Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure

by Hambling, David

  Yang took a final puff and delicately crushed the stub of the cigarette into a china ashtray. Then he became business-like.

  “Collins is gone, you said? This is unfortunate. It will be necessary to talk to the woman Sally. You described how she was assaulted before Collins drove off the assailant with a volley of shots. This may be an event of some importance.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You will arrange an interview, and all will become clear.”

  “What about Lavinia?”

  “It will not be profitable to meet with her at this point.”

  I recalled that Arthur had arranged for a cleaning job for Sally at the Virgo Fidelis convent. I went in search of him so he could help us set up a meeting. It was past ten o’clock in the morning, but Arthur had not yet retired to bed after his night’s work. He was in the Electric Café with the telephone on the table in front of him. He had been much involved with handling a shipment of pineapples and had been able to shift almost all of them. With fresh fruit, there was no time to lose, and Arthur was fretting over the final few.

  “Ham and pineapple,” he said the moment he saw me, snapping his fingers. Evidently, the sight of me gave him an idea. “That’s the way the Yanks eat it. Your esteemed father ought to be able to shift a few crates of pineapples if he sells them cheap with every order of ham.”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. I enjoy pineapple upside-down cake as much as the next man, but fruit and meat is a strange combination. It reminded me of the Chinese meal I had enjoyed the previous day—not the sort of thing normal English people were likely to sit down to.

  “Well, maybe he can start a new fashion over here. I’ll send him two crates on spec, and he can do what he likes with them.” Arthur scribbled a note to himself. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  I explained about Sally; Arthur did not seem surprised that Yang wanted to talk to her. “I’ll make a phone call,” he said. “What’s the time now? Go round there at one o’clock, and you can talk to her then.”

  I had never been in Virgo Fidelis before. Most of it was given over to a girls’ school, and we were directed to a room that must have been the head teacher’s study or something like it. The walls were bare except for a wooden crucifix on one side facing a rather overly coloured picture of the Virgin Mary on the other.

  Sally was waiting for us, her hands folded in her lap. She wore a long black skirt, a plain blouse, and no makeup. I hardly recognised her. She smiled timidly at me but wouldn't make eye contact with Yang.

  “I’m a different woman now,” she assured me. “I’ve left all that behind me.”

  She pushed her hair back with one hand. It was cut short now and kept falling in front of her face. Oddly, Sally looked younger than when I had seen her before.

  “So I understand,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you want to talk to me for,” she said. “I can’t remember nothing. I was drinking, and… I put it out of my mind.”

  “I told Mr Yang everything,” I said. “I was there at the pub, you know.”

  “Were you? See, I didn’t even remember that.”

  “I was there, and I heard what you said at the time. Except, at the time, you were in some distress and couldn’t articulate too well. I thought, perhaps, with the passage of time, you might be able to tell us more easily.”

  Sally shook her head. “Sorry, it’s like I said…”

  Yang had taken a square of gold foil from his pocket. He dexterously unfolded it into a sort of Chinese lantern with tassels. It was on the end of a piece of twine, and spun to and fro as he rolled the string between his fingers.

  “This may help,” he said, holding it up and looking into the whirling golden bauble as if it were a crystal ball. “Look into the gold. See how it spins, how it catches the light. Look into it. Look to the light inside it.”

  Sally obediently looked at the bauble.

  “We don’t want anything from you, Sally,” said Yang. “Just look into the light. Let your mind go. You must have been working very hard at your cleaning. Now you can relax for a bit. Just sit here and look at the golden lights going around and around.”

  I tore my gaze from the spinning bauble with difficulty. Sally was gazing deep into it, her eyelids heavy. For a moment, I wondered whether seconds had passed or hours.

  “You like going to the cinema, Sally? Imagine you are there now, sitting in the back row. It is a comfortable seat. You are feeling relaxed. The movie that you are watching is a newsreel of that night. You see yourself on the screen, standing at the end of the alley. You are safe and comfortable, watching the screen. Your friend Collins is on the screen, too, waiting just around the corner. What do you see next?”

  “There’s a funny sort of man coming down the street,” said Sally, picking up without hesitation. “You can see him as he goes from the streetlight to shadow, streetlight to shadow. He sort of shambles along.” She rolled her shoulders in unconscious imitation of the peculiar gait. “He's tall and all covered up in a long coat. But not really, because it doesn't reach all the way down, him being so tall.”

  “Now the man in the long coat is approaching the Sally on the screen,” said Yang. “We’re watching it in the cinema, and it’s a close-up of the two of them. What can we see?”

  “I’m wearing my blue dress, and he comes right over, kind of slouching over and leaning on the wall right next to me.”

  “Can we see his face?” asked Yang, still twirling the golden bauble as Sally looked into it.

  “Not at first. He’s got a hat on, and it’s all in shadows, and there’s a scarf over his mouth, and I don’t like that, either. I step back into the alley, not thinking, just because he’s too close. Up close, he’s so big I have to lean back to look at him.”

  “You’re still watching on the screen, remember,” said Yang.

