“You weren’t with them?”
“Goodness, no. I know what the motivation was for the rescue.”
“And what was that?”
“Come on, Inspector. Don’t pretend you’re as naïve as you look. The she-cat sent all the other wives away and stuck around the house to…nurse him back to health.”
“You surely can’t believe she…”
“A big muscly American — still young enough to mate — suddenly unattached.”
“But, his wife has only recently died.”
“Opium and alcohol have their own ways of interpreting the mourning process. Trust me.”
It was a difficult call for Henry to make. He didn’t want to show up at the Missionary’s house and disturb Madame Dupré in flagrante delecto. But he also needed to eliminate that particular lead before looking elsewhere. So, he did what all good investigators do. He sent his sergeant.
After knocking at the door for several minutes and getting no reply, Sgt. Nga walked around to the back. He knew the layout of the grounds well as he’d accompanied Henry on the day of the tiger attack. He was a wise old policeman who, were it not for the French hierarchy, would have been a chief inspector by now. Instead, he languished in the depths of the lower ranks, constantly held back by French officers who feared his potential. Henry knew that Nga probably had other views about Mrs. Rogers’ death, so he hadn’t asked.
At the back of the house, Nga knew he was in trouble. He walked into the type of tension that surrounds places where bad things have happened. He’d found himself in them often in his career. The rear door was open again, but this time the glass was smashed. He took his pistol from its holster. Being a sergeant, he’d normally have a couple of young recruits in front of him in situations like this to catch bullets, but Henry had insisted he come alone, ‘so as not to cause the wife of the Administrator undue embarrassment’. Right now he was more concerned about causing himself undue death.
He stood on the rear step and looked in at the shadowy interior. There was no shortage of footprints this time leading into and out of the house. Before taking a deep breath and going in, he glanced back at the yard. It was like a paddy field with rotting plants poking limply from the water. Something… something he couldn’t put his finger on, was different about that yard. It hadn’t looked like this the last time he saw it. But that would have to wait.
Despite all the mess, he removed his boots. He didn’t want to be clunking around on the tiles. He skirted around the muddy footprints and walked silently into the house. Something or some body had rampaged through the lower floor like an elephant in heat. Fine antiques were shattered, expensive oils were slashed, and the beautiful old grandfather clock Nga had looked upon with envy during his last visit was smashed irreparably.
He picked his way through the debris, still careful not to make a sound. There were traces of liquid that could have been oil or paint or blood. It was hard to tell against the dark floor, but in such a situation, a man’s mind invariably chooses the darkest possibility. He felt sure that every step he took would be his last. He edged his way up the staircase with his pistol shaking between his fists. If he’d held it in just one hand it would probably have leapt from his grasp.
The last time he’d gone up this staircase, he’d witnessed the awful mess that was left of the missionary’s wife. He doubted any sight could better that for sheer terror, but on that day he’d been told what to expect. He hadn’t been alone. He’d known the danger had passed. This time he didn’t. The top landing was in no less of a mess than downstairs. As his head rose above the floorboards, he could see into the master bedroom. He could see the bed. A woman’s legs were stretched out on it. After all the noise it took to wreck the house, he doubted she was sleeping.
Still silent, hopefully unnoticed, he cleared the final step and walked to the bedroom. His gun was thrust so far forward it seemed he could barely reach it. He followed it through the doorway. The sight on the bed took his old breath away. The thought of there being some maniac alone with him in the house suddenly took flight like a flock of bats. Mme. Dupré, as naked as the Venus, was laid out on the silk sheet like a banquet. Her breasts looked so delicious it was several seconds before Nga’s eyes passed beyond them to the large gaping hole in her forehead. Incredibly, her face smiled politely as if to be apologizing for the mess.
For Nga, this was a sight more disturbing than that of his previous corpse. Then, he’d been able to go home and describe to his wife every gory detail. But how could he return this evening and tell her he’d been stimulated by the sight of the dead wife of the Administrator?
He looked in the bathroom, the guest room, and the storage alcove, but his instincts already told him he’d seen the worst. It was his duty now to drive to the Sureté and break the news which would launch a stampede of officials and experts and gawkers. So, before he did so, he sat in the bedroom on the pink cloth-coated dressing table stool and stared at his corpse in its last moments of privacy. He enjoyed the silence of the house whose horror had been frozen in time.
Finally, he went downstairs and paused in the rear doorway to put on his boots. He looked again at the flooded yard. What was it? What had changed? Something was missing. Surrounding the garden was a tall wooden fence. The previous tenants had segregated the vegetable patches into varieties — peas here, tomatoes there, squash and beans. And they’d imprisoned each species behind smaller fences like zoo animals. The fence slats were sawn to a point and protruded defiantly from the water, but not all. That was it. One entire line of fencing was gone. But if it had merely fallen down, surely it would now be floating on the surface.
Nga still hadn’t gotten around to putting on his boots. He was wondering, with all the valuables inside the unlocked house, why anyone would bother to steal a length of fence. He waded through the tepid water to the place he was sure the fence had been, and felt around carefully with his naked feet. Sure enough, he found the fence flat on the mud. What, he wondered, could be holding it down? He moved sideways along the fencing until his foot touched something large and soft. He reached down with his hands and was left with no doubt as to what he’d found.
