The Widow Ho

Early one morning, before the sun was up, a distinguished mandarin came out of the temple of the City God. On the first and the fifteenth day of every month it was his duty to visit this temple while the city still slept, to burn incense and bow before the stern-faced god who sat inside.

The mandarin’s name was Shih-Kung, and no official in all the lovely provinces of the Empire was more just or more honest. Wherever people spoke his name, they spoke it with the deepest respect. The narrator presents him as an example of Tien-Li, the righteousness of Heaven.

As Shih-Kung was carried along in his sedan chair, with a long line of attendants close behind, he noticed a young woman walking on the road ahead and began to wonder what could have brought her out at such an unusually early hour. She was dressed in the deepest mourning, and after thinking a little longer, he decided she must be a widow on her way to her husband’s grave to make the customary offerings to his spirit.

Suddenly a wild, howling whirlwind swept around the woman, as if it meant to pour all its fury on her alone. Nothing beyond her was touched. Not a leaf stirred on the trees nearby, and not a speck of dust moved on the road except right where she stood, while the storm raged around her.

As Shih-Kung watched this strange sight, the wind blew the woman’s outer skirt up into the air, and he saw that beneath it she wore a garment of rich crimson. He interpreted the bright clothing beneath her mourning dress as suspicious, and the isolated whirlwind as a wronged spirit’s protest. These were the beliefs that prompted his inquiry, before he had evidence of a crime.

Shih-Kung called over two of his runners and told them to follow the woman, see where she went and what she did, and report back to him straight away.

The two men did exactly as they were told. They found that she went to a graveyard on the hillside at the edge of the town. She had brought a large bundle of gold and silver paper money, the kind that is burned for the dead so that they can buy food and other things they need in the Land of Shadows. She was just about to set it alight, so that it would reach the spirit it was meant for, when to the runners’ astonishment another whirlwind came rushing up as fiercely as before and blew the paper away in every direction. Not a single piece was left to offer to the dead.

The runners reported all of this to Shih-Kung, who immediately sent an order to the county magistrate, telling him to investigate the case thoroughly and describing all the extraordinary things that had been seen.

The lower mandarin was at a loss what to do. No one had brought him any complaint about the woman, and he had not the smallest piece of evidence against her. So he decided to ask the City God to reveal a mystery he could not solve on his own. Shortly before midnight he went to the famous god’s temple and lay down there to sleep, trusting that if he did, some sign would be given him to show the way out of his difficulty.

In the early hours, just before dawn, a vision seemed to pass clearly before his eyes. He saw the stern god step out of his shrine and come forward beyond the yellow curtains that hide his face from the crowds who throng his temple every day. In the air in front of the god floated the coffin of a grown man. Slowly it sank down onto the table just below the altar, where the brass bowls stand full of ash from the countless sticks of incense people burn to win the god’s favor.

A moment later the sleeping magistrate saw a man step out of the surrounding darkness and stand at the head of the coffin. There was something very familiar about this solemn figure, and the mandarin felt sure he knew him. Suddenly he realized who it was: the Coroner of his own district, who had often worked with him and who regularly sent him reports when murder was suspected. The magistrate was so startled that he woke with a jolt, and the whole scene disappeared at once. All he could see was the idol in its shrine, surrounded by the shabby, cluttered furnishings of the temple.

By now the pale silver light of dawn was creeping into the great, gloomy hall, so the magistrate got up and hurried back to his court with a lighter heart. The god had shown him that the grim secret which had escaped him lay in the dead man’s coffin, and nowhere else. His path seemed clear now, and he went home greatly relieved.

He immediately ordered the widow’s arrest, and at the same time he sent officers to bring her husband’s coffin from its grave.

When the widow was brought before the mandarin, she denied knowing anything about how her husband died. He had come home drunk one night, she said, and collapsed senseless on the floor. With great effort she had lifted him onto the bed, where he lay in a heavy, drunken sleep, the way men who have been drinking often do, so she had not been worried about him at all. During the night she fell asleep while sitting up beside him, and when she woke, she found to her horror that he was dead.

“That is all there is to say,” she finished. “If you order the body examined now, it can only mean you suspect me, because no one else was with him when he died. So I object to any examination. But if you insist on it, let me warn you: if you find no marks of violence on him, then by the laws of China you yourself will face the penalty of death.”

“I am fully prepared to take that responsibility,” the mandarin replied. “I have already ordered the Coroner to open the coffin and examine the body with great care.”

The Coroner did so, but he could not find the slightest sign of injury, not even a small bruise, anywhere on the dead man’s body.

The county magistrate was terribly upset. He rushed to Shih-Kung to ask what he should do now to escape the death penalty he had brought on himself. The Viceroy agreed that things had taken a very serious turn. “But you need not worry about what you have done,” he added. “You acted only on my orders, so I take full responsibility for every step you have taken to find the murderer.”

