The Phantom Of The Temple

by Robert Van Gulik

  ‘Stop talking nonsense!’ the judge interrupted him impatiently. ‘Did Seng-san have a quarrel with someone recently? A real quarrel, I mean, not just a drunken brawl?’

  ‘Well, he had a mighty big row with his brother, sir; a couple of weeks ago, it was. Lao-woo, that’s what his brother is called. Not quite as tall as Seng-san, but a mean bastard all right. He took Seng-san’s wench, and Seng-san swore he’d kill him for that. Then Lao-woo left for Tong-kang. With the skirt. But a woman, that’s no reason for killing a man, is it, sir? If it had been money now …’

  ‘Did Seng-san have among his friends or acquaintances a fairly tall, lean chap? Kind of dandy, say a shop clerk or something like that?’

  Ah-liu thought hard, wrinkling his low brow. Then he replied, ‘Well, yes, I did see him a few times with a tallish fellow who was rather neatly dressed in a blue gown. Had a real cap on his head too. I asked Seng-san who he was and what they were talking about so busily, but he just told me to shut up and mind my own business. Which I did.’

  ‘Would you recognize that man again if you saw him?’

  ‘No sir. They met after dark, in the front yard of the temple. He had no beard, I think. Only a moustache.’

  ‘All right, Ah-liu. I hope you told all you know. For your own sake!’

  While they were walking back to the office, Judge Dee told his two lieutenants, ‘Ah-liu’s remarks bear the hallmark of truth. But somebody went out of his way to make Ah-liu the scapegoat. He is safer in jail, for the time being. Tell the headman that the session is adjourned till tomorrow, Sergeant. I must change now, for I promised my ladies I would take the noon-rice with them, on this festive day. Afterwards, Hoong, I shall go with you and the headman to the deserted temple, to view the scene of the double murder. As for you, Ma Joong, I want you to go this afternoon to the north-west quarter where the Tartars, Uigurs and other barbarians live. Since the murderer used a Tartar axe, he may well have been a Tartar, or a Chinese citizen who associates with those foreigners. You have to be very familiar with those axes with crooked handles to use them as effectively as the murderer did. Just go round the low-class eating-houses where the rabble hangs out, and make discreet inquiries!’

  ‘I can do better than that, sir!’ Ma Joong said eagerly. ‘I shall ask Tulbee!’

  Sergeant Hoong gave the judge a meaningful look but tactfully refrained from comment. Tulbee was an Uigur prostitute whom Ma Joong had violently fallen in love with six months before.* (* See The Chinese Maze Murders, London 1962.) It had been a brief affair, for he had soon tired of her rather overwhelming charms, while she proved to have an incurable fondness for rancid butter-tea and an equally incurable aversion to washing herself properly. When he had, moreover, discovered that she had a steady lover already, a Mongolian camel driver whom she had given two boys of four and seven, he ended the relationship in an elegant manner. He used his savings for buying her out, and established her in an open-air soup kitchen of her own. The camel driver married her, Ma Joong acting as best man at a wedding feast of roast lamb and Mongolian raw liquor that lasted till dawn and gave him the worst hangover he had had for years.

  After a brief pause, Judge Dee said cautiously, ‘As a rule those people are very reticent concerning the affairs of their own race. However, since you know the girl well, she might talk more freely to you. Anyway, it’s worth a try-out. Come and report to me when you are back.’

  Sergeant Hoong and Ma Joong ate their noon-rice together, in the guardroom. Ma Joong had ordered a soldier to bring a large jug of wine from the nearest tavern.

  ‘I know the rotgut the old girl serves up,’ he said wryly as he put his cup down. ‘Therefore I have to line my stomach beforehand, you see! Now I’d better change into old clothes, so as not to be too conspicuous. Good luck with the search in the temple!’

  After Ma Joong had left, Sergeant Hoong finished his tea and strolled over to Judge Dee’s private residence at the back of the tribunal compound. The old housemaster informed him that, after the noon-rice, the judge had gone to the back garden, together with his three ladies. The sergeant nodded and walked on. He was the only male member of the personnel of the tribunal allowed to enter Judge Dee’s women’s quarters, and he was very proud of that privilege.

