Murder in Canton: A Judge Dee Mystery

by Robert Van Gulik

  ‘The game opened exactly as you had planned. The Censor came here incognito, to check the rumours about unrest among the Arabs. He did not dare to inform the authorities of his visit, because it had been suggested to him that a person at court was involved in the scheme, and he wanted to discover who that was, of course. However, he came also for another reason, then unknown to you. On his first visit to Canton the Censor had met Zumurrud, and they had fallen in love with each other.’

  ‘How could I have foreseen that she would meet him in that confounded temple?’ Liang muttered. ‘She…’

  ‘That is where life differs from chess, Mr Liang,’ Judge Dee cut him short. ‘In real life you have to reckon with unknown factors. Well, after the Censor had studied the situation here together with Dr Soo, he suspected that a trap was being laid for him. He approached Mansur and feigned to sympathize with his seditious plans. He probably even helped Mansur and two of his accomplices to smuggle arms into the city. When Mansur reported this to you, you knew that your scheme was succeeding even better than you had expected: if Mansur was brought to justice, he would have to confess only the truth! But since you realized that the Censor was fooling Mansur, you decided to speed up his murder.

  ‘Then Zumurrud poisoned the Censor. She had to tell you everything, and…’

  ‘Had to tell me, you say?’ Liang shouted suddenly. ‘She always insisted on telling me! Every time, directly after she had slept with one of her vulgar, stray lovers! Tormented me by telling all the sordid, unspeakable details, then laughed at me!’ Burying his face in his hands, he sobbed. ‘That was her revenge, and I…I could do nothing. She was stronger than me. The fiery blood pulsated in her veins, while mine was thin, thinned by two generations.…’ He looked up, his face haggard. Taking hold of himself, he said harshly, ‘All right, she had not told me about the Censor before, because he was going to take her away. Proceed! Time is getting short.’

  ‘Just at that time,’ Judge Dee continued calmly, ‘I and my two assistants arrived. Ostensibly to inspect foreign trade. You suspected that I had come to investigate the Censor's disappearance. You had my two lieutenants closely watched, and found your suspicions confirmed by the interest they displayed in the Arabs here. You decided that we fitted nicely into your game. For who could better denounce Mansur's treacherous scheme than the President of the Metropolitan Court? Your only problem was Dr Soo. Zumurrud had said that Dr Soo was ignorant of her affair with the Censor, but you had to make sure. Now Dr Soo must have become worried when the Censor did not return to their inn that night, and the next morning, that is the day before yesterday, he roamed along the waterfront looking for him. You had him followed by one of Mansur's Arab assassins, and one of your own Tanka stranglers. They reported in the afternoon that Dr Soo apparently knew Colonel Chiao, and that he followed my lieutenant when he left the wine-house. You ordered the Tanka to assist the Arab in killing Dr Soo, but to strangle him before he could kill Chiao Tai. For you wanted to spare Colonel Chiao so that he could follow up Dr Soo's murder, which would, in due course, further strengthen the case against Mansur.

  ‘Then, however, you had a stroke of bad luck. My man Tao Gan happened to meet the blind girl. She must be your sister, the one you said had died in an accident. For Tao Gan mistook Mrs Pao for her, and so did your Tanka killers whom you had sent to Yau's house. She evidently wanted to prevent you from ruining yourself, and…’

