They chatted for a minute more, with Charlotte promising to drop by when she got back, to say hello and to look at the statue.
She was sure of it, she thought as she walked back to her room. Boardmann’s theft was linked to everything that was going on in Dunhuang. She was reminded of what Bert had said about piecing together a dinosaur skeleton. The skeleton of the T. bataar was unusual: except for the skull, it had been as neatly laid out in its sandstone bed as a body in a casket, but this case was like most of the dinosaurs that Bert and his team spent their winters assembling—a jumble of unrelated bits and pieces. Before you could start putting it together, you had to develop a feel for the individual parts; how one fit into another, where each fit in relation to the whole, where the big pieces went and the small pieces went. Bunny’s news about Boardmann was like finding a crucial missing piece. She was now reasonably certain she had all the important pieces. Now she had to get to know them—to turn them over in her hands, to run her fingers over their bumps and hollows and ridges.
The first piece she wanted to take a look at was the newest one—the hole in the back of the statue. Something about it rang a bell. And then it struck her what it was. Item one: a cache of manuscripts had recently turned up inside a statue, and it was to translate these manuscripts that Marsha and Victor had been invited to Dunhuang. Item two: the statues that had been toppled from the dais in Cave 323 had had holes in their backs which had been made by looters looking for concealed treasure. Item three: Marsha had said that manuscripts and other valuables were traditionally hidden inside the bellies of the statues at Dunhuang to give them spiritual power. Charlotte had examined the piece. Now she put it into place. They had figured out that Wang had hidden the manuscripts in the cubbyholes, and then drawn up a list of his hiding places, a copy of which Charlotte had found in Peter’s room. But they had never thought to wonder where Wang had hidden his original list.
It made very good sense to her that he had hidden it inside a sculpture, namely that of the Oglethorpe’s monk.
Later that morning they scouted out the ninth cave on the list, under the guise of doing research for Marsha’s lectures. If Ned, who was now her chief suspect—the Boardmann connection had only strengthened the case against him—had taken the manuscripts from the eighth cave last night, he could be expected to visit the ninth cave tonight, and they intended to be there. The cave, which was Cave 328, was located in the southern group of caves near the. Cave of Unequaled Height.
As they climbed the cliff, Charlotte filled Marsha in on Bunny Oglethorpe’s call. “One more thing,” she added, after telling her about Boardmann’s theft of the statue. “It had a hole in its back.”
“A hole in its back?” asked Marsha, puzzled.
“Like the Tang statues in Cave 323. I think the Oglethorpe sculpture was also used as a hiding place—by Wang.”
“For more manuscripts?” asked Marsha.
“No. For the list describing where the manuscripts were hidden. As accustomed as he was to hiding things away, Wang wouldn’t have left the list just lying around. It was a valuable document, and, as you pointed out, there was a long tradition of hiding treasure inside of statues.”
“Do you know who the Oglethorpe sculpture was supposed to represent?” asked Marsha. “I know it was a Buddhist monk, but do you know which one?”
“I don’t remember his name,” Charlotte replied between breaths. Thank God for all those hikes up the mountain to her cottage in Maine; without them, she wouldn’t have been up to this trip. “He was the famous pilgrim who carried the Buddhist scriptures across the Himalayas from India.”
“Hsuan-tsang,” said Marsha. “He was Wang’s patron saint. If Wang was going to choose a particular sculpture in which to hide his most valuable document, it would have been a sculpture of Hsuan-tsang.”
“That’s right!” said Charlotte. “Victor talked about Hsuan-tsang being Wang’s patron saint in his lecture.”
“That’s how Stein won Wang over: he also claimed Hsuantsang as his patron saint,” said Marsha. “Okay,” she continued. “Wang hid his list in the statue of Hsuan-tsang. After Wang died, the sculpture was sold to an art dealer, who sold it to the Oglethorpes. But after that, I’m lost.”
They had paused to catch their breath on the porch of one of the caves, about halfway up. In the distance, the jagged ridge of the Mountain of the Three Dangers was sharply outlined against a deep blue sky.
