Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha by Dorothy Gilman Page A

Hitchens to a telephone. After that he’ll be on his own.”
    “How did he get here?” put in Mrs. Pollifax quickly.
    “Taxi,” said Robin, ushering them out into the sunlight and removing his jacket.
    “Taxi,” repeated Mr. Hitchens. “Never heard of you … came alone in a taxi …”
    “Your turn now,” said Robin, emerging from the hut. “Walk inside, discover the body, do a little pacing back and forth and walk out.”
    Once Mr. Hitchens had complied, still murmuring “Taxi … never heard of you …” they prepared to leave. But Mrs. Pollifax, the last to go, lingered for just a moment on the threshold of the hut and looked back at the huddled body of Inspector Hao in the corner.
    “God bless,” she whispered to whatever spirit mightbe lingering, and silently pledged her help to find his killer and his son.
    They left Mr. Hitchens in Yuen Long, where he practiced his new role by thanking them loudly for giving him a ride when he had flagged them down. “But you
will
be looking for Alec now?” he asked in a lower voice, anxiously.
    “Yes,” promised Robin, “but it’s better you not know how or where, because you might let it slip.”
    As Robin gunned the motor, Mrs. Pollifax leaned forward to call to him, “Leave messages—knock on my door—keep in touch, Mr. Hitchens! Oh dear, he
does
look lonely,” she said as Robin turned the car and headed back toward Hong Kong, leaving Mr. Hitchens standing uncertainly beside a stall heaped with vegetables.
    “He won’t be lonely for long,” Robin told her, “he’ll shortly be surrounded by police and newspapermen—this is going to be very big news on the island.”
    “And you and I?”
    “We,” said Robin, “are going to burgle the Hao residence.”
    She laughed. “How smoothly things go when one knows a cat burglar! You’re amazing, Robin, but won’t there be people in the house?”
    “He and Alec lived alone,” explained Robin. “Wife dead, older daughter married and living in Bangkok, second daughter in college in Europe somewhere, Alec newly graduated from college and back home to job-hunt. The house is off Lion Rock Road in Kowloon and the important thing is to get there before the police.”
    Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Hoping, I suppose, that DamienHao left behind some clue to all this that Alec may have missed … Have you visited the house before?”
    “Only to knock—twice as a matter of fact—when no one was at home. I seem to recall a lavish amount of shrubbery for concealing nefarious people like myself but if you’ll put that fantastic hat back on your head, dear Mrs. P., it will add a marvelous note of respectability to our mission, because no burglar would ever dare to wear such a hat, believe me.”
    When they reached the Hao’s neighborhood and Robin pointed out their target Mrs. Pollifax saw that he was certainly right about the shrubbery. There was a six-foot wall around the house and the outline of a tile roof nearly hidden by trees, among them, noted Mrs. Pollifax, a mimosa. Robin parked discreetly across the street and they approached the gate in the wall quickly, with the confidence of two people given every right to be there. Four minutes later, following Robin’s expertise with a set of delicate lock-picking instruments, they were inside the house.
    It was dim inside, the matchstick shades at each window sending alternating lines of sun and shadow across the tile floors. There was a living room, a dining room, a small kitchen and a screened porch in the rear. It looked like any suburban house in America to Mrs. Pollifax, except for a niche in the living room that bore a large gilt Buddha smiling serenely down at their feeble worldly struggles, and at their entrapment in anger, greed and delusion: The Eightfold Path, she remembered with a smile.
    “Upstairs,” Robin said impatiently. “We need a desk, a study, a safe.”
    A moment later they had entered Inspector Hao’s study at the top of the stairs