by John Creasey
Copyright & Information
The Chinese Puzzle
First published in 1964
© John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1964-2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
EAN ISBN Edition
075513172X 9780755131723 Print
0755135164 9780755135165 Kindle
0755134176 9780755134175 Epub
075514550X 9780755145508 Epdf
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
John Creasey – Master Storyteller – was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.
Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:
Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.
Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.
He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.
Chapter One
The Mannerings Talk
“I simply don’t believe it,” Lorna Mannering said. “There’s something you haven’t told me.”
“Not a thing,” Mannering assured her. “You know just as much as I do.” He smiled, half teasing. “All we have to decide is whether to go.”
Lorna did not speak at once, and Mannering watched her. Slowly, his smile faded. There was so much that was precious and familiar about her, yet every time he studied her in this way he noticed something he had not really seen before; and that was remarkable after twenty years and more of married life. It was not simply that the years had given her beauty more maturity; the marvel was that her skin and her eyes had the bright freshness of youth. It was not just that she might concede a little to the latest fashion in lipstick or eye-shadow, the latest fad in shaping her eyebrows, or the latest hair-style. It was some feature, tiny though it might be, that he had never noticed.
At this moment, it was the tiniest mole a hair’s breadth below her right eyebrow; one hair too many had been plucked, and so revealed it. Why should so trifling a thing bring this mood upon him? A mood both of humility and gratitude for their years together.
Lorna’s lips moved; they were shapely and rather full. Mannering expected her to say whether she was satisfied with his assurance or not. Instead, she asked almost sharply: “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He could not easily tell her the truth, so he hedged.
“Like what?”
“In that peculiar way, as if you’d never seen me before.”
“Was I looking like that?” asked Mannering, intrigued.
You know you were. John, you are keeping something back about this invitation to Hong Kong, aren’t you?”
“No,” he answered, positively. He was both glad and sorry that the moment had passed, because he could not really have put into words how he felt, how in those few seconds he had both yearned for her and realised how much she meant to him.
“Honestly?”
“Absolutely everything I know is in that letter,” Mannering asserted. “Would you like to read it again?” Gradually he was beginning to think clearly, to remind himself that they had been talking about an invitation that they should go to Hong Kong a month from now to see a collection of Chinese antiques.
Lorna had taken the letter from the table in the small study in their Chelsea flat. It was evening in early January, the curtains were drawn, the flat was warm, the dark wood of the antiques in this small, pleasant room glowed in the subdued light. Lorna was sitting on a pouffe, facing Mannering, who sat in a winged armchair. On the table were two glasses.
Everything here was calm and pleasant, remote from the violence and the danger Mannering knew his wife so feared. He watched her as she read the letter again. There were a few flecks of grey in her almost black hair. Her complexion had hardly a blemish, but as she concentrated a furrow appeared between her brows, and she had an almost aloof expression; the few people who did not like her were prone to say that she had a touch of arrogance.
She looked up.
“Who is Raymond Li Chen?”
“A Hong Kong antique dealer.”
“He can’t simply want you to go to see the exhibition.”
“If I know the business instincts of a Chinaman, he wants to say ‘thank you’ for past services so as to make sure I don’t forget him in the future. Just that.”
Lorna was half frowning when she said: “I wish I knew whether to believe you or not. Have you done a lot of business with him?”
Mannering picked up his whisky and soda, sipped, and said: “Over the years, a lot, yes. I buy ivory and jade from his catalogue, and recommend him to clients who are passing through Hong Kong.” It was strange that he was in such a thoughtful and reflective mood tonight. He had not been when he had come home from his shop, Quinns, in Hart Row, Mayfair; in fact, he had been half excited at the thought of taking Lorna to the Far East. He should have realised that she would immediately begin to look for snags, but it had not occurred to him. They lived closely together, they had much more affinity than most married couples, and yet it still needed a conscious effort to make him see a situation as Lorna saw it.
“I haven’t heard you talk about him,” Lorna said.
“I dare say that we have a hundred customers whom I don’t talk about.”
“I suppose so,” Lorna conceded, half dubiously. Then she laughed. “Sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to sound as if I didn’t believe you.” She sipped her gin and French. “You haven’t talked much about business at all, lately.”
“There hasn’t been much to talk about. If it comes to that—” He broke off.
