Murder at the Peking Opera

by Amanda Roberts

  “I know the feeling,” the inspector said. “I’ll make this visit brief, but I’m sure we will be speaking a lot over the next few days.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” Changpu said as he motioned to a plush chair in the western style. Changpu took a seat for himself on a long couch. Wangshu’s room was merely a closet compared to this. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything to offer you in the way of refreshments.”

  “No need,” the inspector said. “Wangshu said you are the leader of the troupe?”

  “Yes,” Changpu said with a smile, giving off an air of pride. “The Dashu troupe was founded over a hundred years ago by my great-grandfather down in Anhui. My grandfather moved us here before I was born.”

  “What prompted the move?” the inspector asked, not really caring about the history of the troupe, but he had found that getting people to talk about themselves was a good way to loosen them up for more probing questions later.

  “The Manchu have always been great supporters of opera,” Changpu said. “We were one of four troupes brought to Peking for the eightieth birthday of the great Qianlong Emperor. The current empress is also a great patron. She has elevated us from merely an entertainment for the masses to a respected art form.”

  The inspector nodded. Even he had noticed opera’s growing popularity over the last few years.

  “Most opera troupes are families,” the Inspector said. “Was Fanhua related to you?”

  “He was,” Changpu said with a solemn nod. “My sister’s son. But she died several years ago, and his father abandoned us to seek his fortune on Gold Mountain.”

  “Did he find it?” the inspector asked.

  “We never heard from him again,” Changpu said. “Whether he died on the journey over or is now a fat, rich lord, we have no idea.”

  “You don’t seem particularly distraught over the death of your nephew,” the inspector observed.

  “What can I say to that?” Changpu asked, holding up his palms. “I have three children of my own and a business to run. I cared for the boy, of course, but I’m more concerned about what this will mean for ticket sales. He was quite popular with the ladies.”

  “But didn’t he usually play the role of a woman?” the inspector asked.

  Changpu laughed. “Who can understand the mind of a woman? Especially young, flighty girls like the ones he usually portrayed.”

  Inspector Gong filed that information away in the back of his mind to ponder over later. “So how did you feel about Wangshu being forced into the troupe and acting on stage?” he asked. “Some might take offense at having to replace a male actor with a lowly woman.”

  “Oh, I didn’t care overmuch,” Changpu said, and Inspector Gong couldn’t help but raise a skeptic eyebrow. “It’s true!” Changpu insisted. “You must understand, Peking Opera is a relatively new form of opera. Remember, we are from Anhui. We used to perform Huiju-style opera. And my wife, she is from a troupe from Hubei. They practically speak a different language. Peking Opera is always growing and changing. We constantly write new plays and new melodies. We are never afraid of trying something new and taking risks. Women are involved in every aspect of the opera already. My eldest daughter is a brilliant choreographer while my youngest daughter can write the sweetest love songs. She wrote the duet between the general and Xueyan you heard tonight. Were you not moved to tears by it?”

  The inspector hadn’t been, but he had noticed that several other people were.

  “Letting a woman perform on stage was…inevitable,” Changpu went on. “I know some smaller family troupes who don’t have enough men sometimes allow their daughters to perform. They don’t advertise it and most people can’t tell under the makeup and costumes. And the fat price the empress paid to give Wangshu the chance to perform? Well, that was a welcome incentive.”

  Inspector Gong felt a twitch behind his eye. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. No one seemed to have a reason to kill anyone.

  “Why would Wangshu kill Fanhua?” the inspector asked.

  “No idea,” Changpu said, flabbergasted. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Fanhua was the person who had been wronged, not Wangshu. Fanhua hated playing the wusheng, and he wasn’t right for it. But I didn’t have any other roles for him to play.”

  “But the situation was only temporary,” the inspector said. “Wangshu wouldn’t be here forever.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Changpu said. “Depending on how things went, I might have tried to persuade her to stay, or I could have hired a new woman if she left if the patrons grew to prefer a female dan. Opera is nothing if not adaptable. It would depend on the audience and whether they preferred a man or woman in the role.”

