Bless the Bride

“How strange,” she said. “What was he doing there? He told me he had to visit his tailor, and he’s up on Thirty-ninth Street.” She put her hand up to her mouth suddenly. “Oh, my. You don’t think he went there to tell them that he’s forbidden me to come anymore? He can be so overbearing and arrogant at times.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Sid demanded. “You can’t start off married life under his thumb, you know. Look at Molly. She doesn’t let Daniel browbeat her.”

“I don’t want to upset Monty at the moment.” Sarah stared down at her hands, twiddling the diamond ring on her finger. “He hasn’t been at all well recently, and add to that the strain of the wedding.”

“I thought he looked not very well yesterday,” Gus said. “Rather frail in fact.”

“I know. I’m worried. He used to be so robust, you know. A keen mountain climber and all-around sportsman. And he did wonderfully brave things when he was in the army in India.”

“Do they know what’s wrong with him?” I asked.

She bit her lip. “His doctor thinks it’s nothing serious, but … I’m hoping his health will improve when we’re back on his estate in England and he can get out in the fresh air every day.”

“I’m sure it will,” I said, remembering how much I had worried about Daniel when he had been so sick in jail. “So, Sarah, I was wondering if your settlement house might take in my Chinese girl. What do you think?”

“For the short term, maybe,” Sarah said.

“In spite of the threats from vengeful Chinamen?” Gus asked.

“We’ve done it before. I think they know that the offspring of important Americans work at that house—children of congressmen, senators, and bankers. I like to think that protects us a little.”

“I thought that perhaps we could take her there in disguise and after dark,” I said. “Then nobody in Chinatown would ever know.”

“Molly, how would you disguise a Chinese person so that she wasn’t recognized?” Gus asked. “They do have a rather distinctive look, don’t they?”

“I’ve been thinking. She sneaked into the church with a sheet draped over her head, to make herself look like a nun. You two have so many costumes up in your attic. You must have a nun’s habit or two.”

“As a matter of fact we do.” Sid jumped up. “We gave a wonderful nuns-and-priests party once. Such fun, wasn’t it, Gus. We had confession booths set up and you should have seen the wicked penances we handed out.”

“Too bad we’ve already sent out the invitations for Molly’s party on Sunday. It would have been fun to do that again,” Gus said. “Especially since the happy couple are of that persuasion and know all about priests and nuns.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” I said, as they were both laughing merrily now. “It’s a girl’s life that’s at stake here.”

“Of course it is, and we will do whatever you want us to,” Gus said, her face becoming sober again.

“I’d like to borrow any nun costumes you might have. The girl was right. It’s rude to stare at nuns. If two or three nuns come out of a Catholic church, it’s going to look perfectly natural and nobody’s going to see past the habit.”

“I wonder how many we have, Sid,” Gus said. “I hope there are enough for all of us. Wouldn’t that be ripping fun? A gaggle of nuns.”

I’m afraid I rather thought that those two would spoil the whole thing by giggling or doing something awful at the wrong moment, and was glad when we found only two nun’s habits in the costume box.

“I had better go ahead and talk to the workers at the settlement house,” I said, not relishing yet another expedition into the Lower East Side. “I can’t just land her on their doorstep. They might even say no.”

“Why don’t I go and speak to them?” Sarah said.

“I thought you were forbidden to go there again?” Gus pointed out.

Sarah flushed. “Monty can’t stop me from saying good-bye to my coworkers, can he? Besides, I’d like to set things straight with them, in case he’s been rude to them. And I have some personal items to collect there anyway.”

“That would be most helpful for me. Thank you,” I said.

“I wish I could be there when you bring in the girl, but Monty is coming to dine with my parents tonight.”

“Don’t worry. If they can just take her in until I come up with a plan for her, I would be most grateful. Tell them I’ll be bringing her under cover of darkness.”

“‘Under cover of darkness’—doesn’t that sound deliciously exciting,” Sid said. “Gus and I want to join in the game, you know. Are you sure we can’t come along—as fallen women, perhaps?”

“Holy Mother,” I muttered. “The whole object is not to attract attention to ourselves. And if you two masquerading as fallen women doesn’t attract attention, then I don’t know what would.”

This set them off laughing again.

“Spoilsport, Molly,” Gus said. “We have always been dying to be partners in your cases and soon it will be too late and you’ll be home having tea parties instead.”

I smiled at her fondly. “My dear friend, if it weren’t so serious, I’d be glad to let you come along. But if anyone spots my girl, then it’s all over for her. Either Mr. Lee will take her back as a virtual slave or he’ll have her killed. You do see that I can’t risk it, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Sid said before Gus could answer, “but I’m concerned about you, Molly. Aren’t you running a terrible risk yourself by crossing such a powerful man? If he finds out you were the one who spirited her away…”

“I know,” I said, “but I have to listen to my conscience. How would you like to live at the mercy of a man who has made it clear to you that if you don’t produce a son quickly, you’re headed for one of his brothels? You wouldn’t want me to return her into those circumstances, would you?”

“Of course not,” Sid said.

“You and Gus could help out by asking your friends if any of them would take in the girl as a nursemaid or companion. She’s been educated by Western nuns and she told me she was a good student, so I’m sure she’d be a quick learner.”

“We can do that, can’t we, Sid?” Gus said.

And so it was agreed. Sarah was to go and pave the way, and I would follow as soon as it got dark. Sid and Gus helped me into the nun’s costume. It wasn’t exactly authentic, but it gave a good enough impression and it helped to hide the face under an impressive white starched coif that curved forward then out like miniature sails on either side. I feared that I would be struck down by the Almighty as I stepped out into the balmy night air. I was also sure that I looked like a complete fake until the police constable on the corner saluted me and said, “God bless you, Sister.”

Then, of course, I grinned to myself for the next four blocks.

A man jumped up to offer me a seat on the El. People stepped aside for me on the stairs and others murmured, “God bless you, Sister.” I could see this was a disguise that would prove useful in the future—until I remembered there wasn’t going to be a future in this profession.

Mott Street was more lively than I had seen it during the day. The restaurants were doing a roaring trade and interesting odors wafted out into the street—frying oil and sweet spices, not at all unappetizing. From an open door came the sounds of strange music—a voice singing in a high, tuneless manner against a background of screeching strings. Not what we’d call musical, but it appeared that the place was packed. I could see men standing just inside the doorway. I also noticed figures slinking into the alleyways between buildings and wondered if they were going to the famous gambling parlors and opium dens. I was interested to note that not all the evening revelers on Mott Street were Chinese; a young American couple was waiting in line for a table at one of the restaurants—the Port Arthur, it was called, and I wondered about the origin of the name. Then I saw a distinctly Western form slinking into one of those alleyways, heading for the opium den, I presumed.

The crowd on Mott Street streamed past me, giving me a wide berth. My hopes rose for accomplishing this successfully. I reached the back door of the rectory and tapped lightly. Mrs. McNamara opened it. “Can I help you, Sister?” she asked. “Father Barry is occupied at the moment.”

“Mrs. McNamara, it’s me, Molly Murphy,” I said.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she exclaimed and crossed herself. “Whatever next? Well, I certainly wouldn’t have recognized you. Come on in. Himself is just having his supper,” she said. “He won’t notice a thing while he’s eating.”

Up the stairs we went. Bo Kei looked amazed and delighted when a nun came into the room, then even more excited when she realized it was I. I showed her I had brought her a similar costume. I helped her into it and a few minutes later two nuns came out of the church rectory and melted into the Italian crowd on Park Street. Then it was an easy walk through the noisy Italian streets to the house on Elizabeth.

Hermione was still on duty. “Well, I never,” she said when she saw us, and burst out laughing. “Come in, do.” She whisked us inside and shut the door behind us. “Come on through to the kitchen and I’ll make us some tea.”

“I presume that Sarah came by and warned you about this,” I said.

“She did indeed. Welcome.” She held out her hand to the frightened girl. “You’ll be safe here. And I expect you’d like to get out of that nun’s habit. If you take a look in that closet you’ll find some clothing that will fit you. Help yourself. And I’ll go and make us some tea.”

I followed Hermione down the hall.

“I hope you don’t mind keeping Bo Kei here at least for a few days?” I asked.

“We’re not about to turn her out onto the streets,” Hermione said, then lowered her voice, “but let’s just hope that nobody finds out she’s here. I don’t particularly want to find our house firebombed or our staff with their throats cut.”

“I know I’m asking you to take a big risk,” I said. “I’d take her in myself but my future bridegroom is putting the finishing touches to my house, and he must not find out that I’m doing this.”

“I quite understand,” she said. “Sarah Lindley is having the same problems with a bossy bridegroom.”

“She is. I gather he came here today. Sarah was most embarrassed.”

Hermione shook her head. “No, we haven’t seen him today. Sarah thought he’d come here for some reason, but he hadn’t.”

“But I saw him on Bayard Street, just around the corner, so I assumed he’d come to escort Sarah. She was worried he’d come to tell you in person that he’d forbidden her to come here anymore.”

“I don’t know why he’d need to come in person after he already wrote us a letter,” Hermione said. “I hope he wasn’t spying on her to make sure she hadn’t come here.”

“A letter?”

She went across to a bureau and opened a drawer. “Read this. It will make your toes curl.”

The letter was written in a tall, elegant script with extravagantly flourishing curls on the capital letters.To whom it may concern. Please be advised that at my request Miss Sarah Lindley will no longer be working as a volunteer at your establishment. She needs to devote her full energy and attention to the preparations for our wedding.Yours faithfully, M. P. G. Warrington-Chase (The Honorable)

“What a nerve,” I said. “Did you show this to Sarah?”

“I thought it wiser not to. She told me that Monty was adamant that she give up coming here and she didn’t want to upset him. I expect she’d have been livid if she found that he’d written to us.” She looked up at me. “I hope Sarah is doing the right thing marrying him.”

“But she loves him, doesn’t she?”

“I think she likes the idea of being a grand English lady and living in a castle,” Hermione said, “and of course he’s in love with her money. Who wouldn’t be?”

“But surely he doesn’t need her money—he’s from an aristocratic family with large estates.”

“And has squandered his inheritance in riotous living, to paraphrase the Bible. Believe me, Mr. Monty Warrington-Chase can’t wait to marry and settle his debts.”

“How do you know this?”

“My brother is a member of the same club. Monty spilled out his problems one night while in his cups,” she said. “Naturally I’ve said nothing to Sarah. If she really does love him, then all is well.”

“I think she does,” I said. “She was most concerned about his health.”

“His health? I put that down to aristocratic pallor.” She laughed. “Then I wish them every happiness. Here, take this tray into the living room and I’ll follow with the teapot.”

A few minutes later Bo Kei reappeared in a Western skirt and shirtwaist. “Now I am proper American lady,” she said, laughing with relief.

“Tell this lady your story,” I suggested, but Hermione shook her head. “Let’s not put her through that again. Sarah has already given me a most riveting account. I gather you leaped between rooftops and shimmied down drainpipes.”

Bo Kei nodded, her hand shielding her mouth as she giggled. “Nuns always call me tomboy.”

We took tea together and then Hermione suggested that she meet Annie. “We have another Chinese girl here you might know,” she said.

We proceeded up the stairs. Annie was lying as if asleep, but she opened her eyes as we came in.

“A visitor, Annie. A Chinese girl like you.”

Bo Kei gave a squeal and rushed toward Annie’s bed, letting out a stream of Chinese. Annie recoiled for a moment, then threw her arms around Bo Kei. We watched them as they sat together, holding hands, looking incredulously at each other’s faces. Then Bo Kei looked up at us.

“This girl my cousin. She went away from my village and nobody knew where she has gone. We think she is dead.”

Thirteen

Job well done, I said to myself as Sister Molly of the Unholy Order made her way back to Sid and Gus. They were waiting anxiously and were delighted that the story had ended so happily.

“But what are you going to tell this Chinaman who hired you?” Sid gave me a worried stare.

“That’s a problem, isn’t it. I’m not quite sure,” I said. “From what I hear he’s a powerful and ruthless man. I don’t like to think what he’d do if he found out I’d helped the girl escape from him.”

“Molly, you can’t risk putting yourself in that kind of danger,” Gus said. “This girl isn’t anything to you and I’m sure this kind of marriage arrangement is usual in their culture. Would this life be so much worse than a marriage to someone in her village at home?”

I sighed. She had made a valid point. If women could be bought and sold in China, could she have expected any better for herself? And at least here she would have enough to eat and nice clothes. And if she produced that son, she’d be treated well. But she clearly did not want to be treated as chattel. She had taken a terrible risk to run away. I knew how she felt. I had fled from Ireland when the odds had seemed against me. I had received help when I least expected it. How could I deny it to Bo Kei?

“Maybe I’ll tell him that I’ve looked diligently but that the girl is nowhere to be found at any of the missions—which is true of course.”

“Are you sure that nobody at the settlement house will betray the presence of Chinese girls there?”

“No, I’m not at all sure. If they stay hidden upstairs, then maybe they are safe, but if they come down to communal meals, then anyone could inadvertently give them away. The house is too close to Chinatown. Our only chance is to spirit her far away as soon as possible. So if you two could get to work trying to find a position for her—”

“Molly, we’re planning your party, remember?” Gus said. “We’ve a host of people coming who will need to be fed and entertained. We’ve decorations to design, food to make, drinks to order. Can’t you put off reporting in to your Chinaman for a day or so? He can’t expect you to work miracles in a single day, surely?”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll want to hear from me immediately, and I don’t think I could face him in person, but I could write a letter to let him know that I am still working hard on the case, and then hand-deliver it to his secretary.”

This decision made me feel better. At least I had bought myself some time and the girl would be safe, unless Mr. Lee had his own spies out looking as well. I went to my room and composed the letter carefully, trying not to tell an outright lie in it. It must have been that Catholic upbringing and the beatings from my mother that made it so hard for me to tell an untruth. So I simply stated that she had not been at any of the missions around Chinatown—which was true—and that I was now expanding my search further afield and hoped to have news for him soon.

And I hoped to come up with a brilliant solution before I had to see him again. Maybe if Sid and Gus could find someone to take Bo Kei in as a servant, I could truthfully claim that she had left the city and I had no means of tracing her. Or maybe a convent somewhere would take her in. I could look into convents suitably far from the city.

I was feeling considerably more hopeful by the time I alighted from the El at Chatham Square the next morning. One way or another this would sort itself out. I made my way through the bustling Saturday morning crowd to Frederick Lee’s office on the Bowery. I went up the stairs and found the outer door shut. I knocked on it, gently at first and then louder. Nobody came. I waited, then had to admit that Frederick Lee was not there. Was his employer enlightened enough to give him Saturdays off, I wondered.

I wasn’t sure what to do now. I could just post the letter through the mail slot, but then tomorrow was Sunday and the next day was the Labor Day holiday so Mr. Lee would not receive it until Tuesday. This might mean that he’d send someone looking for me long before then. I supposed my only course of action was to take the letter to the Golden Dragon Emporium and ask one of the employees there to deliver it to Mr. Lee. Of course there was a risk that I might encounter Mr. Lee himself on the street or in the shop, but I decided that was preferable to Mr. Lee sending someone to find me where I was living. I didn’t want to put Sid and Gus in any kind of jeopardy. So I took a deep breath and crossed the Bowery to Mott Street.

Again there was the instant contrast between the chaos of the Bowery and the relative tranquility of the Chinese street. I spotted Kitty Chiu playing jump rope with some friends and a couple of old Italian women in black veils, huddled together and clutching each other’s arms for protection as they went into the Catholic church. Then I heard the sound of footsteps and a loud American voice booming, “This way if you please, ladies and gentlemen.” And around the corner from Park Street came an unlikely procession. It was led by a large, florid man with that typically Irish face. He was wearing a bowler hat perched jauntily on top of an impressive head of hair, and a jacket adorned with a row of pearl buttons, in spite of the warm day. He was carrying a megaphone. Behind him came a group of well-dressed and respectable-looking American men and women—mostly women, it must be noted, and mostly women of my own age.

