A Deadly Injustice (28 page)

‘Indeed.'

‘But there is something more important I want to talk to you about.'

‘And what is that?'

‘I have worked out what has been bothering me for almost a week now. It's about the day of Old Geng's murder. I had it fixed in my mind when we interrogated Madam Gao in the kitchen that day. Then we got sidetracked by the sudden appearance of the beggar.'

I remembered the conversation. It had been my obsession with the beggar that had overridden a clue Lin had winkled out, and then made him forget it. I felt guilty about it.

‘And what have you uncovered?'

‘I have been going over the sequence of events as we now know it. Jianxu was cooking a broth for Madam Gao in the kitchen. The old lady herself was in the eastern range of rooms feeling unwell. Old Geng was closeted in the western range trying to make his accounts add up, and we presume his son, Wenbo, was also close by. But Doctor Sun had been summoned by an anonymous letter that threatened to expose him for attacking the old lady. We can assume that it was sent by Wenbo, because when Sun arrived dressed as a beggar, he was met by the boy. He gave or sold him the aconite, and when Nu saw them together, Wenbo pretended to kick the beggar out. Do you agree with me so far?'

I think I knew where Lin was going with this, because the same inconsistency had come back to me. But I did not want to spoil his triumph. I merely nodded.

‘Go on.'

‘Then we come to the difficult part. At some point, Jianxu left the kitchen. We know that because Wenbo admitted as much. At that point, anyone could have laced the broth with poison. Wenbo, Madam Gao, or Sun in the guise of a beggar, could all have done it. I exclude Old Geng because he ended up eating the broth, which he would not have done if he had poisoned it intending to kill Madam Gao. Whatever his motive might have been for that.'

I could hold back no longer and worked out where this led Lin to.

‘So you think either Madam Gao was the target, which means Sun or Wenbo put the poison in the broth in order to kill her. Madam Gao is excluded here as she would not have poisoned her own soup. Or one of the three – Gao, Sun or Wenbo – poisoned the broth and arranged for it to be fed to Geng. Madam Gao is not excluded by that possibility, of course.'

‘But there is a stumbling block.' Lin had seen it, just as I had at last. ‘How did the soup get taken to Old Geng instead of Madam Gao?'

I pointed out what Jianxu had told Gurbesu.

‘Jianxu said Old Geng took it from her. An act of greed that had fatal consequences.'

Lin would not leave it there, however. He was like a dog shaking a rat until it was dead.

‘But the boy said his father did not leave his office. He was quite sure of that. So how could Geng have taken the soup? Now, what if Jianxu was lying? To protect Madam Gao, as she had done when she confessed in order to save the old lady from being tortured? If she thought Madam Gao had poisoned the soup, and then told her to feed it to Geng, her sense of duty might have been enough to cause her to lie to protect her.'

I had another theory, but agreed Lin's could be right. Before I could say anything about my own ideas however, Lin turned and walked to the door.

‘There is only one way to check the truth or otherwise of all this. Where is Jianxu now?'

I confessed I didn't know.

‘The last time I saw her was when the friar came back last night. We were all so engrossed in his story, I am afraid we must have left Jianxu out a little. I saw her look in on us and then retire. I presumed she went back to her room. I will go and ask Gurbesu.'

When I found Gurbesu, and asked her about the girl, she went to the small room at the back of the house that she had selected for Jianxu. Its location meant she could keep an eye on her, like a big sister. But Jianxu wasn't there – she had gone.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking
.

O
nce we had searched the rest of the house to be sure Jianxu was not elsewhere, Lin began to get concerned.

‘What if she has gone back to Madam Gao? If what I suspect is true, and the old lady is at the heart of all this, Jianxu's life may be in danger.'

I tried to calm him down.

‘Don't worry so much, Chu-Tsai. I think I can prevent that from happening. You can leave it to me.'

He didn't look convinced, but I insisted he stayed at the house.

‘You too, Gurbesu.'

She was about to protest, but I put up both my hands, palms out, to stop her.

