The Judge Dee Novels of R.H. van Gulik

by J. K. Van Dover

  Again, van Gulik weaves together the three separate cases. In The Chinese Nail Murders, two of the murders are actually committed by the same villain: Mrs. Loo killed her husband because he was a “dull, stupid man” (23.166), and she killed her lover (Lan Tao-kuei) because he was abandoning her. If lust drives Mrs. Loo, it is apparently impotence that drives the villain in the third case: with eight wives and no children, Chu Ta-Yuan satisfies himself with voyeurism. When he cannot effectuate a rape of Liao Lien-fang, he strangles her and, to cover his crime, beheads her.

  The plot of “The Case of the Murdered Merchant,” which employs the device that gives The Chinese Nail Murders its title, is virtually identical to that of “The Strange Corpse” in Dee Goong An. Both cases begin when Judge Dee happens upon a distressed person in the streets—a widow’s mother in the earlier novel, her daughter in the later. When he comes to the widow’s house, he notices things which lead him to suspect the widow of having executed her husband. In both cases, the widow is brazenly defiant, and exhumation of the husband’s corpse fails to reveal evidence of murder. In both cases, the motives for the crime are the same. The chief difference lies in the way that the Judge finally discovers the means by which the murder was committed. In the translation, the widow is shocked into confession by the staged drama of an infernal judgment; in the original novel, it is another woman who recognizes the means.

  Mrs. Kuo

  In his postscript to The Chinese Nail Murders, van Gulik seems to imply that having Mrs. Kuo reveal the technique of murder-by-nail (as opposed to eliciting a confession by staging a spectacle of the Black Judge of the Inferno, as in Dee Goong An) was an effort “to comply with the—not unreasonable!—demand of readers that the fair sex should play a greater role in Judge Dee’s life” (182–3). It is worth pausing to look at the role that Mrs. Kuo plays.

  Mrs. Kuo’s dissolute first husband, a butcher, had died four years earlier. The pharmacist Kuo had paid the butcher’s debts and married the widow. They made, Judge Dee observes, “a rather ill-sorted couple” (3.36): she is an elegant and attractive woman; he is a small hunchback. Yet they seem to share genuine affection. When Judge Dee meets Mrs. Kuo gathering herbs on the snow-covered top of Medicine Hill, she refers to a line from an old poem: “something about one being able to hear the petals falling down in the snow” (12.103). Later Dee recalls the entire poem, “Winter Eve in the Seraglio,” with its thematic line: “Joy passes, it’s remorse and sorrow that last.” The line is recalled late in the novel when Judge Dee meets Mrs. Kuo a second time on the mountain, after she has saved his career (and perhaps his life) by revealing how Mrs. Loo had murdered her husband. She knew the method, because she had herself used it on her own abusive first husband, and Judge Dee, as magistrate, must now hold her accountable. She cites an image from the poem, then distracts the Judge’s attention and leaps to her death.

  Mrs. Kuo is distinguished by a number of virtues. Her beauty and elegance are immediately apparent. She has a genuinely devoted relationship with her competent and gentle, though misshapen husband. She and her husband are uncommonly kind to cats. She behaves decently to female prisoners in her role as matron of the women’s jail. She appreciates poetry. And she sacrifices herself to save Judge Dee from the almost heroic ill-will of Mrs. Loo, first by revealing the murder method and then by sparing him the ordeal of prosecuting his savior for having practiced the same method. Mrs. Kuo’s virtues and her unhappy fate cast an important sidelight on the final pages of the novel, when Judge Dee reflects back on his own career. Once more he repeats the thematic line from the poem. This leads him to recall his father’s prophecy thirty years earlier, “I trust you’ll go far, Jen-djieh … but be prepared for much suffering on the way! And you’ll find it very lonely—at the top” (25.176). The Judge’s virtues are different from Mrs. Kuo’s, but like hers, they have led him to little joy and much sorrow. The death of Mrs. Kuo and, of course, even more, the death of his life-long confidant, Sergeant Hoong, are concrete emblems of that sorrow. Exhausted after a decade and a half of service, Judge Dee yearns for peace, for “life in retirement”: “But then he knew he could not do it. Retirement was for men without obligations, but he had too many of those. He had sworn to serve the state and the people, he had married and begotten children. He could not be a defaulter, running like a coward away from his debts” (25.176–77). The obligations of a Confucian official and husband preclude retirement—or suicide. Mrs. Kuo’s situation in the end differs radically from Judge Dee’s: she did murder her husband, and the crime must be expiated. But her escape does emphasize the heroism of Judge Dee’s persistence.