  ‘The sanctimonious little fool!’ Liang interrupted angrily. ‘She is the cause of all my troubles, for she wilfully threw away a splendid future, by my side. She and I inherited my father's talents; our younger sister was nothing but a stupid woman, swayed by her ludicrous petty passions! But Lan-lee! When the old houseteacher was reading the classics with us, she would understand at once the most difficult passages! And she was beautiful! My boyhood ideal of the perfect woman! I often spied on her when she was bathing, her…’ Suddenly he fell silent. He swallowed a few times before he went on, ‘After we had grown up and our parents died, I spoke to her about our ancient myths, of the Founding Saints of our Empire, who took their sisters as spouse. But she, she refused, said awful, terrible things to me, said she would leave me, and never come back. So I put boiling oil into her eyes while she was asleep. For how could I allow a woman who had dared to scorn me ever to look upon another man? Instead of cursing me, she pitied me, the little hypocrite! In a rage I set fire to her room, I wanted to…to…’ He choked, his face distorted in impotent anger. After a while he resumed, calmer, ‘She had said she would never come back, but recently she would come to snoop here in my house, the slick bitch. I heard that she had met my two men who brought the Censor's body here before taking it to the temple, and had stolen that damned cricket. Although she knew nothing of my scheme, she was clever enough to put two and two together. Fortunately my men spotted her when that assistant of yours took her home, and they eaves dropped on their conversation. The nasty bitch was setting you on my trail by saying that she had caught the cricket near the temple where the Censor's body was. So I brought her here and locked her up. But she escaped the next morning, just after breakfast. How she managed to do that, I still…’

  ‘It was indeed the clue of the cricket that led me to the temple,’ Judge Dee said. ‘My discovery of the Censor's dead body was an unexpected setback for you; you had wanted the body to disappear, so that the Tanka poison would not be identified. Later you would make Mansur confess that he had thrown it into the sea, I presume. However, you succeeded in turning this setback into your favour. During my visit here you cleverly suggested that the Arabs had close contacts with the Tanka, implying that Mansur had ample opportunity for obtaining the poison. So everything was going very well indeed. Then, for the second time, the human element cut across your beautiful game. Colonel Chiao met Zumurrud and fell in love with her. Your spies reported that he visited her on the boat yesterday morning, evidently slept with her. What if she had persuaded him to spirit her away to the capital? What if she had inadvertently given him a clue to your identity? Chiao Tai had to go. He was to be killed in Nee's house.’ The judge looked thoughtfully at his host and asked, ‘By the way, how did you know that Chiao Tai would call there a second time?’

  Liang Foo shrugged his narrow shoulders.

  ‘Two of my men had established a regular watchpost in the house at the back of Nee's, directly after your man Chiao's first visit to Nee. Mansur was hiding there too. When he saw your lieutenant going there, he sent his two men over the roofs at once to kill him with one of the captain's swords. I thought that quite a good idea of Mansur, for Nee deserved to die on the scaffold, as a murderer. The lecher debauched my sister.’

  ‘He did not. But let's not digress; let's return to the game of chess; its last, concluding phase. Your chess-men had got completely out of hand. My scheme of exposing the faked head of the Censor worked. Early this morning Zumurrud went to Colonel Chiao's inn, and asked him to take her to me so that she could claim her reward. There she was killed. Now the queen has been taken and you have lost the game.’

  ‘I had to have her killed,’ Liang muttered. ‘She was going to leave me, to betray me. I used the best javelin-thrower I knew. She did not suffer.’ He stared into space, absent-mindedly stroking his long moustache. Suddenly he looked up. ‘Never measure a man's wealth by what he possesses, Dee. Measure it by what he failed to acquire. She despised me, because she knew me for what I really am, a coward, afraid of others, and of myself. And so she wanted to leave me. But now, embalmed, her beauty will be with me forever. I shall talk to her, talk to her every night, of my love. No one will come between us anymore.’ Righting himself, he added fiercely; ‘And least of all you, Dee! For you are on the verge of dying!’

  ‘As if your murdering me would help you!’ the judge said with scorn. ‘Do you think I am such a fool as to come here and confront you with your crimes, without having acquainted the Governor and my lieutenants with all the facts I have discovered against you?’

