The Warning Voice (20 page)

Leaving the packet in Swallow's hands, she turned and began swiftly making her way back again. She had just got
as far as the part of the Garden bordering Flowery Harbour when she saw Lin Zhi-xiao's wife at the head of a party of stewardesses coming towards her from the opposite direction. Concealment was impossible; there was nothing for it but to walk straight up to them and greet them.

‘What are you doing, running around like this?' said Lin Zhi-xiao's wife. ‘I thought you were supposed to be ill.'

Fivey forced herself to smile.

‘I've been a bit better this last day of two, so Mother brought me into the Garden with her for a change of air. I've just been to Green Delights for her, to deliver something.'

‘That can't be right,' said Lin Zhi-xiao's wife. ‘I saw your mother go out of the Garden just now; that's why I shut the gate. If she'd really sent you to Green Delights, why didn't she tell me you were still inside? Why did she go out and let me lock the gate without saying anything? You must be lying.'

Fivey was momentarily at a loss for a reply.

‘Actually she told me this morning but I forgot,' she stammered. ‘I only just now remembered. Probably she didn't say anything about my being in here because she thought I'd already gone home.'

Observing her confusion and the halting nature of her reply, Lin Zhi-xiao's wife remembered that Silver had lately reported some things missing from Lady Wang's apartment which none of the other maids would admit to having taken and wondered if Fivey might be the thief. It was unfortunate for Fivey that Ciggy and Lotus, together with a number of older servants, should have arrived on the scene at that moment and helped to confirm her suspicion.

‘Give her a good grilling, Mrs Lin!' said one of these new arrivals. ‘She's been sneaking to and fro all over the place this last day or two. I don't know what she's been up to, but she's certainly been up to something.'

‘Yes,' said Ciggy, ‘and Silver told me yesterday that when they opened that cupboard in Her Ladyship's side room the other day they found a whole lot of things missing. They noticed there was a bottle short when Mrs Lian sent Patience over for some Essence of Roses, otherwise they'd never have thought of looking.'

‘Oh?' said Lotus with a pleased-looking smirk. ‘I didn't know about that. As a matter of fact I've seen a bottle of Essence of Roses somewhere today.'

‘Where?' Lin Zhi-xiao's wife asked eagerly. Ever since the bottle from Lady Wang's cupboard had been found missing, Xi-feng had been sending Patience round daily to inquire about the progress of her investigations and she was under great pressure to discover the thief.

‘In her mother's kitchen,' said Lotus.

Lanterns were lit and the little party hurried off to investigate, Fivey protesting anxiously as they went:

‘But that little bottle came from Master Bao's room. It was given to me by Parfumée.'

‘Parfumy
!' said Lin Zhi-xiao's wife contemptuously. ‘If we find the evidence in the kitchen, I shall have to report it, and that's that. It will be up to you to explain yourself to the mistresses if you can.'

By now they had reached the kitchen and some of them, led by Lotus, went inside to look. They came out almost immediately with the bottle. Lin Zhi-xiao's wife, thinking that there might be other stolen articles in the kitchen, ordered a thorough search, in the course of which the packet of lycoperdon was discovered. Taking this and the rose essence as evidence, they now led Fivey off to face Li Wan and Tan-chun.

But Li Wan would not see them. Jia Lan was ill, and she was too busy looking after him to have time for household business. They should see Miss Tan about it, she said.

Tan-chun was not in the office, having already returned to her own apartment. Off they all trooped then to Tan-chun's place, where one of their number went inside to announce their business. The maids were all in the courtyard enjoying the cool evening air. Tan-chun was inside, washing her hair, they said. Scribe went indoors to report. It seemed an age before she re-emerged.

‘I told Miss Tan. She said you'd better find Patience and ask her to see Mrs Lian about it.'

So off they went once more, this time to Wang Xi-feng's place, where they told their business to Patience. Patience,
on going inside to report, found that her mistress had just gone to bed. Xi-feng heard her through, after which she gave judgement summarily as follows:

‘Give the mother forty strokes, turn her out of the Garden, and make sure that she is never employed inside the Inner Gate again. Give Fivey forty strokes too and pack her off to the grange. They can either sell her or marry her to one of the hands.'

