Judge Dee At Work

by Robert Van Gulik

  ‘Never mind that! Were they lovers?’

  The maid shook her head emphatically and replied quickly, ‘Never, sir! Mr Fung had planned to ask somebody to approach the old prefect regarding a marriage. It’s true that he was desperately poor, but since he belonged to such an illustrious family there was hope that the prefect would consent. Just at that time, however, Mr Fung’s cough grew worse. He consulted a physician and was told that he was suffering from an incurable lung disease, and would die young. … Mr Fung told her that they could never marry, it had all been but a brief dream of spring. He would go away to a distant place. But she implored him to stay; she said they could still remain friends, and that she wanted to be near him should the disease grow worse… .’

  ‘Did they continue to meet after Mr Ho had married your mistress?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Here in the pavilion. But only during the daytime, and I was always there. I swear that he never even touched her hand, sir!’

  ‘Did Mr Ho know about those visits?’ ‘No, of course not! We would wait till the master was away for the day, then I would take a note from my mistress to Mr Fung, and he would slip inside by the garden door and have a cup of tea with her here in the pavilion. I know these occasional visits were the only thing that kept Mr Fung going, all through the last three years, after my mistress married. And she enjoyed their talks so much! And I was there, always… .’

  ‘You connived at clandestine meetings,’ the judge said harshly. ‘And probably at murder. For your mistress did not commit suicide, she was killed. At half past four, to be precise.’

  ‘But how could Mr Fung have anything to do with that, Your Honour?’ the maid wailed.

  ‘That’s what I am going to find out,’ the judge said grimly. He turned to the coroner. ‘Let’s go to the gatehouse!’

  The headman and his two constables were sitting on the stone bench in the front courtyard. Springing to attention, the headman saluted and asked, ‘Shall I tell my men to fetch a temporary coffin, sir?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ the judge said gruffly, and walked on.

  In the doorkeeper’s lodge the small steward was cursing a wizened old man in a long blue gown. Two grinning palankeen-bearers were looking inside through the window, and listening with relish.

  ‘This man maintains that nobody came to the house, Your Honour,’ the steward said angrily. ‘But the old fool confessed that he took a nap between three and four. Disgraceful!’

  Disregarding this remark, the judge asked abruptly: ‘Do you know a painter called Fung?’

  The astonished steward shook his head, but the elder coolie called out, ‘I know Mr Fung, Excellency! He often buys a bowl of noodles at my father’s stall round the corner. He rents an attic over the grocery, behind this house. I saw him standing about near our garden gate an hour or so ago.’

  Judge Dee turned to the coroner and said: ‘Let this coolie take you to Mr Fung’s place, and bring him here. On no account let Mr Fung know about Mrs Ho’s demise!’ Then he ordered the steward: ‘Lead me to the reception room. I shall see Mr Fung there.’

  The reception room proved to be rather small, but the simple furniture was of good quality. The steward offered the judge a comfortable armchair at the centre table, and poured him a cup of tea. Then he discreetly withdrew.

  Slowly sipping the tea, Judge Dee reflected with satisfaction that the murderer had now been traced. He hoped the coroner would find the painter in, so that he could interrogate him at once.

  Sooner than he had expected the coroner entered with a tall, thin man of about thirty, clad in a threadbare but clean blue robe, fastened with a black cotton sash. He had a rather distinguished face, with a short black moustache. A few locks of hair came out from under the faded black cap he was wearing. The judge took in his large, rather too brilliant eyes, and the red spots on the hollow cheeks. He motioned him to take the chair on the other side of the table. The coroner poured a cup of tea for the guest, then remained standing behind his chair.

  ‘I have heard about your work, Mr Fung,’ the judge began affably. ‘I have been looking forward to making your acquaintance.’

  The painter straightened his robe with a long, sensitive hand. Then he spoke in a cultured voice: ‘I feel most flattered by your interest, sir. Yet I find it hard to believe that Your Honour urgently summoned me here to Mr Ho’s house just to engage in a leisurely talk about artistic matters.’

  ‘Not in the first place, no. An accident has occurred in the garden here, Mr Fung, and I am looking for witnesses.’

