The Red Pavilion

by Robert Van Gulik

  After Feng had introduced his daughter to the judge, she stood herself by the side of her father’s chair, with modestly downcast eyes.

  Judge Dee leaned back in his chair. Carefully smoothing down his long black beard, he said to Feng:

  ‘I am informed that the Academician Lee Lien, having met your daughter when their boats collided, conceived dishonourable intentions regarding her. I am also informed that later he sent her a message, saying that if she didn’t visit him in the

  Red Pavilion he would make public certain facts regarding a crime allegedly committed formerly by you. Finally, that you were seen near the Red Pavilion on the night the Academician died. Do these allegations represent the truth?’

  Feng had become very pale. He bit his lips, searching for words. Suddenly his daughter looked up and said calmly:

  ‘Of course it’s true. There’s no use denying it, father, I had all along the feeling that it would come out.’ Feng wanted to say something but she resumed quickly, looking the judge straight in the eye: ‘This is what happened. On the night of the collision, the Academician insisted on apologizing to me personally. He spoke politely enough, but as soon as my maid had gone to fetch tea, he became offensive. He loaded me with fulsome praise, and said that, since our boats would be side by side all night, we might as well put that time to some good use. The man was so convinced of his own charm and importance that it hadn’t occurred to him that I might refuse to sleep with him. When I did so, and in no uncertain terms, he flew into a terrible rage and swore he would possess me anyway, whether I liked it or not. I left him standing there and went into my cabin, barring the door on the inside. After I had come home I didn’t tell my father, I was afraid that he would quarrel with the Academician and get himself into trouble. The whole incident wasn’t worth that, the man had evidently been drunk.

  ‘However, on the afternoon of the night he died, the miserable wretch sent me a message, of the tenor stated by you.’

  Feng opened his mouth to speak but she laid her hand on his shoulder and went on:

  ‘I love my father, sir, I’d do anything to help him. And there had indeed been rumours that once, many years ago, my father did something that might be explained in a manner detrimental to him. I slipped away that night and went to the Red Pavilion. I entered by the back entrance, unnoticed. Lee Lien was sitting at the table, writing something. He declared himself overjoyed that I had come, offered me a seat and said that he had known all along that Heaven had decided that I would be his. I tried to make him talk about my father’s alleged crime, but he persistently evaded a direct answer. I said I knew that he had lied, that I was going back home and would tell my father everything. He jumped up, calling me awful names; he tore my robe down from my shoulders, hissing that he would have me then and there. I didn’t dare to scream for help, for after all I had gone to his room secretly, and my reputation and that of my father would be ruined if people came to know about that. I thought I could keep him off. I fought back as well as I could, scratching his face and arms. He handled me most brutally. The proof is here.’

  Disregarding her father’s protests, she calmly loosened the bosom of her robe, let it drop down to her waist and showed the judge her bare torso. He saw the yellow and purple bruises on her shoulders, her left breast and both her upper arms. She pulled her robe over her shoulders again and resumed:

  ‘During our struggle the papers on the table had been pushed aside, now I saw his dagger lying there. I feigned to give up my resistance. When he let my arms go to loosen my sash, I took the dagger and warned him that I would kill him if he didn’t leave off. He wanted to grab me again, I struck out wildly with the dagger. Suddenly blood was spouting from his neck. He sank back into his chair, uttering a horrible, rattling sound.

  ‘I was frantic. I ran home through the park and told my father everything. He’ll tell you the rest.’

  She made a perfunctory bow and rushed down the steps of the pavilion.

  Judge Dee gave Feng a questioning look. The warden pulled at his side-whiskers, then he cleared his throat and began contritely:

  ‘Well, I tried to calm down my daughter, sir, I explained to her that she was of course innocent of any crime, for it’s a woman’s good right to defend herself as well as she can when she is being criminally assaulted. On the other hand, I said, it would be most awkward for both of us if the affair were dealt with publicly. It would affect her reputation, and although the rumours linking me with the old case are completely unfounded, I wouldn’t like to see all that brought up again. Therefore I decided upon an ah … rather irregular line of action.’

