by Yangsze Choo
* * *
He can’t understand it. Nobody can. The wounds were cleaned and stitched up. No vital organs were hit. Perhaps it’s the shock. William has heard of men on battlefields who drop dead, their hearts stopped like clocks. Still, it doesn’t explain Ren’s precipitous decline. The fear is sepsis, especially in the tropics where injuries rapidly turn putrid.
“How old is this boy?” Rawlings had asked that night, as they worked on, searching in the bloodied mess for the shot wadding. It was vital to remove as much of it as possible, there being little to combat infection other than rinses of carbolic acid.
“Thirteen, he said.”
“Nonsense! He can’t be more than ten or eleven at the most.”
William felt himself shrink in shame. Of course he should have known. If Ren dies, nobody will really care. William will be made out to be the fool who shot his own houseboy, but it will all blow over because Ren is an orphan with no one to speak for him. Except for me, thinks William.
* * *
When William goes out to the car, he finds Ah Long standing next to it. He’s holding a steel tiffin carrier, the kind they use for packed lunches. The lines on his face look deeper than ever.
“Tuan, let me go to hospital.”
“You want to see Ren?”
A nod.
“All right.” William feels a stab of guilt. Of course the old man must be fond of Ren.
At the hospital, William reviews Ren’s chart. Not good. He’s continued to run a low fever. Worse still, the boy’s face has begun to take on the sunken look that William dreads. Ah Long puts the tiffin carrier on a table and sits by Ren’s bed, speaking to him quietly in Cantonese. Ren doesn’t respond; his eyes are closed and there are blue shadows under them. There’s nothing more that William can do. Irresolute, he stands there wondering what Ah Long is saying.
“Sleeping, is he?” he asks.
“Or wandering.”
William frowns. That makes no sense at all. Ah Long fumbles in his pocket and produces something in a small slim glass jar, the kind that anchovies come in. William looks at it in disbelief. It’s the shattered end of a child’s finger, floating in tea-colored liquid.
“Is this Ren’s?” he says, trying to swallow the bile in his throat.
“Yes. I look for it.”
God. It’s so terribly sad. It reminds him of MacFarlane’s finger, the one he had to amputate because of blood poisoning on that trip they took, but it’s worse because it’s child-sized and preserved in this horrible fashion.
“You do know that we can’t reattach it,” says William, thinking that Ah Long must have spent hours combing the bushes and grass for this one small finger. It’s a wonder that he found it before the crows did.
Ah Long nods. He’s about to set it on the table by Ren’s bed when William stops him. If Ren wakes up, he might be frightened by it. What is Ah Long up to, with his barbaric superstitions? William pockets the glass jar.
“I’ll keep it, just in case.” He turns on his heel, about to resume his duties. “By the way, what’s the fluid?”
Ah Long looks blank.
“What did you preserve it in?” asks William patiently. He needs to know as he’ll have to change the fixative.
“Johnnie Walker, Tuan.”
* * *
When William returns to his office, there’s a visitor waiting for him. With a sinking sensation, he recognizes the tall spare figure of the local police inspector, Captain Jagjit Singh. He hasn’t seen him since the discovery of Ambika’s body in the rubber plantation; there’s been no reason to since Ambika’s death has been ruled a misadventure. But now he’s standing in William’s office as though he belongs there. The same Malay constable is with him.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” says William cordially. “Is this about the shooting? I called it in yesterday, and they said I could just come down to the station and give a statement.”
“I’d actually like to take a statement about something else.”
“A statement about what?” William’s alarm is growing. Is this still about Ambika?
Captain Singh studies William’s face. “So you haven’t heard? About one of your patients—Nandani Wijedasa.”
“Has something happened to her?”
“I’m afraid she’s dead.”
William sinks down. “Dead? How’s that possible?”
“Mr. Acton, when was the last time you saw her?”
William thinks rapidly, his mind scattering and reforming itself. “Saturday night. She came to my house.”
“What for?”
William considers lying, but instinct tells him not to bother. “She wanted to see me before she went away. What happened to her?”
Captain Singh watches William with sharp amber eyes. “Was she upset?”
“Somewhat.” William takes his glasses off and polishes them. “Her father had found out we’d been friendly and he was sending her away. To an uncle, I believe.”
“And what kind of relationship did you have with her?”
This is the question that William has been dreading. “I flirted with her. I thought she was attractive, and I came by a few times to where she lived and we went on a couple of walks.”
“You didn’t know her long?”
“She had the accident with her leg quite recently.”
Captain Singh nods. “Yes, there wasn’t much time for a relationship to develop.”
“May I ask where this line of questioning is going?” William’s voice is sharp and cold.
Captain Singh spreads his hands. “According to her family, the only unusual change in her routine this weekend was that she went to see you. Her cousin said that she was quite upset when she left your house.”
“Yes, I told you that already. She didn’t want to go to her uncle’s, but I thought she should do what her father wanted. And that she was reading too much into our friendship. Now, please tell me what’s happened to her.”
