The Willow Pattern: A Judge Dee Mystery (Judge Dee Mystery Series)

by Robert Van Gulik

  He winced as Ma Joong pasted an oil plaster on the wound in his back. The iron rings of the coat of mail had of course prevented the arrow from entering his body, but they had penetrated deep into the flesh.

  ‘Lucky it was only an ordinary wooden arrow,’ Ma Joong remarked. ‘If it had been one of those new-type iron-shafted ones, its sheer force would’ve pushed in your carcass. Told Supply a hundred times that now that those new crossbows are used the coats of mail should have iron breast and back-plates. But they say you can’t sacrifice mobility to safety, the stubborn bastards!’

  All dressed up again, they ate a quick noonmeal with the lieutenant. Then they left the inn, and went back into the slums. Apparently the word had got round that there had been trouble. Here and there people had opened their windows, and were anxiously looking up and down the sordid street. By dint of much asking, they finally found their way to a large house in a narrow but fairly clean alley. The rickety front door was standing ajar.

  The front hall was completely bare, and the plaster hung down in large patches. But the floor had been swept clean of rubbish and dust. They surveyed the door openings of the small rooms on the left and right. The doors had apparently been taken down long ago to serve as firewood.

  ‘No one about!’ Chiao Tai muttered.

  ‘Hush!’ Ma Joong had raised his hand. In the rear of the compound someone was playing a flute.

  They crossed the hall and threw the double doors at the end wide open. They gave access to a spacious but ill-kept garden. Peach and orange trees stood among the tall grass. An open corridor ran all along on the right and the left, leading to a higher building in the back. This was indeed the square compound they had seen from the top of the pagoda. Now they could hear the flute better. It was played by an expert, a lively tune with a marked rhythm and an attractive lilt.

  ‘Found them!’ Chiao Tai said. He pointed up at the small brown monkey that was hanging by its tail from a branch overhead, keenly observing them with its round brown eyes. Chiao Tai made a purring sound, trying to coax it down. Ma Joong had run straight to the corridor on the left. The red lacquer was peeling off the low balustrades. Evidently the place had stood empty for a long time.

  When Chiao Tai had overtaken him, he said dryly:

  ‘I hope that wench of yours is at home. I am prepared to keep her father and sister busy, so that you can cuddle her in a corner. You deserve it. For once!’

  Ma Joong grinned broadly. Coming from his taciturn blood brother, this was high praise indeed.

  Arrived at the high building, they halted in their steps. Through the arched door opening a charming scene met their eyes. Yuan was playing a long flute, on a tabouret in the centre of a spacious, high-ceilinged hall, empty but for a rustic wooden bench and a bamboo tea table in the corner. Coral, dressed in a long, flowing robe, was dancing on the tips of her diminutive embroidered shoes, gracefully waving her long sleeves. In the wall behind her was a moon door that gave onto an attractive miniature garden, where slender bamboos grew among a few quaintly shaped rocks. After the brutal violence of the encounter they had behind them, this peaceful scene seemed out of another world. They watched it, spellbound.

  Finally Ma Joong stepped inside and cleared his throat. Yuan took the flute from his lips. He looked his two visitors up and down with raised eyebrows. Then he rose and came to meet them. Making a slight bow, he asked in his deep voice:

  ‘What gives us the honour of this unexpected visit?’

  ‘Is your daughter Bluewhite here?’ Ma Joong asked quickly.

  Yuan bestowed a thoughtful glance on him.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘she went out half an hour ago. Take a seat.’ He pointed at the bench and said over his shoulder to his daughter: ‘Fetch the tea-basket from the side room, Coral.’

  Ma Joong was at a loss how to phrase their message. He tugged at his moustache, decided that it would be rude to come to the point abruptly, and temporized by remarking casually:

  ‘We met a bunch of scavengers who seemed out for trouble, you know. Did you hear something about an incident?’

  ‘No. The fellows are becoming a real nuisance, though. They have organized a kind of brotherhood, and force people to buy their faked amulets, pretending that they will make the wearer invulnerable. They add a lot of nonsense about the plague being a sure sign that Heaven has withdrawn its mandate from the Emperor, and that a new era is about to begin.’ He shrugged. ‘What if it were? There’ll always be the rulers and the ruled, and the ruled will always come off losers!’

