“You can go home once you’ve helped out the captain,” O’Byrne said. He shoved the man ahead of him into the room. “Here’s your interpreter, sir. He’s a scribe, so I know he can translate. And we’ve got On Leong men rounding up the servants. I put the fear of God into them—told them their police protection ends as of now if those men aren’t found right away.”
“Nice work, Constable.” Captain Kear nodded with satisfaction. He pointed at the Chinaman, who stood almost quivering with fright. “You, sit. And you,” he turned to Bobby, “go and find the wife and tell her to get down here, or we’ll come and question her in her bedroom.”
“I can’t go up there,” Bobby said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Just do it,” the captain barked. “Or it’s not Hip Sing you’ve got to worry about, it’s Sing Sing. I’ve enough on you to put you away for years if I wanted, so I suggest you cooperate.”
Bobby shot him a look of pure hatred and went upstairs. We heard raised voices, both male and female, and then Bobby returned. “She comes down, but she’s not pleased.”
“Well, she wouldn’t be, would she?” the captain said. “Her old man’s dead. What’s going to happen to her now? How is she going to survive alone in a country where she can barely speak the language and she can’t even go outside? She doesn’t have a child to take her in—unless you’re going to act the dutiful son, Bobby, and you come here and look after her.”
“Of course I look after her,” Bobby said. ‘I know my duty as son. I will take over from my father and do what he expects of me.”
I bet you will, I thought. The businesses and the power in the tong. It was probably just beginning to dawn on Bobby Lee that he was now a very rich man.
“So where would we find Frederick Lee, Bobby?” the captain asked.
Bobby got to his feet. “I do not know where he lives, but my father will have his address in his cabinet. He have particulars on all employees.”
He crossed the room to the ornate ebony cabinet in the corner. There was a little gold key in the lock, which he turned. He opened the carved doors to reveal a series of little drawers inside, each one inlaid with mother-of-pearl designs of animals and flowers. It was truly a wonderful piece of furniture, the likes of which I’d never seen before, and I gazed at it in admiration. Bobby Lee pulled open one of the drawers, then recoiled. “Wah. What happen here? Someone has been here. Someone has touched my father’s papers.”
Nineteen
Captain Kear went over to the cabinet. From where I was sitting I could see that the drawer was hastily stuffed with pieces of crumpled pieces of paper. Bobby opened another drawer, then another. All were in disarray.
“Hold it there, Bobby,” Kear said. “Don’t touch anything else. There might be useful fingerprints. So these drawers were normally neat and tidy, were they?”
“My father keep everything just so. He could find any record in seconds. All in order. He liked order. Someone was looking for something here.”
“The question is whether he found it,” the captain said. “And whether it was the reason old Lee was killed. When we’ve dusted for fingerprints, you and I will go through this cabinet.”
“No use to you,” Bobby said scathingly. “All in Chinese.”
“That’s why you’re going to read it for me, and we’ll bring along that interpreter fellow to make sure you’re reading exactly what it says.”
I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it again. Sticking out of one of those drawers I had seen a very Western scrawled signature. But then the captain would find it for himself later, wouldn’t he?
“Knowing the way that your father did business, my guess is that he had quite a few items that someone might kill for,” he said. “We know there was protection money, maybe even blackmail.”
He took out a handkerchief and carefully closed the cabinet again. Then he removed the key, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and tucked it into his top pocket. “Perhaps he had something incriminating on Frederick Lee—something he wouldn’t return when he fired Frederick. Well I want this Frederick brought in right now. O’Byrne. Go and find him.”
“Find him, sir? How do I do that if I don’t know where to start looking?”
“If he was employed by Lee Sing Tai, you can bet your boots he’s an On Leong member and they’ll have his address in their files. And his family details too. He might be hiding out with a clan member. They all band together when one’s in trouble, don’t they?” Captain Kear sat down again. “Go on, then. Jump to it.”
“Very good, sir.” O’Byrne stifled the sigh. He was a big red-faced Irishman and all this running around on a muggy morning was not to his liking.
“Oh, and on your way send someone to headquarters and tell them we need to have the cabinet dusted for fingerprints.”
O’Byrne was clearly wishing that the captain had selected another constable to accompany him. He nodded, then we heard his big boots going down the stairs.
“Now where’s the wife got to?” Captain Kear demanded. “Didn’t you make it clear that I wanted to speak to her? Go up and tell her that if she doesn’t come down, I’m coming up to her bedroom to get her.”