have to be verified and that will take several hours. I propose, therefore, that we first repair to the refectory to take breakfast.'

  Judge Dee sent a constable to the kitchen to give the necessary orders. All left the terrace and walked to the large refectory on the second courtyard. The crowd of spectators filed to the first courtyard, angrily cursing the monks.

  Judge Dee excused himself to the general and the three other witnesses for not acting as their host. To save time he wanted to give further instructions to his lieutenants while they ate.

  While the general, the retired judge and the two guild-masters engaged in a polite contest as to who should preside over their table, Judge Dee chose a smaller table somewhat apart from the others and there sat down with Sergeant Hoong, Ma Joong and Tao Gan.

  Two novices placed bowls with rice gruel and pickled vegetables before them. The small group ate in silence until the novices were out of earshot.

  Then the judge said with a wry smile:

  'I fear that during the past weeks I must have been a difficult master for all of you and especially for you, Sergeant! Now, however, you shall hear my explanation.'

  Judge Dee finished the gruel, put his spoon on the table and began:

  'It must have hurt you, Sergeant, when you saw me accept that wretched abbot's bribe. Three bars of gold and three bars of silver! The fact is that although at that time I had not yet decided on a definite course of action, I knew that sooner or later I would be in need of funds. You know that I have no income except my official salary and I did not dare to take money from the comptroller of the tribunal for fear that the abbot's spies would discover that I was contemplating some action.

  'As it turned out this bribe was exactly sufficient to pay expenses for setting my trap. Two gold bars were used for redeeming the two girls from the house that owned them. The third I gave to Apricot, to be used in persuading the abbot to let her stay in the temple for one night. One bar of silver I gave to the steward of my distinguished colleague Lo, the magistrate of Chin-hwa, as commission for arranging this transaction and to cover the costs of conveying the two girls to Poo-yang. I gave the second bar of silver to my wife to buy the girls new dresses. The rest was used to purchase their cloaks and for the rent of the two luxurious palankeens in which they proceeded to this temple yesterday afternoon. Thus you can dismiss that w
orry from your mind, Sergeant.'

  The judge noted the look of relief on the faces of his assistants. He smiled patiently and continued:

  'I selected these two girls in Chin-hwa because I recognised in them those virtues that make our peasant class the very backbone of our glorious Empire, virtues that even the exercise of an unfortunate profession cannot substantially affect. I was confident that if they assisted me in the execution of my plan, they would certainly be successful.

  'The girls themselves, and also my family, thought that I had bought them as my concubines. I did not dare to confide my secret to anyone, not even to my First Lady. As I said before, the abbot may well have had spies among the servants in my mansion and I could not afford the slightest risk of the secret leaking out. I had to wait till the two girls adapted themselves to their new mode of life and until they could play the role of a distinguished lady and her maidservant, before I could execute my plan.

  'Thanks to the untiring efforts of my First Lady, Apricot made unusually quick progress and yesterday I decided to act.'

  The judge picked up some vegetables with his chopsticks.

  'Yesterday, after I left you, Sergeant,' he went on, 'I went directly to their courtyard and told the girls of my suspicions regarding the Temple of Boundless Mercy. I asked Apricot whether she would consent to play her role, adding that since I had an alternative plan that did not involve their co-operation she was completely free to refuse. Apricot, however, agreed immediately. She indignantly said she would never forgive herself if she let this chance pass to save other women from the lusts of those depraved monks.

  'Then I told them to put on the best dresses my wife had given them, and conceal these by wrapping themselves in the long hooded cloak of Buddhist nuns. They were to leave the tribunal secretly by the back-door and rent two of the best palankeens in the market-place. When they arrived at the temple, Apricot was to tell the abbot that she was the concubine of an exalted personage in the capital, so exalted indeed that his name could not be disclosed; that his First Lady was exceedingly jealous of her, and that she feared further that her master's feelings for her were cooling. Threatened with being expelled from that mansion, she had come to the Temple of Boundless Mercy as a last resort. Her lord was childless and if she could present him with a son, her position would be safe.'

  Here Judge Dee paused for a moment. His assistants had hardly touched their food.

  'Now this was a plausible story,' the judge went on.' but since I knew the abbot to be an extremely shrewd man, I still feared that he would refuse her because Apricot would not give him her real name and more personal details. So I instructed her to appeal to both his greed and his base lusts. She was to offer him the bar of gold and show him her beauty, giving him to understand by the means well known to every woman that she thought him a handsome man.

  'Finally I told Apricot what to do during her vigil. I did not rule out the possibility that after all everything rested on the miraculous powers of the statue of the goddess, especially since I had been greatly impressed by Tao Gan's failure to locate a secret entrance to the pavilion.'

  Tao Gan looked embarrassed. He hastily buried his face in his bowl of gruel. Judge Dee smiled indulgently and continued:

  'So I told Apricot that should a real saint appear before her in mid-air, she was to prostrate herself on the floor and humbly tell the complete truth, stating that I, the magistrate, bore full responsibility for her being there under false pretences. If, however, a common mortal should enter her room, she was to try to find out by what means he had effected his entrance- thereafter she was to act as circumstances dictated. But I gave her a small box of red lip salve and instructed her to mark the head of the man who embraced her.

  'At the end of the fourth nightwatch Blue Jade would secretly slip out of the guest quarters, and knock twice on the door of Apricot's pavilion. If she was answered by four knocks she would know that my suspicions had been groundless, three knocks meant that there had been foul play.

  'The rest you know.'

  Ma Joong and Tao Gan clapped their hands excitedly, but the Sergeant was looking worried.