  ‘Y
es, I certainly do think so!’ Liang answered smugly. ‘As soon as I knew that you were going to be my opponent, I made a careful analysis of your personality, you see. You are a famous man, Dee. The many astounding criminal cases you have solved during the last twenty years have become public property, they are told and re-told in the tea-houses and wine-shops all over the Empire. I know exactly how you work! You have a logical mind, rare intuitive power, and an uncanny knack of connecting seemingly unconnected facts. You pick your suspect, mostly through your shrewd insight into human nature, and relying heavily on your intuition. Then you pounce on him, bringing to bear on him the full force of your personality—which is rather overwhelming, I admit. You get your man to confess in one brilliant, spectacular move—and you explain afterwards. That is your typical method. You never bother about building up a complete case, patiently plodding along till you have collected conclusive evidence, and sharing your discoveries with your assistants, as other criminal investigators do. For that would run counter to your character. Therefore I know most assuredly that you did not tell the Governor a thing. And your two lieutenants only very little. And therefore, my dear Counsellor, you are going to die here.’ He bestowed upon the judge a patronizing look, then went on placidly, ‘My dear sister shall die here too. My Tanka stranglers failed to kill her twice, first in Yau's house and then again in the Examination Hall, but I know she is here in this house now, and I shall catch her at last. With her goes the only witness that could testify against me. For the stupid Tanka I employ know nothing, and they live in a world apart where they can never be traced. Mansur has his suspicions, but that clever scoundrel is on the high seas by now, in an Arab ship bound for his own country. The Censor's case will be recorded for what it essentially was: a murder of passion, committed by a misguided pariah woman, killed in her turn by a jealous Arab lover who stole her dead body. Neat case!’ After a sigh he continued: ‘It will be universally regretted that in your zeal to solve the case you over-exerted yourself, and died from a heart attack while visiting me for a consultation. Everybody knows that you have been working too hard for many years, and human strength has its natural limits. The poison I used produces exactly the same symptoms as heart failure, and it can't be traced. Got the recipe from Zumurrud, as a matter of fact. Well, that such a famous man breathes his last in my humble house I consider a signal honour! I shall call your man Tao Gan inside, later, and he shall help me with the preparations for conveying your body to the palace. The Governor shall take all the other routine measures, I trust. Your two lieutenants are competent and intelligent—I never underestimate my enemies—and they'll doubtless have their suspicions. But by the time they have convinced the Governor to take a closer look at my affairs, all traces of what really happened here will have been effaced. And don't forget that I shall be appointed as your successor soon! As to the men you so thoughtfully posted in my front courtyard, and the guards who surround my house, I shall explain that you expected a murderous attack on me by Arab scoundrels. I shall let your men discover one Arab hooligan here, and he shall be duly executed. Well, that is all.’

  ‘I see,’ Judge Dee said. ‘And so it was the tea. I must confess that I had expected a more ingenious manner of attack. A secret trap door, or something coming down from the ceiling, for instance. You'll have noticed that I took precautions against that by shifting my chair.’

  ‘But you hadn't forgotten that old trick of the poisoned tea either,’ Liang said with an indulgent smile. ‘You shifted our cups, as I had expected you would while I had turned my back on you; mere routine on the part of an experienced investigator like you, of course. The poison was smeared on the inside of my cup, you know. Your own cup contained only harmless tea. So you drank the poison, and it should start to work by now, the dose was carefully graded. No, don't move! If you rise the poison will work at once. Don't you feel a dull pain in your heart region?’

  ‘I don't,’ Judge Dee said dryly. ‘And I shan't either. Didn't I tell you I knew you have the chess-player's mind? He thinks in sequences of connected moves. I knew that if you chose poison as your weapon, you'd never adopt the crude method of putting it in my cup. That was confirmed when I noticed that your cup was cracked, which meant that you wanted to be able to make sure that I had indeed made the anticipated move of shifting our cups. Well, I made a second move. I not only shifted the cups, but also their content. I poured the poisoned tea in this bowl of chess-pieces here, you know, and the harmless tea into the cracked cup. Then I poured the poisoned tea from the chess-bowl into my cup, now yours. You can see it for yourself.’ He took the chess bowl and let Liang look at the wet chess-men inside.

  Liang sprang up. He went to the sacrificial table, but half-way he halted. Swaying on his feet, he clasped his hands to his breast.

  ‘The queen! I want to see her. I…’ he brought out in a choking voice.