“What were you going to say?”
“Forget it.”
“I don’t want to,” Lorna said. “We haven’t talked like this for a long time. Months. We should have, shouldn’t we?”
After a pause, Mannering leaned forward and said quite simply: “Yes, but I hadn’t
consciously felt anything was missing.”
“What were you going to say?”
“That you haven’t said much about your sitters and your painting lately.”
“I haven’t, have I? John …”
“Yes?”
“You know what we’re saying, don’t you?”
“What are we saying?”
After a much longer pause, and with almost too much emphasis, Lorna said: “That we’re growing apart.”
Mannering would not have believed that anything could startle, even shock him, as much as that did. “Growing apart” echoed and re-echoed in his mind, and his first reaction was to reject it out of hand. His mood soon changed; in fact, as he forced himself to face up to the implication in the words, he could not reject them out of hand.
Lorna’s lips were curved in a smile which did not touch her clear grey eyes. Mannering felt sure that she had startled herself quite as much as she had him. There was anxiety in the very way her broad forehead wrinkled, and the groove between her eyes deepened. It would be easy to imagine that she felt disturbed, if not alarmed.
“Did I really imply that?” asked Mannering quietly.
“The important thing is, did you mean it? Do you think it?”
Mannering had never known such a moment with his wife; never known such tension between them. These weren’t simply words spoken without thinking. They came out of the depths of their subconscious anxiety; uncertainty about the mood of their relationship had come, unbidden, to the surface of their minds.
“John,” Lorna said, with a catch in her voice, “is that what you meant?”
Mannering put his glass down, slowly, and took her hands. “No,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“John,” she repeated, almost inaudibly. “Don’t lie to me. What were you thinking when you were looking at me just now? I want to know. I have to know.” She let him take her hands but did not yield towards him; if anything it seemed to him that she was sitting more upright on the pouffe, straining away from him.
He made no effort to draw her closer.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said.
“Of course you can tell me!”
“No, I can’t. Not really.”
“John,” she said, and although it was subdued there was a note of near-panic in her voice. “You must tell me. I tell you I must know.”
Very gently, Mannering smiled.
“Then I’ll try. I think I was looking at you and trying to imagine how empty life would have been without you over the past twenty years. I simply couldn’t imagine, I couldn’t say that when you asked me, could I? But my sweet!”
Tears came as if from nowhere, spilling over her lashes and down her cheeks.
“I know I’m a fool,” she managed to say at last, through the tears. “I know you’ll laugh at me, but you gave me such a fright. I thought—Oh, never mind what I thought!”
Mannering waited a few minutes, while she dabbed her eyes. Colour crept back into her cheeks, making them glow; she was very slightly olive-skinned, as if far back in her ancestry there had been Spanish or Italian blood. Sometimes she made him think of the Italy of the Middle Ages, the courts of the Borgias and the mediaeval popes. That was a fact, although he had never given it serious thought before. Over the carved oaken mantelpiece in this room was a picture of a smiling cavalier dressed in all his seventeenth-century furbelows, and with his, Mannering’s, face. She saw him as from the past, too. And she had made him handsome enough to match her own beauty.
He poured her out another drink.
“You still haven’t answered about Hong Kong,” he reminded her.
“Is there time to go by sea?” asked Lorna.
He had not thought of it, but calculated swiftly.
“We-ll, if we get off early next week, yes, I should think so. I’m not sure about the sailing dates, but we can find out in the morning. Will you come if we can?”
“Yes,” Lorna said, and went on in a positive tone: “I’ll come in any case. If we can share the same flat in our own home city and drift apart, I’d hate to think what would happen if we put half the world between us.”
“You really did take that too seriously,” Mannering said ruefully.
“I don’t think I did, you know,” Lorna smiled, and although this time her eyes were bright with laughter, too, they were also touched with seriousness. “You haven’t talked half as much about business and Quinns as you used to, and I’ve hardly said a word about pictures and painting and exhibitions. So each of us must have made the other think that we weren’t interested. John …”
“Hm—hm?”
“When were you last up in the studio?”
Her studio was in the attic here, not twenty seconds away. He had to think, and think hard before he answered.
“When the Penders were here.”
“At the end of September.”
“It can’t be!” Mannering was shocked.