  ‘Amen,’ said Chiao Tai. Seeing Ma Joong’s embarrassed look, he decided to take the initiative himself and resumed: ‘We have come here with a message from our boss, the Lord Chief Justice. He wants to see you at once, Mr Yuan. And also your daughter Coral.’

  ‘He does, does he?’ Yuan said slowly. Coral came back, a tea-basket in her hand. She carried the small tea table over to them and poured two cups. Ma Joong thought she was a sweet-looking girl; but she lacked the proud, clean-cut beauty of her sister.

  ‘These two gentlemen want to escort us to the Governor’s palace,’ her father told her.

  In a frightened gesture, she covered her mouth with her sleeve.

  ‘Our boss just wants to ask you a few questions,’ Ma Joong told them hurriedly.

  ‘What about the monkey?’ Coral asked her father.

  ‘He won’t run away,’ Yuan reassured her. ‘He hasn’t explored the neighbourhood yet, and he won’t dare to leave this garden. Bluewhite will look after him when she comes back. Let’s go !’

  While they were walking down the corridor, Yuan made a sweeping gesture and said:

  ‘You can see that this was quite a nice residence, formerly. But the owner moved uptown, many years ago. Some squatters settled down here, but they left because the house was haunted, they said.’ He shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Never met a ghost here myself yet. The hall is fine for Coral’s dancing, and her sister practises sword fighting in the garden.’

  When they were stepping out into the street, a military police patrol passed by, armed to the teeth. The rounding up of the scavengers had begun.

  XVI

  Judge Dee was sitting at his desk, signing the papers Tao Gan was handing him one by one. Seeing Ma Joong and Chiao Tai enter, the judge laid down his writing-brush and said:

  ‘Hoo let himself be arrested quietly, this morning. It’s long past noon. Did you manage to find that puppeteer?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Ma Joong replied. ‘He and his daughter Coral are waiting outside, in the ante-room. Her sister had gone out and, since you said you didn’t need her, we didn’t wait for her to come back. On our way out there, sir, we discovered that there’s trouble brewing among the scavengers in that quarter. The bastards are organizing a kind of semi-religious brotherhood,’ selling charms and spreading all kinds of seditious rumours.’

  The judge hit his fist on the table.

  ‘It only needed that!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘Seditious religious sects!’ He checked himself and resumed quietly: ‘We must take adequate measures at once. In a time like this, those sects spread like wildfire. Open rebellion often starts that way.’

  ‘We had something of a scuffle with them out there, sir,’ Chiao Tai added. ‘When we discovered that they were carrying concealed weapons, we went to the local military post, and told them to alarm the other posts in that neighbourhood. They are rounding up the scoundrels now. Presently Brother Ma and I will go to Military Police Headquarters and question the prisoners.’

  ‘Doctor Lew was there too, sir,’ Ma Joong resumed. ‘He seemed to be on quite good terms with those hoodlums. But he disappeared when the trouble started. So I don’t know for sure whether he is hand in glove with them.’

  ‘Verify that when you are interrogating the prisoners,’ Judge Dee told him. ‘Let me have your report as soon as you are through over there. Now, fetch Yuan and his daughter.’

  On a sign from the judge Chiao Tai and Tao Gan pulled u
p two stools and sat down by the side of his desk.

  ‘Mr Yuan and his daughter, sir,’ Ma Joong announced.

  Yuan knelt, and Coral followed his example.

  ‘You may rise!’ the judge told them. Yuan scrambled up and stood there with an impassive face, his hands by his sides. He studied the judge with wary eyes. Coral hung her head, her slender hands played nervously with the ends of her silk sash. Judge Dee noticed that she wore a small piece of plaster on her right ear.

  ‘Your name is Coral, isn’t it?’ he asked her.

  She nodded silently.

  ‘Usually twins are given similar names. Why didn’t you follow this time-honoured custom, Mr Yuan?’

  ‘Originally my wife called them Sapphire and Coral, my lord. Thirteen years ago, however, a woman called Sapphire disappeared from a brothel in the old city under mysterious circumstances. Since I was afraid that the name would bring bad luck to my child, I changed hers into Bluewhite, which refers to the colour of the stone.’

  ‘I see.’ The judge took the ear-pendant and the red stone from his drawer and laid them on the desk.

