The Corpse Reader (35 page)

Cí wasn’t convinced of the value of the matron’s comments. She was probably good at many things, but he seriously doubted
she had much acumen when it came to corpses. The problem was, of course, that Confucianism forbade men from touching the dead bodies of women, and no one would disobey the law. They’d have to base their findings on those of the matron, and that was that.

With the reading of the report concluded, Kan asked those in attendance for their verdicts.

The prefecture judge went first, stepping forward and asking the matron to turn the body so he could look at the back. The rest of the group drew closer. The back itself was pale and free of wounds, the waist fairly thick, and the buttocks flabby and smooth. The judge began circling the corpse, tugging pensively at his goatee. He then went over to the clothes the corpse had been found in and held up a simple linen smock of the kind worn by servants. The prefecture judge scratched his head and addressed Kan.

“Councilor for Punishments,” he said, “such a loathsome crime…In my opinion, it would be irrelevant for me to talk about the type and number of wounds. Given the strangeness of the wounds, I am in clear agreement with my colleagues on the idea that an animal might be responsible.” He stopped and meditated on his next remark. “But the wounds also lead me to think that we might be dealing with the work of a sect: the followers of the White Lotus, Manichaeans perhaps, Nestorian Christians, or maybe the Maitreya Messianists. Driven by some abominable desire, the killers cut off the head and feet in some bloody ceremony and then allowed some beast to devour the lung. The motives could be varied, though, given how twisted the mind of a killer has to be: an initiation ritual, a punishment, a demon offering, an attempt to remove some elixir contained in a gland or an organ.”

Kan nodded and seemed to weigh the judge’s words for a moment before inviting Ming to take the floor.

Ming came forward. “Most worthy Councilor for Punishments, permit me to bow down in the face of your magnanimity,” he said,
bending low, and Kan gestured for him to continue. “I am only a lowly professor and therefore hugely grateful that you thought of me in relation to this awful event. I hope that, with the assistance of all the spirits, I might cast a little light on this dark affair. I would also like to apologize in advance to those who might be offended if my assessment differs from those given so far. Should that be the case, I commend myself to your benevolence.”

Ming went over and looked at the corpse’s back before asking the matron to turn it back over. Seeing the wound around the sex, he couldn’t help but flinch, but he leaned close to the body and began examining this and the other wounds slowly and in turn. He then asked for a bamboo stalk with which to probe the wounds, and Kan gave his approval. After some final checks, Ming turned to the councilor.

“Wounds are always faithful witnesses. Sometimes they can help us establish the how, sometimes the when, and sometimes even the why. Having an understanding of corpses allows us to evaluate the depth of an incision, the intent behind a blow, or even the force of that blow. All of this is well and good, but if you want to solve a murder, the fundamental thing is to enter into the murderer’s mind.”

He paused briefly, and the room seemed to hum with the group’s anticipation.

“It may be mere speculation, but I see the removal of the pubic area as indicative of a depraved mind, a lustful impulse that unleashed a rare feat of violence. I couldn’t comment on whether these are the acts of any cult or sect, though the wound on the breast might suggest that. What I am absolutely convinced of is that the removal of the head and feet had nothing to do with any ritual—it was to make it difficult to identify the corpse. Someone’s face, obviously, is the easiest way to tell who they were, and their feet contain the secrets of lineage and office.”

“Would you mind elucidating?” said Kan.

“This woman was no peasant, let me assure you. The delicacy of her hands, her well-kept nails, and the vague hints of an expensive perfume all indicate nobility. The murderer tried to make us think otherwise by dressing her in a servant’s clothes.” Ming paced the room slowly. “I’m sure no one in this room needs me to tell them that, from a young age, the feet of upper-class girls are bound in order to prevent their growth and render them beautiful. What people might not know, though, is that with binding the big toe is often stretched back over the top of the foot, while the other toes are bent under the foot. This produces somewhat different, and painful, deformities in each woman. Though men never get to see them, the women’s servants do, in private. Therefore the motivation to remove a woman’s feet is to prevent her from being identified by a servant who knows her peculiar deformities only too well.”

“That is certainly very interesting,” said Kan. “What about the wound to the breast?”

“Well! The prefecture judge pointed to the indubitable cruelty evidenced there, and I’d agree that the wound looks very much like teeth wounds from a large animal. But we don’t know that the wound was necessarily inflicted immediately after the moment of death. Any dog passing down the alleyway where the corpse was dumped could have stopped and devoured that part of her, and at any point.”

Kan frowned and glanced at the hourglass standing on one side of the room.

“Very well,” he said. “Thank you, in the name of the emperor, for your efforts. We’ll call upon you if we have any further need of you. Now if you’ll please follow my assistant, he’ll show you out.” And with this he turned on his heel.

“Excellency! Please!” It was Ming. “You’ve skipped the Reader…I spoke about him to the prefecture magistrate, who agreed that he should accompany us here.”

“The Reader?” said Kan.

“The Corpse Reader,” said Ming, pointing to Cí. “The best student I’ve ever had.”

“Well, I wasn’t informed.” Kan shot a malevolent glance at his assistant. “And frankly, I wonder what he could possibly add that your expertise might have missed.”

