The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

by Ovidia Yu

  I resented rules I didn’t see the point of. But instead of ignoring them, I found ways to work around them. The British men who created our laws didn’t understand us locals any more than they did their own women.

  But observing Le Froy taught me there were different kinds of laws: those of nature and science that are man’s way of understanding the world, and those created by men in power designed to keep themselves in power. Chief Inspector Thomas Le Froy should have embodied the second set of laws but he didn’t.

  The other colonials would have liked Le Froy better if he had taken a local wife and gone drinking and gambling with the other men. He looked like a combination of all the heroes played by Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore but he had turned down all the ladies who had tried to catch his attention (no, I wasn’t one of them).

  That morning, Le Froy was still wearing the cheap, shabby clothes he had gone out in. He reeked of sweat and tobacco, and must have passed for a Eurasian or Indian sailor. I hated to disturb him, but this might be important.

  ‘Can I make you some coffee, sir?’

  ‘Good idea. Strong.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  His eyes stayed shut as I stepped carefully over him. I knew my way around the kitchen, which was in the open courtyard at the back of the house. He allowed me to move freely within his home only because he saw me as a subordinate colleague rather than as a ‘lady’. Le Froy avoided the ladies.

  I found and rinsed out the kettle and a coffee cup. There had always been more servants than family members in Chen Mansion where I grew up, and I smiled to think how humiliated my relations would be to see me making coffee for an ang moh. ‘As though we cannot afford to pay somebody to marry you!’ Uncle Chen would say.

  I pulled my thoughts back to the present as Le Froy said, ‘An accident?’

  I heard him moving around, bumping into something, and took the bottle of Nyalgesic out of the cupboard. ‘I don’t know, sir. The hotel sent a runner.’

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘The runner didn’t know. But he said it was an ang moh man “covered in red blood”. He saw the dead man himself and said he looked like a monster. But, sir, the room is registered to Victor Glossop.’

  A snort came from Le Froy: he must have remembered the trick the wedding party had played on his men.

  As I filled the metal kettle with rainwater from the ceramic dragon pot in the open kitchen yard and lit the charcoal fire, I heard Le Froy shuffling through some papers – his notes from last night, very likely – then making his way upstairs.

  The kettle was boiling. Just in time to complete the waking-up process. I spooned coffee grounds into Le Froy’s stainless-steel kopi pot. He drank cheap local coffee, made from beans wok-fried with lard and sugar, then coarsely ground with cloves. Once you got used to this fragrant, potent brew, the pure expensive European coffee had no kick.

  I poured hot water into the ground beans and stirred, enjoying the heady fragrance. It would take four or five minutes to reach the strength Le Froy preferred.

  ‘That woman the Glossop pup is marrying, Nicole Covington. Who is she? What’s she done?’

  Given Le Froy’s intricate knowledge of poisons, languages and legalities, it was always surprising (and pleasant) to find gaps in his knowledge. Even if I only knew who Mrs Covington was thanks to Pip’s Squeaks and Parshanti.

  ‘She’s very rich and goes to parties. Her husband died and left her even richer.’ Parshanti would know more. I should have paid closer attention to her. If the Cambridge exams had tested us on fashion and celebrities instead of English, geography and mathematics, Parshanti would have beaten my score hands down.

  ‘And she’s getting married again. To another man with a very rich father,’ I added.

  I packed sugar into the bottom of the coffee sock and poured the thick black mixture of coffee grounds and water into it. I didn’t have the skill to tarek it, like the professional coffee-makers, but I poured the brew carefully between pot and mug a few times to cool and froth it, then added it to the condensed milk I had already put into the mug. I also shook out a blue shirt from the stack of laundry the washerwoman had left by the kitchen door.

  Le Froy’s papers were stacked on the kitchen counter. I glanced at them, but didn’t disturb the order they were in. They were mostly notes and reports on covert Japanese military action in the Chinese provinces of Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi. They were setting up puppet governments after the invasion of Manchuria. He couldn’t have these papers in the office because the official stand of the colonial administration was not to get involved with Japanese militarism.