  It was fairly cool in the garden, for it had been laid out expertly by a previous magistrate whose hobby was landscape gardening. High oak and acacia trees spread their branches over the winding footpath that was paved with smooth black stones of irregular shape. At every turn one heard the murmur of the brook that meandered through the undergrowth, here and there broken by clusters of flowering shrubs of carefully matched colours.

  The last turn brought the sergeant to a small clearing, bordered by mossy rocks. The Second and Third Ladies, sitting on a rustic stone bench under high, rustling bamboos, were gazing at the lotus pond farther down, on the garden’s lowest level. Beyond was the outer wall, camouflaged by cleverly spaced pine trees. In the centre of the lotus pond stood a small water-pavilion, its pointed roof with the gracefully upturned eaves supported by six slender, red-lacquered pillars. Judge Dee and his First Lady were inside, bent over the table by the balustrade.

  The judge is going to write,’ the Second Lady informed Hoong. ‘We stayed behind here so as not to disturb him.’ She had a pleasant homely face; her hair was done up in a simple coil at the back of her head; and she wore a jacket of violet silk over a white robe. It was her task to supervise the household accounts. The Third Lady, slender in her long-sleeved gown of blue silk, gathered under the bosom by a red sash, wore her hair in an elaborate high chignon which set off to advantage her sensitive, finely chiselled face. Her main interests were painting and calligraphy, while she was also fond of outdoor sports, especially horse-riding. She was in charge of the tuition of Judge Dee’s children. Sergeant Hoong gave them a friendly nod and descended the stone stairs leading down to the lotus pond.

  He went up the curved marble bridge that spanned the pond. The water-pavilion was built on the highest point of the curve. Judge Dee was standing in front of the table, a large writing-brush in his hand. He looked speculatively at the sheet of red paper spread out on the table top. His First Lady was busily preparing ink on the small side table. She had an oval, regular face, and her hair was done up in three heavy coils, fixed by a narrow, golden hairband. The tailored robe of blue and white embroidered silk showed her fine figure, inclining to portliness now that she was celebrating her thirty-ninth birthday. The judge had married her when she was nineteen and he twenty. She was the eldest daughter of a high official, his father’s best friend. Having received an excellent classical education and being a woman of strong personality, she directed the entire household with a firm hand. Now she stopped rubbing the ink-cake on the stone, and motioned to her husband that it was ready. Judge Dee moistened the brush, pushed his right sleeve back from his wrist, then wrote the character for ‘long life’, nearly four feet high, in one powerful sweeping movement.

  Sergeant Hoong, who had been waiting on the bridge till the judge was ready, now stepped into the pavilion. ‘Magnifïcent calligraphy, sir!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I wanted that auspicious character in the master’s own handwriting, Hoong!’ the First Lady said with a satisfied smile. ‘Tonight we shall display it on the wall of the dining-room!’

  The Second and Third Ladies came rushing towards the pond to admire the writing too. They clapped their hands excitedly.

  ‘Well,’ Judge Dee said smiling, ‘it couldn’t but turn out well, seeing that my First Lady made the ink and you two prepared the red paper and the brush! I must be leaving now, for I have to go and have a look at the deserted temple. Some vagabonds had a scuffle there last night. If there’s time, I shall call on the Abbess in the Hermitage and tell her that I am planning to post a regular guardpost on the hill,’

  ‘Please do that!’ the Second Lady said eagerly. ‘The Abbess is alone in the Hermitage with only one maidservant,’

  ‘You ought
to persuade the Abbess to move into the city,’ the First Lady remarked. ‘There are two or three empty shrines here where she could settle down. That would save her coming such a long way on the days she teaches us flower arrangement.’

  ‘I’ll do my best/ the judge promised. His ladies liked the Abbess, who was one of the few nice friends they had in Lan-fang. ‘I may be late,’ he added, ‘but you’ll be busy the whole afternoon anyway, receiving the wives of the notables who come to offer their congratulations. I’ll try to be back as early as possible.’

  His three ladies conducted him to the entrance of the garden.

  Chapter 6

  Judge Dee’s large official palankeen was standing ready in the front yard, eight sturdy bearers by its side. The headman was also waiting there, accompanied by ten constables on horseback. Judge Dee entered the palankeen, followed by Sergeant Hoong.

