Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

by Paul French

  Nothing had come through from the pathologists at the medical college yet, but back in the whitewashed interview room with Sun Yat-sen staring down, Dennis, Han and Botham resumed their former positions. Pinfold was looking older after a night in the cells. Grey stubble peeked through on his chin; there were dark sacks under his eyes. He might have been tired, but he still wasn’t talking; it would take more than one night to change his mind. Still, they ran through the questions again, patiently repeating the ones they’d asked the day before.

  Nothing. The man barely acknowledged that the detectives were in the room with him. Dennis tried another tack. He showed Pinfold the day’s newspapers, with Pamela on the front page under the headline HUMAN MUTILATOR OF BRITISH GIRL—EVIDENCE INDICATES FIENDISH INDOOR CRIME.

  Dennis thought he detected a flicker, a second glance before the man’s head sunk back down. The DCI laid out the details—the Fox Tower, the cuts, the mutilation, the missing organs, the sexual interference. Still nothing. They broke for lunch. Let him sweat.

  That afternoon they received corroboration of his identity. The Canadians said they thought he was indeed named Pinfold, one of their nationals and a man of interest to them. According to the grapevine, he was a deserter from the Canadian Army; the consul was contacting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service in Ottawa for more details. Rumour had it that Pinfold had skipped his barracks in Canada for the United States, got himself a criminal record, maybe in Chicago, and then crossed the country to San Francisco and got a boat to China via Manila. A note in the Canadians’ file stated that he regularly attended public executions at Tien Chiao, something few foreigners did, considering it ghoulish.

  The Canadians were liaising with the Americans to see if anything came up there or in American-run Manila, which had its own white criminal underworld with casinos, girls and dope. But it would take time.

  One thing the Canadians threw in about Pinfold struck the detectives. He was usually seen down around Chuanpan Hutong, and particularly at a White Russian dive bar along that street. It was a place with no name, at number 27, run by a couple called Oparina. There was a brothel next door at number 28.

  Chuanpan Hutong—the main drag of the Badlands, east of the Legation Quarter, west of Armour Factory Alley—was right between where Pamela was last seen alive and her stated destination of home. Everyone said she always avoided the Badlands by using the Wall Road, a path that ran sometimes along the bottom of the Tartar Wall and sometimes along the top of it, and which was inaccessible to motor vehicles, available only to pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws. Her father, too, had insisted that Pamela didn’t know the many twisting hutong in the Badlands and she feared getting lost in them, but no witnesses had come forward to confirm that was her route on the night she was murdered. The police had assumed she’d taken the Wall Road, as was her habit.

  But what if she hadn’t taken her usual route after all? What if she had cut straight across the Badlands to get home, along Chuanpan Hutong, busy with the wild Russian Christmas? If she had, then she would have passed right by number 27, right by the Oparinas’ joint.

  They needed to recanvass—place Pinfold on Chuanpan Hutong, place Pamela passing by, see whether it was possible for the two to have crossed paths—and then get the pathology results on the shoes, handkerchief and knife.

  That was what Dennis called a case, if he could find a motive.

  That Thursday night, the police of Morrison Street rousted 27 Chuanpan Hutong. Colonel Han led the charge, with twenty constables alongside him. Dennis kept out of it, retreating to the Wagons Lits. A Badlands bar was a little too public, and any involvement by him was bound to get back to the legation in Peking and to his bosses in Tientsin. That would be followed by a reprimand, or even a recall, for taking the investigation outside the Quarter.

  But no one had mentioned anything about Inspector Botham’s remit, so Dennis told him to go along for the ride and observe what he could. If there was any flak later, Dennis would take it as his superior officer.

  On the west side of Chuanpan Hutong were the bars and brothels, and on the east side cheap Chinese eateries and late-night cafés. You could buy chunks of mutton on wooden skewers, called chuanr, as well as bing—wheat cakes fried in oil seasoned with spring onions—and jian bing, rolled pancakes with an egg cracked onto the batter. The indigenous street food of Peking was cheap, filling and popular with both the Chinese and the foreigners.