  “And he unwinds the scarf from around his face, and that’s when I see it’s Billy McCann. I’m so confused, because he’s been dead two years. He steps into the alley—and I scream—”

  “The cinema projector catches for a moment there,” said Yang as Sally’s voice was starting to rise. “So the image is frozen on the screen, and we can see what you saw. But it’s on the screen, so he can’t harm us.”

  Sally’s expression softened again. She screwed up her eyes as though trying to make out a picture.

  “It’s dark in the alley because it’s all in shadow, but that’s why it’s so scary. His arms are wrong—one of them is bigger than the other. But his face… he’s got a hat on, and this scarf over his mouth, but I can see this bit.” She ran a hand over her face at eye level, indicating that strip covered by a masquerader’s mask. “That’s why it’s scary. It’s dark, but I can see it because it’s glowing except the eyes are like black holes. Glowing green like a corpse.”

  Sally stopped a moment, seeing that face again.

  “And I scream, and he stops a moment like he’s surprised, and Edward comes round the corner and shoots him, bang bang bang bang.” She mimed a pistol with her hand. “I run out of the way and into the street and into the pub…”

  “And then the lights come up,” said Yang, “and that’s the end of the film, and you’re safe in the cinema. Comfortable and relaxed.”

  He kept twirling the golden bauble for another minute as Sally’s breathing slowed back down to normal. Then he allowed it to come to a gradual stop.

  “That was very interesting, Sally,” he said, carefully folding up the gold foil. “You have my appreciation.” He bowed slightly.

  “And mine too,” I added.

  Sally looked from me to Yang and back.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  “You have been very helpful,” said Yang, standing up.

  “Do you know what—who…?” She trailed off, looking confused. Yang merely smiled and bowed on his way out.

  “It’s a very peculiar case,” I said.

  To my surprise, Sally reached out and put a hand o
n my arm.

  “Do be careful, Mr Stubbs.”

  Afterwards, Yang wanted to go back to the hotel. Evidently, he was tired out by the whole experience and his shoulder pained him. He indicated that my services would not be needed for the rest of the day.

  “Be ready tomorrow,” said Yang. “Tomorrow, I think, we will discover some of the secrets of life and death.”

  Chapter Nine: The Death of Mr. Yang

  The hotel lounge was a comfortable place to hang around. I read the morning paper and back issues of Punch as well as talking to the clerk, Walker. He filled me in on Arthur’s counterintelligence operation keeping tabs on Yang.

  “He burns things in his room,” said Walker. “The bellboy got excited, thinking it was opium, but it’s only joss sticks. Lord knows how we’ll get the smell out.”

  “Is it worse than tobacco?”

  “People don’t mind cigarettes. And there’s that cat. I don’t know what we’re going to charge him when he leaves, but it’ll be a pretty penny. Won’t mean anything to a man like that, of course. He must be rich as Croesus.”

  We were continuing in this vein when Reg walked in, looking cheerful but business-like.

  “Oh, here you are, Harry,” he said. “I was worried something had happened to you.”

  “To me? Why?”

  “The police down the East End found a Chinese man lying an alley, wearing a very nice suit.”

  “Was he—?”

  “Dead as a doornail. There were two wooden dowels stuck into his eye sockets,” Reg said with relish.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Yang’s still in his room.”

  “No he ain’t,” said Reg. “They left his wallet on the body so people would know it wasn’t a robbery, along with his papers. It was Yang -- he gave you the slip. His Daimler was parked in the next street. That’s why I thought you must have been with him.”

  Walker and I hurried up to Yang’s room with Reg lumbering behind. The clerk knocked several times and called Yang’s name. There was no reply, and after a minute, he opened the door with a passkey.

  Of course, the room was empty. I remembered what Yang had said about discovering secrets of life and death and wondered if he had anticipated something like this.

  It looked as though Yang had been getting ready to go back to China, with everything packed away and his luggage stacked up neatly. Just a few personal items remained: a set of tortoiseshell brushes on the dresser, a scarf tossed over the back of a chair. There was a cushion on the floor and a saucer but no sign of the cat. The window was shut, but the catch was open.

  “Think Yang slipped out the window?” asked Reg.

  “Must have done,” says Walker. “He couldn’t have got out of the building the back way. He would have been seen.”

  “I suppose he might have shinnied down the drainpipe,” I said. It was hard to imagine Yang, in his spotless suit, engaged in anything so grubby. “I thought there were people keeping an eye out.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Reg, flipping open the top suitcase. Inside was a pile of neatly folded shirts. “Arthur won’t mind. Yang’s out of it now, and that’s all he cared about.”

  Reg took a framed silver photograph of a pretty girl with bobbed hair out of a pocket in the suitcase. At first I thought she was an American movie starlet, until I saw that she was an Oriental. There was a tabby cat in her arms; even in black and white I recognised the animal with its piercing eyes.

  Reg put the picture back and started opening other pockets in the suitcase, looking for valuables.

  “You can’t go rummaging through a hotel guest’s property,” said Walker. “Even a Chinese guest.”

  “What’s it matter? He’s dead now.”

  I shut the suitcase so quickly that Reg had to snatch his hands away.

