Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

by Paul French

  What about the blood on his shoes and knife? Dennis asked. Was that from the hunting? And what about his clothing—where were the rest of his clothes? At these questions, Pinfold clammed up.

  Dennis broke off the interview for lunch, feeling that something had been achieved. He had names—Prentice, Gorman, Knauf—and details of nudist colonies and nude dances, weekend antics. Maybe it would prove to be nothing, but it was definitely strange. Perhaps Pinfold was right to ask where the crime was. And where was the connection to Pamela? Dennis himself wondered. But there were crossovers, links. He needed to probe deeper, build up a picture of these men and how they interacted.

  He headed back to the Wagons Lits for some Western food and a change of shirt. When he got there, the receptionist passed him a note from his secretary, Mary McIntyre, asking him to phone her as soon as possible. Dennis made the call and was told he was being recalled to Tientsin, by no less a personage than Consul Affleck.

  Mary McIntyre told him that Affleck, as senior as senior got in the Tientsin British Concession, was raising a storm. He wanted Dennis in Tientsin immediately. There was to be a meeting first thing in the morning, at which the DCI’s presence was required. He’d need to get the next train. There were no further details.

  Dennis caught the International from Peking, steaming through the monotonous sorghum fields outside the city to Tientsin’s East Station, where a crowd of porters, rickshaw pullers and taxis jostled for fares. His driver was waiting for him and drove straight to the British Concession and Dennis’s home on Hong Kong Road. He kissed his sleeping son on the head, ate a hastily prepared cold supper, then headed to his office and a pile of paperwork.

  There his deputies filled him in on the events in Tientsin since he’d been away. Several cases had gone to court in the past week, and there’d been some fallout from fistfights with troops on leave down on the strip of dive bars and brothels on Dublin and Bruce roads, at the seedier end of the concession. There was some paperwork that needed his signature. Then the Pamela Werner investigation.

  On the face of it, there was little to tell. Bill Greenslade had personally checked out the boyfriend, Mischa Horjelsky, and he was off the list of suspects. Greenslade had also paid a visit to Tientsin Grammar. It was still school holidays, and the students weren’t due back for the new term until the following Monday, but it was the teachers who’d interested Greenslade most—they seemed nervous at the mention of Pamela. It was understandable that they’d be upset, and unsure how their charges were going to handle the situation, but they were downright jittery, referring Greenslade’s enquiries to the headmaster, Sydney Yeates.

  Since Yeates wasn’t at the school, Greenslade went to his home, the School House on Race Course Road, where Pamela had been a boarder. But the servants told him Yeates wasn’t there either. Greenslade suspected they were covering for their master. His copper’s intuition told him that the man was at home but didn’t want to talk to a policeman.

  Then Consul Affleck and some of Tientsin Grammar’s board members, mostly local bigwigs, had got in touch with Greenslade and in no uncertain terms told him to stop questioning the teachers and pupils, and to stay away from Race Course Road. They also told him that DCI Dennis would be coming back to town. It was all very queer, Greenslade thought. Dennis had no idea what to think.

  The meeting Dennis had been ordered to attend was scheduled for the following morning at eight o’clock, in his office in Gordon Hall on Victoria Road. The very symbol of British power in Tientsin, the hall was built out of the dark grey stone of the former ancient city wall, which had been pulled down by British troops. It was named after Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon, who’d set out from Tientsin to march on Peking with Lord Elgin in 1860. The march had ended in the burning of the emperor’s Summer Palace and the looting of Peking by the foreign soldiers.

  Gordon then led the defeat of the Taiping rebels outside Shanghai, heading up a ragtag band of volunteers and mercenaries who called themselves the Ever Victorious Army. Lavished with rewards by the grateful Qing rulers, he became ‘Chinese’ Gordon. Eventually he was immortalised as a hero of the British Empire when he fell under the swords of the Mahdi in the Sudan. ‘Chinese’ Gordon became even better known as ‘Gordon of Khartoum.’

