The Mao Case

noticed the large bed with one third of its space covered in books. It reminded him of his visit
     to Mao’s bedroom. Was it an elaborate imitation? He touched the bed. Sure enough, it was a wooden-board mattress.
    So he opened the door to the bathroom. The sight of the double toilet seats — a normal toilet seat for one to sit on, and a
     lower, basin-like seat for one to crouch over — confirmed his suspicion. For Mao, it
had been a habit carried over from his days as a farmer in the Hunan Province, but Jiao was a girl born and raised in Shanghai.
     While the orphanage wasn’t a fancy place, there was no way Jiao would have picked up such a habit in the city. Besides, it
     would have been expensive to have her place designed like that.
    And Jiao hadn’t traveled to Beijing — not before she moved in here. How could she have gotten the ideas and then incorporated
     them into the interior design?
    Once again he took out Peiqin’s list of the “unusual.” The next on the list was the nature of the books in the study. But
     what had baffled Peiqin didn’t baffle Chen, thanks again to his visit to Mao’s old home. He didn’t even have to check all
     the books. A quick look at a couple of titles convinced him that they were similar to the ones in Mao’s study.
    He moved back to the bedroom. Standing by the window, he tried to empty his mind of all thoughts, closing his eyes and taking
     a long deep breath.
    When he reopened his eyes, he let his gaze sweep around the room, effortlessly, as if still in meditation. And his eyes fell
     on the black-lacquered cinerary casket on the nightstand.
    It wasn’t something marked as “unusual” in Peiqin’s list. It wasn’t something that was commonly kept in a bedroom, but it
     wasn’t unimaginable for a filial daughter to keep her mother’s casket there. But how could Jiao have had the casket? When
     Qian died, Jiao was hardly two years old.
    There was an ancient convention, he remembered, about people putting the deceased’s clothes and hats into a coffin when the
     body was missing. He wondered if Jiao had done that for Qian, but it was out of the question that her clothes or hats would
     fit into such a small casket.
    Was it possible that Jiao had hidden something else inside?
    It was considered exceedingly unlucky and sacrilegious to disturb the dead by opening a coffin or a container with the ashes
     of a cremated person. But he succumbed to the temptation. Taking off the lid, he saw only a time-yellowed picture inside,
     of Shang wrapped in a white robe
that revealed her snowy cleavage, standing barefoot by a French window.
    He was shocked. It was imaginable for people to put a picture in a casket, but not such a picture of one’s grandmother. Looking
     up, as if under a spell, he stared at another picture, hanging above the headboard — that of Chairman Mao in his robe, waving
     his hands.
    He shivered with the realization of the eerie correspondence between the two pictures.
    Jiao must be so obsessed with Mao. But she should know better. Mao was responsible for Shang’s tragedy, and for Qian’s too,
     though not directly. A more justifiable reaction from Jiao would be hatred. Instead, it was a fixation on Mao, particularly
     on a fantasy of Shang’s sexual relationship with Mao.
    But the discovery in her apartment hardly helped. If anything, it made Internal Security’s interest more justifiable. There
     must be something suspicious going on in secret with Jiao.
    He glanced again at his watch. It was almost six thirty. Still more than an hour before her return. He decided to stay and
     check the bedroom closets. A large one and a small one. Peiqin had mentioned something about the closets on her list.
    He pulled open the door of the larger closet and saw an impressive array of designer clothing. Some of the outfits were still
     wrapped in plastic. A receipt peeped out of one; it was dated about six months ago. The garment was a costly mandarin dress.
     Because of a recent case, Chen was able to recognize the dress as being in the style of the thirties or forties. Some other
     dresses in the closet, though slightly different in detail, were in the style of the same period.
    Again, Chen didn’t remember seeing such a partiality in Jiao. At Xie Mansion she dressed casually. Jeans, blouse, overalls,
     T-shirts. Except for the last time he met her there, when she was wearing an apron over her pink and white mandarin dress.
    He wondered whether these