  The Imperial Edict

  The reward of Judge Dee’s persistence is promotion to the presidency of the Metropolitan Court. Judge Dee, like the historical Judge Di, thus transitions to the distinct, second phase of his public career, shifting from diligent magistrate, with absolute authority in his district, to beleaguered politician in the court of intrigue surrounding the Empress Wu. As van Gulik informs the reader both in his Preface and in his Postscript 2 to The Chinese Nail Murders, the second half of Dee’s career is covered in Lin Yutang’s 1959 novel, Lady Wu.

  Tartars

  The linguistic, ethnic, and even racial identity of the Tartars is debated. Even the spelling is controversial; “Tatar” seems for most contemporary sources to be the preferred form. The Tatars entered Chinese history in the Tang dynasty as Turkic clan subordinate the East Turk Khanate north of China. As the authority of the Turks declined, “Tatar” was used to refer to several different tribes, all of which were absorbed into the rising Mongol empire. The first recorded use of Tatar appears in 732 (32 years after the death of the historical Judge Di). “Tatar” (or “Tartar”) became interchangeable with “Mongol,” especially in Russia and the West. In the 11th century, they seem to have joined a confederation which included the Mongols and called itself Tatan. The Tatars fought under Genghis Khan in the 13th century, and were especially identified with the western stretch of Genghis’s empire, known as the Kipchak Hanate or the Golden Horde. “Tartar” in The Chinese Nail Murders, like “Uiger” in The Chinese Maze Murders, signifies “barbarian”: an unsophisticated, nomadic culture. But where van Gulik presents the Uigers in Lan-fang as an immediate threat to the integrity of the Chinese empire, the Tartars in Pei-chow are merely exotic strangers in the city, a people who talk and dress differently. The threat has, for the time at least, been pushed hundreds of miles northward, though five months prior to Judge Dee’s arrival, Pei-chow had been inundated with refugees from an incursion by the “Tartar hordes” (11.98).

  It is perhaps worth noting that in 698, Empress Wu Zetian dispatched the historical Di Renjie to command the army sent to repel an incursion of East Turks (the Götürks or, to the Chinese, the Tujue) under the Khan Ashina Mochuo (Qapaghan Qahan). In the event, the Turks had already withdrawn by the time Di arrived, and his principal responsibility lay in pacifying devastated areas and restoring order.

  “Seven-board”

  More commonly as tangram, qiqiao ban (seven boards of skill) appears to actually date to the Song dynasty (960–1279), and thus appears achronistically in Judge Dee’s Tang era. The puzzle game, which requires the players to produce given silhouettes using all seven pieces, enjoyed a European vogue in the early 19th century and again, especially in Germany and the United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  Reviews

  The Chinese Nail Murders, not surprisingly, received praise from Boucher in The New York Times: “This career-finale is one of the very best of the wondrous Dee books.” He approved the complexity of the plot, and noted Judge’s Dee’s human involvement with his case “even to a tenuous sort of falling in love” (“Criminals At Large,” New York Times 14 October 1962: 301). James Sandoe was now somewhat more positive than he had been: the novel is “curious, careful, rather special,” “artfully more-of-the-same,” and, while it will doubtless be welcomed by van Gulik’s “deeply delighted
coterie,” it is also “worth the curiosity of the skeptical or the novice equally” (“Mystery and Suspense,” New York Herald Tribune Book Review 18 November 1962: 15). Sergeant Cuff called the entire Dee series “fine and unusual” (“Criminal Record,” Saturday Review 27 October 1962: 35). And Philip John Stead, in the TLS noted the value of van Gulik’s substantial postscripts, providing scholarly background to the action of the novel: “For many readers the commentary which the author is in the habit of appending to his stories must be by no means the least interesting part of the book” (“Mighty Nonsense” Times Literary Supplement 31 March 1961: 206).

  5. The Chinese Gold Murders

  (25 Chapters)

  Scene: Peng-lai, Judge Dee’s 1st posting. A river port in Shantung (Shandong) province in eastern China, and a center of trade with Korea.

