A Necessary Murder

by M. J. Tjia

“Did it have this symbol at the bottom?” asks Cosgrove.

  Lovejoy swallows hard. “I think it did, Cosgrove. I think it did. I took it for an ‘A’. I thought it stood for ‘anonymous’.”

  Pidgeon is even paler than before. He licks his dry lips. “Cosgrove, you recognise that symbol, don’t you?”

  Cosgrove’s face is serious, looks almost feline. “It’s the sign of the kungsi gang that attacked us.”

  “But how do you know?” Lovejoy’s gaze swings from Cosgrove to Pidgeon.

  “They wrote it on the wall of the house we were staying in when we were in Kuching. During the riot,” Pidgeon’s voice cracks. “You must remember that, Lovejoy.”

  Lovejoy presses his eyes shut. “Ah, yes. They wrote it in Crookshank’s blood. I remember.”

  Pidgeon’s eyes catch mine. “I’m very sorry, Heloise, that you have had to listen to this.”

  Cosgrove folds the letter up, pushes it back down into his pocket. “Heloise is a sensible woman, Pidgeon. We don’t need to tiptoe around her.”

  I’m so gratified by his words I almost grin.

  Amah Li Leen stands back, before taking one more swift look through the peephole. The drawing room’s empty. Heloise has ushered her guests into the hallway. Amah’s fingertips tingle with heightened nerves as she replaces a small oil painting over the peephole. Usually she stops to admire the painting—of dark, roiling waves under an apricot sky. It reminds her of Makassar, of its heat and colour. But this time she’s too troubled by what she has just seen and heard in the other room.

  Lovejoy.

  She picks up the coal scuttle she’d dropped to the ground when she first saw him through the peephole. Gathering up the scattered coal, she carries it to the fireplace. She’d come in to start the fire, warm up the room for their supper, but now she can’t do anything but stare into the empty, scorched grate. Lovejoy looks so much older than when she saw him last. But, of course, that was more than twenty-five years ago. He’s still an ugly man though. Inside and out, no doubt.

  She sinks into one of the bentwood chairs that circle the parlour table. Heloise would be surprised to see her so shaken, but the distant past is a nightmare that Amah only ever reluctantly revisits.

  The door opens, and Abigail puts her head around. “I’m about to go home. Do you need help starting that fire, Amah?”

  Amah stands up, wipes down the front of her skirt. “Yes, you do it. And then fill the coal scuttle, will you? Bring it back here. You’re a big, strong girl.”

  She likes this young woman, even if she does trip over her, it seems, all around the house. Amah admires how she gets on with the job, doesn’t whinge, doesn’t cavil at the cleaning, the scrubbing. Not like the last miss they had in to help out during the day, who dragged her steps as she polished the banisters, and refused to clean the chamber pots properly. Abigail didn’t quibble at Amah being Asian either, didn’t back out of the house, saying, “No fucking way am I working with a damned chink,” like the footman Bundle was thinking of hiring. Abigail said she’d worked with a family who had servants from India, who even had foreigners as guests sometimes.

  As Abigail stokes the fire, Amah neatens the crystal decanters of alcohol on the sideboard. She heard some of their conversation through the air vents high in the wall. Pidgeon—yes, she remembers him well, too, from that voyage a quarter of a century ago—was terrified of some kungsi gang they came across in Sarawak. He said one of them was here, in London, to exact revenge, starting with Lovejoy’s child. Sounded like nonsense to Amah.

  But… a loitering Chinese man. And threatening letters. Amah thinks of how she saw Jakub standing on the corner—it was Jakub, wasn’t it? She also thinks of Miriam’s words, about him being back in London.

  Could it be Jakub who Pidgeon had interrupted at his house? It’s not like there are a multitude of Chinamen in London, after all. But why would he be stalking these men from Amah’s past? Jakub couldn’t have anything to do with that Sarawak business. He wasn’t even born then.

  Amah feels a swoop of fear in her belly. Was it Jakub who had lain in wait for McBride? Is that why she’d seen him so close to their house? Was it her beloved boy who’d cut the man’s throat?