  The eateries catered to the working girls on breaks, giving them a place to rendezvous with their pimps or meet up with clients outside the brothels for off-the-books negotiations. The Badlands had no streetlights, but major haunts like the White Palace Dance Hall had lightbulbs strung up outside, while red lanterns advertising bars and restaurants glowed right along the hutong. Rickshaw pullers walked up and down in the cold, looking for fares.

  While this was technically Chinese Peking, foreigners were in the majority: a mix of criminal elements, dopers, drinkers and whoremongers, along with a few groups of curious, better-heeled foreigners slumming it. The area was the domain of White Russian and Korean prostitutes, with just a few Chinese among them. The main Chinese action went on elsewhere, mainly on the western side of the Legation Quarter.

  Most of the brothels sat behind courtyard walls, hastily plastered, and impossible to see past. The entry gates were manned by a mix-ture of White Russian heavies and tough-looking Chinese men. The latter were usually from Shantung, in the northeast, and were the biggest and toughest China had to offer. Neither group was to be messed with. The dive bars were open to anyone who fancied their chances. Here peroxide-blond White Russians past their prime raised their sketched-on eyebrows and offered ‘business’ to the semicomatose, the paralytic, the close to broke.

  Twenty-seven Chuanpan Hutong was nothing out of the ordinary. It consisted of one big room with a chest-high bar, wooden chairs and rickety tables. It was thick with cigarette smoke; the drinking was serious but not top quality—cheap Crimean wine and Georgian brandy. The bar was manned by the Oparinas and took cash only, no chits, no credit: don’t insult by asking. There were a few smaller side rooms for card games, where there was more smoke, more drink. Some prostitutes on the wrong side of desperate hung around looking for business, but not on the premises. The brothel next door was closed and in darkness when the police arrived, but there were plenty of other places for girls to take clients.

  It was no secret that the Oparinas’ joint was also a front for prostitution, opium and heroin, and probably other shady deals, including arms for the warlords and gangsters. But as it was frequented exclusively by white foreigners who weren’t being targeted by General Sung’s political council in its anti-dope campaign, it hadn’t been raided before.

  Still, the Shantung bouncers on the door of number 27 knew better than to get in Han’s way; this was his patch. Han ran a classic roust—gramophone off, lights on, everyone told to stay in their seats, several larger constables on the door to prevent anyone leaving. There was no back exit, just a high wall topped with broken glass that separated the lowlife of the Badlands from the high life of the Legation Quarter.

  The policemen checked everyone in the bar, questioned them, showed them a photo of Pamela. Those out on the town for an experience were quickly let go, and a group of off-duty Italian Marine Guards were sent on their inebriated way to their legation. The hard-core drinkers were kept back, along with the Oparinas.

  Nobody had seen Pamela, but plenty of regulars knew Pinfold. It seemed he wasn’t a man people felt honour-bound to keep quiet about. The Oparinas admitted he was a regular patron. Others said he was a tout, pimping girls to off-duty soldiers along Chuanpan Hutong. But no one could remember whether he was in the joint on Russian Christmas, Thursday 7 January. It had been a busy night, a drunken night.

  As for Pamela, there was no shortage of blondes, bottle and natural, in the Badlands, but none of them were English and none of them respectable. The Badlands was White Russian terr
itory, not a place where prim and proper girls ventured unaccompanied.

  The constables pulled in some of the girls, brought up a wagon and had them taken to Morrison Street for questioning. Botham wanted to check out the brothel next door, but the Oparinas told him the place had closed down, the owners gone.

  After leaving number 27, Han and Botham headed across the Badlands to the Olympia Cabaret, the source of the matchbook found in Pinfold’s pocket. Han knew the place, and the Chinese owner, a Pekinger who had gone to Paris and made a lot of money. He’d run various joints around the edge of the Legation Quarter and throughout the Badlands, but now stayed mostly in France, looking after his business interests there. In his absence, the cabaret was run by an American.

