Authors: Rhys Bowen
Mrs. Lee rattled off another string of Chinese.
“He has to go back to China,” the interpreter said. “His bones have to be returned to the place of his ancestors.”
Bobby Lee obviously said something reassuring to her and reached out to touch her, but she shrank away as if burned. He shrugged and went ahead of us down the stairs. As we came out into the street the wind had grown even stronger, sending papers and refuse swirling and making the lanterns hanging on the balconies swing. I hoped that Sid’s paper lanterns were surviving.
“The heat’s broken at last, thank God,” Captain Kear said. Then he pointed down the street. “Ah, here’s O’Byrne now. Did you find Frederick Lee?”
“Yes, sir.” He was panting as if he’d been running hard. “We found him, about to leave his rooms, and you know what? It looks as if he was packing a suitcase. And there were train timetables lying on his table.”
“Where is he now?”
“At his place. Twenty-seven Park Street. I took a couple of On Leong men with me and they are guarding him, sir. I thought you might want to examine his room as well as question him.”
The captain nodded with satisfaction. “Good thinking, O’Byrne. I don’t suppose you found he was hiding the girl, did you?”
“No sign of a young woman there, Captain. At least no obvious sign.”
“It will be interesting to see if she’s been there recently—a nice long hair or two, or did he wear the queue?”
“He is only half Chinese,” Bobby Lee said. “He behaves like an American.”
Captain Kear looked at him. “Off you go then, Bobby. I’ll be able to get in touch with you through On Leong if I need you when we go through the cabinet or need to ask you more questions. But don’t think of going back to the apartment before that. You won’t be allowed in. Hear that, O’Byrne. I want you to stay here and keep an eye on this place. You might want to seal off the living room and the master’s bedroom. Don’t let the occupants touch anything and don’t let this one back inside.”
“Very good, sir.” O’Byrne looked relieved that his next task didn’t involve running around the city.
Daniel had pulled out his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “You’d better question Frederick Lee before he bribes the On Leong types to let him slip away. And if you want my advice, bring him to the precinct for questioning. Shut him up overnight. There’s nothing like a night in the cells to get the truth out of a suspect. You can take him to the Tombs if you like. I’ll let them know.”
“Kind of you,” Captain Kear said in a way that might have been sarcastic.
“And put out a city-wide bulletin to look for the girl. You have a description, do you?”
“Miss Murphy has just given me a photograph.” Captain Kear held up the package.
“Excellent. She should be easy enough to find then, if she hasn’t skipped town. In my experience nothing works better than playing one suspect against the other. If Frederick Lee thinks we’ve got her in the Tombs, I guarantee he’ll talk.”
“Very well.” Captain Kear looked long and hard at Daniel, then said, “And I take it you’ll know where to find Miss Murphy, if we need to ask her any further questions.”
Twenty-one
It was a good parting blow as Captain Kear walked away and I saw Daniel’s mouth twitch. The moment we were out of earshot Daniel grabbed my arm and spun me to face him.
“What the devil do you think you were doing?” he demanded. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve made me the butt of jokes in the police department for years to come, not to mention starting up the tong wars again single-handedly.”
He was shouting loudly and his voice echoed back from the tall tenements and the empty street. He was glaring at me, his eyes blazing. “Did you or did you not promise me that you’d give up this ridiculous nonsense?”
I decided that this time fighting was not going to get me anywhere. “I did promise, Daniel, and I’m sorry. I never intended to get involved in something like this. Only the man who came to see me was so persistent and said his employer wouldn’t take no for an answer and would pay me generously, so I went to see him, just out of curiosity, and to start with all he asked me to do was to locate a piece of jade jewelry that had gone missing. That seemed like a harmless enough commission, didn’t it?” The words came flying out in a torrent. “It was only later I found out that he was really looking for a missing woman.”
“And yet you continued to look for her.” His eyes were still blazing.
“You’re very attractive when you’re angry, you know,” I said, attempting to lighten the mood.
“Don’t try to make light of this, Molly. It’s a very serious matter,” Daniel said. “You betrayed my trust. You broke a promise. What sort of start to a marriage is that?”
