by Rhys Bowen
“A few days ago, Bobby. This young lady has been looking for her.”
He stood aside to reveal me, standing in the darkness a few steps above him.
Bobby gave me an incredulous look. “Her? That’s what she tell you she’s been doing—looking for my father’s bride? She came to see my father. Then she comes to give him special message, but she won’t give message to me. Maybe someone pay her to spy in our house, see how best to kill my father.” His voice had risen angrily as he spoke. He tried to push past Kear to get at me. “Make her tell truth.”
“Let’s go down to the living room, shall we?” Captain Kear held him up and forcibly turned him around. “There is no point in jumping to any conclusions at the moment. And if you can find the number one wife and persuade her to come down to talk with us, then maybe we can hear what she has to say on the matter.”
“Where houseboy go?” Bobby asked.
“You tell me. Ran off before we got here,” Kear said as he took my elbow to escort me down the stairs. “How well do you know the servants, Bobby? Are they trustworthy? Been with Mr. Lee a while?”
“Cook been with my father many years,” he said. “Houseboy just come last year, but he is son of On Leong man who work for my father in cigar factory. Good man, so must be good son.”
“One doesn’t always signify the other,” Captain Kear said. I felt that this was being directed personally at Bobby Lee. The captain didn’t think much of him. “And why did they run away if they are innocent of any crime?”
“Chinese always scared when police come,” Bobby said. “They scared police will say they did it and not bother to find real killer. Police think one Chinese look like one another and what does it matter which one they throw in jail? That’s what most men in Chinatown think.”
We reached the living room. Captain Kear indicated I should sit on the sofa and took the big chair himself.
“Take a seat, Bobby,” he said, waving graciously at an uncomfortable-looking upright wooden chair.
Bobby scowled as he perched on the chair.
“Okay, Bobby, now let’s talk about what happened to your father,” Captain Kear said. “Do you know anything that can shed some light on this? Can you think of anyone who would want to kill Lee Sing Tai?”
“Hip Sing, of course,” Bobby said quickly. “They would be happy if no more Lee Sing Tai in On Leong. He control too much of Chinatown.”
“Do you really think they’d be stupid enough to risk starting the war again right now?” the captain asked. “And if they were going to kill Lee, do you think this is the way they’d choose to do it?”
Bobby pursed his lips, thinking. “Okay. Maybe not. Push man off roof is coward’s way. They would shoot him or stab him in his bed and leave him there to be found.”
“Exactly my thoughts,” Kear said. “So what about other rivals—rivals within On Leong, for example, or business rivals?”
“Members of On Leong know that Lee Sing Tai is good for them and good for Chinatown,” he said. “They do what he say. Lee Sing Tai only one who does business with white people outside of Chinatown. He important man. Nobody to take his place.”
“And business rivals?”
“Business rivals? Lee Sing Tai control business in Chinatown, except for Hip Sing properties.”
“So you’re saying he had no rivals who might want to kill him to get him out of the way?”
Suddenly Bobby Lee’s face lit up. “Ah,” he said, waving a knowing finger at Captain Kear. “I know who did this. Of course. It was Frederick Lee.”
“Frederick Lee? Another paper son?”
“No, he not son. He was only Lee Sing Tai’s employee. His secretary. My father dismiss him yesterday. So maybe Frederick angry that his job has been taken from him and he come back to kill. This would be easy. He knows my father’s apartment well. I am sure he has access to keys.”
I was now sitting on the edge of my seat. “I’m sure Frederick wouldn’t do a thing like that,” I said hotly. “He spoke of Mr. Lee with great respect. And he was a quiet, educated man too.”
“How come you know Frederick Lee?” Captain Kear asked, looking at me with surprise.
“Lee Sing Tai sent him to find me. He escorted me to Chinatown and looked after me. I was impressed with him.”
