The Chinese Bell Murders

by Robert Van Gulik

  'When I studied this case I was at once struck by a curious inconsistency. I knew that Lin Fan was a ruthless criminal, I knew that Mrs Liang was his main opponent. I knew that Lin had done his utmost to destroy her-but only until she came to Poo-yang. I asked myself: why didn't he kill her here? Until recently Lin Fan had all his henchmen with him here, he could have had her murdered easily, and make it appear as if it had been an accident. He didn't hesitate to kill here Liang Ko-fa, he didn't hesitate one moment when he thought he could murder me and the four of you. But he didn't lift a finger against Mrs Liang-after she had come to Poo-yang. I was greatly puzzled by this. Then the golden locket we found under the bronze bell supplied a clue.

  'Since the locket was marked with the surname Lin, all of you assumed that it was Lin Fan's. But such lockets are worn by a cord round the neck, on the bare skin under the clothes. If the cord breaks, the locket will drop in the bosom. Lin Fan couldn't have lost it. Since it was found near the skeleton's neck I concluded it belonged to the murdered man. Lin Fan didn't see it because his victim wore it under his clothes. It came to light only when the termites had devoured the clothes, and the cord it had been attached with to the man's neck. I suspected that the skeleton was not that of Liang Ko-fa, but of a person bearing the same surname as his murderer.'

  Judge Dee paused and quickly emptied his tea-cup. Then he went on:

  'I reread my own notes on the case and found a second indication that the murdered man was someone else. Liang Ko-fa must have been about thirty years old when he came to Poo-yang. The person Mrs Liang registered under this name was indeed stated to be thirty years old, but the warden told Tao Gan that he seemed rather a youngster of about twenty.

  'Then I began to suspect Mrs Liang. I thought she might well be another woman, resembling Mrs Liang and knowing everything about the old feud. A woman who hated Lin Fan as much as Mrs Liang, but a woman whom Lin Fan didn't want or didn't dare to harm. I again studied the records of the feud she had given me, and tried to find a woman and a youngster that could have posed as Mrs Liang and her grandson. Then I formed a theory which at first I considered utterly fantastic, but which was confirmed by the facts that subsequently came to light.

  'You'll remember that the records state that soon after Lin Fan had raped Mrs Liang Hoong, his own wife disappeared. It was surmised that Lin Fan had murdered her. But no evidence was given and the body was never found. I now knew that Lin Fan did not kill her. She left him. She had been deeply in love with him, so deeply that she could perhaps have forgiven him for his murdering her brother, and causing the death of her father. For a woman shall follow and obey her husband. But when her husband fell in love with her sister-in-law, her love changed into hatred, the terrible hatred of a woman scorned.

  'Having resolved to leave her husband and take revenge on him, what was more natural than that she would secretly approach her old mother, Mrs Liang, and offer to join her in her attempts to bring Lin Fan to ruin? Mrs-Lin had dealt her husband already a cruel blow by leaving him. For, strange as it may seem to you, my friends, Lin Fan loved her dearly. His desire for Mrs Liang Hoong had only been a perverse whim, that did not affect his love for his wife-the only restraint this hard and cruel man ever knew.

  'After he had lost her, Lin Fan's evil nature asserted itself, he became ever more violent in his persecution of the Liang family. Finally he had them killed in the old fortress. All perished there, including old Mrs Liang, and her grandson Liang Ko-fa.'

  Tao Gan began to speak, but Judge Dee raised his hand.

  'Mrs Lin,' he went on, 'continued where her old mother had left off. Being completely in her mother's confidence, and being naturally conversant with all the affairs of the Liang family, it was not difficult for her to pose as Mrs Liang. I presume there was a family likeness, she only had to make herself look older than she was. Moreover, her mother must have been expecting new attacks by Lin Fan, and entrusted to her daughter all documents relating to the feud for safe keeping, before she went to the old fortress.

