The Willow Pattern

XX

The sentries at the gate of the Military Tribunal had fixed an improvised canvas roofing over the seat of Judge Dee's sedan chair. While the soldiers were carrying him away he leaned back in the pillows, letting his right hand hang outside so that he could feel the cool raindrops.

Suddenly he realized that he was completely worn out. He tried to concentrate on the session of the tribunal, but the hall with the flickering torches seemed as unreal and evasive as a scene from a dream, only half remembered. His thoughts became confused, they turned round and round. While everything grew blurred he had the horrible sensation that he had been carried along in this sedan chair for days on end, and that it would go on and on, in a circle from which there was no escape. A hollow, sick feeling rose from the pit of his stomach. Lifting his hands, he pressed his fingertips hard against his temples. Slowly the dizziness went away. But there remained a feeling of utter fatigue, utter futility. He asked himself whether this was only the normal reaction to the three weeks of mental and physical strain. Or was it a sign that old age was catching up with him?

Sunk in sombre thought, he idly looked at the empty, wet streets. Here and there lights were going on behind the windows of the dark, silent houses. Soon the Court would come back, and the capital would resume its normal routine, become again the bustling metropolis, bristling with activity. The thought could not dispel his deep gloom.

A loud, drawn-out cry made him suddenly sit up. There followed the rattle of a wooden clapper, just ahead. The wet, wrinkled face of a very old man appeared in the cone of light from the chair's swinging lantern. The old man held up a basket heaped with folded sheets of oiled paper. His bare arms, sticking out of the tattered sleeves, were pitifully thin.

'Out of the way!' the soldiers barked.

'Halt!' the judge called to them. 'I'll take one,' he told the vendor. It was the first street hawker he had seen in three weeks.

'Five coppers! Four apiece if you take two, noble lord!' There was a sly glint in the old man's eyes as he looked up at the judge from under his tufted grey eyebrows. 'The very best oil-paper, protects you against the rain, and against the sun too! Take two, my lord, tonight the price'll go up!'

The judge accepted one sheet and took a silver piece from his sleeve. 'Good luck!' he told him.

The old hawker snatched the silver and scurried away over the wet cobblestones, afraid that this crazy lord would repent of his generosity. At a safe distance he began to sound his clapper vigorously again.

With a smile the judge spread the oiled paper out over his wet boots. A warm glow of pride had swept away all his weariness and anxiety — an immense pride in the people he was privileged to serve. For three long weeks they had been cowering in their miserable hovels and shanties, half-starved, paralysed by a dumb fear, at the mercy of the implacable enemy that was stalking about among them, unseen. Yet now, at the very first sign of a change for the better, they came out again at once, unbeaten, courageous and full of good cheer again, eager to haggle over the few coppers needed for their meagre bowl of rice.

Arrived back at the palace, he answered good-humouredly the happy greetings of the orderlies and clerks he met while ascending the stairs to the fourth floor. He went out on the marble terrace at once. Standing at the balustrade, he saw through the steady drizzle more and more lights going on all over the city. Then there came the deep bronze voice of the large gong of the Buddhist temple. A service of thanksgiving had begun.

The judge went inside, took off his heavy ceremonial dress and replaced his winged headwear by a small skullcap. Clad only in his thin under-robe, he sat down behind his desk. He rubbed ink, took up his brush and jotted down a message addressed to his First Lady, in the formal style prescribed for correspondence between husband and wife.

Pressure of official business prevented me from communi­cating with you earlier. Today the rain has come, and that means the end of the Black Death, and of the emer­gency. I trust I shall be able to let all of you return to the city in the near future. There were some unexpected developments but, mainly through the untiring efforts of my three lieutenants, the situation remained well in hand. Greetings also to my Second and Third, and to the children.

He scrawled his signature, then leaned back in his chair. Thinking fondly of his wives and children, he felt he ought to add a postscript, a few lines of a more personal character. Listening to the patter of the rain, he groped for a suitable phrasing. Before he knew it he had dozed off.

He was awakened by the entrance of his three lieuten­ants, tired and wet. Tao Gan handed the judge a rolled-up document. Motioning them to be seated, Judge Dee glanced through the official report, written out in Tao Gan's small, neat hand. Hoo had been executed in the square of the communal pyre. When the executioner was baring his neck, Hoo had cast a long look at the pyre, spluttering in the drizzle. 'We are leaving together,' he had said. Those had been his last words.

Tao Gan took the sapphire ring from his sleeve. This trinket was taken off Hoo's body. It should be added to the assets of the Mei estate, I presume?'

'Yes. Make a large pot of strong tea, Tao Gan'

While Tao Gan busied himself about the tea table in the corner, Chiao Tai pushed his helmet back and said:

'When I was taking Hoo up to the scaffold, sir, I asked him why exactly he had killed Yee. He gave me that blank stare of his, and said: "Yee was a cruel devil. He got what he deserved." Shouldn't this admission of his guilt be entered into the record, sir? Just for the sake of completeness?'