“Men who have lost their jobs have acted irrationally before now,” Captain Kear said. “Especially Chinamen. They care about losing face more than losing money. So do you know why Frederick Lee was fired by your father, Bobby?”
“I do. He try to touch my father’s bride. My father send him to bring his bride to New York and he betray my father’s trust.”
“That’s not what I heard,” I said, really angry now. “I heard it was you who tried to force yourself on your father’s bride.”
Now they were both looking at me suspiciously.
“Who told you this?” Bobby Lee demanded.
I realized I had to tread cautiously here. “Frederick Lee,” I said. “I asked him if he had any idea why Bo Kei had run away and he said that she was frightened when Bobby tried to attack her.”
Bobby Lee pursed his lips in scorn again. “He lies! Of course he says this, to protect himself. I would not dare to touch bride of my esteemed father.”
Captain Kear looked from me to Bobby Lee as if he was trying to decide whom to believe.
“Let’s hear what this Frederick Lee has to say for himself, shall we?” he said. “I’ll have him brought in right away.”
I could read from his expression that he was feeling satisfied. He’d come up with a suspect who would suit everybody and not ruffle any tong feathers. My one thought now was to get back to Patchin Place as soon as possible, so that I could warn Frederick when he came to see me, expecting good news about Bo Kei. But even as this thought formed, another, more worrying idea crept into my head. Was it possible that this crime had been carried out by Frederick? A man will do much for a woman he loves, and clearly their lives would be in danger as long as Lee Sing Tai was alive. But his would not have been those large hobnailed footprints on the roof. He was of slender Chinese stature.
I had no chance to consider this further as there was the sound of voices from downstairs and Constable O’Byrne appeared, dragging an indignant Chinese man by the arm.
“I not do anything,” the man was saying. “Let go of me.”
“You can go home once you’ve helped out the captain,” O’Byrne said. He shoved the man ahead of him into the room. “Here’s your interpreter, sir. He’s a scribe, so I know he can translate. And we’ve got On Leong men rounding up the servants. I put the fear of God into them—told them their police protection ends as of now if those men aren’t found right away.”
“Nice work, Constable.” Captain Kear nodded with satisfaction. He pointed at the Chinaman, who stood almost quivering with fright. “You, sit. And you,” he turned to Bobby, “go and find the wife and tell her to get down here, or we’ll come and question her in her bedroom.”
“I can’t go up there,” Bobby said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Just do it,” the captain barked. “Or it’s not Hip Sing you’ve got to worry about, it’s Sing Sing. I’ve enough on you to put you away for years if I wanted, so I suggest you cooperate.”
Bobby shot him a look of pure hatred and went upstairs. We heard raised voices, both male and female, and then Bobby returned. “She comes down, but she’s not pleased.”
“Well, she wouldn’t be, would she?” the captain said. “Her old man’s dead. What’s going to happen to her now? How is she going to survive alone in a country where she can barely speak the language and she can’t even go outside? She doesn’t have a child to take her in—unless you’re going to act the dutiful son, Bobby, and you come here and look after her.”
“Of course I look after her,” Bobby said. ‘I know my duty as son. I will take over from my father and do what he expects of me.”
I bet you will, I thought. The businesses and the pow
er in the tong. It was probably just beginning to dawn on Bobby Lee that he was now a very rich man.
“So where would we find Frederick Lee, Bobby?” the captain asked.
Bobby got to his feet. “I do not know where he lives, but my father will have his address in his cabinet. He have particulars on all employees.”
He crossed the room to the ornate ebony cabinet in the corner. There was a little gold key in the lock, which he turned. He opened the carved doors to reveal a series of little drawers inside, each one inlaid with mother-of-pearl designs of animals and flowers. It was truly a wonderful piece of furniture, the likes of which I’d never seen before, and I gazed at it in admiration. Bobby Lee pulled open one of the drawers, then recoiled. “Wah. What happen here? Someone has been here. Someone has touched my father’s papers.”
