Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

Madam Shing had seen only the one man, the man who climbed the ladder. She watched him until he vanished through the window. It never occurred to her to look down at the street for other men, so she didn’t know whether there were any. The one man had frightened her enough.

I was pouring another cup of tea for Madam Shing. She looked as though she still needed it. Lady Sara said, “Colin, would you awaken Rick and Charles? Also, John. Give them my apologies, but there is work to do.”

That was as much instruction as she needed to give me. The fact that she asked for both of her footmen as well as her coachman indicated what she wanted done. She owned two taxi-cabs, a four wheeler and a hansom, for use in her investigations. One of the footmen would drive Madam Shing home. We couldn’t allow her to walk back such a cruelly cold distance, and if we gave her money for a cab, she certainly would walk anyway and save it.

The other footman would be driven in the second cab by John, Lady Sara’s coachman, so he could follow Madam Shing on foot if the need arose.

Madam Shing refused to elaborate her story a syllable beyond the bare bones of the facts she had already presented. Her voice was vibrant with truth and honesty — as it always had been when she reported to Lady Sara. We had never had a more reliable agent. This time, however, I had no intention of believing her until I had investigated every word carefully. Obviously Lady Sara felt the same way about it.

When the horses had been harnessed and the two cabs were ready — one of them was waiting out of sight — we bundled Madam Shing up again, Lady Sara gave her congratulations and thanks, added a few shillings to compensate her for her ordeal in walking so far in the cold, and assured her we would take action at once. I assisted her into the four wheeler Rick was driving, and she was whisked away. Rick was to take her directly home. As they turned into Edgeware Road, the hansom cab driven by Old John, with Charles as his passenger, hurried after them.

I returned to Lady Sara’s office with her. She sat down at her desk; I took a chair nearby. I said, “I would like to be present when you relate to Chief Inspector Mewer this Christmas Eve tale about a man with a long white beard climbing a ladder in order to break into the residence of a prominent Chinese merchant. If I’m not mistaken, men with long white beards are supposed to be able to visit homes on Christmas Eve without breaking in.”

“Do you believe her?” Lady Sara asked.

“I do not.”

“Has she ever told us a lie before?”

“Not that I know of. She always has been painstakingly exact and truthful. However, she may be so far gone in senility as to be imagining things.”

“That was a long way to walk on a cold night just to indulge her senile imagination.”

“If she really did walk that far,” I suggested.

“She certainly was cold and gasping for breath when she arrived,” Lady Sara observed.

“She could have achieved that by walking from Gloucester Place,” I pointed out. “After all, she is elderly.” Gloucester Place was a mere three squares away.

“She knows me well,” Lady Sara said. “Even in senility, I don’t believe she would attempt to fob a complicated lie onto me. Nor would she walk so far to do it. Further, in all of my dealings with her, she always has been an exact and factual witness. Her objectivity has never been disturbed by a ripple of emotion. Yet suddenly she has become a different kind of person. Even so, I think we must assume there is some truth in what she told us. She had an experience tonight that was genuinely terrifying.”

“I’m thinking about street lamps,” I said. “Also about Madam Shing’s poor eyesight. Large parts of the East End are not spectacularly well-lighted. West India Dock Road, in front of Charlie Tang’s shop, could be called dim, and Madam Shing lives around the corner on a dark side street. Even on a dark night like tonight, her poor eyesight might conceivably have recognized the general shape of a man climbing a ladder, but I refuse to accept the beard.”

Lady Sara shook her head. “I think we have to accept it. Madam Shing is not a person who can imagine things.” She chuckled. “The beard may be the most important clue she gave to us despite the fact that it is Christmas Eve. But we don’t have to believe she saw it from across the street.”

“We also don’t have to believe the burglar climbed in through a window,” I said. “Charlie Tang is a very savvy merchant. He not only would have locks on his windows, but he wouldn’t traipse off to Liverpool without leaving a capable watchman on his premises. So I conclude that Madam Shing’s story is largely fantasy.”