Bobby stood up very reluctantly.
“And you can start giving me the details on the missing woman, Miss Murphy.” He glanced up at me as he removed a small pad from his top pocket.
“As to that, I know little more than you do—her name is Bo Kei, and you’ve seen the photograph I was given.”
“And where exactly have you been looking for her?” he asked. “If she’s been gone for a week you haven’t been too successful, have you?”
“I was only told about her the other day,” I said. “And New York is a big place.”
“You mentioned missions—was there any reason you started looking there?”
“I thought she wouldn’t know where to go in a strange city and she would certainly be frightened to stray far from Chinatown. And you know that the missionaries are always prowling around, looking for converts, so they would definitely take in a young woman alone on the streets.”
“So which of these missions did you visit?”
Fortunately at this moment we heard groans from the hallway and Lee Sing Tai’s number one wife appeared, hobbling painfully on those little stumps. She was now wearing white, and appeared to have white powder on her face, making her look like a walking ghost. She made her way forward, using the furniture to support herself, while Bobby Lee stood in the doorway, not offering to help her. Captain Kear had risen and offered her the big chair. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to sit in her husband’s chair, even if he was dead. Instead she came toward me. I moved along the sofa and she sat beside me.
“Mrs. Lee,” the captain said, “I am sorry about your husband. I know this is upsetting for you. I hope you can help us.” He turned to the translator, who presumably repeated this in Chinese. I wondered if Mrs. Lee actually understood any English and was playing dumb. She had certainly eavesdropped on my conversations with her husband. The old woman looked at him suspiciously, then asked a sharp question.
“She says how can she help you? It is other people who should be helping her,” the interpreter said.
“We want to know if you have any ideas who might have killed your husband?”
The interpreter repeated the words. Her eyes shot open and it was clear that until now she had considered his death an accident. She rattled off an angry string of Chinese.
“She says how can anyone have killed him? He was asleep in his own bed. His houseboy sleeps at the bottom of the stairs. The front door and the bottom door are always locked. There is no way into the house.”
“Just supposing someone did find a way in—any ideas who that might have been?”
She listened, then considered this and replied. “That young woman,” the interpreter translated. “She must have returned and done this awful deed.”
“The new bride, you mean?” the captain asked gently.
She nodded. “She did not want to be here,” she said through the interpreter. “When she finds that I am number one wife, she does not want to obey me. She is lazy. She does not want to work. I say to my husband—this one is no good. Send her away. But he wants a son very much. I tried to give him a son for many years, but I failed him.” And she looked down at her hands as if embarrassed at what she had just said. I noticed that she had thin, wrinkled hands topped with long, claw-like nails, so the effect was hen’s feet with rings on them. Then she looked up again, defiantly this time, and spat out more words with venom. “He has brought in other women before, but none of them can give him a son. I tell him he is being foolish to bring in these girls. Spend our money for nothing. He is an old man now. Too old to have a son anymore.”
“If it really was this girl he brought in from China, how do you think she found a way into the house to kill your husband with nobody seeing her?” the captain asked.
“How did she find a way out when she vanished? The doors were locked. Our men were down below in the street, but she managed to run away.” She looked up at him. “Maybe she is a demon—a being with supernatural powers. I wouldn’t be surprised at this. I did not trust her from the moment I saw her face. It was an evil face. When I looked at how her eyes were formed, I knew that she was evil.”
As she spoke, I realized one thing was very clear. Bo Kei was absolutely right when she had said that wife number one had not welcomed her into the house. And I found myself wondering if she was angry with her husband for bringing in a succession of young women, reminding her that she was old and barren, and spending their money needlessly, as she had pointed out. Had she finally decided that she’d had enough of living like this? After all, who had a better opportunity to push Lee Sing Tai off the roof than the woman who presumably shared his bed?