Nineteen
Captain Kear went over to the cabinet. From where I was sitting I could see that the drawer was hastily stuffed with pieces of crumpled pieces of paper. Bobby opened another drawer, then another. All were in disarray.
“Hold it there, Bobby,” Kear said. “Don’t touch anything else. There might be useful fingerprints. So these drawers were normally neat and tidy, were they?”
“My father keep everything just so. He could find any record in seconds. All in order. He liked order. Someone was looking for something here.”
“The question is whether he found it,” the captain said. “And whether it was the reason old Lee was killed. When we’ve dusted for fingerprints, you and I will go through this cabinet.”
“No use to you,” Bobby said scathingly. “All in Chinese.”
“That’s why you’re going to read it for me, and we’ll bring along that interpreter fellow to make sure you’re reading exactly what it says.”
I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it again. Sticking out of one of those drawers I had seen a very Western scrawled signature. But then the captain would find it for himself later, wouldn’t he?
“Knowing the way that your father did business, my guess is that he had quite a few items that someone might kill for,” he said. “We know there was protection money, maybe even blackmail.”
He took out a handkerchief and carefully closed the cabinet again. Then he removed the key, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and tucked it into his top pocket. “Perhaps he had something incriminating on Frederick Lee—something he wouldn’t return when he fired Frederick. Well I want this Frederick brought in right now. O’Byrne. Go and find him.”
“Find him, sir? How do I do that if I don’t know where to start looking?”
“If he was employed by Lee Sing Tai, you can bet your boots he’s an On Leong member and they’ll have his address in their files. And his family details too. He might be hiding out with a clan member. They all band together when one’s in trouble, don’t they?” Captain Kear sat down again. “Go on, then. Jump to it.”
“Very good, sir.” O’Byrne stifled the sigh. He was a big red-faced Irishman and all this running around on a muggy morning was not to his liking.
“Oh, and on your way send someone to headquarters and tell them we need to have the cabinet dusted for fingerprints.”
O’Byrne was clearly wishing that the captain had selected another constable to accompany him. He nodded, then we heard his big boots going down the stairs.
“Now where’s the wife got to?” Captain Kear demanded. “Didn’t you make it clear that I wanted to speak to her? Go up and tell her that if she doesn’t come down, I’m coming up to her bedroom to get her.”
Bobby stood up very reluctantly.
“And you can start giving me the details on the missing woman, Miss Murphy.” He glanced up at me as he removed a small pad from his top pocket.
“As to that, I know little more than you do—her name is Bo Kei, and you’ve seen the photograph I was given.”
“And where exactly have you been looking for her?” he asked. “If she’s been gone for a week you haven’t been too successful, have you?”
“I was only told about her the other day,” I said. “And New York is a big place.”
“You mentioned missions—was there any reason you started looking there?”
“I thought she wouldn’t know where to go in a strange city and she would certainly be frightened to stray far from Chinatown. And you know that the missionaries are always prowling around, looking for converts, so they would definitely take in a young woman alone on the streets.”
“So which of these missions did you visit?”
Fortunately at this moment we heard groans from the hallway and Lee Sing Tai’s number one wife appeared, hobbling painfully on those little stumps. She was now wearing white, and appeared to have white powder on her face, making her look like a walking ghost. She made her way forward, using the furniture to support herself, while Bobby Lee stood in the doorway, not offering to help her. Captain Kear had risen and offered her the big chair. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to sit in her husband’s chair, even if he was dead. Instead she came toward me. I moved along the sofa and she sat beside me.
“Mrs. Lee,” the captain said, “I am sorry about your husband. I know this is upsetting for you. I hope you can help us.” He turned to the translator, who presumably repeated this in Chinese. I wondered if Mrs. Lee actually understood any English and was playing dumb. She had certainly eavesdropped on my conversations with her husband. The old woman looked at him suspiciously, then asked a sharp question.