The captain suddenly becomes brisk. “On Saturday night she went missing from your house for a short while, but was later discovered walking on the road by her cousin, who gave her a ride home on his bicycle. She went to bed as usual. At half past eight on Sunday morning, her body was discovered lying in the bushes a little way from her home.”
“Was it a tiger?” William’s mind instantly leaps to Ambika’s poor sad corpse.
“No, though it seems there was a tiger in your garden on Saturday night.”
“Yes,” says William distractedly.
“I’m afraid in Miss Wijedasa’s case, she was violently ill. We’re investigating the possibility that there was some kind of accident. Or suicide.” His eyes rest thoughtfully on William.
“Suicide? She was upset, but she wasn’t suicidal!”
“Her family doesn’t think she was, either. This morning, the body was brought in for an autopsy.”
“Who did it—Rawlings?”
“Yes. According to his first impressions, she ingested something early in the morning, before breakfast. Perhaps some folk remedy—her mother said she’d complained of stomach pains.”
“So why did you need a statement from me?” William’s head is foggy now, his knees weak with tension.
“We just wanted to confirm her movements this weekend. Though it appears you spent most of Saturday night at the hospital attending to your houseboy,” Captain Singh says smoothly. Is it William’s imagination, or has the man been stringing him along? “When I looked up recent deaths in this area, I noticed that another patient of yours died not too long ago. A salesman—Mr. Chan Yew Cheung of Papan—who apparently dropped dead on the road.”
“I read about it in the newspapers. Poor chap.”
“According to his wife, you were the last doctor to see him.”
“That was for appendicitis, half a year ago.”
“Nothing to do with his subsequent heart failure or broken neck, of course.”
“Is that what happened to him?” It
’s the first William has heard about the details behind the salesman’s death. The obituary had only said “suddenly,” but cardiac failure and a broken neck sounds literally like overkill.
“Apparently he’d been drinking and fell into a storm drain, breaking his neck. Though one eyewitness said he’d complained of chest pains shortly before that. There was no autopsy though.”
William supposes not, since there were more than enough plausible causes of death.
Captain Singh thanks him for his time and turns to leave. “You’ve had quite an affinity for deaths and accidents recently.”
* * *
After he’s gone, William sinks into a chair. So Nandani is dead. There’s a hollowness in his gut, a tight misery. Did she die for him? No, that doesn’t seem right. Still, the overwhelming emotion he feels is guilt, because didn’t he wish, fervently and irritably, on Saturday night that Nandani would just disappear?
What would cause an otherwise healthy young woman to drop dead? William puts his hands over his eyes. A terrible suspicion is growing in him that there’s a shadowy power that rearranges events to suit himself. That whole business with Iris, and Ambika, once she started asking for more money. Then the salesman, conveniently dying after stumbling upon his affair with Ambika. And finally Nandani. It’s the fickleness of events that frightens him, as though he only has to say, “I wish it weren’t so!” and the pattern reorders to suit him. Like a dark fairy tale, where all your wishes, however evil and stupid, are granted.
And perhaps, like fairy tales, there’s a price to be paid in blood.
33
Ipoh/Batu Gajah
Friday, June 26th
All week, I scanned the newspapers feverishly to see if there was any mention of a death in Batu Gajah, but there was nothing. Though perhaps an orphaned houseboy didn’t warrant a mention. When I looked at the little glass vial, I couldn’t help recalling Ren’s faint hoarse voice. “Put it back. In his grave,” he’d said.
Chinese sometimes exhumed a grave. Bone-picking, it was called, when remains were disinterred seven years after death to be sent back to an ancestral village. If you had no family and died in a foreign land, you’d become a hungry ghost, wandering and starving forever. To prevent that, the bones were carefully washed with wine and laid out on a yellow cloth, before being packed in a jar. If even the smallest bone was missing, a substitute must be made.
Incomplete sets and broken promises. Dark thoughts, like an eel twisting in my head. I was so preoccupied that on Friday, Mrs. Tham told me to take the rest of the day off.
“Worried about your mother, are you?” she said.
I thanked her guiltily, though I was less anxious about my mother’s health—which was improving—than her debts. Things had been a little too calm in the shophouse, no doubt because my stepfather had suddenly realized he could be widowed again. But all that goodwill might fly out of the window if a debt collector showed up. Clenching my hands, I tried to quell my rising apprehension. If Shin were around, it would have been some comfort. He was the one I most wanted to talk to about Ren getting shot and how the finger had returned to me, though I shuddered to think of Shin’s reaction if he discovered I’d been working as paid entertainment. A shadow lay between us; I couldn’t go running to confide in him. But the most pressing worry was Ren—whether he was alive or dead, and if my last-minute plea to Yi had made any difference. So when Mrs. Tham shooed me out of the dress shop, I headed straight down to Batu Gajah. I’d asked Kiong, after I’d given my notice to the Mama, for the address of the house that we’d gone to. He’d been reluctant.
“If the boy died,” I said, “I’d like to make a soul offering. He was an orphan, wasn’t he?”
Kiong grunted, then scribbled the address on a slip of paper. “First place I’d try, however, would be the district hospital. That’s probably where they took him if he survived.”