“What you are about to see will shock you to the very core,” the Irishman boomed through the megaphone to his wide-eyed charges, his voice echoing back from the tall buildings on either side. “Please, ladies, do not faint. Deese streets here are particularly dirty underfoot and you would spoil dose pretty dresses.” In spite of the Irish appearance, he spoke with the strong accent of the New York gutter. He paused outside an open door with steps leading down to a basement. “Down these steps you will see the ultimate in depravity. Deese poor people are slaves to the opium habit. They have spent the night in this sqalid den, smoking opium, not knowing if it’s one day or the next. Why, they even do it on the Lord’s day—think of that. The ultimate heathens.”

One of the ladies gasped and had to fan herself. Her friend grasped her in case she fainted. I tried not to smile because I had realized that this was the slumming tour that Mrs. Chiu had told me about and the so-called opium den they were about to see was a fake one. The Irishman looked at me with interest as he passed me.

“And can you imagine this,” I heard him saying, not through the megaphone this time, “there are Irishwomen of such depravity that they actually enter into so-called marriage with Chinamen.”

Another gasp from the crowd and I suspected that he was probably pointing at me. I reached the Golden Dragon Emporium and stood outside, hoping that someone would come out and thus make this task easier for me. Nobody did. The Irishman and his slumming tour had descended into the fake opium den and the only sound on the street was the rhythmic chanting of the girls as they turned the rope. I peered into the store. The interior was so dark that I could detect no sign of movement. I took a deep breath and stepped inside. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness I could see that the walls and ceiling were richly carved, like the screen at the front of Mr. Lee’s apartment. There were displays of bolts of silk and stacks of porcelain on one side, and open boxes of teas and spices on the other, producing heady and exotic scents. I waited, expecting someone to come forward, but nobody did.

From a backroom beyond I heard a clattering sound and then a sudden shout. I plucked up my courage and went through beaded curtains, down a narrow hallway. The room beyond was dark and full of smoke, but I could make out the long braids of men sitting around a table. As I watched they slapped down tiles, yelling out excitedly. By this point I had realized I was looking at a gambling den, and the moment I had taken this in, I knew that I shouldn’t be here. I tried to retreat quietly. I crept back down the hallway, past the bead curtains, but they made a tinkling sound as they fell back into place.

A voice called out behind me. There was no point in trying to run or hide. I turned to see Bobby Lee coming after me.

“You—what you doing? What you want here?” he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at me.

I decided that attack was the best form of defense. “Such a gracious welcome,” I said. “Your father greets me most politely. Don’t you think he’d expect you to do the same?”

He frowned. “What business you have with my father? You not missionary lady?”

“I told you before that I am not a missionary lady,” I said. “And I understand that Mr. Lee is only your paper father, not a blood relation at all. What’s more, I’m afraid I can’t tell you the nature of my business with Mr. Lee if he hasn’t chosen to share it with you.”

His frown deepened; in fact he was positively scowling now. “What you want here?” he demanded again.

“I was hoping to see Frederick Lee,” I said. “I went to his office but it was shut.”

“Frederick Lee no work there no more,” he said, and there was a note of triumph in his voice.

“Oh, has he been transferred?”

“Not work for my father. Gone.”

“He’s left Mr. Lee’s employment?”

“My father dismiss him. He not trustworthy,” Bobby Lee said.

“I see.” I had a strong feeling that Bobby Lee had something to do with this sacking. I had witnessed his intense dislike of Frederick yesterday. And the feeling was reciprocated. But whatever the reason for their dispute, Bobby Lee was the paper son. He had won.

“So why you need to see Frederick Lee?” he demanded. “You his sweetheart?”

“Certainly not,” I said. “I came to see him as your father’s secretary. I had a letter I wished to give to your father.”

“My father not here today,” he said. “You give me letter. I give to him.”

There was no way I was going to hand over a letter to Bobby Lee, who would undoubtedly open it and read it. I couldn’t remember whether I had said anything specific in it about looking for the girl, but I couldn’t take the chance. Bobby Lee obviously hadn’t been informed of the reason for my visits, or he would know why I was here today and would ask if I had been successful in my search. That meant that Mr. Lee didn’t want him to know.

“I’m sorry, but the information in my letter is for Mr. Lee alone,” I said. “I will return on another occasion when he is at home. Good day to you.”

I gave him a curt nod and walked out. When I was safely down Mott Street I let out a sigh of relief. Maybe it was the exaggerated rumors that one heard about Chinatown, but I had definitely not felt safe in that room with Bobby Lee.

* * *

I arrived back at Patchin Place to find a hive of activity. Sid was up on a stepladder, stringing paper lanterns across the garden. Gus was in the kitchen loading the contents of her basket into the pantry. “I hope none of this spoils before tomorrow,” she said, looking up as I came in, “but the market doesn’t operate on Sundays so I had to get the fruit and vegetables now. Luckily Mr. Klein has promised to deliver the smoked salmon and cheeses tomorrow, so I don’t have to worry about them. So—have you safely delivered your letter?”

“I couldn’t do so,” I said. “It appears the secretary has been sacked and Mr. Lee’s obnoxious paper son was only too anxious to get his hands on my letter, so I’ll have to go back at another time. I was told that Mr. Lee wasn’t there today anyway.”

“No matter,” Gus said. “You can put your worries aside for the rest of the day and have fun with us decorating the house.”

“Did you finally decide on your theme?” I asked, peering out at Sid on her stepladder.

“We toyed with another nuns and priests, or priests and prostitutes, but we thought they were not suitable as a celebration of marriage, so we’ve simply invited people to come in costume if they feel like it, and we will create a festive environment. We have strolling musicians and a fortune-teller. Sid really wanted fireworks, but it’s hard to set them off in our backyard without offending the neighbors, so we’ll limit those to sparklers.”

I was rather relieved that my wedding party was not to be turned into a Greenwich Village spectacle.

“You must go up to our costume box and choose yourself something to wear.” Gus straightened up as she put a box of peaches onto the pantry floor.

“Not the nun’s habit,” I said. “It was hot and uncomfortable.”

“Quite right. We’ve a lovely French maid or there’s Cleopatra or a milkmaid. I’m sure you’ll find something.”

I couldn’t tell her I’d rather just be myself and I was finding it hard to concentrate on the party, so I offered to help with the preparations. I needed to be busy to take my mind off things. I was in the middle of draping paper streamers across the living room ceiling when the doorbell rang. I looked out of the window to see Frederick Lee standing there.

“Miss Murphy,” he said, his face showing relief when I opened the door. “I am so glad to find you here.”

“I went to find you this morning,” I said, “but instead I met Bobby Lee, who told me that you had been sacked. Is that true?”

“I’m afraid so. A bad business.”

I remembered my manners. “Please, won’t you come inside? Can I fetch you a glass of water?”

“No, nothing, thank you,” he said. He perched nervously on the edge of the nearest chair as I sat opposite him.

“I should not bother you with my problems,” he said.

“I take it that Bobby Lee had something to do with your being sacked? He seemed very happy that you were gone.”

“He is a bad person,” Frederick said. “He is jealous that Mr. Lee relies on me and asks my advice. Also I know a bit about his underhanded schemes, so he wants me out of the way. He told Mr. Lee a horrible untruth about me, and Mr. Lee believed him.…” He paused, opening and closing his mouth nervously, like a dying fish. “Miss Murphy, I came to ask you—have you been successful in your search?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“But you are still searching? You haven’t given up?”

“No, I haven’t given up.”

I tried to read his face. He was staring at me in a worried way.

“Mr. Lee,” I said, “if you no longer work for Lee Sing Tai, why should you be interested in my looking for a possession he has lost?”

“I know,” he said. “I know what this possession is, and it is dear to me.”

“A piece of jade?” I asked.

“Not a piece of jade. I overheard your whole conversation—in fact I have to confess that I was listening deliberately. I know that his bride is missing and he is trying to find her. So I ask—have you found any trace of her yet?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was all too aware that this could be a trap. He went on, “You see, he sent me to Vancouver to bring Bo Kei to him. On the way back to New York Bo Kei and I were together on the train for several days. I have to confess that I developed—feelings for her. I could never reveal these feelings, as it would be disloyal to my employer. It broke my heart to deliver her to this cruel and sadistic old man, but what can I do? I had no choice. To betray my employer would be to betray my tong and my clan. Besides, I have no idea whether she returned those feelings or not. I believe that she did, so I wondered if she had run away and was looking for me.”

“I have no way of knowing whether she was looking for you, Frederick,” I said.

“So I wondered if you had any idea where she might be. If she’s hiding somewhere she’ll need my help. I’ll do anything for her. And now that I no longer work for Mr. Lee, my first duty is to her. I’m prepared to risk all for her happiness.”

I tried not to let my face betray me. I had heard Lee Sing Tai described as wily. Perhaps he had never quite trusted me and somehow knew by now that I was not going to return the girl to him. Why not pretend to sack Frederick, then have him worm Bo Kei’s hiding place out of me?

“I beg of you, Miss Murphy, if you find Bo Kei, please come to me before you tell my employer. Please don’t deliver her back to him. I know this will cost you a large amount of money and it may even put you in danger, but I care about Bo Kei’s happiness and she would face a life of misery with that old man.”

He was looking at me expectantly, but I had learned patience the hard way during my time as an investigator, and I had learned that people are not always what they seem.

“I understand that you are worried,” I said cautiously, “but I can’t tell you anything at the moment. If you would like to give me your address, I will send word if I succeed in my quest.”

He shook his head. “No, I will come back here tomorrow. My rooms may be watched. Mr. Lee has his spies everywhere.”

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll see you here tomorrow. I hope to have news for you by then.”

His whole face lit up. “That would be wonderful.”

I was so tempted to tell him where she was and even to lend them money to take the next train out of New York, but I had to see Bo Kei herself first and hear from her mouth that she wanted to be with Frederick Lee. And I had to weigh the risk that he might betray her to his former employer.

“You understand that this whole thing is impossible, Miss Murphy,” Frederick said with a heavy sigh. “Lee Sing Tai is a powerful man. He has connections in every Chinese community. Even if Bo Kei chose to be with me, we could never find a place where we would be safe. If we tried to run off together he would find us and have us killed, or at least have me killed. He’d want her returned to him. She is his possession.”

I nodded. This was all too true and I had no words of encouragement.

“I just pray that she can still be found,” Frederick said. “It must be almost a week now that she has been away. Where can she be hiding? I wonder if she is still alive. I wonder if that rat Bobby Lee might not have killed her.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“Clearly he lusted after her himself,” he said. “I could see this. He is a man who does not like to be crossed. If she refused his advances—who knows how he might have punished her? And I believe he must have seen me as a rival. He told his father that I had tried to meddle with her on my way across Canada. I treated her with the greatest respect. I never touched her in any way.”

“Let us hope that she is alive and well, Frederick,” I said. “And I am sure that Bobby Lee could not have killed her.”

“How can you be sure?”

I smiled at his worried face. “Are you not half Irish? We Irish are known for our sixth sense. I sense that she is still alive.”

“You give me hope, Miss Murphy,” he said. “God bless you.”

He rose to his feet. “I will go now. But Miss Murphy, once more I beg you—if you find her, please tell me before you go to Mr. Lee. If we run away together, if we have already vanished, then it will not be your fault that she doesn’t return to him and he will not try to harm you.”

“Very well,” I said. “Come to see me tomorrow.”

“I will do so. I will be extra careful and make sure I am not followed. If you find her, I will forever be in your debt.”

I let him out and watched him walk down Patchin Place and out into Greenwich Avenue. I wanted to believe him. I trusted his earnest, open expression, but I couldn’t put aside the thought of old Mr. Lee waiting like a vulture in the semidarkness of that ornate room for Frederick to report back. “Well? Did she tell you the girl’s hiding place? Has she found her, do you think?”

Fourteen

I finished my task with the paper streamers before I decided to pay a call on Bo Kei. I was itching with impatience to go and see her, but I realized I had to behave with a great deal of caution—hard for someone as impatient as I. I half expected that Frederick or one of Lee Sing Tai’s henchmen might be lurking in the shadows, watching me to see where I went, so I started by fulfilling the shopping commissions given me by Gus—things she had forgotten to buy this morning. I hoped that seeing me with a bag of bread rolls or a jar of pickles might convince whoever was watching me that I was only on normal housewifely errands.

I looked around as I came out of the grocer’s and saw no sign of Frederick nor of anybody who looked in any way Chinese. Of course I didn’t know if Mr. Lee employed Westerners as well, but I decided not to put Bo Kei at risk and hailed a passing hansom cab. This was extravagant, considering that I wouldn’t be paid anything for this case, but some things are worth more than money.

The commerce of the Lower East Side forced the cab to come to a halt halfway down Elizabeth Street. “Are you sure this is where you want to be?” the cabby asked me as pushcarts and half-naked children spilled around us. “Not a safe place for young ladies around here, you know. Do you want me to wait?”

I hadn’t anticipated a cab fare back, but it did seem like a good idea. I had less likelihood of being spotted by one of Mr. Lee’s henchmen.

“I won’t be long,” I said and went into the house.

Hermione came out of the kitchen to greet me, wiping her hands on an oversized apron. “Well, if it isn’t the miracle worker,” she said. “Your bringing the Chinese girl has done wonders for poor Annie. Until now she’s just lain in bed and hardly eaten a thing. Frankly I thought we’d lose her soon, but today she’s as sprightly as anything and ate a good breakfast with Bo Kei. And you should hear them laughing—like two naughty schoolgirls up there.”

“I am glad,” I said. “So nobody has come here looking for Bo Kei?”

She shook her head. “Although I’ve had to warn them that it might not be the smartest thing to betray their presence by talking to each other so loudly in their language. Sound does carry through open windows and we’re not far from Chinatown.”

“I hope she won’t be here too long,” I said. “May I go up and see her?”

“Of course. You know the way, don’t you? I’d escort you but I’m facing a mountain of washing-up.” She gave me a wry smile. “Sometimes I wonder why I thought this would be preferable to making a good match and living a life of ease.”

“Maybe because you are free to choose to do the washing-up,” I said.

“Exactly.” She nodded as she went back to the kitchen, while I made my way up the stairs. Bo Kei and Annie had been sitting on one of the beds together, but they jumped up as I came in. Bo Kei gave me a relieved smile. She looked like a young girl again and I realized that she probably wasn’t more than fifteen or sixteen.

“How are you today, Bo Kei?” I said. “Hermione said you sounded very happy.”

“Bo Kei happy to be safe and free,” she said.

“You’re not out of the woods yet,” I said.

“Please? Which wood is this?” She looked puzzled.

“An expression,” I said. “It means that we still have to decide what to do with you. You can’t stay here very long.”

“Missie Molly,” she said slowly. “I not ask you yet—who send you to find me?”

How was I going to answer this one? Do I make up some story about the good people at the house hearing of a runaway Chinese bride? I couldn’t bring myself to come out with a lie.

“Who do you think might be looking for you?” I asked.

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “My master. Lee Sing Tai.”

“That’s right,” I said. “He hired me to find you.”

She shrank against Annie, clutching her as if she was drowning. “Why you bring me here and say you want to help me then? Why not take me straight back to him?”

“Because I do want to help you,” I said. “When he hired me I had no idea it was a person he was looking for. He asked me originally to look for a piece of jade.”

“My bride-piece. This belong to me,” she said, patting at her chest to indicate it was hidden under her clothing. “I have a right to take it with me.”

“And you still have it?”

“Of course. I no sell my bride-piece. It was present. Given to me.”

“It was only when I couldn’t find it in pawnshops that Mr. Lee told me he was really looking for a woman. The way he spoke frightened me. I won’t help anybody to keep another person as a slave.”

Annie looked up at me with dark, expressionless eyes. “You foolish woman. Lee Sing Tai not forgive you. He find you and punish you, just like he find Bo Kei and punish her. I tell her, she not be free from him ever.”

Bo Kei shivered and grasped even harder at Annie.

“Bo Kei?” I asked. “Was there someone else you hoped was looking for you? Someone you wanted to find you?”