The judge shook his head.

'No, it wasn't meant as an admission of guilt,' he said evenly. 'For Hoo did not kill him.' Seeing the astonished faces of his lieutenants, he went on: 'Hoo could not have known that Coral was with Yee that particular night. Didn't she state that the bamboo curtains were down? Even if we assume that Hoo had been watching the gallery from across the canal, he could not have seen that anything special was going on there. And we can't assume that he swam across and climbed onto the balcony just to spy on Yee, and happened to arrive there at exactly the moment that Yee was going to kill Coral. No, my friends, that would have been too much of a coincidence! Also, Hoo was a very strong man, but of squat build, while Yee was taller than average. And the wound had been inflicted from above, by a person as tall or taller than Yee.'

'But Coral said she had seen Hoo standing behind the bamboo curtain, sir!’ Tao Gan exclaimed.

'That is what she thought,' said Judge Dee. 'She had been thinking of Hoo, because Yee made her stand naked on the couch. But this time the devil did that only to gloat over her embarrassment, not to tease Hoo. For there was only one candle, and the bamboo curtains were down. In her excitement Coral did not take in those facts. She saw vaguely a large shadow, and naturally assumed it was Hoo.'

'Who killed Yee then?' Ma Joong burst out.

The judge gave him a keen look.

'After I had heard Coral's story,' he said, 'I worked out a theory. It would fit all the facts, but I had no means of verifying it. I hoped, or trusted rather, that tonight some development would occur that would prove my theory. Well, it did occur, exactly as I had expected. That caused me great pleasure. And not only because it confirmed my theory, mind you.' He took the cup Tao Gan offered him, but it was too hot and he set it down and looked out.

'It's getting to be a real downpour!' he exclaimed. He clapped his hands. When the orderly appeared, he told him: 'Send a man to the guards at the west city gate at once, and tell them to close the sluices.' Then he resumed:

'Let's have a second look at Coral's statement. She said that Yee had met her and her sister in the market, and that he took Coral aside. Now Bluewhite is a clever girl, she must have guessed that something was wrong. The story Coral tried to foist on her will not have been too clever, I imagine, for she is a simple, artless child. Anyway, Bluewhite became suspicious, and decided to keep an eye on her sister. When Coral left that night, Bluewhite secretly followed her. Right to Yee's mansion.

'She saw Yee admit her sister by the small door in the iron gate. She was at a loss what to do, for there is no other means of entering that huge old fortress. However, she is a resourceful girl. She went down to the bank near the bridge, and stripped in the shrubbery. She was going to swim along the bank to the balcony of the gallery, and try to gain access to the house from that side. Since she didn't want to go unarmed, she took one of the iron balls, and tied it into her hair knot. Then she wound her scarf tightly round her head. That would keep the ball in place, and her hair dry.'

He took a sip from his tea. Casting a quick glance at Ma Joong, he continued:

'For a trained acrobat like her, it was an easy job to climb up along one of the pillars, and tall and lithe as she is, getting up on the ledge wasn't too difficult either. Standing there she heard Yee rave about his having whipped their mother to death, and about killing Coral in the same manner. When she saw, through the bamboo curtain, that Yee lashed Coral across her breast, she untied the scarf, put the ball inside, raised the curtain and stepped over the windowsill.

'Yee had turned round, because he had heard something. Then he got a terrible shock. The stark naked, dripping wet woman with her long, dishevelled hair must have appeared to him an avenging ghost from the Nether World. Then he realized that it was even worse than a ghost: it was Coral's sister, not a meek, defenceless girl, but a trained fighter, with a deadly weapon in her hand. Just like most excessively cruel people, Yee was a coward. He let the whip drop and screamed for help. You'll remember, Tao Gan, that his mouth was wide open. Then she felled him with one terrible stroke of the weighted scarf. The force of the blow smacked him backwards into his armchair.'

He paused, and watched for a moment the pouring rain.

'I feel certain,' he resumed, 'that so much actually happened. What follows now is largely guesswork. I suppose that, having killed Yee, her rage suddenly abated. She looked in horror at what she had done. One couldn't expect her to know that killing Yee had been a clear case of manslaughter, completely justifiable for he had been on the point of murder­ing her sister, in the same hideous manner as he had mur­dered their mother. When she saw the blood on her scarf, she got into a real panic. She threw the iron ball into the canal, and the stained scarf on the floor. Then she stepped on the ledge outside, let herself down the pillar, and swam back. She dressed on the bank, and went to the tavern. That's where you met her, Ma Joong.'