  The inspector nodded and added Changpu to his list of suspects. The man had no love of his nephew and was probably going to replace him on a permanent basis. If he had no role for him to play, he would just bring the whole production down. He could have killed him to get rid of him. Though it seemed like a rather dramatic solution to the problem.

  Inspector Gong stood and felt a little lightheaded. “I think that is enough for tonight,” he said. “It has been a long evening.”

  “Too long,” Changpu said as he motioned toward the door.

  “Do you live here at the theater?” Inspector Gong asked.

  Changpu laughed. “Certainly not. I have a house in the Xiyuan District.”

  Inspector Gong nodded. He knew the area. It was where many wealthy Han Chinese lived. His troupe certainly had prospered if he lived there.

  “Wangshu said many of the troupe members are living here at the theater,” the inspector said.

  “Some do, if they have nowhere else to go,” Changpu said as he followed the inspector out of the room and locked the door behind him with a key from a large ring.

  “Do you have a key to Fanhua’s room?” the inspector asked. “I need to have a look at it and make sure no one goes in there until the investigation is over.”

  “Of course,” Changpu said, removing a key from the ring.

  “Which one was his?” the inspector asked.

  “First room,” Changpu said, pointing back down the hallway past Wangshu’s room.

  “Thanks,” the inspector said. “I hope you have a restful night.”

  “I doubt it,” Changpu said. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

  The inspector walked down the hall toward Fanhua’s room, but he watched Changpu leave. He wasn’t sure how seriously he should consider Changpu a suspect, but it was a possibility. He had a motive, however small and unreasonable it seemed to the inspector. After all, he had seen people kill for much less. He would have one of his own men follow Changpu and keep an eye on his residence to make sure he didn’t flee in the night.

  When he got to Fanhua’s room, he was surprised to find the door unlocked. He cursed himself. He should have made sure the room was secure immediately. He gasped when he entered the room.

  It looked as though it had been ransacked. The clothing racks had been toppled, trunks knocked over, and furniture upturned. He had no idea if anything had been stolen, but the room was so crowded with expensive costumes, he rather thought not. As he stepped through the room to the dressing table, the smashed mirror confirmed his suspicions.

  This was an act of rage.

  7

  The theater had long been empty by the time Lady Li left, so she was surprised to see so many people still milling about outside. As she exited, many excited young women rushed toward the open door, nearly pushing Lady Li back inside. When they saw it was Lady Li who was exiting, they all seemed to groan with disappointment in unison.

  Lady Li chuckled in confusion as she made her way through the crowd. “What is going on?” she asked a young woman at random. All of the women appeared to be rather young, only in their teens. And most of them appeared to be upper-class, judging by their clothes. The women were both Manchu and Han, which Lady Li could tell by whether or not they had bound f
eet.

  “We were hoping you were Fanhua,” the girl replied.

  “The actor who played the wusheng?” Lady Li asked.

  “Humph,” the girl scoffed. “For tonight. He’s usually the dan.”

  “The best dan,” another young girl piped up. “The most beautiful, elegant dan in the world!”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Lady Li said. “I never saw him before tonight.” These young women were apparently very fond of Fanhua. Lady Li thought it best they didn’t know just yet that their idol was dead since they didn’t seem to know already. If these women spent a lot of time with Fanhua, or even just talking about him amongst each other, they might know something important about him or his lifestyle that could have led to his death. Lady Li decided to keep engaging them.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” another girl said. “Then you’ve never truly seen an opera!”

  Lady Li couldn’t help but laugh. “Surely I have.”

  “It’s no matter,” a haughty young woman with her arms crossed replied. “I’m sure that dreadful Wangshu won’t last long. She can’t hold a lantern to Fanhua!”

