The Chinese Nail Murders

POSTSCRIPT 2

It seemed superfluous to repeat here the description of ancient Chinese administration of justice printed in the Postscripts of the four previously published Judge Dee novels. Instead I add a few general remarks on those novels, thereby also supplying the answers to a few questions some readers addressed to me.

My interest in Chinese crime literature was aroused 'only after I had already been engaged for more than fifteen years in the study of Chinese language and history, namely when in 1940 I came upon an anonymous Chinese detective novel of the eighteenth century.* (* I am proud to share the credit for having discovered the merits of old Chinese detective novels with so eminent an expert on crime literature as Vincent Starrett. That excellent storyteller became interested in the subject during his sojourn in China, and wrote the delightful essay "Some Chinese Detective Stories," found in his Bookman's Holiday, the Private Satisfactions of an Incurable Collector, published in 1942 by Random House, New York.) Since this book seemed to me of unusual interest, I prepared an English translation, which was publishd in 1949 in Tokyo under the title Dee Goong An. In my annotations I gave a list of books on Chinese crime literature and added: "It might be an interesting experiment if one of our modern writers of detective stories would try his hand at composing an ancient Chinese detective story himself. The pattern is given in the novel translated here, while in the books listed above one will find a rich variety of peculiarly Chinese plots" (page 231). When I noticed that the book market in China and Japan was flooded with bad translations of third-rate Western thrillers, I resolved to conduct the above-mentioned experiment myself, and mainly to prove to Oriental readers how rich their own ancient crime literature is in source material for modern detective stories. I had no previous experience in writing fiction, but I thought that if I relied heavily on my Chinese reading of past years and kept closely to the Chinese traditional pattern, it was worth trying. Thus in 1950 I wrote in Tokyo The Chinese Bell Murders, and later that year The Chinese Maze Murders. Originally I had not intended to publish these two novels in English, my English manuscript was only a working draft to be used for a published version in Chinese and Japanese. Thereafter, when West­ern friends showed interest in this new type of detective novel, I had The Chinese Maze Murders published in English, as another experiment (first printed in 1956, in Holland; published in England). The success of that novel then led to the writing of three more, meant for both Oriental and Western readers. These were The Chinese Lake Murders, completed in 1952 in New Delhi; The Chinese Nail Murders, written in 1956 in Beirut, and The Chinese Gold Murders, written in 1958 in Beirut, in order to provide the series with a suitable opening volume. Although the five novels were written in the order mentioned, in the Judge Dee chronology—which is of course wholly fictitious—the right sequence in which they should be read is Gold-Lake-Bell-Maze-Nail Murders.

Although the actual writing of each novel was completed in six weeks or so, the preliminary work took considerably longer. Yet the laying of the groundwork afforded me as much pleasure as the writing itself, especially since this task could be performed piecemeal, as a wel­come relaxation in between often exacting official duties. First I had to locate in old Chinese sources some plots suitable for being woven to­gether into one longer novel about Judge Dee. Sometimes I found a plot complete in all details in ancient Chinese crime literature, at other times the main idea was suggested by only a few lines in a criminological or medical book, or by a brief anecdote in some other book or essay. In The Chinese Bell Murders all three plots are derived from Chinese sources, but in the four other novels I myself had to supply a considerable part of the intrigue, as will come to light if one consults the references to the sources listed in the Postscripts.

I chose Judge Dee as the central figure because we know much more about him than about other famous master detectives of China's past. The historical records are especially explicit on Judge Dee's career at the Imperial Court, and the detailed description of his achievements in that second phase of his life enables us to form a clearly delineated pic­ture of the kind of man he was. He figures largely in Lin Yutang's recent historical novel, Lady Wu, a True Story (London 1959), where he is called "the greatest man of his generation." I here reproduce a portrait of "Judge Dee" when he was about 68 years old, wearing the full Court dress of a Minister of State; in his right hand he carries an ivory tablet, symbol of his rank. The portrait is taken from the block-print entitled Ku-chin-sheng-hsien-t'u-k'ao, a collection of pictures of famous people, published in 1830 by the scholar Ku Yuan, who utilized portraits in ancestral temples and similar ancient material.

As regards his four lieutenants, Sergeant Hoong, Ma Joong, Chiao Tai and Tao Gan, I adopted the names and main characteristics of this— entirely fictitious—quartet as I found them ready-made in the novel Dee Goong An mentioned above, but I elaborated their personalities accord­ing to my own fancy. For the other persons to be assigned a part in my stories I could pick and choose from the nearly unlimited variety of types described in Chinese historical records, and old novels and short stories.