  The building was new, another hastily thrown-together Badlands specialty, but a lick of paint, some table linen, dim lights and a permanent layer of cigarette smoke hid the jerry-built nature of the place. It was pretty small but typical of its type, with a dozen tables, a discreet entrance, waiter service, a small stage with a Russian two-man band and singer who kept it low-key, and a half-dozen Russian dance hostesses. The latter spoke broken French to appear classy, and claimed to be former Russian nobility.

  The Olympia was an after-hours joint, even for the Badlands, with nothing doing until midnight or later. It was a place for prostitutes to unwind, cozy up with their pimps; a place for men to bring women they shouldn’t be seen with. They huddled at the back tables, ruby-red table lamps obscuring their infidelities.

  Han and Botham were seated at the bar by the Russian doorman while he went to find the manager, a short, stocky man in his mid-forties called Joe Knauf. Han nodded to him in acknowledgement and introduced Botham. The American ordered a round of whiskies, which the detectives accepted—it had been a long night. They chinked glasses and downed them in one. Another round, uncalled-for, appeared in front of the policemen.

  Knauf already knew about the roust at number 27—news travelled fast in the Badlands. He said the place was a dive, and Madam Oparina a White Russian bitch he wouldn’t trust farther than he could throw her. The whorehouse at number 28 had been a poxed dump.

  He also knew Pinfold, who had come into the Olympia a few times. The two had been out hunting together in the Western Hills. There was a bunch of them, Knauf said, who did that now and then, to get a break from the city. It wasn’t so easy now, though, with the Japs nosing around.

  Knauf was a solid-looking tough guy, but he was all helpful big smiles and back-slapping bonhomie with the coppers. But when it came to the Russian Christmas, he couldn’t remember whether he’d seen Pinfold. He gave the same story—that had been a crazy night, with a lot of drinking. Those Russians really knew how to celebrate—it was very good for profits. Anyone could have come into the place and picked up a book of matches from the bar, Knauf wouldn’t know. He shrugged. Then he asked if this was about Pamela Werner, and when Han confirmed it was, the American said it was a terrible crime, and according to the papers she’d been a pretty girl. He’d read about it in the Tientsin papers too, when he’d gone there a few days before on some business.

  There wasn’t much more to be learnt. Knauf ordered another round of drinks for the detectives, and they stayed to take in the show, a White Russian jazz quartet that persuaded a few punters to get up for a smooch. Han and Botham kept drinking.

  Of Rats and Men

  Friday, 15 January: one week in from Pamela’s murder, with the forty-eight-hour rule well out the window, and the twenty-day barrier getting ever closer. A suspect was in custody, but no forensics had been confirmed, and there were still no witnesses. Werner had been pushing for the release of his daughter’s body, and the British Legation had requested it too. Now release was granted, and the burial would take place the next day.

  The prostitutes, pimps and drunks rousted from number 27 had been questioned that morning, after cooling their heels in the Morrison Street cells for the night. Then they’d been let go—the station had addresses for all of them, though these would no doubt be useless by noon.

  Botham, with a sore head from the night before, gave Dennis a report of the raid, which had uncovered pretty much nothing. Plenty of people knew Pinfold by sight, Botham told the DCI, but there hadn’t been a single sighting of Pamela. It looked as though the day would yield little more than the previous week had.

  Then Dennis got a call from Commissioner Thomas. The Legation Quarter police had picked up Pinfold several times, on charges of loitering, suspicion of selling stolen goods, living on immoral earnings. None of the charges had stuck, but Thomas expressed his surprise that the British Legation hadn’t already been in touch with Dennis—he happened to know that Pinfold was on their Suspicious Persons list.

  Thomas had other fascinating details. He suggested Dennis ask the British Legation about a nudist colony that operated in the Western Hills, and specifically an American called Wentworth Prentice and an Irishman called George Gorman. Along with Pinfold, they were thought to be members of the colony, as well as fellow hunters, part of a small group who went after snipe and duck in the paddy fields and hills around Peking.

  At first Dennis thought Thomas was joking. A nudist colony in Peking? But one did in fact exist, and had done for a couple of summers, apparently.