  “But isn’t it more authentic for a woman to play a woman?” Lady Li asked, hoping to get a strong reaction from the women. And she was not disappointed. They all seemed to gasp in horror at once.

  “It’s improper!” one woman said.

  “Immoral!” cried another.

  “It’s obscene!” said another. “She should be ashamed to flaunt herself in public like that!”

  “Women should not take part in public affairs,” another said, quoting the familiar admonition from Confucius that made Lady Li grimace.

  “What made Fanhua better?” Lady Li asked.

  “He’s so beautiful,” one girl said wistfully, and several others murmured their agreements.

  “He’s so gentle,” said another. “When I met him after a show last week, he reached out and touched my face so softly, I almost didn’t feel it.” She sighed at the memory.

  “You have all met him?” Lady Li asked. “Are you his friends?”

  The women giggled.

  “Some of us are friends,” the haughty young woman said. “Some of us are more than that.”

  Lady Li turned to her with a raised eyebrow of doubt. She couldn’t believe a proper young lady like this girl would claim to be “more than friends” with an actor.

  “And what’s your name?” Lady Li asked her, though she almost didn’t expect her to answer.

  “Liu Baoah,” the girl said, holding her chin high.

  “And you were…are very close to Fanhua?” Lady Li asked.

  “You could say that,” Baoah said, trying to act nonchalant about it.

  “Baoah thinks she’s Fanhua’s favorite,” another girl said playfully. “But really I am!”

  “Shut up, Liling!” Baoah said with a push.

  “No, it’s me!” another girl said, then all the girls devolved into a fit of laughter.

  Lady Li smiled at them but turned her attention back to Baoah.

  “He is a frequent guest in my home,” Baoah said. “My baba is a patron.”

  That made some sense. If her parents were fond of the opera, and even supported it financially, the girl would have more opportunities to associate with such a person. Still, she doubted her parents knew about or approved of her standing around outside a theater at three in the morning.

  “I’m thinking of becoming a patron myself,” Lady Li said. “I’d love to talk to you and your parents about it.”

  “Mama and Baba love to talk about the opera,” Baoah said. “We live on Chundu Road, the Liu family compound.”

  “I’ll make it a point to call on you soon,” Lady Li said. She then turned to the girl Baoah called Liling. “And who are your parents?”

  “The Chan family,” she said, hiding her mouth behind her sleeve. “Also on Chundu.”

  “Perhaps we will meet again as well,” Lady Li said. She then nodded to both of the girls, who gave her a small bow in return. She found her sedan chair waiting for her and climbed inside.

  As soon as she sat down, all the excitement from the evening seemed to rush out of her. The night was turning into early morning, and Lady Li knew she would have very little time to sleep before the next day began. Even though she didn’t have to be up before breakfast, she was a light sleeper and was usually awake as soon as the servants started their chores around the house with the first cock crow.

  When she arrived home, all she wanted to do was slink into her room and fall into bed, but she was dismayed to find many of the lanterns still lit and the servants rushing about nervously.

  As she crossed the courtyard, Eunuch Bai approached her with his head down.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Are the girls all right?”

  “They are fine, my lady,” he said. “They went right to bed. But there is another matter…”

  “What is it?” she asked. “Out with it. I’m exhausted.”

  “It’s Lady Swan,” he was all he said. He didn’t need to say more. Lady Li felt the fury rush to her cheeks. She kicked off her pot-bottom shoes as hard as she could into a wall to get some of her anger out before she confronted Swan.

  “You should breathe, my lady,” Eunuch Bai said. Normally, it would be out of place for a servant to counsel his mistress, but he knew that she had been ashamed of her anger toward Swan’s opium addiction in the past and would not want a repeat of such actions.

  She took a deep breath and counted to five before going to Swan’s room. The scene was as she suspected it would be. Swan was slumped in a chair while two maids were holding her upright and trying to get her to drink some weak tea. Two other maids who had been watching quickly vanished when Lady Li entered the room.

