by A. M. Stuart
Weary of the interrogation, Harriet snapped, “I have no idea. He didn’t appear to be carrying anything that I could see.”
“What time was that?”
“Six. I checked my watch because I had to be home by six thirty for supper. I took Visscher’s arrival as my excuse to leave.”
“How did you get home?”
“The servant, Nyan, took me. Sir Oswald had a barouche and pair.”
Suddenly desperately tired, she turned away, trying to ignore the growing thud of a headache behind her eyes that had been threatening all day. She thought of Aziz and his apprehension on the drive to the plantation house, to the place he had called Bukit Hantu.
“Inspector Curran, how good is your Malay?”
“Fairly good.”
“What does Bukit Hantu mean?”
“‘Haunted Hill,’” Curran replied without hesitation.
A shiver ran down her spine. Perhaps she should have heeded Aziz’s warning.
Curran continued, “The locals have a large regiment of evil spirits called hantu. I suspect they will have added another hantu daguk to those already roaming around Sir Oswald’s home.”
“What’s a hantu daguk?”
“The ghost of a murdered man, Mrs. Gordon. It appears as a mist or a cloud to lure other men to their death.”
Despite the heat, Harriet shivered. “Poor Aziz. No wonder he was terrified, but it did have a bad atmosphere, don’t you think?”
Curran shrugged. “I am not superstitious, Mrs. Gordon.”
The motor vehicle turned onto River Valley Road and as the two-storied bulk of the school came into view, a wave of relief washed over Harriet. No hantu would dare come near St. Tom’s and she longed to see her brother and share the horror of the day.
“It’s an impressive building,” Curran remarked.
“It is an old plantation house that has been converted into a school. Our house is around this corner in St. Thomas Walk.”
With a shaking hand, she tucked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear as Constable Tan turned the motor vehicle into the walk.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I feel a little light-headed.”
“Mrs. Gordon, you have gone quite pale,” she heard Curran say from a long way away.
“The heat,” she murmured. “Just need . . .” She trailed off, wondering if she was about to disgrace herself by fainting or, even worse, being violently sick into the policeman’s lap. She took deep breaths of the thick air and thought, for the first time, nostalgically of her parents’ respectable home in faraway Wimbledon.
Tan hauled on the brake and jumped from the vehicle, running up to the house.
“How long have you been in Singapore, Mrs. Gordon?”
The world swam before Harriet’s eyes and she covered them with a hand, fighting the waves of nausea. “Three months,” she said faintly, “but I lived in India for nearly ten years . . . You would think . . .”
“It takes time to acclimatize,” Curran said. “You’ve had a bad shock today and the heat has probably got to you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I told you I am not one of those women who succumb to the vapors.”
A smile twitched the corners of his lips. “Of course,” he said. “Pardon my impertinence. I blame myself for detaining you so long without food and water. Tan has gone up to the house for help.”
“Harriet! My goodness, what’s happened?”
At the sound of Julian’s voice, she pushed her hair into some semblance of order and managed a watery smile for her brother.
“Just the heat,” she said. “I’m fine, Julian.”
Constable Tan opened the door and Curran slid from the seat, his feet crunching on the gravel.
“I am afraid your sister has had a bad shock today, Reverend,” he said, holding out his hand for Harriet.
She took it gratefully and stepped out of the vehicle with as much dignity as she could muster, but her legs seemed to have turned to rubber and only Curran’s hand on her elbow stopped her from sinking to the gravel. She thought for one awful moment he would sweep her into his arms and carry her into the house, a mortification she could never have borne, but instead he stood back, allowing Julian to put his arm around her waist and assist her up the stairs into the comparative cool of St. Tom’s House, as it was affectionately nicknamed.
Curran followed, stopping in the doorway as Julian allowed Harriet to sink gratefully onto the daybed. Curran stood there, circling his hat in his hand.
“We will need to take a proper statement from you, Mrs. Gordon.”
