The Hamlet Murders

by David Rotenberg

  But why? Then Li Chou looked at the commissioner’s desk. There had always been two phones there – one internal, one external. But now there was a third phone that had no keypad. A direct line, no doubt scrambled. Such things in the People’s Republic of China only went to one place – Beijing. Li Chou covered his new knowledge with a smile and backed out of the commissioner’s office. So there was more to this than Li Chou had first seen. Fine. But was that to Li Chou’s advantage or not?

  An hour later, there was a light tapping on Fong’s office door. “It’s open.”

  The door swung open slowly revealing the figure of Shrug and Knock leaning against the door jamb. “There’s a really white Long Nose here who says he needs to speak with you. Or at least I think that’s what he’s trying to say. His Mandarin is awful.”

  “Take a name and get his phone number and tell him I’ll get back to him,” said Fong, returning to the dossiers on his desk.

  “Fine,” said Shrug and Knock as he closed Fong’s office door.

  Two minutes later, he returned with a baby-blueand- yellow business card and a small oblong leather case. “He said to give these to you. Something about he was concerned you were going to bump into things without them.”

  Fong looked at the business card with the sickening colours – he’d seen more attractive baby puke – and couldn’t help but smile. Dr. Morris Wasniachenko – the Ukrainian optometrist. Then he flipped open the small leather case. What he saw there took the smile from his face. Eyeglasses.

  More proof that he was getting old.

  “Nice,” said Shrug and Knock with a big smile. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, your ‘interrogatees’ are here. The people who had keys, those who were last in the theatre and those coming to rehearsal are ready for you, as you wanted, Detective Zhong.”

  Fong nodded then indicated that Shrug and Knock should close the door.

  Fong slid the glasses out of their case and put them on. They made a difference. He caught a reflection of himself in his office window. He didn’t like what he saw. He took off the glasses and slid them into his pocket.

  He looked again at the dossiers of the “interrogatees.” He really didn’t think these folks were very promising suspects. Geoff’s death smacked of real intricacy. Something that linked more logically to his Beijing keepers and what they wanted him to find in Geoff’s room. But he hadn’t found anything of any particular interest. He loosened the tension in his shoulders and read through his notes on the people waiting for him in the various interrogation rooms around the station one more time.

  An hour later, he realized that he hadn’t heard from Captain Chen since he reported his key findings to Li Chou. When he contacted the front desk, he was told Captain Chen had booked off sick. Fong didn’t like it but he put it aside and completed his preparations for the interrogations.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE INTERROGATEES

  The young man playing Hamlet was, well, young. And vacuous and “really sorry that Mr. Hyland was gone.” The man was so wrapped up in himself that Fong cut him short with a demand for an alibi for the night of the murder. The young man supplied both the name of an all-night dance club and those of five of his dance partners. For a second time Fong noted that the man looked like a younger Chinese version of Geoff but there was nothing in Hamlet’s words or actions that was even remotely revealing. Fong ended the interrogation early. After all, how many times could he hear “What am I going to do without him, you know, like, what am I going to do?”

  Fong’s second interrogation was more complicated. Hao Yong had been an admirer of his wife and for a very brief time had been Geoff’s lover. “I was young but not a child. I take full responsibility for my actions. I am sure that I gained more from our relationship than he did. The time we spent together was very important to me both as a person and as an artist.”

  “Do you still . . . ”

  “See Mr. Hyland? Only professionally. I would work for him at any time . . . ” then she stopped herself, evidently realizing for the first time that she would never again be guided through a play by Geoff.

  Fong surprised himself with his next question. “Was Geoff sad or upset?”

  “The Screaming me-me’s got to him.”

  “The who?”

  “The me-me’s are what Geoff called the two Canadian lady producers.”

  Fong nodded, “I’ve met them.”

