early. He came into the room and saw what the man was doing. He grabbed him and pulled him off me. There was a scuffle and my attacker fled. Geng was too old to give chase, and anyway, I needed his attention.’ She stared Lin in the eye, pointedly avoiding looking at me. ‘That was why I agreed to marry him — and that was when my fortunes changed. Geng had saved my life, and I was indebted to him. He said he had been looking for a wife, and now he had found one. It was my fate to obey him, and at his insistence I got rid of my own house and moved in here.’ She waved a weary hand at the ramshackle range of buildings. ‘I think my yun was waning from that point on.’
At last I had the answer to my question about why a rich old woman should marry a poor man who owed her money. I knew a little bit about Chinee belief in fate and luck. So I knew Madam Gao had not been happy to accept Geng’s marriage offer, but had felt bound to do so. Her luck had taken a nosedive from that point. She looked tired, but Lin wanted more.
‘And was it your idea that Jianxu should marry Wenbo?’
‘No, that was Old Geng. He has been looking for a wife for his son for a long time. You can see for yourself how weak the boy is. His father thought my obligation to him would stretch to the girl. And indeed, I saw no reason why she shouldn’t have married Wenbo. It was she who objected. She has always been a wayward child, never doing as she was told. You would have thought she owed me nothing the way she behaved.’
As the old lady rambled on, I had noticed that the boy had moved from his window, where I had first seen him, to the edge of the courtyard where we sat. He was hiding behind one of the doorframes to my right. Madam Gao was not able to see him, but he could see her, and hear what she said. His shoulders had slumped when she described him to us, and his fists had clenched. I could see there was no love lost between them, the tough-minded old woman and the skinny youth.
When she had finished her scalding diatribe about both Wenbo and Jianxu, I asked if we could speak with Wenbo now. She contorted her face into some sort of grin.
‘Of course you can, Mr Investigator.’ She turned her head slightly in the boy’s direction, revealing that she had been aware of his presence all along. ‘You can come out now, Wenbo. Stop skulking, and show yourself.’
The ‘boy’, who must have been twenty at least judging by the growth on his chin, shambled over. His head was bowed, and when he did look up, I saw the spark of fear in his eyes. He was scared of us — more than he needed to be, and more than he had been last time we saw him. I wondered why.
‘You don’t need to be afraid, Wenbo. We are just filling in some of the past in order to be sure of what happened to your father.’
‘It wasn’t Jianxu that did it.’
Wenbo’s face was red and all screwed up. His hands were in tight fists. I stood squarely on to him, facing up his anger.
‘Then who was it, Wenbo? Who was it?’
His face returned to its normal colour, and he lowered his gaze again. The rage was momentarily over.
‘I don’t know.’ He stuck an accusing finger out at Gao. ‘But she didn’t want to go through with the marriage to my father. Ask her who did it.’
The old lady was imperturbable.
‘He isn’t right in the head. He’s weak-kneed for the girl, and can’t accept she was responsible.’
Wenbo growled, and would have launched himself at his never-to-be mother-in-law had I not grabbed his arm. Lin, who had observed all this silently, coughed quietly.
‘I would like you to show me the kitchens where the broth was prepared, Madam Gao.’
The old woman looked puzzled, but eventually shrugged her shoulders, and eased gingerly up from her chair.
‘Come this way. You will not see much. The kitchen has been used and cleaned many times over since Geng’s death.’
She turned and hobbled towards the kitchen door, the only entrance on that side of the courtyard. I followed, my hand still holding Wenbo’s arm firmly. I was curious to know what Lin hoped to learn from examining the kitchen. Whatever it was, the boy would be useful to question also. He was supposed to have been around when the fatal brew was concocted. Inside the kitchen, a large open hearth stood at the back of the room. A fire burned, as it probably did constantly, and a pot of water boiled above it on a hook. The room was very hot. Utensils and cooking pots were lined up on racks, and sacks of provisions lay stacked along one wall. I imagined it was the most normal of kitchens, the only oddity being the presence of the two bodyguards. There was no servant bustling around as there would have been in any other merchant’s kitchen. Madam Gao noticed me looking around.
‘All the servants are gone. I dismissed the last one yesterday. We cannot afford their wages.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘I had expected that the girl could carry out their tasks. But now she is in prison, there will have to be some changes made. Especially when…’
She paused, but we all knew what she had been going to say. She meant that they would have to replace Jianxu as a general-purpose skivvy after she had been executed. Wenbo looked pale, casting his gaze nervously around. I had let go of his arm, and he looked as though he was seeking a means of escape. But the only doors in the kitchen were ones at either end leading into the two wings, and the one where we had just come in. He would find it hard to get free of me.
Lin asked Gao where she had been on the fateful day.
‘I was in my bed through there.’
She pointed to the door at one end of the kitchen.
‘The girl and I occupied that wing of the house, and the Gengs the other.’
This time she pointed to the door at the other end of the room.
‘The house was built for a large family, and Geng’s had been such. But over the last few years, his brothers died, leaving him the sole occupier of the place.’ She shivered theatrically. ‘It’s too big and draughty to my mind. But its size had its uses. Until we were married I insisted on separate quarters.’
Lin nodded his understanding.
‘I see. So you were in that wing of the house, and Geng senior in the opposite one on the day of his murder?’
He pointed once again at the two interior doors.
‘Yes. He was going through his bills, I believe. You can see his office if you wish.’
Lin, who perhaps had expected Wenbo to object to Gao offering him free run of the side of the house that was his, was surprised when the boy said nothing. He was merely sullen and uncooperative. Lin had his next question for the boy, however.
‘And where were you, Wenbo, when Jianxu was in here cooking the broth?’
The boy’s mouth opened and closed without a sound issuing as he tried to order his thoughts. Finally, he had a statement to make.
‘I was in and out of the kitchen, I suppose. Father was busy with his accounts, and I knew he would spend hours trying to make them balance. But they never would, and he got angry, so I kept out of his way.’
‘Did you see Jianxu leave the kitchen at any time?’
I saw where Lin was going with this. He wanted to know if anyone else had had a chance to put the poison into the broth. Wenbo frowned in concentration, and Gao interrupted.
‘I saw a beggar. Tell him about the beggar.’
Wenbo seemed to wince at the old lady’s prompting, but began to explain slowly.
‘Yes. Some beggar came to the street door, and Jianxu wanted to give him some alms. She asked me to keep stirring the broth, but I got bored. There was no one in the kitchen then.’
‘And then she came back and carried on with her cooking?’
‘Er, yes. I don’t know what happened after that because I went to tell father that Jianxu had let a beggar in, and should I kick him out.’
Lin paused, holding his hand in the air to stop Wenbo’s story.
‘The beggar came in the house?’
‘Well, in the kitchen. Jianxu was going to give him something to eat, I think. I said she shouldn’t, and I was going to tell my father. She came into the courtyard and told me…’ He blushed, poking with a toe at the kitchen floor. I prompted him.
‘She told you not to be so stupid.’