  While they were being carried to the east gate, the sergeant asked: ‘Why should the murderer have gone to all the trouble of severing the heads of his victims, sir? And why switch the bodies?’

  ‘The obvious answer, Sergeant, is that, although the murderer-or murderers!-didn’t mind Seng-san being identified as one of the victims, for some mysterious reason he didn’t want Seng-san’s body found. At the same time he wanted to conceal the fact that there had been a second murder, and he wanted to hide the identity of his second victim. But there could be also other, less obvious reasons. However, let’s not worry about that yet. Our first task is to discover Seng-san’s body, and the head of the other victim. Those must be hidden somewhere in or near the deserted temple.’

  When the cortège had passed through the east city gate, a few loafers hanging around the small shops and street stalls lining the country road went to follow, curious to know what was afoot. But the headman raised his whip and barked at them to stay behind.

  A little further on an ornamental stone arch at the foot of the wooded mountain slope indicated the beginning of the flight of steps leading uphill. The headman and the constables dismounted. While the bearers were lowering Judge Dee’s palankeen to the ground, he said to the sergeant quickly:

  ‘Remember, Hoong, that our men are not to know exactly what we are looking for! I’ll tell them it’s a large box or something like that.’ The judge descended and bestowed a dubious look on the steep staircase. ‘A stiff climb on a hot day, headman!’

  ‘Nearly two hundred steps, Your Honour. But it’s the quickest way. Behind the temple there’s a footpath that goes down the slope in an easy descent to the highway, and from there it’s but a short walk to the north city gate. But then it takes you more than an hour to reach the top of the hill. Only hunters and woodgatherers use that road. The riff-raff that stay in the temple overnight go up these stairs.’

  ‘All right.’ The judge gathered up the front of his robe and began the ascent of the broad, weatherbeaten stone steps.

  Half-way up the judge ordered a brief rest, for he had noticed that the sergeant was breathing heavily. Arrived on the top of the stairs, they saw a weed-overgrown clearing among tall trees. On the other side rose a triple temple gate of grey stone with, on either side, a formidable-looking high wall. Over the central arch of the gate appeared three characters in multicoloured mosaic, reading Tzu-yün-szu, ‘Temple of the Purple Clouds’.

  ‘The narrow pathway along the wall on the right leads to the small new temple, the so-called Hermitage, sir,’ explained the headman. ‘The Abbess lives there, with one maidservant. I haven’t asked them yet whether they heard or saw anything last night.’

  ‘I want to see the scene of the crime first,’ Judge Dee told him. ‘Lead the way!’

  The paved front courtyard was overgrown with weeds and the walls were crumbling here and there, but the temple’s main hall with its high roof, flanked by two three-storeyed towers, had withstood the ravages of time intact.

  ‘This outlandish architecture,’ the judge remarked to Sergeant Hoong, ‘can of course never come near the perfection of ours. I have to admit, however, that from a technical point of view the Indian builders did a good job. Those two towers are absolutely symmetrical. I gather that this temple was built three hundred years ago, and it is still in a remarkably good state of repair. Where did you find Ah-liu, headman?’

  The headman took them to the edge of the wilderness on the left of the courtyard. On the right was a piece of wasteland, strewn with large boulders. The judge noticed that it was slightly cooler here than down in the city. The warm air was filled with the incessant strident chirping of cicadas.

  ‘This wilderness was once an extensive, well-kept garden, Your Honour,’ the headman explained. ‘Now it’s a mass of tangled vegetation where even the scoundrels who gather in the temple and courtyard don’t dare to go. It is said that there are many poisonous snakes.’ Pointing to an old oak tree, he went on: ‘The accused was lying under that tree, sir, his head resting on the raised root. My conjecture is that he meant to take to his heels after he had murdered Seng-san. But he stumbled in the dark over that tree root. Drunk as he was, the fall knocked him out completely,’

  ‘I see. Let’s go inside.’

