O’Byrne sighed as if he suspected it wasn’t going to be an easy task. Captain Kear turned and stomped up the steps to Lee’s apartment. The wailing had stopped and the place was now eerily silent. The old woman was no longer on the sofa. Captain Kear started up the next flight of stairs and I followed, having not been told I couldn’t. This flight opened onto a landing with several doors. One of them was open, revealing a large and ornate bed beyond.
“He definitely slept on the roof last night, did he?” I asked. “Not in his bedroom?”
“How would I know?” the captain said shortly. “When I got here the front door was open as you see it and there was only that hideous old crone making a racket on the sofa. There was no way of getting through to her.”
So the wife was already wailing when Captain Kear got here. He wasn’t the bringer of the bad news. That meant that the whole neighborhood had heard about Lee’s death and everyone was lying low before the police arrived. And where did Bobby Lee fit into this? Had he been around and also quietly slipped away when he heard the news?
As Captain Kear started up the next flight of stairs, I nipped across the hall to take a look at that bedroom. It was as overfurnished and as ornate as the living room downstairs had been—the huge carved mahogany bed, cabinets, a vast wardrobe, and in one corner a shrine, containing a statue of a goddess with more arms than necessary. There were sticks of incense in holders around it and a strange, cloyingly sweet smell lingered in the room, making me want to sneeze. I backed out hastily and hurried to catch up with the captain.
Seventeen
A strong breeze was blowing as I came out onto the roof, bringing in more ominous clouds from the south. It really did seem as if it was going to rain and spoil Sid’s party decorations. There was a flat area of roof ahead of me, bordered to the right by a brick wall where it joined the much taller On Leong building. A brass bedstead was the only item of furniture on the flat part of the roof, and the bedsheets flapped in the wind. Captain Kear was prowling the perimeter, moving distinctly warily and peering down at intervals.
“Couldn’t access it from here,” he was muttering. “Nor from here.”
He made his way down the edge of the roof that overlooked Pell Street, where Lee had fallen to his death, then reached the back of the building where there was a gap between this building and the next. He paused. “I suppose it would be possible for a fit person with plenty of guts to jump across here,” he said, “or to have brought a plank to walk across. Okay, when O’Byrne gets here, I’ll have him find out who owns that building and how easy it is to get up to their roof.”
While he peered down and muttered to himself, I was noticing something quite different. The tar on the roof had become soft in the heat. There were distinct footprints near the edge of the roof—some of them small and dainty, but another set larger, and with deep indentations, like a workingman or laborer’s hobnailed boots.
The small feet could be explained, of course, as Bo Kei had told me herself that she had fled this way. But I could detect that same print facing in both directions—coming and going, so to speak. Had she reached the edge, changed her mind about attempting that formidable leap, retreated, thought it over, then finally plucked up courage to do it? All possible, but for a policeman looking for clues it would spell out that she came, killed Lee, and then left by the same route. Of course I knew that she had a perfect alibi for the crime—she was safely locked away in the settlement house on Elizabeth Street.
And as for the large hobnailed boots—who could they possibly belong to? Most of the Chinese I had seen wore soft cotton slippers, and they worked in laundries or restaurants or apparently cigar factories—no place where heavy boots would be needed. And the footprints were large too—when the Chinese men I had seen had been smaller than me. There was no way of knowing when the big prints had been made, but it would seem to be recently, judging by the lack of dust and grime over them, compared to other areas of the roof.
I joined Captain Kear and peered down over the edge. It was a long way down, but I’d developed a good head for heights, clambering on clifftops on the Irish coast as a child. I could see the fire escape on the next building. That was the way Bo Kei had escaped. She must have felt desperate to have attempted it. Even the climb from the end of the fire escape to the ground looked daunting to me.
“There doesn’t seem to be a door opening onto that roof over there,” Captain Kear said. “I don’t see how anyone could get up there. And as for taking that leap across—well, those Chinese with their little short legs would have a hard time doing that. And I wouldn’t want to try it myself. No, let’s assume that our killer gained access by another means—maybe climbed in via one of the balconies. I expect they keep the windows open on hot nights, and if the bodyguards down below weren’t completely vigilant or they don’t work at night, then maybe a daring kind of guy could climb up the carving on the side of the building and in through the balcony.”
“Then that would rule out the missing bride, wouldn’t it?” I said. “A woman out alone on the street—especially a Chinese woman—would surely have been noticed.”
“That’s true enough.” He paced around the roof, head down like Sherlock Holmes, hoping to find a clue of some sort. He straightened up and pointed excitedly. “Look at those small footprints. Your runaway bride, huh? She did come this way, after all.”
“If she lived in this house, then she might have been up on the roof at any time,” I pointed out. “She probably slept up here and she might have wandered around at times.”
“Not near the edge like that. It’s not natural.”
“She might have been looking for a way to escape.”
“Hey, would you look at that—I was right!” He pointed excitedly at the adjoining rooftop. “See that. It looks like a scrap of white fabric, caught on the brickwork. What’s the betting she tore her dress when she jumped or climbed across.”
“That could just as easily be a scrap of laundry that blew away in the breeze,” I said. “Besides, this doesn’t make sense. If the young woman fled and can’t be found, do you really think she’d risk coming back to the place she fled from? And do you really think a delicate little Chinese girl would climb up there and make that leap? I know I wouldn’t.”
He sucked in a breath and nodded, grudgingly. “Yeah, you have a point there, Miss Murphy. I’d sure like to make her the one who killed the old guy. Perfect motive. Shipped from her homeland against her will. Doesn’t want to marry him, so the only way out is to kill him. That would satisfy the tongs nicely.”
“I’m sure there are other people with a good motive,” I said.
He looked at me strangely. “You seem mighty keen to prove it’s not a girl you’ve never even met.”
“I’m just trying to think things through logically,” I said, trying to keep my face from turning red and my expression suitably distant. “And logic tells me that a delicate young girl wouldn’t want to come back here once
