Since my childhood, in fact, virtually since I began to learn English, I have always been a great fan of the crime novel. With all due respect to the authors of the Haliburton Readers, it is Edgar Wallace and Leslie Charteris I have always considered my English teachers. It was probably the reason why I had always wanted to see England. I visualised every country lane concealing a body, every cathedral city at least one murderer. As for London, it must be full of murderees, though I was to discover, to my chagrin, the word did not exist.
Alas, there weren’t any murders in Tientsin. We had war and revolution, we lived through civil wars, but a real murder, in the English style, there was not for a long time.
As usual, when it happened, it was too close to home.
The Hsuehs had been our neighbours when we lived in the former German concession. The German concession had reverted to the Chinese authorities as long ago as the end of the First World War, but everyone still referred to it as the German concession.
Josefa Hoffman, as she had been on arrival, came from Germany to join the German Lutheran Mission and married a Chinese convert, Mr. Hsueh. They had one daughter, Marianne.
Like so many mixed-race girls, Marianne took your breath away. She inherited an olive skin, high cheekbones, long straight jet-black hair from her father. From her mother, she inherited a curvaceous figure. She could dress in both European and Chinese clothes and be taken as easily for one as for the other. Her German and her Chinese were fluent, as was her English.
At school she was a bit of a tomboy, but her mother said this was high spirits, and if she had been a boy, nobody would say anything.
She began going out with boys at fourteen or fifteen, but Frau Hsueh claimed her daughter was a serious girl and “senior” boys stimulated her school work. True, she did well at school.
As soon as Marianne left school and went to work, she got in with a fast crowd. People tittle-tattled to Frau Hsueh, but she said Marianne was a loyal girl and not one to shun people just because they were in trouble occasionally.
Once Marianne was brought home after an opium party, but Frau Hsueh said she was feverish and put her to bed with an aspirin.
Everyone said Marianne would come to a bad end, and it was such a pity because she came from a good family and was such a lovely-looking girl.
Mr. Hsueh and his wife visited us often, but after she left school, Marianne stopped coming. I suppose we were very boring for someone like her. Even our cafes didn’t seem to draw her. Her favourite place was Maxim’s, our top nightclub, and the Jai Alai Club, which was notorious. She was always with a large crowd.
Mrs. Vogelmann first came to us with the news that Marianne Hsueh had been murdered. My mother was shaken at first, and then asked if she was sure. Mrs. Vogelmann had got hold of the wrong end of the stick often enough before. Mrs. Vogelmann said she had no doubt. Hadn’t everyone said Marianne would come to a bad end? Mother ordered a trishaw. Telephones were a rarity in those days.
Mother came back in a state of considerable shock.
It wasn’t Marianne who had been murdered.
Marianne was charged with murder.
The trial purported to establish that Marianne had had an affair with a married man. His wife had refused to grant him a divorce. So he and Marianne murdered his wife, rolled up her body in a carpet, and asked a friend to store it in his attic till they had made arrangements to have it removed. This was not an unusual request. Tientsin is a famous carpet-manufacturing centre (they are sold under the name Tientsin carpets all over the world). It wasn’t unusual to buy a carpet, have it rolled up in heavy-duty paper or cloth, and ask someone to store it because one wished to surprise a wife or anyone else for a birthday or anniversary.
Unfortunately for the conspirators, there had been a hot spell. The carpet gave out an odour... the friend tried to get in touch with the two, as it wasn’t being collected as arranged. Neither was to be found. In fact, both had gone to the seaside, proclaiming that his wife had returned home. The odour grew worse. The friend undid the carpet... and called the police.
The lovers were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mr. Hsueh had a stroke that paralysed him completely. Frau Hsueh nursed him, looked after the shop, and visited Marianne. The prison was far from the foreign concessions. Mr. Hsueh died and Mrs. Hsueh gave up the shop. She was no longer the bubbly hausfrau she had been. Her voice grew shrill, her movements jerky and nervous, her eyes wild. She would frequently open her eyes wide in horror and then shut them again for a few seconds before opening them wide again. “I would like to go back to that moment when... when... and cut it out of time... you know what I mean.” For the first time I realised that what crime writers do not tell you in their lighthearted entertainment is the havoc murder leaves behind in the lives of the innocent. Mother, incidentally, swept all crime books out of the house, nor were we permitted to discuss the case, under the severest penalties. Newspapers were banned from the house till the trial was over and sentence passed.
Mrs. Hsueh went to visit her daughter as often as she could. She would stop at our place on her way to the prison, never on the way back. She saved every penny she could to take food to her daughter as well as money to bribe the warders to ease Marianne’s miserable condition.
When the Communists arrived, one of their first concerns was, obviously, social reform. They began by sweeping beggars off the streets into camps, where they were to be taught a trade. Some of the beggars escaped, for as far as they were concerned, begging was their trade. They knew how to make sores appear on their legs, how to keep an arm or leg hidden out of sight. If you grow up in the Orient, you must learn to distinguish genuine poverty from the professional variety. It took two or three tries before the beggars realised their ancient trade was over and done with. After beggars came the reform of the criminal population, starting with those serving sentences.
Frau Hsueh still brought us news of Marianne. First, that she was to be reeducated, which made her mother apprehensive. The apprehension gave way to gratitude, then delight. How wrong everybody had been about Communists, Frau Hsueh used to exclaim, clasping her hands before her in deep emotion. She was writing to the Lutheran authorities in Germany to commend Communist reeducation.
A little time passed and Frau Hsueh became very quiet, very passive again. Marianne had been a trusted prisoner. Then a member of the prison council supervising the reeducation of fellow prisoners. Finally, she came out on parole and went to live with the prison governor. There was no word of her former lover.
The day came when Frau Hsueh confided to Mother that her daughter no longer needed her. She would return to Germany. Thank heavens, despite her marriage, she had retained her German passport. The Lutheran church had offered to pay her fares and find her a place in an old people’s home.
By that time we were used to poignant farewells. Nevertheless, Mother insisted on all formalities being strictly observed. We all had to dress up to show respect. I had to wear a tie. Money was tight, but Mother gave her a farewell tea. At the end of the tea, out came the inevitable bottle of cognac. We drank to Frau Hsueh’s health and Mother summoned up her German to say she hoped the journey would be as smooth as a tablecloth, an old bit of Siberian idiom. For anyone from Russia, there should have been the inevitable sitting down and then the accompanying to the end of the street. Frau Hsueh was a German Protestant. Convention dictated that she should be farewelled according to the custom of her kind. Father had been sent to school briefly in Leipzig, but could not remember any peculiarly German method of saying goodbye. My mother gave him the inevitable lecture that there was no point in knowing other people’s languages if one wasn’t acquainted with their customs as well. When in doubt, Mother created her own. Anyone starting a new religion would do well to invite her to sit on its committee for inventing traditional rituals.