All right, I had tried being meek and it hadn’t worked. My usual fighting spirit could not be suppressed any longer. “Maybe if you hadn’t insisted that I stay at your mother’s house, sewing undergarments all day and hearing over and over how I didn’t measure up to any of your other lady friends, I wouldn’t have been so anxious for a little excitement,” I said, my own voice rising now.
“That’s beside the point,” he began, then stopped. “My mother actually told you that you didn’t measure up to my other lady friends?”
“All the time. In a very subtle and genteel way, of course. ‘Dear Miss So-and-so. Daniel was so fond of her when they were growing up and such a good family too. And the way you sew, your poor children are going to run around in rags.’”
“She said that?”
“I didn’t mean to tell you,” I said. “But you pushed me into a corner. That’s why I couldn’t wait to escape. But I’m sorry I took this stupid case. I’m sorry I deceived you. If you want to know the reason I was at Mr. Lee’s house this morning, it was to hand him a letter tendering my resignation. Only I arrived to find Captain Kear in charge and Mr. Lee lying dead in the street.”
“A tricky business, Molly,” he said, speaking quietly now. “You know nothing of the way things work in Chinatown. This Lee was a wily old fox and a powerful figure in one of the tongs. Until a year ago there was the most awful bloodshed on a daily basis—men gunned down as they ate in restaurants, firebombs thrown into shops. We worked hard to bring about a peace that was beneficial to both sides. This death could start the whole thing off again. That’s why I felt I had to step in.”
He was frowning down at me, like an earnest schoolmaster giving a pupil a stern lecture. “And I really don’t want to be known as the police officer whose fiancée started a new tong war.”
“Daniel, that’s absurd,” I said angrily. “I was asked to look for a missing girl. How could that have had anything to do with Mr. Lee being killed?”
“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” He started striding out around the corner into Pell Street. “I’ve always been suspicious of coincidences. Something happened to make a person choose last night to kill Lee Sing Tai, rather than any other night. So the immediate thought that comes to mind is whether the girl realized you were hot on her trail and took the ultimate step not to be returned to the old man.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said.
“Oh. Why not?”
I hesitated, debating whether to tell him that I knew where the girl was. “If she was frightened enough to face being alone in a big city rather than staying where at least she got food and shelter, then I can’t see she’d want to risk going back there,” I said. “And for another thing, how would a young girl be strong enough to throw a man off the roof?”
“Then Kear was probably on the right track. She and Frederick Lee formed an attachment on their way to New York and he carried out the murder with her help. Let’s hope that’s how it turns out. At least it will satisfy the tongs.”
We reached the corner of Pell. A crowd was still milling around. Daniel turned back to me. “I’m going to take a quick look at the body and then get it moved off the street. We don’t want the whole world gawking at it and spreading rumors of tong killings. However, you don’t need to come any farther. I will spare you having to look at an unpleasant sight.”
“I’ve already seen the body,” I said. “Captain Kear asked me to make a positive identification because none of the Chinese would do so. And when you look at it, take note of the wound to one side of the head. He was obviously struck before he was thrown off the roof. I didn’t have a chance to examine the apartment carefully, but I’m sure if you go back there you’ll find blood spatters—on the bedding would be my guess.”
“Good God,” Daniel muttered. He shook his head. “You never fail to astonish me, Molly. No wonder my mother thought you were different. Most other women I know would swoon at the very mention of blood spatters.”
I chuckled. “You see, there will be some advantages to having a wife who understands your profession.”
“I don’t doubt it. Now if I can just persuade that wife to stay home and not go rushing out to solve my cases for me, I’ll be happy.” He reached out to touch my cheek in a playful half-slap. “Go on, off to home with you, and for mercy’s sake, stay well away from any crime scene in the future. This is now in the capable hands of the police.”
“Yes, Daniel,” I said in my dutiful bride voice. “And don’t forget that Sid and Gus are giving a party for me tonight. I’m sure you’ll be too busy to attend and it’s a costume affair, so I’m sure it wouldn’t be your idea of fun, but it would be nice if my friends could at least meet my bridegroom.”