  She nodded back and a gentle smile creased her lips for a moment. Then she bowed her head. Fong thought she might cry. But she didn’t. She raised her head. Her eyes glistened. “Detective Zhong, if you could go through your loss and not take your life, what could possibly cause Mr. Hyland to take his?”

  “But Geoff did not take his own life,” Fong thought.

  She stood. “Anything else, Detective Zhong?” she asked.

  “Was Geoff ‘seeing’ anyone this time?” He knew the question would hurt Hao Yong and he had no desire to inflict any pain on her but he needed to know.

  “I am a married woman, Detective Zhong, with a baby girl. I mind my own business and do my own work so I would not know the answer to your question.”

  After a sigh, he requested her alibi. She supplied her husband’s phone number to corroborate her story, turned and left the room.

  Fong felt her absence the moment the door closed behind her. “Artists do that,” he thought, “leave a room wanting when they leave.”

  The third interrogation was with the actor playing Horatio. The young man was clearly conflicted. He thought Geoff was an extraordinary artist and was thrilled to work with him but was angered that he had been consigned to playing what he called “Hamlet’s best bud.” “There’s just not a lot of latitude in the role and I really wanted to show Mr. Hyland my stuff. He’s amazing. Have you seen the show? Look what he can do.” He stopped himself, realizing that he was speaking of Geoff in the wrong tense.

  Then suddenly he was speaking very loudly. “Why him, Detective Zhong? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of awful directors. Power-mad maniacs who don’t know anything. Then there was Geoff. You know what I mean?” Fong did but he dodged the question then requested and received a substantial alibi for the hours in question. He took his leave of the young actor and headed to the next room.

  The interview with Da Wei, Geoff’s homely translator, yielded even less than the previous three. It began with Da Wei crying, continued with her in tears and ended with her sobbing, “He gave us so much.” Fong got an address from her and told her, “I’ll see you later when you’ve calmed down a bit.”

  The actors playing Ophelia and Laertes sat side by side as Fong entered their interrogation room. They were an attractive young couple. Her long hair was held back by a large clip. She had the gentle softness that made some Asian beauty so unique. She also had a deep sadness in her eyes. Fu Tsong had done a lot of talking about eyes. “We wear our history in our eyes, Fong. All our joys and troubles are there. It’s why so many women have sad eyes. But as an actress I must not let the audience see my eyes first. I must make them see my mouth, then my eyes.”

  “You have sad eyes,” he’d said.

  She had smiled and said, “I have earned my sad eyes, Husband.”

  “But your sad eyes don’t make you a sad person,” he’d replied.

  “You would think I was a sad person if I let you see them first. Instead I drop my sense of myself down to my mouth. You look there first and then, only after acknowledging me as Fu Tsong, do you notice that my eyes are sad. It is then that they become beautiful because they sit in opposition to what you see when I make you deal with my face from the mouth up. Besides, there are three positions to wear your eyes.”

  “Wear your eyes?”

  “Yes, that is the right phrase, Husband, wear your eyes. You can make them hard where they become mirrors. Most people have lots of practice doing this since they have been in boring school forever and they do that hard-eyed thing to give off the international signal for ‘I’m not slee
ping, heck no, I’m listening.’” He’d laughed at her impersonation. “Or you can wear your eyes soft where they become, as Mr. Shakespeare says, the windows of the soul, or you can retract them – sit behind them if you wish. It is the place of waiting or watching. It is a wary place, a dangerous place.”

  “ You can do that? Really?”

  “Really, Husband.” And then she’d done one of each “wearing position” in such quick but accurate succession that he began to laugh. “What?” she’d demanded.

  “Well, which one are you?”

  “This one,” she said and softened her eyes that made his eyes drop to her mouth. Her gentle beauty overwhelmed him. Then he noted the sadness in her eyes, which so perfectly contrasted with the strength of her face that he smiled.

  “You are very beautiful,” he’d said.

  She had not responded, just removed her gown and slipped into bed and nestled into his side.

