Necklace and Calabash

XIV

Mr Wei was standing behind the counter in the semi-dark hall, drinking a cup of tea with two guests. He stared bewildered at Judge Dee and the guardsmen, the cup arrested halfway to his lips.

'Did any visitors come for Mr Lang?' the judge rasped.

The innkeeper shook his head, dumbfounded.

The judge ran into the corridor leading to Lang's suite. The door of the ante-room was not locked, but the one giving access to Lang's study appeared bolted on the inside. Captain Siew knocked hard on it with the hilt of his sword. When there was no answer he threw his iron-clad shoulder against it and it burst open. He halted so abruptly that the judge bumped into him. No one was there, but the room had been thoroughly ransacked. The desk had been overturned, all its drawers pulled out. The floor was strewn with scattered papers. Here and there the wainscoting had been pried loose; in front of the window lay a heap of clothes, torn to shreds. Suddenly Judge Dee grabbed the captain's arm and pointed at the farthest corner. Siew uttered an awful curse.

The stark-naked body of Lang was hanging upside down from the rafter. The big toes of his bare feet were fastened to it with a thin cord; his arms were bound behind his back. A bloodstained rag was wound tightly round his head which just cleared the floor.

The judge ran towards him, bent down and loosened the rag. At once blood trickled onto the floor. Quickly he felt Lang's breast. It was still warm, but the heart had ceased beating. He turned to the captain, his face chalk-white.

'Too late. Tell your men to take him down and then off to the mortuary.'

With unsteady steps Judge Dee went over to the desk, righted the armchair and sat down. Lang had been a callous criminal who had fully deserved to be beheaded on the scaffold, but not to be tortured to death in this beastly manner. And he, the judge, was responsible for this outrage. The subdued voice of the captain roused him from his sombre thoughts.

'Two of my men are searching the garden and questioning the servants, sir.'

Judge Dee pointed at the open panel of the garden doors. 'I don't think anyone'll have seen the intruders, Siew,' he said wearily. 'They slipped inside through there. Entered by the back gate, when the cooks were busy preparing the evening rice. That's why they set six as the time for the meeting. The meeting was a ruse, meant to get all Lang's men away from him, so that he could be questioned alone. I made a big mistake, Siew. A very big mistake.'

Slowly caressing his long black beard, he reflected that the scheme accorded well with the tortuous mind of depraved cour­tiers, past masters in double-dealing and deceit. They must have a spy among Lang's men, who had duly informed them that the cashier had not delivered the necklace. Therefore they had not sent Mr Hao to collect it. On second thoughts, however, they had reached the conclusion that Tai Min must have handed the neck­lace to Lang when he had returned to the inn to pack, and that Lang had let him go with the promise of a much bigger reward than agreed upon. And that Lang then had let his men kill the cashier, thus saving for himself their share in the loot, and all further trouble from the cashier. Convinced that Lang had hidden the necklace somewhere in his study, the plotters in the palace had arranged the meeting in the godown, so as to be able to surprise him here in the inn. 'What did you say, Siew?'

'I asked whether you think the bastards found what they came for, sir.'

'They did not. It wasn't there.'

Of that Judge Dee was quite sure. Not because he put it beyond Lang to have engaged in such a piece of double-dealing, but be­cause the cashier would in that case certainly have told his tor­turers that they must take him to their master — hoping that even if he wouldn't be able to bargain with Lang for his life, he would at least gain a little time.

The judge looked on in silence while the two guardsmen took down the corpse. They laid it on a stretcher, covered it with a sheet of canvas, and carried it away. He felt sick and tired of this insane, utterly frustrating case.

'Oh yes, sir, something nearly slipped my mind! Just when I was assembling my men to go to Lang's godown, my agents from Ten Miles Village, on the other side of the mountains, came back. Mrs Wei wasn't there, sir. And they made sure she hadn't been there either.'

Judge Dee said nothing. So that theory of his was wrong too. He had tried his best, but all approaches were coming to a dead end. He asked listlessly:

'What did the gentlemen from the palace say about my escape from your prison?'

'They couldn't say very much, sir, because I took them down to the cell you were supposed to be in, and Liu had done a truly magnificent job there. I didn't like their mean look, however. Lang's murder gives me a good reason for posting six men here in the hall, sir. With strict orders to let no outsider in.'

