The Hamlet Murders

CHAPTER TEN

The young man playing Hamlet was, well, young. And vacuous and “really sorry that Mr. Hyland was gone.” The man was so wrapped up in himself that Fong cut him short with a demand for an alibi for the night of the murder. The young man supplied both the name of an all-night dance club and those of five of his dance partners. For a second time Fong noted that the man looked like a younger Chinese version of Geoff but there was nothing in Hamlet’s words or actions that was even remotely revealing. Fong ended the interrogation early. After all, how many times could he hear “What am I going to do without him, you know, like, what am I going to do?”

Fong’s second interrogation was more complicated. Hao Yong had been an admirer of his wife and for a very brief time had been Geoff’s lover. “I was young but not a child. I take full responsibility for my actions. I am sure that I gained more from our relationship than he did. The time we spent together was very important to me both as a person and as an artist.”

“Do you still . . . ”

“See Mr. Hyland? Only professionally. I would work for him at any time . . . ” then she stopped herself, evidently realizing for the first time that she would never again be guided through a play by Geoff.

Fong surprised himself with his next question. “Was Geoff sad or upset?”

“The Screaming me-me’s got to him.”

“The who?”

“The me-me’s are what Geoff called the two Canadian lady producers.”

Fong nodded, “I’ve met them.”

She nodded back and a gentle smile creased her lips for a moment. Then she bowed her head. Fong thought she might cry. But she didn’t. She raised her head. Her eyes glistened. “Detective Zhong, if you could go through your loss and not take your life, what could possibly cause Mr. Hyland to take his?”

“But Geoff did not take his own life,” Fong thought.

She stood. “Anything else, Detective Zhong?” she asked.

“Was Geoff ‘seeing’ anyone this time?” He knew the question would hurt Hao Yong and he had no desire to inflict any pain on her but he needed to know.

“I am a married woman, Detective Zhong, with a baby girl. I mind my own business and do my own work so I would not know the answer to your question.”

After a sigh, he requested her alibi. She supplied her husband’s phone number to corroborate her story, turned and left the room.

Fong felt her absence the moment the door closed behind her. “Artists do that,” he thought, “leave a room wanting when they leave.”

The third interrogation was with the actor playing Horatio. The young man was clearly conflicted. He thought Geoff was an extraordinary artist and was thrilled to work with him but was angered that he had been consigned to playing what he called “Hamlet’s best bud.” “There’s just not a lot of latitude in the role and I really wanted to show Mr. Hyland my stuff. He’s amazing. Have you seen the show? Look what he can do.” He stopped himself, realizing that he was speaking of Geoff in the wrong tense.

Then suddenly he was speaking very loudly. “Why him, Detective Zhong? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of awful directors. Power-mad maniacs who don’t know anything. Then there was Geoff. You know what I mean?” Fong did but he dodged the question then requested and received a substantial alibi for the hours in question. He took his leave of the young actor and headed to the next room.

The interview with Da Wei, Geoff’s homely translator, yielded even less than the previous three. It began with Da Wei crying, continued with her in tears and ended with her sobbing, “He gave us so much.” Fong got an address from her and told her, “I’ll see you later when you’ve calmed down a bit.”

The actors playing Ophelia and Laertes sat side by side as Fong entered their interrogation room. They were an attractive young couple. Her long hair was held back by a large clip. She had the gentle softness that made some Asian beauty so unique. She also had a deep sadness in her eyes. Fu Tsong had done a lot of talking about eyes. “We wear our history in our eyes, Fong. All our joys and troubles are there. It’s why so many women have sad eyes. But as an actress I must not let the audience see my eyes first. I must make them see my mouth, then my eyes.”

“You have sad eyes,” he’d said.

She had smiled and said, “I have earned my sad eyes, Husband.”

“But your sad eyes don’t make you a sad person,” he’d replied.

“You would think I was a sad person if I let you see them first. Instead I drop my sense of myself down to my mouth. You look there first and then, only after acknowledging me as Fu Tsong, do you notice that my eyes are sad. It is then that they become beautiful because they sit in opposition to what you see when I make you deal with my face from the mouth up. Besides, there are three positions to wear your eyes.”

“Wear your eyes?”