“Not now, surely?” Julian snapped.
Curran shook his head. “Tomorrow will be fine. Good evening to you both.”
Harriet lay back on the daybed and closed her eyes. She heard Curran’s boots on the verandah, the motor vehicle door slam, the engine fire up and the growl of the engine. The police were out of her life.
Another wave of nausea passed over her and from a long way away Julian issued orders to their amah, Huo Jin, that involved fetching a basin, cold compress and tea.
The basin arrived just in time, not that Harriet had anything substantial to throw up but it made her feel a little better, and she lay back on the cushions while her brother knelt beside her on the floor, bathing her wrists and temples with cool water.
“Stop fussing, Ju,” Harriet grumbled, and seized the compress from him, laying it across her brow. “It’s just this stupid heat.”
“No, it’s not. Aziz had some garbled story about dead bodies and evil spirits.”
“Sir Oswald has been murdered, Julian. I found him.”
She heard her brother’s sharp intake of breath.
“Then, of course, I had to wait for the police and they wouldn’t let me take my typewriter. Oh, hang it . . .” She burst into tears.
“I have tea for mem,” Huo Jin said, and Julian helped Harriet to sit up. She took a mouthful of Huo Jin’s brew of black tea, which was so strong, Julian swore it dissolved teaspoons. Right now the tea tasted like the finest wine.
“The policeman, Curran. Have you met him before, Harri?” Julian asked.
She shook her head.
“He’s one of the best cricketers in the Singapore Cricket Club. He’s the one who knocked eighteen off me in two overs at the game two weeks ago.”
Harriet tried to recall the game but they all merged into a blur of idiots in white flannels trying to pretend they were on gentle English village greens and not the hard buffalo grass, baked clay and blistering heat of the tropics. She glanced at her brother, whose mouth had curved into a blissful smile as it always did when considering one of his favorite topics, cricket.
“Really, Ju, a man is dead and you are thinking about cricket?”
The smile vanished. “Of course. Sorry, old thing. Do you want some more tea?”
“Forget the tea.” Harriet lay back with the cold compress pressed to her throbbing temples. “I want a brandy and make it a strong one.”
FOUR
Leaving his principal witness in the care of her brother and servants, Curran returned to Mandalay, just as a tropical thunderstorm broke. He leaned against the rail of the verandah that surrounded three sides of Sir Oswald Newbold’s house and watched several damp constables searching the garden for the murder weapon. He doubted they would find anything useful and the heavy rainstorm would quickly obliterate all trace of any evidence.
Looking out into the unnaturally silent, gloomy evening made darker and more ominous by the twisted rubber trees and heavy vines, he thought of the hantu daguk that would now haunt this place. He had worked too long in the East not to have developed a respect, if not an understanding, for the beliefs of the people who worked with him. There had already been mutterings among the Malay constabulary and he knew better than to try to detain them here after dark.
His thoughts strayed to Harriet Gordon. He suspected it took a great deal to discompose Mrs. Gordon, but the stressful day, coupled with the shock, would probably have felled a stronger man.
“Sir, sir!” A young constable ran up to the verandah.
“Found something?”
“I think you should see.”
Curran pulled his collar up in a pointless gesture against the rain and followed the young man down the driveway. Halfway between the house and the road, the boy pointed to a set of tracks, rapidly dissolving in the rain, running alongside the drive itself.
Curran squatted down to inspect them. A vehicle had sunk into soft mud, deep enough for the tracks not to have been washed away by the rain earlier in the day. Unfortunately, any detail had been lost.
“A motor vehicle?” Curran speculated aloud.
“How do you know, sir?”
Curran swept a hand around the surrounding area. “No evidence of horses.” Bless the beasts, their presence was hard to disguise. He stood, looking up and down the rutted, muddy driveway. “Why halfway? Why not come all the way up to the house?”
The constable stared at him. “A surprise, sir?” he suggested.
