He sat down on the bamboo chair at the centre table, but got up again just in time as the fragile seat began to collapse. The dead girl must have been of slight build. He pulled the heavy ebony seat belonging to the music table up, and sat on that. Stretching his stiff legs, he listened for a while to the howling of the wind round the roof.
Slowly smoothing down his long beard, the judge tried to bring some order to the confused thoughts his brain was teeming with. He was not at all sure that the stratagem of catching the bandit leader by means of the fishing nets would succeed. He had made the proposal mainly in order to encourage old Mr Min, and to rouse him from his fatalistic lethargy. Nor was he sure that the other scheme he had set into motion would be successful. The surest method was still for him to parley with the bandits personally. The government was averse to granting a pardon to bandits in order to obtain the release of a captured official. And quite correctly too, for the procedure damaged their prestige, and encouraged other miscreants to try the same expedient. Yet they would perhaps make an exception in his case, because of his present high rank. And if he came through the experiment alive, he would see to it that the scoundrels got their deserts, in the end. Emboldened by their success, they would certainly again commit acts of violence, and then he would pounce on them. For a pardon covered only past crimes.
He idly wondered who could have stolen the landowner's gold. The embarrassing scene he had witnessed in the sick man's bedroom had shown that the maid had apparently had opportunities for learning the secret of the key's hiding place. But he had perceived undercurrents, the real meaning of which was beyond him. The old man was said to have been very fond of his daughter. Yet he had referred to her once with an evident sneer. And why had he insisted that he, the judge, should stay in the dead girl's room?
He was startled from his musings by a knock on the door. A bent old man clad in a long blue gown of cheap cotton came in. He silently put a padded tea-basket at Judge Dee's elbow, then placed a wooden water bucket by the dressing-table. When he made for the door again the judge motioned him to wait. He asked:
'Was Miss Kee-yu all alone here when she was seized by a heart attack?'
'Yes, sir.' The greybeard started on a long story in some broad dialect that the judge could not follow.
'Speak slowly, man!' he interrupted him peevishly.
'I said that she was lying on the bed there, didn't I?' the old servant asked surlily. 'All dressed up for dinner, she was, in a white gown of thick silk, the best quality. Must have cost a pretty penny, I thought. But she didn't come down for dinner. Mr Yen went up and knocked. She doesn't answer. So Mr Yen goes down again and calls the master and the master calls me. The master and me come up here, and there she's lying on that bed there, as I told you. She's asleep, we think. But no, when the master calls her she says nothing. The master bends over her, he feels her pulse, he lifts her eyelids. "It's her heart that got her," he says, very pale. "Call your wife!" I fetch my old woman and a bamboo stretcher and we carry her down, to the chapel. Quite some weight it was, I tell you! The master calls Mr Liao the steward to help us getting her into a coffin. But the fool is all to pieces over the news, and no use whatsoever. So I say don't bother, we'll manage. And that is what we did.'
'I see,' the judge said. 'Sad affair.'
'Not nearly as sad as coming down here all the way from the city, sir, just to be chopped up by a gang of robbers. Well, I have had a long life and never a day in want, and my sons and daughters have grown up and married, so what should an old body complain of? I always say ...'
His voice was drowned in the rattling of a torrential rain that suddenly came down on the rooftiles.
'As if we were needing more water still!' the greybeard grumbled and went out.
The judge reflected that, if this downpour continued, it would make the water rise still higher. On the other hand, it would prevent the Flying Tigers from launching a night-attack. With a sigh he went to the dressing-table, and washed his face and hands. Then he pulled out the upper drawer, and rummaged among the various toilet articles for a comb to do his beard and whiskers. He was astonished to see there a small brocade roll. It seemed a strange place to store away a manuscript or a painting. He untied the fastening band and unrolled the scroll. It was an excellent miniature portrait of a young girl. He was just going to roll it up again when his eye fell on the inscription by its side. It read: 'For my daughter Kee-yu, on the occasion of her reaching the age of two times eight.' So this was the dead girl whose room he was occupying now! As she had looked three years ago, at least. He took the painting over to the table, and studied it intently.
The portrait was done from the waist upward, the face turned three-quarters to the observer. She was dressed in a lilac robe with a pattern of plum-blossoms, and in her slender right hand she was carrying a twig of those flowers. The glossy black hair was combed back straight from her forehead, and gathered in a coil in the neck. Her narrow sloping shoulders suggested a thin figure, and there was the suspicion of a slightly bent back. She had a striking face, not beautiful by commonly accepted standards, but strangely fascinating. The brow was a trifle too high, the nose well-shaped but too pronouncedly aquiline, while the pallor of the hollow cheeks and the bloodless thin lips pointed to protracted ill health. It was the intense, compelling stare of the large, intelligent eyes that gave her that strange charm. Strange because there was a possessive, almost hungry gleam in her look that was vaguely disturbing.
The painter must have been no mean artist. He had indeed given the portrait so much life that the judge suddenly felt embarrassed, as if he were in the bedroom of a girl still alive, and who might enter her room at any moment.
Annoyed with himself, the judge put the portrait down. He listened for a while to the clattering rain, trying to discover for himself why exactly the girl's eyes had disturbed him. His eye fell on the bookrack. He quickly got up and went to it. He laid aside at once the standard works one usually finds in a young daughter's room, such as The Perfect Housewife, or Pattern of Ladylike Behaviour. The collected works of four romantic poets interested him more, for the dog-eared leaves proved that she had eagerly read those poems. Just as he was about to put the volumes back, he checked himself and had a second look at the names of the poets. Yes, all four of them had committed suicide. Pensively tugging at his moustache, he tried to digest the possible meaning of this discovery. Then he inspected the rest of the books. An expression of perplexity came over his face. They were all Taoist works, dealing with the dietary and other disciplines for curing illness and prolonging life, and with alchemist experiments for preparing the Elixir of Longevity. He went back to the table and again studied the portrait, holding it close by the candle.
Now he understood. Suffering from a chronic heart disease, the poor girl had been obsessed by the fear of dying young. Of dying before she had really lived. That morbid fear had made her try to find solace in the works of those four disillusioned, world-weary poets. Hers were hungry eyes, hungry for life. A hunger so strong that it pulled the observer towards her, as it were, in a desperate desire to partake of his life force. He now understood also why she kept the portrait in the drawer of her dressing-table: in order to compare it daily with her reflection in the mirror, searching for new signs of her deteriorating health. A pathetic girl.