After the plots and the persons concerned in them had been chosen, I had then to create a suitable geographical background. The place of action of each novel had to be a town-district somewhere in China and in particular the tribunal of that town, in old Chinese novels invariably the scene of all more important developments. I order to reduce the unavoidable repetition to a minimum, I purposely made each novel deal with Judge Dee's first few months on a new post. That gave me occasion to create each time an entirely different milieu as background.

Before elaborating this background, I first drew a sketch map of an imaginary town, an engaging task that often suggested new ideas for further developing the plot. Every old Chinese town had approximately the same landmarks: in the first place, of course, the tribunal, then the Temple of Confucius, the Temple of the War God, the Drum Tower, etc. The rest of the city one can design according to one's fancy, incor­porating special features of towns actually visited or lived in. These maps, drawn in the traditional Chinese semipictorial manner, are found on the endpapers of each novel.

The last phase of the preliminary work was to draw up a timetable, divided in as many days as the action occupies, and each day subdivided into morning, afternoon and evening. In the novels there is little mention of dates and hours, because the ancient Chinese did not live by the clock as modern life compels us to do. But I needed a timetable for my own reference, so as to know where all my people were at a given moment, and what mischief they were up to there.

All this preliminary work having been completed, I could at last start to write. With plots, persons and places ready, the actual writing proceeded comparatively smoothly, all kinds of odds and ends coming to mind and finding their appropriate place. An apt retort quoted in an old novel, a joke exchanged between ricksha coolies, a striking pro­nouncement in a philosophical text, scraps of conversation overheard in a tea house—all such tidbits came as grist to my mill. The greatest diffi­culty was to prevent my characters from getting out of hand. I often became so engrossed in a certain character that I was tempted to let him or her engage in all kinds of activities that had no direct or indirect bearing on the plot—and such are out of place in a detective novel.

The characterization of Judge Dee presented one difficulty, namely that according to the time-honored Chinese tradition the detective may not show any human weaknesses, and never allow himself to become emotionally involved in the cases he deals with. Since personally I have little use for the completely aloof, superhuman detective, I tried to reach for Judge Dee a compromise between the "superman" dictated by Chinese tradition, and a more human type of person preferred by me—and probably by many readers, too. I tried to achieve this compromise by stressing those traits in Judge Dee which are felt by us as shortcomings, while the old-fashioned Chinese reader, on the contrary, takes those same traits for granted, or even considers them as virtues. I mention, for instance, Judge Dee's ultra-Confucianist mental attitude, including a narrow-minded view of poetry and painting; his unshakable conviction that everything Chinese is ipso facto superior, and his consequent disdain for the "foreign barbarians"; his prejudice against Buddhism and Taoism, although those are much more elevated in thought than Con­fucianism, which is in fact a rule of conduct rather than a religion; etc. Further, Judge Dee's taking for granted that filial piety implies that daughters meekly let their parents sell them as prostitutes; his condoning torture, and the general maltreatment of men and women before his bench, and his conforming without protest to the laws that prescribe various methods of capital punishment of inhuman cruelty. Stressing these and like points helped to present Judge Dee as a real person. Glossing them over would have been tantamount to falsifying the historical picture, for in ancient China even high-minded and progressive men had ethical standards in many respects different from ours. Yet we should be careful in passing judgment on cruder manners and morals of other times. When I consider the remarkable achievements of modern man in wholesale torture and murder in concentration camps, and especially in mass destruction of human life as made possible by the latest progress in mechanical warfare, I cannot help thinking that most of the cruelties committed in former ages were only the clumsy efforts of rank amateurs.

When the novel had been written, there still remained the task of devising an introductory episode covertly indicating the story's main events. I retained this interesting feature of most old Chinese novels, chiefly because it supplied me with a convenient means for introducing the reader to the Chinese atmosphere; for there will not be many readers who after having finished the novel have time and inclination for re­reading the beginning. The device was invented for the delectation of the Chinese reader of a former age, who considered all haste as a funda­mental error, and was wont to read and reread his novels from beginning to end, tracing the plot in every detail. It may be added that these intro­ductory episodes are supposed to have happened in the Ming dynasty, say circa a.d. 1600; that is to say about three hundred and fifty years ago, and about nine hundred years after Judge Dee's time. I also retained the Chinese custom of placing an edifying poem at the beginning of the book, and also the chapter headings in two more or less parallel lines.

