perhaps thinking I was going to take all his profits. I smiled reassuringly.
‘Just a little insurance policy, Master Li. Say hello to Dao and Yun.’
Li grinned nervously and peeled off some notes, pressing them in my hand. I secreted them in my purse, and walked jauntily out of the temple. Looking back I saw that my bodyguards were no longer following. Well, I did not have need of them now. Turning to my right, I started towards the theatre, and my hoped-for meeting with P’ing- Yang Nu.
The theatre seemed very quiet — even the entrance arch was unoccupied. Normally the stentorian-voiced barker sat there urging people to enter when there was a show to promote, and then taking the money. Today he was nowhere in sight. I walked through into the arena, seeking someone who could tell me where P’ing-Yang Nu was to be found. On the stage, which in full daylight looked dowdy and worn, a couple of actors were practising acrobatic moves. One man swung a punch at the other, and he lurched backwards even though the fist had not touched him and performed a somersault. He did it badly, falling on one knee. He clutched his leg, crying out in pain. The first man called out in derision and the other stumbled back to his place. They squared up to practise the move again, ignoring me as I climbed the steps to the platform on which they were working out their routine. Striding over to them, I could smell the stale sweat on their bodies. The blow was flung again, and the recipient performed another somersault. He landed hard on his backside this time, and the other one laughed. The one on the floor looked up at me, acknowledging my presence for the first time. I tried my best to look stern, though I’m sure he could put on a much more convincing scowl than I could. Unless his acting was as bad as his acrobatics, that is.
‘P’ing-Yang Nu?’
The actor cocked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the backcloth. The man I sought was obviously backstage somewhere. I thanked him, and stuck a hand out to help him get up from his embarrassing position on the tiled floor of the stage. He refused it, bounding to his feet as though unhurt. I did notice he walked away with a limp, however. I pulled the edge of the painted cloth aside and stepped into the gloom behind it. The smell of men’s sweat was even stronger here, laced with another familiar but elusive smell. I took a step forward in the dark, and my foot slid on the tiles. They were wet and sticky. The odour in my nostrils identified itself. It was like the smell of an abattoir. Or a battlefield.
I dragged the backcloth to one side to let more light into this gloomy place. The first thing I saw was a naked leg. It had red and green dragons tattooed all along it. Cautiously taking a step closer, I saw another leg similarly covered in dragon designs. Then the whole body became apparent. It was clad only in a loincloth, and not only were the legs tattooed, the back and arms were covered with dragons too. It was impossible to see if the chest had its adornment also. P’ing-Yang Nu was lying face down in a dark, glistening pool of his own blood.
Together with the prefect, Lin and I examined the body. It now lay on a trestle in a makeshift morgue close to the main square. It would seem that scant attention was paid to the details of a death in Pianfu. It was enough for Li Wen-Tao to know that the man was dead. And that was an obvious deduction from the state of the body. When Nu had been turned over by the funerary attendants, his guts had spilled out. Li, who was in attendance by then, having been fetched by me from the temple complex next door, turned away and vomited his last meal out on the theatre tiles. Now he stood at a good distance from the body, avoiding looking on the mess. Lin and I, on the other hand, were eager to look more closely. I wished Masudi al-Din were here, because I had learned a lot about Geng’s death from his meticulous autopsy. Even though I never saw that body, the Arab’s written report was quite illuminating. Li had no intention of being so meticulous, especially with a dead travelling actor of no importance. It had been all we could do to get permission to examine the body before the prefect disposed of it.
Lin, his face just a little paler than usual, pointed a long-nailed finger at the dead man’s belly.
‘See how the cut is from left to right.’
I nodded, following the line of the incision made in Nu’s flesh. It cut through the necks of two dragons tattooed on his torso, removing the beasts’ heads from their bodies. The man’s guts, pushed rudely back into his belly by an attendant, still poked out. It was as though the dragons themselves had been gutted. But I could see what Lin meant.
‘Assuming the killer was right-handed, a cut from left to right suggests he did it from behind. He surprised the actor, and killed him without getting too much blood on himself.’
‘The alternative is a bold, left-handed murderer… now covered in blood and guts.’
Lin’s morgue humour was grimly amusing. But I was in no mood to laugh. If I had taken Lin seriously, and gone to the theatre sooner instead of being drawn by the lure of money, P’ing-Yang Nu might not now be dead. And we might have been closer to unmasking a killer. On the other hand, if I had been earlier, I might now be lying on a slab alongside P’ing-Yang Nu. Gutted like a fish. Lin divined my thoughts.
‘We could still discover something about what was in Nu’s mind.’
‘How?’
‘We must search for his version of the play script. If he wrote down the amendments he made, we could learn from them. I can only remember a few of the lines we heard on the night.’
Lin was correct, and knew I should have searched for the script as soon as I had arranged for the body to be moved.
‘I will go back immediately and see if I can find it.’
Tien-jan was finally at the theatre when I got back, wiping make-up from his face. I asked him if he had been busy, and he said he had had lots to do.
‘What do you want now, investigator? To accuse me of the murder of Nu?’
I grinned at the slim youth, who had once fooled me into thinking he was a girl.
‘You know I wouldn’t do that. No, I am on another mission. Do you know where Nu would have kept any written copies of the plays you perform? I am particularly interested in the one you put on recently.’
‘Not Guan’s new play?’
I shook my head.
‘No. Though I would love to know what slant Guan has taken on the case of Jianxu. It may affect the outcome of the investigation.’
Natural Elegance put on his best enigmatic look.
‘I cannot tell you that. The script is a closely guarded secret. Even those of us in the play only know our own lines, and none of us knows the ending yet. I think it is still unwritten, actually.’
‘And the other play? Is the script for that a secret too?’
‘Three Princes at Tiger Palace?’ Tien-jan laughed a sweet, tinkling laugh. ‘It is so old everyone knows the words by heart. Though, now you come to mention it, poor Nu did make some amendments this time.’ He paused. ‘I sound like an old script myself — “Now you come to mention it…” There is so much formulaic dialogue in the old plays. Nu liked to change it a bit, so it was no surprise to us when he issued sheets out to each of us at the rehearsal. Though, as we blocked in the moves, I did think some of the dialogue a little irregular and inconsistent. It didn’t fit somehow.’
He was rambling about theatre matters that had me quite confused. Rehearsals? And what was blocking in the moves? I tried to bring him back to the point of my inquiries.
‘But Nu would have had a fair copy of the whole piece?’
The boy sighed and nodded.
‘Yes, the full script. Follow me, and I will show you where he keeps… kept… all the scripts.’
He took me to a room backstage that had pigeonholes along one wall. Every slot was stuffed tight with paper documents. Tien-jan began to rummage through them, at first casually, then gradually moving from slot to slot more urgently. It came as no surprise to me when he said that he couldn’t find the amended script to ‘Three Princes at Tiger Palace’ anywhere.
FIFTEEN
It was not long before the prefect reacted to the murder in the theatre in the most severe of ways. On the