  'Soon thereafter Mrs Lin must have revealed to Lin Fan her identity. This blow hit him even harder than the first. His wife had not perished, she had left him, and she had declared herself his sworn enemy. He could not denounce her personation-what man with any pride left would admit that his own wife had turned against him? Besides, he loved her. The only thing he could do was to hide himself from her. Thus he fled here to Poo-yang, and when she continued to harass him, he prepared to flee again to somewhere else.

  'Mrs Lin had told Lin Fan the truth about herself, but she had lied to him about the youngster who was with her. She told Lin Fan it was Liang Ko-fa. This brings me to the most unbelievable, the most inhuman part of this dark, inhuman tragedy. Mrs Lin's lie was part of a fiendish scheme more repulsive in its subtle cruelty than any of Lin Fan's own barbarous crimes. The youngster was her own son, begotten by Lin Fan.'

  Now all four men started to speak, but again the judge silenced them by raising his hand.

  'When Lin Fan raped Mrs Liang Hoong, he didn't know that his wife, after all those years of frustration, had just become pregnant. I wouldn't presume, my friends, that I can gauge the deepest secrets of a woman's soul. But I take it that Lin Fan going to another woman just at the time which Mrs Lin considered as the climax of their married love, inspired her with that maniacal and inhuman hatred. I say inhuman, because she sacrificed her own son in order to be able to deal Lin Fan, after she would have succeeded in ruining him, one last, shattering blow. She would tell him that he had murdered his own son.

  'Doubtless she had convinced the youngster that he was indeed Liang Ko-fa, by telling him, for instance, that the young children had been exchanged in order to protect him better against Lin Fan's attacks. But she made him wear the locket that Lin Fan had given her on their wedding day.

  'I am telling you this fearful tale as I could finally complete it for myself during my hearing of Lin Fan. Till then it was but a vague theory. The first confirmation was Lin Fan's reaction -when I showed him the locket; he nearly said that it belonged to his wife. The second and final confirmation came during those brief, pathetic moments when man and wife stood facing each other before my bench. Mrs Lin's supreme moment had at last arrived, the goal she had been working for so assiduously had been reached: her husband was ruined, he would perish on the execution ground. Now the time had come to deal him the blow that would break his heart. Raising her hand in accusation she began: "You murdered your____________________" But then she found she couldn't bring out those last two words that would complete the terrible sentence "You murdered your own son." When she saw her husband standing there covered with blood, at last defeated, all her hatred suddenly left her. She saw only the husband she had loved. When, overcome by emotion, she started swaying on her feet, Lin Fan rushed towards her. Not to attack her, as the headman and everyone else thought. I saw the look in his eyes, I know that he only wanted to support her, to prevent her from falling and hurting herself on the stone floor.

  'That is all. You'll now understand the difficult position I found myself in, already before I heard Lin Fan. I had arrested him, and I had to convict him quickly, and without utilising his murdering his son. It would have taken months to prove Mrs Lin's usurping Mrs Liang's identity. Therefore I had to try to trap Lin Fan and make him confess his assault on us.

  'But his confession didn't solve my quandary. The central authorities would certainly assign a major part of Lin Fan's confiscated property to the supposed Mrs Liang. I could never allow the pseudo Mrs Liang to obtain that property which rightfully belonged to the State. I was waiting for her to approach me, for she must have suspected that I knew the truth when I started questioning her about details of the flight from the burning redoubt. When she didn't come, I feared I would be obliged to take legal action against her. Now also that problem is solved. Mrs Lin decided to kill herself. But she waited because she wished to die on the same day and the same hour as her husband. And now Heaven shall judge
her.'

  Deep silence reigned in the room.

  Judge Dee shivered. Pulling his robes closer he said:

  'Winter is approaching, there's a chill in the air. On your way out, Sergeant, you might tell the clerks to prepare a brazier.'

  When his four assistants had left, Judge Dee rose. He went over to the side-table with the cap-mirror to take off his winged judge's cap. The mirror reflected his haggard, tortured face.

  Automatically he folded the cap up and placed it in the drawer of the mirror stand. He put on his house cap, and started pacing the floor, his hands behind his back.