“Yes, that is the right phrase, Husband, wear your eyes. You can make them hard where they become mirrors. Most people have lots of practice doing this since they have been in boring school forever and they do that hard-eyed thing to give off the international signal for ‘I’m not sleeping, heck no, I’m listening.’” He’d laughed at her impersonation. “Or you can wear your eyes soft where they become, as Mr. Shakespeare says, the windows of the soul, or you can retract them – sit behind them if you wish. It is the place of waiting or watching. It is a wary place, a dangerous place.”

“ You can do that? Really?”

“Really, Husband.” And then she’d done one of each “wearing position” in such quick but accurate succession that he began to laugh. “What?” she’d demanded.

“Well, which one are you?”

“This one,” she said and softened her eyes that made his eyes drop to her mouth. Her gentle beauty overwhelmed him. Then he noted the sadness in her eyes, which so perfectly contrasted with the strength of her face that he smiled.

“You are very beautiful,” he’d said.

She had not responded, just removed her gown and slipped into bed and nestled into his side.

He smiled, then noticed that Ophelia and Laertes were looking at him. He wondered for a moment if he’d said any of this out loud. From the looks on their faces, evidently not. Just taken a very long pause. He continued the pause and looked carefully at Laertes. He was not as attractive and a bit older than his Ophelia and he sat behind his eyes – in the place of waiting and watching. As Fu Tsong had said, a wary place.

Laertes leaned forward in his chair. His eyes softened as he said, “Mr. Hyland’s death has touched us all.”

Fong looked at the young couple. They held hands. She leaned against his shoulder. Then Ophelia began to cry.

Fong had had quite enough of women crying and snapped at Laertes, “I’ll be next door. When your friend has regained her composure, tell the guard outside and he’ll get me.”

In the next interrogation room Fong found another couple holding hands. Both were male this time. The actor playing Guildenstern interlocked his fingers with Rosencrantz’s beautifully manicured ones. Gay men were nothing new to Fong. Through Fu Tsong he had many contacts in the gay community and had, more than once, come to the rescue of a gay couple who had found themselves in trouble with the puritanical Communist authorities.

Fong looked at Guildenstern. The man withdrew his hand from his partner. “Detective Zhong, how can we help?”

Fong turned his head to one side. He wondered if Guildenstern knew that the offer to “help” was often seen as a sign of potential guilt.

“I’m not sure.”

“We’ll help in any way we can. What happened to Geoffrey is just terrible. Terrible. A great loss.”

Fong looked to Rosencrantz. “How did you get along with Mr. Hyland?”

“As a director or as a person?” Rosencrantz asked.

Fong momentarily wondered if there was a person Geoffrey Hyland different from the director Geoffrey Hyland. He thought not but answered, “As a director.”

“He was great if he liked you.”

“Liked you or liked your work?”

“What’s the difference?” Rosencrantz asked.

Fong wasn’t sure about that either so he chose one, “Liked your work.”

“He rode my case pretty hard but I liked him. He had standards and wanted them met without excuse.”

That sounded right to Fong. He turned to Guildenstern. “How did you get along with Mr. Hyland?”

“He liked me. So I liked him.” The man shrugged his slender shoulders. “That’s how the world works, isn’t it?”

Fong thought about that for a moment then asked where the two of them were last night. “There was a party,” said Rosencrantz.

Guildenstern shot him a look.

“I’m with Special Investigations, not Vice.”

Rosencrantz supplied the information about the party and the phone numbers of some people who were there. As he finished he let out a sigh.

“What?” Fong demanded.

Rosencrantz looked to Guildenstern who nodded. “There were party members at the party, if you get my meaning.” Fong got his meaning and wasn’t surprised. The party may have a puritanical face but behind closed doors sex was sex. To many it gave meaning to life. At very least it held death at bay – for however brief an instant.

The guard knocked at the door. “Has she stopped crying?” asked Fong.

“Who can tell with actresses?” the guard replied.

Fong let that pass and headed back to Laertes and Ophelia. Ophelia’s tears had disturbed her carefully applied makeup. A slender line of black marked her left cheek.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“A little, thank you, Detective.”

That sounded honest enough. He turned to Laertes. “I hear that Mr. Hyland could be very hard on actors. How did he treat you?”

“He hated me,” said Laertes, “as if it were my fault the guy he cast as Hamlet couldn’t cut it.”

