The Lacquer Screen

by Robert Van Gulik

  ‘Why indeed!’ Chiao Tai said with a pleased grin.

  ‘And why shouldn’t I report to the tribunal where they can find two highway robbers?’ Kunshan asked nastily.

  ‘Because you wouldn’t dare, that’s why!’ Judge Dee replied calmly. ‘Make up your mind!’

  Kunshan gave him a vicious look. He put his hand to his cheek, trying to suppress its nervous twitching. At last he said:

  ‘All right then, share and share alike.’

  ‘That’s settled!’ the judge said with a satisfied air. ‘I’ll visit our friend Leng Chien first thing tomorrow morning. Where can I find him?’

  Kunshan explained the location of Leng Chien’s silver shop, where Leng also conducted his banking business. Then he rose to leave. But Judge Dee put his hand on his arm and said affably:

  ‘The night is still young! Let’s have a cup of wine together and drink to our partnership!’ And, to Chiao Tai: ‘Search behind the counter for the Corporal’s special jug!’

  Chiao Tai left the table, wondering why the judge, utterly tired as he was, wanted to prolong the conversation with that unspeakable cad. He found the waiter fast asleep on the second shelf of the counter, and on the third the Corporal’s jar, which he brought over to their table.

  When they had emptied a cup, Judge Dee wiped off his moustache and said:

  ‘You may be a master-thief, Kunshan, but that’s child’s play compared to our work. Let me tell you a few adventures we’ve had on the road. You remember, mate, that time in Kiangsu Province, when we…’

  ‘I am not interested in your tall tales!’ Kunshan interrupted him sourly. ‘Your work is based on brute force, mine on brains! It takes years and years to become a real expert at burglary.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Judge Dee shouted. ‘Even I can manage to open a door lock from the outside! Once you are in the house, you overpower the owner, ask him politely where his valuables are, take them, and off you go! There’s nothing to it!’

  ‘It’s you who are talking nonsense!’ Kunshan said angrily. ‘Your method is that of the common, stupid robber. He gets away with it once or twice, but then the hue and cry is out for him and he is caught. I have my own method, which I have practised for more than thirty years. And I’ve never been caught once, despite the fact that I usually work in the same city for a couple of years.’

  The judge gave Chiao Tai a broad wink.

  ‘He is a glib talker, isn’t he?’ he asked. ‘He has a secret method, you know, transmitted only from master to pupil, on the ninth day of the waning moon!’

  ‘Since you two are nothing but a couple of vulgar rowdies,’ Kunshan said with scorn, ‘there’s no harm in telling you. You could never in your life even start to imitate me! This is how I work. I begin by studying the house, its inmates and all their habits for a few weeks. I talk to the servants, I talk to the shopkeepers in that neighbourhood, I invest a bit of money in these inquiries. Then I break in, but I don’t take anything, I have plenty of time, you see. I just have a look around the house. I can stay in a cupboard for hours on end, stand concealed in the fold of a curtain, curl myself up in a clothes-box, or squeeze into the narrow space behind a bedstead. Thus I observe the people who live there waking and sleeping, I listen to their most intimate conversations, I spy on them when they think they are alone. Then, at last, I make my final visit. There’s no forcing of locks, no frantic searching. Nobody is disturbed, nothing is displaced. If there is a secret hiding-place for the money, I know it better than its owner; if there is a safe, I know exactly where to find the keys. Nobody ever sees or hears me. Often it takes them days to realize that their money is gone! And then they don’t think of a burglar! No, husbands begin by suspecting wives, wives suspect concubines.…I fear I have caused numerous misunderstandings and brought discord to many a harmonious household!’ He chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand. Then he concluded in a harsh voice: ‘Well, my clever friend, now you know my method!’

  ‘Remarkable!’ Judge Dee exclaimed. ‘I hate to admit it, but I could never do that. I don’t doubt that your secret observations have taught you a thing or two about men and women, including a few new tricks on the bedmat, eh?’

