The Emperor's Pearl

Judge Dee looked down silently at the still figure of the dead drummer. The corpse had been brought up to the dressing-room and laid out on a reed mat on the floor. The coroner of the tribunal was squatting beside it. He had been standing among the spectators on the quay watching the finish, and had cursorily examined the body directly after it was brought on land. Now he was conducting a closer examination. He had inserted a silver stave into the mouth.

Dr Pien, who had been standing in a corner with Kou Yuan-liang, came forward and said in an irritated voice:

'This is a waste of time, Your Honour! I am certain he had a heart attack. All the symptoms point that way.'

'Let my coroner finish!' Judge Dee spoke curtly. He studied the dead man's muscular body, stripped to a loin cloth. The face was distorted by the death grimace, but the regular features and the smooth, broad forehead seemed to point to an educated man rather than to a shop assistant or a coolie—the class of people the crews were usually recruited from. As the coroner righted himself, the judge asked him:

'What made you think the man was poisoned? You have heard that Dr Pien believes that he died from a heart-attack.'

'In addition to the symptoms of heart failure, Your Honour, there are small purplish spots on the tips of the fingers and toes, and I verified just now that the tongue is swollen and covered by dark stains. I happen to be from the south, and I know that the mountain people there concoct a slow-working poison that produces exactly those symptoms. As soon as I had seen the spots on his finger-tips, I knew that he must have been killed by that particular poison.'

Dr Pien bent over the corpse. The coroner opened the mouth wide with the silver stave and let the doctor look inside. Pien nodded. He said contritely to the judge:

'Your coroner is quite right, sir. I was wrong. I now remember having read about that poison. If taken on an empty stomach, it will become effective after a quarter of an hour or so. But if taken after a heavy meal, it may take an hour or more.'

'Since he was the drummer of your boat, I take it that he was an employee of yours?'

'No, sir, he was a vagrant student; Tong Mai his name was. Occasionally he helped out as a clerk in my pharmacy, in the busy season.'

'Did he have no family here?'

'He did, sir, until a few years ago. He lived with his parents in a rather nice villa, in the countryside. Then his father had bad luck in business and lost all his money. He sold the house and moved back to their native place, up north. Tong Mai stayed behind in Poo-yang, hoping to scrape up enough to keep him going till he had completed his course in Classical Literature in the Temple of Confucius here, then join his parents up north. He was a cheerful, easy­going fellow, and also an excellent sportsman. Good amateur boxer, as a matter of fact. All my employees liked him, that is why they asked him to act as drummer of our boat.'

He cast a regretful look at the prone figure.

'Tong was quite a useful young man,' Mr Kou spoke up. 'His father knew a great deal about antiques, and Tong too had quite an eye for spotting a good thing.'

'How did you come to know him, Mr Kou?' Judge Dee asked.