by Nina Jon
Jane could only smile at this.
“I call and call but he not answer. I leave message but he not return call. No letter even. Uncle say he run away after talk. Uncle say he right all along. Cheung Kin have wife in China, and Cheung Kin know he can no longer fool with me, so he leave town. Cheung Kin not want to face music, uncle say. These words hurt me very much. Cheung Kin my betrothed. I not believe he do such a thing, but where is he? I not believe someone hurt him. He has no enemies. He not hurt a fly. Uncle not bad man, he mean well. He not hurt Cheung Kin. If cousin say he saw Cheung Kin leave here then that what he saw. But where is Cheung Kin?”
Foo Yong was clearly distraught and confused by her fiancé’s sudden disappearance. Jane asked her where he lived, and whether his belongings were still there?
Foo Yong nodded sadly. “He live in bedsit on other side of town. Other than his car, everything he own still there. Even photographs. Uncle say nothing else worth taking – it trick to make landlady think he come back so he not have to give notice.”
“Were his wallet and passport there?” Jane asked softly.
“He always kept them on him,” she said.
“Was any cash missing?”
“Any spare money he had he gave to me and I put in bank for our wedding.”
“Does he have any relatives who might know where he is?”
Foo Yong shook her head.
“Only a very old aunt,” she said. “She live in village in central China. Very far away. No electricity, very difficult to contact her. Mrs Hetherington I have very little money. I do not want to spend wedding money. I cannot really afford to pay you…”
“I understand dear,” she said, trying to pour them both more tea, but the pot was empty, as was the bamboo basket of dumplings.
“I get us more,” Foo Yong said, leaving for the kitchen, pot in hand. Jane turned to watch the people coming and going in the street outside, and thought over what Foo Yong had told her. Cheung Kin hadn’t been gone very long. All Foo Yong really knew was that the young man had left after a heated debate with her uncle. It was more than possible that the argument with Foo Yong’s uncle had so angered or upset him that he simply needed time to get over it. He might be spending the time trying to decide whether or not he still wanted to marry into the family.
Alternatively, Foo Yong’s uncle might not be being entirely honest with her about what really happened that night. Was he being economical with the truth in order to protect his niece’s feelings? For all anyone knew, Cheung Kin might have admitted to having a wife and family in China after all, and agreed to leave immediately to avoid the wrath of Foo Yong’s family. Her uncle may even have paid him to leave, or threatened to have him deported if he didn’t. Foo Yong would probably not believe her uncle even if he told her this, nor forgive him.
Foo Yong returned to the table, and set down on it the freshly made tea and another bamboo basket with more of the tiny dumplings in it.
“If I were you,” Jane said, “I’d give it more time – just because your fiancé hasn’t been in touch for a few days doesn’t mean you’re not going to hear from him again. Young men sometimes do these things.”
“He never has before.”
“I presume he’s never argued so violently with your uncle before?”
Foo Yong said nothing. Jane continued. “Lifelong experience tells me Cheung Kin is more likely than not to reappear any minute.”
Foo Yong brightened up considerably at these words.
“You believe this?”
“I do.”
Foo Yong hesitated. “But if he doesn’t?”
“If you still haven’t heard anything in three or four weeks time, why don’t you try placing an advert in whatever newspaper it is that the Chinese community in Britain regularly read, hopefully that wouldn’t be too expensive. Tell him how much you love him and how much you want to see him again. In the same advert you could ask if anyone has any information on his whereabouts. I’ll help you come up with a form of words before I leave. I’d put it in both Mandarin and English. If there’s a website the Chinese community in Britain use, I’d put the same advert on that. It may even be worth running a radio ad on some Mandarin speaking radio stations; I presume there must be some. I think it should come from you though,” Jane said. “A member of your community is far more likely to respond to an advert from someone within their own community than someone outside it. It may also be worth considering sending a letter to his aunt in China. You never know, she might be able to help you. Follow up every lead, however unpromising they seem. If this doesn’t get you anywhere, or if you learn something you’d like me to investigate on your behalf, please do call me again.”
“You’ve been very kind, Mrs Hetherington,” Foo Yong said. “I will take your advice. How much do I owe you?”
“The tea and lovely dumplings were more than enough, thank you,” Jane said, quickly helping herself to another one.
II
Jane liked to record all the facts and resolution of her cases on a database, and collate her success rates under a column headed ‘Success Rate to Date’. When she’d returned from the Kings’ property, she’d put ‘100%’ under this column. She wasn’t sure what to put in the Foo Yong case. After some thought she put ‘to follow’ under the column, and left it like that.
CHAPTER FIVE
SPINSTERS IN PERIL!