“You mean, how did Boardmann know that Wang’s list was hidden inside that particular statue when there are twenty-four hundred statues at Dunhuang?”
Marsha nodded. “For that matter, how did he know the list existed?”
“That’s where I’m stuck too.”
For a moment, they studied the view. Charlotte could no longer see Larry’s white Toyota Land Cruiser in the shadows of the foothills, nor could she see the tents. Reynolds must have given orders for the camp to be dismantled.
After a few minutes, Charlotte spoke. “The only explanation I can think of is that Boardmann, in the course of his research, came across a document in which Wang mentioned that he’d drawn up a list of the manuscript hiding places and where he had hidden it.”
“His daybook!” exclaimed Marsha. “Wang was a meticulous record-keeper. That’s how the Chinese know which foreigners took away what from the caves. There’s a photocopy of it in the library. But”—a frown crossed her face—“Averill wouldn’t have had any reason to study Wang’s daybook.”
“Why not?”
“His specialty was sculpture. The entries in Wang’s daybook all have to do with the manuscripts and artworks that he sold to Stein and the other foreigners. The only sculpture that was removed from the caves during the period of Wang’s stewardship was the Bodhisattva that Langdon Warner carried off to the Fogg.”
“What about Peter?” asked Charlotte as they continued their upward climb. “Would he have had occasion to study Wang’s daybook?”
“Yes,” said Marsha thoughtfully. “Very much so.”
“Okay, let’s say it was Peter who comes across the entry in Wang’s daybook. The entry says that he’s drawn up a list describing where he’s hidden the remaining manuscripts, and that he’s hidden the list in a statue of Hsuan-tsang in Cave X. Peter goes to Cave X, and finds that the statue is missing.”
“Of course! If Peter had wanted to trace the missing statue, the first person he would have consulted was Averill. He is—or rather, was—the reigning authority on Dunhuang sculpture. It’s because of his work that the Academy has been able to track down so much of the missing sculpture.”
“How well did they know one another?”
“Pretty well, I think,” said Marsha. “They were both here together for three months last year. Peter was working on his book, and Averill was studying the sculptures. People can become quite close very quickly in such a small place.” She smiled at her statement, which applied as well to her and Bert.
“So I’ve noticed,” said Charlotte with a raised eyebrow.
Marsha grinned.
“To continue,” said Charlotte. “Peter goes to Boardmann and says, ‘Look what I’ve found.’ Maybe he even showed Boardmann the reference in Wang’s daybook. He asks Boardmann if he knows where the statue is, and Boardmann tells him. Then they plot together to steal the statue.”
“They both would have known about the thefts of the Dunhuang artworks,” added Marsha, “and they probably thought it would be easy to make the theft of the Oglethorpe sculpture fit in with the others.”
“Did Boardmann need the money?” asked Charlotte.
“Academics always need money. But Wang’s daybook still doesn’t answer the question of who killed Peter. Whoever it was must also have had access to the list of hiding places, or wanted access to the list.”
They had paused at the foot of a staircase.
Charlotte turned to Marsha. “How did Averill Boardmann die?” she asked. “I want all the details.”
“Do you th
ink …?”
Charlotte nodded. Though she might be wrong, her intuition told her that Boardmann’s death was linked to the other murders, and experience had taught her that more often than not, her intuition was right.
“He was murdered on the street in New York during a robbery attempt. He was out walking his dogs, a pair of Pekingese. It happened early in the morning, just as the sun was coming up.”
“And the guy they arrested?”
“A vagrant, an ex-con who hung out on the upper West Side.”
“How was he killed? With a gun, a knife?”
“A knife,” Marsha replied. “Stabbed through the heart. They never did find the murder weapon. The police said he had struggled with his attacker. He had slash marks on the undersides of his forearms.”
“Just like Peter,” said Charlotte.
“He died several hours later on the operating table at St. Luke’s. The vagrant they arrested had been seen picking garbage out of the garbage cans in the vicinity, but he denied committing the murder.”
