Sharyn McCrumb - Missing Susan

“How could they tell that?” asked Frances.

“From the bleeding,” said Kate Conway absently. “The patient bleeds very little if cuts are made postmortem, because the heart has already ceased to pump the blood.”

Rowan smiled approvingly. “Thank you, Nurse Conway.”

“Why would anyone cut the throat of a dead person?” Frances persisted.

“To make it look like a stranger had done it, I expect,” said Kate.

“That was the police theory, certainly,” said Rowan. “But which member of the household did it? The crime was investigated at length by the local police, and the victim’s half sister Constance Kent was charged with the murder, but she was released for lack of evidence. Five years later, she astonished everyone by going to the police of her own accord and confessing to the murder of Francis Kent.”

“There!” said Elizabeth triumphantly. “You admit it. She confessed!”

“Oh, yes, she confessed,” Rowan agreed. “Whether or not she did it is another matter.”

“Oh, good! A real life murder mystery!” said Frances Coles. “Who do you think did it?”

“Before we discuss if further, I need to read up on the case again. I know the general facts, but I’m not well-informed enough to argue about it. Ask me again tomorrow night in St. Ives. I’ll try to have another look at a crime book by then. Perhaps we could discuss more familiar ones in the meantime.”

Martha Tabram stifled a yawn. “Not I,” she said. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. Good night all.”

Emma Smith and her mother also bade them a hasty farewell, saying that they wanted to do some walking in the early morning. Susan announced that there was a good television program coming on at ten and she wanted to watch it. The others settled back to hear more tales of crime.

After Elizabeth and Rowan had talked shop-through two more double Scotches-about the moors murderers, the notorious Krays, and other favorite cases, the group fell silent. No one else was very keen on true crime; they simply liked a genteel whodunit to pass the time.

Finally Maud Marsh said quietly, “Have either of you ever heard of a case concerning a Chinese gentleman named Mr. Miao?”

“Derwentwater,” said Elizabeth MacPherson, who indexed her facts geographically.

“Yes,” said Rowan, straining to recall the case. “I remember that it was the Lake District, wasn’t it? Borrowdale, I think, in the late 1920s.” He turned to Maud. “Yes, what about it?”

“What happened?” she asked simply. Her face bore a look of concern that people did not usually have when casually discussing sensational crimes.

“He murdered his wife,” said Elizabeth, who had recently read an account of the case. (The one good thing about learning in binges is that all your information is fresh for as long as you care about it.) “She was Chinese, too. Not very pretty, judging from her photograph.”

“They were on their honeymoon, weren’t they?” said Rowan. “Staying at the hotel in Borrowdale. But they weren’t from England.”

“There was an American connection,” said Elizabeth. “I think they sailed from New York.”

“He was a law student at Loyola in Chicago,” said Maud Marsh.

They stared at her. “That’s not in the books,” said Elizabeth.

“I knew him. He rented a room from my family in Chicago when I was a young girl. He was a very nice man. Later I heard that he was involved in a murder case, and I always wondered about the details. It didn’t seem possible.”

“What doesn’t seem possible,” said Rowan wonderingly, “is that I am sitting here talking to someone who knew a murderer who was executed in 1928. Amazing!”

“What was he like?” asked Elizabeth. She had known several murderers herself, but their cases seemed hardly sensational enough to make crime history. Mr. Miao, on the other hand, was a legend.

“He was very quiet,” said Maud, summoning up her memories from half a century past. She looked a bit ghostlike herself in the plain white dress that matched the silver of her hair. Her hands twisted and untwisted in her lap as she spoke. “He came from a good family in Shanghai. I believe he already had a law degree from a university in China. He studied a great deal and he was always very nice to me. I never met his wife. Are you sure he killed her?”

“They went out for a walk,” said Elizabeth, looking up at the ceiling as she tried to visualize her book of criminal history. “A couple of hours later, he came back, but she didn’t. He told another guest at the hotel that his wife had gone to town to shop. When she hadn’t returned by eight o’clock, the hotel proprietress became concerned; but apparently Mr. Miao wasn’t worried that she had been gone shopping for so long.”

“That’s a little odd, surely, for a newlywed,” Maud conceded.

“Unless he were married to Elizabeth here,” Rowan grunted.

“I don’t shop that much! Anyhow, what happened then? A farmer found the body by a pool of water in the woods. She had been strangled with a blind cord and her clothing was torn. Also her rings were missing.”

“Rape?” said Maud. “That doesn’t sound like something a husband would have done.”

Rowan, thinking of previous wives, opened his mouth and closed it again. He took another sip of Scotch. “As I recall, the physical evidence incriminated him, didn’t it? Didn’t the blind cord match the kind used in the hotel?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I remember that. And they found her missing rings hidden among his things.”

Maud sighed. “How very sad. That does seem to settle it. I only wondered because of something that happened in Chicago, while he was staying with us. I remember that some Chinese men came to see him one afternoon. They were standing in the hallway, speaking very angrily at Mr. Miao in Chinese. And when I saw him later he had cuts and bruises on his face. I asked him who the men were, and he said that they were from-I think he said a rival family. Anyway, they wanted him to do something that he didn’t want to do. He seemed very afraid of them.”

“A tong!” muttered Rowan Rover. “Chinese gangsters in America. Of course you had them in Chicago! I wonder how he got mixed up with them?”

“I don’t know,” said Maud. “I never saw them again, and he didn’t discuss it with my parents. But when I heard that his wife had been murdered, I wondered if those people had somehow followed him to England and killed his bride. Maybe they didn’t want him to marry her.”

Elizabeth looked uneasy. “The defense did call witnesses who stated that they had seen Oriental men in the area that day.”

Rowan shook his head. “Japanese tourists? Korean immigrants? They never found those mysterious Orientals, did they? I think his attorney was grasping at straws.”

“He was such a gentle man, though,” said Maud. “What was his motive supposed to be?”

“They never really gave one,” said Elizabeth. “The theories were that he killed her for her money or because he learned that she couldn’t have children. I think in those days no one expected to understand the motivations of a Chinese mind.”

Maud looked thoughtful. “I wonder if they forced him to kill her, or else… or else, what? I don’t know.”

“I can’t even guess what his motive was,” said Rowan. “But considering how unconcerned he was about her disappearance, we have to assume that he knew she was dead. The fact that her missing rings were found among his possessions is strong evidence that he did it. Had I been on the jury, I’d have found him guilty.”

“And he was hanged?”

“Yes. At Strangeways in Manchester, I expect,” said Rowan. “We’ll be going past another famous prison tomorrow, incidentally. Dartmoor.”