I
When Jane and Hugh’s only child, Adele, fi rst asked her parents how they’d met, Jane replied, “Well, Granny Hetherington loves reading, and one day she asked your father to return a book to the library for her and I was working there and so we met. People who work in libraries are called librarians. I was Jane Preston then. I only became Jane Hetherington when I married your father.” When Adele was a little older, Jane expanded some- what. “When I fi rst set eyes on your father, he was spying on a man from between two volumes of the Encyclopae-dia Britannica.” “Why?” asked Adele. II Hugh Hetherington hadn’t been particularly pleased when his mother had asked him to return a library book for her. Hugh didn’t particularly like libraries or librar- ians, fi nding both old-fashioned and musty. When he walked through the library’s door with Spinsters in Peril! by the novelist Sybille Brown in one hand, and a list of Sybille Brown books in the other, he wasn’t intending to spend any longer there than was strictly necessary.
Hugh made his way across the library to the bookshelves containing the collected works of Sybille Brown, all of which seemed to centre around those blasted spinsters. He scanned the titles of the books on display and compared them to the books on his list. His mother had already read Spinsters Fight Back! Spinsters Triumph! and Spinsters on the Warpath! He selected Spinsters Conquer the Americas! This and Spinsters Spill the Beans! seemed to be the only ones in this series his mother hadn’t yet read. He glanced over to the borrowing desk and saw it was unmanned. He looked around the library and saw two young women, whom he took to be the library staff, standing by a nearby bookshelf, engrossed in conversation. As he approached them, he heard one say to the other, “That’s every day now for a month Jane, that old tramp’s come here. You’ll have to say something; he’ll scare away the other visitors.”
“He’s not a tramp Mary, I keep telling you that,” the other one said. “Tramps don’t dress in tailor-made suits from Savile Row. Besides, he wouldn’t only come here in the mornings if he was a tramp? He’d be here till we kick him out. Also, have you noticed how he always sits in the seat facing that window? And how do you explain the binoculars?”
Hugh, who was now quite close to the two librarians, studied the one addressed as Jane. She was really rather pretty, he thought. He found her outfit – a dark green wool plaid two-piece, with a loose fitting jacket over a knee-length pencil skirt – rather fetching. Who was this gentleman who so fascinated them, he wondered. He pushed apart a couple of volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and saw a clean-shaven man in his sixties, sitting at a table under a window. The man had an open
notepad in front of him, on which he made the occasional note. His hands were filthy, and even though his clothes appeared to be expensively tailored, they too were covered in stains. Although he had a local newspaper spread open on the table in front of him, nothing much in it appeared to interest him half as much as what was happening on the street outside. Here he glanced every few minutes, often training a pair of binoculars on something, before scrawling another note in the notepad.
Just as Hugh was beginning to feel as intrigued by the man’s unorthodox behaviour as the two young librarians, he had the feeling he too was being watched. He turned around to find the librarians looking intently at him.
“Can I help you, sir?” Jane asked him.
“I’d like to return this book,” he said awkwardly, showing her his copy of Spinsters in Peril! “And borrow this one,” he said, holding up Spinsters Conquer the Americas! He felt the need to add, “My mother reads them. The book’s for her. Not me.”
“Please come with me,” Jane said, walking towards the borrowing desk.
“And me,” Mary said, following her.
Hugh did as he was told. On the way to the desk, Jane turned to him and said, teasingly, “Are you ashamed to admit you read books by Sybille Brown?”
“No, because I don’t,” Hugh replied.
“Well, you should. I’ll have you know the spinster sister sleuths series is very popular with our readers,” she informed him. “Aren’t they, Mary?”
“I’ll say,” Mary replied. “I’m reading one at the moment – Spinsters Ain’t So Stupid, After All! It’s riveting stuff, I can tell you.”
At the borrowing desk, while Mary squatted down in front of the book trolley and began to organise the books on it, Hugh waited patiently for Jane to go through the routine of checking that the returned book was not overdue, selecting the relevant book’s reference card from the tray in front of her, removing the borrower’s library card from it, slipping the reference card into the book’s cover and placing the returned book on the trolley behind her.
For Hugh, who was beginning to revise his previously low opinion of librarians, this didn’t take nearly long enough. All in all he thought Jane very attractive and charming and unless he was mistaken, she was flirting with him. To buy more time with her, Hugh handed her the book he wanted to borrow, leant forward and whispered, “I’m with you on this ‘is he or isn’t he a tramp?’ thing,” he said. “He’d have smelt more if he were tramp, although he was talking to himself quite a lot. Just retired most likely, and rather than get under his wife’s feet all day, the poor bugger comes here and collects bus numbers, or something equally enthralling.”
“That’s what you think, is it?” she said, with a slightly bemused shake of her head. “Well then, you can’t have noticed what it is he keeps studying so intently with those binoculars then, can you?”
Hugh admitted he hadn’t. “But then I am something of a newcomer to the espionage game,” he said, in his defence. Hugh was finding Jane more and more interesting, and therefore decided to play along. “Let me have another go,” he said.
Without further ado, he returned to the bookshelves, this time peering over the scruffy man’s head to look out of the window. Unfortunately, he could see nothing other than people getting on a double-decker bus, and a display of sweets in the window of a recently opened F.W. Woolworths and Son, whose brand new frontage dominated the high street. A large poster offered Woolworths’ customers a selection of Palace Mixture, a Mars bar, assorted toffees, humbugs and jelly animals for only 2/6.