Her eyes gave her away before she shook her head and said, “No. Nobody.”

“I just thought…” I said. “Frederick Lee came to see me today.”

Again her face betrayed her before she spoke. “You saw Frederick? He is well?”

“He wants to find you,” I said. “He wants to rescue you and take you away.”

“Lee Sing Tai not allow him,” she said flatly.

“He no longer works for Mr. Lee,” I said. “Mr. Lee fired him because Bobby Lee told him lies about you. He said that Frederick made advances to you on the train coming here.”

“Not true,” she said vehemently. “He treat me with respect, he behave like gentleman, always like gentleman. He never say or do anything wrong, but I know that he likes me. I can tell.”

“Yes, he likes you lot. And now that he no longer works for Mr. Lee and no longer has to show loyalty to his employer, he wants to take you away somewhere.”

“No use!” Annie spat the words. “You think you can hide from Lee Sing Tai? Where you think you go, huh?”

“I have rich friends,” I said. “Maybe they can find you both jobs working in a white person’s household far from here. I don’t think Mr. Lee is likely to find you if you live in an American community miles away.”

“You think this is possible?” She was staring at me with hopeful eyes, exactly as Frederick had looked at me.

“I’ll do my best for you,” I said. “Tomorrow Frederick will come to see me again and I will arrange for the two of you to meet somewhere safer than this. Before that time, please stay quiet and hidden.”

“And what you tell Lee Sing Tai?” Annie demanded.

“I will tell him that by the time I picked up their trail they were already far away.”

“Wah,” she said in scornful tones. “He not let you get away with that. Lee Sing Tai one smart man.”

“Would you rather I just delivered her back to Mr. Lee?” I asked.

“No,” she said hesitantly. “But I know. I have seen. This is a bad man. He kills a person like snapping the neck of a chicken.”

I swallowed hard, physically feeling a hand grasping my own neck. “My future husband is a policeman,” I said. “If Lee Sing Tai knows this, he won’t dare come near me.”

Annie actually laughed out loud at this. “You think police not do what Lee Sing Tai wants? He pays them plenty money and they shut their eyes. He has houses of women, gambling places, opium too, and the police walk right by.”

“There has to be an answer,” I said. “You are living in a free country now. Men are not allowed to treat women as slaves here. One way or another we are going to make sure that Bo Kei and Frederick get away from here safely, I promise you.”

I left then, hurrying back to the waiting cab. But I have to confess that my heart was beating rather rapidly. I had taken some risks in my life as an investigator, but I certainly didn’t want to go up against a man who snapped the neck of a man as if he was a chicken and who had the police in his back pocket.

Fifteen

Sid and Gus were already in a party mood that evening and wanted me to try out various silly costumes as well as experiments in rum punches that Sid was concocting. At one point Sarah Lindley stopped by and joined in the festivities. Monty was out with English friends, so she was enjoying a rare evening of freedom with her women friends. “One of my last ever, I suppose,” she said wistfully.

“You make it sound like a long prison sentence,” Sid commented drily.

“Not really, but it seems strange that I will be with one person, all the time, from now on,” she said. “Especially if we are on his estate in England. I know he’ll want to entertain, but most of the time it will be just us. I wonder what we’ll talk about. Don’t you feel the same, Molly?”

It had never entered my head that Daniel and I would not know what to talk about. “I don’t think that will be my complaint,” I said. “I’m only afraid I won’t see enough of him. When he’s on a case he’ll be working twenty-four hours a day and be too tired to talk when he comes home.”

“You are so lucky that you’ll still have your friends living across the street,” Sarah said. “I’ll know nobody. I don’t even know how the English behave. I expect I’ll be considered the crass American.”

“It sounds to me as if you’re getting cold feet,” Gus said, looking at Sarah with an affectionate smile.

Sarah grinned. “I expect that’s normal, isn’t it?”

As she said this I realized something that made me sit up with a jolt: I no longer had doubts about marrying Daniel. He was a good man and I wanted to be with him. I suppose it was seeing Bo Kei and how bad life could be for other women that had finally driven home to me how lucky I was to have a man who loved me and wanted to protect me. And perhaps I had finally had enough of a life of danger and uncertainty.

The conversation turned to Bo Kei and we discussed what we could do for her. The others were not too keen on my idea of finding them domestic employment.

“She needs to be with her own kind,” Sid said.

I was surprised. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d be prejudiced,” I said.

“Quite the opposite,” Sid replied. “I know how hated and despised the Chinese are. How would you like to be treated with suspicion and prejudice every time you set foot outside your door?”

“Then what do you suggest?” I ask.

“Perhaps we should give them money to go far away—back to Canada, maybe?”

“Monty says there is a flourishing Chinese settlement in the East End of London,” Sarah added. “Surely this horrible Mr. Lee couldn’t trace them there.”

I obviously didn’t have the money for such an expense and I realized that the others were interested in helping in theory but not so keen in practice. It was my problem, not theirs, and they were impatient to get back to party planning. Having never had to work a day in their lives, they didn’t understand that I couldn’t just work when I felt like it or drop a case if it no longer appealed to me.

They also couldn’t come up with a solution for me as to what I could tell Mr. Lee. So I went to bed troubled and my sleep was full of disturbing dreams—in one of which I was standing at the altar with Daniel, but when I turned to kiss him it was a strange, withered old man. “Now you will be my slave,” he said, “or I’ll snap your neck like a chicken.”

I woke to a humid dawn. Clouds were heavy with the promise of rain. This was depressing enough until I remembered what day it was. The day of my party, a day that I should have been looking forward to. Surely it wasn’t going to rain after Sid had put so much effort into decorating the garden? It seemed like a bad omen. I tried to feel happy and excited, but I couldn’t get Bo Kei out of my mind. Why had I ever taken on this stupid case? I knew I was going against Daniel’s wishes and nothing good ever seemed to come when I was being underhanded. It was probably my mother up in heaven making sure I was duly punished.

As I washed I looked at my worried face in the mirror and I came to a decision. I was not going to let an old Chinaman spoil my day. I had a perfectly simple answer. I had told my friends that I couldn’t just drop a case once I had taken it on. But why couldn’t I? I was my own master, after all. I would write Mr. Lee a letter telling him that I no longer wished to handle this case since the buying and selling of human beings went against my conscience. I would not charge him a fee for the time I had already put in on his behalf and I considered the matter closed. I was going to simply drop the letter into the mailbox, but then I realized that the next day was a public holiday and he might well send someone to find me before that. And I still had the photograph of Bo Kei he had lent me. I had to return that to him. So I wrapped it up well, placed the letter on top of the package and decided to hand it to the first person I met at his emporium.

I dressed and let myself out quietly without waking Sid and Gus. The city was unnaturally quiet and peaceful on this Sabbath morning. Distant church bells rang out and families passed me, clutching prayer books and dressed in their Sunday best. A flight of pigeons made a flapping sound that echoed in the still air as they wheeled around Washington Square. I wished I could enjoy this rare moment of tranquility, but I was wound tight as a watch spring.

“In an hour’s time it will all be over and you can start to enjoy being a bride,” I told myself. But I knew I couldn’t really start to enjoy myself until Bo Kei was safely far away and I had no idea how I was going to manage that. It wasn’t really my problem, was it? It was up to Frederick and Bo Kei to decide where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. I should just leave well enough alone. But I’ve never been good at doing that.

Nothing stirred on Mott Street. The door of the Church of the Transfiguration was open and from inside came the sound of a voice intoning. Snatches of Latin floated toward me and with them that customary jolt of guilt that I had skipped mass yet again and was destined for hellfire. Then I detected a movement out of the corner of my eye. I spun around and my heart lurched as I saw a ghostly figure coming toward me from an arched entrance to some kind of tunnel or arcade between buildings. He was deathly white, pale, almost luminous. Then he came out into Mott Street, pausing to steady himself against the corner of the building and I saw it was a white man, but in a sorry state. He was in his shirt sleeves. His hair was plastered across his forehead. His eyes were staring vacantly, he was breathing hard, and he didn’t seem to know where he was. I thought for a moment he might be drunk, but I’ve seen plenty of drunks in my life, including my own father, and they didn’t look like this. Then it came to me that he was emerging from an opium den. Mrs. Chiu had told me that it wasn’t only the Chinese who frequented these places. The man looked around as if he was just coming to his senses and started at the sight of me, as if I too might be a ghost. He gave a little moan, then turned and staggered down Mott Street in the opposite direction.

I went on my way toward the Golden Dragon Emporium. The sight of that man had unsettled me even further and I wanted to get this over with. I reached the store and saw that shutters covered the windows and the front door was firmly locked. I hadn’t expected the Chinese to follow the laws of the Sabbath, and it now occurred to me that perhaps it would stay shut on the coming holiday. I just hoped that the mail slot on the front door to Mr. Lee’s residence would be big enough to take my package, because I wasn’t going to risk coming back here a third time.

I went up the steps slowly. Before I reached the top several Chinamen ran past, shouting to each other in animated fashion. My thoughts turned to tong wars and I shrank into the shadow of the building, half expecting shots to ring out. But they didn’t seem to notice me and disappeared into the On Leong headquarters next door. When I reached the top of the steps I was surprised to find the front door was open. I was just leaning inside to put the package on one of the stairs when I heard the most extraordinary sound—it was the wailing of a soul in torment, the sound of a wounded animal, unearthly and frightening. And it was coming from the top of those stairs.

I looked up and saw that the upper door was open, which was also strange, considering that it had been locked on the other occasions I had been here. Telling myself I was being a fool I crept up the stairs toward the sound. There was no houseboy in the hallway and the sound came from just behind the screen into the living room, so loud that it now echoed through the high ceiling of the hallway. My thoughts went to the Chinese demons that screen was supposed to keep out, but I had to find out what it was. I crept toward the screen and peeked around it—and reeled in surprise: a tiny old Chinese woman sat on the sofa, rocking back and forth. What drew my attention immediately were her feet. Her little legs stuck out like a china doll’s, too short to reach the floor, and peeping through from the hem of her shiny black trousers were tiny little stumps instead of normal feet. Each stump had a red brocade shoe on it, no bigger than a baby’s slipper. I recoiled, thinking she had had both feet amputated until I remembered what had been said about small-foot wives. I was actually looking at a small-foot wife.

All this passed through my head in an instant until the intensity of the sound obliterated any rational thought. Her mouth was open and from it came a continuous wave of horrific wailing. Her eyes were wide open and staring and I wondered if she was having some kind of fit, and should I perhaps go to help her. I also wondered where Lee Sing Tai and the servants were that they didn’t hear her and let her carry on like this.

At that moment I was conscious of another sound over the wailing—heavy footsteps. Someone was coming down the flight of stairs from the floor above. I tried to dart back into the stairwell, but I was too late. I saw big boots, dark blue trouser legs.

“For pete’s sake stop that row, woman,” a deep voice boomed in English. “It gives me the willies.” Then a burly New York police officer came into view. I had nowhere to hide. He saw me and reacted with surprise.

“Who are you? What the devil are you doing here?” he barked. He took in what I was wearing, my neat straw hat and gloves. “Don’t tell me you’re on one of these slumming tours, poking your nose into other people’s business?”

If I’d been smart I would have said yes. But I didn’t want to be seen as a nosy parker with no right to be in the house. “I’m delivering this package to Mr. Lee,” I said.

“What kind of package?”

“A photograph that he lent me.”

Without warning he took it from me and ripped it open.

“Hey,” I said angrily. “That is private business between Mr. Lee and me.”

“Is that so?” He glanced at the photograph, put it on the hall table, then proceeded to open the letter.

“You have no right to do that,” I said indignantly. “It’s personal correspondence. What do you think you’re doing?” I tried to snatch it back from him, but he fended me off.

“Oh, I have every right,” he said, something akin to a smirk crossing his face. His eyes scanned down the letter. “He hired you? What for exactly?”

“If you really must know, he’d lost a piece of jade and he wanted me to find it for him.”

“That’s not what it says here.” He was staring hard at me with cold blue eyes. “You no longer wish to handle this case since the buying and selling of humans goes against your conscience?” he read, raised an eyebrow, and then waved the letter at me.

“This is not what you might think,” I said hastily. “He arranged to have a young bride shipped over from China and—somehow she has gone missing. Naturally Mr. Lee is most worried and hired me to find her. Nothing criminal and therefore nothing of interest to the police.”

“Really?” He was still staring hard at me. “A bride shipped over from China?”

“That’s how the Chinese arrange marriages, apparently.”

“Then who’s the old broad on the sofa if he’s just marrying a young bride?”

“I gather she’s his first wife. They can take more than one in China.”

“But not here in the States. It’s called bigamy.”

I lowered my voice. “Look, Officer, between you and me, I don’t think he actually intended to go through a proper marriage ceremony over here with the new one. She’d be called wife number two, but really just a concubine.”

“And now she’s run away, has she?”

I could feel my cheeks getting hotter. When I am being backed into a corner I start to defend myself. “Look, I just told you—this has nothing to do with the police,” I said. “I don’t know why you are grilling me. It’s a missing persons case, not a crime. And besides, if you’re trying to pin some kind of criminal activity on Mr. Lee, I thought he had an understanding with the police and they left him alone.”

“I don’t know who told you that!” the policeman snapped. “But perhaps it would have been better for him if we hadn’t left him alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Which way did you come down Mott Street this morning?”

“From Chatham Square. Why?”

“Because had you come from the other direction, you might have noticed a commotion around the corner on Pell Street—you’d have spotted a crowd, including some of my men. It appears that Mr. Lee Sing Tai fell off the roof of his building during the night.” He paused to watch my expression, a rather satisfied one on his own face.

“Fell off the roof? You mean he’s dead?”

I have to confess that the wave of emotion that shot through me was not of horror but of relief. Now I would never have to face him. Now Bo Kei would be free of him.

The satisfied expression turned into a smirk. “There aren’t many people who survive a fall from that height unless they have wings,” he said. “Of course he’s dead. Smashed as flat as a pancake.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, because it was expected of me. Actually I wasn’t sorry at all.

“So the only question in my mind,” the officer said, still not taking his eyes from my face, “is whether he fell by accident or whether he was pushed.”

Sixteen

I stood there in the dark hallway, trying not to let my face register any emotion. I recognized the policeman now. He was the officer who had accompanied Daniel at the Elizabeth Street station.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“Sometime during the night, I suppose. The old guy is wearing his nightshirt and I gather he’d been sleeping on the roof.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I was told that he liked to sleep on the roof during hot weather.”

“That will certainly make it easier for us,” he said. “He walked in his sleep and tripped over the low parapet.”

“And if he didn’t?” I asked.

He eyed me critically. “Then somebody pushed him, and if I don’t find out conclusively who that person was, then the rumor will go around that it was a member of Hip Sing. In case you don’t know about such things, it’s—”

“The rival tong,” I said. “I do know.”

His eyes narrowed. “You seem to be remarkably well versed in Chinatown politics,” he said. “What exactly are you—one of the Irish wives from around here?”

Again I should have kept my mouth shut and just claimed to be a friend. But I don’t always stop to think through consequences. “Not at all,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. That’s why Mr. Lee hired me.”

“Really?” He was looking at me with interest tinged with amusement now. “A female dick. That’s a novel one.”

He glanced down at my letter he was still holding. “Murphy, is that the name? Molly Murphy? I’ve heard of you before somewhere.”

I wasn’t going to say that my name had probably been mentioned as Daniel’s future wife. “I have worked on cases in this part of the city,” I said.

“Have you, by george? What kind of cases?”

I tried to think of harmless things I might have done in the Lower East Side—certainly not dealing with Monk Eastman and his gang. “Another missing person case once. A girl who had come over from Ireland. Her family wanted to trace her.”

I hoped he’d be satisfied with that, but he was still frowning. “And why exactly did old Lee hire you particularly to find this bride?”

“I suppose he thought that a young woman like myself could move among other young women in the world outside of Chinatown, without arousing suspicion.”

“I see.” He paused. “And what made him think that his bride had run away and not been kidnapped by Hip Sing, for example?”