“But it was,” insisted Lorna. “And I haven’t set foot inside Quinns since the Legevre Exhibition, when I wanted to study that Legevre miniature.” She glanced up at the portrait of him in fancy dress. “I know one thing.”
“What’s that?” Mannering asked.
“We’ll have plenty to talk about when we’re on the ship!”
They both laughed. Quite suddenly Lorna was on Mannering’s lap. His arms were tight about her, and they were close together in a rebirth of excitement they had not known for a long time.
Mannering’s lips were very close to Lorna’s. “Sweet.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve just thought of something else we’ve almost forgotten lately.”
“What’s that?”
He squeezed her even more tightly.
“Think,” he urged.
It was a wonderful evening; a perfect evening; and when he lay in bed, half dozing, watching Lorna’s profile against the pale light of the street lamps, and feeling the warmth of her bare shoulder against his, he thought: “It’s going to be a second honeymoon.”
He smiled to himself, realising what his more cynical friends would think of that sentiment, even surprised at himself. He felt so right; contented was probably the better word.
Suddenly, Lorna spoke in a quiet voice: “Do you think anything will happen to spoil it?”
“I don’t see why it should,” Mannering replied. “I thought you were asleep. What made you say that?”
“I suppose because I suddenly felt frightened. It’s almost too good to be true, to feel as I do now.”
The strange thing was that he could not laugh her fears away. Nothing would make him admit it, but he half shared them.
“You’re listening to the nonsense of ghosts,” he said.
“I know,” said Lorna. “I suppose we should wish that there were no ghosts, but I don’t. I can’t. If there had been no yesterday, how could there be today?” Suddenly, she was hugging him tightly, quite unmistakably fearful of those “ghosts” they would not name.
There were the vivid memories of the days before they had married, when Mannering had been the Raffles of his age, known as the Baron, a veritable Robin Hood robbing the rich to help the poor. Today, it was hardly possible to believe he had broken into houses, forced safes and strong-rooms, and tangled with the police. There were the ghosts of the shadows of the police, too, some of whom suspected John Mannering to be the Baron, even to this day. How was it possible to be sure that no one still cherished the hope of proving that in court?
There were still nearer ghosts, the memories of criminal cases which he had investigated, often with the police, cases which had brought danger and near-death, with dismay and anxiety for Lorna. Yet there was a funny side to that, too; because of these cases the police had often turned to him for professional advice. He was a consultant to New Scotland Yard as an expert on precious stones and objets d’art. Nothing could have made him more respectable, or put a more righteous se
al upon his reputation.
Soon he heard Lorna’s even breathing, and was glad that she had fallen asleep. He was not at all sleepy. He kept trying to imagine any reason why Raymond Li Chen might be particularly anxious for him to visit Hong Kong.
Was it reasonable that he or anyone else should be invited to an exhibition ten thousand miles away, simply to look and admire? Was Lorna right?—as she had been often in the past—reading an ulterior, if not sinister, motive in something which he had taken at its face value?
He wondered if there was any way to find out.
Chapter Two
The Mannerings In A Hurry
It was one of those periods when the Mannerings were without a living-in maid, so they breakfasted in the kitchen, Lorna lightly, Mannering heartily. Both were bright-eyed, and talk flowed freely, with an underlying note of excitement.
“You’re really serious, John?”
“I’m going to find out about the ships today.”
“What will the weather be like?”
“In Hong Kong, lovely. Even the Red Sea shouldn’t be too bad.”
“How long can you stay away?”
“Five or six weeks. If we sail there and fly back that should give us plenty of time.”
I suppose so,” Lorna said, half dubiously. “Supposing there isn’t a ship?”
“There will be.”
“But if there isn’t …”
“We’ll go as far as we can by ship. We can certainly get to Singapore, and fly on from there.”
Fresh excitement made jewels out of Lorna’s eyes.
“I’ll need some clothes, and you’ll hardly have time to breathe to get things arranged at the shop.”
“I’ll breathe,” Mannering assured her. “Larraby might be a bit breathless, but—what’s the time?”
“Just turned nine. Remember, we slept late!”
“I remember,” Mannering said softly. “And I also remember why. With a bit of luck they should be open.”
“Who should be?” demanded Lorna.