  Kunshan’s face contorted in a grimace that made him look even more repulsive. He hissed:

  ‘Spare me your smutty jokes! I hate and despise women and the dirty games their loathsome men play with them. I hate those hours I must spend hidden in bedrooms, hearing lewd creatures cooing to their stupid husband while selling him their bodies, or coyly feigning to refuse him till he is cringing and wheedling for what I see them offer gratis to their lovers. Those sickening, abominable…’ He suddenly checked himself. Sweat was pearling on his brow. Glaring at the judge with his one eye, he got up. He said in a hoarse voice: ‘I’ll meet you here at noon tomorrow.’

  As soon as the door had closed behind him Chiao Tai exclaimed disgustedly:

  ‘What a foul creature! Why in the name of Heaven did you want to listen to his ranting?’

  ‘Because,’ Judge Dee said calmly, ‘I hoped to hear from him about methods for breaking-in that might indicate how an intruder entered Mrs Teng’s quarters. Second, I wanted to learn a little more about Kunshan’s character, and I got quite an instructive lesson on how frustration can warp a man’s mind.’

  ‘Why his sudden love for us?’ Chiao Tai asked sourly.

  ‘Presumably because we are exactly the combination he needs for his blackmail scheme. He knows that I, who look fairly respectable, I trust, can gain admittance to the banker’s private office, and am capable of conducting the negotiation, while he trusts you to add physical pressure, if that should prove necessary. Moreover, we are strangers here. He couldn’t easily find a pair of crooks so eminently suited to his purpose, and I presume that that’s why he went out of his way to contact us. However, there’s still the possibility of a snake in the grass somewhere. I didn’t like his quick acceptance of my proposal to share the loot. I had expected long and complicated bargaining. Well, anyway, we’ll have to see to it that Kunshan is put behind bars, and for the rest of his life. He is an evil, dangerous villain.’ The judge passed his hand over his eyes, then went on: ‘I’ll now write a note to the coroner. Try to find me an ink-stone and writing-brush. I suppose the Corporal needs them, if only for jotting down his dots and crosses!’

  Chiao Tai rummaged behind the counter. He brought out a dirty, broken ink-slab and a worn-down brush. Judge Dee burned off the brush’s superfluous hairs in the candle and, by dint of much licking, succeeded in giving it a sharp point Then he took from his sleeve the official notepaper and envelope he had abstracted from Magistrate Teng’s desk, and wrote in an impersonal, official hand:

  To the Coroner. You are instructed to proceed without delay to Four Goats Village, where your presence is urgently required for an autopsy.

  Teng, Magistrate of Wei-ping

  He gave the letter to Chiao Tai, saying:

  ‘I don’t want the coroner to conduct an autopsy on Mrs Teng’s corpse. There is no need to distress my unfortunate colleague further by letting him know that his wife was raped. Deliver this letter early tomorrow morning to the owner of the large pharmacy on the market place, you’ll easily find it. We passed Four Goats Village on our way from the Prefecture. It is a five-hour ride, so that’ll keep the coroner out of the way tomorrow. ‘He scratched his head with the end of the writing-brush, then continued: ‘Since I am making such liberal use of Teng’s permission to act on his behalf, I might as well write another note borrowing his name!’ He took a new sheet of official paper and wrote:

  To the Officer in charge of Personnel, Garrison Headquarters. Urgent. You are requested to have the files searched for data on a certain Liu, a deserter who in recent years served as Corporal in the Third Wing of the Western Army. Hand the pertinent extract to the bearer of the present.

  Teng, Magistrate of Wei-ping

  Handing it to Chiao Tai, he said:

  You can take this note to the Garri
son Headquarters some time tomorrow. I expect we’ll have to avail ourselves of the Corporal’s hospitality for a few days and, as the proverb says, “Don’t stay in another’s house unless you know the host well.” Let’s go upstairs and inspect our quarters!’

  Chapter 9

  Judge Dee spent a most uncomfortable night The dog hole assigned to him and Chiao Tai was barely large enough for two narrow plank-beds. The judge had lain down as he was, but his robes did not protect him long against the hordes of voracious vermin that instantly opened their attack. He hardly slept at all. Chiao Tai had found a better solution. He just stretched himself out on the floor between the beds, with his head to the door, and soon had joined the snoring orchestra that reverberated through the thin wooden partitions of the other rooms.

