Bit by bit, I become aware of a familiar sound coming from inside Bernard’s house. The slow click-click turning of the fan. A memory-flash of Bernard rotating in slow circles. I peer through cracks in the door and shutters but can see nothing in the shuttered gloom. I pause long enough to assure myself my imagination is not playing tricks, then run back across the road to Li Fang.
* * *
The police arrive in 10 minutes. It had taken only the sound of a fan turning inside the locked house to bring the super himself. An ambulance arrives as a constable opens the front door.
Daylight floods in. I notice first the lady’s shoes, politely placed just inside the front door. The super turns off the fan. The rope slows its lazy circles. Long black hair flicks around a ghostly whiteness. As the constables slacken the noose and lift the body down, I see her face. The mouth is open; her eyes stare at me through heavy lids that wait to close forever.
* * *
The ambulance men pronounce her dead and close her eyes and mouth. Rearranged, Agnes looks quite peaceful.
Immediately under the fan, Bernard’s desk chair stands erect. I know suicides kick away the chair – and Agnes knew it too, she had read all of Bernard’s work. At any point in her death struggles, Agnes could have put her feet down on the chair and regained her life. If she had been conscious enough to do so.
I read the questions in the super’s face. Who switched on the fan? Why carry shoes through the house and leave them at a sealed front door?
Chin arrives as Agnes is lifted onto a stretcher. His face as white as his wife’s death dress.
‘She’s dead,’ the super tells him.
Chin stares at the blue, nylon rope. ‘Did she …?’
‘We’ll know the cause of death later. The medical cause, that is. The back door’s unlocked. Did your wife have a key, Doctor Chin?’
Chin seems not to hear. He follows Agnes out to the ambulance mumbling that he told her not to wear that white dress. Ra’mad has heard the ambulance siren and comes to stand beside Li Fang and say, ‘What’s up now then?’ Quite cheery, until he sees what’s up and then he looks like he might die himself.
‘Doctor Chin. Did your wife have a key to Professor Fox’s house?’
‘I don’t know. It’s possible. Anything is possible, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Doctor Chin. Anything is possible.’
* * *
K never does things by half and the life-long male chauvinist takes to the role of father-to-be with the zealotry of a convert. I visit him in hospital where I find him holding his wife’s hand and biding his son’s arrival. It frightens me.
Venus now has an imaginary dead husband in place of an imaginary comatose one and, judging by remote extra-sensory perception, is ready to throw herself on an imaginary funeral pyre. I never see her, not even on TV, where her news slot is taken by a Sikh whose waxy turban and waxier moustache seduce no eyes to rise from the beer froth to the Guild House screen. I miss her.
Toshi disappeared the night he played Peeping Tom and David misses him; he blames himself for dragging a Japanese into an English-schoolboy game. Rightly so.
My mind is plagued by replays of the dirty tape-recording trick K played on Agnes. The face of Agnes keeps appearing in my mind, pitiful and pleading, the face of an innocent child. Gone.
* * *
The rumour spreads that Internal Security is holding Bernard’s manuscript, which Chin had claimed as his own, and might be charging Chin with knowledge of things he shouldn’t know. Such rumour would lead to booming book sales had the bookshops any books to sell. Perhaps it also leads the VC, ever a cautious man, to name the head of the English Department as the new dean.
Li Fang tells me Agnes’s family comes from Ipoh, collects her things from Chin’s house and takes her body from the morgue. Chin does not go with them for the funeral.
Norsiah returns to the routine of cleaning my flat in the mornings when I’m out; I leave it to her to mention our relationship and she doesn’t, so I don’t. I presume she’s staying in Bernard’s servant’s quarters; I often see her on Guild House veranda, sitting with Li Fang.
Barnaby spends her life at the sealed front door of Bernard’s locked house. In mourning for her old master or for Agnes or both. At night, I take her food and find it untouched the next day. I sit with her in the moonlight. Barnaby’s head lays propped on the cement step like an opium smoker on a ceramic pillow, eyes set in the direction of Chin’s house.
