Qiu Xiaolong - When Red is Black

“About Yin again?” Wei was not very patient on the phone.

“Sorry, we have to ask you some more questions,” Yu said.

He could understand Wei’s impatience. Wei had gotten into trouble because of Death of a Chinese Professor. If anything politically incorrect was published, not only the author, but the editor too, was held responsible. Should the author be well-known, he would sometimes get away with little punishment, while the editor became the one to shoulder the “black pot.” Wei had been criticized for having not foreseen the political repercussions of Death of a Chinese Professor.

“I have told you everything I know about Yin, Comrade Detective Yu. What a trouble-maker-even after her death.”

“Well, last time, we talked about Yin’s novel, Death of a Chinese Professor. But Yang also had a book published by your house. A poetry collection.”

“That’s right, but I am not the poetry editor. Jia Zijian edited the poetry collection. It came out sometime before the novel.”

“Has Jia talked to you about it?”

“We did not discuss it. A poetry book, you know, does not find too many readers, or make much money. Yin was involved with the book, of course. She was some character: she would not have let a single drop of fertilizer fall into anyone else’s field.”

“Can I talk to Jia?”

“He’s not in the office this morning. Call back in the afternoon.”

This did not appear to lead anywhere. Wei, too, was sure that the poetry collection had not earned much money. For a while after their conversation, however, Yu could not shake off an uneasy feeling, as if he had missed something.

Old Liang did not appear in the office in the morning. It was a silent protest, perhaps. For him, the case was finished when Wan confessed and any further investigational effort was an attack on Liang’s judgment.

Because Yu had been turning the conversation with Wei over in his mind, he called Peiqin.

“Wei only guesses,” Peiqin said, not ready to acknowledge that the sum involved would be so small. “You need to talk to the poetry editor.”

“I don’t know why Wei reacted so negatively against a dead woman,” he said.

“It beats me too. Why would he have a grudge against her?” Peiqin added abruptly, “He said she would not spare even a drop of fertilizer for anyone else. Who could he have meant?”

“Somebody else who wanted to edit the collection?”

“But no one could have competed with her. She alone had possession of many of Yang’s original poems.”

The proverb Wei had quoted was commonly used to describe a greedy person, or a person in a given business transaction who was overreaching. “I’ll call you later.” It was Detective Yu’s turn to be abrupt. He put down the phone and then immediately picked it up again to dial the editor.

“Comrade Wei, excuse me for one more question,” he said. “In our earlier talk, you used a proverb-not letting a single drop of fertilizer fall on another’s field. What did you mean?”

“That’s something Jia said-in connection with a relative of Yang’s, I remember.” Wei hardly tried to conceal the impatience in his voice. “So what?”

“Thank you so much, Comrade Wei. This may be very important for our work. I really appreciate your help.”

“Well, I don’t know much about it. You’d better talk to Jia. He will be back soon.” Wei added, “Oh, one more thing. About a year ago, somebody called to inquire about the publication date of the poetry collection’s second edition. The call was transferred to me, and I did not have any information for him. He might have been a reader interested in the poetry, but I somehow got the feeling that he called for some other reason.”

Yu decided to visit the publishing house.

The Shanghai Literature Publishing House was located on Shaoxing Road. It had been a large private residence in the thirties. There was a new bookstore cafe on the first floor. Detective Yu called Jia and waited for him there.

Jia, a man in his late forties, walked into the cafe in big strides. As Yu broached his topic, Jia eyed him in surprise.

“The second edition has not come out, has it?”

“What do you mean?” Yu said, reminded of the conversation with Wei.

“Then why do you ask, Comrade Detective Yu?”

Yu’s puzzlement was mirrored on Jia’s face. He apparently knew nothing about the murder investigation.

“I don’t know anything about the first edition or the second edition, Comrade Jia. Can you tell me what you know, from the beginning?”

“Well, it was several years ago,” Jia said slowly. “Yin asked me to arrange a meeting here at the publishing house to explain her contract for Yang’s poetry collection to Yang’s grandnephew.”

“Yang’s grandnephew?”

“Yes, a boy named Bao, from Jiangxi Province.”

“Hold on here-a boy, from Jiangxi Province -” Yu interrupted Jia. It fit the description given by the shrimp woman. The time was right, too. It made sense for Yin to have referred to him as her nephew. In view of the difference in their ages, it would have been too much to call him her grandnephew. “Yes, please go on, Comrade Jia.”

“His mother is an ex-educated youth, who married a local farmer and settled in Jiangxi. Bao must have come here to claim the money as the legitimate heir to Yang. After all, Yin had not been married to Yang.”

“That’s true. How did the meeting go?”

“It was not a pleasant one. He did not understand why she got such a large share of the money-too large a portion, to his way of thinking.”

“I do not really understand. Can you tell me a little more?”

“When we publish the work of a dead author, we sometimes engage a special editor. Such an editor would collect the author’s various publications, compare different versions, annotate some of the text, and write an introduction if necessary. As special editor for Yang’s poetry, Yin did a lot of work, searching out poems from old magazines, and retrieving quite a few from his notebooks or scrap paper. It was no exaggeration to say that the collection would not have been published without her hard work. For such a job, we normally pay about fifty percent of the going rate.”

“Fifty percent of what you normally pay an author?”

“Yes. That is, of course, when the author is no longer around and no one else makes claim to the royalties. At that time, it was fifteen Yuan for ten lines, I remember, regardless of the print run. If there’s anything not conventional in our agreement with Yin, it was the additional twenty percent she claimed as a copying fee. We agreed, since it was still less than what we would have paid Yang. The sudden appearance of the grandnephew rattled us. There’s no precedent for a relative like him claiming anything, especially so long after publication. Yin maintained that what she earned was rightfully hers. In a way, she was right. So she refused to pay Bao.

“I talked to my boss. Not that much money was involved. We did not want to cause a scandal. So we paid Bao an amount equivalent to the remaining thirty percent.”

“In other words, you ended up paying the normal rate- 100%-for the book.”

“That’s correct.”

“Did Bao accept the arrangement?”

“He did, but in a grudging way.”

“So he protested?”

“He did not know anything about the publishing business, but he didn’t trust her. Obviously, he didn’t think it was fair. That’s why she wanted us to explain, I think. She was a very shrewd woman. There was nothing he could do. In those years, people did not sue each other over things like that.”

“Do you think he hated her?”

“That’s difficult for me to say. Nobody was happy. She even asked us to draft an agreement that he had to sign, specifying that he would never bother her again, before he received the money.”