  The Magistrate’s Lieutenants: Hoong Liang, Ma Joong, Chaio Tai, Tao Gan

  The Cast:

  Wang Te-hwa, Judge Dee’s predecessor as magistrate of Peng-lai

  Yü-soo, Korean prostitute

  Yee Pen, wealthy shipowner

  Po Kai, Yee Pen’s recently hired business manager

  Koo Meng-pin, a wealthy shipowner

  Kim Sang, Koo’s business manager

  Mrs. Koo, daughter of Tsao Ho-hsien, recent bride of Koo Meng-pin

  Tsao Ho-hsien, Mrs. Koo’s father, a doctor of philosophy

  Tsao Min, Mrs. Koo’s younger brother

  Fan Choong, chief clerk of the tribunal

  Woo, Fan’s servent

  Pei Chiu, Fan’s tenant farmer

  Pei Soo-niang, Pei’s daughter

  Ah Kwang, a vagabond Tang, senior scribe of the Peng-lai tribunal

  Tang, senior scribe of the Peng-lai tribunal

  Hai-yüeh, abbot of the Buddhist White Cloud Temple

  Hui-pen, prior of the temple

  Tzu-hai, almoner of the temple

  “The Case of the Murdered Magistrate”

  Victim: Wang Te-hwa, poisoned

  Villain’s motive: political conspiracy

  Judge Dee accepts an appointment as magistrate in the district of Peng-lai with instructions to solve the murder of his predecessor. On several occasions he encounters the ghostly presence of Judge Wang. Eventually he discovers that Wang’s death was related to the activities of a gold smuggling conspiracy. (The method used to kill Judge Wang echoes that used in “The Case of the Poisoned Bride,” the third case in Dee Goong An.)

  “The Case of the Bolting Bride”

  Victim: Mrs. Koo, raped; vanished; murdered?

  Villain’s motive: lust

  Returning to her new home with Koo Meng-pin from her father’s tower hermitage west of Peng-lai, young Mrs. Koo disappears. Investigating, Judge Dee discovers two bodies buried in a hole near the farm of Fan Choong: that of a Buddhist monk and that of Fan Choong himself. Mrs. Koo eventually explains that she was also a victim in the assault that killed Fan, but that though bloodied and thought to be dead, she had survived. She was rescued by a benefactor and concealed for several days. Ma Joong has meanwhile killed the murderer. Neither her father nor her husband will accept Mrs. Koo following her return; Judge Dee advises her not to rashly dedicate herself as a nun.

  “The Case of the Butchered Bully”

  Victim: Fan Choong, nearly decapitated with a scythe

  Villain’s motive: jealousy

  Fan Choong’s body is discovered buried with the corpse of a Buddhist monk. Tang is extremely distraught. Judge Dee eventually discovers that Fan’s death was the result of mistaken identity.

  Prologue

  In the fifth and final novel of the first series, van Gulik abandons the device of the Ming dynasty prologue, setting the precedent for all of the remaining novels (the second and the third series), which will all begin with direct action. In lieu of the prologue, van Gulik opens with a scene of Dee as a young official in the capital, enjoying a farewell dinner before departing for his first assignment. His friends urge that both friendship and promotion lie in the metropole; Dee replies that he is not interested in bureaucratic paperwork; he wants to deal with living men in real situations.

  One of the functions of the prologues was to insert an element of the uncanny, which van Gulik took to be a signature of the Chinese tradition of detective story. In The Chinese Gold Murders, van Gulik works the mysterious into the narrative itself. Three times Judge Dee sees the ghost of his predecessor. Two of the three occasions have naturalistic explanations; but, as the final paragraphs of the novel emphasize, the third does not. In the Bell, Maze, Lake, and Nail Murders, the paranormal experience is outside the narrative of the detective story; in The Chinese Gold Murders it occurs in the investigation. About to step on a loosened plank in a bridge over a deep chasm, Judge Dee is alerted by the apparition of Judge Wang. The other sightings of his predecessor are explained as appearances of Judge Wang’s twin brother, who is covertly also looking into the crime. The apparition on the bridge is an inexplicable intrusion of the supernatural into the detective story itself.

  The Magistrate’s Lieutenants

  Having depicted enlistment of Tao Gan in The Chinese Lake Murders (3rd novel, 2nd posting) and the death of Sergeant Hoong in The Chinese Nail Murders (4th novel; 5th posting), van Gulik opens the final novel in the initial series with an account of the enlistment of Ma Joong and Chaio Tai. In Chapter Two, the two “Brothers of the Greenwood” beset the Judge and Sergeant Hoong as they ride to Dee’s first assignment in Peng Lai. In the chivalric tradition, the bandits permit Dee to dismount and arm himself with his sword. After beating Ma Joong, whose sword breaks, the Judge is battling Chaio Tai when a troop of twenty soldiers interrupts the combat. The judge graciously identifies his attackers as his “assistants,” thus protecting them from arrest. That evening, Ma Joong and Chiao Tai, having reflected upon the virility and the chivalry of the Judge, appear at his inn and offer him their allegiance. The episode emphasizes that while Judge Dee employs the two men as muscle (“my braves”), he is, if only marginally, their superior in swordplay (as well, of course, as much more their superior in analysis).