‘I can deal with this. You should both be here if Jianxu returns.'

Gurbesu looked at me with those dark, penetrating eyes of hers.

‘This is like your scheme to incriminate the prefect in an illegal scam, isn't it? I thought you were doing it on the side to make money for yourself at first. But it was all about sucking Li into something that you could use against him later. You've known for some time who the killer is, and you've set another scheme up to trap her.'

I gazed modestly at the ground, though I was in fact very pleased with myself. But I knew it was hard to hide things from Gurbesu.

‘Well, I wouldn't say I've known for some time, but you are right, I do intend to catch her.'

I left them both uncertain and worried and crossed the courtyard, easing loose the dagger I had stuffed in my belt when I had got up that morning. I needed some reassurance, in case my plans went wrong. Jianxu's disappearance had accelerated the situation, and I had to hurry. The conclusion of this vexed case was in sight, but the threads were unravelling faster than I might have wished.

I strode through the back alleys of Pianfu in my desire to avoid the bustle of horses and sedan chairs on the main highways. The delicate twanging of tuning forks signalled the presence of travelling barbers ready to serve their customers. As I passed one side street, I heard the clatter of copper bowls and knew that a water seller was close by. I found that noise and the cries of street vendors a comforting and familiar sound after well nigh five years in Cathay. Was I settling down here? Would I stay, and live my life out amongst the Chinee and Mongols? I liked my life, but Venice and Caterina Dolfin always came back to haunt me. And the boy who was my son. It was strange, but thinking of him brought me back to Madam Gao, Jianxu and the task in hand. I suppose I was reminded because the girl had lost her father, and lived her life under the watchful and heartless eye of Madam Gao. My son had no father to bring him up, either. Would it affect him as it seemed to have done Jianxu? I hoped not.

The Geng household was now just ahead of me. I approached it cautiously, peering through the gate at the apparently deserted courtyard. Where was Madam Gao? And had Jianxu come here after all?

She had crept into the house keeping to the shadows cast by the afternoon sun on the far side of the courtyard. It had proved easy to slip away from the supervision of the Kungurat woman. After all, she had long experience of sneaking away from the old lady now and then. And she had been much more watchful than Gurbesu. She felt no sorrow about leaving them. Despite all their shows of friendship towards her, when that black crow of a Christian priest had arrived, she had dropped completely out of their minds. When she had looked in on their revelry, only the red-haired man had noticed her presence. And he had only engaged her look for a moment before returning to the conversation with the priest. And his fondling of Gurbesu's thigh. The dark-skinned Kungurat had ignored her completely, revealing how false her concern for Jianxu had really been. In a way, she couldn't blame them. From a child she had been brought up to be silent unless spoken to, and subservient to all men in her family, and that of her husband. Madam Gao was a tyrant, and she did her every bidding. So why would the rowdy and undisciplined foreigners even notice her? She was to them no more than the pile of documents that represented her case to them.

Now she stood in the shadows, shivering slightly, in the morning chill. She had returned to the only person whom she knew and understood. She had come back to be under the scrutiny of Madam Gao and she was fearful of what might happen to her. But there was now no going back.

I thought I saw a shape in the shadows on the far side of Geng's courtyard. I moved that way, but it must have been my imagination. A weed blowing in the wind, perhaps. But then I saw the marks of a woman's pattens on the packed earth. However small, they were not as tiny as Madam Gao's bound feet, and there were no servants in the house to have made them. Jianxu must have come here. They led towards the kitchen.

She quietly made her way to her old domain – the kitchen of Geng's house. At the door, she took off her wooden pattens and carefully placed them side by side on the threshold. She stepped inside. The kitchen was cold with no fire burning in the hearth. If she had been here in the past and had let the fire go out, Madam Gao would have given her a tongue-lashing. Even the servants got treated better than her. She picked up a metal poker and prodded the ashes. They drifted up into the air, and a cold wind whistling through the kitchen blew them across the floor. She could not see even a dim red glow left in the embers.