The body under the water was heavy and appeared to be held fast there. It was as if it were somehow nailed to the ground. He found a belt around its waist and heaved with all his might until suddenly it was surrendered by its tether. It bobbed to the surface sending Nga backwards, splashing into the water. He didn’t hurry to get up. He sat and looked at the man who floated there face-down in front of him, a foolish smile smeared across his face.
47.
The local Vietnamese photographer Henry used for crime-scene photos seemed to be taking a lot more snaps of the first victim than he normally did, certainly far more than he took of the second. At least, Nga noticed, Henry was doing it right this time. Even the inspector hadn’t been able to put a natural death label on this one. The house was cordoned off, front and back, and only he, Nga, and the photographer had gone into the place.
They bagged samples of this and that, Nga took notes, and Henry said ‘shit’ with grim regularity. A more confident man would have been able to admit how far out of his league he was on this one.
“Shit. Look at that.”
The camera snapped. They were still standing knee deep in water having discovered at last what had nailed the second victim. It turned out he had become impaled on a metal stake once used to anchor a bird feeder. Henry was rarely one to voice his suspicions until the final report, but in this case he obviously needed support from his sergeant.
“This is the way I see it, Nga. Something causes him to leave the house in a hurry. He exits through the back door into a flooded garden. He falls forward over the fence and onto the metal stake.” He glanced briefly at Nga who denied him a nod even though he agreed with the assessment. But it was clear a good deal more investigation needed to be done before they could establish who had killed whom. It was time to bring in experts. “Very well. I thi
nk we’re finished here,” Henry said to Nga. “Arrange for the bodies to be collected. I have to somehow get a report to the Gendarmérie in Saigon. That will be another challenge in itself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lac Lake
Hong had returned the previous evening with everything worked out. All she needed now was to regroup her troupe and the first matter on the agenda— the intrigue of the missing women in Ban Methuot — could be addressed. Then she could begin healing her own life. The American knight was to be the unwitting star of both spectacles and she hadn’t seen him or his so-called wife since she’d arrived back in the Highlands. She was certain the couple would spend weekends at the lake house during the wet season. It was tradition for the missionaries to hibernate till the summer, but their villa was still locked and boarded.
She had met with Chama, the matriarch of the M’nong tribe the night before. It was the culmination of the plan that had been hatched in the missionary’s living room. Hong had shown her to one of the guest rooms to allow her time to get cleaned up from her journey. To Hong it felt like a great and inappropriate honor to have the grand old lady travel to see her. But Chama had insisted. This way, the consort wouldn’t be implicated in their plan. She shouldn’t be seen at any Montagnard villages until this thing was resolved.
They met in the emperor’s study — a library full of books he’d barely thumbed through — a room he rarely visited. Chama was a splendidly large woman dressed in an ornate sarong and tiers of beads that lay across her mountainous naked breasts. Her hair was cropped short and her earlobes stretched to accommodate five-inch disks of polished sao wood. She was a glorious sight.
“We’ve found them,” was the first thing she said. She spoke Vietnamese well. They sat opposite one another at the desk, Hong on the guest chair.
“Excellent. I expected as much.” Hong knew Chama’s own people had been out into the countryside offering rewards for information. “Where are they?”
“On DeWolff’s estate.”
“But that’s ridiculous. Why would he do such a thing?”
Chama’s smile was like the entrance to a coal cellar. The mountain people appreciated the beauty of gumminess and often removed the front teeth of young girls in order to better appreciate it. “Don’t you know the best place to hide twenty four women is in the last place you’d expect to find them?”
“But their husbands work on the estate.”
“Yes, but they work on the plantation. It’s a huge place. The women are in an old stockade at the farm. The Montagnard aren’t allowed there. It’s the domain of the French overseers and their families. You’d need an army to get in.”
“I’m hoping we’ll have one. This news makes things a lot easier.”
“What’s your plan?”
Hong laughed. “I’m afraid Plan A has suffered a setback. I’m working on Plan B.”
“What went wrong?”
“It depended on the cooperation of the evangelical missionary and her husband. Unfortunately I haven’t seen a sight of them since I got back. I was…What’s wrong?”
Chama’s expression switched back and forth between shock and guilt. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Chama tapped her big fingers on the varnished desktop and raised her eyebrows. “The Americans? They’re dead.”
48.
Dr. Moncur was neither a coroner nor a surgeon. But, as the senior medical officer in Ban Methuot, he was often consulted on forensic matters. In the dry season he would insist bodies be shipped to the capital where they had the personnel and equipment to do the job properly. But, in the rainy season he’d been called on several times to perform unqualified autopsies while the bodies were still fresh. The two he’d just performed were undoubtedly the most important he’d ever done.
