Missing Susan

“Derwentwater,” said Elizabeth MacPherson, who indexed her facts geographically.

“Yes,” said Rowan, straining to recall the case. “I remember that it was the Lake District, wasn’t it? Borrowdale, I think, in the late 1920s.” He turned to Maud. “Yes, what about it?”

“What happened?” she asked simply. Her face bore a look of concern that people did not usually have when casually discussing sensational crimes.

“He murdered his wife,” said Elizabeth, who had recently read an account of the case. (The one good thing about learning in binges is that all your information is fresh for as long as you care about it.) “She was Chinese, too. Not very pretty, judging from her photograph.”

“They were on their honeymoon, weren’t they?” said Rowan. “Staying at the hotel in Borrowdale. But they weren’t from England.”

“There was an American connection,” said Elizabeth. “I think they sailed from New York.”

“He was a law student at Loyola in Chicago,” said Maud Marsh.

They stared at her. “That’s not in the books,” said Elizabeth.

“I knew him. He rented a room from my family in Chicago when I was a young girl. He was a very nice man. Later I heard that he was involved in a murder case, and I always wondered about the details. It didn’t seem possible.”

“What doesn’t seem possible,” said Rowan wonderingly, “is that I am sitting here talking to someone who knew a murderer who was executed in 1928. Amazing!”

“What was he like?” asked Elizabeth. She had known several murderers herself, but their cases seemed hardly sensational enough to make crime history. Mr. Miao, on the other hand, was a legend.

“He was very quiet,” said Maud, summoning up her memories from half a century past. She looked a bit ghostlike herself in the plain white dress that matched the silver of her hair. Her hands twisted and untwisted in her lap as she spoke. “He came from a good family in Shanghai. I believe he already had a law degree from a university in China. He studied a great deal and he was always very nice to me. I never met his wife. Are you sure he killed her?”

“They went out for a walk,” said Elizabeth, looking up at the ceiling as she tried to visualize her book of criminal history. “A couple of hours later, he came back, but she didn’t. He told another guest at the hotel that his wife had gone to town to shop. When she hadn’t returned by eight o’clock, the hotel proprietress became concerned; but apparently Mr. Miao wasn’t worried that she had been gone shopping for so long.”

“That’s a little odd, surely, for a newlywed,” Maud conceded.

“Unless he were married to Elizabeth here,” Rowan grunted.

“I don’t shop that much! Anyhow, what happened then? A farmer found the body by a pool of water in the woods. She had been strangled with a blind cord and her clothing was torn. Also her rings were missing.”

“Rape?” said Maud. “That doesn’t sound like something a husband would have done.”

Rowan, thinking of previous wives, opened his mouth and closed it again. He took another sip of Scotch. “As I recall, the physical evidence incriminated him, didn’t it? Didn’t the blind cord match the kind used in the hotel?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I remember that. And they found her missing rings hidden among his things.”

Maud sighed. “How very sad. That does seem to settle it. I only wondered because of something that happened in Chicago, while he was staying with us. I remember that some Chinese men came to see him one afternoon. They were standing in the hallway, speaking very angrily at Mr. Miao in Chinese. And when I saw him later he had cuts and bruises on his face. I asked him who the men were, and he said that they were from-I think he said a rival family. Anyway, they wanted him to do something that he didn’t want to do. He seemed very afraid of them.”

“A tong!” muttered Rowan Rover. “Chinese gangsters in America. Of course you had them in Chicago! I wonder how he got mixed up with them?”

“I don’t know,” said Maud. “I never saw them again, and he didn’t discuss it with my parents. But when I heard that his wife had been murdered, I wondered if those people had somehow followed him to England and killed his bride. Maybe they didn’t want him to marry her.”

Elizabeth looked uneasy. “The defense did call witnesses who stated that they had seen Oriental men in the area that day.”

Rowan shook his head. “Japanese tourists? Korean immigrants? They never found those mysterious Orientals, did they? I think his attorney was grasping at straws.”

“He was such a gentle man, though,” said Maud. “What was his motive supposed to be?”

“They never really gave one,” said Elizabeth. “The theories were that he killed her for her money or because he learned that she couldn’t have children. I think in those days no one expected to understand the motivations of a Chinese mind.”

Maud looked thoughtful. “I wonder if they forced him to kill her, or else… or else, what? I don’t know.”

“I can’t even guess what his motive was,” said Rowan. “But considering how unconcerned he was about her disappearance, we have to assume that he knew she was dead. The fact that her missing rings were found among his possessions is strong evidence that he did it. Had I been on the jury, I’d have found him guilty.”

“And he was hanged?”

“Yes. At Strangeways in Manchester, I expect,” said Rowan. “We’ll be going past another famous prison tomorrow, incidentally. Dartmoor.”

“I want to see that!” said Elizabeth. But she was a bit more subdued about crime than usual. It was difficult to know what to say to someone who mourned for a murderer. Odd how unusual even the most ordinary people could turn out to be.

She fell asleep that night thinking of Constance Kent in a bloodstained nightdress standing over the body of her brother.

“How many were going to St. Ives?”

– OLD ENGLISH RIDDLE

CHAPTER 10

“I’LL NEVER GET used to stewed tomatoes for breakfast,” said Alice MacKenzie, peering at the shriveled vegetable curled up next to a sausage patty.

“No,” Frances Coles agreed. “But the bread is certainly good.” She had piled a selection of baked goods next to her plate of eggs.

It was nine o’clock and those members of the tour group who had not been up for hours were finishing up a hasty breakfast in the Manor House restaurant, an elegant banquet hall decorated in pastels, with large sunny windows, and a photograph of their most famous diner, HRH the Prince of Wales, prominently displayed.

“You’re going to eat all those?” asked Elizabeth MacPherson, slipping into the vacant chair at their table with a croissant and a bowl of cereal.

Frances giggled. “Eventually,” she said, pointing to her cavernous handbag.

Elizabeth stifled a yawn. She was wearing a black sweatsuit that suggested a rapid transition from bed to breakfast table. “Are you already packed? We’re heading out soon. Bernard was just finishing his breakfast when I came in. I hope we get to St. Ives today before five.”

Alice heaved a sigh. “More shopping?”

“Actually, no. I want to visit a library.”

Fiances began to rummage in her handbag. “I have an extra paperback here,” she said. “It’s a Carolyn Hart, if you’d like to borrow it.”

“Thanks, Frances, but I brought reading material. I need to find a library because I want to do some research.”

“On what?” asked Frances. She was wrapping a croissant in a paper napkin and stowing it away for future consumption.