City of Ink

by Elsa Hart

  The messenger dipped his head deferentially. Li Du entered his office, walked quickly to his desk, took out a piece of paper, and hastily ground just enough ink to effect what he intended. He composed a short message, then sealed and addressed it. He hurried across the courtyard to where the messenger was waiting on the veranda outside the clerks’ office, and explained that the letter should be directed to the Office of Temple Histories, within the palace. The messenger slipped it into his bag, bowed, and departed.

  Mi, who had gone inside with the day’s missives, emerged once again onto the veranda. “For you,” he said, holding a single, hefty document out to Li Du. “The doctor’s report on the autopsy.”

  The paper exuded a gentle fragrance of angelica root. Li Du took it to his office, sat down, and put on his spectacles. The report began with the usual formalities, making it clear that the doctor undertook to be accurate and truthful, understanding that his work would be judged not only according to the laws and statutes of the city, but also those of the gods and spirits in the netherworld, who would not tolerate wrongdoing.

  The second section of the report detailed the wounds received by Madam Hong. As the doctor had suspected during his initial evaluation at the scene of the crime, Madam Hong’s injuries had been sustained during a short, violent struggle with an assailant. Cuts on her arms indicated that she had tried to protect herself before receiving the mortal blow, a stab wound to the heart. This wound, in addition to the others, had been administered by the blade of a small, well-sharpened knife, almost certainly the one found at the door of the suspect, Hong Wenbin. A bruise on Madam Hong’s hip suggested that she had struck the corner of the desk in her efforts to elude her attacker, which also accounted for the objects—a small bottle, in addition to various papers—that had fallen from its surface to the floor. A more general analysis yielded no relevant information except that Madam Hong had been a strong, healthy woman at the time of her death. She had not, it was briefly noted, been with child.

  Li Du turned to the analysis of Pan’s body. In the case of the second victim, the doctor had written, certain indications merit further consideration. As he read, Li Du began unconsciously to lean closer to the page, as if his growing sense of surprise and confusion could be addressed by proximity to the words. When he was finished, Li Du remained for a moment as he was, staring down at the doctor’s measured, slightly ponderous handwriting. Then he closed his eyes, nodded his head forward, and rested his temples on his fingertips. After a short while, he opened his eyes. He removed his spectacles, located his hat, and pulled it, still damp, onto his head. Holding the report, he walked the short distance along the veranda to the chief inspector’s office.

  Sun was affixing a seal to a letter when Li Du entered. “Yes?” he asked. “What is it? What do you have there?”

  “This is the doctor’s report,” said Li Du. “I’ll explain it to you on the way.”

  “On the way where?”

  “To the offices of the Gendarmerie.”

  Chapter 28

  Unlike the Banners, a Manchu institution incorporated into a Chinese city, or the city magistrates, a Chinese institution incorporated into Manchu rule, the Gendarmerie was an agency created solely for the purposes of maintaining order in the capital. As such, they were uniquely suited to the task. Consisting of some twenty thousand soldiers and a civilian staff, the Gendarmerie had assumed primary responsibility for everything from guarding the gates of the outer wall to clearing the city streets after heavy snowfalls.

  Upon arriving at the institution’s Inner City headquarters, Sun and Li Du presented their credentials to the crisply attired guards who asked for them. A short while later, they were ensconced in a small, well-appointed office that adjoined the institution’s prison complex, where thieves and brawlers awaited punishments that generally ranged in severity from five strokes with a light bamboo stick to a period of penal servitude in a distant region. Harsher sentences of permanent exile or execution were reserved for more serious crimes, which were rare on the closely watched streets of the capital.

  It was not long before a Gendarmerie official entered the room, looking as if he had stepped out of a painting commissioned to show the capital at its best. His robes bore no trace of a wrinkle or a spatter of mud, and his shaved forehead was so smooth that it would be easy to assume natural baldness, were it not for the thick ebony braid down his back. He moved with the easy grace of an athlete, and regarded them with the focused attention of an intellectual.

  “I am Chief Inspector Sun, from the North Borough,” said Sun, who appeared slightly dazzled. “This is my assistant, Li Du.”

  “Thank you, yes. I have been informed of your names. I am He Jingxiu.” The perfunctory introduction, and the tone in which it was uttered, said clearly that He Jingxiu was not a man with time to waste on pleasantries, and that to require them of him would be to frustrate the course of justice. He turned to indicate a man who had just been escorted into the room by two guards. “This is Zou Anlin, formerly an overseer at the Black Tile Factory. I understand you wish to question him.”

  Li Du regarded the prisoner. Zou Anlin did not appear to have suffered excessively from his confinement. His hands and hair were clean of the clay dust that had coated them when Li Du had last seen him. His pallor was healthy, his expression almost complacent, though Li Du did not fail to observe Zou’s start of unease when he recognized them.

  He Jingxiu consulted a document. “I see that his crime was mitigated by the return of the stolen property. He has been sentenced to five strokes of the heavy cane. Have you come with an additional complaint?”

  “It is possible,” said Sun, with a glance at Li Du. “As I’m sure you know, this man was caught stealing a bag of silver from the scene of another, far more heinous crime.”