  He tried desperately to compose his mind. But as soon as he had succeeded in diverting his troubled thoughts from the horrors he had just related, there rose before his mind's eye the gruesome sight of the mangled bodies of the twenty monks, and the mad laughter of Lin Fan as his limbs were torn apart began to ring again in his ears. He asked himself in despair how August Heaven could will such inhuman suffering, such sickening bloodshed.

  Tom by doubt he stood still in front of his desk, he buried his face in his hands.

  When he lowered his hands his eye fell on the letter from the Board of Rites and Ceremonies. With a forlorn sigh he remembered his duty to verify whether the clerks had placed the board in the proper place.

  He pulled aside the screen that separated his private office from the court-hall. Walking past the dais he stepped down into the hall, and turned round.

  He saw the bench covered with scarlet cloth, and his empty arm-chair. He saw behind it the screen with the large embroidered unicorn, the symbol of perspicacity. And as he looked higher, he saw on the wall above the canopy over the dais, the horizontal board with the Imperial Words.

  When he read them he felt deeply moved. He knelt on the bare flagstones. All alone in the cold, empty hall he remained so for a long time, in earnest and humble prayer.

  High up above him the morning sun coming through the windows shone on four large gilded characters, written in the Emperor's faultless calligraphy:

  'Justice outweighs human life.'

  JUDGE DEE KNEELS BEFORE AN IMPERIAL INSCRIPTION

  POSTSCRIPT

  A feature all old Chinese detective stories have in common is that the role of detective is always played by the magistrate of the district where the crime occurred.

  This official is in charge of the entire administration of the district under his jurisdiction, usually comprising one walled city and the countryside around it for fifty miles or so. The magistrate's duties are manifold. He is fully responsible for the collection of taxes, the registration of births, deaths and marriages, keeping up to date the land registration, the maintenance of the peace, etc., while as presiding judge of the local tribunal he is charged with the apprehension and punishing of criminals and the hearing of all civil and criminal cases. Since the magistrate thus supervises practically every phase of the daily life of the people, he is commonly referred to as the 'father-and-mother official.'

  The magistrate is a permanently overworked official. He lives with his family in separate quarters right inside the compound of the tribunal, and as a rule spends his every waking hour upon his official duties.

  The district magistrate is at the bottom of the colossal pyramidal structure of ancient Chinese government organisation. He must report to the prefect, who supervises twenty or more districts. The prefect reports to the provincial governor, who is responsible for a dozen or so prefectures. The governor in his turn reports to the central authorities in the capital, with the Emperor at the top.

  Every citizen in the Empire, whether rich or poor and regardless of his social background, could enter official life and become a district magistrate by passing the literary examinations. In this respect the Chinese system was already a rather democratic one at a time when Europe was still under feudal rule.

  A magistrate's term of office was usually three years. Thereafter he was transferred to another district, to be in due time promoted to prefect. Promotion was selective, being based solely on actual performance; less gifted men often spent the greater part of their lives as district magistrate.

  In exercising his general duties the magistrate was assisted by the permanent personnel of the tribunal, such as the constables, the scribes, the warden of the jail, the coroner, the guards and the runners. Those, however, only perform their routine duties. They are not concerned with the detection of crimes.

  This task is performed by the magistrate himself, assisted by three or four trusted helpers; these he selects at the beginning of his career and they accompany him to whatever post he goes. These assistants are placed over the other personnel of the tribunal. They have no local connections and are therefore less liable to let themselves be influenced in their work by personal considerations. For the same reason it is a fixed rule that no official shall ever be appointed magistrate in his own native district.

  The present novel gives a general idea of ancient Chinese court procedure. The illustrations facing p. 50 and 280 show the arrangement of the court-hall. When the court is in session, the judge sits behind the bench, with his assistants and the scribes standing by his side. The bench is a high table covered with a piece of red cloth that hangs down in front from the top of the table to the floor of the raised dais.