  He paused to take a sip from his tea. Then he went on in a firmer voice:

  ‘I went to the Red Pavilion, where I found Lee dead in his chair in the sitting-room, as my daughter had described. There was little blood on the table and the floor, most of it was on his robe. I decided to make it appear as if he had committed suicide. I carried the body to the Red Room, laid it on the floor and placed the dagger in his right hand. Then I removed his papers from the table in the sitting-room to that in the Red Room, locked the door and left by the veranda. Since the only window the Red Room has is barred, I hoped that the Academician’s death would be interpreted as a suicide. And so it was. The Queen Flower’s statement about her having refused him supplied a convenient motive.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Judge Dee remarked, ‘that you inserted the key into the lock after you had been called to investigate and after you had had the door broken open?’

  ‘Indeed, sir. I had taken the key with me, for I knew that, after the body had been discovered, I would be the first to be notified. The manager came to me, we fetched Magistrate Lo, and went together to the Red Pavilion. After the door had been broken open, the magistrate and the constables went straight to the dead man, as I had expected. I quickly put the key inside the lock.’

  ‘Quite,’ the judge said. He thought for a while, tugging at his moustache. Then he said casually:

  ‘In order to make your hoax perfect, you ought to have taken away that sheet with the Academician’s last scribblings.’

  ‘Why, Your Honour? Evidently the lecher was also desiring Autumn Moon!’

  ‘No, he was not thinking of the Queen Flower, but of your daughter. The two circles represent rings of jade. When he had drawn those, it struck him that they resembled the full autumn moon, so he added, three times, those two words.’

  Feng darted a quick look at the judge.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s true! Stupid of me not to think of that!’ He added, embarrassed: ‘I suppose that all this will have to come out now, and that the case will be reviewed?’

  Judge Dee sipped his tea, his eye on the flowering oleander shrubs. Two butterflies fluttered about in the sunlight. The quiet garden seemed far removed from the noisy life of Paradise Island. Turning to his host, he said with a bleak smile:

  ‘Your daughter is a courageous and resourceful girl, Mr Feng. Her statement, as amplified just now by you, would seem to solve the Academician’s case. I am glad to know how he got those scratches on his arms, for those had made me believe for a moment that sinister forces had been at work in the Red Room. However, we still have the swellings in his neck. Your daughter didn’t notice those?’

  ‘No sir. Neither did I. Probably just a couple of swollen glands. As to the measures you propose to take regarding me and my daughter, sir, do you intend to …’

  ‘The law says,’ Judge Dee interrupted him, ‘that a woman who kills the man who tries to rape her shall go free. But you tampered with the evidence, Mr Feng, and that is a serious offence. Before deciding upon a course of action, I want to know more about those old rumours your daughter referred to. Am I right in assuming that she meant the rumour that, thirty years ago, you killed Tao Pan-te’s father Tao Kwang, because he was your rival in love?’

  Feng sat up straight in his chair. He said gravely:

  ‘Yes, Your Honour. It’s needless to say that
it’s malicious slander. I did not kill Tao Kwang, my best friend. It’s true that at the time I was deeply in love with the Queen Flower, the courtesan Green Jade. It was indeed my dearest wish to marry her. I was twenty-five at that time, and had just been appointed warden of the island. And my friend Tao Kwang, then twenty-nine, also loved her. He was married, but not too happily. However, the fact that we were both in love with Green Jade didn’t influence our friendship. We had agreed that each would do his best to win her, and that the rejected candidate would bear the other no grudge. She, however, seemed reluctant to choose and kept putting off her decision.’

