The Hamlet Murders (6 page)

Yet here it was and mixed with Geoff’s seminal fluids. She looked back at the body. Could this man have been having sex literally moments before he committed suicide? She picked up the phone and called Fong.

His voice mail picked up. “Call me, Short Stuff. Surprise big got I for you,” she said in her own version of English.

Fong stood very still in the centre of Geoff’s room. Despite the man’s many visits to Shanghai and his considerable success, Geoff was still classified as a worker. Foreign worker, true, but worker nonetheless. So the room he was assigned on the academy’s grounds was adequate although hardly posh.

Fong drew open the curtain. The back of the ancient prop shop was across the way. Its shutters were thrown wide in a vain effort to combat the heat of the day. The sounds of hammering something into submission filled the air. As Fong watched, an elderly technician came out, lit up a smoke and began to sew a leather pouch together.

Fong turned back to the room. Bed, night table, small desk, laptop computer running a screen saver of fish swimming away from a big lazy shark, clothes hung on a rod. Books in the corners, on the floor beside the bed, on the night table. Video cassettes on the desk and two notepads. A small television with adaptor and slot for a VHS tape on the floor by the window.

Fong lifted the mattress and quickly established that there was nothing of interest there. He pulled it aside and went through the bedding and the pillows and the box spring. Nothing ripped, nothing opened, nothing there. Tossing them all in a corner, he knelt and ran his hands over the floorboards. They had probably been put down more than two hundred, maybe three hundred, years ago. It would be a clever man indeed who could prise one up and not leave telltale marks. There were none.

He reassembled the bed and quickly headed into the bathroom. More cosmetics than Fong would have thought. Some he couldn’t identify but nothing hidden there.

He returned to the bedroom. He went through the clothing roughly. Nothing.

He tilted the lamp and unscrewed the bulb. Nothing.

He stacked things on the bed so he could reach the overhead fixture. Nothing.

He pulled off the faceplates of the electrical outlets. Nothing.

He pulled off the back of the television and fished around inside, careful not to touch the capacitor. Nothing.

He went into the bathroom and threw water on his face. When he looked up, he saw himself in the mirror – older than he thought of himself. Older than he knew he was. Behind him in the mirror were Geoff’s cosmetics, kept in a rack in the shower.

Fong returned to the bedroom. The tapes, the books and the computer.

He sat on the bed and grabbed the hardcover books that were on the night table beside Geoff’s Arden edition of
Hamlet.
Geoff was evidently reading three novels by a man named le Carré. John le Carré. A Frenchman named John? Fong flipped over the jacket of the first book and read about Mr. le Carré’s background. An English spy turned writer. Fong couldn’t quite see a Chinese man doing that. Maybe that’s why the guy changed his name when he wrote.

Fong put the three novels on the bed in front of him.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,
Our Game
and
The Secret
Pilgrim.
He opened the first one and looked at the title page. Geoff had said something to him about tinkers and tailors. Fong remembered. That’s what Geoff had said about the two guards in the first scene of his
Hamlet.
But he had said nothing about soldiers and spies. He held the book upside down and riffled through the pages. Nothing fell out. He then leafed through it. A few things were underlined, but it quickly became clear that Geoff was noting syntax and language usage, not actual subject matter as none of the underlined sections seemed to relate to any other.

In
The Secret Pilgrim,
Geoff had underlined a lot of the dialogue between a character called Ned and a man who endured capture by the Khmer Rouge in order to rescue his daughter. But it was in the third book,
Our Game,
that Geoff’s slashing notes were everywhere. It was getting late. Fong turned on the light, sat back on the bed and began to read. Twenty pages in he saw Geoff’s note:
I’m Tim!!!

Our Game
tells the story of a middle-aged British spy – Tim – who loses his younger wife to another spy who betrays his country and ends up fighting alongside the Chechens in the former Soviet Union. The final image is of Tim picking up a rifle and joining the rebel band – at long last “doing” something with his life. Fong finished skimming the book as the sun rose. Geoff’s notes were all over the text – some underlinings, some in the margins, many right across the print itself. All were urgent, emphatic. Fong found it sentimental. Dangerously romantic. So unlike the Geoff he thought he knew.