Although I generally followed in my novels the old Chinese tradition, I deviated from it in two important points. First, in my novels the criminal's identity is revealed only at the end. Old Chinese crime stories, on the contrary, betray this important secret at the beginning; the subsequent detailed description of the moves and countermoves of detective and criminal provided the sedate Chinese reader with an enjoy­ment comparable to that derived from watching a game of chess. I thought that in this respect I had to make a concession to the modern Oriental and Western reader. Second, I kept the number of dramatis personae limited to about two dozen. Old Chinese novels as a rule have a cast at least ten times that size. This does not bother the Chinese reader, who has a prodigious memory for names and a sixth sense for family relationships, and who therefore likes his novels to be generously popu­lated. Since one cannot expect the same from the modern Western reader, in my novels I kept to casts of a more modest size and, more­over, spelled their names in such a manner as to be fairly easily remembered. Some readers, however, have remarked that even these limited casts are too large. In the new series of Judge Dee novels I am now preparing I therefore use a cast of only about twelve.

It was my aim to acquaint the reader with all the clues Judge Dee and his assistants discover, so that a—largely hypothetical!—reader who would study the novel line by line with a pad and pencil at hand, would be able to work out for himself the final solution. At the same time I thought it my good right to gloss over those clues by the various approved means.

As regards the style of my novels, I followed the Chinese tradition that a novel must be written in a simple, factual prose, and that descrip­tive passages must be limited to the absolute minimum. Chinese novelists concentrated on exciting action and deft dialogue, always remembering the main rule governing all forms of Chinese literary expression: "Say much in few words." Thus also in the matter of style I am greatly in­debted to my Chinese predecessors in crime fiction.

Finally, I may say a few words about a delicate subject, namely the supernatural element. In old Chinese crime literature ghosts and goblins roam freely about, dogs, cats, spiders, monkeys and even kitchen utensils prove to possess the faculty of speech and deliver testimony in court. Such traits are, of course, incompatible with the modern principle that a detective novel should be as realistic as possible. However, I thought that a discreet use of this traditional Chinese element would not offend the reader, including those who hold more decided views on these matters than I. Since we of the present know little more about supernatural phenomena than did Judge Dee twelve hundred years ago, I prefer to sum up here the main supernatural traits of my five novels in the form of open questions, leaving it to the reader to decide what actually happened.

Did the sanctimonious collector of Sung celadon who narrates the opening episode of The Chinese Bell Murders really see in the old mirror all those frightful happenings? Or had he been sickening for a malicious fever that reached a crisis during his visit to the curio shop? In the latter case it is only natural that his interest in Judge Dee, and his affection for his two concubines (Apricot and Blue Jade of the novel), figured largely in his subsequent delirious visions.

Did the student of crime literature who appears in the opening episode of The Chinese Maze Murders really meet a descendant of Judge Dee in the restaurant on the Lotus Pond, or did he only have there a dream wherein the persons he had seen passing by occupied an important place? And did Master Crane Robe in Chapter XIX of that same novel possess esoteric knowledge, or were the clues Judge Dee obtained in his abode only the logical consequence of the Master's close association with the dead Governor?

The depraved Inspector who is introduced in the first pages of The Chinese Lake Murders was through an emotional conflict in such an unbalanced state of mind that he even contemplated suicide. Did his finding the dead body of a beautiful woman—who for some reason or other had drowned herself—bring him under the delusion that she was alive and told him the details of his own nefarious plot ? Or was it the vengeful ghost of Almond Blossom who took possession of the corpse and thereafter haunted her victim till he died, broken in mind and body?

Did the old scribe appearing in The Chinese Gold Murders really change on occasion into a were-tiger? In that case it was he who was seen in the forest by Judge Dee and his two hefty lieutenants. If, on the other hand, the reader refuses to admit the existence of were-animals, then Judge Dee saw a real tiger, which had a white spot on its paw that caused it to be mistaken for a white, human hand. And in that case the old scribe's confession can be dismissed as the vagaries of an old man's diseased mind. As to the ghostly apparitions mentioned in that novel, those find in the end their perfectly natural explanation—all except one, that is!

Finally, the henpecked husband who relates the opening passage of the present novel, The Chinese Nail Murders, had that evening been en­grossed in his research on Judge Dee, and he had directly thereafter written a long letter to his beloved brother. Did he really meet the latter's ghost in his garden pavilion? Or was it but a dream, whereto Judge Dee, his brother and his own argumentative First Lady (Mrs. Loo of the novel) each contributed their share?

All these puzzles end up with the very same question mark as do most personal problems we are confronted with by this perplexing life of ours. And probably this was so disposed for our good.

Dr. R. H. van Gulik