“Then what evidence did they have?”
“Averill’s watch. He was wearing Averill’s watch.”
They had reached their destination, which was the same cave from which Langdon Warner had taken the Bodhisattva. The Buddha in the center of the group of sculptures was flanked by three figures on the right, and two on the left. Where the third figure should have been on the left was only an empty dais with a post in the center that had once supported the missing sculpture.
Marsha pointed to a sign on the wall behind the empty dais. “It says, ‘Stolen by American so-called archaeologist Langdon Warner in 1924. Now in the Fogg Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.’”
“Looks like Chu’s work,” said Charlotte.
Marsha nodded. “He’s put up signs like this in all of the caves from which artworks were removed by Western explorers.”
“The statues are exquisite,” said Charlotte. “Especially this one,” she added, nodding at the small Bodhisattva that was the twin of the one in the Fogg. Its erect posture was stately, its long limbs graceful and elegant, the expression on its broad, smooth face serene. Its necklaces, armlets, and bracelets were sumptuous and the colors of its long, pleated skirt—vermilion, malachite, and gold—were rich and vibrant.
“It’s early Tang,” said Marsha as they both gazed at the statue, “before the figures became more massive and opulent. I think it’s one of the most beautiful statues at Dunhuang. I’m not surprised that Langdon Warner chose its twin to carry off to the Fogg.”
“And I’m not surprised that Chu wants it back.”
It didn’t take long to find the cubbyhole: it was located at the rear of the inner chamber, near the floor. The painting above it depicted a man treading on the tail of a tiger, the symbol for the caution demanded by a dangerous enterprise. After a bit of discussion, they chose the adjacent cave as their observation post. This time they didn’t want to risk not getting a good look at their man. The two caves were connected by a doorway that had been cut through the wall between the antechambers.
The shape of the skeleton was beginning to take form, Charlotte thought as they descended the cliff. As she read the pieces, they fit together something like this: Peter finds the reference to the list of hiding places in Wang’s daybook. He solicits Boardmann’s help in tracking down the statue, and they plot together to steal it from the Oglethorpe Gardens. Somehow Ned Chee finds out about the plot. He might also have come across the reference to the list in Wang’s daybook during the course of his research, and figured out that it was Boardmann who stole the statue. He had worked closely with Boardmann, he said. Maybe Boardmann had said something or done something that tipped him off. In any case, Ned decides that he wants the manuscripts for himself. After stealing the list, most likely without Boardmann’s knowledge, he stabs him on the street—thus eliminating the competition—and camouflages the murder as a robbery attempt. Pretending to be a vagrant on a cold April morning in New York wouldn’t have been hard. All he would have needed was a stumbling gait, a plastic garbage bag full of aluminum cans, and a hooded parka to conceal his face. Then he arranges a return trip to Dunhuang, romances Emily to get her to hand over the keys (poor Emily), and starts assembling the manuscripts in the stupa. Then comes the second killing: Larry innocently wanders over to the stupa to check out what’s going on, and Ned sneaks back to his camp later to murder him in his sleep. Having succeeded in pinning the murder on a vagrant in Boardmann’s case by planting Boardmann’s watch on him, Ned repeats this ploy by planting Larry’s portable shortwave radio on Feng. He then continues with his nighttime work of removing the manuscripts from the cubbyholes with the intent of selling them later on. All is going well until Peter shows up. Using his copy of the list, Peter locates the cubbyholes, only to find that somebody has already cleaned some of them out. By keeping a close watch on the caves, he figures out which cave his adversary will visit next, and goes there to confront him. Not knowing that Ned has already killed Boardmann and Larry, he demands a piece of the action, and ends up as Ned’s third victim.
It wasn’t a complete skeleton yet; there were still some missing pieces. For instance: if Ned had been in Dunhuang for eight weeks, why had he only recently gotten around to removing the manuscripts from the cubbyholes? One reason might have been that he wasn’t able to figure out Wang’s code right away. The I Ching might have been in fashion with New Agers like Kitty, but it was off the beaten track for an art historian, Chinese-American or not. Another might be that it had taken him that long to convince Emily to part with the keys. In any case, the basic structure of the skeleton was there, and it seemed to fit together pretty well.
