The Red Pavilion

'I suppose,' Judge Dee remarked, 'that you inserted the key into the lock after you had been called to investigate and after you had had the door broken open?'

'Indeed, sir. I had taken the key with me, for I knew that, after the body had been discovered, I would be the first to be notified. The manager came to me, we fetched Magistrate Lo, and went together to the Red Pavilion. After the door had been broken open, the magistrate and the constables went straight to the dead man, as I had expected. I quickly put the key inside the lock.'

'Quite,' the judge said. He thought for a while, tugging at his moustache. Then he said casually:

'In order to make your hoax perfect, you ought to have taken away that sheet with the Academician's last scribblings.'

'Why, Your Honour? Evidently the lecher was also desiring Autumn Moon!'

'No, he was not thinking of the Queen Flower, but of your daughter. The two circles represent rings of jade. When he had drawn those, it struck him that they resembled the full autumn moon, so he added, three times, those two words.'

Feng darted a quick look at the judge.

'Good heavens!' he exclaimed. 'That's true! Stupid of me not to think of that!' He added, embarrassed: 'I suppose that all this will have to come out now, and that the case will be reviewed?'

Judge Dee sipped his tea, his eye on the flowering oleander shrubs. Two butterflies fluttered about in the sunlight. The quiet garden seemed far removed from the noisy life of Paradise Island. Turning to his host, he said with a bleak smile:

'Your daughter is a courageous and resourceful girl, Mr Feng. Her statement, as amplified just now by you, would seem to solve the Academician's case. I am glad to know how he got those scratches on his arms, for those had made me believe for a moment that sinister forces had been at work in the Red Room. However, we still have the swellings in his neck. Your daughter didn't notice those?'

'No sir. Neither did I. Probably just a couple of swollen glands. As to the measures you propose to take regarding me and my daughter, sir, do you intend to . . .'

'The law says,' Judge Dee interrupted him, 'that a woman who kills the man who tries to rape her shall go free. But you tampered with the evidence, Mr Feng, and that is a serious offence. Before deciding upon a course of action, I want to know more about those old rumours your daughter referred to. Am I right in assuming that she meant the rumour that, thirty years ago, you killed Tao Pan-te's father Tao Kwang, because he was your rival in love?'

Feng sat up straight in his chair. He said gravely:

'Yes, Your Honour. It's needless to say that it's malicious slander. I did not kill Tao Kwang, my best friend. It's true that at the time I was deeply in love with the Queen Flower, the courtesan Green Jade. It was indeed my dearest wish to marry her. I was twenty-five at that time, and had just been appointed warden of the island. And my friend Tao Kwang, then twenty-nine, also loved her. He was married, but not too happily. However, the fact that we were both in love with Green Jade didn't influence our friendship. We had agreed that each would do his best to win her, and that the rejected candidate would bear the other no grudge. She, however, seemed reluctant to choose and kept putting off her decision.'

He hesitated, slowly rubbing his chin. Apparently he was debating with himself how he should go on. At last he spoke:

'I think I had better tell Your Honour the whole story. I ought to have spoken up thirty years ago, as a matter of fact. But I was a fool, and when I came to my senses, it was too late.' He heaved a deep sigh. 'Well, next to Tao Kwang and I, there was another suitor, namely the curio-dealer Wen Yuan. He tried to win her favour not because he loved her, but only because of his stupid need for self-assertion, he wanted to prove he was just as much a man of the world as me or Tao. He bribed one of Green Jade's maids to spy on her, suspecting that either I or Tao had already become her secret lover. Then, just at the time when Tao and I had decided we would insist that Green Jade make up her mind whom she preferred, Wen's spy told him that she was pregnant. Wen Yuan went at once with this information to Tao, and suggested to him that I was her secret lover and that Green Jade and I had been fooling him. Tao came rushing to my house. But he was a clever and just man, though a bit short-tempered, so it took me little time to convince him that I had had no intimate relations with her. We then discussed what we should do next. I wanted to go to her with Tao, tell her that we had discovered she loved another man and that we would therefore cease to bother her; that she had better say openly who that third person was, because we remained her friends, ready to help her, should she be in any difficulty.'

'Tao didn't agree. He suspected that Green Jade had deliberately let us believe that she was hesitating between us two, so as to get more money out of us. I told Tao that such was not her character, but he would not listen and ran off. After he had gone I thought over the situation, and decided it was my duty to have another talk with Tao before he did something foolish. On the way to Tao's house I met Wen Yuan. He told me excitedly that he had just seen Tao and passed on to him the information that Green Jade was meeting her secret lover in the Red Pavilion that afternoon. He added that Tao had gone there already to find out who the man was. Fearing that Tao was about to fall into one of Wen's nasty traps, I rushed to the Red Pavilion, taking a short-cut through the park. When I had stepped up on the veranda, I saw the back of Tao's head as he was sitting in a chair, in the sitting-room. I called his name, and when he didn't move, I went inside. His breast was covered with blood, a dagger was sticking out from his throat. He was dead.'

Feng passed his hand over his face. Then he stared out into the garden with unseeing eyes. Taking hold of himself, he resumed:

'While I stood there, looking aghast at my friend's dead body, I suddenly heard footsteps approaching in the corridor. It flashed through my mind that, if I were found there, I would be suspected of having killed Tao, out of jealousy. I ran outside, to the Queen Flower's pavilion. But no one was there. Then I went home.

'As I was sitting in my library, still trying to sort out all possible explanations, a lieutenant of the magistrate came and summoned me, as warden, to the Red Pavilion. Someone had committed suicide there. I went and found the magistrate and his men in the Red Room. A waiter had seen Tao's body there, through the barred window. Since the door of the Red Room had been locked, the key lying on the floor, inside, the magistrate concluded that Tao had bled to death by a self-inflicted wound in his throat. A dagger was clasped in the dead man's hand.'

'I didn't know what to do. After my flight from the Red Pavilion the murderer had evidently removed the corpse from the sitting-room to the Red Room, and thus set the stage for a suicide. The magistrate asked the hostel's manager about a possible motive, and he mentioned that Tao Kwang had been in love with the Queen Flower. The magistrate sent for her. She said that Tao Kwang had indeed been in love with her. Then she added, to my utter amazement, that he had offered to redeem her, but she had refused him. I frantically tried to catch her eye as she was standing there before the magistrate and delivering this utterly false statement, but she looked away. The magistrate decided then and there that it was a plain case of suicide because of unrequited love, and sent her away. I wanted to go after her, but he ordered me to stay. The smallpox epidemic was assuming alarming proportions in this region; that was also why the magistrate of Chin-hwa and his men were on the island. The whole night he kept me fully occupied with devising measures to prevent the disease from spreading; he wanted some of the buildings burned down, and other emergency measures taken. Thus I had no opportunity to go to Green Jade and ask for an explanation.'