  “The murders at the Black Tile Factory,” said He Jingxiu. “I understand the culprit died while in the custody of your borough magistrate,” he added, censure evident in his voice.

  Sun hesitated. A brief internal debate played out across his features before he indicated Li Du with a short nod. “In the course of compiling the official report,” he explained, “my assistant has encountered several small details that require clarification. If it is acceptable, I will allow him to pose the questions.”

  Making no objection, He Jingxiu turned an inquiring look to Li Du, who cleared his throat quietly before addressing Zou. “According to your confession, you entered the office at the Black Tile Factory on the morning after the murders. Upon discovering the bodies, you intended to report the crime, until you saw the silver. You decided to take it for yourself, and remain silent. Is that still your story?”

  Zou looked down, his shoulders curved inward in apparent shame. “It is, sir, and I accept my punishment with gratitude. I am not a thief at heart, sir. I regret what I did.” Li Du saw Zou’s eyes lift and dart across the faces in the room, trying to assess the effect of his words.

  “The murders took place during the night,” Li Du went on. “As you were the last to leave the kilns in the evening, and the first to arrive the next morning, you would have been a suspect, had you not been able to provide an alibi for the hours between sunset and sunrise.”

  Zou began to nod vehemently. “I didn’t leave my room at the Sichuan lodge. Not once.”

  “That is true,” Li Du affirmed. “It was verified by the man who occupies the cot beside yours.” He turned to address the others. “The man is elderly, and suffers from rheumatism. He says he was awake all that night, and that Zou remained asleep in his bed.” Li Du turned back to Zou. “When was the last time you saw Pan Yongfa?”

  “When I saw his body there in the office, sir.”

  “And when was the last time you saw him alive?”

  Zou’s reply did not come at once. “I saw him the day before,” he said finally. “But everyone at the factory did.”

  “Perhaps,” said Li Du. “But you were the only one who spoke with him alone in the office tha
t afternoon. According to the kiln manager, Hu Gongshan, Pan asked for refreshments. It was you who served them to him. You brought him a small bottle filled with wine, and a dish of roasted soybeans. Is that correct?”

  Zou’s lips were compressed in a tight line. He barely opened them to reply. “Yes.”

  “Did you and Pan converse during that time?”

  “No,” Zou burst out. “He was an official. I would not have presumed to address him. I was only bringing him what he wanted. I gave him the food, and I left.”

  “And you didn’t know he intended to return to the factory that evening?”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “Why did you enter the office on the following morning?”

  Zou looked confused. “I—I was the first one to the factory.”

  “But you had no business in the office,” said Li Du. “You made a point of that when the chief inspector first interviewed you. At that time, you insisted you hadn’t gone into the office at all. Of course, that was before you were caught with the silver, and had to change your story.” As he spoke, Li Du withdrew the doctor’s report from his bag, and put on his spectacles.

  “What document is that?” The question came from He Jingxiu.

  “These are the findings of Doctor Wan, who, upon examining the body of Pan Yongfa, noticed a curious discrepancy. His report says that the wound to Pan’s throat did not bleed as profusely as the doctor would have expected.”

  “Which suggests that the victim was already dead when the wound was inflicted,” said He Jingxiu, his eyes now fixed on Li Du with increasing interest.

  “It is a possibility,” said Li Du. “But the doctor could find no evidence of another mortal injury to Pan Yongfa, or any sign that he had ingested poison.”

  “In that case,” said He Jingxiu, “another doctor should be consulted, in case there is evidence of a poison unknown to Doctor Wan.”

  “That may not be necessary,” said Chief Inspector Sun, motioning for Li Du to continue, his expansive face suffused with pride in his assistant.

  “Doctor Wan may not have come to a conclusion,” Li Du went on, “but he did provide a thorough account of what he observed. He mentions a slight blue cast of the lips and nailbed, present on Pan’s body but not on Madam Hong’s. When I read his description, I was reminded of an incident reported in the City Gazette last winter. Two men, old friends, had died within hours of one another, both seemingly without explicable cause. The coroners there, too, noted a blue tinge to the lips and nails, but it was not until the testimony of a third friend that their deaths were explained. The men had been trying to compound their own medicine—a tincture of aconite—and had dramatically misunderstood the dosage. When mixed correctly, it can be very effective, but in quantities exceeding a drop or two, quite deadly.” Li Du paused. “Aconite is used to treat—”

  “Rheumatism,” Sun declared, unable to contain himself. “The very same malady that afflicts the bunkmate of Zou Anlin.”

  “I suggest,” said Li Du, “that if we were to ask the elderly man why his rheumatism kept him awake all that night, he would tell us that he had misplaced the bottle of aconite tincture that he usually kept to relieve his pain. But he would be wrong. He did not misplace the bottle. It was taken from the room by someone who knew that in a high dose, it could be deadly.”

  Zou’s pinched face swiveled on his thin neck as he directed a panicked, beseeching look at the faces around him. “I don’t know what any of this is about,” he said, his voice almost a moan. “I’m only a poor laborer. I saw the silver, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to take it for myself. But I never harmed anyone. They were dead when I found them.”

