The Willow Pattern
- Автор: ван Гулик Роберт Ханс
- Серия: Judge Dee #11
- Год: 101
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Willow Pattern». Краткое содержание книги:
As Judge Dee copes with the administration of the plague-ridden Imperial Capital, he must also bring his skills to bear on the mystery of two seemingly unconnected murders that could mean the extinction of the city's oldest, most aristocratic families.
He took a sip from his tea. Casting a quick glance at Ma Joong, he continued:
'For a trained acrobat like her, it was an easy job to climb up along one of the pillars, and tall and lithe as she is, getting up on the ledge wasn't too difficult either. Standing there she heard Yee rave about his having whipped their mother to death, and about killing Coral in the same manner. When she saw, through the bamboo curtain, that Yee lashed Coral across her breast, she untied the scarf, put the ball inside, raised the curtain and stepped over the windowsill.
'Yee had turned round, because he had heard something. Then he got a terrible shock. The stark naked, dripping wet woman with her long, dishevelled hair must have appeared to him an avenging ghost from the Nether World. Then he realized that it was even worse than a ghost: it was Coral's sister, not a meek, defenceless girl, but a trained fighter, with a deadly weapon in her hand. Just like most excessively cruel people, Yee was a coward. He let the whip drop and screamed for help. You'll remember, Tao Gan, that his mouth was wide open. Then she felled him with one terrible stroke of the weighted scarf. The force of the blow smacked him backwards into his armchair.'
He paused, and watched for a moment the pouring rain.
'I feel certain,' he resumed, 'that so much actually happened. What follows now is largely guesswork. I suppose that, having killed Yee, her rage suddenly abated. She looked in horror at what she had done. One couldn't expect her to know that killing Yee had been a clear case of manslaughter, completely justifiable for he had been on the point of murdering her sister, in the same hideous manner as he had murdered their mother. When she saw the blood on her scarf, she got into a real panic. She threw the iron ball into the canal, and the stained scarf on the floor. Then she stepped on the ledge outside, let herself down the pillar, and swam back. She dressed on the bank, and went to the tavern. That's where you met her, Ma Joong.'
'Now I understand why she ignored her father then!’ Ma Joong exclaimed. 'She was sore at him because he had never told her the truth about her mother's death, while he had taken her sister into his confidence!’
The judge nodded.
'She resolved never to tell him what she had done. Later she remembered having left the scarf on the scene of the killing. She began to worry whether she or her sister had perhaps left other clues too. We know that, except for Coral's ear-pendant and the red stone, there were none. For the maid Cassia had found the wet spots on the windowsill, and she had wiped them off carefully, because she thought these traces pointed to Hoo. But Bluewhite did not know that, of course. So she decided she would go back there and enter the gallery in the same manner as before. She had not reckoned with the fact, however, that now the canal wasn't any more a mass of quiet, practically stagnant water. The sluices had been opened, and there was a strong current.'
He cast a quick glance at Ma Joong.
'You were born and bred in the water district, my friend. You ought to know that, when there is a bend in a water course, the current is always strongest along the outer side of the curve. I often noticed that fact when, standing on a bridge, I followed the course of pieces of driftwood. Moreover, on the inner side of the bend, downstream from the Halfmoon Bridge, there rises the steep wall of the Yee mansion. That narrows down the current, and increases its pull towards the outer side of the bend. The girl never reached her destination. The current carried her across the canal over to the opposite side, and in the bight under Hoo's balcony she got entangled in the weeds. After you had saved her, Ma Joong, she had to make up a story, and quick too. Do you remember whether you mentioned Hoo at all?'
A YOUNG GIRL TAKES VENGEANCE
Ma Joong scratched his chin.
'Come to think of it, I did,' he said ruefully. 'Made a feeble joke about Hoo having chucked her over the balcony.'
'Exactly. That gave her her cue. Well, after I had heard Coral's story, and formulated my theory, I made it a point to stress to Yuan that I would make Hoo's attempted rape of Bluewhite count heavily against him. I trusted that, if my theory was right, she would come to me and make a clean breast of it. For she is a decent girl, I understand, and she would never let a man be wrongly accused because of a faked story fabricated by her. There had been, of course, other facts that supported my theory. To begin with, when I left Hoo, he certainly wasn't in the mood for trying to rape a girl. He was waiting, not for Bluewhite, but for a message from Mrs Mei. Further, the scarf we found was only wet from water in the four corners, suggesting a swimmer having knotted it round the head — which pointed to a woman. Also, when Bluewhite fought off the scoundrels in the tavern, she had only one weighted sleeve.'
'And her hair was still wet,' Ma Joong muttered. With a sigh of admiration, he added: And that's why she drank like a fish! What a wench!'
'You'd better go to the Chancery, Ma Joong,' the judge said dryly, 'and see whether she's still waiting there. If so, you might ask her yourself about the details of her adventure.'
Ma Joong jumped up and rushed outside without another word.
'She is a very impetuous and independent young woman,' Judge Dee told the others with a smile. 'What she needs is a good husband. That will make her settle down, I'd say.'
'Brother Ma will see to that all right!' Chiao Tai remarked with a broad grin. 'He should follow the ancient custom and marry her twin sister at the same time, as his Number Two. That'd give him a chance to prove his mettle!' He paused, rubbing his knees with a satisfied air. Suddenly he asked: 'Oughtn't we to make the wench tell the whole story in the tribunal, sir, and have her officially acquitted? Yee's death can't be filed as an unsolved murder case!’
The judge raised his thick eyebrows.
'Why shouldn't it? I don't want the private affairs of the future family of our friend Ma Joong to be bandied about in all the teahouses downtown. I shall have Yee's demise registered as murder committed by a person or persons unknown. I don't mind a bit having a few unsolved cases on my record.'
'So Brother Ma got hooked, at last!' Tao Gan said with his thin smile. 'And how!’ Then, however, his face fell. Tugging at the hairs that grew from his left cheek, he resumed with a dejected face: 'So the Willow Pattern wasn't a clue, after all. Yee pushed the flower vase aside when he was eating the ginger, and later it dropped onto the floor accidentally.'
The judge gave his lieutenant a pensive look. Letting his long sidewhiskers glide through his fingers, he said slowly:
'No, I am not too sure about that, Tao Gan. The odds are that your reasoning about the significance of the broken vase as a clue still holds good. We shall never be able to prove it, though. Remember that Yee had screamed when he saw Bluewhite coming for him. And also that he did not know that Coral had fled. He will have assumed that the twin sisters would be discovered in the gallery by the maid or the young doorman. Since he was a vicious, spiteful man I think it quite possible that, having recognized the avenging fury, his last thought was to leave a clue to her identity. Therefore he deliberately smashed the flower vase. Not because it was decorated with the Willow Pattern, but for a much more obvious reason. Namely that it was blue-and-white porcelain. Pour me another cup, will you?'
POSTSCRIPT
Judge Dee was a historical person who lived from 630 to 700 A.D. In the earlier half of his long official career he distinguished himself as an eminent detector of crimes, and after his appointment to high office in the Imperial capital he became, through his sagacity and courage, one of the outstanding statesmen of the Tang period. The adventures narrated in the present novel — entirely fictitious — are supposed to have happened in the second phase of Judge Dee's career, when he had served about one year as President of the Metropolitan Court.