The Willow Pattern

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 up 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 they 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.

A CRUEL TYRANT AND HIS VICTIM

'I quickly got up. Clutching my breast I slipped into the dressing-room. I grabbed my clothes and my guitar and ran downstairs as fast as I could. In the passage downstairs I dressed somehow or other, then ran across the courtyard. No one was there. I went outside through the narrow door in the gate, pulling it shut behind me.'

She heaved a deep sigh. Ma Joong offered her a cup of tea. But she shook her head and resumed:

'I aimlessly walked through the empty streets, trying to think out what had happened. Evidently Mr Hoo had been spying again on Yee. When he saw me standing naked on the couch, his violent temper got the better of him. He must have jumped into the canal and climbed up on the balcony. Then, however, Yee must have told him who I really was, and that would have made them patch up their quarrel, the two men sitting down together to devise a horrible scheme for ruining us. I became panicky again, and tried to keep up my spirits by singing a little song. Then those two awful scavengers tried to assault me, and then that doctor ... It was the most wretched night I ever had.'

Tears were glittering in her eyes. She wiped them off impatiently and went on:

'Fortunately my sister was not at home. My father didn't scold me, but he said that we would have to leave the city at once, to escape the vengeance of Mr Hoo and Yee. When we heard that Yee had been murdered ...'

Her voice trailed off. She cast a shy look at the judge. He was leaning back in his chair, slowly caressing his side­whiskers.

'Thank you, Miss Yuan,' he spoke. 'It was indeed a terrible experience. However, you are a plucky girl, and you are very young. The young easily forget, a privilege not shared by older persons, unfortunately.' Turning to the puppeteer, he asked in a gentle voice: 'Why did you include that hideous scene of your wife's murder in your peep-show?’

'To keep my hatred alive, my lord,' Yuan replied at once. Then he looked away. The lines of his mobile actor's face suddenly deepened. He resumed, awkwardly groping for words: 'I have some ... some doubts, at times. About things, in general. I think of the milieu Yee was reared in, the "old world", with all its antiquated ideas of absolute power, all its frustration... .' He looked at the judge and said apologetically: 'It's my puppets that give me those strange ideas, I fear. When I met Mr Ma in the tavern, I had been brooding again. And suddenly I felt that I had to look again at ... at that incident, had to talk about it.' He shook his head. His voice was firm again when he con­cluded: 'Well, my scheme was indeed successful, after all. Hoo and Yee must have got into a violent quarrel. Hoo murdered Yee, and you have arrested him already, I hear. I fully understand that I shall have to accept the con­sequences of my actions, my lord.'

Judge Dee studied his drawn face for a while. Suddenly he asked Coral:

'Did Yee pay you for your performances, Miss Yuan?’ 'No sir. He wanted to several times. But Hunchback Wang always told him that it would be included in the final settlement.'

'In that case,' the judge said, 'there is no charge against you, Mr Yuan, nor against your daughter. It was wrong of you to try to take justice in your own hands, but it would be most difficult to construct a case against you on that ground. Moreover, who shall say whether Yee and Hoo did not have other bones to pick between the two of them, apart from their jealousy over your daughter? As for her, there is no rule forbidding a girl to dance gratis, even in the nude. Here, take these trinkets, Miss Yuan. The red coral goes well with your name!'

Yuan wanted to speak, but the judge raised his hand.

'Yee was a despicable relic of an abominable age,' Judge Dee said gravely. 'And yet, Mr Yuan, the impartial justice I just spoke of requires that his murderer, although he freed the world of a cruel monster, shall be beheaded, unless he can prove it to have been manslaughter. For if people were allowed to take justice in their own hands, the rule of law would cease, and everybody would be at his neigh­bour's mercy. I have arrested Hoo because he tried to assault your daughter Bluewhite——'

'Mr Hoo assaulted Bluewhite?' Yuan exclaimed. 'When——'

'You had better ask her that yourself,' Judge Dee said curtly.

'The wench never tells me anything!' the puppeteer said angrily.

'Anyway,' the judge went on, 'attempted rape is a capital charge, so Hoo's head shall fall on the scaffold. Tell your daughter that I said that. It will set her mind at rest. You may go.'