“I asked him the same question,” I said. “He indicated that his spies had looked into that aspect thoroughly before he thought of hiring me.” I hesitated, then went on. “From what I understand of the Chinese, I don’t think Mr. Lee would have resorted to hiring an outsider and a female unless he’d done everything he could himself to recover the young woman.”

“That’s true enough,” he agreed, then he stood looking at me, head cocked to one side, like a bird’s. “You know what I find interesting? That Mr. Lee smuggles in a new bride from China—which I might point out to you is breaking the law to start with, Chinese women not being allowed to enter the United States. Then this bride does a flit, he hires you to find her, and immediately afterward he plunges to his death. Odd chain of events, don’t you think? And in my twenty years of experience in the New York Police Department, I’ve always found that when strange things happen, one after the other, there’s always a connection.”

He was staring at me, long and hard, as if he expected me to crack and confess all. “Now look here,” I said, my hackles rising. “I don’t know if you’re hinting that I might have had anything to do with his death. If so, I’ve no idea why you’d think that. For one thing, he hasn’t yet paid me my fee—and now he’s not going to, so I’m left out of pocket. Besides, I’d never met the man before and I have no interest in Chinatown or its inhabitants.”

As I said this, unwanted thoughts were racing through my brain. I could think of several people who might want Lee Sing Tai dead, and first on the list was his runaway bride. The officer’s mind must have been working along the same lines because he said, “So you haven’t located this runaway bride yet?”

Now what do I say? Lying to the police was a serious matter, but I also realized that she’d make a perfect scapegoat for them, so that the case could be solved neatly and a new tong war would not erupt. “I did start to look for her. I went around the local missions. But as you can see from the letter, I decided to withdraw from the case,” I said. “I realized that I didn’t wish to be any part of this sordid business. I don’t approve.”

Suddenly his expression changed. He was no longer looking at me as if I was his prime suspect. I could see an idea had just come to him. “Look, Miss Murphy, I’m Captain Kear of the Sixth Precinct,” he said. “Can I ask you to do something for me? Nobody has officially verified the identification of the body for us yet. The old woman in there couldn’t make it down the stairs on those feet, even if we could get her to shut up.”

“What about the servants?” I asked.

“They must have run off when they heard the police were on their way,” he said. “There was nobody in the house when we got here and the door was wide open. Probably thought we were going to blame them. And the Chinamen in the crowd suddenly can’t understand any English or claim to be complete strangers.”

“Is Mr. Lee’s son nowhere around?” I asked.

“He has a son?”

“Bobby Lee,” I said.

“Oh, Bobby Lee, that’s right. Old Lee’s paper son, isn’t he? I haven’t seen him for a while. I heard old Lee shipped him out to the cigar factory in Brooklyn after the last dustup with Hip Sing.”

“He was around here yesterday,” I said.

“Was he? I’ll send someone to look for him. But in the meantime I wondered if you’d take a look at the body yourself. If you’re not too squeamish, that is? I need him officially identified before we move him. These Chinese would lie to their grandmother if it suited them. They all claim they’ve never seen him before.”

“All right.” I swallowed hard. Frankly I was not at all keen to view a body described as flatter than a pancake, but I had my image as a cool-headed detective to uphold, and I was rather flattered that Captain Kear was treating me as an equal and not as a helpless woman who might swoon at any second.

He ushered me down the stairs ahead of him. The street was still deserted and the church was now silent. I thought that probably any sensible Chinese had shut himself in his rooms, just in case he found himself grabbed as a suspect or new tong violence erupted. There was still a crowd around the body. Hardly any of them were Chinese, but there were curious Italians, Jews, and Irish, being held back by constables. I heard one of them saying, “Here’s the captain now,” as Captain Kear elbowed his way ungraciously through the crowd.

“Is the morgue wagon on its way?” he asked one of the constables holding back the crowd.

“Yes, sir. Should be here any moment.”

“And the doctor?”

“Been summoned, sir,” the same constable replied. “Might have a problem locating him. It’s a holiday.” His tone implied that it should have been a holiday for him too, if he hadn’t been summoned to this scene.

“And has somebody been to HQ on Mulberry to request a photographer? I want a photograph of him before he’s moved.”

“I’d say he’s not looking at his best for a photograph,” one of the constables quipped and got a general laugh.

“Get going then, Mafini.” The captain barked the order.

One of the constables forced his way through the crowd and took off, running.

“I’ve brought this young lady to identify him,” Captain Kear said. “If you don’t mind taking a look, Miss Murphy.”

I sensed the curious stares of the crowd as they parted for me to step closer. I took a deep breath, then looked. He was lying on his back, spread-eagled like a starfish, limbs sticking out at unnatural angles like a broken rag doll. His mouth was open in surprise, his eyes staring up at the sky. He was wearing a nightshirt that made him somehow look even more pathetic, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The white nightshirt was now spattered with blood. There was a great pool of blood around his head, now black with a carpet of flies. I shut my eyes and looked away.

“Yes,” I said, turning back to Captain Kear when I had composed myself. “That is definitely Lee Sing Tai.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Come away now. I’ll just need a few particulars and then you can go.”

I looked back at the corpse. “There is no way he’d have landed like this if he’d tripped and fallen,” I said, as the thought came to me. “He’d have fallen forward and landed on his face. He had to have been pushed.”

As I said the words I heard a murmur go through the crowd and a couple of Chinese at the back took off running. Captain Kear looked up and frowned. “It wasn’t the smartest thing to say that out loud,” he said. “They’ll be reporting back to On Leong in seconds.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think. Besides, you said they didn’t understand English.”

“Only when it suits them. Most of them understand pretty well.” He took my arm and dragged me away from the crowd. “If what you say is true, then we’d better make it quite clear that we don’t see this as a tong murder. For starters, I’d like to question your runaway bride. Why don’t you come back with me and you can give me her particulars and tell us how far you’ve got on the search.”

He’d phrased it as an invitation, but it really was a command.

“You’d better come along to take notes, O’Byrne,” the captain added. “And I want the missing servants found. Houseboy and cook, wasn’t it? And I gather there are usually bodyguards outside his place. Where the hell were they? They’ve run off too. Get to it, Hanratty, and spread the word that these men are our main suspects if they don’t show up immediately. The rest of you keep the crowd away. Ask if anyone saw him fall, or saw anything at all. Not that I’m hopeful that anyone will come forward, but we can try. Oh, and make sure someone comes to get me the moment the doctor and photographer arrive.”

He shoved his way back through the crowd, clearing a path for me. While he had been giving his orders, I had been taking a long look at the corpse and I’d noticed something else. I moved closer to Captain Kear. “He’s got a wound on one side of his head,” I said, this time in a low voice so that nobody else could overhear. “He couldn’t have received that during the fall.”

“He could have hit something on the way down,” Kear said.

I looked up at the building. There was a succession of balconies, but they didn’t project in any way; in fact his descent would have been smooth and swift.

“I think somebody killed him first,” I said, “or at least knocked him out.” Even as I said it I could hear a voice in my head yelling at me to shut up. If he was lying where he landed on the street, then there was the possibility that he tripped and fell, however strangely he had landed. If, on the other hand, he had a large dent in one side of his head, then it was obvious that somebody knocked him out before throwing him over the edge.

“I’d keep that to yourself if I were you,” Captain Kear muttered. “For the moment the official line on this is going to be accidental death. If I get word that On Leong is going to blame it on Hip Sing and we’re about to be back in a full-flown tong war, then I’ll have to come up with a suspect pretty damn quick.”

I had observed that he was not toning down his language in the presence of a lady. This surprised me until I realized that he was not treating me like a lady. I was a detective, a professional. That made me feel a certain sense of satisfaction.

We turned the corner back into Mott Street with Constable O’Byrne leading the way.

“Is it possible that it was committed by Hip Sing?” I asked. “I understand that Mr. Lee was very thick with On Leong.”

Captain Kear shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like their method of operation at all. Gunning down someone in the street, a quick stab in the back—that would be normal tong tactics, not a death made to look like an accident. They actually want the other side to know when they are killing someone. Besides, it’s in Hip Sing’s interest to keep the peace right now. They suffered far worse in the last round of violence than On Leong did. They need to build up to full strength again before the next round begins.”

“You think it will break out again?”

“Bound to. While you’ve got struggles for control of the Chinese community they’ll keep on at it until one side wins.”

“I understand that On Leong pays you to turn a blind eye to their activities,” I said. “What about Hip Sing?”

“You mentioned that before,” he said sharply. “Are you talking about bribes? Bribes are not allowed in the police department. Who told you that?”

“It was old Mr. Lee himself,” I said, realizing that once again I’d let my mouth run away with me and this wasn’t the wisest thing to say. “He said he had the police in his pocket.”

Captain Kear’s face was flushed. “Well, he might have made a donation to our benefit fund, in return for which we kept an eye on his businesses and saw that nobody robbed them or firebombed them, but that’s another thing entirely.”

So he’d just confirmed by his guilty bluster that Lee Sing Tai had been bribing the police—which might have given someone else a motive for killing him. What if Mr. Lee had threatened to spill the beans at police headquarters? It seemed to me that given the diverse nature of Lee Sing Tai’s business ventures, any number of people might have wanted him dead.

“And another thing,” Captain Kear said. “How the hell could Hip Sing gain entry to Lee Sing Tai’s home? He always had bodyguards lurking on the street nearby. He kept servants around him. They’d never have admitted a Hip Singer. The tongs always meet on neutral turf at the Port Arthur restaurant.”

I gave myself a facetious reminder never to go and eat there in case a gun battle broke out around me and I grinned. I suppose one has to make light in the middle of tension. But then I considered what he had just said.

“If Mr. Lee was sleeping on the roof, might it not have been possible to gain access from the roof of a nearby building?” As soon as I said the words I realized that once again I should probably have kept quiet. Now I was actually putting into his head a way to pin the crime on Bo Kei. And if he did, I couldn’t save her without admitting that I knew that she was safely in the settlement house. I’ve always liked to appear clever, I suppose, or at least to prove I’m equal to any man. It’s one of my failings.

He looked surprised. “You think that’s possible? That never occurred to me. You might be right. You hear that, O’Byrne. The young lady suggests it might have been possible to access the roof from another building.”

“Have to have been a darned good jumper,” O’Byrne said.

I knew it could be done, but this time I said nothing.

“Let’s take a look, anyway,” the captain said. He paused outside the Golden Dragon Emporium and looked up and down the street, which still remained unnaturally empty. “Where is everybody, for God’s sake?” he demanded. “O’Byrne, go and round up someone who can interpret for me. I want to question the old woman and also the servants when Hanratty brings them in. They’ll sure as hell all claim that they can’t speak English.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” the constable said, looking dubiously at all those closed and shuttered doors.

“Start with On Leong headquarters,” the captain said. “There has to be someone inside and they’d lose face if they didn’t come to the aid of a top man like Lee Sing Tai. Remind them of that.”

O’Byrne sighed as if he suspected it wasn’t going to be an easy task. Captain Kear turned and stomped up the steps to Lee’s apartment. The wailing had stopped and the place was now eerily silent. The old woman was no longer on the sofa. Captain Kear started up the next flight of stairs and I followed, having not been told I couldn’t. This flight opened onto a landing with several doors. One of them was open, revealing a large and ornate bed beyond.

“He definitely slept on the roof last night, did he?” I asked. “Not in his bedroom?”

“How would I know?” the captain said shortly. “When I got here the front door was open as you see it and there was only that hideous old crone making a racket on the sofa. There was no way of getting through to her.”

So the wife was already wailing when Captain Kear got here. He wasn’t the bringer of the bad news. That meant that the whole neighborhood had heard about Lee’s death and everyone was lying low before the police arrived. And where did Bobby Lee fit into this? Had he been around and also quietly slipped away when he heard the news?

As Captain Kear started up the next flight of stairs, I nipped across the hall to take a look at that bedroom. It was as overfurnished and as ornate as the living room downstairs had been—the huge carved mahogany bed, cabinets, a vast wardrobe, and in one corner a shrine, containing a statue of a goddess with more arms than necessary. There were sticks of incense in holders around it and a strange, cloyingly sweet smell lingered in the room, making me want to sneeze. I backed out hastily and hurried to catch up with the captain.

Seventeen

A strong breeze was blowing as I came out onto the roof, bringing in more ominous clouds from the south. It really did seem as if it was going to rain and spoil Sid’s party decorations. There was a flat area of roof ahead of me, bordered to the right by a brick wall where it joined the much taller On Leong building. A brass bedstead was the only item of furniture on the flat part of the roof, and the bedsheets flapped in the wind. Captain Kear was prowling the perimeter, moving distinctly warily and peering down at intervals.

“Couldn’t access it from here,” he was muttering. “Nor from here.”

He made his way down the edge of the roof that overlooked Pell Street, where Lee had fallen to his death, then reached the back of the building where there was a gap between this building and the next. He paused. “I suppose it would be possible for a fit person with plenty of guts to jump across here,” he said, “or to have brought a plank to walk across. Okay, when O’Byrne gets here, I’ll have him find out who owns that building and how easy it is to get up to their roof.”

While he peered down and muttered to himself, I was noticing something quite different. The tar on the roof had become soft in the heat. There were distinct footprints near the edge of the roof—some of them small and dainty, but another set larger, and with deep indentations, like a workingman or laborer’s hobnailed boots.

The small feet could be explained, of course, as Bo Kei had told me herself that she had fled this way. But I could detect that same print facing in both directions—coming and going, so to speak. Had she reached the edge, changed her mind about attempting that formidable leap, retreated, thought it over, then finally plucked up courage to do it? All possible, but for a policeman looking for clues it would spell out that she came, killed Lee, and then left by the same route. Of course I knew that she had a perfect alibi for the crime—she was safely locked away in the settlement house on Elizabeth Street.

And as for the large hobnailed boots—who could they possibly belong to? Most of the Chinese I had seen wore soft cotton slippers, and they worked in laundries or restaurants or apparently cigar factories—no place where heavy boots would be needed. And the footprints were large too—when the Chinese men I had seen had been smaller than me. There was no way of knowing when the big prints had been made, but it would seem to be recently, judging by the lack of dust and grime over them, compared to other areas of the roof.

I joined Captain Kear and peered down over the edge. It was a long way down, but I’d developed a good head for heights, clambering on clifftops on the Irish coast as a child. I could see the fire escape on the next building. That was the way Bo Kei had escaped. She must have felt desperate to have attempted it. Even the climb from the end of the fire escape to the ground looked daunting to me.

“There doesn’t seem to be a door opening onto that roof over there,” Captain Kear said. “I don’t see how anyone could get up there. And as for taking that leap across—well, those Chinese with their little short legs would have a hard time doing that. And I wouldn’t want to try it myself. No, let’s assume that our killer gained access by another means—maybe climbed in via one of the balconies. I expect they keep the windows open on hot nights, and if the bodyguards down below weren’t completely vigilant or they don’t work at night, then maybe a daring kind of guy could climb up the carving on the side of the building and in through the balcony.”

“Then that would rule out the missing bride, wouldn’t it?” I said. “A woman out alone on the street—especially a Chinese woman—would surely have been noticed.”

“That’s true enough.” He paced around the roof, head down like Sherlock Holmes, hoping to find a clue of some sort. He straightened up and pointed excitedly. “Look at those small footprints. Your runaway bride, huh? She did come this way, after all.”

“If she lived in this house, then she might have been up on the roof at any time,” I pointed out. “She probably slept up here and she might have wandered around at times.”

“Not near the edge like that. It’s not natural.”

“She might have been looking for a way to escape.”

“Hey, would you look at that—I was right!” He pointed excitedly at the adjoining rooftop. “See that. It looks like a scrap of white fabric, caught on the brickwork. What’s the betting she tore her dress when she jumped or climbed across.”

“That could just as easily be a scrap of laundry that blew away in the breeze,” I said. “Besides, this doesn’t make sense. If the young woman fled and can’t be found, do you really think she’d risk coming back to the place she fled from? And do you really think a delicate little Chinese girl would climb up there and make that leap? I know I wouldn’t.”

