Briton’s Wanderings Led Him to Heart of a Chinese Scandal

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JOHN F. BURNS
NYT

BEIJING — At St. Mary’s Church in London’s Thames-side Battersea district, mourners who gathered for Neil Heywood’s memorial service a few days before Christmas were perplexed by the instructions laid down beforehand by one of Mr. Heywood’s classmates from Britain’s elite Harrow boarding school. He asked them not to approach Lulu Heywood, Mr. Heywood’s Chinese wife, and to remain in the pews until she and their two children had left the church.

The classmate’s eulogy made no mention of why a 41-year-old man in apparently good health had suddenly died. Nor could anyone ask the family.

“It was all very odd,” said one of those at the service, who, like many people connected with Mr. Heywood, asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivities surrounding the case. “There were a lot of questions, and a lot of tears. We’d all been to plenty of funerals, and none of us had ever been through anything quite like it.”

That now seems an understatement. Since Tuesday, when China’s Communist Party said that Gu Kailai, the wife of a suspended Politburo member, was under investigation for the “intentional homicide” of Mr. Heywood, all assumptions about his life in China are in doubt. The official account, still sketchy, says only that Ms. Gu and a household employee are suspected of murdering Mr. Heywood after he and Ms. Gu fell out over business dealings that have yet to be explained.

(More here.)