  While the constables were pushing the six-fold lattice doors of the main hall open, fragments of mouldering wood came down on their heads. Judge Dee went up the three broad stone stairs, stepped over the high threshold, and looked curiously at the cavernous, half-dark hall. On the right and left a row of six heavy stone pillars supported the thick rafters high above, from which dust-laden cobwebs hung down like so many grey pennons. At the far end, against the back wall, the judge saw vaguely an altar table of solid ebony, more than twelve feet long and about five feet high. In the side wall was a small narrow door, and above it, high up in the wall, a square window, boarded up with planks. Pointing at the window, Judge Dee asked, ‘Can’t your men open that, headman? It’s too dark in here!’

  At a sign from the headman two constables went to a niche in the wall behind the left row of pillars. They took two halberds from it. With those they set to work on the boarded-up window. While they were busy, Judge Dee walked on to the centre of the hall and silently surveyed it, slowly caressing his long sidewhiskers. The clammy, oppressive air seemed to clog up his lungs. Except for the holes bored at regular intervals in the wall for placing burning torches in, there was nothing left to suggest the orgies that had taken place there years ago, yet the hall emanated a subtle atmosphere of evil. Suddenly the judge had the uncanny feeling that unseen eyes were fixing him with a hostile stare.

  ‘They say that formerly the walls were hung with large coloured pictures, Your Honour,’ the headman spoke up beside him. ‘Of naked gods and goddesses, and-‘

  ‘I am not interested in hearsay!’ Judge Dee snapped. Seeing the leer freeze on the headman’s face, he asked, more friendly, ‘Where do you think those ashes on the floor behind the pillars come from, headman?’

  ‘In winter, Your Honour, the scum that frequent this place burn faggots here. They come to stay here overnight, especially during the cold months, for the thick walls protect them against rain and snow.’

  ‘The heap of ashes here in the centre looks quite recent, though,’ the judge remarked. The ashes were lying in a shallow round cavity, hollowed out in one of the flagstones. Around the cavity a wreath of lotus petals had been carved into the stone. The judge noticed that this particular flagstone was located in the exact centre of the floor. The eight flags surrounding it were marked by incised letters of a foreign script.

  The boards that had covered the window at the back of the hall fell down with a thud. Two black shapes hurtled down from the rafters. One came flapping past Judge Dee’s head with an eerie, piercing screech. Then the bats made for the dark cavity over the front entrance.

  Sergeant Hoong had been studying the floor in front of the altar table. He righted himself and said, ‘Now that we have better light, sir, you can see clearly that there was a veritable pool of blood here. But the thick layer of dust and refuse has abso
rbed it. And there are so many confused footprints all over that it’s hard to draw any conclusions.’

  Judge Dee went over to him and examined the floor. ‘No, Heaven knows what happened here! Headman, get your men around me!’ When the constables were standing in a half-circle in front of him, the judge resumed, ‘I have information to the effect that, before or after the murder, a large wooden box was concealed inside this temple, or in the grounds outside. We shall begin inside.

  I’ll take the left wing with Sergeant Hoong and three men, the headman takes the right with the others. It must have been a fairly large box, so look for hidden cupboards, stone flags that show signs of having been taken up recently, trap doors and so on. Get to work!’

  Two constables opened the door beside the niche for the ritual weapons. Besides the two long halberds which they had put back there, the niche contained one Tartar double axe, an exact replica of the murder weapon. They entered a narrow corridor about twenty-five feet long, with four door-openings on either side. These proved to give access to long, narrow rooms, each lit by a gaping window; the paper-covered latticework had disappeared long ago.

  ‘Evidently these rooms were the cells of the priests,’ the judge remarked. ‘There must be a similar set of eight cells over in the right wing, for the groundplan of this temple is exactly symmetrical. Hey, come here, you!’ Pointing at the tiled floor, Judge Dee told the constable: ‘See whether you can pry those tiles loose. They don’t seem to fit closely. Your two colleagues can inspect the floors of the cells opposite.’

  The constable inserted the point of his knife in the groove between the flagstones. Three could be raised easily.

  ‘See what was buried there!’

  The man dug with his knife in the loose earth but there was nothing underneath except the solid stones of the temple’s foundations.

  ‘We are hot on the scent, sir!’ Hoong exclaimed, excited. ‘Someone wanted to bury something bulky here, but gave up when he found he couldn’t make the hole deep enough!’