by Rhys Bowen
“Who is it, Joe?” a man’s voice called from beyond the screen.
“An Irish lady, dad. Mrs. Murphy,” the boy called back. “Wants to speak to you and mom.”
“From the church or the missions?”
“Didn’t say.”
“I’ll be right there,” the man’s voice said, and a slightly built Chinaman came around the screen, straightening his ascot.
I held out my hand to him. “Molly Murphy,” I said. “I had the pleasure of meeting your wife the other day and I wondered if I could have a word with you both.”
“Come in,” he said, ushering me through the hallway. “Aileen,” he called. “You’ve got company.”
“I’m just finishing up in here,” Mrs. Chiu’s voice came from the far end of the passage.
“Take a seat. She’ll be coming right away.” Mr. Chiu escorted me to the sofa. I sat. “If you’ve come to visit, I’m afraid this isn’t a good time. We’re just about to go out,” he said. Although his words were slightly clipped and staccato, his English was remarkably good. “We take a picnic to Staten Island with friends from church today.”
“How lovely. It’s a perfect day for a picnic,” I said. “I won’t keep you long. I came actually because I need some help and your wife is the only person I know in Chinatown whom I felt I could approach.”
At that moment Aileen Chiu came into the room, wiping her hands on the apron she wore over her good clothes. “Sorry, I was just finishing making the egg sandwiches,” she said. Her face broke into a smile when she saw me. “Why, it’s you, Miss Murphy. How nice to see you again. But I’m afraid you’ve come at a bad time. We’re just on our way out. We’re meeting friends at the Staten Island ferry. We always share a picnic with members of our church on Labor Day.”
“I’m sorry. Of course I won’t keep you then,” I said. “Perhaps I could come back later today when you get home?”
“We usually stay pretty late,” she said, giving her husband a worried glance. “What is this about?”
“You remember the young man you saw me with the other day, Frederick Lee?” I said. “You thought he was my sweetheart?”
“Of course I remember. I used to know his mother before she passed away, God rest her poor soul,” Aileen Chiu said.
I took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Frederick has been arrested for the murder of Lee Sing Tai. They are holding him in the Tombs.”
“Holy Mother of God,” Aileen Chiu muttered. “We heard about Mr. Lee being killed, of course, but I don’t think we knew he was murdered, did we, Albert?”
“There were rumors going around On Leong, but nobody knew anything definite,” Mr. Chiu said. “So they’ve arrested Frederick Lee, have they? That’s too bad.”
“I’m sure he’s innocent,” I said. “So I wondered if you might know how to obtain a lawyer for him. I don’t believe he’ll get a fair hearing otherwise. I suspect that Captain Kear wants to pin it on Frederick because he’s not connected to one of the tongs.”
“Captain Kear. I might have known,” Aileen Chiu said, smoothing her hands down her apron. “That man’s nothing but trouble. He’s given Albert his share of grief, hasn’t he, my dear, because Albert won’t go along with bribing the police.”
“Let’s not go into that,” Albert said curtly. “So Frederick Lee is being held in the Tombs and you want us to find a lawyer to represent him?”
“A good lawyer,” I said. “I just wondered if you knew such a person. I don’t know how much Frederick could pay, but I hate to think of him being browbeaten into a confession because he has nobody to speak for him.”
“Quite right,” Albert Chiu said. “Don’t worry, Miss Murphy. I will try to do something about this. I will ask my fellow church members today and if they can’t come up with anybody, then I will go to CCBA tomorrow. They will certainly find someone to represent him.”
“CCBA? What’s that?” I asked
“It is the Consolidated Benevolent Association. It looks after the welfare of Chinese citizens.”
“For a price,” Aileen muttered.
Albert frowned at her.
“Well, it does,” she said defiantly. “You have to pay CCBA if you want to open a business in Chinatown.”
“Isn’t that just like one of the tongs, then?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Albert said. “It’s how the tongs started out. Now they’re too busy trying to destroy each other and demand protection money from us businessmen. At least the CCBA is not crooked. They will probably pay to hire a lawyer for Frederick Lee.”
“Unless someone in On Leong like Bobby Lee pays them not to,” Aileen said.
“Hush, woman. Do not speak of something you know little about,” Albert said. “My word is respected in this community. If I ask for help, I will receive help. You need not worry, Miss Murphy. I will do my best for a fellow Chinese.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
“How do they know that Lee Sing Tai was murdered?” Albert Chiu asked. “From what I heard, he fell from the roof where he had been sleeping.”
“Someone pushed him from the roof,” I said.
“How do they know this? Was there a witness?”
“He had a wound to the side of his head,” I said. Even as the words came out I realized that I was probably the one who had caused all this trouble. If only I had kept quiet about noticing the wound. If only I had not insisted that Lee Sing Tai had been murdered, then Captain Kear would probably have been happy to let the death be ruled accidental. As usual I had spoken too hastily, without thinking through the consequences, and it was my fault that Frederick Lee was now locked up in the Tombs.
“Is that so?” Mr. Chiu nodded. “So it is believed that someone struck him first and then threw him to his death?”