She pricked her ears, thinking she heard a sound. If so, it could only be her mother-in-law. There was no one left in the house. In fact, she had not been sure that the old lady would be here. But then she would not have returned to her old house as it was empty, and all her possessions moved to Geng's. No, Madam Gao had to be here, and the creaking of timbers above suggested she was awake and moving around. Gripping the heavy poker more tightly in her hand to defend herself, Jianxu crept towards her mother-in-law's upper room.

The old lady sat upright in the darkened room of the empty house. She had always been taught never to slouch, and though her back troubled her more and more often, she still did not give in to its niggling pain. There was time enough to lie down when you were dead. Her thoughts drifted over the last few years that had been such difficult ones for her. It had started when that penniless scholar had brought his girl child to her. She had needed a servant, and gave the man the money he wanted to complete his studies. She had assumed he would come back to claim his daughter, but he never did. The old lady had no complaints about that – she had got a compliant servant at a very cheap price. The first real piece of bad luck had been Cangbi being so sickly. He had always been a weak child, but she had assumed he would grow out of it as he became a man. He didn't, and was reliant on her for most of his needs. It had been a surprise and a relief when her son had begged her to let him marry the girl. She was even more surprised when the girl agreed. She had always ignored her son, only doing for him what the old lady told her to do. It had been a great tragedy when he had died, despite the ministrations of the doctor.

Things then had gone from bad to worse in a way that suggested her great
yun
cycle was on the wane. Old Geng saving her life had seemed like a boon, until she saw what an obligation it had created. The only way out of his clutches that she could see was if he died. She paused in her reverie. Her feet were hurting, and she bent down to squeeze and pummel them. It was the only relief she could find for the aches. If only Jianxu had been here, she could have massaged them for her.

Where was the girl anyway? She had been released, had she not? Why had she not returned where she belonged? The old lady sat up, thinking she heard the floor boards creaking outside the room where she sat. But when she listened hard, she could not detect another sound. She bent down again to manipulate on her feet. One thing she was sure of. When the girl did turn up, she would kill her.

I saw the pattens on the threshold of the kitchen. They had been placed with such exact precision that it had to have been Jianxu's work. I looked cautiously round the door, but couldn't see her. The kitchen was cold and silent, the pots left dirty, and several utensils were scattered over the table. It would not have been so when Jianxu was working there. I saw a smear of cold, grey ash had drifted across the floor. In it were the imprints of a woman's feet clad in socks. I followed the grey marks on the floor towards Madam Gao's quarters.

She sneaked up the staircase, keeping to the edge to prevent any step creaking and giving her away. If she alerted the old woman to her presence, she feared for her safety. But she had the poker and the element of surprise. She saw that the door to Gao's bedroom had been slid open, but the room was still in darkness. Gao must have risen, but had not yet opened the shutters to let the daylight in. As she got closer, Jianxu could see strips of sunlight cutting across the room. The shutters were old and warped, and didn't fit tightly any more. A huddled figure in a blue silk gown sat on a low stool, her head bowed. Her grey hair hung over her face and she seemed oblivious to the intruder. It appeared Madam Gao was examining her bent, bound feet that often still gave her pain in the mornings. Jianxu knew she could hardly bear to put her weight on them until she had rubbed and pummelled them into some sort of feeling.

Jianxu couldn't believe how easy it was to get right up behind her without Gao knowing. The old lady was even muttering to herself, unaware of someone else being in her room. Jianxu had feared this woman all her life and had been afraid Gao might kill her. Now she gripped the poker firmly, and swung it up into the air. But before she brought it down in its murderous arc, Jianxu could not resist a cry of triumph.

‘I killed them all one by one. Now only you stand in my way, you bitch.'

As she brought the heavy iron poker down towards Madam Gao's delicate skull, Jianxu was astonished to see the old lady rise into the air, and fly across the room, landing with her legs akimbo on feet that were no longer painful and tiny but a man's firm feet. A burst of applause came from the doorway behind her. She spun round the see the red-haired barbarian filling the opening. He was clapping his big, coarse hands like he was watching a play.