“I think you’re right. A surprise and not a pleasant one.”
Curran did a quick circumnavigation of the house. Doors opened from the bedrooms onto the wide encircling verandah but Singh had assured him that these were all locked when he had arrived at the house. Only the study doors had been open to the outside but the pintu pagar, the half doors that allowed ventilation, had been secured. The back and the front doors offered the only viable access to the house and neither bore any sign of forced entry. Anyone could have entered the house from either end. It bore out his suspicion that Newbold’s murderer had been invited in.
Pausing at the back door to shake off as much water as he could, he went in search of Greaves, who had been occupied in the study for most of the afternoon.
He paused at the doorway, allowing his senses to adjust. Newbold’s body may have been removed but a sour, lingering miasma left by the decaying blood and other body excretions that had soaked into the carpet still hung over the room.
“Find anything useful?”
Greaves looked up from his painstaking work of fingerprinting every surface of the study and, seeing Curran, straightened, wiping his face on his sleeve. Beneath the perspiration, the young man had a worrying, pasty complexion. It had been a long, stressful day and Greaves had been in Singapore only a month. As Curran had told Mrs. Gordon, it took time to become accustomed to the energy-sapping humidity.
“Not much, sir. I took the prints off Newbold and his servant before they were taken away and I’m guessing that most of the prints in this room are theirs.”
“What about Mrs. Gordon?”
Greaves looked shocked. “She’s surely not a suspect, sir?”
“Maybe not but no doubt her prints are in this room and we need to eliminate those from any others. We’ll ask her next time we see her.”
Curran peered at the bloody marks marring the chipped white paint of the door. It looked to Curran as if the murderer had grabbed the edge of the door and wrenched it open, no doubt in pursuit of the servant.
“What about these marks on the door?”
“Too smeared to be of any use, sir.”
Curran stooped to pick up one of the framed maps that lay shattered on the floor, the paper lining on its back ripped apart. He set the fine, hand-tinted map of Burma against the wall and picked up a second map in a smashed frame. This was a smaller-scale survey map labeled MOGOK DISTRICT. A river ran through a valley flanked by steep mountains, the largest of which bore the name MT. NEWBOLD in large block letters. The mountain was inscribed with a height of 12,463 feet. A sizable mountain.
Peering at the fine detail he located the MT. NEWBOLD MINING ENTERPRISE (BURMESE RUBY SYNDICATE), indicated by several small black dots, tucked into the side of Mt. Newbold along a narrow valley branching off from the main river valley.
He traced the waving line of the river with his forefinger. “The Irrawaddy,” he said aloud, allowing the consonants to roll off his tongue.
“Sir?”
Curran turned to look at the young constable. “I have always thought the name of the Irrawaddy River had a certain romance to it.”
Greaves stared back at him. Romance and Constable Greaves were clearly not well acquainted.
“Take a break and go and find something to drink, Constable. I don’t want you passing out with heat exhaustion.”
Greaves nodded and set his brush and powder down. “Don’t mind if I do, sir.”
“In fact, pack it in, Greaves. The light’s going.”
Alone in the room, he stepped over the dark stain in the rug and picked up the fallen Buddha. Despite the dusting of fingerprint powder and the bloody smears it was a beautiful piece. Carved from stone, and of some antiquity, it sat on a waisted plinth carved with lotus buds. One hand rested across the folded knees while the fingers of the other hand balanced on the edge of the plinth. The head had been carved with snaillike curls and the Buddha gazed down serenely at the hand in his lap. From the beauty of its proportions and the artful simplicity of the carving this would be a piece Curran would have been proud to own.
Curran resisted the urge to wipe the blood off it. It seemed sacrilegious that such a sacred and benign deity should be defiled with the evidence of such violence, but it needed to be properly photographed and that could be done tomorrow at South Bridge Road. He carried the statue over to the circular table and set it down beside the typewriter to be taken to Police Headquarters. The little statue surveyed the room from beneath lowered eyelids, its benign smile unaltered by the violence it had witnessed.