“I am Tim. . . . So, what romantic calling were you on, Geoff?” Fong said aloud. Not surprisingly, no one answered.

Fong got off the bed, stretched, then phoned the office and left a message for Captain Chen to get in touch with him. He snapped his cell phone shut and looked back at the room. His eyes lit on the important remaining items: Geoff’s copy of
Hamlet,
the VHS tapes and the laptop. He sat at the small desk and opened Geoff’s copy of
Hamlet.
He was surprised how few notes were there. Fu Tsong’s Shakespearean scripts had been a flurry of personal impressions and questions. Geoff’s notes, written in a tight and concise hand so unlike the slashed comments in
Our
Game,
appeared only four times in the entire text.

The first note was at the end of act one where Hamlet has received the information from the ghost about his father’s death. There, Geoff wrote:
Could it
be that Hamlet now has direction in his life – is happy?
The second was in the Polonius scene with Reynaldo where Geoff penned the simple word:
Spy.
The third was in act four when the story of Hamlet’s escape from the plotting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is told. There, Fong was astounded to see Geoff’s note:
Switch! Should I tell Fong?
And Geoff’s last note was in the final act upon Hamlet’s death:
Suicide? Suicide
as failure? Suicide as success?

A knock on Geoff’s door brought Fong to his senses. Chen entered, surprised to see that Fong had clearly spent the night there.

“What’s the time?”

“Just before eight, sir.”

“Contact Li Chou. Get his people in here. Arrange a full meeting – Lily, Li Chou and his people, our guys – one o’clock.”

Fong stood up.

“Did you find a suicide note, sir?”

Fong looked at Captain Chen, “I don’t know. Maybe in its own way, I did.” He headed toward the door.

“Where are you going, sir?”

“Home. I need a few hours of sleep before the meeting. Hand me those videotapes and notepads. You work on Mr. Hyland’s laptop, Chen. I want to know everything that’s on there.”

Chen pulled out a small rectangular electronic gadget of some sort, detached a metal stick and touched the screen with it.

“What’s that, Chen?

“It’s called a PalmPilot, sir. It’s really quite useful.”

Fong nodded although he had no idea what something called a PalmPilot could be useful for.

“It keeps notes, sir, calendars and the like. And it can even be programmed to monitor radio signals.” Fong smiled and nodded but thought, “Fine, Chen, you use that thing. For me, I’ll use a datebook to keep appointments and a radio to get radio signals.”

At his apartment, Fong was grateful that the water had come back on. While the small gas water heater attached to the shower did its work, he returned to the bedroom and slid one of the tapes into his VHS adaptor then into his machine. He punched the On button. A program called
Six Feet
Under
came up. Fong watched, trying hard not to yawn. When he got the gist of the show, he let the tape run and headed toward the shower.

The water was scalding hot but Fong didn’t care. He put his face up to the pounding heat and allowed it to punish him in the hope it would take away his weariness. Over the sound of the water and the gas heater, he heard the VHS tape droning on. Between gurgles, he caught snippets of dialogue. Something about a cat. Something about these tits cost a fortune. Something about do you know who this was?

Fong reached for the soap and turned off the water to conserve gas. He began to lather up. Then stopped. No sound was coming from the VHS tape. Maybe this was an M.O.S. section. He smiled when he remembered Fu Tsong’s explanation of the term:
“Mit
out sound, Fong.”

“Mit
out sound, what language is that?”

“Well, it’s English with a German accent. Lots of the early Hollywood directors were German and
mit
is the German word for
with.
So without sound became
mit
out sound. M.O.S. – and it stuck.”

Then a loud cackle of a microphone being tapped came from the VHS tape.

Geoff’s voice said, “Don’t do that.” Then, “Three, two, one – play.”

A beat of silence.

Then he heard her. His deceased wife, Fu Tsong – as clear as he heard her inside his head every time he entered a theatre:
“Here’s flowers for you; Hot lavender,
mints, savoury, marjoram; The marigold, that goes to
bed wi’ the sun and with him rises weeping’ these flowers
of middle summer, and I think they are given to men of
middle age.”