* * *
When I arrived at Batu Gajah Station, it was midafternoon and just as hot as the day we’d cleaned the pathology storeroom. The hospital had seemed busy enough that I could probably risk a quick visit without running into Shin or narrow-faced Y. K. Wong.
As I got off the train, I noticed two men approaching, heads bent together. One was very tall and stoop-shouldered, with a great beak of a nose. He looked familiar, and I realized that I’d seen him at that ill-fated party. The other was William Acton. I darted behind a pillar, hoping they’d pass by, but they stopped right on the other side.
“Thanks for the ride.” That was the tall one.
“Glad to save you the walk. You really think it was murder, Rawlings?”
Who had died? My thoughts leaped to Ren. But Rawlings was speaking again. “That, or suicide. There’s no doubt in my mind that she either took it herself or someone poisoned her.”
“God. I can’t believe it.”
“Wasn’t she at your house on Saturday night—the local girl sitting in the kitchen?”
“Yes. She was a patient of mine, and she was friendly with Ren.” He sounded oddly defensive.
“No need to blame yourself. Time of death was early Sunday morning, so who knows what happened.” This was a bit too hearty, as though the other man had also seen through Acton’s denial. “It was likely a vegetable toxin, though we may not be able to test for it. I’ll ask the lab in Ipoh. Budget won’t run to sending this all the way to KL if it’s just a local girl committing suicide or taking some fool remedy. Farrell will have my head for it.”
There was a sigh. “All right. Thanks for letting me know.”
The quick clip of footsteps. I stayed where I was, thinking furiously. If William Acton really was the fifth Virtue, then he must be Li, order and ritual. He’d been with Dr. MacFarlane when his finger was amputated, and his name was also on Pei Ling’s mysterious list. And now, someone else had died.
I waited a few minutes until I was sure they’d gone. The finger in its glass vial was in my pocket, since I couldn’t leave it where Mrs. Tham might find it. I considered replacing it in the pathology storeroom, but I had a bad feeling. Somehow it had wormed its way out of there and buried itself in the dark earth outside William Acton’s bungalow, as though it had an agenda. The idea made me shudder.
Deep in thought, I stepped off the curb without looking and was honked at. Startled, I raised my eyes to find that the car was an Austin, and William Acton was driving. I felt like kicking myself—what was the point of hiding only to be run over by him five minutes later?
“Louise,” he said, leaning out of the window. “Want a lift?”
Since he’d already spotted me and it was a long, uphill walk to the hospital, I climbed in. Acton didn’t seem surprised to see me, just distracted, as though he was mulling something over.
“How is Ren—your houseboy?” I said. “Is he all right?”
“He’s still in the hospital. Are you working there today?”
He probably assumed I had a job there since I’d been cleaning up the pathology storeroom. But relief was flooding me. Glorious, heartfelt relief. Ren had survived!
“My brother’s an orderly. I was just helping out.”
“Your brother—you mean the chap who was with you the other day?”
“Yes.”
Acton shot me a swift glance. “I didn’t realize that.”
“We don’t look alike.” I wondered why I always apologized for that.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking.” He grinned. “Anyway, do you want to see Ren? I’m going back myself.”
William Acton was a much better driver than Robert was. At least, he changed gears without gut-wrenching swerves. Spared the terror of death by motorcar, I studied him surreptitiously, struck once again by his disarming manner. I suspected the reason he could be so casual was because he didn’t really see me as a person, just another interchangeable local girl.
As the car began to climb the hill, he said, “Look here, Louise—on Saturday night at the party, did you happen to see a Sinhalese girl? Her
name was Nandani.”
That must be the girl they’d been discussing at the train station. The one who’d died. “Was she there to see you?”
He glanced quickly up and out of the window. Guilty. “She came by the kitchen and Ren gave her some supper.” He was hiding something. A memory stirred in me: Ren’s frightened face, white in the darkness of a corridor, and then the old Chinese cook coming out to tell him something.
“I think Ren was searching for her in the house.”
A twitch. “Did he say anything to you? About why she was there?”
I shook my head. What he was concerned about? We were passing sprawling white colonial buildings now, beautifully set in manicured green lawns. The view from a car was very different from trudging along on foot. It was like a dream, the way the scenery slid by so smoothly, and I said as much to him. It was just small talk, but he seemed struck by it, and also eager to change the subject from Nandani.
“What sort of dreams do you have, Louise?” Acton gave off the same sticky sense of loneliness as some of the customers at the May Flower, the ones who stayed too long, paying for dance after dance. But now was my chance to find out if he really was the fifth one of us.
Yi had said we’d all gone a little wrong, perhaps in the way we’d failed to live up to our Virtues. My own choices—working at a dance hall, getting mixed up with a dead man’s finger, and telling lie after lie—could hardly be called wise, despite my supposed cleverness at school. I imagined the five of us making a pattern. A set that fit together naturally like the fingers on a hand. The further we strayed, the more the balance in our worlds distorted. Less human, more monstrous. Like the claw of a beast.
And what about the unknown fifth? The worst one of all, according to Yi. Of course, Li stood for order. Ritual. Doing things in their proper way, not shortcutting for selfish desires.