Fong recalled Laertes’ attack on Hamlet with the fight master and smiled – so that was what that was all about – just your basic theatre scrap over casting. Would someone murder over casting? Fong doubted it. If so, why didn’t he murder the guy playing Hamlet?

He turned to Ophelia, “And you?”

“He liked me. He liked my acting.” She reached up and unclipped her hair.

The interrogation didn’t seem to be going anywhere. They were each other’s alibis claiming that they spent the night together. Fong made a note to check with the house warden although he knew that the warden system at the Shanghai Theatre Academy was as weak as the key-lady system in guesthouses. He reminded them that this was a murder investigation and that they were not to leave the city without his permission. He demanded their passports but neither had one since neither had ever left the People’s Republic of China.

At the door he looked back at them. She rested her head against his shoulder, her long hair, loose from its clip, fell to the floor, revealing the nape of her neck. Laertes spoke to her softly, reassuringly. She tilted her head to accept his kiss. They were an attractive young couple. The kiss was tender, sweet.

Fong snapped shut his folder on Ms. Kitty Pants, the smaller of Geoff’s Screaming me-me’s, as the woman strode into his office. He didn’t stand. She didn’t sit. “Thank you for coming,” Fong began.

“You summoned me, I didn’t come because I wanted to. I have a show that I have to get ready.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She clutched her red zippered binder tightly to her chest and actually tapped her little foot.

Fong went through his mental file on North Americans and really didn’t think he’d met one like Kitty Pants before. Through Fu Tsong he had met several American producers but Ms. Pants wasn’t like them. She had their swagger but not their style. In fact, her style reminded him more of a petty bureaucrat at a post office checking foreign packages for correct “stampage,” if there is such a word. Was it possible she was some sort of government producer? Was there such a thing? Fong did recall Geoff bemoaning the state of his country’s arts that were as he put it “in the hands of people who can write grants to people who have written grants. Fifty-yearold failed women who have control over artists and not a clue what art is – I like to think of them as meme’s.” Fong looked at the woman – one of Geoff’s me-me’s. She sat. Now that he hadn’t asked her to sit, naturally she sat. Was she always so angry and officious he wondered, or was this an act she reserved for him?

“What’s in the book?”

“It’s not a book, it’s a binder.”

“Fine. What’s in the binder, Ms. Pants?”

“My notes on the show. I never let them out of my sight.”

“Do you take many notes?”

“More than Mr. Hyland ever did. They’re my record of how we got to where we got and they never . . . ”

“Leave your sight. You mentioned that already. Now who makes the rehearsal schedule?”

“Nominally, Geoff.”

“Nominally?”

“Well, he makes requests and I sort out the problems he creates.”

“Geoff creates problems?”

“He’s disorganized. He’s impulsive. He’s . . . ”

“An artist,” Fong wanted to complete her thought but decided not to. Instead he said, “You didn’t like Mr. Hyland?”

“Oh, I liked him fine, but he was a director in desperate need of someone like me who could harness his energies in the proper fashion.”

Fong had seen several of Geoff’s previous productions at the theatre academy. All had been excellent and none of them had needed a person like Kitty Pants to help him harness his energies. Geoff had, in fact, worked totally on his own, often using no one but his translator Da Wei to assist him. Again Fong looked at this woman. Was this a unique product of Canada – like a moose? Then he reminded himself that people were people. If it looked like a squid and swam like a squid and inked like a squid – it was a squid, whether an Asian or a Caucasian squid made no difference. He’d seen lots of Asians like this before. He nodded. What sat in front of him was just an angry control freak, filled with her own selfimportance. He’d also seen lots of these folks before. He pressed a button on his desk and spoke quickly into the intercom in Mandarin, confident that Ms. Pants didn’t speak a word of the Common Tongue. Chen answered.

“Sir?”

“I thought you were sick?”

“I was but I’m better.”

Fong let that hang for a moment then said, “Good, come into the office and demand in Mandarin that Ms. Pants get up, then demand that she walk over and stand in the corner with her face to the wall.” Chen’s chuckle began to erupt from the box but Fong clicked it off before it hit the air.

“Planning some outrage, are we?” Ms. Pants asked with feigned casualness.