  CHAPTER 7

  The sip of whisky warms my chest as I stare up at my portrait above the fireplace in the drawing room. I’m still feeling rather pleased with Cosgrove’s words. If only Hatterleigh could be that matter-of-fact with me. I know in some ways he is proud of my sleuthing, but, most of the time, he cannot help but try to dissuade me from such unpleasantness. Like last night, when he tried to steer me away from questioning the police, and that glint of concern in his eye when we discussed my last case. Of course, it is Hatterleigh’s wish to protect me that maintains my life of comfort. When I think of this, I struggle between a preening complacency and feeling like there’s a stone around my neck.

  “Madam,” says Bundle.

  “Yes, Bundle. Supper ready?”

  The butler nods. “Yes, it is. However, it’s on another subject I’d like to speak with you.”

  I feel a flicker of concern when I see the troubled look on Bundle’s usually bland, handsome face. Even that time I’d arrived home, blood smeared across the bodice of my dress, or when I’d turned up arm in arm with a vagrant, Bundle never so much as lifted an eyebrow.

  “What is it?”

  He leads the way into the hallway, to the mahogany display cabinet that stands against the wall between the drawing room and the parlour. He lifts the glass top so we can gaze down upon the curios collected upon the felt overlay.

  “I had Abigail dust these today,” he says. “That’s when I noticed…”

  My eyes take in the ivory netsukes from Japan—the glossy rabbit with flowing ears, the hunched man clutching a large fish to his chest. And the less polite netsukes, that are rather rare and precious—engorged men with spreadeagled women, who have wide smiles, their heads flung back. A woman with her intricately carved tongue poked into another’s chatte. God, I wonder what Abigail thinks when she’s dusting them. My two favourite netsukes stand in the top left-hand corner. A tiny, hardwood snake, as black as ebony, coiled upon itself. I’d bought it at an auction, because Amah was born in the Chinese year of the snake, but she wouldn’t keep it, insisted it stayed in my display cabinet. Beside it is a tiger—my Chinese sign—yellowed with age, jaw snarled, front paw ready to strike.

  “Has something been stolen?” I ask Bundle, looking over the pieces of dress jewellery made from cinnabar, the brass oxen, the jade Buddha.

  My eyes snag on a long gap at the bottom of the felt overlay. I place my fingers on the empty space, stare up at Bundle.

  “What was here?” Even as I ask, I know the answer.

  A kris. A short sword, maybe a foot long, its keen blade a series of curves, with an intricate pattern engraved upon the iron and garnets peppered along its handle.

  “That fancy knife, madam,” says Bundle.

  I frown. Who among my guests would swipe the kris? Surely if a guest or servant were after something to sell, they’d choose an easier item, like silver or my jewellery.

  “How long has it been missing?”

  “I saw it there just yesterday, when I polished the cabinet.” His voice is as deep as usual, but I think I discern a hint of a tremor. “I wonder if, perhaps, it was taken from here last night?”

  Last night.

  I look in horror at Bundle.

  “You think it was used to murder McBride?” The pool of blood, glistening in the moonlight.

  Bundle nods.

  “But who…?” Who would take the kris? Who would want to kill McBride? “That means…”

  Bundle nods again. “If I am correct, it means that someone—someone in this house last night—took the knife to use on McBride.”

  I think of McBride’s head, wet, hinged backward. The damage to his throat. Amah had once told me that the kris has a wavy blade in order to sever as many blood vessels as possible. So the victi
m bleeds out quickly. The end is more certain.

  I lean upon the display cabinet, my other hand clamped across my stomach. “Where’s Amah?

  “She went out about twenty minutes ago. She did not leave word on where she was going.”

  Amah’s Uncle Chee is seated at a table in the corner of his own eating house, bent over a bowl of soup. He has the Singapore Chronicle spread before him, open at the shipping news.

  She’s come to see Miriam, to find out more of Jakub, but she takes a seat across from her uncle.

  “You want soup?” He speaks to her in their own dialect, a mix between Malay and Makassarese. “Miriam made me some sayur asam. It’s good.” He slurps from his spoon and grins. “Not as good as your mother’s, of course. But it’s impossible to find tamarind here.”

  He ladles some soup into a small rice bowl, slides it across the table to her.