  Japan had defiantly resigned from the League of Nations after being censured for attacking Shanghai. But the League had done nothing, while forbidding the Chinese to deploy their own troops in their own cities. The Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army, formed by some Chinese to defend their homes, was condemned as a terror organization.

  In fact, anyone in the Crown Colonies who tried to speak against the Japanese invasion could be arrested for treason. The authorities were more concerned about appearances than the ongoing carnage in China.

  Officially, at least, Le Froy had to support that. And I understood. My grandmother was angry but she also understood. Despite the terrible stories coming out of China, she had forbidden Uncle Chen to join the Communists in raising funds to support the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army. Ah Ma put his safety, and that of our family, first.

  And Ah Ma was still good to the Japanese tradesmen. Uncle Chen wanted to kill them all, but Ah Ma had said, ‘The ones trying to earn a living here are not the ones raping children with bayonets.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Le Froy’s voice brought me back from the horrors. He was freshly washed and shaved but still wearing the clothes he had slept in. He took the coffee and didn’t speak again until he handed over his cup for a refill. ‘The hotel sent someone round instead of telephoning?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s why I came for you, sir. Someone would have checked to make sure it wasn’t a trick before sending a boy over. And the boy said he saw the dead body himself.’

  Le Froy said something I couldn’t make out. I turned and saw he was struggling out of his shirt. A more ladylike young woman would have screamed and fainted, or at least closed her eyes. I reached over and undid the two buttons my boss had missed, freeing him.

  ‘Sorry, sir. What did you say?’

  Le Froy’s face appeared, clear of his shirt. ‘Go back to the office. Tell de Souza to meet me at the hotel with a tape recorder.’ He put on the clean shirt I had picked.

  ‘I brought the tape recorder with me, sir, and my notebook.’ And my shorthand skills. ‘I brought my camera too, just in case,’ It was the folding pocket Kodak my grandmother had bought for me to photograph her rental properties. A lady reporter like Henrietta Stackpole would not miss a chance like this. A celebrity death was much bigger news than a celebrity wedding.

  ‘Who’s at the hotel?’

  ‘Sergeant Pillay. Sergeant de Souza went to get the reserve corporals from HQ.’

  ‘I saw Victor Glossop at the hotel when we went back after the betel bomb. I thought him a fool. A damned conceited young fool. I never thought there was any real danger.’

  ‘Fools are killed too,’ I said. ‘And Mr Glossop didn’t get any threats, only Mrs Covington.’

  Besides, we had been told to watch the wedding and the wedding rehearsal, not to protect the groom. But that was following the letter of the law, which Le Froy wasn’t good at doing.

  ‘Stop talking and start the car,’ he growled. Le Froy’s black and green Plymouth was in front of the house as usual.

  ‘I can’t drive, sir.’ We both knew I had been driving my grandmother around for years. And that I didn’t have a driving licence.

  ‘What the blazes – get the engine warmed up. Keys in the prayer bowl.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Body at the Farquhar

  The Farquhar was one of
the oldest hotels in Singapore and by far the grandest. It loomed like a palace along South Coast Road, and had a wide driveway lined with sealing-wax palms and bougainvillaea bushes. Its clientele were mostly Caucasians and Eurasians, and ordinarily I would have stayed away. But a dead body makes any hotel irresistible.

  Christmas wasn’t as big a festival as Chinese New Year or Deepavali, but all the umbrellas along the driveway were trimmed with damp tinsel and the valet wore a red Santa cap. ‘The valet will take your car, Chief Inspector.’

  Darwin Van Dijk himself greeted us in the drizzle, showing how serious the situation was. He was the general manager of the Farquhar and far more imposing than any of the hotel’s owner-investors.

  ‘The dead body on your premises, it’s a guest?’ Le Froy asked, without preamble.

  Instead of answering, Van Dijk looked disapprovingly at me and said, ‘I will get a taxi for your companion.’

  Companion? The man assumed I was there with Le Froy because he had spent the night with me! I felt furious and humiliated. Had I had a gun in my hand, I would have shot the general manager in his stupid, smug face.