Late that afternoon, as the sun was sinking behind the western mountains, Shih-Kung slipped out through a side door of his court dressed as a cloth peddler, with pieces of different fabrics slung over his shoulders. His disguise was so good that no one he passed in the street ever imagined that this traveling cloth seller was really the Governor-General of the province, hunting for evidence of a murder committed in his own capital.

He walked on through one street after another until he reached the edge of town, where the houses were farther apart and fewer people lived. It was getting dark by then, so when he came to a house standing all alone, he knocked at the door. An older woman with a pleasant, motherly face opened it and asked him gently what he wanted.

“Forgive me for coming to your house,” he said, “but I wonder if you would kindly let me stay the night. I’m a stranger here and have come a long way from home to sell my cloth. Night is falling fast, and I have nowhere to sleep, so I beg you to take me in. I am not asking for charity. I can pay you well for any trouble, and tomorrow morning I will be on my way as early as you like, and you will be rid of me.”

“My good man,” she answered, “I am quite willing to let you stay. I’m only afraid that my son may be unpleasant to you when he comes home later this evening.”

“In my line of business I meet all sorts of people with all sorts of tempers,” he assured her, “and I usually manage to get along with every one of them. Perhaps it will be the same with your son.”

The old woman smiled kindly and showed him into a little room next to the sitting room. Shih-Kung was very tired, so he lay down just as he was on a plank bed in the corner and began to think over his plans for solving the murder. Before long he fell fast asleep.

Around midnight he woke to the sound of voices in the next room. He heard the mother saying, “Please be careful how you treat the peddler, and don’t use any of your rough language with him. He looks like a common man, but I’m sure he is a gentleman. He has a fine way about him that shows he comes from a good family. I didn’t really want to take him in, because I knew you might not like it, but the poor man was exhausted, it was getting dark, and he said he had nowhere to go, so at last I agreed. It’s only for tonight. He says he must be off again at daybreak.”

“I really hate having strangers in the house,” said another voice, which Shih-Kung guessed was the son’s. “I’m going to take a look at him and make sure he’s all right.”

The son came in carrying a lantern, walked right up to where Shih-Kung lay and held the light close to his face, peering down at him uneasily for a few moments. He seemed satisfied, because he called out loudly enough to be heard in the next room, “It’s all right, Mother, I’m happy. The man has an honest face. I don’t think I have anything to fear from him. Let him stay.”

Shih-Kung decided the moment had come. He stretched and yawned as if he were just waking up, then sat on the edge of the bed, looked the young man in the face and asked who he was.

“Oh,” the young man said in a friendly way, “I’m the son of the old lady who said you could stay tonight. For certain reasons I don’t like having strangers around the house, and at first I was very much against having you here. But now that I’ve had a good look at you, I don’t mind at all. I’m proud of being a good judge of people, and I don’t mind telling you that I like you. Come into the next room with me. I’m going to have a bit of supper, and my mother says you fell asleep without eating anything, so I’m sure you’ll be glad to join me.”

As they sat talking over the meal, they grew friendly and began to trust each other. The son kept drinking sam-shu, the rice spirit, from a tiny cup that he filled from a steaming kettle, and it loosened his tongue so that he said more than he would have otherwise.

Shih-Kung had long experience of the shady side of life, and he soon worked out what kind of man his companion was. He felt that here was a mine from which he might dig up valuable information to help him uncover the facts he needed.

He looked across the table at the son, whose face was flushed with drink by now. Then, glancing quickly around the room as if he feared someone might be listening, he lowered his voice. “I want to tell you a great secret,” he said. “You have been very open with me, so now I’ll do the same. I’m not really a cloth peddler. I only use that trade as a disguise to hide my real work, which I don’t want anyone to find out about.”

“And what might that work be,” asked the son, “that you’re too ashamed to admit it openly?”

“Well,” said Shih-Kung, “I call myself a kind-hearted thief.”

“A kind-hearted thief!” cried the other in amazement. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’d very much like to know what that means.”

“You see,” explained the guest, “I’m not an ordinary thief who takes other people’s things for himself. I never steal for my own gain. I find out where men have grown rich dishonestly, and then, by certain methods I have, I take away some of their ill-gotten wealth and share it out among the people they have cheated. In that way I bring a fitting punishment on the guilty and help the ones who have suffered because of them.”

“What you say astonishes me,” replied the son, “though I don’t believe the part about not keeping a share of the loot for yourself. But since you’ve been honest with me, I’ll return the favor and tell you what I am. I’m a real thief. I support my mother, who doesn’t know the truth, and keep our home going entirely on what I steal from other people.”