  He looked at me reproachfully. “Fill your pockets while you can, Stubbs. You’re out of a job now.”

  “How did you find out so quickly about Yang being killed?”

  “I tipped the constabulary off about Yang a few days ago just as a precautionary measure.”

  “Did you tell Arthur about that?” I asked.

  “What Arthur doesn’t know won’t hurt him. As soon as Yang’s name came up, the police contacted me first thing. As a matter of fact, they asked me to officially identify the body.”

  “You?”

  “Always happy to help the boys in blue.” Reg smirked and pulled out a silver cigarette case with an Oriental design. “And pick up a keepsake.”

  “Did you get his watch, too?”

  “It was only a cheap watch. Then I thought I’d come over here and have a look around before the police did.”

  “You’ve had your look around,” said Walker. “Let’s get back to reception before they show up.”

  We went back down, where Reg expounded his theory that Yang had arranged a rendezvous and the Triads had ambushed him.

  “They got him good and proper. No torture. I reckon one man held him and the other one—fttt!” Reg made a gesture of sticking two fingers into my eyes. “The Triads cut up the body when they want to humiliate the victim—‘lingchee,’ that is—but that takes time…”

  We were interrupted by the arrival of a pair of police constables. I recognised the PC who had attended the shooting incident, and he recognised me. He sent his colleague up with Walker to look at the room and addressed me politely.

  “Am I correct in saying that you are a Mr Stubbs, lately employed to assist a Chinese gentleman?” There was no point in denying it. “Would you be so good as to accompany me to the station? I believe that you may be able to help us with our enquiries concerning the late Mr Yang.”

  I spent a few hours answering questions and making my statement. I described the encounter with the other Chinese as an argument rather than a fight, and omitted some other details such as Arthur’s involvement, but gave them a broadly accurate outline. Not that the police were so very interested. Yang’s murder did not cause much of a ripple anywhere. The detail of having his eyes poked out with wooden skewers was the one outstanding feature of the crime, but having played on that for what it was worth in terms of Oriental barbarism, the newspapers had nothing else to say on the matter. The prevailing view was that Yang was a gangster who was seeking to expand his gang’s influence in the Chinese community in London and had fallen foul of the existing interests.

  Or, if you believed the one anonymous Chinese shopkeeper the papers quoted, a group of right-thinking vigilantes had taken the law into their own hands and executed justice to keep the scourge of crime away from Limehouse.

  The body was packed up and shipped out posthaste. The Chinese always send their dead back home for burial, wherever they die. Yang’s baggage was whisked away, unmolested I trust, by some efficient agent.

  Perhaps I was the only one in London to mourn him. I had become used to his odd ways, and I was ready to count Yang as a friend. As for his final encounter, I rather thought he deliberately slipped away so I would have no part in what he must have suspected would be a terminal matter. I took it as a favour and not a slight.

  I thought occasionally of the girl with bobbed hair waiting for him in Shanghai, and whether I should write. Would Yang’s employers inform her of his death, or would she still be waiting for him to return? Not that I had an address to write to, but I did think of her.

  The police investigation was cursory. Having pegged it as a matter between Chinese, they felt no great need to explore further. An inspector from the Metropolitan Police made some remarks in the papers about the difficulties about investigating that sort of case. The Chinese legation said that the event was regrettable but showed no inclination to raise a hue and cry. The legation represented the new revolutionary Kuomintang government in Peking, while Shanghai was still under the sway of the old government of the Republic of China. They would not wish to draw attention to the incident and the rise of gangsterism in a city that they claimed but did not control.

&nb
sp; “All’s well that ends well,” was Arthur’s view.

  The only loser was Reg, who had fallen from Arthur’s favour. Looting from the dead was not respectful; talking to the police without getting leave doubly so.

  “No wonder he has trouble sleeping at night,” said Arthur. “Though I gather it was something you told him.”

  “What was?”

  “He keeps getting nightmares about a Chinese strangler and wakes up choking.” He tapped his temple. “Power of the mind. A guilty conscience is a dangerous thing, as I always say.”

  “We still have the question of Roslyn D’Onston,” I said. “The purpose of Yang’s visit was to establish if D’Onston was alive. I tend to the conclusion that the answer is in the affirmative.”

  Arthur has a mind like a steel trap and an eye for the angle that everyone else has missed. Powell’s sudden death and Howard’s wild claims might not amount to much. But Arthur has his own sources of information.

  “That’s a stretch,” he said at last. “But people have some funny notions. If your Mrs Lavinia psychic does think she is Roslyn D’Onston, there might be some undesirable possibilities arising. We can’t have her setting about our local ladies of the night with a straight razor, collecting ingredients for her witch’s brew. Also… Yang’s mob will want to do something about his being bumped off. Reg may be wide of the mark on some points, but he’s right when he says they never forget a grudge.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said impulsively. “Either she’s just an innocent old woman, or there is something in what Howard was saying and… well, I’ll talk to her.”

  “You’re forgetting something, aren’t you, Stubbsy? Suppose Lavinia really is a Medusa who can kill you with a look.” He gave a light snort. “You’d be struck as dead as Powell.”