They would find out how accurate it was soon enough.
At nine that night, Charlotte disembarked from the minibus with Marsha, Bert, and Dogie at the traffic circle at the center of Dunhuang town. With nightspots in short supply, they had eagerly taken the bus driver up on his offer to drive them into town for the evening. They had nothing to do until they took up their watch at the caves later that evening. So they had decided to do what all sensible people did when they needed a little recreation and had some extra time on their hands (in Charlotte’s mind, anyway), which was to go to the movies. They had noticed on Sunday that the local movie theatre was showing a Charlie Chaplin movie, and, since language wasn’t going to pose a problem—most of Chaplin’s movies had been silents—they had figured “why not?”
The movie theatre had been designed in the fifties during the period of political alliance with the Russians, and was typical of Russian-style architecture—a featureless block of stucco with a colonnade here and there. Chu’s son may have considered Charlotte’s movies spiritual pollution, but they were in the finest taste compared to the pollution of the Chinese landscape by this hideous Russian architecture, which was ubiquitous. On the balcony above the doors a hand-painted sign advertised the picture, which was Chaplin’s masterpiece, The Great Dictator. In it, Chaplin played both the evil dictator and the common man who is crushed by the dictator’s policies. Charlotte remembered when it was released. It was 1940, the year after Hitler’s invasion of Poland provoked a declaration of war from Britain and France, and the year after the release of her own first picture. She hadn’t seen it since.
After buying their tickets, which cost the equivalent of twenty cents, they went in. Inside, the theatre was a big, barnlike structure with a cement floor, hard wooden seats, and dim lighting. As the film unwound, Charlotte found herself profoundly moved, not only by Chaplin’s brilliant performance, but also by the reaction of the audience. The theatre was charged with emotion. There were those who were no doubt remembering their own humiliations during the Cultural Revolution, but there were also those who were no doubt remembering their own misdeeds. For Chaplin’s dictator was a man who does evil because he is a man to whom evil has been done, and the wounds inflicted by son turning in father, student turning in teacher, and friend turnin
g in friend must still have been raw in the minds of the audience. Many were probably intellectuals from Beijing and Shanghai who had been shipped out to the western regions, the People’s Republic’s equivalent of Siberia, and never had the chance to return.
When the lights came on at the end of the movie, Charlotte could see tearstains on the cheeks of many in the audience. She thought again of Reynolds’ proposal, and ached for it to come through.
Afterwards they wandered around the town. At ten o’clock the dusty streets were still crowded. It seemed as if everyone was out for the evening: peddlers hawked shish kebab and melons, young men played pool at tables that were set up on the sidewalk, lovers strolled languidly, arm in arm—a big change from a few years before when public displays of affection were prohibited. Townspeople eager to practice their English approached them with the question: “Are you very happy?” This concern with their state of happiness puzzled them until they figured out that the phrase was from a popular English phrasebook.
They were trying to decide where to go next when Dogie let out one of his hoots of glee. He was staring at a moon-faced woman wearing a white cap who was turning a tin drum on a nearby street corner. “If that woman ain’t sellin’ ice cream, my name ain’t Percival V. O’Dea.”
“Percival!” said Charlotte.
“Yep. It means knight in Old French. My mama was a schoolteacher. Taught history. My father was a no-account scalawag who never finished seventh grade, but we don’t talk about him.”
“What the V. for?” asked Marsha.
“Virgil. After the Roman poet.”
“With a name like that, it’s no wonder he’s called Dogie,” said Bert.
“It’s not much worse than Albert,” countered Dogie.
Stopping the drum, the woman scooped out a white substance with a wooden paddle, and deposited it in a paper cup for a customer.
“I think you’re seeing correctly, Percival,” said Marsha.
Murder on the Silk Road Page 23