Then he began to tell about some of the adventures he had had on his night-time raids into rooms and houses, which he always spied on carefully in advance to make sure they held valuables that could be carried off easily.

As he talked, Shih-Kung’s eyes shone with satisfaction. He could see that the man had walked into the trap set for him, and he felt sure that before the night was out he would have some clue to the mystery he was trying to solve. He was disgusted by the grubby details of the criminal life the young man seemed so proud of. Yet this mandarin, with his great mind and the gift for statecraft that had made him famous throughout the Empire, sat patiently for hours listening to the miserable boasting of a common thief. And in time his patience was rewarded.

“Oh, by the way,” said the man whose trade was breaking into houses in the small hours while everyone slept, “a while ago I had a most extraordinary experience. You’ve been such a good fellow that I’ll tell you about it, if it isn’t too late.”

“I would love to hear it,” said his guest. “I’ve enjoyed your lively stories enormously. You deserve to be counted among the great heroes of old who made their names famous by their daring deeds. Please go on and tell me all about this strange experience.”

“Well,” the man began, “I had carefully planned a visit to a certain house just outside the city walls. It was easy to get into without being seen, because it stood in a quiet street where hardly anyone passes after dark. It was a gloomy spot at night. The high walls around it cast deep, heavy shadows, and timid people say those shadows are really sad, restless ghosts creeping about to frighten anyone who isn’t careful.

“It was a little after midnight when I crept through the narrow lanes, keeping close to the houses where the darkness was thickest. Everyone was fast asleep. The only things that bothered me were the dogs. They’re far cleverer than their owners, and they guessed I was up to no good, so they barked and snapped at my legs. But I got past them and reached the house I meant to rob.

“When I got close, I was surprised to see a light burning inside. There was something else I couldn’t understand, too. The little side door I had planned to use was not bolted. It had been left half open, so any passing robber could walk straight in. I took off my shoes and tiptoed across the stone courtyard toward the lighted room. Then I hid just outside the window, where I could see everything without being seen.

“A woman of about thirty was sitting alone at a table. She was clearly angry about something. She was frowning, and every now and then her eyes flashed with fury she was trying to hold in, as if she had been badly wronged and wanted revenge. I was just wondering when I would be able to get on with my own business when I heard the side door bang shut, and then the heavy, stumbling footsteps of someone full of sam-shu in the dark.

“I moved a little farther from the window. A man came reeling toward the room where the woman sat. He flung the door open with a crash, fell down on the floor and lay there without moving. He was a small, puny fellow, while his wife was big and strong. She looked at him with utter contempt, then came over, picked him up and laid him on a bed in the corner of the room.

“She sat down again, but the looks she kept throwing at her miserable husband were full of evil. I was wondering how this strange scene would end when I saw her get up, take out a needle and use it to kill him in a way that left no injury visible to the first examiner.

“The drunken man cried out in terrible pain and thrashed about on the bed, and then he lay still and never moved again.

“I was so terrified of being blamed for the murder that I ran out of that house as fast as I could go in the dark, and I never stopped once until I got home, shaking with fear at what I had seen.

“The only funny part of the whole business was the inquest the other day over the husband’s body. I was there, and I was laughing to myself the whole time. There was the Coroner, with a serious face, following every rule for examining a body to find proof of murder. There was the county magistrate, questioning the woman and threatening her about her part in it. And there was the wife, sobbing and sighing, with tears streaming down her face, calling on Heaven to witness that she had nothing to do with her husband’s death. It was a splendid comedy, and the wife played her part wonderfully. There wasn’t a flaw in her story, and there wasn’t a mark on the body to prove her guilty.

“A few words from me would have settled the matter at once. The poor county magistrate looked dreadfully worried, because by law he was in serious trouble for examining the body without enough evidence. If only I could have spoken one sentence in his ear, it would have taken a heavy weight off his heart.”

“Then it is your duty,” said his guest, “to go to the mandarin’s court tomorrow morning and tell your story to the county magistrate, so that a great wrong does not go unpunished.”

“That I can never do,” the man answered at once. “Think what would happen if I did. I’m a thief. I make my living by stealing. I was in that house on the night of the murder to rob it, and all of that would come out when I gave my evidence. After I had proved the murder, what would happen to me? I’d be thrown into prison, and I might be stuck there for years, because who would ever pay bail for a thief? And my poor mother would starve. She depends on me for everything. She would have to go out into the streets and beg from door to door. No, I can never get mixed up in this case.”

Shih-Kung understood the man’s difficulty, yet without his evidence there was no way to convict the woman of her crime. So he worked out a plan to clear away whatever stood in the way of making him a witness.