  Instead I took out my camera and shot him with that. The flash made him blink and wince. ‘For the record,’ I said. I held onto my camera bag and hoped I wouldn’t be thrown out.

  ‘Miss Chen is a member of my team. She will be assisting me,’ Le Froy said. His tone was mild. His eyes were challenging.

  Darwin Van Dijk gave a noncommittal nod. I felt better.

  (Though I’m looking back on this many years later, it still gives me a little thrill to think I was once mistaken for Le Froy’s lady companion!)

  Van Dijk brought us to the servants’ entrance, answering Le Froy’s questions along the way.

  ‘Yes, Mr Victor Glossop. It is not the suite he is registered in, but an additional private room he took.’

  ‘In English, man. Not hotel jargon.’

  ‘Mr Glossop was one of a party of five. They took connected suites on the second and third floors. But the gentlemen also took an additional room. A smoking room with a balcony and garden access.’

  In other words, a room with a discreet entrance for private visitors.

  ‘How long have Victor Glossop and his party been staying here? Which liner did they arrive on?’

  As we walked, Le Froy was looking left and right, up at the ceiling of the dim, narrow corridors and down to the bare floorboards, throwing out questions as he went. He barely acknowledged the responses and I made sure I remembered them so I could record them.

  They walked fast and I struggled a little, determined to keep up. But by the time I pushed open the door that connected the stifling service passage to the airy, plush-carpeted guest corridor, both Van Dijk and Le Froy had reached the door where Sergeant Pillay was on guard. He greeted Le Froy with relief and rose from the chair he had used to block the entrance to the room.

  ‘Sir. It’s a Caucasian male in his twenties. Not officially identified yet, but it is Victor Glossop’s room. Nobody has been allowed in. I told everybody to wait for you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Miss Chen, maybe you should wait outside.’ Prakesh Pillay lowered his voice. ‘It’s a mess.’

  I smiled my thanks and hurried through the door with my camera before anyone decided to stop me. I almost wished I hadn’t when the smell hit me, making me gag.

  It was dim inside the room after the modern electric lights in the corridor. The stench took me back to the sickroom in which I had last seen my dead father. It was the smell of recent death, of meat just starting to go off. And of betel. Not betel spittle but fresh betel . . . laid over faecal matter and urine.

  The heavy scent of expensive perfume made things worse.

  I was careful where I put my feet on the thick carpet, careful to breathe slowly and not retch. ‘Imagine the substances are your own and they won’t make you nauseous,’ the mission-school teachers had said during Basic Nursing. As prim as they were tough, those English ladies dealt unflinchingly with conditions they were too genteel to put into words.

  As my eyes adjusted I saw I was standing in a small foyer that opened into a room with a bed, two armchairs and a writing desk. To the right, there were windows, the curtains pulled shut, and to the left, cupboards. In the corner by the bed, two doors stood at right angles.

  Le Froy stepped into the room and stopped, studying the scene. I did the same. A vase lay shattered on the floor about a foot from the bed, and what was on the bed explained the messenger boy’s monster.

  The face of the man lying there was swollen into a grotesque mask. There were blister-like swellings on his naked torso too, and it seemed someone had drawn red spots, crosses and swastikas all over him. He looked like Togog, the red-faced wayang kulit clown. In fact, along with the stuffy, stinking heat, that terrible room felt like one of the lowest levels of Hell.

  All the magazine photographs I had seen showed Victor Glossop as fair-haired and handsome. But the bloated figure on the bed was hideous. The half-closed eyes were staring, and his swollen lips seemed to part over a giant pink maggot – oh, it was his tongue.

  I had been holding my breath and now when I gasped the foetid air choked me. I thought I was going to faint or be sick.

  ‘Vomit,’ Le Froy said sharply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone else was in the room with him. The vomit over there is a different consistency from what came out of him on the bed.’

  I saw he was right. I took out my camera and unfolded it. It is always easier to study a scene through a lens. This is true literally as well as metaphorically. I switched into working mode and felt the dizziness and nausea recede.

