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

by Paul French

  Others made suggestions. They told him to talk to the Gurevitch girl again, Pamela’s skating companion on the night of her murder. They told him to find Sun Te-hsing, the rickshaw puller who’d been arrested soon after the murder. Both these people knew more than they’d said. And most particularly, they told him to focus on Wentworth Prentice and his associates. The dentist was at the heart of it, the central cog. His nudist colony in the hills, closed down by the Japanese in the summer of 1937, had been guarded by known Badlands thugs. And the parties he held in his flat were reportedly debauched.

  Werner’s informers told him that shortly after the murder, Prentice had sent his trusted friend and fellow American Joe Knauf to Tientsin, to secure a reliable lawyer to represent him in case he was arrested. At the same time Pinfold, who had been lying low in the Badlands, had been overheard asking his associates whether the police ‘had got the American yet?’ The dentist was a man with secrets. And, as Werner already knew, he was a man who had lied outright to the police.

  If Detective Chief Inspector Dennis had not been barred from talking to Werner, he too would have learnt of the lie. Werner had proof of it, handwritten evidence in the form of a professional note he had received. It was dated 1 December 1936.

  This is to confirm my statement that the sum of (Dollars Fifty) $50, will not be exceeded for the whole course of treatment for Pamela. This, of course, refers to the regulation of the upper left cuspid, and to no other teeth that may need treatment at a later date.

  Sincerely yours,

  WB Prentice

  Prentice had been Pamela’s dentist. In the treatment to which his note referred, he had simply straightened her upper left canine tooth slightly, a procedure which wouldn’t necessarily have been noticed as recent by the doctors who performed the autopsy. And in fact they had missed it entirely. But more important, Prentice had denied repeatedly to the police that he’d ever even seen Pamela. Why was that?

  Werner went to see Ethel Gurevitch, who he knew was also one of Prentice’s patients. She was still living with her family on Hong Kong Bank Road. Being stateless and without passports, only their useless tsarist documents, they had nowhere to go.

  Ethel was frightened. The year since Pamela’s death had weighed heavily on her, and she was extremely nervous talking to Werner. He pressed her about the evenings on which the girls had been at the skating rink, and eventually Ethel revealed that she’d seen Pamela speaking with a certain man that first night, Wednesday 6 January. But she either could not or would not name him. Ethel and her friend Lilian Marinovski had said nothing about this to the police. They were afraid of getting into trouble, Ethel told Werner; they didn’t want to be involved in a murder case.

  Werner thought the man had to be Prentice, and that Ethel was clearly afraid of him. He couldn’t help noting that the dentist’s flat was almost directly opposite the skating rink, and within a stone’s throw of the Badlands.

  But while Ethel wouldn’t give Werner Prentice’s name, she did give him another one. When she’d run into Pamela that Wednesday night, Pamela was in the company of the Gorman family, whose teenage children she knew. She had been to their house for tea, then gone skating with the family.

  George Gorman—the pro-Tokyo hack who’d now ingratiated himself completely with the occupying power and was editing the Japanese-controlled Peking Chronicle for them, daily spouting their propaganda; who’d always been a gun for hire; who’d attacked the police investigation for alluding to Prentice and his group; who’d accused Dennis and Han of targeting upstanding members of Peking’s foreign community, namely Wentworth Prentice and Joe Knauf—had backed up the dentist’s alibi on the evening of Pamela’s murder, stating that he was at a cinema.

  Werner hadn’t known that his daughter had gone skating with the Gormans that final week. George Gorman and Prentice were close friends. Gorman had been part of the nudist colony, had reportedly also attended Prentice’s ‘nude dances,’ along with Pinfold and Knauf. Werner had never given any thought to the man until he saw his newspaper articles during the investigation, but he had come across the name again recently.

