“I’m almost finished, Yu. Don’t get your hands dirty,” she said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “There is a pot of green bean soup in our room. Go in and help yourself.”
A light gray smudge from the back of her hand appeared on her forehead. He chose not to mention it. But he said, “Don’t do this again, Peiqin. It’s not worth it. “
“It’s not about the money. No ration coupons are needed to buy coal dust. And Geng’s business is too good.”
One problem Geng’s private restaurant had was an inadequate coal supply. Most rationing restrictions had disappeared from the city of Shanghai, but there was still a shortage of coal. Peiqin had been helping Geng with his accounting work. Now, it seemed, she was helping with his coal problem.
“We will use these at home,” she explained with a smile. “Then Geng can have our ration coupon.”
In their room, he helped himself to a bowl of green bean soup, which was supposed to keep the body’s elements in balance. Green beans were not in season; the soup must have come from her restaurant. It was already cool.
Peiqin entered their room, wiping her hands on a towel. She must have washed at the courtyard sink. There was no longer a faint smudge on her forehead. “How is it going?”
“Slow,” he said, “as usual.”
“Is Chief Inspector Chen still on vacation?”
“Yes, still busy with his translation.”
“It must be some project to keep him away from such a case.”
“Yes, it’s a very lucrative commission from Mr. Gu, a Mister Big Bucks of the New World Corporation.”
“Long sleeves are wonderful for dancing. Chief Inspector Chen has long connections. Because of the connections he has made in his position, those Misters Big Bucks come to him.”
“That may well be true,” Yu said somewhat somberly. “But he is a capable man.”
“No, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying anything against your boss. At least he works for his money, instead of taking it for doing nothing.”
“You should have had a rest today, Peiqin, instead of making those coal briquettes.”
“It was like a good workout for me. A health club recently opened on Huaihai Road. It beats me how people pay to go there.”
“The newly rich cannot find enough ways to waste their money.”
“Well, we may be worse off than the upper crust,” she said, “but we’re better off than the bottom layer.”
A cliché, meant to comfort, Yu thought, but it was a sort of cold comfort, like the out-of-season green bean soup. Nonetheless, it was quite true. As a cop, he did not have to worry about layoffs, and Peiqin worked in one of the few still-profitable state-run restaurants. They did not have too much to complain about as long as they did not compare themselves with those upstarts.
As he poured the green bean soup into a bowl for her, he could not help thinking of the shrimp woman again.
“Look, your hand got dirty,” she said. “I told you not to bother with the coal dust.”
“I did not touch anything,” he said, surprised at the sight of the traces of the dust on his hand, and on his bowl too.
Strange. How had the coal dust gotten onto his hand? He had not helped Peiqin at all. Perhaps it came from the pot. He had poured the soup from the pot.
“No, I poured the soup into the pot before I started with the coal briquettes. And then I stayed in the courtyard until you came home.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, changing the subject. “Have you discovered anything else in your reading?”
“A few interesting points, although I fail to see their relevance to the case. Chief Inspector Chen doesn’t either. I called him this afternoon,” she said. “Oh, I remember now. Old Hunter came in, carrying groceries in both hands. So I opened the door for him. My hands were wet then. That’s why the dust was on the pot and how it got on your hand. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Peiqin, but you really do not have to make coal briquettes. Geng should be able to manage.”
“It’s just like making bricks in Yunnan, don’t you remember?”
He did, of course. How could he forget those years in Yunnan? They’d had to make bricks with their hands, in response to Chairman Mao’s urgent call “to prepare for the war.” The bricks were never used, and, after years of wind and rain, they dissolved back into soil.
“If there had been no coal dust on my hand, would you have remembered Old Hunter coming back home and your opening the door for him?”
“Probably not. Opening the door was an automatic response. It took only a second. Why?”
“Nothing.”
Yet it was something, Yu thought. The shrimp woman’s testimony about the morning of February 7, outside the back door of the shikumen building seemed airtight, but the shrimp woman could have stepped away for a second, like Peiqin, without being aware of it, and without remembering it afterwards. If so, the murderer could have left through the back door unseen.
But was it possible that the murderer had been lucky enough to sneak out at that very instant?
Many things might depend upon coincidences, a phone call at an unlikely hour, a knock at the door, an unexpected glance in the dark… but wasn’t it a little too much, too strained, for the present case? It was hard to imagine that this sequence of events had occurred unless the murderer had been lying in wait somewhere for the shrimp woman to step away from her stool. Or was there something missing in his earlier reconstruction of events after the discovery of the crime? Yu flipped out his pocket notebook and turned to a dog-eared page. He had made a timetable of the residents’ entries into Yin’s room on the morning of February 7:
6:40 Lanlan rushed into room, and immediately started practicing
Chinese CPR and shouting for help;
6:43-6:45 Junhua ran in and her husband Wenlong followed her;
6:45-6:55 Lindi, Xiuzhen, Uncle Kang, Little Zhu, and Aunt Huang arrived;
6:55-7:10 More people entered the room, including Lei, Hong Zhenshan,
the shrimp woman, Mimi, Jiang Hexing;
7:10-7:30 Old Liang and members of the neighborhood committee
arrived at the crime scene.
The times might not be exact, but that was basically the order in which people had entered Yin’s room. Yu had checked and double-checked this with the help of Old Liang.
“What’s up?” Peiqin said. “All of a sudden, you seem to be lost in thought.”
He told her about the coincidence of the coal dust before pointing at the timetable in his notebook.
“What about the shrimp woman?” she asked.
“She’s an important witness, because she ruled out the possibility of anyone entering or exiting through the back door. The front door could not have been the murderer’s exit unless, as in those Agatha Christie novels Inspector Chen has spoken of, many people were involved in a conspiracy. So, unless the murderer remained in the building-was a resident-he must have left through the back door. The shrimp woman said that she had it in view the whole time, but what if she didn’t? What if she stepped away and has forgotten about it? Or, even, what if she is the criminal?”
“You have a point.”
“She was the closest to the tingzijian room. She should have heard the moment Lanlan started screaming. The back door was wide open, and she should have seen the residents rushing upstairs.”
“So you mean-”
“She should have been one of the first into the room, but it took her fifteen minutes. Yes, at least fifteen minutes, according to my timetable.”
The shrimp woman was familiar with the shikumen building, and with the habits of the other residents. Obtaining a key would not have presented a problem to her, as she had mixed with her shikumen neighbors for many years.