Chin’s maid leaves one morning; I see a taxi take her away with a suitcase. Chin is now alone; his last source of comfort gone. He stoically continues his lectures, reading them out in English from notes corrected in advance by Agnes. He calls no staff meetings and spends no time in the department. Barnaby literally dogs his footsteps. Students tell me Barnaby attends all of Chin’s few lectures and stares at Chin throughout. When Chin eats lunch – alone – in Staff House, Barnaby waits in his sight. When Chin goes to the library, Barnaby waits until he comes out. Wherever Chin goes on campus, Barnaby is there. Increasingly, Chin stays home as if under house arrest.
One evening, I see him walking to and fro in front of his gate, the little patch of mourning cloth pinned to a sleeve, a cat in his arms, alone and friendless. He must be suffering; he must be depressed. I find it increasingly difficult to focus loathing on the man. I am beginning to soften but Barnaby keeps her hate alive. She directs deep growls at Chin but she does not attack. She has a plan, of that I’m sure.
34
Suicide Dressed as Murder
BARNABY’S PREY IS isolated and vulnerable. She forays into Chin’s garden; she circles Chin’s house to scratch at the doors at night. Finally, she camps out on Chin’s front doorstep. I do nothing to discourage her. With Barnaby, no point.
Li Fang tells me Chin tries to brain Barnaby with a golf club whenever he can. Barnaby always retreats, tail between legs, offering no fight. Li Fang explains that Barnaby acts out the thoughts of Chairman Mao, wearing down her enemy before the kill. It seems to me that Barnaby enjoys the blessing of Li Fang in her protracted war.
A golf-club length from Chin, Barnaby is always there, an unwanted appendage stuck like glue. A few times she misjudges, or as Li Fang and Chairman Mao would have it, tests the enemy. Even when clipped by a club or shoe, Barnaby does not retaliate. Li Fang explains: to be attacked by the enemy is a good thing. Barnaby is noting Chin’s weaknesses while avoiding engagement. When she runs away whimpering, it’s only to fool the enemy. Each time the dog-catchers come, Barnaby retreats to my flat or Li Fang’s bedroom; eventually, I guess, the dog-catchers stop answering Chin’s calls.
Meanwhile, life goes on. Li Fang quietly courts Norsiah. K receives an assurance from the VC that his contract will be extended after all. David and Venus, for different reasons, do not set foot on campus.
Chin’s only ‘crime’ is being the son of Bernard’s wartime enemy, and Bernard himself, it seems, removed Chin’s father before I was born; of course, Chin stole Bernard’s book, but you don’t execute a man for stealing a book. With the suicide of Agnes – perhaps as much my and K’s fault as Chin’s – I lose any thirst for revenge. After all, I tell myself, Bernard’s book will eventually be published with his name on it and if it’s not exactly as he wrote it, can I really blame Chin for the changes? And Bernard’s death, as explained by Agnes, was most likely accidental; sure, an accident that took Bernard’s life but being disgraced as a plagiarist and losing a wife is surely punishment enough for unintended manslaughter? I, a man called ‘hero’ by the most beautiful woman in the world, should somewhere find the power of forgiveness. Explaining all this to Barnaby is beyond me. It should be possible with Li Fang, but I’m not sure it would change his point of view; although I’m not sure what his point of view is, and I don’t try to find out. I do nothing … as usual.
Pleading grief at his wife’s suicide, Chin reports in sick. He is given special leave and his duties are reallocated within the department. I see the
food delivery van regularly outside Chin’s. He never leaves home. His BMW sits in the drive; he goes nowhere in it. Nobody calls on him except Barnaby.
* * *
Four weeks after the death of Agnes, Superintendent Wong pays me a morning visit. He brings with him a technician to take away the snooping system. He tells me he listened to the recording of Agnes’s last night and asks me point blank if I think she, Chin or both of them were responsible for the death of Bernard; he doesn’t mention Li Fang.
‘If anybody, it must have been Chin,’ I answer. ‘He lied about the typewriter. Chin never gave Bernard the typewriter. I know because I gave it to him myself over a year ago. It never left Bernard’s house; Norsiah can vouch for that. Chin drugged Bernard and stole the manuscript – just like Agnes said.’