  After the case had been closed, Werner had had to appeal repeatedly to the police to have Pamela’s belongings returned to him—her clothes and personal items, along with the things Inspector Botham and Sergeant Binetsky had taken from her room. Eventually a policeman delivered them, wrapped in brown paper tied with greasy string. Her clothes were still bloodstained, although the blood had turned a dark brown, like dried gravy. In one parcel were Pamela’s silk chemise, her torn tartan skirt, woolen cardigan, shoes, navy blue over-coat and belt. Another package contained her platinum wristwatch, the small silver casket from her bedroom, a jade comb, a hair clasp and her diary. Werner reread the diary.

  And there it was, in an entry for the summer of 1936, the year before she died. Pamela had gone on a picnic with a group of families to Patachu, an ancient temple a dozen or so miles outside Peking, and a favourite escape from the sweltering city. In the Western Hills conventions were relaxed somewhat—cool white linen replaced formal wear.

  Werner had as usual been wrapped up in his research and writing, so Pamela had accepted an invitation and gone along unaccompanied. George Gorman, a married man and the father of two children, had ‘made love’ to her, she wrote—meaning that he had flirted with her, perhaps propositioned her. Pamela’s diary recorded that she had rebuffed him, and had laughed at the silliness of it all.

  Not having been able to discuss the case with Dennis, Werner had no way of knowing what the DCI had made of this entry. He didn’t even know whether Dennis was aware of George Gorman’s friendship with Prentice at the time he’d read it. And if Dennis hadn’t been aware of that, it was possible he’d interpreted the episode as nothing more than a harmless flirtation with a family friend who’d let the wine and heat go to his head and then acted indiscreetly. Or maybe Dennis had thought it was a case of a young woman reading the signals wrong. But now it meant everything—it linked Gorman to Pamela, and Gorman was linked to Prentice.

  Werner came to the conclusion that Gorman had held a grudge against his daughter after her rejection of him that summer day in the Western Hills. What she had taken as a tipsy but innocent flirtation, he had meant seriously. He had identified her as a target for Prentice and his pals, put Pamela in Prentice’s mind. The trip to the skating rink that fateful week proved that he knew she was back in Peking.

  Werner went back over the long newspaper piece in which Gorman had defended Prentice, and then he trawled through copies of the Peking papers for 7 January 1937. At the two cinemas that showed foreign films, at Dashala and at Ch’ienmen, there had been no screenings that night after five thirty. Prentice claimed he’d gone to an eight o’clock screening on Morrison Street, but that was an impossibility. Gorman had lied for Prentice.

  Perhaps George Gorman had told Prentice he’d be at the skating rink with Pamela on the Wednesday night, and Prentice had gone there too. Or maybe he’d been watching the arc-lit rink from his flat opposite. At any rate, it seemed he had approached Pamela there.

  Werner went to the British Legation with his evidence. He appealed to the new consul, Allan Archer, to instruct the police that anything Gorman had said or written in defence of Prentice was irrelevant and out of order, but Archer refused, telling Werner curtly, ‘You are on the wrong track.’

  But Werner knew he wasn’t on the wrong track. Before Prentice had been first questioned, Dennis had been ordered to stay away from Werner, and so the detectives had failed to connect Prentice to Pamela. They didn’t know about Gorman, about the summer picnic the previous year, or that he’d been at the skating rink the night before Pamela was murdered. DCI Dennis hadn’t known the cinema times in Peking, and clearly he hadn’t checked.

  Werner now knew his daughter had sat in Prentice’s dental chair just a few months after Gorman’s clumsy advance to her in the Western Hills, and both men had lied about their connection to her.

&
nbsp; And then, a chance encounter. In September 1938 Werner was walking along Eight Treasures Alley near Ch’ienmen when he passed a foreign girl walking with a European man. He turned the corner onto Jiao Min Hutong and heard his name being called. Turning, he saw that the girl, alone now, was running towards him.

  ‘Are you Mr Werner?’ she asked when she reached him.

  She was White Russian but spoke flawless English. She told Werner that she’d come looking for him once before, on Armour Factory Alley, but he’d been away at Peitaiho. Now she was engaged, and was leaving Peking the next day to get married in Tientsin. Her fiancé was waiting around the corner, and she had only a few moments before she must return to him. She’d told him that Werner was an old teacher of hers, and she wanted to say hello. But in fact there was something she wanted to tell Werner, if he would assure her it would remain anonymous.