  Fung sat up in his chair. He asked worriedly: ‘An accident? Not involving Mrs Ho, I trust?’

  ‘It did indeed involve her, Mr Fung. It occurred between four and five, in the pavilion. And you came to see her at that time.’

  ‘What has happened to her?’ the painter burst out.

  ‘You ought to know the answer to that yourself!’ Judge Dee said coldly. ‘For it was you who murdered her!’

  ‘She is dead!’ Fung exclaimed. He buried his face in his hands. His narrow shoulders were shaking. When after a long time he looked up, he had himself under control again. He asked in a measured voice: ‘Would you kindly inform me, sir, why I should have murdered the woman I loved more than anything else in the world?’

  ‘Your motive was fear of exposure. After her marriage you continued to force your attentions on her. She grew tired of it and told you that if you didn’t stop seeing her she would inform her husband. Today you two had a violent quarrel, and you killed her.’

  The painter nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said resignedly, ‘that would be a plausible explanation, I suppose. And I was indeed at the garden gate at the time you mentioned.’

  ‘Did she know you were coming?’

  ‘Yes. This morning a street urchin brought me a note from her. It said that she had to see me, on an urgent matter. If I would come at about half past four to the garden gate, and knock four times as usual, the maid would let me in.’

  ‘What happened after you had gone inside?’

  ‘I didn’t go inside. I knocked several times, but the gate remained closed. I walked up and down there for a while, and having made one more fruitless attempt, I went back home.’

  ‘Show me her note!’

  ‘I can’t, for I destroyed it. As she told me to.’

  ‘So you deny having killed her?’

  Fung shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you are certain that you won’t be able to discover the real criminal, sir, I am perfectly willing to say I killed her, just to help you dispose of the case. I’ll be dead before long anyway, and whether I die in bed or on the scaffold is all the same to me. Her death has robbed me of my last reason for prolonging this miserable life. For my other love, my art, has already left me long ago-this lingering illness seems to destroy the creative impulse. If, on the other hand, you think it possible to trace the cruel fiend who murdered this innocent woman, then there’s no earthly reason why I should confuse the issue by confessing to a crime I did not commit.’

  Judge Dee gave him a long look, pensively tugging at his moustache. ‘Was Mrs Ho in the habit of sending you her messages through a street urchin?’

  ‘No, sir. Her maid always brought the notes, and this was the first time it contained the request to burn it. But it was hers all right, I am familiar with her style and her handwriting.’ A violent attack of coughing interrupted him. He wiped his mouth with a paper handkerchief, looked for a moment indifferently at the flecks of blood, then resumed, ‘I can’t imagine what urgent matter she wanted to discuss. And who would have wanted her dead? I have known her and her family for more than ten years, and I can assure you that they didn’t have an enemy in the world!’ Fingering his moustache, he added, ‘Her marriage was a reasonably happy one. Ho is a bit dull, but he is genuinely fond of her, always kind and considerate. Never spoke of taking a concubine, although she hadn’t born him a child. And she liked and respected him.’

  ‘Which did not prevent her from continuing to meet yo
u behind his back!’ the judge remarked dryly. ‘Most reprehensible behaviour for a married woman. Not to mention you!’

  The painter gave him a haughty look.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said coldly. ‘You are caught in a net of empty rules and meaningless conventions. There was nothing reprehensible about our friendship, I tell you. The only reason we kept our meetings secret was because Ho is a rather old-fashioned man who would interpret our relations as wrongly as you seem to do. We didn’t want to hurt him.’

  ‘Most considerate of you! Since you knew Mrs Ho so well, you can doubtless tell me why she was often depressed of late?’

  ‘Oh yes. The fact is that her father, the old prefect, didn’t manage his finances too well, and got deeply in debt with that wealthy shipowner Hwa Min. Since a month or so that heartless usurer has been pressing the old man to transfer his land to him, in lieu of payment, but the prefect wants to keep it. It has belonged to his family for heaven knows how many generations, and moreover he feels responsible for the welfare of the tenant farmers. Hwa would squeeze the last copper out of those poor devils! The old man begged Hwa to wait till after the harvest, then he’d be able to pay Hwa at least the atrocious interest due. But Hwa insists on foreclosing, so as to get that land into his hands cheaply. Mrs Ho kept worrying about this affair, she made me take her to see Hwa twice. She did her best to persuade him to drop his demand for immediate payment, but the dirty rat said he would consider that only if she let him sleep with her!’