He sucked in a breath and nodded, grudgingly. “Yeah, you have a point there, Miss Murphy. I’d sure like to make her the one who killed the old guy. Perfect motive. Shipped from her homeland against her will. Doesn’t want to marry him, so the only way out is to kill him. That would satisfy the tongs nicely.”

“I’m sure there are other people with a good motive,” I said.

He looked at me strangely. “You seem mighty keen to prove it’s not a girl you’ve never even met.”

“I’m just trying to think things through logically,” I said, trying to keep my face from turning red and my expression suitably distant. “And logic tells me that a delicate young girl wouldn’t want to come back here once she’d fled and certainly wouldn’t have the strength to kill a man and hurl him down to the street.”

He paused long enough to take this in; then he said, “We need to find her anyway. Maybe she can shed some light on this business.”

“She’s been gone a week now,” I said. “She could be anywhere—miles away.”

“When O’Byrne gets back, he can take down her particulars. And we have her photograph downstairs. We’ll put out a bulletin for her. It should be easy enough to spot a Chinese woman. Not too many of them in New York, are there?”

“If she hasn’t already left New York,” I said.

“Then someone will have spotted her on a train. We’ll find her, don’t you worry. Ten to one she paid someone to do the dirty deed for her—those bigger footprints, maybe.”

“Paid someone? She’d just arrived from China. How would she have gotten her hands on any money?” I demanded.

“Stole it from the old guy. Stole something and pawned it.”

“I’ve already tried all the pawnshops,” I said. “She hasn’t pawned anything.”

“You’re a thorough little thing, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Too bad you’re not a man. I could use you at the precinct.”

“You already have some female detectives,” I said. “Mrs. Goodwin is a friend of mine.”

“They are just glorified matrons,” he said. “They might be useful at times, but the last thing we want is women on the force.”

I was wise enough not to pursue this subject. Captain Kear and I were not going to see eye to eye about women.

“Where the devil is O’Byrne with that interpreter?” he snapped. “Surely he can find one damned person who can translate for us?”

Again I was about to chide him for his offensive language in front of a woman, but thought better of it. I had been so used to Daniel, who always watched his language in front of me and apologized if he uttered a curse word by mistake. Clearly this captain was not Daniel’s equal in refinement or intellect. Standing on that windswept rooftop in this alien part of the city, a feeling of longing for Daniel swept through me. I was so glad this case was over and I wouldn’t have to deceive him when I saw him again.

Captain Kear had gone ahead of me to the stairwell and began to descend. I hurried to catch up with him. As we went down into the darkness, we heard feet coming up from the floor below.

“Ah, that will be O’Byrne now,” he said. “Up here, man,” he called. “Have you got us an interpreter yet?”

Instead we heard loud commands barked in Chinese and Bobby Lee’s face appeared, coming up the stairs toward us.

Eighteen

Bobby Lee recoiled in surprise when he saw the policeman.

“Wah! What happening here? What you doing in my father’s house? You got search warrant?”

“Hello, Bobby. Haven’t seen you around for a while,” Captain Kear said pleasantly. “I take it you haven’t heard the news yet?”

“News? What news? I just came from Brooklyn. Is this a raid?”

“No raid, Bobby. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Lee is dead.”

“What? How he die? Heart attack?”

“He fell from the roof.”

I was watching his face. He seemed shocked enough, but the moment I saw him, it struck me that he, of anyone, had a good motive for killing Lee Sing Tai. He might well be able to convince an American court that he was the rightful son and heir. And if the bride was returned to Mr. Lee and had produced a real son, then he’d stand to lose everything. As Frederick had pointed out, he could even be sent back to China.

“He fell from roof?” He shook his head violently. “Not possible. He don’t like heights. He would never go near the edge of roof. Never look down.”

“His bed is up there,” Captain Kear said. “Maybe he walked in his sleep and tripped over the edge.”

Bobby Lee considered this, then shook his head again. “Walk in sleep? No! He not fall,” he said. “Someone push him. Someone kill him. Hip Sing do this. They been waiting to get even.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Bobby,” Captain Kear said. “We don’t want to start another tong war unnecessarily, do we? If there’s out-and-out fighting, then your businesses suffer as much as theirs. And you’d be high on their list to be assassinated first.”

Bobby was scowling. “You are supposed to look after us. How this man get to my father, huh? How come police no see? He have servants. He have bodyguards. And his wife—what about wife? Or new bride? What does this bride say, huh? Ah, so. I see now. Maybe she kill him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She don’t like it here. She don’t want to be his concubine. She want to go home.”

“His new bride is missing and until a few minutes ago we couldn’t get any sense out of the old wife,” Captain Kear said with a note of superiority in his voice.

“New wife missing? When this happen?” Bobby asked.

I realized with some satisfaction that Lee Sing Tai had kept this news from his paper son. Maybe wives were supposed to keep to their own quarters, so Bobby hadn’t noticed anything was wrong—which would make his motive even stronger. He thought the new wife was still around and might conceive a son at any moment.

“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 power 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.”

“You will see that Frederick Lee came back here for revenge,” Bobby said. “Perhaps he and the girl have planned this together. Perhaps this woman here is also part of the plot.” And he pointed at me.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I am a well-respected private investigator. Mr. Lee hired me to find this runaway girl. It’s as simple as that.”

“Then why you not find her yet?” Bobby Lee demanded.

“I had only just begun to look,” I said. “Why did your father not find her for five days before he hired me? I’m sure he had plenty of men at his disposal.”

I shifted uneasily on the hard seat of the sofa. I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about being here, not just physically but mentally too. I longed to be back in the security of Patchin Place. And I still wanted to meet Frederick Lee before Captain Kear’s men caught up with him.

“Do you need me any longer?” I asked. “I’ve told you all I can about the missing girl and I’d like to go home.”

“So I can’t persuade you to go on looking for the girl?”

“The man who hired me is dead,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, she is free to go wherever she wants to.”

“I’ll need to know where to find you,” the captain said.

I opened my purse. “I have a card in here somewhere,” I said, reluctant to hand my card to a policeman, who would take it back to a precinct where Daniel had been observed only two days ago. I could just picture his sharp eyes picking out my name. “But at the moment I am not living at home. My house is being redecorated, so let me write down the address of my neighbors for you.”

Loud noises from down below announced that someone was coming up the stairs. The houseboy and an older Chinese man in cotton blouse and baggy pants were muscled into the room by a couple of unsavory-looking characters, all of them complaining and yelling loudly.

“These men have brought you houseboy and cook,” the interpreter said.

“Tell them ‘Thank you,’” Captain Kear said.

He did so. They waited and muttered something to the interpreter.

“They expect their reward for finding these men,” the interpreter said cautiously.

“Tell them they should consider themselves lucky I’m not questioning them as suspects in this,” the captain replied. “And then tell them to beat it before I change my mind.”

The interpreter translated, most unwillingly by the look of it, and the two men renewed their protestations while the houseboy started wailing.

“Quiet!” Captain Kear shouted. “Or I’ll arrest the lot of you.”

“What the devil’s going on up there?” a voice boomed. “Are you up there, Kear?”

I recognized the voice instantly.

Twenty

I looked around the room, like a trapped animal. I even wondered if I could run up the stairs and successfully make that jump across to the next building, if I hitched my skirts high enough. But even as thoughts of flight went through my head, Daniel came bounding up the stairs, around the screen, and into the room.

“What’s going on in here, Kear?” he demanded. “Some idiot comes rushing into headquarters babbling about dead Chinamen and tong wars starting again, and then one of your men arrives to request the police doctor and photographer and fingerprint kit, so I thought I’d better come down and take a look for myself.”

“It’s okay, Sullivan. It’s all under control,” Captain Kear said.

“That’s not what it sounded like from downstairs,” Daniel said. “It sounded like chaos to me.”

“It’s just a routine Chinatown murder. Nothing unusual. Besides, it’s Sixth Precinct business and I’m handling it.” Captain Kear gave Daniel a long, hard stare.

“Then why were they babbling about tong wars starting up again?” Daniel asked. He looked around the room. “If this thing is going to get out of hand, we need to stop it right now and if you need extra men to do that—”

He stopped in midsentence. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he demanded.

“You know Miss Murphy?” Captain Kear asked.

“Know her? In two weeks’ time she’s going to be my wife.”

“Well, I’m damned. You omitted to mention that little fact, Miss Murphy. A husband-and-wife detective team—how convenient.” Captain Kear grinned. “So is she going to help you solve your cases, Sullivan?”

“Miss Murphy has told you she’s an investigator?” Daniel asked.

“She has. In fact she was working for the man who has just been killed.”

“Working for him?” Daniel was now glaring at me.

“Daniel, that’s not how it sounds,” I began, but he held up a warning hand. “We’ll discuss this later, Molly. So who was this man?”

“Lee Sing Tai. I take it you’ve heard of him.”

“Lee Sing Tai—oh, Mr. Lee and I are well acquainted. Protection racket, drugs, prostitution, and the On Leong tong. Not a very nice man, was he, our Mr. Lee? I’m just surprised he lived as long as he did. So someone finally put a bullet through him, did they?”

“Pushed him off his own roof, actually,” Captain Kear said.

“And how did anyone manage to get into his house to throw him off the roof?” Daniel demanded. “Don’t these On Leong types usually keep a pack of bodyguards around?”

“I’ve sent someone to find the bodyguards,” Captain Kear said, “but these two are the servants that have just been brought in. They’d run off before I got here.”

“Run off before their master was killed or after?” Daniel asked, looking at the still-trembling men.

“Well?” Captain Kear barked. “You heard the policeman. What have you two got to say for yourselves? Do you realize that by running off I’m going to think that you killed your master?”

This was duly translated and a great wail came from the houseboy.

“I no do this terrible thing,” he said in English. “It must be demon who do it. How he get in master’s house? I sleep on my mat in hallway, same as always. Nobody come past me. This I swear.”

“And your master slept on the roof?” Captain Kear asked.

“On hot nights.”

“Why didn’t you sleep up there beside him?”

“He no like me beside him. He say he need me to guard hallway—like watchdog,” the boy said. “I swear nobody got into master’s house. All doors were locked, same as always.”

“And what about you?” Daniel pointed at the cook. “Who are you?”

“This man is the cook,” the interpreter said after the cook had given a long speech with much hand waving. “He says he sleeps in little space behind kitchen. Far from front of house. He does not hear anything all night. This morning he gets up and starts to make breakfast when houseboy comes and says that master is dead and policemen are coming. They are frightened that policemen will think they did this terrible thing, so they run off.”

“Not very bright, was it?” Daniel said drily. “By that very act you make yourselves appear guilty. And who are these other people?”

“I Mr. Lee’s son,” Bobby said. “And this his number one wife.”

“Paper son,” Captain Kear corrected. “Bobby Lee. You may have come across that name too.”

“Ah, yes, Bobby Lee. Familiar name from the last tong war. You’ve been out of the picture for a while, haven’t you, Bobby?”

“I run Father’s factory in Brooklyn,” Bobby said. “I do what Father want, like good son.”

“I’m sure you do.” Daniel smirked, then pointed at the other men who had now moved off to one side, hoping to slip around the screen unnoticed. “And what about these two? Are they the bodyguards?”

“They are On Leong men. They found the cook and houseboy for us.”

“Nice work, boys,” Daniel said. “Did you tip them yet?” When the captain frowned but didn’t answer, Daniel reached into his pocket and handed them some coins, which the men accepted with cupped hands, bowing low.

“You can go now,” Daniel said. If I hadn’t felt so sick and scared, I would have been amused by the way that Daniel had simply taken over against Captain Kear’s wishes. It was clear in police hierarchy that he was the superior officer.

One of the men muttered something in Chinese. Daniel looked at the interpreter.

“This man asks if Hip Sing did this terrible thing like everyone is saying.”

“Definitely not,” Captain Kear snapped the answer. “You can tell them this does not look like the work of Hip Sing and we are pretty sure who the culprit was. He will soon be arrested. You will see that American justice is fair and swift.”

“So you’ve already figured this one out, have you?” Daniel asked.

“I think we’re well on our way,” Captain Kear said. “Old Lee had just had a new bride brought in from China.”

“A new bride? For him? At his age?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Captain Kear said. “They’re vain, these old Chinamen, and money buys anything over there.”

“So where is she?”

“She’s run off and your young lady here, Miss Murphy, was hired to find her and bring her back. And then there’s Lee’s former secretary, Frederick Lee, who was fired yesterday for putting his hands on the new bride. Either one is a good suspect—not involved with the tongs in any way. In fact I’m inclined to think that they planned it together. They certainly had time to get very pally on their train trip across Canada together. And he’s young and she’s young and Lee was definitely past his prime.”

“Have you spoken with Frederick Lee yet?”

“I’ve sent men to bring him in for questioning.”

“And where’s the body now?”

“Still lying in the street. I’m waiting for the doctor and the morgue wagon to arrive. I thought I’d question the people in the household and get a jump on things while we’re waiting.”

Daniel nodded and I realized that the other man was seeking his approval. “What did you need the fingerprint powder for? You think there might be prints on his back from the man who pushed him?”

Captain Kear scowled and Daniel laughed. “I’m pulling your leg, man. Where’s your sense of humor?”

Captain Kear’s expression indicated that he didn’t find it very funny. “That cabinet in the corner appears to have been tampered with,” he said primly. “That’s why I requested the fingerprint powder.”

“Tampered with?”

“Papers rifled through and out of order as though someone was looking for something in a hurry.”

“Have you been through it yet?”

“Give me a chance, I’ve only been here half an hour at the most. Besides, it’s all in Chinese characters. I’ll need someone to read it to me.”

“Then let’s leave it for later. I suggest we station your constable on duty to keep an eye on the place and go and take a look at the body. Where is it?”

“Around the corner on Pell Street. But let me remind you again that this is my precinct, Sullivan. My case. You’re not just coming in to take over from me, even if you are officially my superior.”

“Nobody wants to step on your toes, Kear,” Daniel said easily. “I’m just doing what I can to help—throwing in a little expertise so that we don’t find a full-fledged tong war on our hands again. You have to admit that you’re still wet behind the ears when it comes to detective work, right?”

“But I do know all about the streets around here. I know how things operate.”

“I’m well aware that you know how things operate, Kear,” Daniel said. The two men stared at each other like dogs who have just encountered each other unexpectedly. There was a tension I didn’t quite understand. “But we’re wasting time. We’ve got a body on a busy street and we don’t want it lying around all day, do we? Where’s your man to guard the room?”

“I sent him to find Frederick Lee.”

“Don’t you have more than one man working on this?”

“Of course, but I’ve a team of them keeping the crowd away from the body, and the others are rounding up suspects.” Captain Kear got to his feet. The tension was now palpable.

“You understand?” he barked at the people in the room. “Mrs. Lee should go back to her bedroom. Bobby, I want you to leave the place, and nobody touches anything in here at all. Understand that, boy?” He gestured at the wide-eyed houseboy. “No cleaning, no dusting, nothing. You stay in kitchen with the cook and don’t touch anything or I’ll have you locked up.”

The interpreter translated the instructions into Chinese. Mrs. Lee said something.

“She wants to know if she can have her breakfast,” he said. “And she wants to know when she can see her husband’s body.”

“She can have her breakfast if she wants it and we’ll let her know when the body can be released to the funeral parlor.”

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.”

Sarah put a hand on my arm. “Is this wise, Molly? You’re going to marry a policeman and yet you are deliberately and knowingly going against the law.”

“But I don’t think she killed anyone, Sarah, and I really don’t think she’ll get a fair trial. You should have heard that Captain Kear concocting the perfect case against Bo Kei and a young man.”

“Captain Kear? Oh, we know all about him. As crooked as they come. He even suggested to us that we pay him protection money. As if we have any spare money.”

“So what did he say?”

She smiled. “Luckily one of our workers at the time happened to be the son of the New York state attorney general. It was suggested that he leave us alone.”

“It’s good to have friends in high places,” I said. “But I shouldn’t stand around talking. I should remove Bo Kei before the police come looking for her.”