  “What happened?” Lady Li demanded. “How did she get it?”

  “I found one of the floorboards disturbed,” Eunuch Bai said. “There was a substantial amount of opium hidden there. She must have been stockpiling it for weeks knowing you would contain her to the house eventually.”

  Lady Li rubbed her forehead. “I don’t understand,” she mumbled. “She said she wanted to marry Inspector Gong. Doesn’t she know that this could ruin everything? If his mother finds out she eats opium before the wedding, she will call it off, no matter the shame it might bring to the family. Calling off a betrothal would be better than having an opium-eating daughter-in-law.”

  “When it comes to the allure of the clouds,” Eunuch Bai said, “I don’t think an addict pays heed to such reason.”

  Lady Li watched Swan’s bobbing head, her eyes closed, her skin clammy. She was completely unresponsive to the maids trying to help her wake up.

  “How much did she have?” Lady Li asked.

  “A lot,” Eunuch Bai said. “She apparently dismissed her maids early for the night, saying she was tired. I went to check on her after I put the girls to bed. She had most likely been smoking for hours. I found her on the floor. I think she slid off the bed at some point and didn’t notice. Thankfully the pipe had long gone out.”

  Lady Li squeezed her eyes shut at the thought of Swan burning their house down in an opium stupor.

  “She’s not going to wake up anytime soon,” Lady Li told the maids. “Put her in one of the guest bedrooms. Who knows how much more opium she might have hidden within her own walls. Or within her kang or in her closet. And she must have a maid watcher her at all times. She is no longer allowed to dismiss them on her own.”

  One of the maids bowed and then scurried off to prepare one of the other rooms.

  “All the opium you found,” Lady Li said to Eunuch Bai, “take it out of the house and burn it. Then pull up all the floorboards in here, rip open her kang, pull down every wall hanging. If she has hidden any more opium in here, I want it found.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Eunuch Bai said. He then opened his mouth to say more, but then he stopped.

  “What?” Lady Li asked, exasperated. “Just out with it.”

&
nbsp; “I have heard that when an opium addict is suddenly cut off from the drug,” he said, “the addiction can get worse. The person can get very ill, possibly die.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lady Li said. “Can’t the drug kill her?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am not an expert on this, but it is as if her body has learned to live with it. It thinks it is a necessary part of life. If the body suddenly doesn’t have it, it simply cannot function.”

  “That’s mad,” Lady Li said, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Are you saying we should keep giving her opium? Look at her!”

  “I’m not saying we ignore her addiction,” Eunuch Bai said with a clarity and calm Lady Li wished she could emulate. “But that we need help. We cannot cure her on our own. She needs a doctor.”

  “What can a doctor do?” Lady Li asked. “She’s not sick, just stupid.”

  “But she has made her body sick,” Eunuch Bai explained. “Acupuncture, medicines, there are things a doctor could do to help her recover safely.”

  “I can’t send for my doctor,” Lady Li said. “Then he’d…know. He could tell someone. He could warn Gong Furen.” Her personal physician was considered one of the best in the city, but she wasn’t sure she could trust him with such a sensitive subject.

  “We need to find someone discreet,” Eunuch Bai said. “Someone we can trust.”

  Lady Li rubbed her forehead again as she paced. She was so exhausted she couldn’t think straight.

  “I don’t know anyone like that,” she said. “I don’t deal with those kinds of people.”

  “But you know someone who does,” Eunuch Bai said. Lady Li cocked her head at him and frowned. He chuckled. “Unfortunately, I’m not speaking of myself this time.”

  “You mean Inspector Gong?” Lady Li asked.

  “He already knows about Lady Swan’s addiction and has agreed to marry her anyway,” he reasoned. “He surely knows someone who could treat her and be discreet about it.”

  “I suppose,” Lady Li said. “She will be his responsibility soon enough anyway.”

  “Exactly,” Eunuch Bai said.

  “The room is ready, my lady,” one of the maids said upon her return.