  Hurriedly she explained that she’d lived in Tientsin for seventeen years and had known his daughter a little. She’d been a couple of years behind her at Tientsin Grammar School and, like everyone, had been shocked to hear of her death. Six months before the murder, the girl had had an appointment at Wentworth Prentice’s dental surgery, and was surprised when he charged her next to nothing for the treatment. He had then behaved in an improper manner towards her, begging her to ‘make a date’ with him, adding that he would take her to supper and ‘make it worth her while.’ She had been scared and rebuffed him. A few weeks later he’d seen her walking along Legation Street, and had tried to get her to stop and talk to him, jumping out of his rickshaw and running after her.

  She knew of other girls, English and Russian, who’d been approached by Prentice, invited to ‘parties’ with him and his pals. Some had accepted, and they were taken to a place in the Badlands, on Chuanpan Hutong, but none of them would ever speak about what happened there, and most had now left China.

  This girl thought it was pretty clear what had happened at those ‘parties’ in the Badlands—the girls were forced to have sex with Prentice and his friends. And afterwards they remained silent because they knew Prentice would deny all of it. Everyone else involved would deny it too. Any accusations would only tarnish the girls’ own reputations. In an unforgiving society, it was they who would be blamed.

  The White Russian girl couldn’t understand why Prentice and his gang hadn’t been arrested. Rumours about him had been rife ever since his wife had left him, taking their three children back to America. The dentist had lured some of his victims with promises of marriage—the White Russian had heard that one of them had committed suicide when she found out he was deceiving her.

  Werner’s worst fears were beginning to crystallise. Following his meeting with the White Russian girl, he had his private detectives return to the Wagons Lits to seek out Chao Hsi-men, the hotel concierge who’d reported seeing Pamela at the reception desk on the afternoon of her murder. From Chao they got the name of the employee manning reception that day and tracked him down. With an offer of money, they got what they wanted, although the receptionist was too scared to go on the record.

  A foreign man answering Prentice’s description had left a note to be collected by Pamela on Thursday 7 January. He had tipped heavily and told the receptionist to say nothing, should anyone ever ask about it. The receptionist knew a secret assignation between two foreigners when he saw one. Discretion about any affairs the guests might be conducting was expected from the hotel staff.

  Pamela had come in on the afternoon of the same day and picked up the note, thanked him and left. The receptionist had no idea what it said—it was none of his business, just a quick bit of easy cash. He admitted he had kept out of the way when the police came asking questions, and said that his colleague Chao Hsi-men had known nothing of the note.

  Werner and his detectives went back to Armour Factory Alley with descriptions of Pinfold, Knauf and Prentice. The police had never circulated any of the men’s descriptions, had never released them to the press. Nobody in the alleyway had been asked about them. The foreigners had mostly all left and closed up their houses, leaving them in the care of their Chinese staff. Pamela had been popular with the servants who worked in the courtyards along the street, and they were only too keen to help, now that they were being asked. They remembered seeing Pinfold lurking on Armour Factory Alley on 6 January. Werner’s street was narrow and close-knit, and a strange foreigner stood out.

  Werner worked through the likely sequence of events. Pinfold, a procurer for Prentice, had been informed by Gorman that Pamela was back in Peking from Tientsin. Hanging around Armour Factory Alley, he had let Pamela know that a note from Prentice had been left for her at the Wagons Lits, and she should pick it up. There was to be a party, the details of which were in the note. Werner saw all the links, and thanks to the chance encounter with the White Russian girl, he now had a better idea of what Prentice’s scheme was.

  The dentist and his gang identified likely young foreign girls, followed them, hounded them, invited them to suppers and parties that ended up in the Badlands. There they forced themselves upon the girls, afterwards insisting they remain silent, threatening them if they should not. The girls’ reputations were on the line. It was their word against everyone else’s, and they would be accusing men of good standing, professional men. Nobody would believe them.