“She says how can she help you? It is other people who should be helping her,” the interpreter said.
“We want to know if you have any ideas who might have killed your husband?”
The interpreter repeated the words. Her eyes shot open and it was clear that until now she had considered his death an accident. She rattled off an angry string of Chinese.
“She says how can anyone have killed him? He was asleep in his own bed. His houseboy sleeps at the bottom of the stairs. The front door and the bottom door are always locked. There is no way into the house.”
“Just supposing someone did find a way in—any ideas who that might have been?”
She listened, then considered this and replied. “That young woman,” the interpreter translated. “She must have returned and done this awful deed.”
“The new bride, you mean?” the captain asked gently.
She nodded. “She did not want to be here,” she said through the interpreter. “When she finds that I am number one wife, she does not want to obey me. She is lazy. She does not want to work. I say to my husband—this one is no good. Send her away. But he wants a son very much. I tried to give him a son for many years, but I failed him.” And she looked down at her hands as if embarrassed at what she had just said. I noticed that she had thin, wrinkled hands topped with long, claw-like nails, so the effect was hen’s feet with rings on them. Then she looked up again, defiantly this time, and spat out more words with venom. “He has brought in other women before, but none of them can give him a son. I tell him he is being foolish to bring in these girls. Spend our money for nothing. He is an old man now. Too old to have a son anymore.”
“If it really was this girl he brought in from China, how do you think she found a way into the house to kill your husband with nobody seeing her?” the captain asked.
“How did she find a way out when she vanished? The doors were locked. Our men were down below in the street, but she managed to run away.” She looked up at him. “Maybe she is a demon—a being with supernatural powers. I wouldn’t be surprised at this. I did not trust her from the moment I saw her face. It was an evil face. When I looked at how her eyes were formed, I knew that she was evil.”
As she spoke, I realized one thing was very clear. Bo Kei was absolutely right when she had said that wife number one had not welcomed her into the house. And I found myself wondering if she was angry with her husband for bringing in a succession of young women, reminding her that she was old and barren, and spending their
money needlessly, as she had pointed out. Had she finally decided that she’d had enough of living like this? After all, who had a better opportunity to push Lee Sing Tai off the roof than the woman who presumably shared his bed?
“Supposing it wasn’t this young woman,” Captain Kear insisted. “Can you think of anyone else who might want your husband dead?”
“Hip Sing,” the interpreter translated for her with vehemence. “They have already made several attempts on his life. They will stop at nothing until they have killed him and destroyed On Leong. This is their sworn duty.”
“Anyone else?” the captain insisted. “Has anyone been to visit your husband at the apartment recently? Anyone you didn’t know?”
The interpreter looked at her expectantly. She shook her head. “I am not invited to be present when my husband does business. I know my place and stay away.”
But you listen behind the drapes, I wanted to say.
Without warning she stood up. A great flood of Chinese preceded the translation. “Why do we sit here, discussing who might have killed my husband? Maybe it was an accident. Maybe nobody killed him. What does it matter? He is dead, isn’t he? Nothing will bring him back. And I am left alone. What is to become of me, huh? Who will look after me? He promised he would make money in America and then take me back home to our village. Now I am stuck here and alone.”
“You have young Bobby here,” the captain said. “He’s already volunteered to take care of you.”
The interpreter dutifully translated.
“Him?” She looked at him, her lip curled like a dog’s. “He is good for nothing. He bleeds us dry. It would not surprise me if he hadn’t pushed my husband off the roof.”
“How can you say that!” Bobby Lee demanded. “I treat him with the same respect I give to my real father. I obey him. I make his businesses prosper for him. I even do his dirty work for him. And I tell you that you do not need to worry. I will prove to you that I will take care of you as if you were my mother.”
“Pipe down, everyone,” Captain Kear said. “All this noise is giving me a headache. I’m not concerned with what’s going to happen now. I want to know what happened on that rooftop, and believe me, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