  Gordon Hall was the focal point of the British Concession’s authority. It held the offices of the British Municipal Council, the law courts, and the British Concession police headquarters, Dennis’s citadel. The building itself was half Gothic castle, half bastion of imperial power, with churchlike arches over every doorway, and a massive front door heavily fortified in case of attack. This door was never used, as everyone entered by the side entrances. If things went bad in Tientsin, Gordon Hall would be where the besieged Brits would make a final stand.

  The hall was in a position of prominence on the British Bund, close to the Tientsin Club and the Astor House Hotel, and directly across from the perfectly laid out Victoria Park, which could have been the municipal gardens of any English town. Facing the hall from the opposite bank of the Hai River was the old Russian Concession.

  Present in Dennis’s office that morning, along with Consul Affleck and Bill Greenslade, were E. C. Peters, chairman of the Committee of Management at Tientsin Grammar, Arthur Tipper, chairman of the Tientsin British Municipal Council, and P. H. B. Kent, legal adviser to the same council. These men were among the most powerful in Tientsin, and ultimately ran the British Concession.

  Mary McIntyre brought in tea for them all, and a folder of documents that she handed to Consul Affleck. No one said anything until she had retreated and closed the door, and the tapping of her typewriter keys could be heard. Dennis made to start, wanting to inform the meeting that the investigation had finally got moving in Peking, but Affleck abruptly cut him off. When the consul was riled, traces of his Liverpool accent showed through. His had been a slow rise through the China Service; he’d only recently been elevated to a consulship, at the relatively advanced age of fifty-six.

  DCI Dennis exchanged glances with Bill Greenslade, who shrugged to indicate he too had no idea what this was about.

  Affleck got straight to the point. He was a blunt talker, despite his rank, and a professed atheist who had controversially married the widow of a British accountant in Tientsin, something that hadn’t made him popular with the more traditional and pious elements in the Foreign Office. Times might have changed since 1913, when Ambassador Jordan had ostracised a man for marrying a widow, but prejudices died hard in Whitehall. This morning’s meeting was about the headmaster of Tientsin Grammar School, Sydney Yeates. What was about to be discussed must never leave this office—on that, all the men around the table were to be clear. The very reputation of Tientsin Grammar was at stake, as was that of the British Concession in the city, and indeed British face in China.

  The consul handed round sheets of foolscap from the manila folder Mary McIntyre had given him. Dennis noted there were none of the usual rubber stampings on the folder to indicate what was inside. The sheets were the formal police registration for Sydney Yeates. It listed his personal details—occupation, address, date and place of birth (1893, Oxford)—and included details of his family. Wife: Louise Ivy, née Barnes, born 1895, Headington, Oxford; children: Barbara, born 1924, Oxford.

  Sydney Yeates was a solid fixture of Tientsin’s British commu-nity. He had studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, then spent time as a teacher in England before moving to Africa to teach. He subsequently became inspector of schools in Nigeria. A stint teaching in Rangoon followed, and he arrived in China in 1923 as assistant headmaster at Tientsin Grammar. He was promoted to headmaster in 1927.

  Dennis knew Yeates only vaguely. He’d seen him on the sidelines during the parents-versus-school cricket matches the DCI played in occasionally to make up the numbers, and at municipal council meetings, or on St George’s Day, Empire Day and the King’s Birthday. Dennis thought the man looked like a headmaster, with his slicked-down hair, dimpled chin, deep-set eyes t
hat accentuated his seriousness, and thin top lip that his pupils said quivered when he was angry. He appeared older than his forty-three years, his thick black spectacles aging him even further. He was tall and strong-looking, and he had an equally strong reputation for being stern.

  Not being known as a particularly kind man was one thing, but Dennis had also heard rumours about Sydney Yeates’s excessive discipline. Parents had mumbled, and a few complained openly. The headmaster was fond of doling out corporal punishment on pupils’ backsides with a Rangoon cane, sending them home with blue-black welts that blistered and pustulated if they weren’t treated. It was said he’d been asked to leave his school in Rangoon for being a little too severe with the cane.