He turned to the young man and said, “I’ve spent a very pleasant evening with you, and I thank you for your kindness and hospitality. My heart longs for a deeper friendship than words alone can express. So I propose that you and I become sworn brothers, so that whatever happens to us in the future, we will stand by each other to the very end.”

The young man looked up, astonished at this unexpected offer, but the sudden light in his eyes and the smile that spread across his face showed how much it pleased him.

“I’d be delighted,” he said quickly. “But when will we be able to go to the temple and make our vow before the god?”

“There’s no need to go to a temple,” Shih-Kung replied. “Your family’s own shrine, there in front of us, will do perfectly well. Give me a brush and paper, and I will write out the terms of our brotherhood and present them to the god.”

In a few minutes the document was written, setting out the obligations of their sworn brotherhood. With the most solemn oaths, Shih-Kung and the thief promised to help each other in any trouble that might ever come to either of them. If one called, the other must answer at once. No danger to life or limb could hold either of them back when he heard the other cry out for help or rescue. Each was to treat the other’s interests as his own, and as long as they lived, the duty to help in every time of need could never be weakened or canceled.

To show that this solemn promise was no passing fancy, it had to be read aloud in front of the household god, who in this house was the Goddess of Mercy. She would then be a witness to it forever, and with the unseen powers at her command she would bring pain and punishment on whichever of them broke his oath. Standing before her shrine, Shih-Kung read out the terms of their agreement word by word, slowly and gravely, as the solemn moment deserved. Then he lit the paper at the lamp, and both men watched it burn until only ashes were left. Now each of them knew that the Goddess had received the document and stored it among her records in the faraway Western Heaven, as proof of the vows made before her in those early morning hours.

When they sat down again, Shih-Kung fixed his new brother with a strong, commanding look. “You and I are sworn brothers now,” he said, “and so of course we must be honest with each other. I don’t want to deceive you any longer. I must tell you that I am not a cloth peddler, and I am not a kind-hearted thief in the sense you understood. I am Shih-Kung, the Viceroy of this province.”

The moment the man heard the name of the great mandarin, who struck terror into every criminal and wrongdoer under his rule, he fell to his knees in utter fright, knocked his forehead on the floor again and again and begged for mercy.

Shih-Kung gently raised him up and told him to put away all his fears. “You are my brother now,” he said, “and we have just sworn before the Goddess to defend each other with our lives. I will certainly keep my side of the oath. From this moment your fortune is made. And as for your mother, who welcomed me so kindly, it will be my privilege to provide for her for the rest of her life.”

Encouraged by the great statesman’s words, the young man came forward at the second inquest that Shih-Kung ordered. The court accepted his testimony, convicted the widow and punished her. The narrator does not specify the sentence.

Where this tale comes from

“The Widow Ho” is chapter I of Chinese Folk-Lore Tales by the Rev. J. Macgowan (London: Macmillan, 1910). Its hero, the upright official Shih-Kung, is presented as the model of Tien-Li, the righteousness of Heaven, as understood by the narrator.

It is a detective story with a supernatural push: an angry whirlwind and a dream sent by the City God start the case, but it is the Viceroy’s disguise, patience and a sworn brotherhood that finally win the witness he needs. The murder is condensed here, retaining the concealed needle as the clue without the original’s detailed description. The threatened death penalty for an unsuccessful examination of the body is part of this story’s legal premise, not a verified account of Chinese law.

Read the original: Macgowan’s Chinese Folk-Lore Tales (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: spousal murder, a concealed wound, arrest on supernatural suspicion, threats of execution and deception of a witness. The story’s clothing judgments and legal procedure invite critical discussion.

Reading the story closely

The case moves from signs to testimony. Red clothing and a whirlwind arouse Shih-Kung’s suspicion, a dream points to the coffin, and the first examination finds nothing. Only the thief claims to have seen the killing. Trace that sequence and distinguish what each stage suggests from what it demonstrates. The narrator endorses the verdict but does not describe an independent check of the witness’s final account.

The obstacle to testimony is practical: the thief expects imprisonment and fears his mother will lose her support. Shih-Kung removes that obstacle by promising protection and care, yet obtains the brotherhood oath before disclosing his identity. Compare the information each man has when he swears. The solution rests on a powerful official’s personal promise, which is different from a general guarantee available to every witness.

Talk about it

• What clues first made Shih-Kung suspect the widow?
• Why was the thief afraid to tell what he had seen?
• Was it fair of Shih-Kung to trick the thief into becoming his sworn brother? Why or why not?

Related stories

• The Tragedy of the Yin Family — another Macgowan tale where a wronged spirit brings justice
• The Vengeance of the Goddess — a Macgowan tale of a murdered king and a holy priest
• The Reward of a Benevolent Life — a Macgowan tale whose villain is brought before the famous judge Fau-Kung