“I hope you are not taking too great a risk, Molly. You’ll be harboring a fugitive, won’t you? You can go to jail for that. And think of the disgrace for your future bridegroom.”

I hesitated. What she was saying was actually true. I had already incurred Daniel’s wrath once today. Could I knowingly take this risk? But if I didn’t, Captain Kear’s men would drag her off in no time, and once they had her and Frederick in custody, they wouldn’t bother to look any further for the real killer.

“I have to do this,” I said. “Sid and Gus have a strong sense of justice. They’ll understand and want to help me.”

With that I went up the stairs. I tapped on the door and thought I heard scurrying as I entered. Bo Kei was perched warily on the edge of her bed, as if poised for flight, but her face broke into a smile when she saw me.

“Missie Molly?” Bo Kei said. “You have found Frederick for me? You will take us to safety?”

“I’m afraid it’s not as easy as that, Bo Kei.” I sat down beside her. “Something terrible happened last night. Lee Sing Tai was murdered—pushed off his roof.”

“Oh!” She put her hand to her mouth in horror. “Last night? Somebody killed him last night?”

“That’s right.”

She sat there, hand over her mouth, just staring as if she was taking it in.

“But this is good news for me, isn’t it?” she said shakily. “Now Lee Sing Tai is dead, I am free. I do not belong to anyone. I can go with Frederick.”

“It’s not good news, Bo Kei. The police think that you and Frederick may have had something to do with his death.”

She looked horrified. “Me and Frederick? How do they even think that we know each other? We have not spoken since I was delivered to Lee Sing Tai’s house. You did not say anything to them to make them think this, did you?”

“Of course not. It was Bobby Lee who suggested that Frederick might be the murderer, because his father had dismissed him from his position. And because he was attracted to you. He suggested you two had planned the crime together.”

“Bobby Lee said this? He is a wicked man. He tried to force me to do a terrible thing, Miss Molly. He wanted my body for himself. He say his father is too old and he can give me the son instead. Make his father happy. Father will never know. Now he wants revenge because I pushed him away.”

“I believe you,” I said. “Bobby Lee is a most despicable man.”

“Then I will go to your police and tell them that Frederick and I are innocent. The nuns say that American law is fair and just.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Bo Kei. Not all policemen are fair and just, in fact I am told that the policeman handling this case is known to be crooked. He would concoct a case against you, because it would satisfy everyone and look good for him.” I looked at her terrified face with sympathy. “The fact that you ran away makes you a suspect in the eyes of the police, Bo. There will be policemen all over the city looking for you.”

“Then I am not safe here.”

“No.”

“And Frederick—are they looking for him?”

“They have already found Frederick and the police have gone to question him. I’m worried for him, Bo Kei.”

“Then what must I do?”

“We must hide you somewhere for now. This is exactly the sort of place that the police will come hunting for you. I have friends who have connections outside of the city. Maybe they will find somewhere for you to hide. I wish I had been able to warn Frederick; then we could have spirited the two of you away.”

“He will go to jail now? They will say he murdered Lee Sing Tai and they will execute him?”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” I said.

“But he didn’t do it, I swear to this.”

“You can’t swear to it, Bo. You weren’t with him last night. You can believe in his innocence based on his character, but that’s not the same as swearing.”

“I understand. But I know in my heart he is not the killer. They will find out who really killed Lee Sing Tai, won’t they?”

“American policeman are smart and I’m sure they could find enough clues to point to the real killer if they want to. The problem is that they may not want to. They don’t want to do anything that might start another tong war, you see.”

“So it is like China here. Magistrates decide who they want to be guilty and nobody can say anything or they will be guilty too.”

“I hope it’s not quite as bad as that,” I said. “I’ll do my best, Bo Kei. My future husband is an important policeman and he is not crooked. I will try to make him find the real killer and to have Frederick set free.”

“You are wonderful woman, Missie Molly.” She reached out and shyly touched my hand.

I didn’t feel like a wonderful person. I felt sick and scared. I wasn’t at all sure that I was doing the right thing. But I needed to buy time. “We must go now, Bo Kei.”

“We can take Annie with us?” she asked. “She also will not be safe here.”

“I don’t think we can take Annie,” I said. “She’s sick, and I can’t bring someone with consumption into my friends’ home. Besides, she has nothing to worry about from the police. She’s not involved in this at all and she’s in good hands here.”

“No, the police will see Chinese girl and make her answer their questions. Maybe they will hurt her.”

“Don’t worry. The ladies who run this place come from important families. They will tell the police that Annie is not the girl they look for. The police will listen to them. Annie will be quite safe, I promise.”

I could see her thinking this through, wanting to say something, but not daring to. Finally she said, “I have to say good-bye to her.”

“That may not be wise, Bo Kei,” I said. “She should not know that you are going with me. The less she knows, the better. If she doesn’t know where you have gone, then the police won’t be able to get it out of her, will they?”

“You say police not harm her!” Bo Kei wailed. “You promise.”

“They won’t harm her, but they may ask her questions.”

“Then we must take her too,” Bo Kei insisted. “She can sleep in my bed. I don’t mind. I am strong. I will not catch this disease. Please, Missie Molly. We can’t leave her here.”

“We have to. I’m sorry, Bo Kei, but she will be well looked after here and the police won’t bother her.”

“I don’t know.” Bo Kei still chewed at her fingertips, her face an agony of indecision.

“Are you worried that the police might mistake her for you? Or is it because of her previous connection with Lee Sing Tai? Don’t worry. The police don’t need to know about that, and the workers here will testify that she has been lying at death’s door all week. So let’s go quietly now, Bo Kei. We’ll ask Sarah to tell Annie that you’ve gone away. It really is much safer for us all.”

She shook her head vehemently. “Then I not go either.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re the one who is in danger, not Annie. Come on.” But she shook herself loose from my hand.

“I must speak with her before I go. I promise I’ll not tell her that I go with you. Just a few words. I must.”

“Very well,” I sighed. “But you realize you may be signing your own death warrant.”

She shook her head. “No. Annie would never betray me. Never. She is my family, and family takes care of each other.”

With that she marched defiantly to Annie’s room.

Twenty-two

The cab was waiting outside the front door. I bundled Bo Kei in, her face hidden behind a shawl, and we set off for Patchin Place. Gus greeted me with a worried face when I knocked at the front door. “Molly, where have you been? We were so worried when we arose this morning and found your bed empty. And then when you didn’t return and didn’t return we thought something must have happened to you.” She broke off as she noticed Bo Kei, standing behind me.

“Something has happened,” I said. “Let us inside and I’ll explain everything.”

We sat in the conservatory, where they always ate breakfast, while I told the whole story. Bo Kei sat beside me, looking at her hands, saying nothing.

“I know I’m taking a horrible risk,” I said at last. “If you don’t wish to be involved, then I’ll hide Bo Kei away in my house across the street and you can pretend we never came here.”

There was silence. I saw a look pass between Sid and Gus.

“Why don’t you take Miss Bo up to your room so that we can discuss this,” Sid said. I picked up the restrained civility in her voice.

“Very well.” I got to my feet. “I’ll show you my room, Bo.”

She touched my arm. “Missie Molly, I don’t want to cause trouble. You can take me back to the house. I’m sure police will believe that I had nothing to do with Mr. Lee’s death.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure it will be all right,” I said. “My friends are naturally being cautious, but they are very good people and I know they will want to help.”

I led her up to my bedroom on the third floor.

“You have pretty room,” she said wistfully. “You are lucky to live here with friends.”

“I don’t actually live here,” I said. “I am staying here until my wedding. Then I will move with my bridegroom into that house directly across the street.”

“You get married?”

“In two weeks’ time.”

“He is good man? Did you choose him or does your family arrange this?”

“I chose him,” I said. “And he is a good man. A little difficult sometimes, but good.”

“I am very happy for you.” Her face grew wistful again. “Frederick is a good man, I think. I am sure I could be happy with him, if only.…”

“It will all work out right, I’m sure.” I touched her shoulder gently. “Now just wait here until I talk this through with my friends. They have been very good to me and I don’t want to put them in any danger.”

“I should never have run away,” she said flatly. “I should have accepted my fate, as we are taught in the Chinese way. For us there is no question of happiness, only duty. This man paid my father a bride price for me. I should have accepted that I belonged to Lee Sing Tai.”

“In America they say that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” I said. “Nobody here would expect you to face a life of misery with that old man, his wife, and his son making advances to you. And the knowledge that he’d send you to one of his brothels if you didn’t give him a son, when he is clearly too old to have children … no, you definitely did the right thing, Bo Kei. It’s just a pity that somebody chose this moment to kill Mr. Lee.”

As I came down the stairs Daniel’s words did pass through my mind—what looks like a chain of coincidences usually turns out to be linked. Did her running away somehow lead to Mr. Lee’s death? When I thought about it, I came to a sad conclusion. The only person who would have felt himself forced to act at that moment would indeed have been Frederick Lee.

As I arrived back in the kitchen, Sid and Gus were standing, heads together and talking quietly. I felt my stomach do an uneasy lurch. Had I really stretched our friendship too far this time?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should never have brought her here, but I had to act quickly, before the police raided the settlement house. I’ll go upstairs and fetch her and take her over to my place. You can claim no knowledge of her if the police ever question you.”

“Oh, no, Molly, don’t misunderstand us,” Sid said. “Of course we want to help. It’s just that—” She paused and looked across at Gus for reassurance again. “Molly, are you quite sure that she is innocent? This is a girl who has already proven that she is prepared to take tremendous risks and is remarkably agile. She leaped across rooftops once. What was there to stop her from repeating the action?”

“She was in the settlement house last night,” I said.

“I’ve been to those places,” Sid said. “People are always coming and going. She could certainly have slipped out if she’d wanted to.”

“And she does have such a perfect motive,” Gus added. “She could never be safe or free while the old Chinaman was alive. These people are so different from us and it is not easy to read their expressions. How can you tell if she is telling the truth? Even our own kind can sometimes lie and deceive us.”

“This is all true,” I said. “And the answer is that I don’t know if she is innocent. But I don’t see how she could have done it alone.” As I said it I thought of those dainty footprints in the soft tar on the rooftop. “But you’ve seen how petite she is. How could she have the strength to hurl a grown man to his death?”

“Then perhaps her lover Frederick is not the nice, innocent boy he seemed to you,” Sid said. “You’re a kind person, Molly Murphy. You’ve let people use you before now.”

“I know that too,” I said. “But I also know that my Celtic sixth sense has often served me well, and my gut feeling is that Bo Kei is innocent. If another policeman was on the case—if my Daniel would only take it over—I’d be happy to leave the whole thing in the hands of the police. But you haven’t seen this Captain Kear. He is brash and arrogant and I could see that he’d already made up his mind that Bo Kei and Frederick are the guilty parties. He won’t even bother to go on looking for the true murderer.”

Sid glanced across at Gus and sighed. “We want to help, Molly. We feel angry at the way this girl has been treated. Of course we can’t condone the buying and selling of women.”

“Sid even thought she was quite justified in killing him,” Gus said with a grin, “but you know that Sid sometimes does get a little heated on the subject of women’s rights.”

I shook my head. “No. I’ve just realized that I can’t leave her here. I know she hadn’t exactly been charged with a crime yet, but I can’t let you run the risk of harboring a fugitive. I’ll take her over to my house. She can stay up in the attic and I’ll take her food and drink until we can decide what to do with her.”

“And if your bridegroom decides to make a sudden inspection or brings back the paper-hanger, what then? He’d be furious if he knew you were even working again.”

I sighed. “I’m afraid he’s already discovered that much. He burst into the room at Mr. Lee’s house. And believe me, he was furious. I was tempted to tell him that I knew of the whereabouts of the Chinese girl, but while that Captain Kear is in charge of the case, I just couldn’t risk it. They were already talking about throwing Frederick in the Tombs to soften him up. What if they did that to Bo Kei too?”

Gus slipped her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t get upset, Molly. She can stay here. We don’t want to do anything to cause friction between you and Daniel. I’ll make up a bed for her in my studio. Then she’ll be well hidden away when the guests come for the party tonight.”

“Oh, the party.” I started to laugh. “So much has happened today that I completely forgot. Did your lanterns survive the wind so far, Sid?”

Sid glanced out of the window. “So far, but the sky does not look too promising, does it? We must make alternative plans in case we have to move the whole thing inside.”

“Candles,” Gus said firmly. “We’ll need hundreds of candles. Paper lanterns are just too dangerous, but we do need to set the mood. What a pity we took down that big chandelier in the dining room when we moved in here. Do you think we still have it in the attic, Sid? Maybe we could rig it up again.”

“No time, dearest. We have so much to do as it is.”

“Put me to work,” I said. “I’ll do anything I can.”

“We could send Molly out to every candlemaker in the Village,” Gus said.

“The bad weather may pass over,” Sid said. “We may be able to hold it in the garden and use our paper lanterns after all. It’s more important to make sure the ice is delivered or our tubs of ice cream will be a disaster.”

And they were off, discussing party provisions and whether they should serve the fruit salads in individual rock melons. I found it hard to think of domestic details while a girl waited up in that room.

“I’ll go and make up a bed in your studio then, Gus,” I said. “And if I may, can I take up some food and drink to Bo Kei? I don’t know what she’s had to eat today.”

Then, of course, they fussed around, suggesting all kinds of delicacies that might tempt a Chinese palate. Sid even wanted to get out her Chinese cookbook and see how to make bird’s nest soup. I stopped them and took up a cheese sandwich and an orange. The way she devoured them made me think that she hadn’t had breakfast. I then explained about the party, how busy we’d be, and how she must stay well hidden when the guests arrived. I found her some books, although I wasn’t sure whether she had learned to read much English. She was more interested in the dolls that Gus had sitting on a corner shelf and I was reminded again that she was little more than a child herself.

Then I went down to join in the preparations. As with everything that Sid and Gus did, they threw themselves into it wholeheartedly. Some might say that they went overboard. By evening the tables in the conservatory were groaning under the weight of hams and cold chicken and salads and exotic cheeses. There was asparagus in aspic and oysters and potted shrimp, fresh fruits of all kinds, including pineapples, which I had never seen before, cake stands of tiny French pastries, and tubs of ice cream keeping cool for the right moment. Then there were drinks of all descriptions—fruit punches and chilled white wines for the ladies, claret and stout for the men. They had even borrowed the young man who normally worked in their favorite tavern to act as barman. There were Japanese lanterns and banks of candles waiting to be lit, flowers on the tables, and greenery trailing from the picture rails.

As I stood and surveyed the scene and thought of the cost of it all, it dawned on me that this was all for me. The thought was so overwhelming that I felt tears springing into my eyes. They had been good friends since they took me under their wing at a difficult moment in my life and they had constantly rescued me and cheered me up ever since. And I—I had repaid them by constantly rushing around and making demands on them. I watched them standing there, admiring their handiwork, and I came to a sudden decision.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I want you two to be my bridesmaids.”

They looked around. “But I thought we’d been through this. Daniel doesn’t approve of us. His mother wouldn’t approve of us.”

“I approve of you,” I said. “You are my dear friends, closer to me than family. If you are not at my side, then the wedding won’t be perfect.”

“Well, if you insist…” Gus looked pink and pleased.

“Only one stipulation,” I said. “You are not to dress as French maids or nuns or anything else outlandish.”

“Spoilsport.” Sid laughed. “Don’t worry, we shall not disgrace you. We were both brought up to behave properly in polite society and you shall help us select the most demure of dresses. And you’ll find that Daniel’s mother will be overwhelmed by having one of the Boston Walcotts in the bridal procession.”

I laughed too. “You’re right. She’ll be thrilled.”

Twenty-three

At six o’clock the heavens suddenly opened and we rushed into the garden, frantically trying to carry in furniture and rescue the lanterns. We were soaked to the skin by the time we had finished.

“Look at us,” Gus said, laughing as water trickled down her face. “Talk about orphans of the storm. Let us just pray that our guests don’t arrive early.”