He turned his attention to the desk and safe. A copy of the Straits Times dated Friday, 4 March, lay folded on the blotter and Curran picked it up, drawn by an advertisement circled in blue pencil on the front page.
Shorthand and Typewriting. An Englishwoman undertakes casual work as a stenographer and typist. From Monday to Friday after 5:30 P.M. daily. On Saturday after 2 P.M. She guarantees rapid and careful work together with ABSOLUTE SECRECY. Address Mrs. Gordon, Tanglin Post Office 35.
The careful wording and the intentional capitalization of ABSOLUTE SECRECY amused him. Mrs. Gordon was proving to be an intriguing woman.
He sat in the sizable leather chair and began a methodical search, setting aside documents to go back to South Bridge Road as he went through them. Most of the papers appeared to be routine correspondence between Newbold, his bank and a publisher in London. In a leather folio, he found the land deeds for the plantation dated 1908. He wondered if that had been the year Newbold came to Singapore.
Aside from a number of share certificates in the Burmese Ruby Syndicate and a letter of appreciation from the board to Newbold dated 1906, acknowledging, with grateful thanks, his years of service, he found nothing else to mark Newbold’s time in Burma. Nothing at all.
The sound of raised voices disturbed his reverie and he found a sodden Constable Tan in hot argument with an equally damp Englishman.
“Ah, Curran, tell your constable here who I am,” the man appealed to Curran, the soft lilt of a Welsh accent unmistakable.
“A gentleman of the press has arrived,” Curran said drily. “It’s all right, Tan. I know Mr. Maddocks. Tell the men to finish up and organize a guard to be left on the house tonight.”
Tan frowned. “The Malay will not stay here,” he said. “They say it is haunted.”
In a flash of exasperation, Curran snapped, “I know that. I don’t care who stays here but we need a watch kept and any man who disobeys will be dealt with, understood?”
Tan’s mouth tightened and he gave a quick salute.
Maddocks removed his pith helmet and mopped his perspiring face with a limp handkerchief. It might ha
ve been raining but the rain did nothing but thicken the air with an even damper humidity.
“How long does it take to get used to this accursed climate, Curran?”
Curran faced the journalist at the “stand easy” position, his hands clasped behind his back and his feet firmly planted on the verandah, obstructing any view inside the house.
“What are you doing here, Maddocks?”
The journalist shook himself and straightened, his eyes gleaming with what Curran took to be journalistic fervor. “There’s been a murder, Inspector. I am here for the story.”
Maddocks stepped to one side, craning his head around Curran in an attempt to get a view of the crime scene. Curran took the man by the arm and steered him along the verandah as far away from the study windows as the building allowed.
“The best you’ll get from me is a statement, Maddocks,” he said.
Maddocks heaved a theatrical sigh and leaned against the verandah rail.
“Very well, a statement,” he said, flicking through the pages of a dog-eared notebook. “With any luck, I’ll get this through to the Times in London before six. Violent murder of famed explorer . . .” he said as he began to write.
Curran tilted his head and peered at the squiggles and dots that covered the pages of the journalist’s notebook.
“Is that shorthand?” he inquired.
Maddocks flicked back a few pages. “Yes, why do you ask?”
“Is it hard to learn?”
Maddocks shrugged. “It can be. Damn useful in my business though and worth the effort. Now, Inspector, your statement for the anxious readers.”
Maddocks stood with pencil poised and Curran began. “On the evening of Sunday, sixth March, Sir Oswald Newbold and his servant were attacked and killed in his home on Bukit Timah Road, by person or persons unknown. Investigations are being undertaken by the Detective Branch of the Straits Settlements Police.”
He turned to walk away. Maddocks looked up. “Wait . . . that’s it?”
Curran turned back. “I’ve nothing else to say.”
“Start with how he was killed?”