'Now I understand why she ignored her father then!’ Ma Joong exclaimed. 'She was sore at him because he had never told her the truth about her mother's death, while he had taken her sister into his confidence!’

The judge nodded.

'She resolved never to tell him what she had done. Later she remembered having left the scarf on the scene of the killing. She began to worry whether she or her sister had perhaps left other clues too. We know that, except for Coral's ear-pendant and the red stone, there were none. For the maid Cassia had found the wet spots on the windowsill, and she had wiped them off carefully, because she thought these traces pointed to Hoo. But Bluewhite did not know that, of course. So she decided she would go back there and enter the gallery in the same manner as before. She had not reckoned with the fact, however, that now the canal wasn't any more a mass of quiet, practically stagnant water. The sluices had been opened, and there was a strong current.'

He cast a quick glance at Ma Joong.

'You were born and bred in the water district, my friend. You ought to know that, when there is a bend in a water course, the current is always strongest along the outer side of the curve. I often noticed that fact when, standing on a bridge, I followed the course of pieces of driftwood. More­over, on the inner side of the bend, downstream from the Halfmoon Bridge, there rises the steep wall of the Yee mansion. That narrows down the current, and increases its pull towards the outer side of the bend. The girl never reached her destination. The current carried her across the canal over to the opposite side, and in the bight under Hoo's balcony she got entangled in the weeds. After you had saved her, Ma Joong, she had to make up a story, and quick too. Do you remember whether you mentioned Hoo at all?'

A YOUNG GIRL TAKES VENGEANCE

Ma Joong scratched his chin.

'Come to think of it, I did,' he said ruefully. 'Made a feeble joke about Hoo having chucked her over the balcony.'

'Exactly. That gave her her cue. Well, after I had heard Coral's story, and formulated my theory, I made it a point to stress to Yuan that I would make Hoo's attempted rape of Bluewhite count heavily against him. I trusted that, if my theory was right, she would come to me and make a clean breast of it. For she is a decent girl, I understand, and she would never let a man be wrongly accused because of a faked story fabricated by her. There had been, of course, other facts that supported my theory. To begin with, when I left Hoo, he certainly wasn't in the mood for trying to rape a girl. He was waiting, not for Bluewhite, but for a message from Mrs Mei. Further, the scarf we found was only wet from water in the four corners, suggesting a swimmer having knotted it round the head — which pointed to a woman. Also, when Bluewhite fought off the scoundrels in the tavern, she had only one weighted sleeve.'

'And her hair was still wet,' Ma Joong muttered. With a sigh of admiration, he added: And that's why she drank like a fish! What a wench!'

'You'd better go to the Chancery, Ma Joong,' the judge said dryly, 'and see whether she's still waiting there. If so, you might ask her yourself about the details of her adven­ture.'

Ma Joong jumped up and rushed outside without another word.

'She is a very impetuous and independent young woman,' Judge Dee told the others with a smile. 'What she needs is a good husband. That will make her settle down, I'd say.'

'Brother Ma will see to that all right!' Chiao Tai remarked with a broad grin. 'He should follow the ancient custom and marry her twin sister at the same time, as his Number Two. That'd give him a chance to prove his mettle!' He paused, rubbing his knees with a satisfied air. Suddenly he asked: 'Oughtn't we to make the wench tell the whole story in the tribunal, sir, and have her officially acquitted? Yee's death can't be filed as an unsolved murder case!’

The judge raised his thick eyebrows.

'Why shouldn't it? I don't want the private affairs of the future family of our friend Ma Joong to be bandied about in all the teahouses downtown. I shall have Yee's demise registered as murder committed by a person or persons un­known. I don't mind a bit having a few unsolved cases on my record.'

'So Brother Ma got hooked, at last!' Tao Gan said with his thin smile. 'And how!’ Then, however, his face fell. Tugging at the hairs that grew from his left cheek, he resumed with a dejected face: 'So the Willow Pattern wasn't a clue, after all. Yee pushed the flower vase aside when he was eating the ginger, and later it dropped onto the floor accidentally.'

The judge gave his lieutenant a pensive look. Letting his long sidewhiskers glide through his fingers, he said slowly:

'No, I am not too sure about that, Tao Gan. The odds are that your reasoning about the significance of the broken vase as a clue still holds good. We shall never be able to prove it, though. Remember that Yee had screamed when he saw Bluewhite coming for him. And also that he did not know that Coral had fled. He will have assumed that the twin sisters would be discovered in the gallery by the maid or the young doorman. Since he was a vicious, spiteful man I think it quite possible that, having recognized the aveng­ing fury, his last thought was to leave a clue to her identity. Therefore he deliberately smashed the flower vase. Not be­cause it was decorated with the Willow Pattern, but for a much more obvious reason. Namely that it was blue-and-white porcelain. Pour me another cup, will you?'