“Or perhaps Mr. Shing never mentioned the Buddhas to Wong Li. He placed them in the shop himself after the murder. One thing we can be certain about is that Mr. Shing took the bottle of sake with him when he called. Perhaps it was Wong Li who was fond of the Japanese liquor. Mr. Shing presented the bottle and suggested that they drink a toast — to anything at all, maybe the English Christmas. They did so in the Tang sitting room, and when Wong Li left the room for a moment, Mr. Shing took the dagger from the wall and used it at the first opportunity after Wong Li returned. Being thorough, he may have poured out one more toast from the sake bottle to make sure the police would believe his tale of three toasts.
“Then he left, locking the shop after him with Wong Li’s keys, which you may be certain he quickly disposed of where they will never be found.
“He had set the stage perfectly. Witnesses would claim to have seen Charlie Tang and Wong Li quarrelling. Wong Li was murdered shortly after that, and the police would think Charlie Tang did it before he and his family departed and then locked both shop and living quarters with his own keys when he left.
“Mr. Shing has the temperament of an artist, and the case he constructed was artistically complete. His downfall came because he assumed that Charlie Tang’s morals were similar to his own. That night it suddenly occurred to him, to his horror, that when Charlie Tang returned from Liverpool and found himself confronted with Wong Li’s corpse, he would simply get rid of it. Charlie Tang has a reputation of being a very sharp individual. He would know that a dead employee could cause him endless inconvenience. Further, the Chinese distrust the police and try to do their own policing. Charlie Tang would deftly dispose of the corpse and perform his own investigation, which might prove highly dangerous to Mr. Shing.
“This is what Mr. Shing would have done, and he assumed that Charlie Tang would do the same. He decided that he must somehow let the police know about the murder before Charlie Tang returned. But now there was no way anyone else could get into the house to discover Wong Li’s body.
“Then he remembered Madam Shing, who perhaps is a relative of his. He has lived in the neighbourhood longer than she has — long enough to know all about her — including the fact that she once was an agent for the Lady Detective who works with the police. So he called on her and asked her to go at once to the Lady Detective and tell her she had seen a man climb a ladder and break into Charlie Tang’s residence. Madam Shing would have no part of such a prevarication. Just as Wong Li felt that the responsibility for his master’s property was a sacred trust, Madam Shing would have felt that truth was a sacred trust in her relation with me. She flatly refused. So Mr. Shing used force — remember the bruises on her arms and perhaps on her throat — and finally terrified her so with fear for her life that she consented. He or one of his employees certainly took her most of the way in a cab and then followed her all the way to my door.
“So she arrived in a panic and told me what he wanted her to — but she added the one touch of truth that destroyed all of his plans. When she described the man climbing the ladder, she put Mr. Shing’s beard on him. Probably she did it without thinking because the beard had terrified her and was foremost in her thoughts. Then, when I arranged to have her taken home, she pretended to go willingly, but she knew Mr. Shing would be waiting for her if she failed. At the first opportunity, she escaped to friends who would protect her.”
“You keep saying she won’t be called as a witness, but she is the only one who can connect Mr. Shing with the murder,” I said.
“Mr. Shing’s fingerprints connect him with the murder. Madam Shing won’t be called unless the police should decide to charge Mr. Shing with assault — but why would they bother? A murder charge is inclusive enough, and as I told you, she didn’t see anything. No one climbed a ladder, and she probably was asleep when Mr. Shing called on her.
“As for Mr. Shing, no Oriental would talk as confidentially to a stranger as he did to me in describing that touching scene where he drank toasts with Charlie Tang and Wong Li. It was information important to the case against Charlie Tang, and he wanted to make certain the police got it. Why did he confide in an Anglo-Saxon woman who was merely browsing for knickknacks in his shop? Because he knew who I was. He had terrified Madam Shing into calling on me and telling his lie for him — he knew the ploy had worked, because it got both me and the police there — and he wanted to make further use of me. He didn’t realize, when he told me that little tale about drinking a toast, that I was hearing it as a confession.”
Secondhand Heart
by Doug Allyn
Some nights I dream of toasters. An endless assembly line of 1955 Sunbeam T-35’s snakes through my sleep. Each one pristine. Chrome gleaming. Brand spanking new. Thousands of toasters.
Millions.
Then the new starts to wear off. Pinheads of rust discolor the chrome. The toasters look tired. Used. Secondhand.
Suddenly the assembly line veers and the toasters start spilling off the end, tumbling down into a landfill, down and down into a bottomless black pit...
And I snap awake! Wide-eyed, panting. Scanning the room for... I don’t know what. Something horrible. Death, maybe.
But no one’s ever there. Only me. Alone.
So I fall back to my pillow. But not to sleep. Instead I begin the deep breathing exercises they taught me in the hospital, slowing my hammering heartbeat. Willing myself to calm down.
Just make it through the night. A few more hours. How hard can that be?
Very hard, sometimes.
My bedroom helps. The room is softly lit. I never sleep in the dark anymore. Every stick of furniture is familiar. It took me months of scrounging to find them all. A fifties’ vintage McCobb six-drawer maple bureau, a Maloof day bed, cast-iron Laurel lamps with white mushroom shades.
In mint condition the furnishings might be worth five or six grand, but they aren’t museum pieces. I live with them.
Everything I own is secondhand. By choice.
Secondhand means that other people once chose these things, too. Bought them, enjoyed them. So in a small way, I feel connected to their lives, to their happiness. It’s the only connection I have now. Strictly secondhand.
Most people like new things. They buy new cars. Their cups all match. Their curtains color-complement their carpets and the art on their walls.
On garbage day, armies of empty cardboard boxes from Sears or Marshall Field’s line their curbs. Treasures mingling with the trash. A 1964 Eureka upright vacuum, a Plycraft bar stool.
Thank God for those people. If American consumers didn’t keep ditching their old stuff to buy new stuff, there wouldn’t be nearly as much cool secondhand stuff for the rest of us.
Secondhand goods are more than my obsession. They’re my business now. Stu’s Nothing New Store. The Right Stuff at the Right Price. It’s not what I planned for my life. But it’s the right thing. For now.
My shop shares a block with a half dozen similar stores, Needful Things, Clara’s Classic Collectibles, L’Attitude, in Bay Harbor’s Oldtown district near the Saginaw River. Tourists flock here in the summer, but in November it’s quieter. Waiting for winter.
Owning a secondhand store isn’t like running a supermarket. You can’t order stock from a catalog and salesmen don’t call.
Occasionally civilians bring in things to sell. I seldom buy. Can’t afford to. The Antiques Roadshow has everyone convinced that their mismatched saltshakers are worth umpty millions. They don’t want a fair price. They want me to save their lives. I can’t. I’m barely clinging to my own.
My store is a mixed bag, vintage furniture, lamps, and appliances. Useful things whether you’re into antiques or not. I keep it stocked by scanning the classifieds, shopping the sales. Hunting and gathering. A Neanderthal in chinos and deck shoes.