“All I could see clearly was Woolworths,” he said, back at the desk.
“Precisely,” she said. “What does that tell you?”
“His wife works in Woolworths and he thinks she may be having an affair?” Hugh suggested.
“You really have a very over active imagination, Sir. Let me give you a very important piece of the jigsaw.”
She removed a library card from the rows stretched out in front of her, and handed it to Hugh. “It’s the gentleman’s library card. As a matter of fact, he has an overdue book of ours,” Jane added, disapprovingly.
Hugh peered at the card. The name on it was John Simpson, which judging by the triumphant look on Jane’s face, was clearly meant to be of some significance, but just what that significance was, was lost on him.
“I’m none the wiser,” he had to admit. “Ah. I’ve got it,” he said, clicking his fingers. “He can’t be a tramp, because tramps don’t have library cards. Am I right?”
“No,” Jane replied. “The homeless are as entitled to a library card as anyone else.”
Hugh stared at the library card again.
“What’s the name of the most famous sweetshop in town?” Jane asked.
Hugh and Mary, now on her feet, glanced at each other.
“Simpson’s,” Jane reminded them.
“It’s lovely in there, but pricey,” Mary said, opening a drawer and removing a half-eaten pack of boiled sweets from it, which she began to eat absent-mindedly, as though all this talk of confectionery had made her hungry. “I bought these in Woolworths. They’d have been twice as much in Simpsons.”
“Exactly,” Jane said. “To be precise, you bought them in the pic ‘n’ mix on the first floor, which if you sit where he’s sitting, is what you’ll find yourself looking directly at. I don’t think I need say more.”
“On the contrary, if you want me to have any idea of what you’re talking about, I think you do,” Hugh said.
“He’s here every day,” Jane said, tapping the floor with her foot, “because they’re there,” she said, motioning in the direction of the Woolworths store.
“And?” Hugh wanted to know.
“It’s obvious. He’s one of the chocolatier Simpsons, and he’s worried about the competition.”
Hugh did not entirely believe her. “I know someone whose last name is Cadbury, but he doesn’t make milk chocolate,” he said.
“I still think he’s a tramp,” Mary said, offering Hugh a sweet.
“I still think he’s retired and at a loss for what to do with his time,” Hugh maintained, helping himself to a lemon drop.
“Shall we ask him?” Jane said.
Mary and Hugh watched Jane approach John Simpson, his library card in her hand. As she crossed the library, Hugh had a sinking feeling that young Jane was going to be proved right.
“How often is she right about things like this?” Hugh asked Mary.
“Always,” she said. “Do you really know someone whose surname is Cadbury?”
“No.”
“I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this, Sir,” Jane began, once she’d reached John Simpson’s table. “But some time ago now, you borrowed a book, which you still haven’t returned.”
He turned around in his seat to face Jane.
“Did I, young lady?”
“You did, I’m afraid,” Jane informed him.
“I’d better return it then, hadn’t I?”
Jane hesitated at the table. “I couldn’t help noticing from your library card, that you share your surname with the famous chocolatiers…” she said, tapping the library card, which she was holding in her hands, “…and I just wondered if you were in any way connected?” she continued innocently, and with only the slightest glance in the direction of Hugh and Mary.
“That’s most observant of you, young woman,” he said. “As a matter of fact, my great-grandfather opened the original Simpson’s confectionery shop. I’ve just handed the business over to my son. It wasn’t an easy decision to take, after so many years in the saddle,” he said, with a note of sadness in his voice. “That place opening the same week and undercutting us, didn’t help,” he said, pointing at Woolworths.
Hugh and Mary received another quick glance from Jane, who appeared to be trying not to look smug.
“You’re probably wondering why I come here every day?” John Simpson continued.
“I really hadn’t noticed that you d
id, Sir,” Jane replied.
“I come here every morning, and make a note of every person who comes out of that shop with a confectionery purchase,” he said, emphasising the word with. “Do you know where I spend my afternoons?”
“I really couldn’t guess,” Jane said.
“I spend them sitting at a bus stop, opposite the very store opened by my great-grandfather, making a note of every person who comes out without a purchase. Too many of one and too few of the other, and I pay my son a visit and ask him how he expects to remain in business.”
“Visits he must look forward to, I’m sure,” Jane said.
“As I keep telling my son, complacency is the death of any business.”
At that moment, John Simpson noticed someone about to buy a large box of chocolates in the opposition premises. He snorted and picked up his fountain pen and began to make a note of this on his notepad. In doing so, he managed to get almost as much ink on his hands, as he did on the paper. He proceeded to wipe his hands on his coat and trousers.
“My staff gave me this damned pen as a retirement gift,” he muttered. “Feel I should use it, but I really can’t get to grips with it at all.”
Jane returned to the desk
“Told you he was retired,” Hugh said. “My name is Hugh, by the way. Hugh Hetherington,” he added, holding his hand out for her to take, and wondering if she was involved with anyone. Jane returned the handshake, wondering the same thing about Hugh.