Short story: a Christmas Eve murder mystery in old Shanghai’s French Concession
- It’s Christmas Eve in Shanghai in 1930 and a mysterious guest has accepted an invitation to the Carmichaels’ annual drinks party. Soon a gunshot rings out …
Christmas Eve at the Gascoigne Apartments was always a special time and December 24, 1930, was expected to be the same as usual.
The Gascoigne wasn’t the largest apartment building in Shanghai’s Frenchtown, or even the most impressive on the wide boulevard of Avenue Joffre. But it always stood out at Christmas time with coloured lights hung over the entrance and candlelit Chinese lanterns in every window.
The residents of the Gascoigne’s five apartments each celebrated the festive season in their own way, giving the entire building a cosmopolitan atmosphere.
Above the lobby, on the first floor, lived the Carmichaels, a septuagenarian Scottish couple. Roger had been a Yangtze steamship captain; Edith spent decades as his patient wife. At Christmas they decorated their apartment in a manner one might associate more with Dickens than the Gascoigne’s modern art deco.
Having been a seafaring man there was invariably something of a nautical theme – three ships a sailing in was usually prominent. However, though they tried to be as festive as possible hosting an annual Christmas Eve drinks party for all their fellow residents, you couldn’t help but notice the photograph of a young man and woman, in smart clothes, with what looked like confetti in their hair, prominently displayed on their marble mantelpiece and, every year, at this time, the picture was draped with black ribbon.
Opposite the Carmichaels on the first floor lived the Bakers, who were American. Ulysses was in shipbroking and had done well for himself. His wife, Fiona, was famously extravagant in their Christmas decorations but, since they’d moved in, was too afraid of the outside streets to ever leave the Gascoigne.