Then she giggled, “I’m too old to play Perdita.

Fong felt himself stagger. His hand reached out and hit the water tap.

Then Geoff’s voice responded, “Nonsense. Westerners can’t tell the age of Asian women. Until they get old, that is.”

“Are you suggesting that I’m old?”

“No. Never will you get old. Not to me.”

The boiling hot water pelted down on Fong but he didn’t move. Couldn’t move, as Fu Tsong returned to her speech:
“I would I had some flowers o’ the spring
that become your time of day.”

And then he was crying. The water mixing with his tears and swirling down the drain into the nothingness beneath.

Li Chou looked at the crime-scene photos of Geoff Hyland, then pushed them to one side and took a large, sealed manila envelope from his briefcase. The envelope had belonged to his CSU predecessor and Fong’s close friend, Wang Jun. As part of Li Chou’s deal in accepting the post, he had demanded all private papers that could be found from Wang Jun’s time as head of the CSU. This was the only extant copy of Wang Jun’s confidential report on the death of Fu Tsong. It had been found after Wang Jun’s death, hidden in the man’s mattress.

Li Chou slid the long nail of his left pinky finger along the crease of the envelope, opening the thing as easily as any letter opener could. The opening sentence of Wang Jun’s report brought a smile to Li Chou’s lips:
Fu Tsong, Zhong Fong’s wife, was having an
affair with the Canadian theatre director Geoffrey Hyland.

In Li Chou’s mind, he ticked off one of the three ingredients necessary for a murder to take place: motive.

“For the flowers now, that frighted thou let’st fall from
Dis’s waggon! Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty.”

Fong stood before the image on the screen. Entranced. Unable to reach over and turn it off. Wanting it to last forever.

“Violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses that die unmarried,
ere they can behold bright Phoebus in his strength – a malady
most incident to maids; bold oxlips and the crown
imperial: lilies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one! O,
these I lack, to make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
to strew him o’er and o’er.”

Fu Tsong’s image held, suspended in digital space, her arms raised, her face alive with joy and then it was gone.

The phone rang so loudly that Fong jumped.

“Short stuff?”

“Lily?”

“Did you get my message?”

“Not yet.”

“Pick up your messages. I don’t leave them for my health, Short Stuff.”

“I will, Lily.”

“Good. When?”

“As soon as you answer a single question for me?”

“Sure. Xiao Ming is fine. You can pick her up early on Sunday if you want.”

“Thanks. I look forward to that.”

“So does she.”

Fong was pleased. Although it wasn’t easy, he and Lily were working their way to an understanding on how to share the raising of their daughter.

“But that’s not my question, Lily.”

“Well spit it out, Short Stuff.” He did wish she’d stop calling him that although it was true she usually only used that appellation for him in private. What’s your question, Fong?”

“What kind of flowers were on Geoff Hyland’s body?”

Fong fast-forwarded through the VHS tapes. There were no more speeches by Fu Tsong. Just lots and lots of
Six Feet Under.
Fong mulled that over – lots and lots of
Six Feet Under.
Why was Geoff all of a sudden interested in a program about dying. I AM TIM and dying.
Soldier Sailor Tinker . . . Spy.

Fong began to leaf through Geoff’s notepads. In the back of the first one he found six typed pages filled with edits. As he read, he realized that this was Geoff’s writing:
In the end all there is, is love. Every
scene is about it, every character seeks it, every being lives
in the hope of it.” Said by some old acting teacher, don’t ask
me who.

I have been teaching professional actors for over 20
years. I began to teach in New York between directing jobs
in the American regional theatres. I taught in my
Manhattan apartment three nights a week – my wife was
very patient. In my second year of teaching, I was contacted
by a young man from Yonkers. He asked if I would teach him and three of his friends. I asked about his background.
He was not an amateur but he was clearly not travelling
on a traditional professional trajectory. What he clearly
was – was hungry. So I agreed.