"Your arrival here placed me in a difficult position. I would have liked to co-operate with you but could not reveal my identity, for then it would of course have been your duty to arrest me at once and forward me to the capital. But I did what I could in an indirect way. I approached your two assistants and took them to the floating brothels in order to interest them in Kim Sang and the Korean girl, whom I suspected. In that I succeeded fairly well." He gave Chiao Tai a quick glance. The tall fellow hastily buried his face in his teacup. "I also tried to draw their attention to the Buddhist crowd-but in that I was less successful. I suspected that the monks were concerned in the gold smuggle, but couldn't discover any clues. I kept a close watch on the White Cloud Temple; the floating brothels were a useful observation post. I saw the almoner Tzu-hai leave the temple in a stealthy way and followed him, but unfortunately he died before I could interrogate him about what he was going to do in the deserted temple.
"I questioned Kim Sang a bit too closely and he became suspicious of me. That is why he did not oppose my coming along on the boat trip; he thought he might as well kill me too." Turning to Ma Joong, he said, "During the fight on the barge they made the mistake of concentrating on you. They considered me a negligible quantity, and planned to finish me off later at leisure. But I am rather handy with a knife, and stuck it in the back of the man who grabbed you from behind when the fight started."
"That certainly was a timely gesture!" Ma Joong said gratefully. "When I had heard Kim Sang's last words," Wang pursued, "and thus knew that my suspicions about the gold smuggle were correct, I took the dinghy and hurried back at once to get my box which contained amongst other notes those on Hou's trumped-up charge against me and on his market manipulations-before Kim Sang's accomplices would steal them from my room in Yee Pen's house. Since they suspected To Kai, I decided to drop that disguise, and adopted that of an itinerant monk."
"Seeing all the wine we have swilled together," Ma Joong growled, "you could at least have said a few words of explanation before leaving the barge."
"A few words wouldn't have sufficed," Wang replied dryly. To Judge Dee he remarked, "Those two are a useful pair, if somewhat rough-mannered. Are they in your permanent service?"
"They certainly are," the judge replied.
Ma Joong's face lit up. Nudging Chiao Tai, he said, "The marching with frozen toes up and down the northern frontier is off, brother!"
"I chose the disguise of Po Kai," Wang continued, "because I knew that if I posed as a dissolute poet and fervent Buddhist, I would sooner or later come into contact with the same persons my brother had associated with. And as an eccentric drunkard I could roam over the city all times of day and night without arousing suspicion."
"The part you acted was well chosen," Judge Dee said. "I shall now draw up the charge against Hou, and a platoon of the military police shall bring it at once to the capital. Since the murder of a magistrate is a crime against the state, I can bypass the prefect and the governor and address it directly to the president of the Metropolitan Court. Ile'll have Hou arrested at once. Tomorrow I shall hear Koo, Tsao, Hui-pen and the monks involved in the plot, and as soon as possible send the full report on the case to the capital. As a matter of form I shall have to keep you under detention here in the tribunal, sir, pending the official notice that the charges against you have been withdrawn. This will give me the opportunity for profiting by your advice on the financial technicalities of the case, while I also hope to consult you on an eventual simplification of the land taxes in this district. I studied the dossier on that subject and it struck me that the tax burden of the small peasants is unduly heavy."
"I am completely at your service," Wang said. "By the way, how did you identify me? I thought I would have to explain everything to you."
"When I met you in the corridor of your brother's house," Judge Dee replied, "I suspected that you were the murderer, who had disguised himself as his victim's ghost in order to be able to search undisturbed for incriminating material the dead magistrate might have left, So strong was that suspicion that the same night I paid a secret visit to the White Cloud Temple, and had a look at your brother's corpse. But then I saw that the likeness was too perfect ever to be achieved by artificial means. Thus I was convinced I had really seen the dead magistrate's ghost.
"It was only tonight that I hit on the truth. I saw a theatre piece about twin brothers who could be told apart only by the missing forefinger of one of them. That made me doubt the reality of the ghost, for I reflected that if the dead man had had a twin brother, he could easily have posed as his ghost, perhaps by sticking or painting a birthmark on his cheek, if that were necessary. And 'rang told me that the dead man's only living relative was a brother, who had as yet failed to get in touch with the tribunal. `Po Kai' was the only man who could qualify: he had arrived here directly after the magistrate's murder, he was interested in the case, and Miss Tsao and an observant waiter had made me suspect that he was acting a part.
"If, sir, your name hadn't happened to be Wang-together with Li and Djang occurring most frequently among our people-I might have placed you earlier. For at the time when I was leaving the capital, your alleged crimes and your disappearance were creating quite a stir there. As it was, To Kai's' remarkable skill in financial matters finally supplied the clue. It made me think that he might be connected with the Board of Finance, and then it struck me at last that both the murdcred magistrate and the ab sconding secretary of the Board bore the same surname, Wang." The judge heaved a sigh. He pensively caressed his side whiskers for a while, then resumed.