  Li Du spoke calmly and clearly. “Your crime was not an impulsive action, but a careful plan. You knew Pan had the silver with him that day. You had reason to believe he intended to return with it to the factory that night. You wanted it, but you didn’t want to risk an attempt to overpower a younger, stronger man. So you used the time between Pan’s visit to the kilns that afternoon and his return that night. You hurried the short distance to the Sichuan lodge, stole the bottle of aconite, and took it with you to the factory. Just before you left that evening, you refilled the bottle of wine you had served to Pan earlier in the day. This time, you added the poison. You hoped Pan would recognize the bottle, help himself to its contents, and succumb, leaving the silver for you to take on the following morning. What you did not anticipate was the presence of Madam Hong, and of another killer at the factory that night.”

  This time, Zou did not protest, but turned on Li Du a look of such burning resentment that the skin around his eyes seemed to wrinkle and retreat from their heat. The look of rage turned quickly to one of fear when he took in the implacable faces of the Gendarmerie guards.

  He Jingxiu gave a short nod and turned to Chief Inspector Sun. “I had not realized you employed such competent assistants in the boroughs,” he said. “It seems the charge against this man must be amended from theft to murder.”

  * * *

  Sun and Li Du stood outside the gates of the Gendarmerie while a sedan chair was summoned to return the chief inspector to the North Borough Office. “I’ll have to start paying more attention to the City Gazette,” said Sun. “And I’ll speak to Doctor Wan about improving his knowledge of poisons, not that I expect to encounter such an unlikely confluence of crimes again. Did you put all that together simply from seeing the doctor’s report?”

  “There were other signs,” said Li Du. Now that the confrontation was over, he felt an uneasy awareness of having acted outside the constraints he usually placed on himself. The acute, curious glances of the Gendarmerie officials were unsettling. They had noticed him, and would remember him.

  “What signs?” asked Sun.

  “The broken wine bottle,” Li Du replied. “And the rat.”

  “The rat?” Sun was momentarily perplexed. “Ah yes, the rat,” he said, understanding. “The one the doctor found dead in the corner of the room. You think it drank the poisoned wine that spilled on the floor when the bottle fell?”

  Li Du nodded. “The doctor’s report suggested an interpretation. I considered it, and the pieces simply fell into place.”

  Sun’s brow furrowed. “The question is what to do now. Though this addition to our knowledge of what occurred that night is undeniably significant, it does not suggest that Hong was innocent.”

  Li Du had anticipated this. “You mean that Hong might have stumbled onto the scene and attacked them just as before.”

  “Exactly,” said Sun. “He wouldn’t have known Pan was dead. He might have thought him asleep, cut his throat, and attacked Madam Hong. From Magistrate Yin’s perspective, this won’t change anything.”

  “I suppose not,” said Li Du. “Though I would like to know why Madam Hong would remain in a room with a dead man.”

  “It is a good question,” Sun said, considering it. “But the magistrate won’t reopen the case just to answer it. He has his eye on a promotion to the Ministry of Punishments.”

  “And no one on the verge of a promotion wants complications,” said Li Du. He saw the look of surprise on Sun’s face, and realized he had spoken aloud what the chief inspector had tactfully left unsaid. He was about to offer an apology when he saw that Sun’s face had tensed in a clear effort to gather his thoughts in preparation for speech. Li Du waited in silence.

  Sun spoke at last. “I hope you do not misunderstand,” he said. “I, too, wish to know the truth.” He hesitated. “This city has its own rules,” he went on slowly. “Not the rules laid out in the statutes, you understand, but its own rules. Only those who understand them best have the power to manipulate them, but to aspire to be such a man is dangerous. I myself have never desired it. My advice to you, as your employer and your friend, is to continue writing the report you have been given permission to write. You have shown an aptitude for uncovering truth. Use it, and hope, as I do, that it leads to further revelations. But do not go too
far, because if you do, I am not certain I will be able to save you.”

  Chapter 29

  In a city that preferred its citizens to have officially sanctioned reasons to be wherever they were, there were limited places to linger while waiting to meet a friend. Parks were, for the most part, accessible only by imperial invitation. Libraries were privately owned. There were no public squares. The elephant stables, located in the Inner City, were an exception to this rule, and had become a favorite destination for residents and travelers alike.

  The elephants, gifts to the Emperor of China from lands to the south, were housed in six buildings, which were divided into eight stalls, separated by brick walls. Li Du entered through the open ironbound door into a cavernous space lit by skylights. One of the elephant keepers bowed to him, then returned to the task of shoveling manure into buckets, to be sold at markets as a luxury hair treatment to improve shine and luster.

  It was long past the tentative time they had set to meet, and as Li Du moved from one building to the next, he began to think Hamza must have returned to Water Moon Temple. Then he spotted the storyteller standing very still in front of one of the stalls. Hamza’s head was tilted back as he stared, transfixed, at an elephant. The elephant, busy with its own contemplations, was swishing its trunk across the floor of its enclosure, sweeping hay from side to side. As Li Du greeted Hamza, it raised its head, flapped its papery ears, and granted them a moment of its attention with one bright eye.