Patience relayed this verdict, word for word, to Lin Zhi-xiao's wife and the others waiting outside. Fivey, shocked and weeping, threw herself on her knees at Patience's feet and explained to her how Parfumée had given her the rose essence as a present.

‘We can clear
that
up easily enough,' said Patience. ‘All we've got to do is wait until we can ask Parfumée tomorrow to find out whether she gave it to you or not. But what about this lycoperdon stuff? That was brought here as a present for Their Ladyships. No one had the right to touch that before Their Ladyships had seen it.'

Fivey explained that the packet of powder came not from Lady Wang's store but from her uncle's share of the surplus that had been given as a douceur to the gate-people.

‘That puts you in the clear then,' said Patience, smiling. ‘It's beginning to look as if
you
are wearing the hat for someone else.' She turned to Lin Zhi-xiao's wife. ‘It's too late to do anything about this now. Mrs Lian has just taken her medicine and gone to bed; I can't go pestering her about a little thing like this at this time of night. You'd better hand her over to the night watch and tell them to look after her until the morning. I'll explain it all to Mrs Lian tomorrow, and we'll see what we can do.'

Lacking the confidence to dispute this countermanding by Patience of her mistress's orders, Lin Zhi-xiao's wife conducted Fivey outside and handed her into the custody of the watch before continuing about her own business.

Though still unbound, Fivey was unable to move freely and was obliged to stay where she was put and listen to the ill-natured comments of the old women. Some of them, assuming as a matter of course that she was guilty, rebuked her for
her misconduct; others complained of the trouble that she was causing them.

‘As if we haven't got work enough already, they have to give us this thief to mind,' they grumbled. ‘If she does herself an injury or gives us the slip while we're not looking,
we
shall get into trouble!'

And those who in the past had got on badly with her mother rejoiced in the daughter's discomfiture and lost no opportunity of taunting and abusing her.

Poor Fivey! Her heart was full of the injustice of it, but there was no one to pour out her troubles to. The hardships of that night were doubly distressing to a person of her weak and ailing constitution: no one to give her tea or even a cup of water when she was thirsty, no pillow or bedding for her to lie on – even if she had felt like sleeping. The wretched girl spent the whole night in almost continuous weeping.

The enemies of Fivey and her mother, disappointed that the sentence could not be carried out on them immediately and fearful that the morrow might bring some remission, rose up next morning at crack of dawn and went secretly to Patience, hoping, by means of bribes and flattery, to buy her over. They extolled her resoluteness and drew her attention to various past misdemeanours of Cook Liu in order to strengthen the evidence against her. Patience accepted their presents, listened politely to their advice, and as soon as they had gone, slipped quietly over to Green Delights and asked Aroma whether Parfumée had in fact given some Essence of Roses to Fivey.

‘I certainly gave some to Parfumée,' said Aroma, ‘but whether or not she passed it on to someone else, I couldn't say.'

She called in Parfumée to ask her. Parfumée, in some alarm, at once confirmed that she had given the bottle to Fivey and went off to tell Bao-yu what had happened. Bao-yu was as shocked as she was.

‘The Essence of Roses is no problem,' he said; ‘but what about the Lycoperdon Snow? I'm sure what she told them about it was the truth, but if it gets known that her uncle took it while on duty, then
he
's going to get into trouble – which seems a rather poor exchange for his kindness.'

He thought he had better see Patience himself and point this out to her.

‘Look,' he said, ‘the Essence of Roses can be accounted for easily enough, but that Lycoperdon Snow business still looks a bit fishy. Why don't you be a nice, kind girl, Patience, and tell them that the Lycoperdon Snow was given to her by Parfumée as well? Then that disposes of the whole affair.'

‘That's all very well,' said Patience, smiling, ‘but she told everyone last night that her uncle gave it to her. How can she now make out that she got it from you? And apart from that, don't forget that the bottle of Essence of Roses from Her Ladyship's room has still to be accounted for. If
this
isn't it, where are they going to look for it? It's not very likely that anyone else will own up to having taken it.'