"A more experienced magistrate would doubtless have unraveled this case sooner, sir. But this is my first post, I am only a beginner." Opening his drawer, he took out the notebook and handed it to Wang, saying, "Even now I don't understand the meaning of the notes your brother made here."
Wang slowly leafed through the notebook, and studied the figures. Then he said, "I didn't approve of my brother's slack morals, but it can't be denied that he could be very shrewd when he chose. This is a detailed record of the incoming ships of Koo's firm, with the amounts of harbor ducs, import taxes and the head taxes of the passengers he paid. My brother must have found out that the import taxes were so low that Koo could hardly have imported sufficient cargo to cover his costs, while the head taxes were so high that his ships must have carried an abnormally large quantity of passengers. That excited his suspicion and made him think of smuggling. My brother was lazy by nature, but if he happened to meet with something that tickled his curiosity, he would study it wholeheartedly and shun no labor to find the solution. He was already that way when he was a boy. W'e11, this was the last puzzle my poor brother solved."
"Thank you," Judge Dee said. "That disposes of my last problem. And you also solved for me the problem of the ghostly apparition.
"I knew that if I acted the part of my dead brother's ghost," Wang remarked, "I could make investigations in the tribunal without anybody daring to challenge me if I was discovered. I could go freely in and out there, because shortly before his demise my brother sent me a key to the back door of his residence. Apparently he had a foreboding about his impending death, as proved also by his entrusting the lacquer box to that Korean girl. The investigator surprised me when i was searching my- brother's library, and the old scribe saw me when I was looking for my brother's private papers in this office. You I also met quite by accident when I was examining my brother's luggage. Allow me to off er you my sincere apologies for my rude behavior on that occasion!"
Judge Dee smiled bleakly.
"They are gladly accepted!" he replied. "All the more so since last night in the White Cloud Temple, when you appeared before me the second time in your ghostly disguise, you saved my life. I must say, though, that on that second occasion you did indeed frighten me very much, your hand looked quite transparent, and you seemed to dissolve suddenly into the mist. How did you achieve that macabre effect?"
Wang had been listening to the
judge with mounting astonishment. Now he spoke perplexedly
"You say I appeared before you a second time? You must be mistaken! I never went to the temple as my dead brother's ghost." In the deep silence that followed these words there came from somewhere in the building the faint sound of a door being closed, this time very softly.
POSTSCRIPT
A. feature all old Chinese detective stories had in common was that the role of detective was always played by the magistrate of the district where the crime occurred.
This official was in charge of the entire administration of the district under his jurisdiction, usually comprising one walled city and the countryside around it for fifty miles or so. The magistrate's duties were manifold. lie was fully responsible for the collection of taxes, the registration of births, deaths and marriages, keeping up to date the land registration, the maintenance of the peace, etc., while as presiding judge of the local tribunal he was charged with the apprehension and punishing of criminals and the hearing of all civil and criminal eases. Since the magistrate thus supervised practically every phase of the daily life of the people, he is commonly referred to as the "father-andrnother official."
The magistrate was a permanently overworked official. He lived with his family in separate quarters right inside the compound of the tribunal, and as a rule spent his every waking hour upon his official duties.
The district magistrate was at the bottom of the colossal pyramidal structure of ancient Chinese government organization. He had to report to the prefect, who supervised twenty or more districts. The prefect reported to the provincial governor, who was responsible for a dozen or so prefectures. The governor in his turn reported to the central authorities in the capital, with the emperor at the top.
Every citizen in the empire, whether rich or poor and regardless of his social background, could enter official life and become a district magistrate by passing the literary examinations. In this respect the Chinese system was already a rather democratic one at a time when Europe was still under feudal rule.
A magistrate's term of office was usually three years. Thereafter he was transferred to another district, to be in due time promoted to prefect. Promotion was selective, being based solely on actual performance; less gifted men often spent the greater part of their lives as district magistrates.
In exercising his general duties the magistrate was assisted by the permanent personnel of the tribunal, such as the constables, the scribes, the warden of the jail, the coroner, the guards and the runners. Those, however, only performed their routine duties. They were not concerned with the detection of crimes.
This task was performed by the magistrate himself, assisted by three or four trusted helpers; these he selected at the beginning of his career and they accompanied him to whatever post he went. These assistants were placed over the other personnel of the tribunal. They had no local connections and were therefore less liable to let themselves be influenced in their work by personal considerations. For the same reason it was a fixed rule that no official should ever be appointed magistrate in his own native district.
The present novel gives a general idea of ancient Chinese court procedure. When the court was in session, the judge sat behind the bench, with his assistants and the scribes standing by his side. The bench was a high table covered with a piece of red cloth that hung down in front to the floor of the raised dais.
The constables stood facing each other in front of the dais, in two rows on left and right. Both plaintiff and accused had to kneel between these two rows on the bare flagstones and remain so during the entire session. They had no lawyers to assist them, they might call no witnesses and their position was generally not an enviable one. The entire court procedure was in fact intended to act as a deterrent, impressing the people with the awful consequences of getting involved with the law. As a rule there were every day three sessions of the tribunal, in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon.
