Poisoned Bride and Other Judge Dee Mysteries (7 page)

During the recital of this harangue, a large crowd of idlers had been gathering around him, and Judge Dee had been examining them carefully out of the corner of his eye. He noted that all of them seemed people of that neighbourhood, happily chatting amongst each other. He particularly noticed an elderly woman, with bent back, who, wedged in between the other spectators, seemed eager to come forward. When he had finished his speech, this woman actually addressed him, saying:

“Since you, Master, are so well versed in the arts of healing, you must be able to cure this inveterate disease of mine.”

“Certainly”, Judge Dee said, “If I did not possess this skill, how would I dare to travel hither and thither, indulging in vain boasts? Just give me a clear description of your symptoms, and I shall cure you”. The woman said:

“The roots of my disease have embedded themselves here right in my heart. Could you cure this ailment?”

“What is impossible for me?”, Judge Dee replied. “You have an ailment of the heart, and I have medicine for the heart. Turn your face to the light, and let me have a good look”.

When she had turned her face to Judge Dee, he gave it but a casual look. For although he engaged in this business in the interests of justice, he still remained a high official, and she a woman unrelated to him, so that it was against the rules of propriety that he should allow her to come too close to him. He said:

“I know what is troubling you. Your skin is parched and sallow, and blue veins are standing out. This is a sure sign that your liver is inflamed, and your nervous system weakened. Sometime in the past you must have been in great mental anguish. Brooding over this, your liver became irritated, and your digestion became impaired. You have this ache in your heart region all the time, have not you?” The woman hastened to answer:

“Master, you indeed are a physician of uncanny skill! I have been suffering from this malady now for a considerable time, but never yet has any doctor so accurately determined its cause. Since you have made now your diagnosis, do you think there is a medicine that can cure me?”

“It is sad to tell, but my husband died already many years ago. He left me one son, who now would have been twenty-eight years old. Formerly he had in this market a small shop of woollen and cotton goods. Eight years ago he married. Then, last year May, on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, he stayed at home till noon, and thereafter took me, his wife and their small daughter for an outing, to see the Dragon Boat races on the river. That evening my son was still as cheerful as usual. But after dinner he suddenly complained of a violent pain in his stomach. I thought that he probably had caught a touch of the sun that afternoon on the river, and told his wife to bring him to bed. During the third nightwatch, I suddenly heard him cry out loudly, and then his wife rushed into my room crying that my son had died.

“This terrible calamity struck both myself and his wife as if the vault of Heaven had fallen down on us. Our family line had been broken off.

“Although we had this small shop, there was hardly any capital, so it was only with great difficulty that, by borrowing here and there, we could at last scrape together enough money for his burial. When the corpse was going to be dressed, I noticed that the eyes were bulging from their sockets. This sorry sight increased my grief, nights and days I passed crying over my son. That is the way how I got this ailment of my heart”.

Upon hearing this story, Judge Dee’s trained mind forthwith spotted some suspicious features. “It may have been”, he thought, “that this young man died from sunstroke. But how then to explain his crying out suddenly before he died, and why his eyes have been bulging from their sockets? There must be more there than meets the eye. I came here to-day for investigating further the double murder case, but perhaps it will turn out that instead of getting the murderer Shao, the only thing I get is a new case!” To the woman he said:

“Now I have heard your story, I realise that your disease is even more serious than I had surmised. If only caused by melancholy, this illness, although still a major one, yet can be cured comparatively easily. But when a deep grief has started to gnaw at the heart and the bones, that is an illness that cannot be cured in a few moments. Now I have a drug here that will help you, but it is absolutely necessary that I boil it myself, to add the right quantity of water. Then only will this drug have its powerful effect. How could I perform this difficult task right here in the street? I do not know how serious you are to have this illness cured. Should you really want to get rid of the very roots of this malady, then the only way is that I go together with you to your house, and there prepare this potion for you.”

