Judge Dee at Work

Pulling his house-bonnet over his ears, he took up the candle and walked through the dark, deserted chancery to the guard­house.

The four constables squatting round the blazing log fire in the centre of the stone floor jumped up when they saw Judge Dee enter and hastily set their helmets straight. The judge could see only the broad back of their headman. He was leaning out of the window cursing violently at someone outside.

'Hey there!' Judge Dee barked at him. When the headman turned round and bowed deeply, he said curtly, 'Better mind your language on the last day of the year!’

The headman muttered something about an insolent ragamuffin who dared to bother the tribunal so late at night. 'The small monkey wants me to find his mother for him!’ he added dis­gustedly. 'Do they take me for a nursemaid?'

'Hardly that!' Judge Dee said dryly. 'But what is it all about?' He stepped up to the window and looked out.

In the street below the tiny boy was cowering against the wall for shelter against the icy wind. The moonlight shone on his tear-stained face. He cried: 'It is all ... all over the floor! I slipped and fell in it ... And Mother is gone!’

He stared at his small hands, then tried to rub them clean on his thin, patched jacket. Judge Dee saw the red smears. Quickly turning round, he ordered the headman, 'Get my horse and follow me with two men!'

As soon as he was outside, the judge lifted the boy up and placed him on his saddle. Then he put his foot in the stirrup and slowly mounted behind him. Wincing, he remembered how not so long ago he could still jump on his horse. But a touch of rheumatism had been bothering him of late. He suddenly felt tired, and old. Four years in Lan-fang ... With an effort he took hold of himself. He said in a cheerful voice to the sobbing boy, 'Now we'll go together and find your mother for you! Who is your father, and where do you live?'

'My father is pedlar Wang,' said the boy, swallowing his tears. 'We live in the second alley to the west of the Temple of Con­fucius, not far from the Watergate.'

'That's easy!' Judge Dee said. He carefully guided his horse along the snow-covered street. The headman and two constables rode silently behind him. A strong gust of wind blew the snow from the roofs, the fine particles striking their faces like so many needles. Wiping his eyes, the judge asked again, 'What is your name, small boy?'

'I am called Hsiao-pao, sir,' he answered in a trembling voice.

'Hsiao-pao, that means Small Treasure,' Judge Dee said. 'What a nice name! Now where is your father?'

'I don't know, sir!’ the boy cried out unhappily. When father came home, he had such a big quarrel with mother. Mother didn't have any food ready, she said there weren't even any noodles in the house. Then ... then father began to scold her, he shouted that she had passed the afternoon with Mr Shen, the old pawn­broker. Mother started to cry, and I ran out. I thought I could perhaps borrow a package of noodles from the grocer, to make father happy again. But there was such a crowd at the grocer's that I could not get through, and I went back. But then father and mother were not there anymore, there was all that blood, all over the floor. I slipped, and I ...'

He burst out in sobs that shook his small back. The judge drew the boy closer to him in the fold of his fur coat. They rode on in silence.

When Judge Dee saw the large gate of the Temple of Confucius looming ahead against the winter sky, he descended from his horse. Putting the boy down too, he said to the headman, 'We are nearly there. We shall leave our horses here at the gate. We'd better not give warning that we have come.'

They entered a narrow alley, lined on both sides by a row of ramshackle wooden houses. The boy pointed at a street door that stood ajar. A dim light shone behind the paper window, but the second floor was brightly lit and a confused noise of singing and shouting came from there.

'Who lives above?' Judge Dee asked, pausing in front of the door.

'That's Tailor Liu,' the boy said. 'They are having some friends in for the feast tonight.'

'You show the headman the way up there, Hsiao-pao,' the judge said. To the headman he added in a low voice: 'Leave the boy with the people upstairs, but bring that fellow Liu down here for questioning.' Then he entered the house, followed by his two constables.

The cold, bare room was lit only by a spluttering oil lamp on a rickety corner stand. In the centre, on a large, coarsely made table, stood three bowls of cracked earthenware, and a large kitchen chopper lay at one end, spattered with blood. On the stone-flagged floor there was more blood, in a large pool.

Pointing at the chopper, the elder constable remarked, 'Someone neatly cut someone's throat with that, sir!'

Judge Dee nodded. He felt the bloodstain on the chopper with his forefinger and found that it was still wet. Looking round, he quickly surveyed the rest of the dim room. Against the back wall stood a large couch with faded blue curtains, and a small un­curtained bed was placed against the wall on the left, evidently the boy's. The plaster walls were bare, and had here and there been clumsily patched. Judge Dee went to the closed door by the side of the bedstead. It led into a small kitchen. The ashes in the stove were cold.