  He smiled, then noticed that Ophelia and Laertes were looking at him. He wondered for a moment if he’d said any of this out loud. From the looks on their faces, evidently not. Just taken a very long pause. He continued the pause and looked carefully at Laertes. He was not as attractive and a bit older than his Ophelia and he sat behind his eyes – in the place of waiting and watching. As Fu Tsong had said, a wary place.

  Laertes leaned forward in his chair. His eyes softened as he said, “Mr. Hyland’s death has touched us all.”

  Fong looked at the young couple. They held hands. She leaned against his shoulder. Then Ophelia began to cry.

  Fong had had quite enough of women crying and snapped at Laertes, “I’ll be next door. When your friend has regained her composure, tell the guard outside and he’ll get me.”

  In the next interrogation room Fong found another couple holding hands. Both were male this time. The actor playing Guildenstern interlocked his fingers with Rosencrantz’s beautifully manicured ones. Gay men were nothing new to Fong. Through Fu Tsong he had many contacts in the gay community and had, more than once, come to the rescue of a gay couple who had found themselves in trouble with the puritanical Communist authorities.

  Fong looked at Guildenstern. The man withdrew his hand from his partner. “Detective Zhong, how can we help?”

  Fong turned his head to one side. He wondered if Guildenstern knew that the offer to “help” was often seen as a sign of potential guilt.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “We’ll help in any way we can. What happened to Geoffrey is just terrible. Terrible. A great loss.”

  Fong looked to Rosencrantz. “How did you get along with Mr. Hyland?”

  “As a director or as a person?” Rosencrantz asked.

  Fong momentarily wondered if there was a person Geoffrey Hyland different from the director Geoffrey Hyland. He thought not but answered, “As a director.”

  “He was great if he liked you.”

  “Liked you or liked your work?”

  “What’s the difference?” Rosencrantz asked.

  Fong wasn’t sure about that either so he chose one, “Liked your work.”

  “He rode my case pretty hard but I liked him. He had standards and wanted them met without excuse.”

  That sounded right to Fong. He turned to Guildenstern. “How did you get along with Mr. Hyland?”

  “He liked me. So I liked him.” The man shrugged his slender shoulders. “That’s how the world works, isn’t it?”

  Fong thought about that for a moment then asked where the two of them were last night. “There was a party,” said Rosencrantz.

  Guildenstern shot him a look.

  “I’m with Special Investigations, not Vice.”

  Rosencrantz supplied the information about the party and the phone numbers of some people who were there. As he finished he let out a sigh.

  “What?” Fong demanded.

  Rosencrantz looked to Guildenstern who nodded. “There were party members at the party, if you get my meaning.” Fong got his meaning and wasn’t surprised. The party may have a puritanical face but behind closed doors sex was sex. To many it gave meaning to life. At very least it held death at bay – for however brief an instant.

  The guard knocked at the door. “Has she stopped crying?” asked Fong.

  “Who can tell with actresses?” the guard replied.

  Fong let that pass and headed back to Laertes and Ophelia. Ophelia’s tears had disturbed her carefully applied makeup. A slender line of black marked her left cheek.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “A little, thank you, Detective.”

  That sounded honest enough. He turned to Laertes. “I hear that Mr. Hyland could be very hard on actors. How did he treat you?”

  “He hated me,” said Laertes, “as if it were my fault the guy he cast as Hamlet couldn’t cut it.”

  Fong recalled Laertes’ attack on Hamlet with the fight master and smiled – so that was what that was all about – just your basic theatre scrap over casting. Would someone murder over casting? Fong doubted it. If so, why didn’t he murder the guy playing Hamlet?

  He turned to Ophelia, “And you?”

  “He liked me. He liked my acting.” She reached up and unclipped her hair.

  The interrogation didn’t seem to be going anywhere. They were each other’s alibis claiming that they spent the night together. Fong made a note to check with the house warden although he knew that the warden system at the Shanghai Theatre Academy was as weak as the key-lady system in guesthouses. He reminded them that this was a murder investigation and that they were not to leave the city without his permission. He demanded their passports but neither had one since neither had ever left the People’s Republic of China.