“You see, I knew it,” Aileen Chiu said triumphantly. “I knew there had been a death that night. What did I tell you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, we were sleeping on our roof too,” Aileen Chiu said. “And our Kitty woke up and said she thought she saw an angel. So I said to Albert—it’s come down from heaven to take somebody, you mark my words. And I was right.”
“Your Kitty saw an angel? On Mr. Lee’s rooftop?” I asked.
“She couldn’t exactly pinpoint it to Mr. Lee’s rooftop, but it was one of those buildings farther down the block. Her father thought she’d dreamed it, of course, but she was quite insistent. It was either an angel or a fairy, she said.”
“Did she say what this angel looked like?” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“A little dainty spirit thing, like a young girl with white wings, and it flew from one roof to the next.”
Twenty-seven
I ran all the way back to the El station on Chatham Square, driven by my anger. I stood, seething, on the railway platform, waiting for a train that didn’t come. Finally it dawned on me that today was a public holiday and the train schedule would be curtailed. I ran down the steps again, not willing to wait any longer, threw caution to the winds, and hailed myself a cab.
I had to get back to Patchin Place immediately. I had to confront her. I didn’t stop to think that if she had killed once before, most efficiently, she could do so again if cornered. I was so furious at having been taken in by her. Poor little Bo Kei—please do what you can to help Frederick. I know he’s innocent. Well, of course he was innocent if she had killed Lee Sing Tai herself. Unless she had persuaded or driven him to help her. She had demonstrated just how forceful she could be. And he was besotted with her. A man will do a lot for a woman he loves, especially if there is only one way for them to be together and that involved hurling her husband from a rooftop.
There was still the question of the big workman’s boots. Frederick was a clerk, and his sort didn’t wear hobnail boots. But then I had never actually studied his feet. He could have inherited the shoe size of his European mother. He could have worn
those boots that night to throw us off the scent. I dismissed that notion right away. Who would be aware that the tar on the rooftop might become soft enough to leave imprints after a hot day?
But if Bo Kei had killed Mr. Lee, she would surely have needed an accomplice to help her carry the unconscious Lee Sing Tai to the edge of the roof. And in my cursory examination I had seen no sign in the dust and dirt up there of a body having been dragged. And what better accomplice than her beloved Frederick? I realized with utter mortification that I had probably been duped yet again.
No, that wasn’t quite true. I had made poor judgments. I had assumed that she and Frederick were innocent because they seemed like nice, wholesome young people. And yet Daniel had reminded me more than once that murderers don’t look like villains. I came to the conclusion that my anger was directed at myself as much as at Bo Kei.
As the cab came to a halt at the entrance to Patchin Place I felt a sudden spasm of fear. In my mind as I had traveled northward, Bo Kei had become a dangerous monster, not just a frightened and desperate girl. What if she had killed my friends—stolen their jewels and run off? I overpaid the cabby in my haste and teetered in my impractical lady’s shoes over the cobbles to their front door. Why, oh, why did they not make sensible shoes for women? I’d willingly have worn hobnail boots. I knocked on the front door, waited for what seemed an age, then let out a huge sigh of relief as Sid answered it.
“Thank heavens,” I muttered. “Where is Bo Kei?”
Sid looked surprised.
“What’s the matter? You look as white as a sheet. She’s sleeping, I believe. Gus felt an urge to paint today, so I moved the Chinese girl into your room, as she said she was sleepy.”
The horrible vision in my head transformed into a picture of Gus sitting engrossed in her painting while Bo Kei came up behind her, a heavy object in her hand. I left Sid staring at me and positively ran up the stairs. My bedroom door was closed. I flung it open and a sleepy Bo Kei opened her eyes and looked up at me.
“Missie Molly. You come back. What news?” she asked, sitting up anxiously.
“How could you?” I burst out, my intention to tread carefully with a dangerous killer having been forgotten in the heat of the moment. “You lied to me. You let me help you and spirit you to safety. Do you realize I can find myself in terrible trouble for harboring a criminal? This could put my upcoming marriage in jeopardy.”
“What do you mean?” She stared at me worriedly. “What criminal do you speak of?”
“Don’t you play innocent with me, miss. You begged me to save poor Frederick because you knew he was innocent. Of course you knew it. All the time it was you!”
She looked as if she was about to cry. “What was me? What have I done?”
“Killed the person who stood between you and happiness. You were seen, Bo Kei. Someone saw you leaping from one rooftop to the next.”
“Yes, I did this. On the night that I escaped, more than one week ago.”
“No, on the night that Lee Sing Tai was hurled down to his death.”
“That is not possible.” She looked shocked. “How could I be there? You yourself took me to the house of safety.”
“I am told it would be comparatively easy to come and go unnoticed from that house. Maybe you climbed down the drainpipe again. Maybe you got out of your window and crossed the roof to make your escape. You seem rather good at doing that kind of thing.”
She was still staring at me in horror. “But I did not kill Lee Sing Tai. I swear this. I also swear that I did not go to his rooftop that night. That man frightens me. I would do anything in my power to stay away from him. Why would I risk going back to a man who would make me his slave?”
“So that you could be free forever, of course. So that you could be with Frederick. While Lee Sing Tai was alive you would never be free, would you?”