  Scene

  Van Gulik makes Judge Dee’s first posting a border assignment, this time on the eastern frontier, where the Others are not “barbarian” Uyghers or Tatars, but rather Koreans, whom the Chinese see rather as civilized competitors. In the sequence of Dee’s career, then, he is first assigned to a frontier posting, then to two heartland postings, and then to two frontier postings, before being recalled to the capital.

  Peng-lai will also be Judge Dee’s posting in The Lacquer Screen and in three short stories: “Five Auspicious Clouds,” “The Red Tape Murder,” and “He Came with the Rain.”

  Plot

  For the first time, there are not 25 chapters. The Chinese Gold Murders is not noticeably shorter than its five predecessors; the new format signals the author’s refusal to be tightly bound by his own precedents.

  All three cases are linked through the conspiracy to smuggle gold from Korea to the Chinese capital. Judge Wang (“the Murdered Magistrate”) was killed when he grew too suspicious; the vain scholar, Tsao Ho-hsien, enters the conspiracy to recoup his fortunes and finds himself obliged to marry his attractive daughter, “Mrs. Kuo, née Tsao” (“the Bolting Bride”), to his fellow conspirator, Koo Meng-pin. Fan Choong (“the Butchered Bully”) rapes “Mrs. Kuo, née Tsao.” Po Kai serves as Koo’s business manager. The Koreans, including the misguided Korean patriot, Yü-soo, are working with Koo. And, tying “The Case of the Murdered Magistrate” to the novel’s prologue in the capital, it is Dee’s friend, Secretary Hou, who has masterminded the entire smuggling plot.

  Korea

  In the 640s, the second Tang emperor, Taizong, had initiated a series of ineffective interventions in Goguryeo (Korguryŏ), the northern kingdom of the Korean peninsula. Taizong’s son, Gaozong (“Kao-tsung” in van Gulik’s Preface to The Chinese Gold Murders), was more successful. By allying his forces with those of the southern
Korean kingdom of Silla, Gaozong achieved a victory over Goguryeo in 668. This would be the victory “a few years ago, in our war with Korea” that Judge Dee refers to at the beginning Chapter 3. (Van Gulik dates Judge Dee’s arrival in Peng-lai to 663; exact historical correlation is not to be expected.) Later, Yee Pen reports that there are rumors that Peng-lai is being used to smuggle arms to Korea: “I heard that the Koreans are chafing under the defeat we inflicted on them, and are planning to attack our garrisons leagured [sic] there” (8.89). Yü-soo, the Korean prostitute, believes this is the purpose of the conspiracy that she is engaged in; her final words are “My country needs those arms; we must rise again….Long live Korea!” (13.149). But arms smuggling proves to be a red herring; it is gold that is being smuggled, and it seems that the chief harm to the empire lies in the avoidance of “high import and road taxes” and the possibility of market manipulations (204).

  Nonetheless, what van Gulik calls “the smuggle” constitutes one more instance of Judge Dee’s “Murder Cases” acquiring a larger significance. The primary mission of the fictional detective is to clarify a private problem—a theft, a blackmailing, a murder. There may be an added element of larger significance: Dupin investigates the Purloined Letter primarily to relieve a lady from potential blackmail, but involving as it does a state minister, the case also has a larger political significance. And in a couple of Sherlock Holmes’s sixty cases, the investigation actually centers on crimes of national or international importance (“The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” “The Adventure of the Second Stain”). In each of the first five novels, Judge Dee’s investigations acquire significant implications for the Chinese empire. He always restores order to families by identifying murderers, but he also eliminates a source of disorder in the larger body politic. In The Chinese Lake Murders and The Chinese Bell Murders, which represent Judge Dee’s second and third postings, the threats to the empire come from purely internal dissidents: the White Lotus Society and “the Buddhist crowd.” The first proposes to overthrow the existing dynasty; the second is acquiring an undue and dangerous influence (from Dee’s Confucianist perspective) in the imperial court. In The Chinese Gold Murders, The Chinese Maze Murders, and The Chinese Nail Murders—his first, fourth, and fifth postings—the threats to the empire are posed in whole or in part by the Koreans to the east, the Uigers to the west, and the Tartars to the north.