‘You think Chin killed the professor?’
‘No, not killed. But maybe he hanged him. Bernard was already dead.’
‘Why hang a dead man?’
‘Agnes thinks … thought … it was to lay the blame on her. Chin suggested to you in Bernard’s garden that Agnes was behaving strangely, perhaps insanely.’
‘Agnes hanged herself and her suicide supports Chin’s view of her mental state.’
‘Maybe, but I believe Agnes – the first version as told to me in K’s garden. Chin’s not guilty of premeditated murder, but he is guilty of hanging Bernard’s body in a noose.’
‘Then you might need to hope he meets justice through karmic intervention. To put it bluntly, there’s no evidence to persuade the Prosecutor that a charge of involuntary manslaughter would stick – I’ve tried. The case remains open but now that Agnes is gone and her testimony with her, it would be your word against Chin’s regarding who gave the typewriter – and that’s important to finding a motive; if Chin wrote the book, as he says, he had no motive to steal it and thereby no motive for murder or manslaughter. Even if Norsiah testifies you gave it to Fox, it’s not enough for a murder trial.’ Maybe so, but I doubt Barnaby will give up her fight as long as Chin is just down the road.
‘I want you to know that after I leave here, I’ll be turning both investigations, that of Professor Fox and that of Agnes, over to Inspector Ong; the campus area is within his jurisdiction. He might want to talk to you – knowing him, he will – although we have statements from you already. I listened to what was said in your bed and it’s obvious you dislike Chin. I suggest you backpedal on this dislike if questioned. Otherwise it might look like you have a vendetta against Chin’.
He asks me about Agnes’s mood on the night before her death and I tell him she displayed mood swings between violence and childish tenderness. And that the account she gave in my bed is quite different from the account she gave an hour earlier in K’s garden. ‘I wasn’t trying to bed Agnes to get at her husband. I was truly reluctant to sleep with her because of Venus and in the end I’m very glad I didn’t, otherwise I would blame myself more than I do for her suicide.’
‘In that regard, I would say Woolf, if anybody, carries some responsibility for her death. That stupid recording game and all those secret meetings in your back room.’
‘K didn’t kill Agnes but I feel that he contributed, as I must have done, to her death; perhaps, as they say, driving her to suicide.’
‘I’m not a psychologist,’ Wong replies in a measured neutral tone which sounds like every psychologist I’ve ever heard in academic seminars. ‘I do, however, detect a marked air of communal guilt. Almost everybody I speak to seems to feel guilty about the death of Agnes. I doubt anybody was really fond of her, except perhaps Professor Fox … and maybe you in your own way. A few people state they thought her a whore. Perhaps that’s why they feel guilty. And perhaps you are all guilty. But the police can’t arrest the whole of society for the way it thinks.’
‘You’re sure it was suicide, Superintendent?’
‘Can’t be 100% sure of anything, but perhaps that’s how Agnes wanted it – leaving behind the same mystery that surrounds the death of Bernard Fox. I spent a long time thinking about those shoes and why they were inside the sealed front door and not the back. If she was confused enough to give you two different versions of events in the professor’s house and disturbed enough to kill herself, we should perhaps not expect shoes to be in their logical place. On the other hand, if someone had lifted her body to hang in a noose and the shoes fell off, that someone might have placed them by the front door – a mistake like the upright chair, perhaps a little too obvious to be a clue left by a murderer.’
‘So, are you saying Agnes killed herself and left indications to suggest murder? If that’s so, how did she manage to turn on the fan after hanging herself?’
‘As I see the progression of events to support a conclusion of suicide: Agnes unlocked the professor’s back door, then turned back towards her home and, presumably to implicate her husband, dropped the key on the path near Chin’s house – my men found it there – before returning to Fox’s. Inside, she mixed all the sedative given to her by Ra’mad in a glass of water and drank the lot, then washed out the glass. She used her husband’s tow rope – not the one used to hang the professor as Chin had replaced his tow rope with a similar blue nylon one – to rig up a noose. It was amateurishly made – which suggests the second noose was made in a hurry. She tied the rope to the capstan, switched the fan on slow, climbed onto the professor’s chair and placed the large noose over her head without pulling it tight. The noose swiveled around her neck. She stood there with the rope turning itself around her neck until the drug took affect and her legs buckled. The fan’s movement carried her in an arc around the standing chair without knocking it over.’
