The police were waiting for a warrant that would give them authority to break into the premises. It promised to be a long wait. Magistrates were difficult to find on Christmas Day.
Lady Sara plucked at my sleeve and signalled to Constable Kung. “All of this police authority standing around and doing nothing will not advance our case an iota,” she said to the Constable. “What we need right now are more witnesses to that argument between Charlie Tang and Wong Li. Will you see if you can find any?”
He hurried away. Lady Sara led me along West India Dock Road to the Chinese Mission House. It was a two-storey, white-painted brick building situated comfortably between a slop shop, an establishment selling used clothing and cheap sailors’ togs, and a Chinese shop whose proprietor had an unlikely English name. The dazzling white front stood out starkly from the dark, weathered bricks of the buildings on either side. A sign in English across the top of the building read CHINESE MISSION. Above the door, four large Chinese characters probably proclaimed the same thing.
In the dim interior, the Reverend George Piercy seemed to be getting ready for a party. A table was laid for more than a score of guests. The fare was to be simple: tea, bread and butter, cakes, and biscuits. On the evenings of Sundays and holidays, Piercy was accustomed to entertaining young Chinamen who needed advice on personal problems or merely enjoyed the fellowship such a gathering supplied. He had lived for thirty years in China, and the London Chinese considered him their friend and adviser.
He was so slender he looked as though he had spent his life fasting. He was gentle and friendly, and he was instantly sympathetic to any problem. He greeted Lady Sara with a shy smile, got both of us seated, and asked how he could help us.
Lady Sara told him what had brought us to Limehouse and what we had discovered.
“Wong Li murdered?” Piercy exclaimed.
“The body won’t be positively identified until the police obtain a warrant and force entrance to the building, but I think we can safely assume that it is Wong Li.”
“How unspeakably sad! He has a wife and three young children — I must begin immediately to see what can be done for them.”
“When the identification becomes official, we will need a sympathetic Chinese woman to carry the sad news to Mrs. Wong. I thought you would best know how to manage that.”
“Yes. Of course. Please excuse me. I’ll send for someone.”
“Charlie Tang himself will be the principal suspect,” Lady Sara told him when he returned. “Witnesses heard them quarrelling yesterday morning before the Tangs left.”
“But that is totally unacceptable and impossible! They were both men of high character, and they held each other in the highest esteem! I would as soon believe that Her Majesty had stabbed her Prime Minister as believe that Charlie Tang and Wong Li would quarrel!”
“Nevertheless, I feel certain that Charlie Tang will be the principal suspect unless something is done quickly to counter that. I have doubts about this myself, and I need to know who else could have done it. Does Charlie Tang have any enemies?”
“Of course,” Piercy said. “He is generous, he is kind, he is popular, and he is extremely successful. There are always some who envy the person who is any of those things, and he is all of them.”
“Rival businessmen?” Lady Sara suggested.
“That would seem unlikely to me. They, also, are men of integrity.”
“An employee of one of them thinking to do his employer a favour?”
“I suppose that is possible, but I would have difficulty believing it.”
“An employee acting on a suggestion from his employer?”
“That is flatly impossible. All of Charlie Tang’s principal rivals are successful men. They might envy him a little because he is a bit more successful than they are, but surely not to the point of involving him in murder!”
“Was he resented because he has an English wife and has adopted English ways?”
Piercy shook his head emphatically. “The Chinese are far from home. Chinese women are in short supply. It is so common for Chinese businessmen to take English wives that I would have difficulty understanding why Charlie Tang would be singled out.” He smiled. “In my opinion, the Chinese are the East End’s finest citizens. They also are far kinder and far more considerate to their wives and children than most English husbands. The one thing that might have aroused enmity was Charlie Tang’s crusade against the smoking of opium and majoon. He considered this destructive of many potentially fine young men, and he sponsored meetings to discuss the steps that should be taken to close those shoddy establishments that are misnamed ‘opium parlours.’ How that could have resulted in the murder of Wong Li, who surely had nothing to do with it, is more than I could say.”
“Does a directory of those opium parlours exist?” Lady Sara asked.
“Not to my knowledge. Those who patronise them always know where they are — even the ones that change their addresses frequently. Of course, there are a few that occupy better premises and have their own special clientele. In their own fashion, they resemble the gentlemen’s clubs in the West End. If you really want to know something about them, I can introduce you to a merchant who has a shop next door to one of them. He would be pleased to see it put out of business.”
“That would be difficult as long as our laws permit it,” Lady Sara said. “But I would like to meet him. Is there a Joss House in the East End?”
“Ah! There is much mystery as to whether a Chinese Joss House, or temple, exists here. The Chinese themselves say there is none, but they prefer to keep their own secrets, and they resent having their ancient customs ridiculed. If there is a Joss House, they would not even tell me about it.”
Leaving a politely smiling Chinese youth in charge of the Mission, Piercy came with us to introduce Lady Sara to another Li, Chung Li, a well-known Chinese businessman.
Chung Li’s establishment was not as extensive as Charlie Tang’s. The building was smaller, and he offered only Chinese products. Much of his stock seemed to consist of foods and medicines imported from China. At Piercy’s suggestion, he retired with us to a back room, and he and Piercy talked for a few minutes in hushed tones. Then Chung Li nodded. He was a plump, smiling Chinaman with a mouthful of gold teeth that he flashed at us repeatedly.
“I’ll show them,” he promised Piercy.
Having received our thanks, Piercy took his leave of us. Chung Li began an explanation, and at first, until we became accustomed to his elided R’s, he was extremely difficult to understand. Eventually he made himself clear.
At one time the building that housed his shop had an additional front entrance, a door between the shop and the opium establishment next door that opened on a stairway leading to the flat upstairs. The proprietor at that time also owned the building and ran the opium parlour as well as the shop. He liked to display merchandise on the pavement outside. Traffic to the crowded flat upstairs interfered with this, so he had an outside stairway built at the rear of the building, removed the front stairway, and bricked up the front entrance that had led to it.
This left him with a long, narrow room between his shop and the opium parlour. He used it for storage, but he also found another use for it. A platform was erected the full length of the wall, and holes bored through the wall, making it possible to spy into the opium parlour.
Chung Li thought the former proprietor had used it to identify the better class of opium patrons. When they arrived, often at night and always with their faces covered by a convenient scarf, it was difficult to recognise them. Once inside, they felt safe and removed their disguises. The occasional opium addict from high society, or politics, or the theatre, or any other form of public life who had the misfortune to be recognised, quickly became a blackmail victim.