  ‘How did you lose these?’ he asked Coral.

  She raised her head. When her eyes fell on the trinkets, her rosy cheeks suddenly turned chalk white.

  ‘All right,’ Judge Dee said curtly. ‘You may wait in the ante-room. Take her there, Tao Gan.’

  While his lieutenant was leading her outside, the judge looked Yuan over, slowly stroking his moustache. At last he asked:

  ‘What was your relation with the bondmaid who was whipped to death by Yee six years ago?’

  ‘She was my wife,’ Yuan replied quietly.

  ‘How did she become a bondmaid?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t pay Mr Hoo the money I owed him.’

  Judge Dee raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Hoo, you say?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. Mr Hoo employed my late father as his steward. The salary was low, our family large. Bitter poverty made my father steal money from a goldsmith. Mr Hoo hushed it up and refunded the stolen money to its rightful owner. In return for this favour, my father agreed to pay him back double the amount, in monthly instalments. My father died after he had paid the first instalment, so the debt devolved on me. Owing to the expenses of my father’s burial, I could not pay on time, and Mr Hoo ruled that my wife would serve him as bondmaid, her wages being deducted from the debt. Hoo treated her well, on the whole. Once, however, Yee saw her when he visited Hoo, and he asked Hoo to transfer the bond to him. That is how my wife then became Yee’s bondmaid.’

  ‘Why didn’t you protest?’ the judge asked sharply. ‘The transfer of bonds is illegal.’

  ‘How could I have done that, sir?’ Yuan asked, astonished. ‘Mr Hoo was our master and our benefactor. Hadn’t he saved my late father’s reputation by making good the theft?’

  ‘Why then didn’t you denounce Yee after he had murdered your wife in that abominable manner?’

  ‘I, a steward’s son, denounce Marquis Yee, the lord of the “old world"?’ Yuan scoffed. ‘High up here in your palace, my lord, you know very little indeed about the kind of justice meted out by the minions of the law to us, the poor.’

  ‘I try to keep myself informed,’ the judge said dryly. ‘Abuses are punished severely, but we cannot prosecute if the people don’t denounce offenders. A gong hangs in the gatehouse of the High Court, and at the gate of every tribunal in the empire, and every citizen has the right to beat that gong to announce that he wants to report an injustice, That is not only his privilege, but also his civic duty. There is impartial justice in the empire, Mr Yuan. Has been for the last two thousand years, if you except periods of national crisis and upheaval.’

  ‘Living as I do in the slums of the old city, that fact must have escaped my attention,’ the puppeteer said dully.

  ‘If you had gone to my predecessor, six years ago, you would have noticed it all right,’ Judge Dee said unperturbed. ‘Then there would have been no need to arrange an elaborate kind of marionette-play, involving a degrading experience for your young daughter, and exposing her to grave risks.’

  As Yuan remained silent, the judge went on:

  ‘Being a puppeteer, you imagined that human beings can be manipulated in the same way as your marionettes. You knew Hoo’s violent temper and his crude sensual appetites, as well as Yee’s perverted lusts. You thought that, through your daughter, you could stir up trouble between those two, and that Hoo would kill Yee, or Yee Hoo. In either case your wife would have been avenged, for the murderer would have been executed. For achieving that purpose you did not shrink from making your daughter, a sweet young girl, expose herself naked to two evil lechers, apart from the risk that one of them would simply violate her on the spot.’

  ‘Coral did not mind taking risks, sir. She was very fond of her mother, and she would do anything to avenge her. She fully approved my plan, for it meant avenging her mother without me or she actually raising our hand against our former masters. And as regards dancing in the nude, that also is a fine art. It does not degrade the serious performer. Only the wrong kind of spectator.’

  ‘Suppose one of those lechers had tried to overpower her up there in the gallery?’

  ‘The keeper of the Tavern of the Five Blessings always went with her, my lord. He is my best friend, and he can play the drum very well.’

  ‘I saw him!’ Ma Joong exclaimed angrily. ‘An undersized hunchback! And you entrusted him with…’

  ‘That hunchback is the best knife-thrower in the city, Mr Ma,’ Yuan interrupted him with quiet dignity. ‘And a man without fear. Further, Yee was firmly convinced that Coral was a professional courtesan and the hunchback her tout. He bargained several times with him, as a matter of fact, about buying Coral. Yee thought she would be his to do what he liked with as soon as the price was agreed upon.’