  He hesitated, slowly rubbing his chin. Apparently he was debating with himself how he should go on. At last he spoke:

  ‘I think I had better tell Your Honour the whole story. I ought to have spoken up thirty years ago, as a matter of fact. But I was a fool, and when I came to my senses, it was too late.’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘Well, next to Tao Kwang and I, there was another suitor, namely the curio-dealer Wen Yuan. He tried to win her favour not because he loved her, but only because of his stupid need for self-assertion, he wanted to prove he was just as much a man of the world as me or Tao. He bribed one of Green Jade’s maids to spy on her, suspecting that either I or Tao had already become her secret lover. Then, just at the time when Tao and I had decided we would insist that Green Jade make up her mind whom she preferred, Wen’s spy told him that she was pregnant. Wen Yuan went at once with this information to Tao, and suggested to him that I was her secret lover and that Green Jade and I had been fooling him. Tao came rushing to my house. But he was a clever and just man, though a bit short-tempered, so it took me little time to convince him that I had had no intimate relations with her. We then discussed what we should do next. I wanted to go to her with Tao, tell her that we had discovered she loved another man and that we would therefore cease to bother her; that she had better say openly who that third person was, because we remained her friends, ready to help her, should she be in any difficulty.

  ‘Tao didn’t agree. He suspected that Green Jade had deliberately let us believe that she was hesitating between us two, so as to get more money out of us. I told Tao that such was not her character, but he would not listen and ran off. After he had gone I thought over the situation, and decided it was my duty to have another talk with Tao before he did something foolish. On the way to Tao’s house I met Wen Yuan. He told me excitedly that he had just seen Tao and passed on to him the information that Green Jade was meeting her secret lover in the Red Pavilion that afternoon. He added that Tao had gone there already to find out who the man was. Fearing that Tao was about to fall into one of Wen’s nasty traps, I rushed to the Red Pavilion, taking a short-cut through the park. When I had stepped up on the veranda, I saw the back of Tao’s head as he was sitting in a chair, in the sitting-room. I called his name, and when he didn’t move, I went inside. His breast was covered with blood, a dagger was sticking out from his throat. He was dead.’

  Feng passed his hand over his face. Then he stared out into the garden with unseeing eyes. Taking hold of himself, he resumed:

  ‘While I stood there, looking aghast at my friend’s dead body, I suddenly heard footsteps approaching in the corridor. It flashed through my mind that, if I were found there, I would be suspected of having killed Tao, out of jealousy. I ran outside, to the Queen Flower’s pavilion. But no one was there. Then I went home.

  ‘As I was sitting in my library, still trying to sort out all possible explanations, a lieutenant of the magistrate came and summoned me, as warden, to the Red Pavilion. Someone had committed suicide there. I went and found the magistrate and his men in the Red Room. A waiter had seen Tao’s body there, through the barred window. Since the door of the Red Room had been locked, the key lying on the floor, inside, the magistrate concluded that Tao had bled to death by a self-inflicted wound in his throat. A dagger was clasped in the dead man’s hand.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. After my flight from the Red Pavilion the murderer had evidently removed the corpse from the sitting-room to the Red Room, and thus set the stage for a suicide. The magistrate asked the hostel’s manager about a possible motive, and he mentioned that Tao Kwang had been in love with the Queen Flower. The magistrate sent for her. She said that Tao Kwang had indeed been in love with her. Then she added, to my utter amazement, that he had offered to redeem her, but she had refused him. I frantically tried to catch her eye as she was standing there before the magistrate and delivering this utterly false statement, but she looked away. The magistrate decided then and there that it was a plain case of suicide because of unrequited love, and sent her away. I wanted to go after her, but he ordered me to stay. The smallpox epidemic was assuming alarming proportions in this region; that was also why the magistrate of Chin-hwa and his men were on the island. The whole night he kept me fully occupied with devising measures to prevent the disease from spreading; he wanted some of the buildings burned down, and other emergency measures taken. Thus I had no opportunity to go to Green Jade and ask for an explanation.

  ‘I never saw her again. Early the next morning she had fled to the woods with the other girls, when the constables started to set fire to their dormitories. Out there she caught the disease, and she died. I only obtained her papers, which another girl had taken from her body before it was burned on the large communal pyre that had been lighted on the orders of the magistrate.’

  Feng’s face had acquired a deadly pallor, beads of perspiration had appeared on his brow. He groped for his tea cup and drank slowly. Then he continued in a tired voice:

  ‘Of course I should then have informed the magistrate that Tao Kwang’s suicide had been faked. It was my duty to have the murderer of my friend brought to justice. But I didn’t know how far Green Jade had been implicated, and she was dead. And Wen Yuan had seen me going to the Red Pavilion. If I spoke up, “Wen would accuse me of having murdered Tao Kwang. I was a miserable coward, I kept silent.