“It might seem strange, sir, but he has the ability to see things where, for any other person, whoever it may be, there is only darkness.”

“Yes, I do find it strange.” He muttered something but then turned to Cí. “Fine, but get on with it. Anything to add?”

Indeed I do
.

Cí stepped forward, picked up a knife, and, before anyone could stop him, plunged it into the corpse’s belly.

“I can add that what we have here is no woman,” he said, lifting out innards and holding them above the corpse. “This body belonged to a man.”

Further examination confirmed Cí’s assertion: the corpse had no female reproductive organs. Kan was astonished. Seating himself on a bench, he asked Cí to go on.

With a confident tone, Cí went on to assert that the wound to the lung had been the sole cause of death. Though its edges didn’t have the hard, pinkish patches produced when living flesh is cut—nor did the ankle and neck stumps, nor did the gash around the sex—Cí found definitive signs of collapse in the lung, which happened only when a living person’s lung was punctured.

He rejected the idea that an animal had been involved. The lung had clearly been removed with a great degree of brutality, as if someone had been trying to access the heart, but, he pointed out, there were no scratches or bite marks, nothing to indicate the involvement of any large animal. And though the ribs had been broken, they were clean breaks, as if made by some kind of tool. It seemed, in any case, as though the murderer had been looking for something inside the corpse. And it would appear that whatever it was had been found.

“Why? What might he have been looking for?” asked Kan.

“That I don’t know. Maybe an arrowhead broke off inside and the killer tried to remove it because, say, it was reinforced with some kind of precious metal or something else that would point to the culprit.”

“As for the amputations…”

“I believe they were a red herring. Professor Ming’s idea that the corpse belonged to a noblewoman, and that the feet had been removed to prevent her identification—though an excellent reflection—is, I think, what the murderer wanted us to believe. Add that to the smooth, feminine body, and the breasts above all—”

“Male genitalia, but also breasts? Should we be thinking about the victim as some kind of aberration of nature?”

“Not at all. The deceased was, in fact, none other than an Imperial eunuch.”

But Cí’s astuteness did not have the desired effect. From the way Kan clenched his fists and muttered under his breath, it seemed that he was kicking himself for not having drawn the same conclusion. Everyone knew that eunuchs often developed feminine features, especially those castrated before puberty. Kan glared at Cí as though he were responsible for the oversight, as if he had somehow caused Kan to misinterpret the evidence.

“That will be all,” he hissed.

On their way back to the academy, Ming asked Cí to explain his logic.

“I worked it out during your remarks, when you said it would have been easy to identify the woman by her deformed feet…”

“Yes?”

“Well, as you yourself pointed out, foot binding is only something the upper classes do. Kan would definitely have known that.
So we have to assume he’d already interviewed all the noble families about a disappearance. Since he asked you to help, it must have been because those interviews bore no fruit.”

“But from there to saying the corpse was a eunuch?”

“Something just struck me. Right after I arrived in Lin’an I was unfortunate enough to witness a castration of a child whose parents wanted the boy to be an Imperial eunuch. That poor boy has stayed with me so strongly…And then all the details fell into place.”

Ming didn’t say another word on their way back to the academy. Cí tried to guess his mood, but his clenched jaw and hard eyes didn’t bode well. Cí thought his pride might have been hurt by not figuring out the eunuch. The situation reminded him of when he’d tried to help Feng and it had ended worse than he could have imagined, with his brother being accused. Although Cí had already effectively been expelled, he had a feeling things were about to get even worse.

As they arrived at the academy, Ming announced that he had a meeting, and that Cí was to wait for him so they could talk. He said he would be back by nightfall.

No sooner had Cí crossed the academy threshold than the guard appeared and took him by the arm.

“A man came by earlier,” he said, leading Cí into the gardens, “and claimed to be your friend. I told him you weren’t here and he went into a rage, so I kicked him out.” He lowered his voice, stopping to face Cí. “He said something about being a fortune-teller, about a reward or something. I thought you should know. Be careful. If the professors see you hanging around with his kind, they won’t like it. Not one bit.”

Cí flushed. Xu had found him, and it would seem he was ready to follow through on his threats. Cí felt his world crashing down. He was being kicked out of the academy, and Xu was going to be there waiting to report him the moment he set foot on the streets.
Even though Ming had told him to wait, Cí knew he had to pack his things and flee the city before things got any worse.

Cí wandered through the academy for the last time. The empty classrooms struck him as somehow desolate, as if the sorrow crushing him were contagious. The walls seemed like mute witnesses to his vain efforts; they were part of the dream from which he was now forced to wake. When he passed the library and its shelves lined with generations’ worth of knowledge, it felt like a hammer’s blow to his already dejected state of mind.

Night was falling as he made his way along the streets of Lin’an. He walked aimlessly through the city he knew so well. He thought that he would walk until he happened upon a wagon or a boat—anything—that could take him far away. He went to the house he’d lived in with his parents and Third in what seemed another lifetime, and he stopped, silently wishing that someone would come to a window, open it, call out to him. But no one came. He was about to continue on, when all of a sudden four soldiers came around the corner and ordered him to stop. He recognized one of them from the palace.