Yuan and his daughter fell on their knees and began to thank the judge. But he told them to rise and said:

'If you want to do me a favour, Mr Yuan, then make it known in the "old world" that there is justice for high and low, rich and poor. And that even in a time like the present, when hundreds die from the plague every day, the death of every single person who dies by violence shall be duly investigated and avenged. Good-bye!’

Ma Joong saw the puppeteer and his daughter out. He came back and exclaimed with a beaming smile:

'How ever did you discover what happened, sir?'

Judge Dee sat back in his chair.

'Your account of the meeting in the tavern,' he replied, 'told me that Yuan was emotionally involved in the bond­maid's killing. So deeply involved that he simply had to show that scene and speak about its horrors — even to a complete stranger like you. If he had known that you were one of my lieutenants, it would have been different. In that case I would have assumed that the crime had nothing to do with him, but that, having heard about it, he wanted to get Yee punished for his iniquities, and that he there­fore made the picture for his peepshow, hoping for an opportunity to bring the crime in this manner to the know­ledge of an official and thus arouse his interest in this old case. Such a roundabout method would have been just what one would expect from an ordinary man of the people.

'Second, when I discovered that Yee's maid Cassia had caught Hoo's fancy once, I realized that her testimony had been calculated to lead us astray by a clever mixture of truth and falsehood. After she had found Yee's body, she had evidently had a look around the gallery for possible clues to the murderer. She understood that he must have been a strong man, and when she saw the wet marks on the windowsill, she suspected at once that Hoo had done it, having entered the gallery by the balcony. Therefore she wiped the windowsill clean. In her hurry she overlooked the bloodstained piece of cloth lying behind the pillar. When she was telling her son about the murder, she remembered the dancing girl and the tout the boy had seen, and she decided to lead suspicion away from Hoo by suggesting that the tout was the murderer. She mentioned that possibility to her son, but he said that the tout was a small man. She persuaded the youngster that the darkness had deceived him, and that the tout was really a big bully, like most men of that profession: he was to describe the man as such when the constables questioned him. But the boy was not quite convinced that the shadows had indeed played him a trick, and he was also afraid to cause trouble to the girl he admired. Hence his nervousness when I questioned him about the girl and her companion. That Hoo described the tout as an elderly, high-shouldered man ought to have set me thinking at once.

'Thereafter, however, I combined a number of seemingly-unrelated and even contradictory facts, and suddenly every­thing fell into place. Our reptilian friend of the Special Service convinced me that Porphyry was a faked courtesan, who had evidently acted that part expressly to sow discord between Hoo and Yee. Yuan had a daughter named Coral who was a good singer — I heard her myself in the street below here — and Yee's doorman had been much impressed by Porphyry's sweet voice. Finally, porphyry and coral are similar stones. When adopting a faked name, people have a tendency to select one that resembles the real name: an intuitive, mystic fear of losing one's identity by using a wholly different name, I assume. Therefore I concluded that the murdered bondmaid must have been a near relative of Yuan, and that he, being a puppeteer, had wanted to stage a plot of private vengeance, using Coral as the main actress. The emergency was the ideal time for executing the scheme, for Yee had sent nearly all his servants away, and the prostitutes from the brothels refused to come. Yuan's mis­take was that he wanted to take over the responsibility of the Playwright.' The judge smiled wanly and added: 'I should be the last to blame him for that, though! Heaven knows that I make that mistake too, on occasion! Well, let's have a cup of tea. Then I must change, for it's get­ting time to go to the Mei residence for the funeral service.'

'With your permission, sir, Ma Joong said, 'I would like to go with Brother Chiao to the military police now. To inquire how the rounding up of the scavengers went.'

'By all means. Call on the municipal chancery first, though. They must order our friend Mr Fang to countermand his instructions for the apprehension of "Porphyry" and her companion. Otherwise Mr Yuan and Coral will be waylaid by all kinds of thugs and plug-uglies from the licensed quarters, eager to earn the reward! Tao Gan, you will accompany me to the Mei mansion.'