  ‘Three weeks later, when the epidemic had been brought under control and life on the island was gradually returning to normal, Wen Yuan came to see me. He said he knew I had murdered Tao, and that I had arranged the faked suicide. If I did not cede my post of warden to him, he would accuse me in the tribunal. I told him to go ahead, I was glad that all would come out now, for my silence was weighing every day more heavily on me. But Wen is a sly scoundrel, he knew he had no proof, he had only tried to intimidate me. So he kept his peace, confining himself to spreading vague rumours hinting that I was responsible for Tao Kwang’s death.

  ‘Four years later, when I had succeeded in banishing Green Jade’s memory from my mind, I married, and my daughter Jade Ring was born. After she had grown up she met Tao Kwang’s son Tao Pan-te, and they seemed to like each other. It was my fond hope they would marry, some day. I felt that the union of our children would reaffirm the old friendship between me and Tao Kwang, my friend whose death I had failed to avenge. But the evil rumours spread by Wen Yuan must have reached Tao Pan-te’s ears. I noticed a change in his attitude to me.’ He broke off, and gave the judge an unhappy look. ‘My daughter noticed the change in Tao too, for a long time she was very depressed. I tried to find another suitable bridegroom for her, but she would have none of the young men I mentioned to her. She is a very independent and headstrong girl, sir. That’s why I was so pleased when she showed interest in Kia Yu-po. I would have preferred a local man whom I knew better, but I couldn’t bear to see my daughter unhappy any longer. And Tao Pan-te gave me clearly to understand that he had renounced her, by offering to act as middleman for her betrothal.’

  He took a deep breath, then concluded:

  ‘Now you know everything, sir. Including where I obtained the idea of making the Academician’s death appear a suicide.’

  Judge Dee nodded slowly.

  As he refrained from making any comment, Feng said quietly:

  ‘I swear by the memory of my dead father that what I told Your Honour about Tao Kwang’s dea
th is the complete truth.’

  ‘The spirits of the dead are still among us, Mr Feng,’ the judge reminded him gravely. ‘Don’t idly use their names.’ After having taken a few sips from his tea, he went on: ‘If you did indeed tell me the complete truth there must be a ruthless murderer about here. Thirty years ago he killed in the Red Pavilion the man who had discovered that he was Green Jade’s secret lover. Last night he may have struck again there, this time at Autumn Moon.’

  ‘But the coroner’s report proved that she died from a heart attack, Your Honour!’

  Judge Dee shook his head.

  ‘I am not so sure about that. I don’t believe in coincidences, Mr Feng, and the two cases resemble each other too closely. That unknown man got involved once with a Queen Flower, thirty years later he may well have become involved with another one.’ Giving Feng Dai a sharp look, he added: ‘And, speaking about Autumn Moon’s demise, I have a feeling that you didn’t tell me all you know about her, Mr Feng!’

  The warden stared at him with what seemed genuine astonishment.

  ‘The little I knew I told you, sir!’ he exclaimed. ‘The only aspect of her case I was reluctant to touch upon was her short-lived liaison with Magistrate Lo. But Your Honour discovered that yourself quickly enough!’

  ‘I did indeed. Well, Mr Feng, I shall carefully consider what measures to take. That’s all I am prepared to say now.’

  He rose and let Feng conduct him to the gate.

  Chapter 15

  JUDGE DEE FOUND Ma Joong waiting for him on the veranda of the Red Pavilion. He said:

  ‘I heard a very interesting story, Ma Joong. It would seem that the answer to all our problems lies in the past. Namely, in the murder of Tao Kwang, thirty years ago. We must go at once to see Miss Ling; she will supply a clue to the identity of the murderer of Tao Kwang. And then we shall also know who caused Autumn Moon’s death. I shall …’ He sniffed the air. ‘There’s a bad smell here!’