Read Magistrates of Hell for Free Online Page A

invitations out for the engagement party the following day. Oh, dear God!’ He sank his head to his hands again and whispered, ‘I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it, Professor. Look, can they get me out on bail, at least? I’ve been sick as a dog . . .’
    ‘What about last night?’
    ‘Could we talk about this later, please?’ Richard swallowed convulsively. ‘I’m sick—’
    ‘You’re going to be a great deal sicker, and this may be my last chance to get any sense out of you for days,’ responded Asher. ‘Tell me about last night. Where did you go?’
    ‘The Eight Roads,’ the boy mumbled. ‘Just outside the Chi’ang Gate—’
    ‘I know where it is. Who was with you?’
    ‘Hans, Gil, and Crommy. We all had passes – for the gates, I mean, after dark. Crommy gets one of the rickshaw boys to take us; they all know the way.’
    Asher shook his head, amazed that those four choice spirits hadn’t been quietly murdered in a
hutong
months ago. ‘Do you remember coming back?’
    ‘Not a thing.’
    ‘Or why you came back early? It was barely ten o’clock when Miss Eddington’s body was found, and she’d only been dead a few minutes.’
    ‘Ten—’ Richard looked up again, his face now greenish with nausea. ‘I say, I couldn’t have got that drunk in three hours! Are you sure?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ said Asher. ‘Did you in fact mean to insult your fiancée and her parents?’
    ‘Good Lord, no! Crommy swore we’d only have a drink or two and – well, and a little jollification, just to brace me up for the ordeal . . .’
    Asher reflected that Miss Eddington, had she lived, would have been fortunate to avoid a thundering case of syphilis on her wedding night.
    ‘I swear I never meant to get really drunk! And I was going to go back to the Eddingtons’. But I honestly can’t remember . . .’ The young man turned a sudden, ghastly hue and pressed his hand to his mouth, at which Asher signed to the guard who stood beside the interview-room door. After the prisoner had been helped from the room, Asher sat for a time at the scarred deal table, looking at the shut door which separated the chamber from the lock-up without truly seeing it.
    Seeing instead the Trade Secretary’s narrow garden in the jerking lantern-light, the small gate that opened into the alleyway, which in turn led between the garden wall and that of the British Legation and back to Rue Meiji. The alley serviced half a dozen of the western-style bungalows, allowing Chinese tradesmen and vendors of vegetables and meat to bring their wares to the kitchens, where Chinese servants would prepare them for those who had forced their trade and their religion on the country at gunpoint. At night the alleyway was deserted. Anyone could have come or gone. At ten o’clock, Rue Meiji was still alive with rickshaws – one had only to walk down the alley and lift a hand . . .
    A known killer attends a festivity at which a young girl is killed
. . .
    Ysidro, sitting in the window bay of the Trade Secretary’s rear parlor, thin hands folded, like a white mantis contemplating its prey.
    How long has Ysidro been in Peking?
    ‘’Scuse me, Professor Asher?’
    The young man who stood in the interview room’s outer doorway had the slightly grayish look about the mouth of someone suffering a brutal hangover. Still, he held out his hand and introduced himself, though Asher had already deduced that this must be Gil Dempsy, clerk at the American Legation: ‘They told me you were a friend of Sir Grant’s, who he asked to look into this awful mess. I’ll take oath Rick didn’t do it.’
    ‘Would you?’ Asher followed the young man out on to the verandah that flanked this side of the garrison offices, shaded against the baking heat of the Peking summers but at this season blue and chill. ‘Any thoughts on who might have?’
    ‘It’s got to have been the Chinese, sir.’ Dempsy sounded a little surprised that there might be any alternative