Judge Dee got up. 'Excellent,' he said, 'I need a good night's sleep.' Together the two men went back to the hall.

The judge had not realized that so many guests were staying at the Kingfisher. The hall was crowded with excited people. One guardsman stood at the main entrance, the other was questioning a few frightened servants in the corner. As soon as the guests saw Captain Siew they besieged him with questions. The captain beckoned Wei, who was standing with Fern and the clerk by the counter. He told the innkeeper:

'Intruders murdered Mr Lang Liu, and ransacked his suite.'

'Holy Heaven! Did they damage my furniture?'

'Go and have a look for yourself!’ the captain told him. As the innkeeper rushed to the corridor, followed by his clerk, Siew addressed the guests: 'You'd better go back to your rooms, gentle­men! There's nothing to worry about, I shall have six men on guard here, all through the night.'

While they were passing the counter Judge Dee told him:

'I'll have a close look at the register. Ought to have done that at once. I don't seem to have done many of the things I ought to have! Well, I'll come to see you early tomorrow morning.'

'You seem to be very friendly with that fresh captain!’ Fern remarked.

'He wanted my opinion on the time of death. Could you give me the inn's register, please?'

She pulled out the upper drawer and handed him the bulky guest-book. Putting her elbows on the counter, she watched the judge as he leafed through it. The names did not tell him much. Except for Lang and his men, all seemed to be bona-fide merchants, and all had arrived one or more days earlier than Judge Dee. He would leave it to the captain to go into their antecedents.

'I didn't see you all afternoon,' she resumed, giving his haggard face a curious glance. 'You look a bit peaked, you know.'

'I am rather tired; I'll go to bed early. Good-night!'

Up in his room he opened the window wide, then sat down at the table and pulled the padded tea-basket towards him. Slowly sipping his tea, he made a desperate effort to collect his thoughts. He must review the situation in a dispassionate frame of mind: get over his deep shock at the sickening murder of Lang Liu; see all what had happened as a purely intellectual jigsaw puzzle, and try to assign to each component part its logical place. But too many of those parts were missing. If the Princess had not given him explicit orders to remain incognito until he had found the necklace, he would at least have been able to do something, get things moving. Proceed to the palace and institute an official investigation, beginning with the arrest of the two men in grey from the Superintendent's Office who had been after him. They were not pursuing him because he had entered the palace under false pretences, of course, but because they were in the pay of the plotters. And the latter were determined to prevent him from getting the necklace.

This direct course of action being ruled out, he wondered what alternative there was for him. Time was getting very short. He had only the night and the early morning left, for the Princess would have to leave the Water Palace for the capital at noon. He got up and began to pace the floor restlessly, his hands clasped behind his back.

The lovely face of the Princess rose before his mind's eye. The Third Princess, His Majesty's favourite daughter, surrounded by dozens of court ladies and scores of maids, protected by the Chief Eunuch and his giant-like sentries ... yet alone, with only one lady-in-waiting she could really trust. The Emperor granted her every wish; he had even taken the step, unprecedented in history, of entrusting her with a blank edict appointing an Imperial In­quisitor. So powerful a young woman, yet so utterly lonely and forlorn! He thought of her large, troubled eyes.

She had given him to understand that the necklace had been stolen in order to alienate the Emperor's feelings from her. But that couldn't have been the real reason. The Emperor was known as a wise, understanding man of balanced judgement, and the loss of the necklace could hardly result in more than a severe scolding. Yet her last words had been that she placed her happi­ness in his hands!

He reflected bitterly that his over-confidence had led to him making some bad mistakes. His theory about the murdered cashier planning to join the innkeeper's wife had been com­pletely wrong. What had that youngster been up to then, that night when he went to the Water Palace to steal the necklace?

Suddenly the judge halted. A slow smile lit up his drawn face. Caressing his sidewhiskers, he realized that it was, after all, pos­sible to take direct action without coming out into the open.

He quickly opened his saddle-bag and inspected its contents. When he found at the bottom a plain robe of black silk and the long broad black sash belonging to it, he nodded with a satisfied air. It was exactly what he needed. Having taken off his brown travelling-robe, he laid himself down on the bed. He needed a few hours of sleep, but too many thoughts were nagging at his tired brain. After tossing about for a long time he at last dozed off.