‘But what if Chin drugged his wife and strung her up, couldn’t he also have left those clues?’
‘He could,’ says the super, ‘had he not been with the vice-chancellor at the time pleading for his job.’
‘And that thing about the noose swiveling around the neck until Agnes passed out, are you thinking that could also apply to the death of Bernard? Are we back with the possibility of suicide?’
‘We are. The noose that held his body was much better made. It could easily have been made by the professor – I’m sure somewhere in the university library you’ll find a description of a hangman’s noose. The rope was taken from Chin’s car in both cases, but Agnes as well as Chin had keys to that car. That it was Chin’s rope suggests that Agnes got it for Fox and that Fox wanted to leave a big question mark over his departure, implicating Chin as killer. But in that case, because the better-made noose would not easily swivel around the neck – we tested it on Madhu – we can be fairly sure somebody other than Bernard Fox turned on the fan.’
‘Same old question. Why would anybody turn on the fan?’
* * *
I am still sitting in my living room lost in a mind-replay of Bernard’s death night, my waiting for Venus night, when, about an hour after the super has gone, another police car pulls up at my window and out step Madhu and two constables, all three in uniform. I go to meet them as they come in the front door looking very official. Madhu can’t hide his embarrassment: he has been sent to pick me up.
Madhu leads me out and sits me in the back of the car. ‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ is all he says. There is 10 minutes of silence before the two constables join us. One is carrying in a clear plastic bag the little-red-heart knickers. Why had I kept them for four weeks? Just what sort of pervert am I?
35
Porridge
‘IF PROFESSOR FOX killed himself, you told Madhu, he would have done things differently, with an overdose of sleeping pills or something.’
It’s Inspector Ong firing statements at me. An acerbic edge to his voice so very different to the super’s matey tone. We are facing each other across a table like chess opponents and I presume everything is being recorded. I’m here voluntarily they say, although I’d much rather not be here.
Ong is clearly annoyed at something – he’s not trying to get my cooperation. He alread
y has everything in a hundred files but seems ready to spend eternity going back over everything that led nowhere other than to the two of us sitting in a windowless room at Police Headquarters.
‘I was simply making the point that Bernard hated violence and would not have hanged himself even if he had decided to end his life.’
‘It’s obvious he did not hang himself without your help. You helped him hang himself, using the noose he had made ready from Chin’s tow rope. Fox wanted to die and at the same time wanted his death to serve a purpose – that purpose being to point a finger at his enemy, Chin. You did as Fox asked you. Whether or not you knew the purpose of the hanging is what will determine the judge’s sentence. Come clean now and you get off with assisted suicide; deny everything and you’ll face serious charges of manslaughter and defilement of a corpse.’
I realise why the super warned me to be careful. I’m not handcuffed. I can leave whenever I want, they tell me. But if I do, they also tell me, I might be detained. I guess they haven’t decided what to charge me with yet. Successful suicide is not a crime in Singapore but Madhu told me abetting suicide can be punishable by up to ten years in prison; maybe that’s what Ong is angling for. Or maybe he’s going to charge me with turning on a fan. Ong, I feel, definitely wants to charge me with something; I’m not just here for a cup of tea.
‘So, if I get things right,’ I say, ‘you are now working on a possibility that Bernard, for whatever reason, killed himself and deliberately left behind clues pointing to Chin as his murderer: suicide dressed as murder. Then Agnes kills herself in a copycat suicide and also leaves behind clues pointing to Chin, another suicide posing as murder. If you don’t mind me saying so, Inspector, if the two deaths are so similar and all clues point to Chin, isn’t the logical conclusion that Chin is the killer of both Bernard and Agnes? Rather than two suicides pretending to be murder, we have two murders dressed as suicides.’
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