  ‘Did your other daughter know about your scheme?’ Judge Dee asked.

  ‘Heaven forbid, sir!’ Yuan exclaimed aghast. ‘I had always told her that her mother met with an accident while working for Yee, that she fell into a deep well. If Bluewhite had known the truth, she would have gone to Yee at once and strangled him with her own hands! She is a good straightforward girl, sir, but she has a violent temper and she is awfully strong-minded. If she has set her mind to do something, even I, her father, can’t keep her back. Coral is quite different, she is a meek and docile girl, her main interest is in singing and dancing.’ He shook his head resignedly, and went on: ‘All went well until last night. Coral went there without telling me, and all alone. She…’

  ‘I prefer to hear the rest from her own mouth,’ the judge interrupted him. ‘Bring her in again, Tao Gan!’

  When she was standing before him again, Judge Dee said to her:

  ‘Your father has just told me about the plan to avenge your mother, Miss Yuan. Now I want to hear from you exactly what happened last night.’

  She gave the judge a timid look and began in a soft voice:

  ‘Yesterday, at noon, I went to the market with my twin sister, my lord. We wanted to see if we could find some vegetables. All of a sudden, someone tugged at my sleeve from behind. It was Mr Yee. I was in a dead fright, but he smiled at me and said in a pleasant voice: ‘‘HOW are you, Coral? And this is your twin sister Bluewhite, isn’t it? The famous girl-acrobat. I knew your father well, you know, when he was serving in the house of my good friend Hoo.” I couldn’t imagine how he could have discovered my identity, and I was at a loss what to say. I just dropped a low curtsy, and so did my sister. Then, after some desultory conversation, Yee said that he wanted to talk to me alone for a moment, about an old family affair. As soon as my sister had walked on to have a look at the stalls, Yee’s manner changed. He called me awful names and said that one of his retainers had seen me when going to his place. The man had recognized me as Yuan’s daughter, and informed Yee. “Your father always was a tricky bastard,” he hissed. Then he went on to tell me that he would inform Mr Hoo, and that the
y would kidnap my father and torture him to death. I begged him to forgive us. At last he said: “All right. I promise that I shall leave your father in peace, On condition that you dance once more for me. Come tonight, and alone, mind you".’

  A fiery blush had coloured her cheeks. Looking up at the judge, she said meekly:

  ‘I knew full well that Yee’s order meant more than dancing, sir. But I would gladly have surrendered to him, for it meant my father’s life. So I promised I would come. I told my sister a fancy story. In the evening I said to my father that I was going out to meet a girl friend. I arrived in the Yee mansion at the appointed time. I had taken my guitar with me, because I hoped I would be able to gain time by playing some music for him. He let me inside himself. He was in a pleasant mood again, and chatted with me about all kinds of trifles when he was taking me up to the dressing-room of the gallery. I proposed to play and sing for him first, but he would have none of that. He said with a smile that I needn’t be afraid, he just wanted to see me dance for the last time, that was all.

  ‘I undressed and stepped out into the gallery. Yee was sitting at the table, in his armchair. I saw that he had moved the couch from the wall to the centre of the portico. Evidently he intended to tease Hoo again by making me dance on that couch, so that Hoo could see me from his balcony. And indeed Yee pointed at the couch.

  ‘I stepped onto it, but didn’t know how to begin, for there was no drum to dance to. Yee tasted from the ginger on the table, he let me stand there for a long time, horribly embarrassed. Suddenly he said with a smile: “Come here and have some ginger too. It’s quite good."

  ‘As soon as I had come up to the table he suddenly jumped up. He grabbed me by my hair with his left hand, so roughly that one of my ear-pendants was torn off. Taking the whip he had hidden behind him in the chair, he called me the vilest words from the gutter, shouting that he would kill me in exactly the same manner as he had killed my mother, and on the selfsame couch. He let go of my hair, and lashed me with the whip across my breast. I stumbled back and sank down on the couch, covering my face with my hands, in abject fear. Suddenly Yee’s raving broke off. Looking through my fingers I saw that Yee had half turned to the windows of the portico. A huge, dark shadow had appeared on the bamboo curtain.