  This was the game. The men had done it before, and then they’d done it to his daughter. But it had somehow gone very wrong.

  Chuanpan Hutong

  The Badlands appeared untouched by the Japanese occupation. It was perhaps the one place in Peking where things were pretty much business as usual. In a city now filled to bursting with Japanese soldiers who’d been living for months in rough conditions in northern China, the services that the Badlands specialized in were in high demand.

  The area was no longer a place where curious wealthy foreigners went ‘slumming it’ of a weekend, or where the occasional Chinese ventured to seek illicit pleasures. Now the former had fled and the latter stayed at home in fear. The Badlands had become the playground of the Japanese and the largely collaborationist Peking underworld.

  Werner knew that the Chuanpan Hutong angle had gone nowhere in the police investigation. He’d heard from his agents that people had been warned at the time to keep quiet. He’d also confirmed the rumours that Dennis’s colleague Inspector Botham was a drunk, who after the night of the roust at number 27 had returned to the Olympia Cabaret and accepted more drinks from the manager, Joe Knauf. And Botham had used his position to spread gossip at the bars of the Legation Quarter. Threats, drunken rages—add these to the existing fear of authority and a desire to avoid being implicated or framed, and no wonder so many people had remained silent. DCI Dennis hadn’t known Peking well enough to push the matter of 27 Chuanpan Hutong. Pinfold, Knauf and Prentice were all connected as hunting friends, but not through Pamela—that connection had been just out of reach, since no one had been able to place her in the Badlands that night.

  Around the same time that Werner had run into the White Russian girl on the street, his agents managed to get in contact with Sun Te-hsing, the rickshaw puller who was seen washing blood from his cushions on the night of the murder. Sun claimed that he’d been shocked by the false detail given about him in the Chinese newspapers, and the false statements attributed to him. They reported that he’d been arrested, but he never had, just questioned. They reported that the blood on his cushions had come from a drunken American marine who’d been in a fight, and that this man was subsequently tracked down and had given confirmation—that was the first Sun had heard of the story.

  At the time he was questioned, the rickshaw puller had told Colonel Han what happened that night, and then he’d been kicked out of the station and told to disappear. He’d never spoken out about the lies in the newspapers because he’d been scared. Like plenty of other Peking rickshaw pullers, he smoked a little opium to give him the strength to work, to keep out the cold, and he knew Han was actively looking for dopers.
More than a few were ending up at the Tien Chiao execution grounds.

  Sun Te-hsing had gone back to pulling his rickshaw. But now, with the Japanese occupation, times were even harder. Fares were scarce, inflation was rampant, and he was a poor man. Werner’s agents had told him they were looking for information about the murder, and Sun was prepared to talk for money—he would set the record straight. And so he told Werner what he’d apparently told Han the day after the murder.

  He had been touting for business on the night of 7 January on Chuanpan Hutong. Everyone knew that number 27 was a dive bar, where fares staggered out regularly, and that number 28 was a busy brothel—you didn’t have to wait long there either. The Badlands had been busy that night, it was a foreign holiday.

  Some time after ten o’clock, Sun had seen a car arrive from the direction of the Legation Quarter. It pulled up outside number 28, and four people got out. From the front seat, beside the Chinese chauffeur, came a short man. Sun couldn’t say who he was, but he did remember that the man had a particularly large nose, even for a foreigner. From the back seat came a man whom Sun identified from photographs as Prentice, then a younger half-European, half-Chinese man, and finally a white girl with yellow hair. They all entered number 28, through the small gateway that led into the courtyard. The girl was walking between the two white men, each of whom was supporting one of her arms.

  The chauffeur turned the car around and drove back in the direction of the Legation Quarter. Sun was unable to identify the man, beyond his being Chinese and dressed in the typical black uniform and cap of all Peking’s chauffeurs. The car was also black, with a brown roof, but as to its make, Sun had no idea. He’d decided at the time that since the car hadn’t been told to wait, there was a good chance that one or more of the people who’d just entered number 28 would require his services to get home. So he squatted down on his haunches by the carbide lamp on his rickshaw and bided his time.