  ‘Did Mr Ho know about those visits?’

  ‘He didn’t. We knew how much it would distress him to hear that his father-in-law was in financial trouble while he could do nothing to help him. Mr Ho has no private means, you know. He has to depend on his modest pension for his living.’

  ‘You two were indeed very kind towards Mr Ho!’

  ‘He deserved it; he is a decent fellow. The only thing he couldn’t give his wife was intellectual companionship, and that she found in me.’

  ‘I never saw such a complete lack of the most elementary morality!’ the judge exclaimed disgustedly. He got up and ordered the coroner: ‘Hand this man over to the headman, to be locked up in jail as a murder suspect. Thereafter you and the two constables convey Mrs Ho’s dead body to the tribunal, and conduct a thorough autopsy. Report to me as soon as you are through. You’ll find me in my private office.’

  He left, angrily shaking his long sleeves.

  Mr Ho and the two shipowners were waiting in Judge Dee’s private office, attended upon by a clerk. They wanted to rise when the judge came in, but he motioned them to remain seated. He took the armchair behind his desk, and told the clerk to refill the teacups.

  ‘Has everything been settled, Your Honour?’ Mr Ho asked in a dull voice.

  Judge Dee emptied his cup, then rested his forearms on the desk and replied slowly, ‘Not quite, Mr Ho. I have bad news for you. I found that your wife did not commit suicide. She was murdered.’

  Mr Ho uttered a suppressed cry. Mr Hwa and Mr Yee exchanged an astonished look. Then Ho blurted out, ‘Murdered? Who did it? And why, in the name of heaven?’

  ‘The evidence points to a painter, by the name of Fung.’

  ‘Fung? A painter? Never heard of him!’

  ‘I warned you the news was bad, Mr Ho. Very bad. Before you married your wife, she had friendly relations with this painter. After the marriage the two kept on seeing each other secretly, in the garden pavilion. It is possible that she grew tired of him and wanted to end the liaison. Knowing that you would be here all afternoon, she may have sent Fung a note asking him to come and see her. And if she then told him that they were through, he may well have killed her.’

  Ho sat there staring straight ahead, his thin lips compressed. Yee and Hwa looked embarrassed; they made to get up and leave the judge and Ho alone. But Judge Dee gave them a peremptory sign to stay where they were. At last Mr Ho looked up and asked: ‘How did the villain kill her?’

  ‘She was knocked unconscious by a blow on her temple, then strung up by the neck to a beam and strangled. The murderer upset a teapot, and the tea from it extinguished the fire of the incense-clock, establishing half past four or thereabouts as the time he committed his evil deed. I may add that a witness saw the painter Fung loitering about at that time near your garden gate.’

  There was a knock on the door. The coroner came in and handed a document to the judge. Quickly glancing through the autopsy report, he saw that the cause of death had indeed been slow strangulation. Beyond the bruise on the temple the body bore no other marks of violence. She had been in the third month of pregnancy.

  Judge Dee folded the paper up slowly and put it into his sleeve. Then he said to the coroner, ‘Tell the headman to set free the man he put in jail. That person will have to wait a while in the guardroom, though. I may want to question him again later.’

  When the coroner had left, Mr Ho got up. He said in a hoarse voice, ‘If Your Honour will allow me, I’ll now take my leave. I must …’

  ‘Not yet, Mr Ho,’ the judge interrupted. ‘I want to ask you a question first. Here in front of Mr Hwa and Mr Yee.’

  Ho sat down again with a perplexed look.

  ‘You left your wife in the pavilion at about two o’clock, Mr Ho,’ Judge Dee resumed. ‘And you were here in this office till five, when your steward came to report your wife’s demise. For all we know she could have died any time between two and five. Yet when I told you about her suicide you said: “Only a few hours after I had left her …” as Mr Hwa and Mr Yee here will attest. How did you know that she died at about half past four?’

