The old lady grinned. “Ah, yes, but Mao said, ‘Women hold up half the sky.’” And her words brought Margaret sharply, and unexpectedly, back into Li’s thoughts.

Qian had wandered over to the piano and lifted the lid to stare at the keys in wonder. Music was a mystery to him. “Did you write all your songs on this?” he asked.

A sadness clouded her eyes. “Only the recent ones. The best I wrote on my first piano. It was the love of my life. My passion . . . Long gone.” She paused. “But you came to ask about Mr. Chao.” She grinned bravely. “So . . . I’ll make us some tea and you ask.”

Li and Qian sat on the edge of low chairs as she bustled back and forth from the kitchen, boiling a kettle and making them cups of green tea. The children were somewhere else in the house, drumming incessantly on what sounded like an old tin, competing with the racket of the birds. “You said nobody liked him much,” Li prompted her above the noise as she poured the tea.

“That was mostly because no one knew him,” Liu Xinxin said. “The Ministry of Agriculture owns several apartments in this block, but Mr. Chao never mixed with those families. And with the rest of us he was . . . how can I explain it? . . . standoffish. Like he was better than us. You would recognise him in the street and say ‘hi’ and he would look the other way. He never smiled or acknowledged anyone. I think he was a very sad man.”

“What makes you say that?” Li slurped his tea. It was good.

“A man who never smiles must be sad,” she said. “And his eyes, if you ever got a chance to look into his eyes, they were so full of pain, as if he were carrying some unbearable burden. Of course, Mr. Dai, the elevator man, knew him best. He is on my committee, so we would often discuss Mr. Chao.” She paused to reflect, and then corrected herself. “When I say Mr. Dai ‘knew’ him, what I mean is that Mr. Dai saw him most often. Like I said, no one knew him.”

Li asked, “And his family? Do you know anything about his background?”

She shook her head. “Only the information given when he first came.”

“Which was how long ago?”

“About two years. He had been working near Guilin in Guangxi province in the south for some years before they transferred him back north to Beijing and an apartment here. But he has not worked much in the last six months. He has not been well, I think.” She leaned forward confidentially. “They said he had been married and divorced, and that he had a young family somewhere in the south.” She dropped her voice. “He liked young boys, you know.”