The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [126]
A marriage certificate, dated 21 November 1912, between Yolanda Chin, sixteen, and Reverend James Harmony Hayden, age thirty, a British subject.
This time, the exclamation was mine.
“Born in 1882—do you know what Hayden looks like?”
Lofte went back to his envelope and took out a square of newsprint, commemorating some kind of donation or prize-giving: The quality was as poor as might be expected, but it showed two men shaking hands and facing the camera, the man on the left clothed in formal black and silk hat, the grinning man on the right in light suit, soft hat, and clerical collar.
“The one on the right is Reverend Hayden. The occasion is the opening of a school for poor children for which his church helped raise funds.”
Apart from the grinning teeth, all one could tell about James Hayden was that he was Caucasian, and that his eyes were dark. A shadow next to the left eye might have been wear in the page or a flaw in the printing, but I was pretty sure it was not.
“He has a scar next to his eye,” I said.
“That's what it says in his description,” Lofte agreed. “I haven't seen him, but I understand that he was in an accident in late 1905, a building collapse with live electrical wires. He was badly hurt. It was the following year that he set up shop as a reverend.”
“He's not ordained?” Holmes asked.
“He may be. There are many religions in Shanghai.”
“It's him,” I said ungrammatically, my eyes fixed on the clipping. I had not seen his face, could not testify to the colour of his eyes or the shape of his hair-line, but I had no doubt.
“I agree,” said Holmes.
Lofte waited for us to explain, and when we did not, he went on.
“He hired a small space on the fringes of the city's International Settlement, and began to hold services, a mixture of the familiar and the exotic, from Jesus as guru to the health benefits of Yoga. Mind-reading, I understand, was a regular feature. He claimed to have received personal messages from the shade of Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophist. Before long, he bought the building outright, thanks to the bored and wealthy wives and daughters of the English-speaking community, who just lapped him up.”
“Mixing Hinduism, Yoga, mysticism, that sort of thing?”
“And Tantra,” he added, then quickly moved on before I could ask for details—but I had no need to ask. Tantra employed sexuality as a means to mystic union: a true discipline in its original home, a means of exploitation by unscrupulous charlatans in the West. I should not be surprised to find among its devotees a man who would marry a child he thought to be sixteen.
Lofte dipped back into the envelope for another sheet. He handed it to Mycroft, who read it then laid it atop the first. “They were divorced in 1920. She cited abandonment for her and their child.”
Holmes cleared his throat. “Child?”
“Yes. According to a woman who had remained friends with Yolanda after she left the—the pleasure house, she had a child in 1913.” He went back to his envelope, this time for a telegraph flimsy. “I had to leave a number of elements in this investigation to others, you understand, since time was a priority. This was waiting for me in Cairo.”
YOLANDA CHIN BORN 1893 FUNG SHIAN DISTRICT STOP CHILD DOROTHY HAYDEN BORN 1913 LUAN DISTRICT LIVING WITH GRANDPARENTS FUNG SHIAN STOP
Holmes, reading this, made a tiny noise that might have been a sigh, or a whimper.
Lofte continued. “It would appear that she and Hayden did not live together, as he had a house in the International Settlement, where Chinese were not made welcome. Certainly they were separated by March 1917, when she began work as a barmaid two streets down from the … house where she had lived. There is, I will mention, no evidence of a child during this time. Giving a child over to one's grandparents to be raised is a common practise for… among girls who live in the city.
“Then in 1920, Damian Adler