  Stumbling ahead, he succeeded in grasping the edge of the sacrificial table. Then he gasped for air; a convulsive movement shook his thin frame. He fell, dragging the table cover down with him. The sacrificial vessels dropped on to the floor with a loud crash.

  XXIII

  The door burst open and Tao Gan came rushing in. He halted abruptly when he saw Judge Dee bent over Liang's prone figure. The judge felt Liang's heart. He was dead. As the judge began to search the corpse, Tao Gan asked in a whisper:

  ‘How did he die, sir?’

  ‘He believed me when I told him he had drunk the poison he had intended for me, and the shock brought about a heart attack. That is as it should be, for he knew secrets of state that should never be divulged.’ He briefly told Tao Gan about the shifting of the cups. ‘The poison I poured into that chess-bowl; it is half full of chess-pieces. Liang saw that they were wet, but could not see that the bowl contained in fact the entire content of the cracked cup. Take this bowl with you.’ Pulling a long, razor-sharp blade from the leather sheath he had found in Liang's sleeve, he added, ‘Take this too. Be very careful, there is some brown substance on its tip.’

  Tao Gan took a piece of oiled paper from his sleeve. While he was wrapping the bowl and the dagger, he said:

  ‘You should have actually let him drink his own infernal poison, sir! Suppose he hadn't believed you? Then he'd have killed you with that poisoned knife. One scratch would have sufficed!’

  Judge Dee shrugged.

  ‘Until he thought that I had drunk the tea, I took care to stay out of his reach.’ Then he added, ‘Getting on in years, one isn't so sure of oneself any more, Tao Gan. One tends more and more to shift decisions on matters of life and death to a Higher Tribunal.’ He turned round and left the hall, followed by his lieutenant.

  On the landing stood a slender young woman, quietly dressed in a dark-brown robe. Her opaque eyes were staring straight ahead.

  ‘She came just now, sir,’ Tao Gan explained hurriedly. To warn us about Liang.’

  ‘Your brother is dead, Miss Liang,’ Judge Dee told her soberly. ‘He had a heart attack.’

  The blind girl nodded slowly.

  ‘He had been suffering from heart trouble, these last years,’ she said. After a pause she asked suddenly, ‘Did he kill the Censor?’

  ‘No. Zumurrud did.’

  ‘She was a dangerous woman,’ she said pensively. ‘I always feared that my brother's devotion to her would be his undoing. When I heard that his men had brought here the dead body of a high official who had been Zumurrud's lover, I thought my brother must have murdered him. I found the room where the corpse was, and while the two men were busy disguising themselves as constables, I quickly went through its sleeves and delivered the Golden Bell from its crushed cage. I also took what felt like an envelope, because it was the only paper the dead man carried, and therefore had to be important.’

  ‘I presume it was your sister, Mrs Pao, who slipped that envelope into Colonel Chiao's sleeve yesterday morning, very early?’

  ‘Yes, sir. She was an old friend of Captain Nee and had just delivered a note aski
ng him to meet her that afternoon in Mr Yau's house. She had planned to leave my package addressed to Mr Tao in the tribunal, but when she saw Mr Tao's friend, she thought it safer to let him have it.’ She paused and pushed her hair back from her smooth forehead. She went on, ‘We saw each other regularly, in secret of course. For both my brother and I wanted it to be believed that I was dead. But I could not bear my own sister sorrowing over me, and after a year I went to see her and told her I was still alive. She was always worrying about me, although I kept assuring her I had all I needed. Yet she insisted on introducing me to all kinds of people who might buy crickets from me. Yesterday morning, after I had fled from here, I told her that I feared our brother was getting into trouble. It was at my request that she went through the desk in his bedroom when you were visiting him with her husband, sir. She took two maps, and later explained to me that on one Mr Chiao's inn had been marked. I had hoped to meet her again in Mr Yau's house that same afternoon, but I just missed her. Who murdered her, sir? She had no enemies, and although my brother despised her, he did not hate her, as he did me.’