He played the melody through once, very slowly, his eyes glued to the score. There was a lilt in it that made it easy to memorize. After he had repeated the more difficult bars a few times, he knew the tune by heart. He shook the cuffs of his fur coat back from his wrists and prepared to play it seriously, raising his head to the moonlit mountain scene outside.
All of a sudden he stopped playing. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen a slender girl, standing by the desk in the left corner. The grey shape was shrouded in shadows, but the bent shoulders and the profile with the curved nose, and the hair combed back straight from the brow were clearly outlined against the moonlit screen door.
For the barest instant the grey shape hovered there. Then it dissolved into the shadows.
Judge Dee sat motionless, his hands resting on the silken strings. He wanted to call out, but a tight feeling was constricting his throat. Then he got up, stepped round the lute table and slowly advanced a few paces in the direction of the left corner where the shape had disappeared. Dazedly he stared at the desk. No one was there.
He rubbed his hand over his face. It must have been the ghost of the dead girl.
With an effort he pulled himself together. He pushed the sliding doors wide open, and stepped out on the narrow balcony. There he took a deep breath of the cold crisp air. In his long career he had on occasion met with ghostly phenomena, but those had proved to have a perfectly natural explanation, in the end. However, how could there be a rational explanation of the dead girl's apparition he had witnessed just now? Could it have been a figment of his imagination, just as when he thought he had heard the dead girl address him, after he had lain himself down to sleep? But then he had been dozing, whereas now he was wide awake.
Slowly shaking his head, he went inside again, pulling the sliding doors closed behind him. He took his tinderbox from his sleeve and lit the small storm lantern. He had made up his mind. The ghostly apparition could mean only one thing: that the girl had died a violent death here in this room. Her disembodied spirit was still roaming about, and trying desperately to manifest itself, overcoming the barrier that separates the dead from the living. While he was falling asleep she had succeeded in getting her voice across to him. Just now, when he was concentrating his mind on the melody she had composed herself, the contact had suddenly been established, enabling her to project her shape for one brief moment in the world of the living. His duty was clear. He took the lantern and went downstairs.
On the landing on the first floor he halted. A strip of light came from under the door of the sick man's room. He tiptoed up to it and pressed his ear to the panel. There was a low murmur of voices, but he could distinguish no words. After a while the murmur ceased. Then someone began to intone a low chant, resembling a magic incantation, or a prayer.
He descended into the hall. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, he lifted his lantern to orientate himself. Apart from the main entrance, he remembered having seen only one other door down there, behind his chair when he was having dinner. That seemed to tally with Mr Min's remark that the house chapel was at the back of the hall.
He walked across the hall and rattled at the door. It was not locked. As he opened it, the heavy smell of Indian incense told him that his assumption had been correct. He closed the door noiselessly behind him, and held the lantern high. Against the back wall of the small room stood a high altar table of red-lacquered wood, on it a small shrine containing a gilded statue of Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. In front of her he saw a silver incense burner. Four incense sticks were standing in the ash it was half filled with, their ends glowing.
The judge fixedly regarded the sticks. Then he pulled one from the bundle of new sticks lying by the burner, and compared its length with that of those burning in the vessel. The latter proved to be only a quarter of an inch shorter. That meant that the person who had lighted the sticks must have visited the chapel only a short while ago.
He pensively looked at the oblong box of unpainted wood which was standing on two trestles; this was the spare coffin the dead girl's body had been placed in. The wall opposite was covered from floor to ceding by a fine antique brocade hanging, embroidered with the scene of Buddha's entry into Nirvana. The dying Buddha was reclining on a couch; representatives of all beings of the three worlds surrounded him, bemoaning his departure.
The judge put his lantern on the altar table. He reflected that, since the door of the chapel had not been locked, anyone who liked could have gone in. Suddenly he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was not alone. Yet no one could have hidden himself in that small room. Unless there was an empty space behind the wall hanging. He stepped up to it, and pressed it with his forefinger. It was hanging directly against the solid wall. He shrugged. There was no use in speculating who could have visited the chapel before him. But he had better be quick, for the unknown visitor might come back.
He walked round the prayer cushion in the centre of the floor, and by the light of the lantern looked the coffin over. It was about six feet long but only two feet high, so he would probably be able to examine the dead body without having to remove it from the coffin. He noticed with satisfaction that the lid had not been nailed down, it was fastened only by a broad strip of oiled paper that had been pasted down all around it. But the lid looked fairly heavy, it would not be easy to remove it, all by himself.
He took off his fur coat, folded it and laid it on the floor. He didn't need it, for the air was close, and it was fairly warm in the small room. Then he bent over the coffin. Just as he was testing the edge of the paper band with his long thumbnail, he heard a sigh.
Frozen in his attitude, he strained his ears, but heard only the pounding of his own blood. It must have been the rustling of the wall hanging, for he noticed there was a slight draught. He began to loosen the paper band. Then suddenly a black shadow fell on the lid.
SUDDENLY THE JUDGE HAD THE FEELING THAT HE WAS NOT ALONE
'Leave her in peace!' a hoarse voice spoke up behind him. The judge swung round. The steward stood there, staring at him with wide eyes.