“I can’t promise anything,” he said. “I have enough on my plate already, but given the potential for serious repercussions in this case, I have no alternative but to assign some of my men to assist Captain Kear.”
“I take it you don’t think much of him?”
“I have my reasons,” he said. “I especially have reasons for not giving him carte blanche with a case involving the Chinese tongs.” He looked up. “Ah, here’s the morgue wagon now. Off you go and enjoy your party.”
Then he hurried off, leaving me standing there. I knew I should do as he said and go straight home, but I couldn’t. I had been too late to save Frederick Lee, but it would only be a matter of time before they found Bo Kei if every policeman in the city was looking for her. I had to go and warn her immediately. I made my way with all haste to Elizabeth Street. Hermione wasn’t on duty and I was surprised to find Sarah coming down the stairs toward me.
“Molly!” she said. “How nice to see you.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought his lordship had forbidden you from coming here.”
“He changed his mind,” she said. “He said that he could see how much this work meant to me and it was wrong of him to deprive me of these last weeks of satisfaction, so he would not object as long as I allowed him to escort me. Wasn’t that sweet of him?”
“Very understanding,” I said, mentally reversing my opinion of Monty as a spoiled, arrogant, and stuck-up Englishman.
“I’ll only be helping out occasionally, as there is so much to do for the wedding,” she said. “Isn’t it incredible how many fittings are needed for a wedding dress that one will only wear once in one’s life.”
“My mother-in-law is making mine,” I said. “I was supposed to be helping but my sewing was so terrible that she banished me to undergarments. I am a hopeless failure, according to her.”
Sarah laughed. “Oh, dear. In-laws are not all they should be, are they? Monty’s mother looked through her lorgnette at me as if I was something that had crawled under the door. Have you come to see your Chinese girl?”
“Yes, I have.”
“She’s doing awfully well. In fact they both are. The other girl seems to have a new lease on life since Bo Kei arrived. We thought she wouldn’t be long for this world and that the consumption was at a late stage, but now she seems so much brighter that we have hopes she may even recover.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “May I go up to see Bo Kei?”
“Of course,” she said. “She’s in the room facing the stairs on the third floor.”
“Not with Annie?”
“We’re keeping Annie in isolation as much as possible. It wouldn’t be wise to have anyone sleeping in a room with her, considering how sick she is. I don’t think consumption is horribly contagious, but one can’t be sure.”
I started up the stairs, hesitated, then made up my mind. “Sarah, can I be frank with you?” I said, looking up and down the hallway to make sure we were not being overheard. “The police will be searching for Bo Kei. They think she might somehow be involved in a murder that took place last night.”
“But that’s absurd. She was here last night.”
A wave of relief came over me. Of course she had a perfect alibi.
“Would you swear to that? The doors are locked, and nobody comes and goes?”
“Well, no,” she said. “Our doors are never locked. We are known to be a haven for battered women and prostitutes escaping from brothels.”
“So it would be possible for anyone to enter or leave during the night if they wanted to?”
“I’m afraid it would.”
“Oh, dear,” I said. “I’m sure she’s innocent, but you know what some of the police are like, and she doesn’t know anything about life in America. They can probably trick her into confessing anything. Would you be prepared to hide her?”
“Hide her?”
“If the police came to the door, I mean. Would you be prepared to lie and say that she wasn’t here? Or hide her away in a cupboard if they wanted to search the place?”
Sarah looked worried. “If I was hiding someone in my own home it would be different,” she said. “But I’m just one of many volunteers here. I can’t risk the future of this house by lying to the police and harboring a fugitive. They’d shut us down, and then who would do the good work that we do here?”
I did see her point. “Then I’ve no choice,” I said. “I must get her away as quickly as possible. Could you send someone to hail me a cab? I’ll go upstairs and get Bo Kei ready. That way, if anyone asks you if she is with you, you can truthfully deny it.”
Sarah sighed. “I really think that would be best. But where would you take her?”
“I’ll see if Sid and Gus would be prepared to take her in,” I said. “If not, then my own house is across the street and nobody’s living in it at present. I could hide her there, at least until we decide what to do with her.”