  Amah stirs the sayur asam, watching the chopped tomato rise in the steaming soup, disappear again. She looks over at the customers grouped around the largest table, sipping tea, their voices low and urgent. Chinese sailors, in faded trousers, tattered shoes. Each has a long plait that ropes low to the seat of his trousers. Chee, although of the same blood, wears his hair short.

  He shrugs. “More sailors stranded here.”

  “They didn’t get paid?” asks Amah.

  “I don’t know about that. They were promised work on a voyage home, but when they got here, the company backed out. Happens all the time.”

  This time Amah notices the slumped shoulders of the young one nearest her, the flushed cheeks of the middle-aged man next to him. “Where will they go?”

  “There are two lodging houses nearby. There’s also a Chinese missionary, and the Strangers’ Home.”

  Amah thinks back to that first evening, many, many years before, when they stepped off the ship onto Toxteth wharf in Liverpool. How chill the air was, how barren the dock. Nobody was there to greet them, no venders with food, no touts offering somewhere to stay. Certainly there was no Chinese missionary or Strangers’ Home to go to. She turns back to Chee. “Not as grim as when we arrived, then.”

  He grunts in agreement, points at her bowl with his spoon and says, “Eat.”

  “Is Miriam here?” she asks, sipping her soup. “I wanted to ask her where I can find Jakub.” The soup is good. But Chee is right. It’s not as tasty as her mother’s sayur asam. A bit too much vinegar, maybe?

  Chee makes a sucking noise at the side of his mouth. His eyes harden. Amah has never seen him look more like her grandfather—his father. “Who knows where that boy is.”

  “So Miriam doesn’t know either?”

  “She’s worried about him. I hate it when he makes her worry.” Chee’s spoon clatters against the bowl. “He’s only ever thought of himself, that boy. Never others.”

  “He’s not a boy, Uncle Chee. He’s a young man.”

  “He still acts like a boy. I wonder sometimes if it would have been different if he was brought up in the old country.”

  “Makassar?”

  “No! China.”

  Amah’s mouth twists. “Uncle Chee, you’ve never been to the old country. How would you know?”

  “I just know it.” Chee’s hand curls into a fist on the tabletop. “If someone strong like my father had him in hand…”

  “He would have run away like we all did,” answers Amah, her voice dry.

  Chee meets her eye. He waves his hand, relaxes, but his mouth is still pursed in an unsatisfied line.

  “But, really, Uncle Chee, do you have any idea where I can find Jakub?” she asks.

  He frowns at her, takes another mouthful of soup. “Why do you want to find him so much?”

  Amah’s eyes drop from his. She can’t tell him the truth—neither of the reasons she wants to see him. First, that she’s a little hurt that Jakub hasn’t sought her out after so long away. Second, that she’s worried for the young man. She wants to make sure he’s not involved with these murders, that he’s not the Chinese man the others are talking about.

  But she knows she can’t get away with telling a falsehood to her uncle. This is the same man who’d caught her out when she’d smuggled the baby cuscus, with its gamey, soft fur, and its eyes as round and glossy as buttons, into her grandfather’s house, and hidden it amongst her mother’s bed cushions. Another time he’d caught her watching the little boy next door, laughing as he pissed on the smoked fish drying in the sun. Amah can still feel the flick of his hard finger to her ear, the residual warmth after the sting. She almost lifts her hand to her left ear with the memory.

  Amah’s voice is low as she says, “Uncle Chee, you know I’m always interested in what Jakub is up to.”

  He stares at her for a few moments. “That boy, he’s very suspicious, you know.” He shakes his head from side to side, makes the sucking noise again. “He should have trained to be a lawyer.” He laughs, but it’s not a happy sound.

  “What do you mean, Uncle?”

  “He found out that Miriam is not his real Ma.”

  Amah gapes at him. “But how does he know this?”

  “I am not sure.” Chee shrugs. “He asked me many questions, but I thought he was just curious about his heritage.”

  “Like what?”

  “What boat we came in on. What year it was. Then, just before he left for the East, he told Miriam he knew the truth, that she’s not his real mother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Miriam thought it best not to worry you with it. She was very upset. She loves that boy. She’s always been a good mother to him.”

  Amah hugs her arms to herself. Anxiety threads her chest tight. “Yes, she has.”