You can see why these two women were so dear to me. Most young ladies would be mortified that their coiffure was ruined. Sid and Gus were simply amused.

“I think we should sample the punch to fortify ourselves, don’t you?” Sid poured us each a generous glass.

I went up to change and visited Bo Kei on the way. We had been having such good fun that I had forgotten for a moment that she was virtually a prisoner up there in Gus’s studio. She eyed me hopefully as I came in.

“You have news of Frederick?” she asked.

Then I felt guilty that I hadn’t done more. But in all honesty, there was nothing I could do at this moment, other than keep Bo Kei safe and out of Captain Kear’s clutches. I could hardly go to the Sixth Precinct and petition on Frederick’s behalf without revealing my own involvement. And Daniel had made it quite clear that I was to stay away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve heard nothing yet. They will probably keep him in a cell overnight. They do that sometimes, hoping that a prisoner will break down and confess. But Frederick is innocent. We know that and I’m sure the police will realize it too.”

“Poor Frederick. That he should suffer for me,” she said. “Surely the American police are smart and they will soon discover who really killed Lee Sing Tai.”

“I hope so,” I said, not wanting to tell her that Captain Kear was probably not going to investigate when he had a bird in hand, so to speak.

“Who could have killed my master, I wonder?” she said, staring out of the window at the rain.

“Do you have any ideas on the subject?”

“Me?” she asked sharply. “How would I have ideas about this? I know nothing about his life. I was not allowed to leave the house. I was sent to my room when he had guests. I only meet wife number one, and Bobby Lee.”

“And what about them?” I asked. “Could either of them have killed him?”

She looked shocked. “Kill their benefactor?” Then I saw her considering this. “Wife number one could not kill him,” she said. “She is too frail. Besides, he is her protector in a foreign land. With Lee Sing Tai gone, what will happen to her?”

This was true enough. I had witnessed her distress for myself.

“And Bobby Lee? You don’t think he is capable of killing his paper father?”

“For what reason?”

“To inherit all Mr. Lee’s business empire.”

“But surely he will not inherit. He is only paper son. Mr. Lee has relatives at home in China. I heard him say this once to Bobby Lee. They have a big fight and Lee got mad. He said, ‘You assume too much. Never forget that you are only a paper son and for me family will always come first. Remember our agreement. I could send you home tomorrow if I wanted to.’”

“Ah,” I said. “Interesting. Mr. Lee was threatening to send Bobby Lee home? Now that is a strong motive and he had better opportunity than anyone. Nobody would even question his entering that house. He must have his own key. And he’s strong enough to throw a man off the roof.”

“Yes, he is strong.” Bo Kei turned her face away again and I wondered if she really had been able to fight him off or if he might have raped her.

“And they talked of an agreement he had signed,” I went on. “And that paper would have been kept in the big cabinet where Lee Sing Tai kept all important papers. But then why would Bobby have drawn attention to it, and why would he have left it in such disarray? Couldn’t he have slipped in and removed the agreement at any time he chose?”

“The cabinet in the corner?” Bo Kei asked, turning back to face me. “But that was always kept locked and Mr. Lee kept the key on a chain around his neck.”

“Did he? But when I was there today the key was in the cabinet.”

“Then Bobby Lee had to kill his paper father to get the key,” she said. “You will tell this to the police. They will arrest Bobby.”

“I’ll certainly mention it to the police,” I said, “but I think they’d have a hard time proving he was guilty. If he found the paper he had signed, he’d surely have destroyed it by now.”

“But at least they would then know that Frederick was innocent,” she said. “And Bobby Lee is a bad man. It is right that bad men should suffer.”

“I’m not sure about that.” I laughed. “We can’t play God.” I brushed a sodden hair back from my face and remembered that I should be hurrying to get ready.

“Listen,” I said. “Tonight there will be a party at this house. It is important that you stay upstairs and unseen. A policeman may be present and you don’t want to take any risks.”

“I will stay in the room,” she said.

“I’ll bring you up some food before the guests arrive. But now I must go and make myself respectable.”

“I think you are most respectable woman already,” Bo Kei said.

I had to laugh at this. “There are some who would dispute it, but thank you,” I said.

“Thank you, Missie Molly.” She gave that funny little bow.

I dried my hair and dressed. I had decided against wearing a costume, although Sid and Gus had tried to tempt me with everything from Marie Antoinette to a Vestal Virgin. Somehow it seemed to be mocking my wedding to dress up in costume at my prenuptial party. So instead I borrowed one of Gus’s evening gowns—relics of her former life when she had moved in glittering society. It was a simple affair in gray silk, dotted with pearls, but it showed off my red hair and my curves. I even managed to put my hair up, with the aid of several combs and was feeling quite sophisticated as I went downstairs to join Sid and Gus. They had taken my pleas not to be too outlandish to heart. Gus was costumed as a water sprite, with lots of trailing green and blue chiffon, and Sid was a wood nymph with a similar costume in green and brown. She wore leaves in her hair, while Gus had a crown of silver starfish.

“You both look spectacular,” I said.

“If you hadn’t been such a fuddy-duddy we could have made you a spirit of the air and then we would have been complete,” Sid said, “but as it is, you look as the future Mrs. Daniel Sullivan should—respectable and demure.”

“Oh, dear. That sounds boring.”

“My sweet, you are marrying a boring and respectable man. What can I say?” Sid chuckled. “But I’m sure you’ll be blissfully happy and that’s all that matters.”

I thought about this as we removed the aspics and cold salmon from the pantry where they had been sitting on ice. Was I really destined for a boring, respectable life with Daniel? Would he forbid me to attend such functions as this in future? Would he even pressure me eventually to break off my friendship with Sid and Gus? Rubbish, I said to myself. I was a strong person and not even my husband was going to tell me what to do. I swept out of the pantry with the platter of salmon, narrowly missing a calamity as it slid across the tilting plate.

The first guests started to arrive—artists and actors, suffragists, and society ladies I had met through my hostesses, as well as people I had never met. Some were in fabulous costumes, while others had chosen more conventional evening dress. Sarah and Monty were of the latter. She looked enchanting in powder blue while he was dashing in white tie and tails. He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he examined the other occupants of the living room.

“Come and try the punch, Mr. Warrington-Chase,” Gus whisked him away. “Or would you prefer champagne to start with?”

“Most kind,” Monty muttered, looking distinctly uneasy as he was led away by a water sprite.

“Oh, dear.” Sarah gave me an embarrassed grin. “I was not at all sure about this and I’m afraid it’s going to be a disaster. Monty really doesn’t approve of this sort of thing. I tried to persuade him to wear a costume—I suggested that he come as Lord Byron. That’s respectable enough, isn’t it? I even bought him the wig, but he refused to wear it.”

“But they have costume balls in England.”

“Yes, but with the right sort of people. It’s apparently all right if lords and ladies put on masks and costumes, but not bohemians. I know he only allows me to mix with Sid and Gus because it’s such a short time before we sail for our new life at his country estate.”

“You must put your foot down and not find yourself under Monty’s thumb, Sarah,” I said. “Daniel would prefer that I not have Sid and Gus as my friends. He wanted us to take a house in a very different neighborhood so that I could be away from them, but I made it clear that I was not abandoning my friends.”

She sighed. “You are so brave. But I shall be far away from friends and moving in a strange society. I won’t know how to behave and I shall need Monty to guide me.”

“Of course you’ll know how to behave,” I said. “It’s not as if you started life in a peasant’s cottage like me. You were raised in a good family, and good manners are the same everywhere in the world. Trust me, Monty’s friends will be enchanted with you.”

“I hope so.” She gave a weak smile.

Monty returned, carrying two glasses of champagne. “Here you are, my dear,” he said. He was in the process of handing her the glass when he looked up and said, “What in God’s name is that?”

My friend Ryan O’Hare, the flamboyant Irish playwright, had arrived. He was wearing tight black trousers, a frilly white jabot, and a red-lined cape. His dark hair was curled and flicked over his forehead. He looked devastatingly handsome as he held out his hands to me in dramatic gesture. “Molly, my dearest. Come and greet Lord Byron,” he said.

I heard a grunt from Monty.

Ryan crossed the room to me, took my hand, and kissed it. “Ravishing, as always,” he muttered. Then he noticed Monty standing beside me. “And who is this?” he asked. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“This is Montague Warrington-Chase,” I said.

Ryan turned the full force of his charm on Monty. “Warrington-Chase? English? I believe I once had tea at your place.”

“You did?” Monty looked incredulous.

“When I was a child. Osbourne St. George, isn’t it?”

“Good God,” Monty said curtly. “And what was your name, sir?”

“Ryan O’Hare. The family has a nice little castle in Ireland and I moved in your circles before I was banished.”

“Ryan O’Hare. You’re the playwright who caused that stir because of the play you wrote about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.”

“What a ridiculous fuss, wasn’t it?” Ryan said. “They were horribly stuffy and boring. They needed someone to poke fun at them.”

“She was the monarch of our country, sir,” Monty said stiffly. “There are limits.”

“To hell with limits, I say.” Ryan waved a frilly white sleeve.

“As I heard it, you had to flee the country.”

“Oh, absolutely. Hunted to the Kentish coast. Almost had to swim the Channel.”

“Ryan, you are a terrible liar,” I said, slipping my arm through his. “And I should point out to you that Monty is the fiancé of my friend Sarah Lindley.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, clearly disappointed that his charm was being wasted on Monty. Instead he turned and managed to be charming to Sarah.

Twenty-four

The gathering became more lively as the evening went on. People ate, drank, and were merry. There were musicians and the carpet was rolled back in the dining room for people to dance. A large pile of presents appeared on the hall table. I kept glancing toward the front door, wondering if Daniel would come. But as the festivities went on, I found I was actually having quite a good time myself, forgetting the way the day had started and the decisions I had made. I was chatting with Sarah when Monty came up to us with a strange expression on his face.

“I’ve just had the most astounding encounter,” he said. “I went upstairs, needing to visit—I mean heeding the call of nature, so to speak.” He coughed, uncomfortable at mentioning this subject to ladies. “I located what I believed to be the WC and just as I was about to open the door, it opened and you’ll never guess who stepped out—a Chinese girl. I thought for a moment she was one of the guests in a dashed authentic-looking costume, but she was the real thing. Where on earth did she come from?”

When we didn’t answer immediately he went on, “Sarah, she’s not the girl you told me about, is she? The one at that place where you work who you said was dying of consumption, because she looked quite hale and hearty.”

“No, this is a different girl altogether,” Sarah said quickly. “That girl is still at the settlement house.”

“Thank God. I thought for a moment someone had been injudicious enough to bring consumption into this house. Terribly catching, you know. So who is this girl? I had always understood that the Chinese were not allowed to bring their families to this country, but now Chinese women seem to be springing up all over the place.”

My heart was racing. “She was raised by missionaries, who sent her over here,” I said, before Sarah could answer. “We are training her to go into service.”

“Oh. I see. Splendid idea. I gather the Chinese are frightfully hard workers. She doesn’t have any contagious diseases, does she?”

I attempted a light laugh. “No, she’s quite healthy.”

“She got an awful shock seeing me.” He chuckled. “You should have seen her face. Scurried up the stairs as if I was the big bad wolf.”

“I told her to stay in her room,” I said. “So I expect she thought she’d get into trouble.”

“Why is your bridegroom not at your side?” Ryan asked, coming up to us with a glass of champagne in either hand. “Doesn’t he realize that you are in danger of being carried off by all the jealous males at this party?”

“Ryan, you still haven’t lost your Irish blarney,” I replied, laughing. “I’m in no danger of being carried off by you or anyone else and Daniel has to work, I’m afraid.”

“Then you’ll need one of these to cheer you up.” He handed me a champagne glass. “Foolish man to put work before love. I’ve never done that in my life. Love always comes first.”

Monty looked at him with distaste. “So your fiancé has to work on a Sunday evening?” he asked.

“Policemen have to work whenever there is a case to be worked on,” I said. “It’s something I’m going to have to get used to, I suppose.”

“And he’s on a big case now, is he?” Monty asked. “Something exciting?”

“I don’t really know,” I said. “He’s not allowed to discuss his work with me.”

“I find detective work quite fascinating,” Monty said. “I rather feel I should have been a good detective if I’d put my mind to it. A gifted amateur like Sherlock Holmes. But I should have been careful not to have let my enemy throw me over the Reichenbach Falls.” And he gave a self-congratulatory chuckle.

At that moment there was a knock at the front door and Sid appeared, beaming. “Look who has just arrived,” she said and ushered in Daniel. “Look everyone, the bridegroom cometh!”

There were suitable murmurs of excitement as Daniel, looking distinctly uncomfortable, was surrounded by outlandishly costumed figures who patted him on the back and attempted to shake his hand.

“How clever,” Ryan said, appearing at his side. “You’ve come disguised as a policeman. Very novel.”

“Ryan, you are being wicked again.” I went over to rescue Daniel. “I didn’t think you’d be able to come,” I said as I extracted him from the crush. “It was really good of you. I know how busy you are.”

“My conscience got the better of me,” he said. “I realized that this party was important to you and I should make some effort to get along with your friends, just as I hope you’ll get along with mine.”

“They don’t always look as strange as this,” I muttered as I slipped my hand through his. “And most them are really Sid and Gus’s friends. But you’re a good man.”

He smiled. “How much of a hardship is it to exchange a hasty sandwich at police headquarters for champagne and good food,” he said. “I haven’t had a good meal in days.”

“Come through to the conservatory and you shall eat your fill,” I said. “And take a look at that table in the hallway. Wedding presents, I believe.”

“For us?” Daniel looked surprised.

“It is our wedding party,” I said.

“Good God. We’ll need a bigger house to put them in.”

“We won’t. But we’ll be able to entertain more elegantly, which is what you want, isn’t it?”

We reached the conservatory and Daniel helped himself liberally to the fare on the tables. “I must say your friends have really pulled out all the stops, haven’t they?” he exclaimed. “What an incredible array of food.”

“You know Sid and Gus. When they do something, they throw themselves into it wholeheartedly.”

“I rather fear it will make our wedding breakfast seem pale in comparison,” he said. He piled a plate. As I was about to go back to the living room he said, “Can’t we find a quiet corner? I’d enjoy this food so much more if I didn’t have that O’Hare person commenting on the way I eat.”

“You have to understand that Ryan enjoys getting a rise out of other people,” I said. “Especially members of the establishment like you. Come on, let’s sit out here for a while.”

We found two chairs in a corner of the conservatory and I let him eat in silence while rain drummed on the glass roof. After a few bites he put down his fork. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long,” he said. “This Chinese business has just added to my workload.”

“Daniel, I really am sorry,” I said. “I didn’t intend to get involved in anything difficult or dangerous.”

“You never do, do you?” he said. “You just seem to stumble into trouble, and then miraculously to stumble out of it again. At least you didn’t need rescuing this time and at least you’re not in any way involved in the machinations of Chinatown. And believe me, you’re well to be out of it, Molly. That Lee fellow was a nasty piece of work. I’m not at all surprised that somebody finished him off. I just hope we can find out who that was before the tongs start hurling accusations at each other.”

“So you’re going to take over the case, are you?”

“I can’t really step on Kear’s toes. He’s the same rank as I and it’s in his precinct, so I should let him handle it.”

“But he’s got it all worked out in his mind,” I said. “He wants it to be Frederick Lee, so he’s not going to look any farther. And who knows what kind of methods he might use to make Frederick confess to something he didn’t do.”

Daniel looked at me strangely. “You sound as if you care about what happens to this Frederick fellow.”

“I’ve only met him a couple of times,” I said carefully. “But he seemed such a nice, polite young man. Not one who would murder anybody, especially not someone from his own clan.”

“I must say I’m inclined to think it wasn’t he,” Daniel said. “I went back and took a look at the Lee apartment with the fingerprint expert. Somebody definitely went through that cabinet in a big hurry. Papers were literally stuffed back in all the drawers.”

“And did you find any interesting fingerprints?”

“Bobby Lee’s were on it,” he said, “but not Frederick Lee’s. There was also a set of prints that we can’t identify yet. And apparently plenty of motives for killing Lee in those little drawers—protection money contracts, IOUs for large sums of money, and who knows what else. Most of them in Chinese, but not all. What seem to be promissory notes from Americans were there as well. I didn’t have time to get much of the Chinese translated for me. Just enough to get the idea that a lot of very diverse people owed Lee money.”

“Did you happen to come across a document involving Bobby Lee?” I asked. “One concerning his status as a paper son?”

“No,” Daniel said. “What are you hinting at?”

“Just a thought,” I said. “Mr. Lee had this girl brought over because he wanted a son—a real son. Bobby Lee was no relative really, so he would be supplanted by a real flesh-and-blood son, and apparently Mr. Lee had made it clear that Bobby would inherit nothing when he died.”

“How on earth did you learn this?” Daniel demanded.

Of course I’d learned it from Bo Kei. “Frederick Lee told me a little of it after Bobby was so rude to him, then more came out when Captain Kear was questioning Bobby. And I’ll tell you another thing that was suspicious. Mr. Lee wore the key to that cabinet in a chain around his neck. Today it was in the cabinet. So I wondered if the body showed any kind of bruising around the neck where the chain had been.”

Daniel laughed. “Where the chain had been?—my dear, he was in such a mess that his whole body was bruised and bleeding. But that was an interesting observation. You noticed the chain around his neck when he was alive, did you?”

“Yes,” I said, although that wasn’t exactly true. But I did have it on good authority from one who had seen him in his night attire.

“So your suggestion is that we look more closely at Bobby Lee?” Daniel said after a pause. “And we hunt for some kind of document that proves he isn’t Lee’s true son and he doesn’t stand to inherit when Lee dies?”

“That is what I am suggesting,” I said. “Although I can’t see why he wouldn’t have had time to remove an incriminating piece of paper before the police arrived.”

“The houseboy slept just on the other side of the screen. Perhaps he woke up before Bobby could go through the whole cabinet.”

“Then if he knew Bobby had been there, why didn’t he tell that to the police when Captain Kear questioned him?” I asked.

“Either loyalty or fear. From what I’ve heard of Bobby Lee, and from what I know of the ways the tongs operate, the boy could have been afraid of having his hand or ear or tongue cut off.”

I tried not to gasp, but my body gave an involuntary shudder.

Daniel noticed. “They are ruthless people, Molly. They have different notions of loyalty and revenge and they regard life as cheap. That’s why I’m relieved you had the sense to want no part in this whole sordid business.”

I nodded demurely, looking down so that I didn’t meet his eye.

“You’d have thought that Bobby would have had opportunities before this to sneak in and remove a piece of paper, wouldn’t you? That really must mean that he could never get his hands on Mr. Lee’s key or that the paper was cleverly hidden.”

“Or that Lee checked at regular intervals,” Daniel suggested. “Bobby wouldn’t have dared to remove it while his father was alive. He was much too afraid of him.”

“So what will you do now?” I asked.

“It’s still Kear’s case. I’ll tell him to get an official translation of everything in that cabinet.” He paused, studying my expression. “Better yet, I’ll find my own translator and put him to work on it right away. Thank you, you’ve been a big help.” He took a couple of more bites of cold salmon, a swig of champagne, then got to his feet. “I suppose we’d better go and mingle before I have to leave again.”

We came out into the hallway. “I know you’re suggesting it was Bobby Lee,” he said, “but I really want that girl found.”

“Girl?” I asked innocently.

“This missing bride. She has an equally good motive for killing the old man. The timing of her flight is just too coincidental for me, and I did notice small footprints when I was up on the roof.”

I tried not to glance up the stairs.

“If she was his bride, and his bed was up there, she might well have walked around quite legitimately on the roof,” I pointed out.

“But these looked rather fresh, didn’t they? And they were at the edge of the roof. At the very least she used the roof as a way to escape, and at worst, she came back that way to kill Lee.”

“If you were examining footprints, what did you think about those heavy men’s boots?” I asked. “Weren’t they equally fresh?”

“Ah, yes. The big boots. I suppose they could be,” he said. “It’s hard to tell. Lee could have brought in a Caucasian workman to fix a leaking roof. The Chinese don’t have that kind of footwear. But to come back to the missing woman—tell me, exactly how far did you get in your search for her?” His voice echoed up the stairwell.

I glanced up nervously, half expecting to hear scurrying feet. “Not very far,” I said. “I tried the various missions around Chinatown and while doing so, I found out what was going on and didn’t want to return the girl to Mr. Lee.”

“I’ve had men on the lookout for her today,” he said.

“Any luck?” I asked cautiously.

“One false lead. We heard of a Chinese girl hiding out at one of those settlement houses. But this one turned out to have escaped from a brothel, and the settlement workers said that she’s dying of consumption.” He paused and looked at me quizzically. “I wonder how much money I’d have paid for you?”

“Sight unseen, from Ireland?” I asked. “About a couple of chickens and a sack of potatoes, I should think.”

He slipped his arms around my waist. “At least two sacks of potatoes,” he murmured and kissed me.

Twenty-five

I was relieved when Daniel finally left the party. He actually started enjoying himself and stayed longer than I would have thought. But in the end he looked up at the clock on the mantel and sighed. “I suppose I had better get back to work,” he said. “There may be important developments tonight.”

“A big case, is it?” Monty asked. “A murder?”

“Only coincidentally,” Daniel said. “But yes, it’s a big case, and I’ll be mighty glad when it’s over. Like Molly and her runaway girl, I find it distasteful.”

“Runaway girl?” Monty asked.

Daniel chuckled. “My fiancée gets herself involved in all kinds of queer situations. This time it was tracking down a runaway bride. So if your bride decides to run off before the wedding, just hire Molly. She’ll track her down for you.”

“Runaway bride?” Monty said. “Wait a second—you don’t mean the Chinese girl, do you? Now I remember. Sarah told me about her but I didn’t put two and two together. Ah, so that’s it.” His eyes strayed toward the stairs. Any minute now he would put two and two together.

“Hadn’t you better go?” I pulled on Daniel’s arm.

“Trying to get rid of me, are you?” Daniel smiled. “But you’re right. I do have to go. Where are our hostesses? I should say good-bye.”

I didn’t start breathing again normally until Daniel was out in the street, and I stood at the front door.

“I’ll be in touch when I can,” he said. “I hope to have the other case I’m working on sewn up in the next few days. You’ll be going back to my mother tomorrow, will you?”

“I should help Sid and Gus clear up first,” I said. “And I still need to do some shopping for my trousseau—if you’d like your bride to start off married life with new undergarments.”

He looked at me quizzically. “You two have to learn to get along some time,” he said. “I thought this would be a good opportunity to do so.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll go back later this week, and I’ve been trying really hard, Daniel. You’d have been proud of me. When your mother extolled the virtues of every other girl in the county, I bit my tongue and smiled sweetly.”

“I’d like to have seen that.” He reached out and stroked my cheek. “Behave yourself now. I don’t want to find you turning up at any more crime scenes, understand?”

“Yes, Daniel,” I said meekly.

He laughed, but as he turned to go, I called after him, “Did you locate the murder weapon yet?”

He turned back to me. “Murder weapon? He was pushed off the roof. Do you want a handprint in the middle of his back?”

“Remember I mentioned the wound to one side of his head? He was struck with some object. If it didn’t kill him, at least it knocked him out enough to drag him to the edge of the roof. Isn’t it possible that the assailant left the weapon somewhere in Lee’s apartment?”

Daniel shook his head, smiling. “Why is it that you and I never have the same conversations as other couples about to be married—about the flowers for the church and the number of guests and the honeymoon?”

“If you’d rather discuss flowers and bridesmaids’ dresses, I’m happy to do so,” I said sweetly.

“Your problem is that you have become too damned good at this detective stuff,” he said. “I’ll have one of my men take a quiet look for the murder weapon. Now for heaven’s sake go back and enjoy your party and stop thinking about this. And that’s an order.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” I said in my most simpering voice.

He laughed and hurried off into the night.

I heaved a big sigh as I went back inside. The party continued into the wee hours of the morning. Sid and Gus’s friends certainly kept late hours, still laughing and drinking with no apparent signs of tiredness as my own eyes kept wanting to close. When at last I dragged myself upstairs I peeked into Bo Kei’s room. She was asleep, looking like a peaceful child, her dark hair spilling across the pillow. How could anyone possibly suspect that she could have killed Lee Sing Tai? And if she had dragged his body to the edge of the roof, wouldn’t there have been signs of a heavy object being dragged? Spatters of blood on the tar? I wished I could take another look. I had been allowed only the most cursory of examinations last time. But I thought it was unlikely that I’d be able to slip past a police guard without word getting back to Daniel.

My gaze went back to Bo Kei. How long could I go on hiding her? But where could I possibly send her where she would be safe? What if I was charged with harboring a fugitive from the law? Did one go to jail for such things? What would that do to my husband’s career? As usual I had let my heart dictate to my head. I would have to learn to start thinking rationally.

“What on earth am I going to do with you?” I whispered to the sleeping girl.

* * *

In the morning Bo Kei begged me to find out what was happening to Frederick. However, I could hardly slip out and leave Sid and Gus to the mountains of washing-up. Bo Kei joined in cheerfully and we soon had the house back in order.

“Now you go and save Frederick,” she insisted as soon as the last dish was put on the dresser.

I looked at her indignant and innocent young face. She could be forceful when she wanted to be. And the irreverent thought crossed my mind that if they had planned anything together, she would have been the driving force, not him.

“I don’t really know what I can do, Bo Kei,” I said. “I can’t very well show up at the police station and demand that they free him.”

“You tell them he is innocent. You make them believe.”

“How can I do that unless I can show them who really committed the crime?”

“You tell them Bobby Lee did this terrible thing.”

“I don’t know that for sure,” I said. “I have suggested to Captain Sullivan that they investigate Bobby Lee, so I’m sure he’ll do that. Until then, it’s a matter for the police so we must just wait patiently.”

“I can’t wait patiently,” she said. “We must help Frederick.”

“You can’t do anything. You have to stay hidden. You were almost discovered last night when one of the guests saw you.”

“I know,” she said. “But there was no chamber pot in my room, so I had to go down to water closet. This man, he looked as scared as I felt. He stared at me, then he ran down the stairs.”

“Really?” This was an interesting interpretation of events.

“I shall stay hidden,” she said. “But you must help us. Find out if Frederick is still in jail. He need good lawyer to help him. Not Chinese lawyer, American man. Make police listen.”

That made a lot of sense, although it was unlikely that Frederick could afford to pay for a good lawyer. “I can try to do that much for you,” I agreed.

I put on my straw hat and out I went, traveling reluctantly back to Elizabeth Street and just praying that I didn’t run into Daniel. I was trying to think if I knew any attorneys. One had been retained for Daniel once when he had been wrongly arrested and thrown into the Tombs. But he hadn’t managed to have Daniel released and Daniel was a well-respected person. How much more difficult would it be for a Chinese man? I wondered if they had lawyers within their community. If only I had someone to ask—then, of course, I realized that I did know somebody. Mrs. Chiu would be able to help me.

Yesterday’s storm had passed, leaving steaming puddles in the gutters. The sun was beating down from a bright blue sky and the day promised to be a scorcher. Jefferson Market and then Washington Square seemed unnaturally quiet and empty and it took me a moment to realize that it was Labor Day. Other people would be taking picnics to Central Park or heading for the thrills of the new Luna Park on Coney Island. Nobody except for policemen and people like me would choose to stay in the heat of the city. I thought wistfully for a moment about Westchester County. Daniel’s mother would surely have a picnic or a croquet game arranged for us. And there would be ice cream and polite conversation. All so safe and civilized. At this moment it did seem infinitely preferable to the distasteful task ahead of me.

I stood outside the Sixth Precinct police station on Elizabeth Street and collected myself before I dared to enter. I wasn’t doing anything wrong or stupid, I told myself. I was just finding out whether Frederick was still in jail or had been found innocent and released. Any normal citizen could do the same.

I went in through the glass-fronted door and up to the counter. The same young policeman was on duty.

“I remember you,” he said. “You were here the other day asking about something, then you ran off before I could come back with an answer for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to leave in a hurry the other day. I was late for an appointment. Today I just came to find out whether a man called Frederick Lee was being held in one of the jail cells and whether he has actually been charged with the murder of the Chinaman Lee Sing Tai.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” the young constable said. “He wasn’t brought here, I can tell you. But I heard all about the dead Chinaman. Our men had to guard the body. They said he fell off a rooftop—looked pretty gruesome. Said it turned their stomachs.”

“Who would know about Frederick Lee?” I asked.

“Well, it’s Captain Kear who’s in charge here,” he said. “I think he’s in his office. I’ll go get him for you.”

I started to say, “No, that’s all right,” but I was too late. He moved swiftly and I heard the captain’s name echoing down a tiled hallway. Almost immediately the captain himself appeared, in braces and rolled-up shirt sleeves, and looked surprised to see me.

“Miss Murphy. What can I do for you?”

“I came to inquire about Frederick Lee,” I said. “I wondered if you had officially arrested him and whether he’s being held in jail?”

A big smile crossed Kear’s face. “So Sullivan is sending you to do his dirty work now, is he? Pretends he’s not trying to step on my toes and get involved in my case, so he sends his sweetie to soften me up instead.”

“Absolutely not,” I said angrily. “Captain Sullivan has no idea that I have come to you. It’s just that I met Frederick Lee a couple of times and I found him a thoroughly nice and decent young man. So I just wanted to find out if he was being treated fairly and whether a lawyer had been engaged to represent him.”

“It’s actually none of your business,” he said, “but if it satisfies you, Frederick Lee is being held in the Tombs until we determine his role in the murder of Lee Sing Tai.”

“Has he engaged the services of a lawyer?”

“I wouldn’t know that.”

“So you’ve dumped him in jail without anyone to advise him.” I could feel my hackles rising. “What evidence do you have against him?”

“Motive,” he said. “Dismissed from his job the day before. Got too friendly with the master’s new bride.”

“And did anyone see him entering or leaving the Lee residence that night?”

“Of course not. I thought we’d already established that he came across from the next roof.”

“Then why did none of his footprints show up there?”

“Who says they didn’t? He’s half European, isn’t it? What’s to stop him from wearing those hobnailed boots to throw us off the scent?”

“Have you found whether he owns such a pair of boots?”

He looked at me scornfully. “He’d have ditched them, wouldn’t he?”

“So you actually have no evidence against him,” I insisted. “He’s in jail because he seems like a good candidate whose arrest would satisfy everyone.”

“We’re waiting until the bride shows up,” Kear said. “She can’t have gotten too far. We’ll find her, and then when we have them together, we’ll get to the truth.”

“And if the murderer was someone else?” I asked. “What about Bobby Lee? Shouldn’t you be looking into him and his relationship with his father?”

“And shouldn’t you be leaving a criminal case to the police?” he said. “If I lodge an official complaint to the commissioner that Sullivan is sending his ladylove to stick his nose into my case, I don’t think the commissioner would be very pleased, do you?”

I gave him my coldest stare. “I thought I made it clear to you that Captain Sullivan has nothing to do with this. He would be furious if he knew I had come here.”

“Then what’s your interest, girlie?” he asked. “Is it just morbid curiosity or are you still involved in this case in some way? Perhaps you know more than you’re telling me. Perhaps you actually know who pushed old Lee off the roof.”

“Perhaps I just believe in justice,” I said. “But you’re right. The case has nothing to do with me. I won’t bother you again.”

Twenty-six

I walked very fast down the rest of the Elizabeth Street, my mind brimming with things that I would have liked to say to the smarmy Captain Kear. No wonder Daniel didn’t like him and didn’t trust him. I was relieved that I had managed to keep my temper. And of course the moment I was safely away from the police station I had regrets about ever going there in first place. It hadn’t been the wisest thing to do. What if Captain Kear really did complain to the commissioner about Daniel? It wasn’t that long ago since Daniel himself had been suspended and in disgrace. I shouldn’t have done anything to further jeopardize his career.