  At the door he looked back at them. She rested her head against his shoulder, her long hair, loose from its clip, fell to the floor, revealing the nape of her neck. Laertes spoke to her softly, reassuringly. She tilted her head to accept his kiss. They were an attractive young couple. The kiss was tender, sweet.

  Fong snapped shut his folder on Ms. Kitty Pants, the smaller of Geoff’s Screaming me-me’s, as the woman strode into his office. He didn’t stand. She didn’t sit. “Thank you for coming,” Fong began.

  “You summoned me, I didn’t come because I wanted to. I have a show that I have to get ready.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” She clutched her red zippered binder tightly to her chest and actually tapped her little foot.

  Fong went through his mental file on North Americans and really didn’t think he’d met one like Kitty Pants before. Through Fu Tsong he had met several American producers but Ms. Pants wasn’t like them. She had their swagger but not their style. In fact, her style reminded him more of a petty bureaucrat at a post office checking foreign packages for correct “stampage,” if there is such a word. Was it possible she was some sort of government producer? Was there such a thing? Fong did recall Geoff bemoaning the state of his country’s arts that were as he put it “in the hands of people who can write grants to people who have written grants. Fifty-yearold failed women who have control over artists and not a clue what art is – I like to think of them as meme’s.” Fong looked at the woman – one of Geoff’s me-me’s. She sat. Now that he hadn’t asked her to sit, naturally she sat. Was she always so angry and officious he wondered, or was this an act she reserved for him?

  “What’s in the book?”

  “It’s not a book, it’s a binder.”

  “Fine. What’s in the binder, Ms. Pants?”

  “My notes on the show. I never let them out of my sight.”

  “Do you take many notes?”

  “More than Mr. Hyland ever did. They’re my record of how we got to where we got and they never . . . ”

  “Leave your sight. You mentioned that already. Now who makes the rehearsal schedule?”

  “Nominally, Geoff.”

  “Nominally?”

  “Well, he makes requests and I sort out the problems he creates.”


  “Geoff creates problems?”

  “He’s disorganized. He’s impulsive. He’s . . . ”

  “An artist,” Fong wanted to complete her thought but decided not to. Instead he said, “You didn’t like Mr. Hyland?”

  “Oh, I liked him fine, but he was a director in desperate need of someone like me who could harness his energies in the proper fashion.”

  Fong had seen several of Geoff’s previous productions at the theatre academy. All had been excellent and none of them had needed a person like Kitty Pants to help him harness his energies. Geoff had, in fact, worked totally on his own, often using no one but his translator Da Wei to assist him. Again Fong looked at this woman. Was this a unique product of Canada – like a moose? Then he reminded himself that people were people. If it looked like a squid and swam like a squid and inked like a squid – it was a squid, whether an Asian or a Caucasian squid made no difference. He’d seen lots of Asians like this before. He nodded. What sat in front of him was just an angry control freak, filled with her own selfimportance. He’d also seen lots of these folks before. He pressed a button on his desk and spoke quickly into the intercom in Mandarin, confident that Ms. Pants didn’t speak a word of the Common Tongue. Chen answered.

  “Sir?”

  “I thought you were sick?”

  “I was but I’m better.”

  Fong let that hang for a moment then said, “Good, come into the office and demand in Mandarin that Ms. Pants get up, then demand that she walk over and stand in the corner with her face to the wall.” Chen’s chuckle began to erupt from the box but Fong clicked it off before it hit the air.

  “Planning some outrage, are we?” Ms. Pants asked with feigned casualness.

  Fong just smiled. “Just one more question.”

  “If you have to.”

  “I do. There is a dead man – you may recall that.”

  That sobered her up a little. “Rehearsal was to begin at ten o’clock, right?”