  ‘It looks like he is wearing lipstick, sir. And I think the marks on his body are lipstick as well.’

  I looked more closely. Some of the spots looked like little red hearts.

  ‘Make sure you get pictures of all the patterns,’ was all Le Froy said. ‘Especially those that look like words.’

  I photographed the body on the bed from different angles. He was shirtless but wore a sarong of light and dark blue checks. He might have picked it up in the street market outside the hotel. It was not folded and tucked native style, but bunched around his hips with a leather belt.

  ‘Shall I open the curtains, sir?’ Van Dijk’s voice startled me. I had forgotten he was there.

  ‘Yes,’ Le Froy said, without turning.

  ‘Wait. Just a moment, please.’ I wasn’t trying to be difficult: I could see that the general manager’s chilly disdain might have come from the effort of holding in his own guts.

  As quickly as I could I took some photographs of the closed curtains, and was glad I did. ‘Chief, look.’

  There were splashes of what seemed to be blood on the fabric. But the colour was wrong. The texture was, too, for clotted blood. I leaned closer and sniffed to be certain, and heard Van Dijk gasp, in horror or disgust, and retch. There was something else on the floor just behind the hem of the curtain. I pushed the cloth aside and picked it up with my fingertips. It was an open tube of Lucky lipstick, a cheap brand I had seen sold on market stalls. But the colour was different from that used on Victor’s body. I passed it to Le Froy.

  ‘What do you think?’ Le Froy asked. His eyes were bright and dispassionate.

  ‘It’s old betel juice, sir, on the curtains.’ Perhaps they had practised spitting in here before pulling their rehearsal trick.

  Le Froy nodded. ‘And this lipstick?’

  ‘It’s a different colour from the one used to draw on his body. This is more orange than brown. But it may change on contact with skin.’

  ‘Agreed. I want photographs. And find samples. Then get Pillay in here to turn him over.’ He nodded towards the body. ‘Photograph his back, his hands and feet, his ears . . . Look for anything unusual.’

  I got down to work, glad I had two spare canisters of film in my bag and very glad my stomach had settled.

  ‘Dr Leask is on his way,�
�� Constable Kwok came in to say.

  ‘Don’t let anyone into the room till he gets here,’ Le Froy said. Then, to me, ‘Make sure you get photographs of the whole room. Sergeant Pillay, you have the fingerprint kit?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He made a face behind Le Froy’s back. Taking fingerprints was a messy business and no use unless you had prints to compare them to. I was trying to sort the ones already on record in the police files, but there seemed no way to classify them. Fingerprinting was a new gimmick and no one at the Detective Shack except Le Froy really believed it could work.

  ‘Mr Van Dijk, can you tell me what happened here? Who found Mr Glossop? When were you informed?’

  Van Dijk answered, ‘Housekeeping. The chambermaid knocked and called, then let herself in when there was no answer. That is standard. She saw him there on the bed and panicked. Two of the houseboys heard her screaming and rushed in.’

  ‘Very courageous of them.’

  ‘Gentlemen guests sometimes express excessive affection towards housekeeping staff,’ Van Dijk explained, ‘which can interfere with the cleaning schedule. Usually a houseboy turning up is enough to set things right. On seeing the man was dead, they came to me. I sent one to run for the police.’

  ‘Good boys. Do you know if one of them was sick by the bed?’

  ‘I – no. No idea.’

  I wondered if Van Dijk had left his breakfast on the carpet.

  Suddenly one of the inner doors swung open and a large man dressed in dark grey appeared next to me. Startled, I jerked away, bumping into Le Froy. I’m not superstitious but in that instant I thought he was the spirit-collector, come for the dead man. Sergeant Pillay touched me lightly on the arm to comfort me. Or maybe to seek comfort. His fingers were cold and trembling.

  ‘I am Dr Taylor Covington. I demand to know what’s going on here. You have no right to keep us out of a room we’ve paid for. I represent the Covington party.’

  At that moment, if Dr Taylor Covington had said he represented the devil, l would have believed him.

  Taylor Covington