  Ho made no answer. He stared at the judge with wide, unbelieving eyes. Judge Dee went on, his voice suddenly harsh:

  ‘I’ll tell you! Because when you had killed your wife at two o’clock, directly after the maid had left the pavilion, you intentionally spilled the tea over the incense-clock. You apparently consider me a fairly competent investigator-thank you. You knew that if I visited the scene I would discover that your wife had been murdered, and deduct from the incense-clock that the deed had been done at about half past four. You also assumed that I would find out sooner or later that Fung had been at the garden gate at about that time-lured there by the faked note you had sent him. It was a clever scheme, Ho, worthy of an expert in juridical affairs. But the carefully faked time element proved to be your undoing. You kept telling yourself: I can never be suspected, because the time of the murder is clearly established at half past four. And so you inadvertently made that slip about “a few hours after I had left her”. At that time the remark didn’t strike me as odd. But as soon as I realized that if Fung was not the murderer it had to be you, I remembered those words, and that provided the final proof of your guilt. The Five Auspicious Clouds didn’t prove very auspicious for you, Mr Ho!’

  Ho righted himself. He asked coldly: ‘Why should I want to murder my wife?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. You had found out about her secret meetings with Fung, and when she told you she was pregnant you decided to destroy them both, with one and the same blow. You assumed that Fung was the father of the unborn child and …’

  ‘He was not!’ Ho suddenly shrieked. ‘Do you think that miserable wretch could ever have … No, it was my child, do you hear? The only thing those two were capable of was sickening, sentimental drivel! And all the kind words I overheard them saying about me! … the decent but rather dull husband, who was entitled to her body, mind you, but who could of course never understand her sublime mind. I could, I could have …’ He began to stutter in impotent rage. Then he took hold of himself and went on in a calmer voice, ‘I didn’t want the child of a woman with the mind of a streetwalker, a woman who …’

  ‘That’ll do!’ Judge Dee said curtly. He clapped his hands. When the headman came in he said, ‘Put this murderer into chains and lock him up. I shall hear his full confession tomorrow, in the tribunal.’

  After the headman had led Ho away, the judge continued to
Yee Pen, ‘The clerk shall see you out, Mr Yee.’ Turning to the other shipowner, he added, ‘As for you, Mr Hwa, you’ll stay a few moments: I want a word with you in private.’

  When the two men were alone, Hwa said unctuously, ‘Your Honour solved this crime in a remarkably short time! To think that Ho …’ He sadly shook his head.

  Judge Dee gave him a sour look. ‘I was not too happy with Fung as a suspect,’ he remarked dryly. ‘The evidence against him fitted too neatly together, while the manner of the murder was totally inconsistent with his personality. I made my palankeen bearers bring me back here by a roundabout way, so as to have a little time to think. I reasoned that since the evidence could only have been rigged by an insider, it had to be Ho—the well-known motive of the deceived husband who wants to take vengeance on his adulterous wife and her lover, both at the same time. But why did Ho wait so long? He knew everything about Mrs Ho sending messages to Fung; he must have discovered all about their secret meetings long ago. When I saw from the autopsy report that Mrs Ho had been pregnant, I took it that it was this news that had made her husband resolve to act. And I was right, though we now know that his emotional reaction was different from what I had assumed.’ Fixing the shipowner with his sombre eyes, he continued, ‘The false evidence could have been fabricated only by an insider, familiar with the incense-clock and with Mrs Ho’s handwriting. That saved you from being accused of this murder, Mr Hwa!’

  ‘Me, sir?’ Hwa exclaimed aghast.

  ‘Of course. I knew about Mrs Ho’s visits to you, and about her refusing your disgusting proposal. Her husband was ignorant of this, but Fung knew. That gave you a motive for wanting both her and Fung out of the way. And you also had the opportunity, for you were in the garden towards two o’clock, while Mrs Ho was alone in the pavilion. You are innocent of murder, Mr Hwa, but guilty of attempted seduction of a married woman, as will be attested by Mr Fung, and of attempted bribery, as will be attested by Ho’s steward, who overheard your conversation while you were visiting Ho at noon. Tomorrow I shall charge you with these two offences in the tribunal, and sentence you to a term in prison. That will be the end of your career here in Peng-lai, Mr Hwa.’