  On this bench one always sees the same implements: an inkstone for rubbing black and vermilion ink, two writing brushes, and a number of thin bamboo spills in a tubular holder. These staves are used to mark the number of blows that a criminal receives. If the constables are to give ten blows, the judge will take ten markers and throw them on the floor in front of the dais. The headman of the constables will put apart one marker for every blow.

  One will also see on top of the bench the large square seal of the tribunal, and the gavel. The latter is not shaped like a hammer as in the West. It is an oblong piece of hardwood about one foot long. In Chinese it is significantly called ching-t'ang-mu 'Wood that frightens the hall.'

  The constables stand facing each other in front of the dais, in two rows on left and right. Both plaintiff and accused must kneel between these two rows on the bare flagstones and remain so during the entire session. They have no lawyers to assist them, they may call no witnesses, and their position is generally not an enviable one. The entire court procedure was in fact intended to act as a deterrent, impressing the people with the awful consequences of getting involved with the law. As a rule there were every day three sessions of the tribunal, in the morning, at noon, and in the afternoon.

  It is a fundamental principle of Chinese law that no criminal can be pronounced guilty unless he has confessed to his crime. To prevent hardened criminals from escaping punishment by refusing to confess even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, the law allows the application of legal severities, such as beating with whip and bamboo, and placing hands and ankles in screws. Next to these authorised means of torture magistrates often applied more severe kinds. If, however, an accused should receive permanent bodily harm or die under such severe torture, the magistrate and the entire personnel of his tribunal were punished, often with the extreme penalty. Most judges, therefore, depended more upon their shrewd psychological insight and their knowledge of their fellow men than on the application of severe torture.

  All in all the ancient Chinese system worked reasonably well. Sharp control by the higher authorities prevented excesses, and public opinion acted as another curb on wicked or irresponsible magistrates. Capital sentences had to be ratified by the Throne and every accused could appeal to the higher judicial instances, going up as far as the Emperor himself. Moreover, the magistrate was not allowed to interrogate the accused in private, all his hearings of a case, including the preliminary examination, had to be conducted in the public sessions of the tribunal. A careful record was kept of all proceedings and these reports had to be forwarded to the higher authorities for their inspection.

  The reader may wonder how it was possible that the scribes accurately noted
down the court proceedings without the use of shorthand. The answer is that the Chinese literary language in itself is a kind of shorthand. It is possible, for instance, to reduce to four written ideographs a sentence that counts say twenty or more words in the colloquial. Moreover there exist several systems of running handwriting, where characters consisting often or more brush strokes can be reduced to one scrawl. While serving in China I myself often had Chinese clerks make notes of complicated Chinese conversations and found their record of astonishing accuracy.

  I may remark in passing that the old Chinese written language did not as a rule have any punctuation and that in Chinese there is no difference between capitals and small type. The falsification mentioned in the fourteenth chapter would, of course, be impossible in most alphabetical systems of writing.

  'Judge Dee' is one of the great ancient Chinese detectives. He was a historical person, one of the well-known statesmen of the T'ang dynasty. His full name was Ti Jen-chieh, and he lived from a.d. 630 till 700. In his younger years, while serving as magistrate in the provinces, he acquired fame because of the many difficult criminal cases which he solved. It is chiefly because of his reputation as a detector of crimes that later Chinese fiction has made him the hero of a number of crime stories which have only very slight foundation in historical fact, if any.

  Later he became a Minister of the Imperial Court and through his wise counsels exercised a beneficial influence on affairs of State; it was because of his energetic protests that the Empress Wu who was then in power abandoned her plans to appoint to the Throne a favourite instead of the rightful Heir Apparent.

  In most Chinese detective novels the magistrate is at the same time engaged in the solving of three or more totally different cases. This interesting feature I have retained in the present novel, writing up the three plots so as to form one continuous story. In my opinion Chinese crime novels in this respect are more realistic than ours. A district had quite a numerous population, it is only logical that often several criminal cases had to be dealt with at the same time.