Chung Li paid as little attention as possible to the opium parlour, but he was willing to show us the platform the previous owner had used for spying. Lady Sara, who already knew all about opium parlours from numerous interrogations of addicts, deferred to me, telling me to look for anything that might be useful to us.
I mounted a ladder to the long platform and gingerly made my way to the front of the building. There was no railing. I returned slowly, using the spyholes along the way. I failed to see how this would advance our case, but I had never visited an opium parlour, and I was curious.
There was nothing on display in the front windows, which were heavily curtained with a drab-looking material. The curtains concealed a nondescript shop with a counter and a few items like tobacco, cigars, and sweets offered for sale. On the counter was a small pair of scales. A young, bespectacled Chinese man sat behind the counter reading a book.
The back room was separated from the shop by a partition with a dingy yellow curtain in the doorway. This was the opium-smoking room, and I counted seven customers. The room was furnished with several comfortable chairs, two settees, and an odd wooden structure, a low platform that supported three large mattresses. The opium smokers had their purchases measured out for them in the front of the store and then went to the rear to sit or recline comfortably while they smoked opium, or if majoon, the blend of opium, hemp, and hellebore, was their preference, smoked, chewed, or ate it.
It was a pernicious habit, and it couldn’t be justified, as some tried to do, by the excuse that the user harmed only himself. Heads of families were destroyed; wives and children were left in poverty. Even so, I failed to see what connection it might have with the murder of Wong Li.
Chung Li was unable to tell us where other opium parlours were located. There were a number of them in the East End, he said, and they were easily identified by their curtained front windows, but he paid very little attention to them.
We returned to the emporium of Charlie Tang, where the congregation of police was drawing a crowd. The boy I had hired to hold the borrowed horse was still exercising patient diligence, and he flashed a smile when he saw me. He deduced, rightly, that his long ordeal would be properly rewarded.
Sam Godson had joined the bystanders to see what use we were making of his property. While I was talking with him, the warrant finally arrived. With it came a locksmith. The Chief Inspector had decided — in consideration of the corpse in the sitting room — that he was fully justified in breaking in, but because the premises were the property of a prominent and influential Chinese merchant, he thought it might be wise to do so with finesse.
When I looked around, Lady Sara had vanished. I finally located her in the middle of West India Dock Road headed diagonally across it, and I had to hurry to catch up with her. Facing the side street was a short row of shops. In one of them could be seen the tell-tale curtains that marked an opium parlour. It was the shop next door that she was headed for, however. One glance and I saw why. Above the door was the proprietor’s name in English, W. Shing, accompanied by Chinese characters that probably said the same thing. I had been in the neighbourhood numerous times to call on Madam Shing, but I had never noticed that particular shop.
On the outside it was totally nondescript; on the inside, it was a fairyland. It was a shop offering Chinese objects made of brass — platters, bowls, tureens, goblets, beautifully fashioned art objects, gongs, bells, canisters, tea services, Buddhas of various sizes. Some of the items were wonderfully engraved. Some were genuine works of art.
But the contents were incidental, and the name of the proprietor — a common name among London’s Chinese — could have been a coincidence. The thing about the shop that had seized Lady Sara’s attention the moment she looked in that direction and now arrested mine was the proprietor himself. He stood in the doorway looking curiously at the confused intermingling of police and bystanders that surrounded Charlie Tang’s shop. He was elderly, he wore an ornate Chinese hat and Chinese robes, and he had a long white beard.
For all I knew, white beards were commonplace among the elderly Chinese — one saw them often enough in the East End — but this one was interesting because of the owner’s name and because he was located so conveniently close to Madam Shing’s residence.
Lady Sara was playing the role of an innocent tourist. She admired the brass works of art, exclaiming with delight each time her gaze fell on something new. Finally she selected a small vase. She took it to the front of the store, where the light was better.
“Lovely,” she exclaimed. “Let’s see if it takes a polish.” She went to work on it with a silk handkerchief, then held it up again. “Lovely. I’ll take this.” She smiled at the proprietor. “If it matches my decor, I’ll need several more.”
He bowed gracefully and took the vase from her with a smile. “It is a simple design,” he said — his English was impeccable — “but one is less likely to tire of simplicity.” He wrapped the vase in a piece of newspaper bearing Chinese characters and handed it to her. She paid him — a stiff price, it seemed to me, four pounds — and he accompanied us to the door.
He resumed his position in the doorway, again turning his attention to the chaos around Charlie Tang’s shop. “What is happening?” he asked.
“During the night there was a report that Charlie Tang’s residence had been broken into,” Lady Sara said. “But there seems to be no sign of any disturbance, and all the doors and windows are locked. I don’t know what the police are doing now.”
“But where is Wong Li?” Mr. Shing asked. “He was to guard the store during his master’s absence.”
“The police say there doesn’t seem to be anyone inside,” Lady Sara said. “No one we have talked with has seen Wong Li recently. Have you?”
The old man meditated for a moment. “I saw him night before last — the night before his master left for Liverpool. I sometimes import small items of brass for Charlie, and I had just had a new shipment. I took him the twenty small Buddhas he had asked for. Wong Li was there. He was always there during the hours the shop was open. I also presented Charlie with a bottle of sake, which is a Japanese liquor he is fond of, and the three of us, Charlie, Wong Li, and I, drank a toast to Charlie’s trip.” He smiled. “It was a very English occasion. But I can’t believe there is no one inside the store. Charlie told me himself that Wong Li would stay there during his absence.”
“Your English is excellent,” Lady Sara said. “How long have you lived in England?”
“All my life,” the old man said with a smile.
We thanked him, he thanked us, and we took our leave of him. As we walked back across West India Dock Road, I muttered to Lady Sara, “Just in case you are thinking you have found the white beard Madam Shing saw climbing a ladder, I’ll remind you that she also thought she saw it climb through Charlie Tang’s window, which certainly never happened. She would make an impossible witness.”
“She will never be called as a witness for the simple reason that she didn’t see anything.”
“Didn’t see — but she must have seen something! If she hadn’t come to you last night, we wouldn’t have found out that Wong Li was murdered. Do you mean she made it all up?”
“Not all of it,” Lady Sara said. “The one accidental grain of truth in her testimony is what gave us our case.”
“We have a case?”
“Yes. There are a few points that still need verification, but Assistant Commissioner Henry will take care of that for us.”