  Tientsin Grammar under Sydney Yeates was a strict school. If a student was given detention twice in one week, that meant an automatic appointment with the headmaster’s cane, but that strictness was part of the reason some parents sent their children there in the first place, and Yeates was hardly the only headmaster in the empire who meted out discipline with a stick.

  The pupils themselves had differing views of Yeates. Many liked and respected him; they thought him ‘dapper.’ Others considered him lazy—he didn’t actually teach that regularly anymore—or said he drank, beat them, could be brutal, liked to embarrass and humiliate them, make spectacles of them. Dennis had seen Yeates drinking in the posh Tientsin Club, but couldn’t say he drank more than anyone else. Yeates was, to Dennis’s mind, a little superior: a little too quick to remind people of his Oxford background, to put on his robes and mortarboard in public.

  Affleck now asked Dennis outright if he was sure that the murdered girl in Peking was Pamela Werner, and Dennis said he was. No, he told the consul, they hadn’t charged anyone with the crime, but the investigation was ongoing. Why had he been brought back to answer these questions?

  Peters, the chairman of the school’s Committee of Management, then took over. Certain allegations had been made, he said, the previous year, the previous term. It was impossible to get to the bottom of them, but they were worrying nonetheless. An investigation had been conducted within the school, discreetly of course, and a resolution had been found. However, recent events raised the issue of the press becoming involved, and there were certain facts that, were they to see the light of day, might not be in the school’s best interest. And they most surely had nothing to do with the unfortunate and tragic case in Peking.

  Dennis was at a loss. He felt that his position had been undermined. What allegations? he wanted to know. What investigation?

  Peters looked to Affleck. Affleck looked to the legal adviser Kent, who gave the nod. In his characteristically blunt manner, the consul laid out the events.

  The previous term, Pamela Werner’s father had approached the school board and claimed that his daughter had been subjected to unwarranted attentions while boarding at the School House—unwarranted attentions from headmaster Sydney Yeates.

  She was distressed, upset, and Werner threatened to expose Yeates unless something was done. He used his influence to involve Affleck too, and an investigation was conducted. It appeared that, while perhaps drunk, Yeates had approached Pamela in a manner unbecoming of a headmaster with a pupil. His manner was even more improper given that she was under his care as a boarder.

  There had been allegations by others before, but they’d always been withdrawn. Werner, though, was more adamant than most. Yeates had partially admitted that his conduct was improper, and he offered to resign at the end of the school year, in the summer, to avoid a disgrace that would end his career. Werner had pulled Pamela out of school and was planning to send her to England to complete her education. To preserve her reputation, he agreed to Yeates’s leaving on the grounds of ill health once the long summer break started. A public scandal was in no one’s interest—not Yeates’s, nor the school’s, nor Pamela’s.

  Dennis was stunned. He too was a father, and he had a parent’s reaction to the news, a horrified dismay that the headmaster had been acting this way towards a student. He made to speak, but again Affleck cut him off.

  Pamela’s unfortunate death allowed for no choice but to bring forward Yeates’s departure, the consul declared. The headmaster had been in Tientsin at the time of the murder, so there was no question of his being a suspect.

  If need be, Superintendent Greenslade could make discreet enquiries to validate Yeates’s alibi—he’d been at home with his wife and daughter. Yeates had tried his best to avoid Greenslade, but had eventually had to provide an alibi. However, Bill Greenslade would not have described Sydney Yeates as cooperative. For the leaders of Brit-ish Tientsin, it seemed that the most important thing was for this incident not to become public knowledge; it most certainly was not to get into any newspapers.

  A decision had been made, Affleck went on, and Yeates would not be returning to school on Monday. Instead he and his family were to leave for England as soon as possible. Peters was to arrange it all, and he would explain to the school that the headmaster was retiring due to poor health. The deputy, John Woodall, would be promoted to acting head. Woodall would have to be told the truth, but apart from him and Werner and those in the room, nobody else would know. Affleck would ensure that the local newspapermen were told to ignore any gossip. The reputation of Tientsin Grammar School . . .