Skybright stepped over at this point to join in the discussion.

‘The Essence of Roses from Her Ladyship's place must have been stolen by Sunset to give to young Huan. It's as plain as the nose on your face. I don't understand why you're all making such a mystery of it.'

‘
I
know that as well as you do,' said Patience, ‘but it's not so simple. Silver, who was so worried about finding that bottle missing that she was in tears, did go, very quietly and nicely, and ask Sunset if she had taken it, and if Sunset had had the grace to say ‘yes', Silver herself would have done nothing, and I'm quite sure that no one else would have made an issue of it. Who's going to stir up trouble about a little thing like that? But unfortunately not only would Sunset
not
admit to having taken it, but she even had the gall to accuse Silver of taking it herself. The two of them made such a hullabaloo between them that soon everyone in the household had heard about it. By that stage I couldn't ignore the matter any longer, even if I'd wanted to. I
had
to investigate it. And the first thing I found, of course, was that the one doing all the accusing was actually the thief. But without any evidence, there was nothing much I could do.'

‘I can take responsibility for that too,' said Bao-yu. ‘You can tell them I stole the bottle from Her Ladyship's room to give the girls a scare. Now everything is accounted for.'

‘No doubt it's an act of merit to clear someone else of suspicion,' said Aroma, ‘but Her Ladyship won't be very pleased when she hears. She'll say you've been up to your old childish tricks again.'

‘Oh,
that
's of no consequence,' said Patience. ‘We could of course clear this matter up quite easily by looking for the stolen bottle in Mrs Zhao's room. The only reason I hesitate to do that is because I'm afraid it would make things difficult for a certain person whose feelings I do care about very much. I know
she
would be distressed, and the last thing I want to do is “damage the jade vase while trying to hit the mouse”.'

She held three fingers up as she said this to indicate that it was Tan-chun she was referring to. Aroma and the rest nodded in agreement.

‘That's true. Perhaps it
would
be better if Bao-yu took all the blame.'

‘Yes,' said Patience, ‘but at the same time I think we ought to call Sunset and Silver here and get this matter properly sorted out. We don't want whoever it is to think she can get away with it. If we do nothing, she's sure to think it's because we haven't the wit to find out rather than that it's for the reason I've just said, and she'll think she can go on stealing things with impunity.'

This being agreed on, Patience sent someone to call them over.

‘Well, you can stop worrying now, you two,' she said when they had arrived. ‘They think they've found the thief.'

‘Where is she?' said Silver.

‘At the moment she's in Mrs Lian's room being questioned,' said Patience. ‘She's admitted taking everything they've asked her about. I happen to know myself that she didn't take them and is only confessing because she's frightened. Master Bao can't bear the idea of an innocent person suffering and has already agreed to take responsibility for some of them. As regards the rest, I
could
tell them who the real thief is, but there are certain difficulties. One is that the real thief is a very good friend of mine. The other is that the receiver of stolen goods, who is a pretty poor specimen, is closely related to a very
nice
person who would be very much upset if all of this
were to come into the open. It looks as if I shall have to ask Master Bao to take responsibility for the whole lot, so that
everyone
is clear of suspicion. Before I do that, however, there's something I should like to be clear about first. Can I be sure, if I
do
ask him to do us this favour, that everyone is going to be a bit more careful in future? Because if not, then rather than stand by and see an innocent person suffer, I shall have to tell all I know to Mrs Lian.'

A blush had overspread Sunset's face while Patience was saying this. Her natural decency suddenly getting the better of her compelled her now to speak.

‘Don't worry, Patience. There's no need for any innocent person to suffer and there's no need for that other person you mentioned to be upset.
I
stole those things. It was because Mrs Zhao kept on at me to take them. I stole them to give to Huan. Even when Her Ladyship was here I often used to steal things for him, so that he could give them away to his friends. I thought that the fuss made when they found out that things were missing would die down in a day or two. I can't stand by and let an innocent person take the blame. You'll have to take me with you to Mrs Lian and let me make a clean breast of it.'