Bless the Bride (17 page)

“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.”