  The meeting was adjourned after Affleck had gained an assurance from everyone present that the matter would go no further. Dennis was told he could return to Peking to continue his investigations. As they all got up to leave, none of the men, not even Affleck, blunt as he was, could look Dennis in the eye. There was no other phrase for it—a cover-up had just taken place in the office of the head of the British Municipal Police, Tientsin.

  Dennis fumed. He had been rendered impotent to preserve British face. He realized now what Werner had meant by his response to Dennis’s question about why Pamela was leaving Tientsin and returning to England. I would have thought you would have known?

  He should have known. And not knowing had not only made him look incompetent, it had taken him away from Peking at a critical moment in the investigation.

  The following week, Sydney Yeates left Tientsin with his wife and daughter, boarding the first available ship out of the city. He never returned.

  Closet investigations, secret meetings, people being bundled out of the city—it all seemed outlandish to Dennis. And despite the pact of silence in his office, the rumours and gossip inevitably increased. There was talk of widespread sexual activity among the older pupils at Tientsin Grammar, and indeed it did seem that there was a fast set at the school, and that Pamela was part of it. Yeates was declared to be a drunk as well as a bully; he’d had an affair with Pamela, had forced her to do things.

  The rumour mill went even further: the autopsy had found that Pamela was pregnant, and the baby was Yeates’s; he had been seen in Peking on the night she was murdered. In fact he regularly slipped away from Tientsin to cavort in the Badlands. The studio portrait of Pamela appeared in the Tientsin newspapers and was passed from hand to hand for comment. Most were sympathetic to her—she was the innocent victim of a horrific crime that could have been perpetrated on any of them. Others were less so. They read the reports that Pamela was ‘not of a placid nature,’ that she’d been in trouble at other schools before Tientsin. They discovered she was older than she appeared, and was seeing a number of boys in Peking. They believed she had strung along the popular Mischa Horjelsky in Tientsin and had probably been living an immoral life.

  The two schools of thought divided along the lines of the two Pamelas: Pamela as a good girl, a schoolgirl, a plain girl, and Pamela as a woman, too independent, out of control. In numerous comfortable sitting rooms across Tientsin’s British Concession, and in the soft leather chairs of the Tientsin Club at Gordon Hall, the question of the two Pamelas was a popular topic of conversation.

  The rumours buzzed all the more after Yeates disappeared, along with his wife and daughter Barbara, herse
lf a prizewinning pupil at the school. People wondered why they had left so suddenly. John Woodall’s promotion to acting head and his subsequent move into the School House on Race Course Road had all happened so abruptly, and even though the newspapers fell into line and reported the official reason of Yeates’s ill health, the unseemly haste of events was suspicious to many. Tongues wagged, the speculation intensified. Some believed Yeates was guilty of Pamela’s murder, and that it was being covered up to save face.

  At the end of March, Tientsin Grammar held its annual Speech Day and prize giving, a major event in the school calendar and one that was reported in the Peking and Tientsin Times:

  Mr EC Peters—Chairman of the Committee of Management of Tientsin Grammar School—proposed three cheers for the recently departed Mr Yeates. . . . The response to Mr Peters’s call was vociferous and unanimous, attesting to the high esteem in which the pupils hold their past headmaster.

  Perhaps this was the case, perhaps it wasn’t—the paper was still toeing the line. Pamela’s absence from the event wasn’t mentioned, nor was her murder. There were no condolences for her, no minute’s silence.

  And in an issue of the school paper, the Grammarian, that was published shortly after Speech Day, the new headmaster, John Woodall, wrote an article called ‘Mr. Yeates—An Appreciation.’ Amidst the praise for his departed colleague was a sentence that was pointed out again and again in the drawing rooms and clubrooms of Tientsin:

  In 1927 he became Headmaster, and for ten years he has held a position which, without exaggeration, must be one of the most difficult and trying ones in the educational world East of Suez, a world where truth is so easily twisted into scandal, where the interests of parents, boards of governors, staff and pupils so often seem to conflict, and where their divergences seem to be emphasized.