“I admit it. I am glad that he is dead,” she said in a small voice. “But I swear to you, on all the holy saints of your church, that I was not the one who pushed him from the roof. I was not the one who killed him.”
I stared at her, wishing I could read her mind. There was something about the way she phrased that last sentence that made me wonder if she knew who did the actual killing if she didn’t do it herself. “You know what I think?” I said. “That you and Frederick planned this between you. You might not have been strong enough to throw Lee off the roof, but Frederick was.”
“No, this is not true. Frederick is innocent. He is a good, upright man. He would never do a terrible thing like this, never.” She was sobbing now. “Please, Missie Molly. Please believe me.”
“I want to believe you, Bo Kei. I wanted to help both of you, but if someone tells me they saw a small, slight figure jumping from roof to roof, the very night that Lee Sing Tai was killed, what am I to believe?”
She went to say something, hesitated, then said, “Maybe what they saw was laundry, flapping in the wind. Plenty laundry on rooftops. Maybe it was someone moving across another roof on their way to bed. Plenty people sleep on roof when weather is hot.”
“It doesn’t matter. If you and Frederick did this between you, then the truth will soon come out,” I said. “He is being held in the Tombs. That is a terrible place. I’ve been there. If he has something to confess, trust me, he will confess it.”
“But what if they make him confess to something that he didn’t do?” She wailed. “This happens all the time in China. Men will say anything when police do terrible things like drive bamboo under fingernails or burn with red hot pokers.”
I shuddered. “The police here don’t do anything like that,” I said. “I only meant that those cells are damp and it is frightening to be locked away in darkness. If Frederick really is innocent, then you have nothing to fear.”
As I said the words a sliver of doubt crept into my mind. I knew there were policemen like Daniel who were firm but honest. But then there was also Captain Kear, who had made it quite clear that Frederick was the ideal suspect. Might he not resort to underhanded means to make Frederick confess to something he didn’t do?
“I do not think they will ever be able to discover who did this crime,” she said, looking at me defiantly now. “A man falls from a rooftop. How can they know if he was pushed? How can they say who pushed him if nobody saw?”
“They have ways of finding out,” I said. “For one thing, someone had hit him on the head to knock him out. They will find the weapon and there will be fingerprints on it.”
“Fingerprints? What is this?”
“Did you know that every person’s finger leaves a print of a different pattern? The police now have a way of examining the prints people leave on objects that they touch. Later they take fingerprints from people they suspect, and if one of them matches up, then they know who is guilty. Clever, no?”
She nodded.
“The New York police are among the first to put fingerprinting into action.”
“But people must leave fingerprints all over their own houses.”
“Of course they do. But if a strange print shows up where it shouldn’t—on a heavy object that struck Lee Sing Tai, for example—then they will not stop until they have found the person who matches that print.”
I had hoped this might scare her, and indeed she did look worried, but then she said, “If Frederick or I had done this terrible thing, you would not be able to prove it by finding our fingerprints at Lee’s house. I lived in that place and Frederick was summoned there by his employer. The police would expect to find that we had touched many things.”
That was true, of course. I didn’t know what else to say. In fact I found myself deeply confused. She wasn’t acting as if she was guilty, but then I obviously wasn’t as good at extracting a confession as professionals like Daniel. What was I going to do with her? If she had killed Lee Sing Tai, then I certainly didn’t want to compromise myself or Sid and Gus for a moment longer. But if she was telling the truth and she was innocent, then I didn’t want to hand
her over to Captain Kear either. I deeply regretted my rash behavior in bringing her here. When would I learn to think first and not act on impulse? I came to a decision: I would tell Sid and Gus the whole story, as much as I knew it. They were worldly wise, intelligent women. I would let them suggest our next course of action.
“You can go back to your nap,” I said, “but whatever you do, don’t try to leave the house. Every policeman in New York is looking for you. I want to speak to our hostesses. We must decide what to do with you.”
“They will believe I am innocent,” she said defiantly. “They are good, kind women.”
I was on my way to the door when I heard deep pounding coming from below. Someone was hammering on the front door. Bo Kei leaped to her feet and ran over to me.
“The police have found me,” she whimpered.
“Let’s hope not. Stay put until I come back.”
As I came out onto the upper landing Sid was coming up the stairs. She held a piece of paper in her hand.
“That was a messenger boy,” she said. “It’s a message from Sarah Lindley for Bo Kei. Not good news, I’m afraid.”
She handed me the sheet of paper. It read: I AM SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR FRIEND ANNIE HAS JUST PASSED AWAY.
Twenty-eight
Bo Kei was distraught when I told her the sad news. Her face crumpled and she broke into noisy sobs.
“No, this can’t be true,” she said. “How did she die?”
I went to sit on the bed beside her and put my hand gently on hers. “She was very sick, Bo. She had consumption. People who catch that disease don’t get better.”
“No!” She was shaking her head violently now. “She tell me she not so sick. She says she will soon be well and we will go away from New York together.”
I looked at her with pity. “I’m sure she said that to make you feel better. She didn’t want to upset you with the knowledge that she was going to die.”
