breaking the law to start with, Chinese women not being allowed to enter the United States. Then this bride does a flit, he hires you to find her, and immediately afterward he plunges to his death. Odd chain of events, don’t you think? And in my twenty years of experience in the New York Police Department, I’ve always found that when strange things happen, one after the other, there’s always a connection.”
He was staring at me, long and hard, as if he expected me to crack and confess all. “Now look here,” I said, my hackles rising. “I don’t know if you’re hinting that I might have had anything to do with his death. If so, I’ve no idea why you’d think that. For one thing, he hasn’t yet paid me my fee—and now he’s not going to, so I’m left out of pocket. Besides, I’d never met the man before and I have no interest in Chinatown or its inhabitants.”
As I said this, unwanted thoughts were racing through my brain. I could think of several people who might want Lee Sing Tai dead, and first on the list was his runaway bride. The officer’s mind must have been working along the same lines because he said, “So you haven’t located this runaway bride yet?”
Now what do I say? Lying to the police was a serious matter, but I also realized that she’d make a perfect scapegoat for them, so that the case could be solved neatly and a new tong war would not erupt. “I did start to look for her. I went around the local missions. But as you can see from the letter, I decided to withdraw from the case,” I said. “I realized that I didn’t wish to be any part of this sordid business. I don’t approve.”
Suddenly his expression changed. He was no longer looking at me as if I was his prime suspect. I could see an idea had just come to him. “Look, Miss Murphy, I’m Captain Kear of the Sixth Precinct,” he said. “Can I ask you to do something for me? Nobody has officially verified the identification of the body for us yet. The old woman in there couldn’t make it down the stairs on those feet, even if we could get her to shut up.”
“What about the servants?” I asked.
“They must have run off when they heard the police were on their way,” he said. “There was nobody in the house when we got here and the door was wide open. Probably thought we were going to blame them. And the Chinamen in the crowd suddenly can’t understand any English or claim to be complete strangers.”
“Is Mr. Lee’s son nowhere around?” I asked.
“He has a son?”
“Bobby Lee,” I said.
“Oh, Bobby Lee, that’s right. Old Lee’s paper son, isn’t he? I haven’t seen him for a while. I heard old Lee shipped him out to the cigar factory in Brooklyn after the last dustup with Hip Sing.”
“He was around here yesterday,” I said.
“Was he? I’ll send someone to look for him. But in the meantime I wondered if you’d take a look at the body yourself. If you’re not too squeamish, that is? I need him officially identified before we move him. These Chinese would lie to their grandmother if it suited them. They all claim they’ve never seen him before.”
“All right.” I swallowed hard. Frankly I was not at all keen to view a body described as flatter than a pancake, but I had my image as a cool-headed detective to uphold, and I was rather flattered that Captain Kear was treating me as an equal and not as a helpless woman who might swoon at any second.
He ushered me down the stairs ahead of him. The street was still deserted and the church was now silent. I thought that probably any sensible Chinese had shut himself in his rooms, just in case he found himself grabbed as a suspect or new tong violence erupted. There was still a crowd around the body. Hardly any of them were Chinese, but there were curious Italians, Jews, and Irish, being held back by constables. I heard one of them saying, “Here’s the captain now,” as Captain Kear elbowed his way ungraciously through the crowd.
“Is the morgue wagon on its way?” he asked one of the constables holding back the crowd.
“Yes, sir. Should be here any moment.”
“And the doctor?”
“Been summoned, sir,” the same constable replied. “Might have a problem locating him. It’s a holiday.” His tone implied that it should have been a holiday for him too, if he hadn’t been summoned to this scene.
“And has somebody been to HQ on Mulberry to request a photographer? I want a photograph of him before he’s moved.”
“I’d say he’s not looking at his best for a photograph,” one of the constables quipped and got a general laugh.
“Get going then, Mafini.” The captain barked the order.
One of the constables forced his way through the crowd and took off, running.
“I’ve brought this young lady to identify him,” Captain Kear said. “If you don’t mind taking a look, Miss Murphy.”
I sensed the curious stares of the crowd as they parted for me to step closer. I took a deep breath, then looked. He was lying on his back, spread-eagled like a starfish, limbs sticking out at unnatural angles like a broken rag doll. His mouth was open in surprise, his eyes staring up at the sky. He was wearing a nightshirt that made him somehow look even more pathetic, like Scrooge in
“Yes,” I said, turning back to Captain Kear when I had composed myself. “That is definitely Lee Sing Tai.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Come away now. I’ll just need a few particulars and then you can go.”
I looked back at the corpse. “There is no way he’d have landed like this if he’d tripped and fallen,” I said, as the thought came to me. “He’d have fallen forward and landed on his face. He had to have been pushed.”
As I said the words I heard a murmur go through the crowd and a couple of Chinese at the back took off running. Captain Kear looked up and frowned. “It wasn’t the smartest thing to say that out loud,” he said. “They’ll be reporting back to On Leong in seconds.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think. Besides, you said they didn’t understand English.”
“Only when it suits them. Most of them understand pretty well.” He took my arm and dragged me away from the crowd. “If what you say is true, then we’d better make it quite clear that we don’t see this as a tong murder.