The woman hesitated for quite some time, before she answered:

“If you, Master, kindly consent to go back with me, then I certainly want to be delivered from this ailment. But there is one problem which I should first discuss with you. After the death of my son, his wife has strictly preserved a chaste widowhood. She even refuses to see anybody who is not a near relative. After noon each day she locks herself within her room, and should strangers as much as enter the house, from within her room she scolds me no end, crying ‘Mother, why do you let these people in this house where there is a young woman?’. Thus our male relatives, knowing my daughter’s firm resolution never to remarry, do not visit our house, and recently also our female relations have stopped coming. Thus nowadays my daughter and I are always alone in the house. In the morning we work together at our household tasks, but after noon each of us stays in her own room. If you should consent to come, you will, therefore, have to prepare the medicine in the courtyard, and I shall have to ask you to leave immediately after. Else my daughter will start quarreling with me again”.

This information made Judge Dee all the more suspicious that there was some strange secret here. He thought “It is true that fortunately there are not a few constant widows in our Empire; but this young widow is overdoing it. That she won’t allow men to come to the house and talk to her, this of course is the proper behavior. But that she refuses to see other women, and moreover locks herself in her room every afternoon, that is highly suspicious. I shall go with this woman to that house, and have a look what this daughter-in-law of hers is really up to.” Then he said to the woman:

“That your daughter is such a constant widow is indeed worthy of the greatest praise and admiration. I shall stay at your place just long enough to prepare your medicine, and leave immediately after, without even drinking a cup of tea, or insisting on the other amenities”.

The woman, seeing that Judge Dee consented, was overjoyed, and said:

“I shall first go home alone, and explain to my daughter, and then come back here”.Judge Dee, fearing lest her daughter would not allow her to come back, said quickly:

“That would not do. After having prepared your medicine, I must hurry on to the city, to attend to my business there. You make a lot of conditions, despite the fact that, as I presume, you have not enough money to give me a suitable fee for my trouble. Yet I am willing to go with you, taking as my sole reward the enhancing of my reputation as a skilful physician. But then we must start right now”.

Then he gathered up his drugs and herbs, and, having with a deep bow taken leave of the crowd of spectators, he departed together with the woman.

They passed through some narrow alleys, and then came to a small modest dwelling in a backstreet. A girl about seven years old, who had been standing in front of the door, came running to meet them with evident joy, as soon as she saw them approaching from afar. With one hand she took the woman by her sleeve, and with the other she gesticulated wildly; but the only utterance she made were some incoherent sounds.Judge Dee, seeing that this young girl was dumb, said:

“Who is this girl that has lost the power of speech? Was she born this way?”

But the woman had already opened the front door, and hurried inside, apparently to apprise her daughter in advance of their arrival. Judge Dee feared that the daughter-in-law would disappear before he would be able to catch a glimpse of her, so he quickly followed the woman inside. At the back of the courtyard he saw a one-storied dwelling of three rooms next to each other. The door of the room on right opened, the occupant evidently having heard the sound of the front door; she looked through the half open door, right into the face of Judge Dee.

He thus saw this daughter-in-law. She was a woman of about thirty, wearing a simple house dress, and not yet made up; but this did not hamper her voluptuous beauty. Judge Dee could well imagine that one glance of her would be enough to make men dizzy. Her forehead was snow-white and beautifully shaped, and her cheeks were a rosy colour.

On seeing a stranger entering the courtyard, she hastily withdrew into her room with a cry of annoyance, and immediately locked the door. From within Judge Dee heard her scolding her mother-in-law, crying:

“You wicked old woman, now you bring even a miserable quack to our house. After a few days of quiet, I shall again have to quarrel with you the whole evening. Why do I deserve this bad luck?”

Hearing this language, Judge Dee thought that he could make a good guess at what was really going on there. “This young woman must be a bad person”, he thought, “and up to nothing good. Now that I have gone as far as this, I shall not leave here before I know something more, no matter how I am cursed and reviled.”

He sat down on a seat in the courtyard, and said politely: “This humble person is now visiting your mansion for the first time, and has not yet even inquired your honourable name. And that young girl who came to meet us is, I presume, your worthy granddaughter”.

“Our surname”, the woman answered, “is Bee. My late husband was called Bee Chang-shan, and my son was called Bee Hsun. Alas, after his demise he only left me this small granddaughter of seven years old”.