Fong just smiled. “Just one more question.”

“If you have to.”

“I do. There is a dead man – you may recall that.”

That sobered her up a little. “Rehearsal was to begin at ten o’clock, right?”

“Right. It should have been nine o’clock but Geoff was such a lazy . . . ”

“Right,” he said snapping her off. “And did Geoff make the schedule that called Laertes and Ophelia in first, or did you?”

“He did. I tried to talk him out of it but . . . ”

Chen entered the room without knocking and indicated that Ms. Pants should stand up. She looked to Fong, who shrugged his shoulders with his best it’s-a-Communist-country-what-can-I-do look. Then Chen pointed her to the corner of the room and barked a country nursery rhyme in Mandarin. She went to the corner then Chen indicated with his finger that she should turn around and face the wall. He barked the nursery rhyme again but backwards this time. She resisted, but Chen screamed the opening lines of Mao’s red book at her.

Captain Chen was having fun.

Ms. Pants finally turned around and faced the wall still clutching her red zippered binder with the ever-so-valuable insights on the show’s progress.

Fong smiled then the two of them left the office and quietly shut the door. Once they were outside Chen asked, “Is she a suspect?”

“Of what?”

“Mr. Hyland’s murder?”

“No.”

“So what is she suspected of doing?”

A person like Ms. Pants, Fong assumed, could have organized a killing and staged it to look like a suicide but he couldn’t for the life of him think what her motive for doing so would be. Besides, the whole thing had artistic touches. The way Geoff was dressed, the positioning of the ladder, the flowers – artistic. And this woman didn’t have an artistic bone in her tight-assed body. “She’s suspected of being offensive to art. And of bad manners.”

Chen just stared at Fong. Fong pointed toward the room. “Get her passport then let her go.”

Chen turned to the office then stopped. “I don’t speak English.”

“No, you don’t.” Fong smiled. “Just keep yelling in Mandarin until she figures it out. It’s good for a person like her to feel powerless. It’s what she enjoys doing to others. Maybe it will make her think twice before acting that way. Then again maybe it won’t.” Fong turned on his heel and headed toward the interrogation room the cops nicknamed the Hilton because it had a chair with all four legs and had been cleaned at least once in the past fiscal year.

The other Screaming me-me, Ms. Marstal, sat looking as if her hands needed a cigarette. She didn’t stand when Fong entered but that was okay. Fong moved to the far side of the table and sat. He opened a folio and quickly leafed through the pages despite the fact that he already knew all the data there by heart.

“So you are here as an adviser to the production?”

“That’s not how I would describe it.”

That surprised Fong. “How would you describe it then?”

“My ex-husband put up the money for this. We were going to try out the concepts that Mr. Hyland had over here. Don’t ask me how Geoff talked my ex into doing it in Shanghai. If he wanted out of town we could have done New Haven or something.”

Fong nodded although he had no idea what she was talking about. “Your money was behind the production?”

“Yes. My ex-husband’s.”

“Didn’t the theatre academy produce the show?”

“They gave us the space and actors . . . ”

“That’s not producing a show?”

“Well, if you count that, I guess it was, but really the actors here . . . ” She didn’t complete her thought.

Fong knew that Geoff was able to attract the finest actors in China. “You had a problem with some of the actors?”

“Not a problem, they just aren’t very talented.”

“Really?”

“Especially the poor thing playing Gertrude.”

Fong stopped listening as Ms. Marstal slandered Hao Yong’s work in the play. Fong understood what this was all about and began to nod and smile.

“Something funny, Detective?”

“Inspector.”

“Fine. Inspector, what is so humorous?”

Fong took a breath and remembered Fu Tsong’s comments about actresses who married rich producers. “They deprecate and fawn, Fong, and continually try to prove they haven’t slept their way into their roles. They usually have good tits but not enough brains to do the work. They always get attracted to the ethereal side of acting. There is real magic in good acting, Husband, but not the way their small brains can comprehend.”

When he looked up, Ms. Marstal was talking again.

“Geoff is so didactic – I’m interested in the spontaneous – channelling is the height of the form.” Then she laughed. Fong assumed she did that because she thought he didn’t understand what the hell she was talking about. He did – joke on you, lady. Then she rose and sort of posed against the door jamb, “Geoff didn’t find me attractive.” She waited for Fong to contradict Geoff’s taste. He didn’t. Finally she unfurled herself from the door and said, “Fool, him.”