  They got up soon after dawn and went downstairs. There was no one yet in the taproom. The inmates of the Phoenix Inn evidently did not believe in early hours. Chiao Tai rekindled the kitchen stove and they made a perfunctory toilet When Chiao Tai had prepared a pot of hot tea for the judge, he went off to deliver the letter to the coroner. Judge Dee sat down at the corner table, and sipped his tea.

  Carnation came down, woke up the waiter by thumping the counter hard with her fist, and then went to the kitchen to prepare the morning gruel. Soon afterwards the Corporal and his four assistants also made their appearance. The Corporal drew up a chair to Judge Dee’s table, but indignantly refused a cup of tea. He shouted at Carnation to warm a bowl of wine for him. When he had drunk that with evident satisfaction, he asked:

  ‘How did it fare last night, brother?’

  ‘The dead woman must have been a wealthy lady,’ the judge replied. ‘And the fellow who did it was rich too, for he left these baubles on her.’ He took the earrings and the bracelets from his sleeve and laid them on the table. ‘When I have disposed of these, you’ll get half the proceeds.’

  ‘Heaven!’ the Corporal said admiringly, ‘that was well worth a trip to the marsh, eh? She was surely murdered by a man of her own sort; you must have a fat purse to let such good stuff go! Keep on trying to find the bastard, you might blackmail him. And tell him at the same time that, if he has other women to kill, I’d thank him for doing the job outside my city.’

  A ragged vagabond came in and asked for a free bowl of gruel. When he had greedily gobbled it down, standing at the counter, he called out to the Corporal:

  ‘Have you heard the news, boss? They’ve just brought the dead body of the magistrate’s wife to the tribunal. She’s been murdered in the marsh.’

  The Corporal hit his fist on the table and cursed violently.

  ‘You were damn well right when you called her a lady I’ he shouted at the judge. ‘You’d better find that murderer quick, brother! Bleed him for as much as you can, then bring him to the tribunal. Hell and Heaven—the magistrate’s wife, of all people!’

  ‘Why the excitement?’ Judge Dee asked astonished.

  ‘You know what an Imperial official is, don’t you? If your or my wife gets her throat cut and we report it, the constables just beat us up and say that we should look after our household goods better. But the wife of a magistrate, brother, that’s something else! If the fellow who did it isn’t found plenty quick, this whole town’ll be crawling with military police, secret police, special agents from the Prefecture, special investigators and their men, and all the other vermin that call themselves the law. They’ll comb the city, brother, and make arrests left and right. You and me’ll have to pack up in a hurry and leave! That’s why I am excited, brother, and that’s why I tell you: set to work and get the bastard!’ He stared moodily at his wine-cup. Judge Dee said:

  ‘It won’t be so easy though, seeing that the fellow was a member of her own class.’

  ‘He was her sweetheart, of course!’ the Corporal growled. ‘Those so-called gentlewomen! The knots of their trouser-cords are tied as loosely as those of our own jades! The fellow got tired of her, she made a fuss, and he bashed her head in. Old story! Well, I’ll call my men together, and let them have a look at these baubles. They’ll ferret out where the slut used to play her games with our magistrate’s belly-cousin. That’ll help you to trace the son of a dog.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ the judge said, just to humour his host Suddenly he looked up from his gruel and asked curiously: ‘How would your men go about that? None of them will even know her by sight!’

  ‘They’ll know her baubles, won’t they?’ the Corporal asked impatiently. ‘It’s their job! When you or me see an expensive skirt go by, either on foot or carried in a litter, we try to get a peep at her muzzle. But a beggar looks only at the trinkets she carries. He has been trained to do that, it’s his rice-bowl! If he sees a valuable earring behind a veil, or a nice bracelet on the hand that moves the curtain of a palankeen, he appraises its value, and, if it’s good stuff, he knows it’ll be worth while to follow that woman. She may let drop an expensive handkerchief, or even a few coins. Now these baubles are high-class workmanship and made to order, so there’s a good chance that one of my men noticed them. Do you get it now?’

  Judge Dee nodded. He pushed the jewels over to the Corporal, reflecting that he was picking up interesting knowledge that might come in useful on a future occasion. He saw Chiao Tai coming in and said to his host:

  ‘I’ll be off now to look after a little affair of mine. I’D be back presently.’