It was a fundamental principle of Chinese law that no criminal could be pronounced guilty unless he confessed to his crime. To prevent hardened criminals from escaping punishment by refusing to confess even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, the law allowed the application of legal severities, such as beating with whip and bamboo, and placing hands and ankles in screws. Next to these authorized means of torture magistrates often applied more severe kinds. If, however, an accused received permanent bodily harm or died under such severe torture, the magistrate and the entire personnal of his tribunal were punished, often with the extreme penalty. Most judges, therefore, depended more upon their shrewd psychological insight and their knowledge of their fellow men than on the application of severe torture.
All in all, the ancient Chinese system worked reasonably well. Sharp control by the higher authorities prevented excesses, and public opinion acted as another curb on wicked or irresponsible magistrates. Capital sentences had to be ratified by the throne and every accused could appeal to the higher judicial instances, going up as far as the emperor himself. Moreover, the magistrate was not allowed to interrogate the accused in private. All his hearings of a ease, including the preliminary examination, had to be conducted in the public sessions of the tribunal. A careful record was kept of all proceedings and these reports had to be forwarded to the higher authorities for their inspection.
"Judge Dee" is one of the great ancient Chinese detectives. He was a historical person, one of the well-known statesmen of the T'ang dynasty. His full name was Ti Jen-chieh, and he lived from A.D. 630 till 700. In his younger years, while serving as magistrate in the provinces, he acquired fame because of the many difficult criminal cases which he solved. It is chiefly because of his reputation as a detector of crimes that later Chinese fiction has made him the hero of a number of crime stories which have only very slight foundation in historical fact, if any.
Later he became a minister of the Imperial Court and through his wise counsels exercised a beneficial influence on affairs of state; it was because of his energetic protests that the Empress Wu, who was then in power, abandoned her plans to appoint to the throne a favorite instead of the rightful heir apparent.
In most Chinese detective novels the magistrate is at the same time engaged in the solving of three or more totally different cases. This interesting feature I have retained in the present novel, writing up the three plots so as to form one continuous story. In my opinion, Chinese crime novels in this respect are more realistic than ours. A district had quite a numerous population; it is only logical that often several criminal cases had to be dealt with at the same time.
I have adopted the custom of Chinese Ming writers to describe in their novels men and life as during the sixteenth century, although the scene of their stories is often laid several centuries earlier. The same applies to the illustrations, which reproduce customs and costumes of the Ming period rather than those of the T'ang dynasty. Note that at that time the Chinese did not smoke, neither tobacco nor opium, and did not wear the pigtail-which was imposed on them only after A.D. 1644 by the Manchu conquerors. The men wore their hair long and done up in a topknot. Both outdoors and inside the house they wore caps.
Chinese Sources
The solution of the Murder of the Magistrate was taken by me from one of the original Chinese Judge Dee stories, viz. that of the Poisoned Bride. This tale will be found in the Chinese novel Wu-tset'ien-szu-ta-ch'i-an, which I published in English translation under the title of Dee Goong An (Tokyo, 1949). There a bride is accidentally poisoned on the wedding night by the venom of an adder which nestled in the moldy rafter in the kitchen, above the spot where the tea water was always boiled. When the hot steam curled up, the adder would push its head out and release its venom into the water. I modified the plot, but borrowed unchanged the manner in which judge Dee discovers the truth, namely by observing dust fallen from the ceiling into his teacup (cf. Dee Goong An, page 159). Mr. Vincent Starrett has pointed out already in his excellent essay, "Some Chinese Detective Stories" (ín:
Bookman's Holiday, Random House: New York, 1942) that this motif is reminiscent of Sir Conan Doyle's story "The Speckled Band," which was written at least a hundred years later.
The Korean element was suggested by Edwin O. Reischauer's stimulating study Ennin's Travels in T'ang China (New York, 1955). He brought to light, on the basis of the travel diary of a Japanese monk who visited China in the ninth century, the great importance of Korean shipping to T'ang Chinai and the existence of Korean settlements on the northeast coast which practically enjoyed extraterritoriality. The same source also proves how highly developed the Chinese bureaucratic system was already in the T'ang period. Travelers were checked and searched at frequent intervals along the highways, and one needed numerous official documents before one could move from one place to another.
The cases of the Bolting Bride and the Butchered Bully are based upon an occurrence described in the Ku-chin-ch'i-an-wei-pien (Shanghai, 19Z1), where in the seventh chapter a number of old cases are collected under the heading Wu-sha-ch'i-an "Curious Cases of Murder by Mistake." There it is said that the woman was wounded only slightly, and fled after the murderer had left, which doesn't sound very convincing. Therefore I introduced the element of the sickle, and rewrote the tale so as to fit in with the smuggling plot.
Ghosts and were-animals figure largely in Chinese fiction. Those interested in these occult subjects will find copious data in H. A. Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (first edition: London, 1880; American edition: New York, 1925). Tigers still occur in fair numbers in Manchuria, and in the southern provinces of China. But Marco Polo tells us that in former times they occurred also in the northern provinces and often made traveling unsafe in those parts.
The Chinese Gold Murders Page 18