The woman had been shot in the head. One bullet had finished her instantaneously. It had passed through her brain so there was no doubt. They found the bullet in the pillow. The army corporal who came to consult with Moncur was no expert, but he’d served in the second war in Europe. He recognized the bore of the bullet as being compatible with the Luger they’d discovered in the mud near the body in the yard. The water in the male’s lungs told Moncur he had still been alive when he went face-down onto the metal spike. He died from drowning. It would certainly have been an agonizing death.
At the Sûreté there was a necessary but uneasy coalition of police and military. In the absence of an Administrator, deputy Desailly was also spending a good deal of time at the police station. He had to have answers. By now, news of the disaster had probably reached Saigon via the Pleiku garrison. They would, no doubt, fly someone down on military transport to conduct an official inquiry. Desailly wanted all the facts at his fingertips. He asked Henry for his appraisal as to what had happened.
“Right now, I’m not certain,” he confessed. “A crime of passion? Viet Minh assassins? Don’t forget the man’s mind was deranged from the loss of his wife. He was capable of anything. It’s an awful mess. This monsoon blew in on a nightmare. I wish I’d drawn home-leave so some other fool could suffer all this.”
“Me too.”
Lac Lake
When Lan woke from one more of her regular naps Hong was out sitting on the balcony looking down the hillside in the direction of the missionary’s house. But she was looking towards it, not at it. Everything had collapsed in her world. It had all gone so well until now, perhaps too well. She knew she’d been due for a setback, but surely she hadn’t deserved one so final.
“What are you doing, ugly?” Lan slurred as if her tongue had grown too large for her mouth. Hong didn’t answer. Lan slapped the sleep from her own face as she walked outside. “Goodness, girl. You look as gray as the day. What’s up?”
“The Rogers are dead.”
“That’s terrible.” Lan sniffed and spat a gob of mucous over the edge of the balcony. “What’s a roger?”
Hong lost her temper. “You know? You disgust me,” she said. “If you could take some control over yourself just for a few seconds, show yourself some respect, perhaps you might start to notice what’s going on around you.”
At first, Lan didn’t move or speak. Hong could almost hear her breath in the icy silence. Then she turned and walked quickly back inside. There was a slam from the boudoir door that seemed to vibrate through the lodge. Hong sighed. She’d completed her rout. Her hope was ended and now she’d alienated the only friend she had.
A wind blew a chill through the warm monsoon air. Down the hill the orchids on the Cornfelt’s balcony swung back and forth on their wires in formation. They hung inside the porch roof dying of thirst. They were a yard from the pouring rain and there was nothing they could do about it. Hong understood what that feeling was like.
The front gate guards insisted they accompany the consort down the track. She insisted they didn’t. There was something in her tone that told them she could make their lives very unpleasant if they disobeyed her. So, they watched the pale blue umbrella glide down the snaking trail in the direction of the foreigners’ villa. They watched it round the deserted guard post at the lake’s edge and skirt the high water line to the porch. There, it disappeared from their view.
On the balcony, Hong rested her open umbrella on the wooden deck and climbed onto the heavy table to unhook the first of the thirsty orchids. They’d been so beautiful when they had love and care. Mrs. Cornfelt wasn’t that good with people but she’d been a mother to her orchids. She’d had them delivered from all over Indochina. Leaving them behind had been a trauma, but what future was there for orchids in North Carolina? When she’d come for her English lessons, Hong had made a point of visiting the balcony orchids every time. They were temperamental plants and she was afraid they’d never forgive the human race for torturing them like…
A sound.
She froze. Some object — some round, hard object had fallen to the ground and rolled. It had bumped into something and stopped, then silenc
e. But it wasn’t a sound from the porch. It had come from inside the villa. The shutters were closed, the doors locked, but the sound had most certainly come from inside. Her first reaction wasn’t fear. It was anger. She knew what was happening and she didn’t like it. Some opportunist was squatting in the empty house. Someone was taking advantage of the Rogers’ absence — now their demise — and was stealing from them. She should certainly have gone back to the lodge and summoned the guards, but she was so angry, so wrapped up in the frustration of her crumbled plans, that her personal safety was not at the forefront of her mind. She needed a whipping post.
The handles of the solid double doors that opened onto the deck were fastened together with a heavy padlock. The metal chain looped twice through the handles and, at first glance, the doors seemed impenetrable without a key. Yet, something about their alignment was wrong. The left side was an inch lower than the right. In fact, it was so low it rested directly on the wooden floor. Hong looked carefully at the hinges and understood immediately. On the left side, they’d been cut through with a hacksaw blade. Although the door had been pulled back into its frame and appeared closed, the sawn hinge halves didn’t match up.
A six-inch nail had been driven into the wood as a barely visible handle. When she grabbed it and tugged, the whole unit gave way like a Chinese screen. The center chain rattled and the door creaked and she knew her arrival wasn’t going to be a secret. As she was inserting herself through the gap she went over the possibilities in her mind, Viet Minh, bandits, escaped Montagnard slaves. She reached inside her ao dai to the secret pocket she’d sewn there, and pulled out the skewer she carried with her always. It wasn’t for show. She knew how to use it and had done so, once with devastating effect.
Bleeding in Black and White Page 23