  “So, what do we do now, kodok kecil?”

  Although her chest hurts, she manages to smile sadly at Chee. “Why do you always call me ‘little frog’, Uncle?”

  He throws his head back, thinks for a moment. He smiles as he recalls the past. “I think it’s because when you were small you wouldn’t leave your mother’s skirts. You used to peep out at me like a frog under a husk.”

  Another lifetime. She’s almost forgotten that little girl.

  “So, Li Leen, what should we do about Jakub, do you think?” he asks.

  The young Chinese man at the big table hunches over and starts to cry. The man next to him clasps a hand on his shoulder, makes soothing sounds.

  Amah’s mouth twists to the side again. “Tell him the truth, I suppose.”

  As Amah trudges along the road in search of a cab, she thinks back to those first few days on the Dukano as they crossed the Java Sea. The pictures in her head are sepia, bright yet unclear.

  Besides her mistress, Mrs Preston, there were four other families making their way to Surabaya. One end of the deck was crammed with crates containing pet dogs and birds, and furniture that couldn’t fit in the hold. Three women, their pale skin gleaming in the heat, slumped to the ground, faint. After that, all the white people stayed in their cabins until the sun was low and a breeze picked up. Late at night, the servant boys slept on the floor of the saloon. Amah was never sure where the other servants slept, but Mrs Preston let her sleep in the small room where her mistress’s baggage was kept.

  The other ladies were Dutch and, in the evenings, they languished about on deck-chairs dressed in kebayas and sarongs, like their servant girls. But not Mrs Preston. She was British. She always dressed in a blouse that buttoned to her throat and a dark skirt that billowed to the ground. That is how Amah learnt to dress the way she did. Only if it was so steamy that even Amah felt trapped in her skin, would Mrs Preston unbutton the top few buttons of her blouse.

  Amah shakes her head, even smiles, when she thinks of how insolent she was when she was first in Mrs Preston’s service. If Amah had a servant that acted like she did then, she would slap the servant’s face until her cheek was as red as a dragon fruit. But Mrs Preston was kind, and sickly from a fever she’d picked up in Nieuw Guinea. And, of course, Amah had r
ecently lost her mother. She was lonely. And foolish. It didn’t take her long to soften. Mrs Preston treated her like her child, really. Or sister. Combed her hair after Amah did hers, taught her English words. Of course, now, Amah realises that Mrs Preston was probably just bored and starved of company, but by the time the Dutch families left the boat in Java and the Dukano had arrived in Sarawak, not two weeks later, Amah couldn’t be pried from her mistress’s side.

  CHAPTER 8

  Cosgrove stands in the doorway letting the cold night air in.

  “Come, Heloise,” he urges. “The others are waiting in the carriage.”

  I’ve been fretting about the kris. Amah still hasn’t returned home, and Bundle has gone to the police station for me, to report the kris’s disappearance.

  “Cosgrove, something terrible has happened,” I say to him, ushering him in so I can close the door. “Bundle found that a kris is missing from that cabinet there.” I gesture further down the hallway. “You know, one of those jewelled Malay knives? He thinks it’s only been missing since McBride was murdered.”

  I’m sure Cosgrove’s blue eyes darken as I speak. “Is he sure?” He looks from me to the cabinet.

  I nod. “Cosgrove, that means…”

  He stares at me. “Someone from this house that evening must have taken it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The police. Have you told them?”

  “Bundle is there at this moment.”

  “Good.”

  He bows his head, frowning at the floor as he thinks. “Could it have been taken by one of your servants?”

  I’ve wondered this myself, but most of my staff are of long-standing, and if Abigail wanted to steal something, surely she’d take something more easily fenced. I shake my head. “I really don’t think so.”

  “Well, I guess we can each expect a call from the police soon, making enquiries about that kris.”

  How absurd. I feel mortified, as a hostess, that something as ghastly and inopportune as a murder has happened on my premises; that it has become an annoyance to my guests.

  Cosgrove smiles at the stricken look on my face. “At least we can forget about it all tonight, though, Heloise. I overheard Hatterleigh say he was going to the Billinghams’ ball tonight, so Milly thought it would be a nice idea if you came out with us. What do you say?”