  Wentworth Prentice had started it. He was a dentist who worked out of the Legation Quarter, a seemingly respectable professional who was involved in some questionable activities with some questionable people. The group rented an old temple in the Western Hills, as did many foreigners on summer weekends, to retreat from the dust and humidity. But this was different, not a base for picnics and rest but a nudist colony. The local Chinese police had let it operate, had probably been paid to do so, and anyway, it was just crazy foreigners being crazy foreigners. Who knew what they got up to?

  According to Thomas, Prentice was also rumoured to hold nude dances in his Legation Quarter apartment, where girls were hired to dance naked for a bunch of men. Apparently the British Legation knew about those too. It was all a little bohemian, a little strange, but was it criminal?

  As for the Irishman, George Gorman, he travelled on a British passport and had drifted through various Chinese cities before arriving in Peking, where he passed himself off as the local correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, a paper he occasionally freelanced for. He also freelanced for Japanese publications and sometimes wrote for the Peking Chronicle. Most people saw him as an apologist for the Japanese military, and many remembered that when Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931 Gorman had been working for the Japs directly, disputing stories by foreign correspondents that Tokyo disapproved of, sowing seeds of doubt and obfuscation.

  Hearing all this, Dennis couldn’t keep from wondering himself why the legation hadn’t mentioned any of it when Pinfold’s name became public. He said as much to Thomas, who surmised that since the nudist colony had a few dozen members, it no doubt included some otherwise respectable foreign residents of Peking, and probably a senior-ranking Englishman or three, who wouldn’t like the idea of being quizzed by the police about their summer weekend activities. Neither would they appreciate being asked about their patronage of nude dances. It wouldn’t do to have it revealed that your erstwhile straitlaced doctor, bank manager or customs official spent his Saturdays running round the Western Hills stark naked.

  Dr Wentworth Prentice represented the point at which the two sides of foreign Peking crossed. At his Western Hills colony and his nude dances, the respectable people of the city met the sinful.

  Dennis had Pinfold brought back up from the cells to the interview room. Han joined him, and Dennis confronted Pinfold with what he’d heard. It was time to go in heavy, provoke a response.

  ‘Let’s talk about the Western Hills nudist colony,’ Dennis said, and Pinfold blanched. But now that he knew he’d been positively IDed, he finally started talking.

  He had been there, he admitted, during the past two summers, up at an old temple Prentice had rented. It was
the dentist who ran the place, and he didn’t want any Peeping Toms or voyeurs coming over for a look-see, so he’d hired Pinfold to provide security. The local police hadn’t been too bothered—the place was for foreigners only, and an envelope with a little cash for their boss ensured they didn’t cause any trouble. A bunch of people came out on the weekends and sat around naked, picnicking, playing tennis, swimming—all the usual activities of foreigners in the Western Hills, just with no clothes on. At night they had parties. It was all pretty harmless, and Pinfold had an easy job. The temple was quite remote, with nothing overlooking it.

  Who else was involved? Dennis wanted to know. Apart from Prentice, there was the Irishman called Gorman, but Pinfold didn’t know the names of any other members. Some were big shots, Legation Quarter types. Others were a little further down the foreign totem pole, and some were women of a ‘dubious background.’

  How did he get the job in the Western Hills? Dennis asked, and heard that Pinfold had gone hunting with Prentice and Joe Knauf, the manager of the Olympia Cabaret, and a few of their friends a couple of times. The dentist had asked if he wanted to make a little extra money on the weekends. Pinfold was easy with the whole nudist thing, and how hard was it to score some wages while eyeing up naked women? He ran security for the place with Knauf, who, being an ex–U.S. Marine, hired himself out for that kind of work, but Knauf didn’t show up every weekend.

  As for the nude dances, they were no big thing either. Pinfold would find a girl down on Chuanpan Hutong who wanted to make a little extra cash—maybe a dancer from the Olympia or the White Palace. It was ‘gentlemen’s entertainment’ for a select group of friends at Prentice’s apartment on Legation Street, nothing more. It gave a Russian girl or two their dinner money. Where was the crime in that?