Thus speaking she drew the young girl close to her, and started crying. Judge Dee said:

“Madam, it is already quite late now, please bring me a portable tea stove, so that I can boil the medicine. But, by the way, as a doctor I am interested in this case of your granddaughter. How did it come about that she lost her power of speech?” Mrs. Bee said: “This is all part of the terrible fate that befell our house. This girl, when still a baby, showed promise of great talents. She was very clever, and when she was four she was talking all the time. But two months after her father’s death, one morning on waking she was found stricken with dumbness. Since that day, although she understands everything well enough, she has not been able to utter one single intelligible word. That such a nice and promising child should change overnight into such a useless creature, is that not a great misfortune?”

Judge Dee inquired:

“In whose room was she sleeping at the time she became dumb? Could somebody have robbed her of her power of speech by administering some drug to her? You should investigate this properly, for if it should turn out that some evil person really made her dumb with a drug, I have means of curing her”.

Before Mrs. Bee could answer, her daughter was heard calling from her room:

“In broad daylight, this fellow is trying to swindle good people out of their money, just by talking some palpable nonsense. Who could possibly have drugged my daughter, who never leaves nay eyes? Since olden times till the present, there have been doctors of all descriptions, but I have never yet heard of a doctor who could cure dumbness. You old woman, you only dragged this quack here to be entertained by his attempts at doctoring you, without even having inquired previously as to what kind of man this fellow is. This is indeed a poor way of showing sympathy with my grief over the loss of my husband”.

Mrs. Bee, thus reviled, did not dare to say one word in return. Judge Dee thought: “That daughter of hers is certainly engaged in some nefarious scheme. Her mother-in-law does not know this, simply because she is a stupid woman; she thinks that her daughter is really intent only on preserving her chaste widowhood. But I, on the other hand, suspect that she killed her husband. For really chaste widows are also loyal daughters-in-law; honouring their husband, they also show proper concern over the health of their husband’s mother. So why did this young woman do nothing to have her mother-in-law’s disease cured? And also, why did she do nothing about the dumbness of her own small daughter? Moreover, on hearing that someone can cure her, instead of being filled with joy, she not only does not show the slightest interest, but even starts cursing and scolding. These two inconsistencies constitute a valuable clue. I had better not press the matter further now, however, lest I rouse the woman’s suspicions. After having returned to the tribunal, I shall start making careful inquiries.”

Rising from his chair, he said aloud:

“Although I am but a travelling doctor, I still expect that people show me due respect, else I must refuse to treat them. Now this daughter-in-law of yours without any reason insults me, who am not asking one copper for my services. I therefore don’t see why I should thus help you. You had better look for some other doctor”.

He then took his leave. Mrs. Bee did not dare to beg him to reconsider his decision, she silently conducted him to the door.

When Judge Dee had returned to the market, the sun was setting. Since it was too late to return to the city, he decided to stay there over night. He would return to Chang-ping the next morning, meanwhile trying to gather some more information in that locality.

He found a large hostel right opposite the market, and entered there. A waiter came forward, and inquired whether he would like to rent a bed, or have a room all to himself. Judge Dee saw that the courtyard of the hostel was crowded with sedan-chairs and carts. As he did not like to be packed in one room with a number of other people, he said:

“I am alone, but since I am planning to engage in my trade in this place for a couple of days to get together some travelling funds, I would like to rent one single room”. The waiter, learning that the doctor was going to see patients and sell drugs, which would give him many opportunities for earning a commission, quickly answered with a polite “Yes, Sir”, and led Judge Dee inside, to a guestroom on the second courtyard.

The waiter tidied up the room for Judge Dee, and as he had no bedroll with him, the waiter went and rented bedding for him in the hostel’s office. When he had made the bed, he asked whether Judge Dee had already had his dinner. Judge Dee ordered two dishes of simple but good food, and a pot of wine.

The waiter first brought a cup of hot tea, and then went to fetch the food. When Judge Dee had finished his dinner, he reflected that since there were so many guests staying in the hostel, there was just a chance that he might learn there something about the murderer of Six Mile Village. He strolled out into the courtyard, and saw that although the paper lanterns were being lighted, there still was a constant coming and going of guests.

Scrutinising this bustling crowd, he noticed a man who, as soon as he had seen Judge Dee, stood still and made as if he would greet him.

Judge Dee had instantly recognised this person, and before the other could say anything, Judge Dee quickly called out:

“Honourable Mr. Hoong, whence have you come? It is fortunate indeed that I should thus happen to meet you here. Please come inside with me, Sir, so that we can have a chat”.