  While the two men were walking towards the market place, Chiao Tai asked:

  ‘I suppose now we go straight to your colleague Teng with the story of that banker’s malversations?’

  ‘Not so fast!’ the judge replied. ‘First we go to visit Leng Chien, and verify the truth of Kunshan’s story by blackmailing the banker.’

  As the dumbfounded Chiao Tai made no response, Judge Dee continued:

  ‘If Leng Chien lets himself be blackmailed, it means that he confesses that he has been guilty of fraud. We must reckon with the possibility, however, that Kunshan is playing us some nasty trick. I’ll observe the banker’s reactions. If I think we can go ahead, I’ll give you a sign.’

  Chiao Tai nodded. He hoped for the best.

  Leng Chien’s silver shop presented an impressive front. It occupied a large, two-storeyed building on a busy corner of the market place. The shop front was open to the street, and had a counter more than twenty feet long. Behind it a dozen clerks were busy serving a crowd of customers, weighing silver, appraising jewels, exchanging coppers for silver and vice versa. Above the babble of voices one heard the monotonous singsong of two cashiers who were checking accounts.

  Judge Dee walked over to the chief clerk, who was sitting at the end of the counter behind a high desk, busily clicking the beads of his abacus. He pushed his visiting-card under the wooden grille and said politely:

  ‘I would like to speak to Mr Leng personally, if possible. I wish to transfer a sum of money. It’s rather a large amount.’

  The clerk looked doubtfully at the two tall men, and asked some questions about the deal they were engaged in. Judge Dee told a plausible story about a speculation on the rice market. The cleric, reassured by his cultured language, jotted down a few words on his card. Then he shouted to an office boy to take the card upstairs. After a while the boy came back with the message that Mr Leng would see Mr Shen and his associate.

  The banker, clad in a neat white mourning-dress, was seated at a large red-lacquered table. While busily talking to two clerks he pointed to two high-backed chairs at the tea-table in front of the window, and one of the clerks quickly poured out tea for the visitors. Judge Dee looked at the banker while he was giving his final instructions to the two clerks. He thought the man was looking pale and worried. Then he surveyed the room. He was struck by a scroll hanging on the wall behind the banker, a large painting of lotus flowers, accompanied by a long poem written in an expressive hand. From where he was sitting he could just make out the signature: ‘Your ignorant younger brother, Te’. Evidently this was Leng Chien’s bro
ther Leng Te, the young painter who had died two weeks before, as the spectator in the tribunal had told him.

  Leng sent the clerks away. Turning to his guests, he asked briskly what he could do for them.

  ‘It concerns the partial transfer of about one thousand in gold, Mr Leng’ Judge Dee said evenly. ‘This is the most important document pertaining to the transaction.’

  He took the notebook page out of his sleeve, and placed it on the table.

  Leng’s face turned ashen. He stared aghast at the piece of paper. Judge Dee felt relieved. He nodded to Chiao Tai. The big fellow stood up and ponderously walked to the door, which he bolted. Then he stepped up to the window and pulled the shutters closed. The banker followed his movements, panic in his eyes. As Chiao Tai went to stand behind the banker’s chair, Judge Dee continued:

  ‘I have, of course, the rest of the papers too. Quite a bulky notebook.’

  ‘How did you get it?’ Leng asked tensely.

  ‘Come now, Mr Leng!’ the judge said reprovingly.’ Let’s not digress, shall we? I am not an unreasonable man, you know, but, as you have seen from my visiting-card, I am a commission agent, and I expect of course my commission on your profit. I calculate that you made about one thousand gold pieces.’

  ‘How much do you want?’ the banker asked in a strained voice.

  ‘Only seven hundred,’ Judge Dee replied calmly.’ That’ll leave you a nice capital to start working with again.’

  ‘I ought to denounce you to the tribunal!’ Leng muttered.

  ‘And I ought to denounce you!’ the judge said affably. ‘So let’s call it quits.’

  Suddenly Leng buried his face in his hands. He wailed:

  ‘It’s Heaven’s retribution! Ko’s ghost is persecuting me!’

  There was a knock on the door. Leng Chien wanted to jump up, but Chiao Tai laid his heavy hands on his shoulders and pressed him down again, whispering hoarsely into his ear: