The Body Snatchers Affair

10

It was a quarter of six when Sabina once again returned to the agency offices. This time she found John at his desk, and if not exactly in a cheerful frame of mind, at least glad to see her.

“Ah, my dear, I was hoping you’d return. If you hadn’t, I would have called at your rooms this evening.”

“Important news, John?”

“No, no. I merely wanted to confer.”

“This is the place for business conferences, not my rooms or yours.”

“So you’ve made abundantly clear. You have time now, I trust.” His expression altered a bit and his voice was slyly probing when he added, “Unless you have plans for the evening that require you to hurry home?”

Now why would he ask that? Oh, Lord, he hasn’t found out I’ve been keeping company with Carson, has he?

Sabina ignored the question, turning away to shed her coat and hat and then crossing to her desk. She could feel John’s eyes on her the entire time. More often than not, one of his unprofessionally covetous gazes nettled her, but today it made her feel uncomfortable in an oddly different way. And a little warm under the high collar of her shirtwaist.

To business, and quickly.

“Did your visit to Fowler Alley prove enlightening?” she asked as she seated herself.

“Not Fowler Alley, no. My call at the Hip Sing Company, yes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You went there? I don’t see a puncture wound anywhere. No bullets fired or hatchets or knives thrown your way?”

“Bah. I’ve bearded fiercer lions in their dens than Mock Quan.”

“Mock Quan. Isn’t he Mock Don Yuen’s son? I thought you intended to see the father.”

“I did see him at his herb shop. And learned nothing from him.”

“But you did learn something from Mock Quan?”

“Yes. That he’s a wily young scoundrel with delusions of grandeur and a hunger for the kind of power Little Pete enjoys.”

“Then you think he had something to do with the theft of Bing Ah Kee’s remains and the Scarlett murder?”

“Quite possibly, but I can’t be sure yet. His father is also suspect, as is Little Pete.” John’s hands were busy now with the loading and firing of his pipe. When he had it drawing to his satisfaction he asked, “Were you able to track down our client?”

“I was.” Sabina explained how she’d found Andrea Scarlett, the reason why the woman had not been at home last night, and her call upon Elizabeth Petrie to act as guardian until the affair was resolved.

The news of the attempt on Mrs. Scarlett’s life brought one of John’s fierce scowls. “The man who fired the shot at her may or may not have been a Chinese in Western garb? She had no clear impression either way?”

“No. Only a brief glimpse.”

“But she is sure the suit he wore was dark-colored?”

“As sure as she could be under the circumstances.”

John sat musing for several seconds. Then he blew out a great cloud of tobacco smoke and thumped the desk with his fist. “Dark-colored … blue, I wonder? A blue shadow? Could she have been followed previously by someone wearing clothing of that color?”

“She didn’t seem aware of it, if so,” Sabina said. “In any event, Scarlett was shot by a highbinder in traditional black Chinese clothing, not one dressed in a blue suit.”

“In Chinatown, whereas the attempt on Mrs. Scarlett was made in a white neighborhood. Protective coloration, mayhap.”

“That still doesn’t explain Scarlett’s use of the phrase ‘blue shadow.’ If in fact that was what he uttered.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Then, after a pause, “Though it might, to an extent, if the assassin was in fact a white man. Scarlett was hardly the only Caucasian on a tong payroll.”

“Why would whoever is behind this business use a highbinder for one murder and a white gunman to attempt another?”

“A good question.”

“Here’s another: How was the highbinder able to follow you on your rounds of the opium resorts?”

“That has been bothering me, too.” John shook his head, puffing furiously on his pipe. At length he asked, “Was Mrs. Scarlett able to give you any idea whether her husband kept private papers elsewhere than his office?”

“No.”

“Or any other useful information?”

Under different circumstances Sabina might have given him an evasive answer to that question, in order to pursue the matter of Scarlett’s Chinese mistress herself. Despite his admonition not to enter Chinatown, there was no real risk in a Caucasian woman walking the Quarter’s streets in broad daylight, even in this time of violent unrest. But she would be busy enough as it was with the Blanchford case and her pursuit of information about Carson and the mysterious actions of the bogus Mr. Sherlock Holmes. And the Scarlett case was primarily John’s; the fact that he had almost been shot along with the attorney gave him the right to see it through himself.

She said, “Yes, though it may or may not prove significant. It seems her husband had a faithless passion for Chinese women, one named Dongmei in particular.”

John’s eyes brightened at this. “Well, well. And how did Mrs. Scarlett find out?”

“Apparently he made no secret of the fact. She was hurt, of course, but she cared enough for him, or the income from his Hip Sing activities, to put up with it.”

“This Dongmei. A prostitute, one of the flower willows?”

“Possibly a courtesan. Mrs. Scarlett knows little about her, other than the woman was the one who introduced her husband to opium.”

“Ah. Before or after he became involved with the Hip Sing?”

“Shortly before, she believes.”

“Does she know where Dongmei resides?”

“No.”

“I’ll find out.” John had been scribbling notes to himself. He finished with a flourish, folded the paper, and tucked it into his vest pocket. “Now then — tell me about the rest of your day. You saw the widow Blanchford as scheduled, I trust? And we’re now in her employ?”

“Yes to both questions.”

“Who was it who was kidnapped?”

“I heard her incorrectly on the telephone,” Sabina said. “It was her late husband’s body that was abducted. From the family crypt.”

“What’s that? Another body snatching?”

“Yes.”

“For what purpose, in this case?”

“Ransom. Seventy-five thousand dollars for the body’s safe return.”

She went on to explain about the demand note, the gold ring, and the triangular piece of satin cut from the lining of Ruben Blanchford’s coffin. What she didn’t confide to him was the seemingly impossible element to the crime. He fancied himself an expert on that sort of mystery, with some past justification, and if he knew about the locked-crypt business he would be sure to insinuate himself into the investigation. This was her case, as the Scarlett homicide was his, and she intended to be the one who solved it.

“Nasty business,” he said.

“Nasty and cruel.”

His pipe had gone out; he paused to relight it with one of the large sulphur matches he preferred. “First Bing Ah Kee, now Ruben Blanchford. An odd sort of coincidence.”

“If it is a coincidence.”

“You don’t suppose there is any connection? A Chinese tong leader and a wealthy white philanthropist?”

“Not directly, no,” Sabina said. “Most likely it was the newspaper reports of the Bing Ah Kee snatch and Ruben Blanchford’s death and burial arrangements, both on the same day, that generated the idea.”

“Ah. A copycat crime.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Have you any leads to the identity of these modern-day William boys?”

“William boys?”

“William Burke and William Hare. Irish immigrant murderers hanged in Scotland some seventy years ago. Graverobbers to begin with, supplying doctors at Edinburgh Medical School with dissection cadavers for anatomy lectures. When the supply of newly buried corpses grew short, Burke and Hare turned to murder. Killed sixteen people and sold their remains to a doctor by the name of Knox.”

Sabina felt a slight frisson. Mass murder was the most heinous of all crimes, and the impetus for the slaughter John had described struck her as a particularly grisly one.

“Famous case in its day,” he went on, “one known to most Scots worldwide. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a story about the Burkers, as they were called. And children made up a grisly skipping rhyme.” Which he proceeded to quote:

“Delightful,” Sabina said sardonically. “But to answer your question, no, no direct leads as yet. An idea, however, of where the truth lies and how to go about finding it.”

He grinned. “Woman’s intuition?”

“Hunch,” she said.

Her gaze dared him to argue the semantic distinction. To his credit, he didn’t.

“Do you want to discuss it?” he asked.

“No more than you’re willing to discuss yours.”