‘I don’t doubt that you had an equally ingenious plan for taking revenge on Leng Te. But he died before you could execute that scheme. You gloated over your wife’s despair. I hear that the last two weeks you have been exceptionally cheerful, while your wife became ill.
‘Kunshan murdered your wife. She never knew what happened to her, and she died in peace. You entered the dressing-room just after Kunshan had emptied the full contents of his infernal blowpipe there, and the drug overpowered you. When you came to, you thought it had been you who had killed her. That didn’t particularly distress you. You then became frantic only because you assumed that too much brooding over your scheme had ended up by really affecting your brain. That priceless brain of the great poet! You were so worried about yourself that when I came unexpectedly to see you, you didn’t have the presence of mind to put into operation your scheme of the lacquer screen. In your confusion you told the steward that stupid lie about your wife having gone to visit her sister, and you got rid of me as quickly as possible. However, after the session, when you had calmed down, you realized that my arrival in Wei-ping was a godsend. You now had a witness to confirm your story of the lacquer screen, a colleague who would go with you to the Prefect and whose testimony would lend even more colour to the tragedy. So you sent your headman to summon me, to hear your touching confession.
‘But I couldn’t be found. In the state of mind you were in, that disappointment unduly disturbed you. You began again to doubt your own sanity, and the soundness of your scheme. The servants began to wonder about the locked bedroom. The presence of the dead body there began to haunt you. Thus you took the foolish step of removing your wife’s body to the marsh, without even examining it.
‘Late that night I finally did come. You told your story with relish, and your confidence returned. But to your great disappointment I then began to talk about unclarified points, hinting at the possibility that you had not killed your wife. Nothing could have been more unwelcome to you! Then, however, you remembered that, since you had made the mistake of removing the body, I might perhaps hit on a good idea for glossing over that blunder. Therefore you consented to postpone our visit to the Prefect, and gave me a free hand to try to locate the real killer—convinced as you were that there was no such person.
‘Now everything has turned out very well indeed for you. It’s true that you don’t have the satisfaction of having killed your wife yourself, but on the other hand now you’ll be even more of a tragic hero. Your beloved wife was brutally murdered! I don’t doubt that in the coming years your name as a poet will grow steadily. The tale of the lacquer screen is off, but that of the inconsolable lover will do nicely too. Your poetry won’t become better, but people will say that’s because of the cruel blow that shattered your happiness. Everybody will pity you and praise your work even more highly than before. I wouldn’t be astonished if you became the Empire’s leading poet, Teng!’
Judge Dee paused. Then he concluded in a tired voice:
‘That’s all I wanted to say to you, Teng. Of course I shall keep all I discovered about you a deep secret, for ever. Only don’t expect that I shall ever read your poetry again!’
There was a long pause. The judge heard only the rustling of the green bamboo leaves in the garden outside. At last Magistrate Teng spoke:
‘You wrong me deeply, Dee. It is not true that I didn’t love my wife. I loved her dearly. It was only the fact that offspring was denied to me that cast a shadow over my happiness. Her adultery was a cruel blow that broke my heart. In fact, it brought me to the verge of insanity. It was during those fits of brooding in the deepest despair that I evolved that horrible tale of the lacquer screen. Since, as you yourself stated just now, although I had the full right to kill my wife I didn’t do so, and since Kunshan’s confession has closed the case, it was quite unnecessary and wholly superfluous for you to speak to me as you did now. Even though you knew that the story about the lacquer screen was not true, you ought to have had pity on a disillusioned man, and not have exposed all my shortcomings and weaknesses as cruelly and sneeringly as you did just now. I am deeply disappointed in you, Dee, for you were always described to me as a charitable and just man. It is not charitable to humiliate and debase me just in order to show off your own cleverness. And it is not just to vilify me, alleging that I hated my wife, justifying your completely unwarranted meddling in my private life by fantastic deductions which lack all concrete proof.’
Judge Dee turned round to face his host. Fixing him with his piercing eyes, he said coldly:
‘I never accuse anyone without concrete proof. Your first visit to the house near the west gate was fully justified, for you had to verify the adultery. Had you then rushed inside and killed them both on the spot, or run off and killed yourself, or done Heaven knows what other desperate deed, I would have believed that you loved your wife, or at least would have given you the benefit of the doubt But you went back to the house and spied on them a second time. That reveals your depraved character, and supplies all the concrete proof I need. Goodbye!’
The judge bowed and left.
He found Chiao Tai waiting for him in the courtyard of the tribunal, holding two horses by the reins.
‘Are we really going back to Penglai, Magistrate?’ he asked. ‘You have been here only two days, you know!’
‘Long enough,’ Judge Dee said curtly. He swung himself into the saddle and they rode out into the street.
They left the city by the south gate. As they were riding along the sandy highway, the judge heard something crackle in his sleeve. Guiding his horse with his knees, he felt for it and found it was the paper folder with the last of his red visiting-cards inscribed ‘Shen Mo, Commission Agent’. He tore it into small pieces. He looked for a moment at the red scraps in the hollow of his hand, then threw them away.
