Red Mandarin Dress

snakeskin before he took up the magazine again. “When I first looked at the picture, it reminded me of several lines from Othello : ‘If it were now to die, / ’Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, / My soul hath her content so absolute / That not another comfort like to this / Succeeds in unknown fate.’ Absurd, you may say, but I came to understand your insistence of putting each victim in a red mandarin dress. You want to remember her at her happiest moment, your happiest as well. To do you justice, you might have wanted those victims to be happy, and beautiful too, for that moment.
    “So I’ll call attention to the similarities between the pictures and the murder case. In a couple of the pictures, the bosom buttons of her dress appear slightly undone. And in several of them, she walks barefoot. Not to mention the mandarin dress itself. The same material and style. The same craftsmanship too. An authority I have consulted about the mandarin dress will back me up. And what about the background of the original mandarin dress? A private garden. Now except for the last victim, the scenes where the victims were found invariably had something to do with flower and grass. The symbolic correspondence is impressive too. In fact, the flower-bed background for the first victim is only a stone’s throw from the music institute.”
    “You are misleading people—”
    “No, I don’t think I have to,” Chen pressed on. “The pictures of the beautiful hostess of the Ming Mansion—nowadays the celebrated Old Mansion—shall prove more than enough. There are about eighty pictures in all. Apart from using them in my story, I’ll sell one or two to a newspaper or a magazine—to achieve the maximum effect. Also, let’s think about a title for it. How about ‘The First Red Mandarin Dress’? People will surely unearth all the details. Dirty details. Sensational details. Sexual details. It will be a feast for the reporters. And I will do my best to help them.”
    “We don’t have to talk anymore, Chief Inspector Chen. You invited me here for a story of yours, and I listened patiently to the end. Now you are suddenly talking about a felony, accusing me of being the murderer. I don’t think I need stay here any longer. As an attorney, I know my rights,” Jia said, looking at Chen in the eye. “You can come to me tomorrow with a warrant, either before, during, or after the trial.”
    “Don’t leave, Mr. Jia.” Chen made a gesture for his patience. “I haven’t even started telling you about another selling point. For romantic suspense, I’ll include part of my interview with Xia.”
    “You contacted Xia!” Jia said. “Yes, to undermine the housing development case, you are capable of anything.”
    “No. A romantic affair between a successful attorney and a celebrated model is just another selling point for ‘The First Red Mandarin Dress.’ ”
    “You are grasping at straws. We parted such a long time ago. It has nothing to do with your fiction or nonfiction.”
    “People meet, people part, no one can help it. But why part? There are interpretations and interpretations. She may not say a lot, not to begin with, but I bet those paparazzi won’t let her get away. Sooner or later, they will be able to dig out more intimate details about your personal life, fitting them to the psychological profile of a sex killer. They will be especially interested to learn about the source of one peculiarity of the murder case: the fact that all the victims were stripped naked but not sexually attacked. It has already riveted the attention of the reporters.”
    “You are making a serious mistake,” Jia retorted, standing up indignantly. “Before you can lock up the attention of the reporters, there may be one or two more victims. I don’t think people would be grateful to an irresponsible cop lost in his fantasy of a bestseller.”
    That was a threat Chen had to take seriously. Like in a Chinese proverb, a desperate dog jumps over the wall. Jia was capable of striking out again, like he did at the Joy Gate, in spite of the police surveillance.
    White Cloud came into the room again, still wearing the red mandarin dress.
    “Sorry, it’s the time to put in the seasoning for the soup.” She lifted up the lid and poured in the seasoning. She also changed the spoons and saucers for them before she turned to Jia, smiling an apologetic smile. “Please be seated.”
    She could have seen or heard what was going on