  After some hesitation, Sergeant Hoong said:

  'The other day, when Your Honour gave me what I then thought to be the final statement on the problem of the Temple of Boundless Mercy, Your Honour made a remark that still greatly worries me. Namely that even if convincing evidence against the monks could be found, and their confessions obtained, the Buddhist church would intervene and protect them, and have them set free long before the case would have been closed. How can this problem be solved?'

  Judge Dee knotted his heavy eyebrows, and pensively tugged his beard.

  Just at that moment the clatter of hooves was heard outside in the courtyard. Chiao Tai came rushing into the refectory.

  He quickly looked about and seeing the group he came running to their table, his brow covered with sweat.

  'Your Honour,' he panted excitedly, 'I only found four foot soldiers in the garrison headquarters! The rest of the garrison left yesterday for Chin-hwa on emergency orders of His Excellency the Governor. When I passed the stockade on the way back here, I saw a furious crowd of several hundred people ramming the palissade. The constables had fled inside the tribunal!'

  'This is a most unfortunate coincidence!' exclaimed Judge Dee. 'Let us hasten back to the city!'

  He hurriedly explained the situation to the general and put him in charge of concluding affairs in the temple, assisted by the master of the Guild of Goldsmiths. Judge Dee asked the retired Judge Wan and the master of the Carpenters' Guild to accompany him.

  Judge Dee ascended the general's military palankeen with Sergeant Hoong. The old judge and the guildmaster disappeared into theirs while Ma Joong and Chiao Tai leaped on their horses. They raced back to the city as fast as the bearers could go.

  The main street was teeming with an excited crowd, which broke out in wild cheers as they saw Judge Dee in the open palankeen. On all sides people shouted 'Long live our Magistrate!' 'Thousand years to His Excellency Judge Dee!'

  As they approached the tribunal, however, they found fewer people about and when they rounded the north-east corner of the compound an ominous silence hung over the deserted streets.

  The palissade had been broken down in several places. Inside were the mutilated remains of the twenty criminals, stoned and trampled to a horrible death by the maddened crowd.

  Nineteenth Chapter:

  JUDGE DEE DRAWS UP A STERN WARNING TO ALL CITIZENS; HE GOES TO VISIT THE TEMPLE OF TRANSCENDENTAL WISDOM

  Judge Dee did not descend from his palankeen. One glance was sufficient to indicate that nothing could be done. A mass of mangled bodies and torn limbs covered with blood and mud made it unnecessary to look for any signs of life. Judge Dee ordered the palankeen bearers to proceed to the main gate of the tribunal.

  The guards opened the double gate and the palankeens of Judge Dee and his companions disappeared into the main courtyard.

  Eight frightened constables emerged and dropped to their knees by the side of Judge Dee's palankeen knocking their heads on the flagstones. One of them began to recite an elaborate apology, but the judge cut the explanation short.

  'You need not apologise,' he said, 'the eight of you could never have held the crowd back. That was the task of the mounted soldiers whom I called but who failed to come.'

  Judge Dee and his two lieutenants, the retired Judge Wan and Guildmaster Ling descended from their palankeens, and proceeded to Judge Dee's private office. On the desk lay a pile of documents that had arrived during his absence.

  Judge Dee picked up a large envelope bearing the seal of the Governor of Kiangsu Province.

  'This,' he said to Judge Wan, 'will be the official communication regarding the calling up of our garrison. I beg you to verify this!'

  Judge Wan broke the seal and after a glance at the contents he nodded and handed it back to Judge Dee.

  'This letter,' Judge Dee observed,
'must have arrived yesterday evening after I had left the tribunal on an urgent, secret investigation. I passed the night in a small hostel called "The Eight Immortals" in the northern quarter of this city.

  'I came back to the tribunal before dawn but had to leave immediately for the Temple of Boundless Mercy. I barely had time to change my clothes and did not even enter this office.

  'I would appreciate if, as a matter of form, you and Master Ling would interrogate the servants of my mansion, the manager of the Eight Immortals hostel, and the soldier who brought the governor's message. I want to include your testimony in my report on this case, lest it be said that the death of those unfortunate criminals was caused by negligence on my part.'

  Judge Wan nodded and replied:

  'Recently I received a letter from an old friend of mine in the capital from which I understand that the Buddhist church has become quite influential in Government circles. I am sure that the high dignitaries of the church will study this report on the Temple of Boundless Mercy as sedulously as if it were their favourite sutra. If they can find a flaw they will certainly pounce on it and try to discredit you with the government.'

  'The exposure of those villainous monks,' the guildmaster said, 'has brought joy and relief to all of us here in Poo-yang and I can assure Your Honour that the people are full of gratitude. I regret all the more that the crowd, in their indignation, behaved in such a lawless manner. I apologise humbly for the behaviour of my fellow citizens!'

  Judge Dee thanked them. The two witnesses took their leave to verify matters as the judge had requested.

  Judge Dee immediately took up his writing brush and drafted a stern warning addressed to the people of Poo-yang. He sharply denounced the massacre of the monks, stressing that the punishment of criminals is the exclusive right and duty of the State. He added that any person engaging in further acts of violence would be executed on the spot.

  Since all the scribes and clerks were still in the temple, Judge Dee ordered Tao Gan to prepare five copies in large characters. He himself wrote out five others in his bold calligraphy. Having impressed on these proclamations the large red seal of the tribunal, the judge told Sergeant Hoong to have the placards posted on the gate of the tribunal and other central points in the town. He also ordered the sergeant to have the remains of the twenty monks placed in baskets for a later cremation.