The Willow Pattern

'No,' he said quietly, 'she did not betray you. You betrayed yourself. Last night, when I came to see you.'

Hoo fastened his eyes on the judge. He opened his mouth to speak, but Judge Dee went on quickly:

'When you were telling me and my assistant the true story of the Willow Pattern, you were evidently labouring under a strong emotion. You told it as if it happened to you yourself instead of to your great-grandfather, and a hundred years ago. Admittedly it is a pathetic tale. But you must have heard it told and retold uncounted times in the family circle. Why should this old tale of bygone days disturb you so? I suspected that you too had once redeemed a courtesan, probably sacrificing the last portion of your family fortune, and that she had left you to marry a rich man.'

He paused. Hoo remained silent. He glared broodingly at the judge from under his thick eyebrows.

'Second,' Judge Dee resumed, 'when I informed you that Mr Yee was dead, you at once inquired about his eye. Now, the street jingle about the impending doom of the three houses, Mei, Hoo and Yee, mentions three ways of dying, in the ambiguous, oracular language those jingles always employ. Namely, by losing one's bed, by losing one's eye, and by losing one's head. The jingle did not specify to whom of the three each manner of dying applied. Yee had been killed by a fearful blow that destroyed the left half of his face. The killer had left in a hurry, without taking time, of course, to verify how the blow had affected Yee's eye. It struck me that you inquired at once after Yee's eye, remarking at the same time that you might die by losing your head. I thought that very strange, for your remark implied that you were very sure that Mr Mei had died by what the street song called "losing his bed". But Mei had died by falling down a staircase! I couldn't make head or tail of it. I didn't try to draw any conclusions, but I kept the facts in mind.'

The judge leaned back in his chair. Slowly caressing his sidewhiskers, he continued:

'Thereafter, however, I learned from a reliable source that Mrs Mei had been a courtesan, of a brothel in the old city. And that she had been bought by an unknown person, whom she subsequently left for the wealthy Mr Mei. These events bore a striking similarity to the story of the Willow Pattern you told about your great-grandfather. It brought to mind a curious incident. When Mrs Mei came to see me, she winced when she noticed the Willow Pattern on a plate with cakes I offered her. And, more curious still, a puppeteer told me that a prostitute called Sapphire had disappeared from a brothel in the old city, under mysterious circum­stances. Sapphire — the name of the courtesan your ancestor had bought out! And Mrs Mei showed a marked preference for that same stone. Odd coincidences. Yet I did not consider these facts as evidence that you were the man who had bought Mrs Mei out, and that you had remained her lover even after her marriage to Mei, with the implication that Mei instead of having died an accidental death had been murdered by the two of you. In the first place, I had no proof that Mei had indeed been murdered, and moreover I refused to believe that a worldly-wise and experienced man like Mei would have married a depraved woman. I did have you arrested, but that was because of quite another charge that had been brought against you.'

Now Hoo wanted to speak, but the judge raised his hand.

'No, listen to me. I have a definite purpose in telling you all this. Well, tonight everything became clear. I discovered that Mr Mei had been brutally done to death. The murderer had bashed in the old man's head with a heavy ink-slab, and just before or after the deed he had kicked and beaten his victim in a ferocious manner. The body was covered by bad bruises, which we had wrongly ascribed to his hitting the edges of the steps while falling down. Then I also knew for sure why you had connected Mei's death with "losing his bed"; you interpreted that term as meaning that Mei died by losing his nuptial couch, because of his wife commit­ting adultery. That meant that you had been Mrs Mei's lover, and that you murdered him when the old man sur­prised you with his wife in the guest-room. And thus the full meaning of your interpretation of the jingle was clarified. Mei had died by "losing his bed". If Yee's death had involved his losing his eye, the logical consequence was that you would lose your head; meaning that Mei's murder would be discovered and that you would die on the scaffold.

'Finally, the fact that it was you who had bought out Mrs Mei explained why Mei had kept the antecedents of his wife secret; it was not his secret alone, but also yours. A drama of conflicting passions among the leaders of the "old world", a world now rapidly fading away.'

The judge paused. Hoo's face was taut, but he did not speak.

'I explain all this to you, Mr Hoo, because I consider it my duty to Mrs Mei to prove that I discovered your guilt entirely by myself, and not through her betraying you. When she was standing here before my bench a few minutes ago, she didn't as much as mention your name. On the contrary, she insisted that it had been she who had murdered her husband. Because she had got tired of his attentions.'