Fong wanted to say, “Geoff chased skirts not rags,” but thought better of it. Then he remembered the rest of that conversation with Fu Tsong about actresses like Ms. Marstal. “And then when they get older they use phrases like ‘old dames like me’ or ‘has-beens like me,’ but never believe them, Fong. They think they are still sixteen and want to be treated as if they hold the key to the secret gates to ecstasy all by themselves.”

“Ms. Marstal, is it hard to find work at your age?”

“Excuse me?” she said, clearly caught off balance by Fong’s question.

“I believe you heard me. It must be difficult for an actress of your age in a field so dedicated to youth.”

She softened. “Well, it’s hard for old dames like me, yes.”

“And Gertrude was your role to play once the show moved back to North America?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

Fong just smiled. “Why were you at the theatre for a ten o’clock call?”

“I attend most rehearsals.”

“But no Gertrude scene was called.”

“True, but Geoff needed guidance. I noticed him moving the show in a most unacceptable way.”

“What way was that?”

“Conceptual. As if his concept were more important than the actors.”

“And that didn’t suit the show?”

“No. It almost entirely undermines Gertrude’s character.” Fong smiled again and nodded. Ms. Marstal saw it and wasn’t pleased. “Gertrude is Hamlet’s mother. Her story is central to the whole thing. And she’s a sexually alive human being. She’s the sexual centre of the play itself.” She did that smiley thing again and said, “I mean how many times do has-beens like me get a chance to strut our stuff? I was at rehearsal to protect my role. If you knew anything about actresses you would understand my position.”

Fong let that pass. “So what happens now?”

“Meaning . . . ?”

“Who looks after the show after Geoff is gone?”

“That duty falls to me. I’ve always wanted to direct. If I weren’t a woman I would have been asked to do so years ago. Did you know that Elinora Duza played Hamlet?”

No, Fong didn’t know that. Nor did he know what an Elinora Duza was – perhaps some form of puffy Italian pastry or maybe it was the name for a Big Whopper in Rome or something. What he did know was that this woman wasn’t smart enough to plan the demise of Geoffrey Hyland. And even getting a chance to direct was not motive enough for murder. If, through some bizarre alignment of the stars or some trick of alchemy, the killing of a talented director would revive the career of a mediocre actress then Fong would have arrested Ms. Marstal on the spot. But since there wasn’t a hope of any such extraterritorial happenings he unceremoniously demanded her passport and left her to find her own way out of the police station.

It was already dark as Fong entered his office. He sat at his desk and thought, “So much for the keyholders and those who were in the theatre just before and those called to be in the theatre just after Geoff’s death.” He slid the dossiers into a desk drawer. Then he noticed a piece of paper with a phone number on it. Beneath the number was Chen’s notation: Shakespeare Expert.

He looked at the clock on the wall. Enough for today. He picked up the piece of paper and turned off the lights in his office. Standing in the dark, he looked at the dancing neon of the nighttime Pudong across the Huangpo River. Every day it seemed to grow.

He left the office, putting the phone number on Shrug and Knock’s desk with a note attached to it saying “I want him in my office first thing tomorrow morning.”

The office was almost deserted. He headed down the back stairway, crossed the eight lanes of traffic and four of bicycles on the Bund and entered a pedestrian underpass.

And there he was. As always. The ancient man with his arhu and begging bowl. Fong spread out a piece of newspaper and sat on the dirty tiles across from the old man. He pressed his cheek into the coolness of the tile wall.

“The weight is heavy on you tonight,” the old man said.

“Yes,” Fong agreed.

“Things must be permitted to end to allow other things to begin.”

Fong nodded but said nothing.

“The weight of ghosts can crush a man.”

To this Fong was afraid even to nod his head, “Play something for me, Grandpa – and help me forget.” Fong slipped some yuan notes from his pocket and placed them in the begging bowl.

The man’s ancient fingers touched the arhu’s strings. The instrument’s unearthly tones bounced like living things off the hard tile surfaces of the tunnel then fell from on high like diving birds into Fong’s ears where they fell, fell, fell through endless space to the still terribly deep pond beneath that was him.