They fluttered for a while behind his horse, then slowly sank down together with the settling dust.
Postscript
JUDGE DEE was a historical person who lived from 630 to 700 A.D. In addition to earning fame as a detector of crimes, he was also a brilliant statesman who, in the second half of his career, when he was serving as a Minister at Court, greatly influenced the internal and foreign policies of the Tang Empire. The adventures related here, however, are entirely fictitious, although many features were suggested to me by original old Chinese sources. The puzzling suicide I borrowed from a case recorded in the Chinese collection by Hsü Mu-hsi, Ku-chin-chi-an-wei-pien (Strange Cases of Old and Modern Times), published in Shanghai in 1920; it is the fourth case of the third section. Judge Dee’s method of making Kunshan confess was practised in China as early as the third century A.D. When a thief called Shih-ming stubbornly refused to confess even under severe torture, a judge of that time ‘had the chains taken off the prisoner, gave him food and drink and had him take a bath, so as to bring him in a happy mood. Then Shih-ming confessed and denounced all his accomplices’ (see R. H. van Gulik, ‘Tang-yin-pi-shih, a thirteenth-century manual of Jurisprudence and Detection’, Sinica Leidensia, vol. X, Leiden 1956, page 181).
Note that in Judge Dee’s time the Chinese did not wear pigtails; that custom was imposed on them after 1644 A.D., when the Manchus had conquered China. Before 1644 they let their hair grow long, and did it up in a top-knot. They wore caps both inside and outside the house. Tobacco and opium were introduced into China only many centuries later.
—ROBERT VAN GULIK
About The Author
Robert Van Gulik was born in the Netherlands in 1910. He was educated at the Universities of Leyden and Utrecht, and served in the Dutch diplomatic service in China and Japan for many years. His interest in Asian languages and art led him to the discovery of Chinese detective novels and to the historical character of Judge Dee, famous in ancient Chinese annals as a scholar-magistrate. Van Gulik subsequently began writing the Judge Dee series of novels that have so captivated mystery readers ever since. He died of cancer in 1967.
Robert Va
n Gulik
The Judge Dee Mysteries
The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee
The Chinese Maze Murders
The Chinese Bell Murders
The Chinese Lake Murders
The Chinese Gold Murders
The Chinese Nail Murders
The Haunted Monastery
The Red Pavilion
The Lacquer Screen
The Emperor’s Pearl
The Monkey and the Tiger
The Willow Pattern
Murder in Canton
The Phantom of the Temple
Judge Dee at Work
Necklace and Calabash
Poets and Murder
A Chronology of the Judge Dee Books
Judge Dee at Work contains a "Judge Dee Chronology" telling of Dee's various posts, in which Van Gulik places the mysteries—both books and short stories—in the context of Dee's career and provides other information about the stories. On the basis of this chronology, the works can be arranged in the following order:
663 A.D. – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Peng-lai, a district in the Shantung province on the northeast coast of China.
The Chinese Gold Murders
"Five Auspicious Clouds", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
"The Red Tape Murders", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
"He Came with the Rain", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Lacquer Screen
666 A.D. – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Han-yuan, a fictional district on a lakeshore near the capital of Chang-An.
The Chinese Lake Murders
"The Morning of the Monkey", a short novel in The Monkey and the Tiger
The Haunted Monastery (Judge Dee, while traveling, is forced to take shelter in a monastery.)
"The Murder on the Lotus Pond", a short story in Judge Dee at Work (667 A.D.)
668 A.D. – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Poo-yang, a fictional wealthy district through which the Grand Canal of China runs (part of modern-day Jiangsu province).
The Chinese Bell Murders
"The Two Beggars", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
"The Wrong Sword", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Red Pavilion, visiting Paradise Island in the neighboring Chin-hwa district
The Emperor's Pearl
Poets and Murder, visiting neighboring Chin-hwa
Necklace and Calabash, visiting Rivertown and the Water Palace
670 A.D. – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Lan-fang, a fictional district at the western frontier of Tang China.
The Chinese Maze Murders
The Phantom of the Temple
"The Coffins of the Emperor", a short story in Judge Dee at Work (672 A.D.)
"Murder on New Year's Eve", a short story in Judge Dee at Work (674 A.D.)
676 A.D. – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Pei-chow, a fictional district in the far north of Tang China.
The Chinese Nail Murders
"The Night of the Tiger", a short novel in The Monkey and the Tiger
677 A.D. – Judge Dee is Lord Chief Justice (President of the Metropolitan Court) in the imperial capital of Chang-An.
The Willow Pattern
681 A.D. – Judge Dee is Lord Chief Justice for all of China.
Murder in Canton, visiting Canton
Two books, Poets and Murder and Necklace and Calabash, were not listed in the chronology (which was published before those two books were written); both were set during the time when Judge Dee was magistrate in Poo-yang.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Lacquer Screen
Copyright © 1962 Robert H. Van Gulik
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