A Spoonful of Murder

by Robin Stevens

  Her breath caught artfully, and she gazed up at the detective, chest heaving. ‘It was awful,’ she said.

  ‘Hm,’ said Detective Leung. ‘Is that correct?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. It was correct – except it missed out the pin. I knew I must avoid saying it was the one I’d lost. If I did, the detective might begin to suspect me. ‘And it wasn’t just a kidnapping. Su Li was murdered.’

  ‘I am well aware of that,’ said Detective Leung. ‘To solve one crime is to solve the other, and both are crucial. That is why, if you remember anything else, you must tell me. A life depends on it.’

  He seemed to be looking under my skin, in just the same uncomfortable way as Inspector Priestley does in England. But I did not respond, and finally Detective Leung bowed to us and made his way through the hall towards the stairs at the back of the house.

  I leaned disconsolately against one of the large pots in the hall, and the sweet, light scent of orange blossom drifted down around me.

  ‘Hazel,’ said Daisy, leaning beside me, so that our faces were both in shadow. ‘I can see you worrying. You think that Leung will talk to the servants, find out that the pin is yours and arrest you for Teddy’s kidnapping and Su Li’s murder before we can detect it properly, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I said unconvincingly.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Hazel,’ said Daisy. ‘Keep your chin up and be the Hazel I know you are. I know it’s frightening, and terribly close to home, but you do need to buck up. No excuses. You can’t simply despair. Why – if I’d despaired at Fallingford, we might never have solved the case!’

  This is, as usual with Daisy, not quite the truth. I have never seen her so close to breaking as she was after Mr Curtis died, as the horror of the solution to his murder crept closer. I remembered that, and shivered.

  ‘There’s still plenty we can do to help you. I know we’re in a foreign country – I mean, foreign to me – but the same detective rules apply. The sooner we solve the case, the sooner we can prove that you had nothing to do with it. Don’t give up! Detective Leung is on the case, but so are we. We can get to the bottom of it before he does, and prove that you had nothing to do with the kidnapping, I know we can. And this means – I hate to say it, Hazel – that I need you to take the lead on this occasion. Which is not to say that you are allowed to become Detective Society President, even for a moment. It simply means that I am delegating the responsibility to you temporarily. You know this house, and you know the people in it. You know where we ought to go.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. In past cases I have become better at thinking for myself – often to Daisy’s annoyance. But I had never before heard her ask me to do so. For a moment I was bewildered. But then I realized that, even though I had not been back for two years, even though it had changed now that my grandfather was gone, I knew our Big House, and I knew its people. And if I needed to lead, I could.

  1

  It was quite easy to follow Detective Leung. The Big House seemed full of his presence and his light but firm footsteps. We ducked into the shadows to avoid him, hiding round corners whenever he got too close and listening at doors as he spoke to the maids.

  He was calm, he was cool – and he was as sharp as a knife. He left everyone he spoke to gasping, secrets pulled effortlessly out of their mouths. He was trying to discover whether Su Li had been part of the plot to kidnap Teddy, and whether anyone else in the house had helped. The pin, to him, was simply evidence that the Triads were involved – but this was only because he was unaware that I owned a rooster pin which was now missing. Every time it came up, I struggled to breathe. He only needed one person to give him the lead …

  May’s maid, Ah Kwan, her arms full of abandoned toys, said that Su Li would never have hurt Teddy – but all the same, she did not make Su Li sound particularly nice. ‘She was too proud of him,’ said Ah Kwan. ‘And too proud for the rest of us, once she was given care of him! We all wanted the job, but Mr Wong gave it to her. Boyfriends? We are not allowed – but Su Li was carrying on with a boy, Wu Shing. She ended things with him last year. So snooty of her! Wu Shing was the lift operator? Goodness me! So he got his revenge. And a pin? Isn’t that the sign of Sai Yat’s Triad gang? Poor little Teddy, caught up in this!’

  Rose’s maid, Pik An, who was tidying the empty music room, agreed with Ah Kwan about Su Li’s boyfriend – ‘She told everyone that he was awful to her. She never could keep her mouth shut!’ – but said she didn’t know anything about the pin.

  ‘I have heard that you are Triad,’ said Detective Leung steadily, and Pik An cried out indignantly.

  ‘Me?’ she said. ‘It’s not the maids in this house who are Triad—’ And then she stopped, and went quiet.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Detective Leung, satisfied. I heard his footsteps approaching the door then, and Daisy and I had to duck behind the big screen before he came out into the hall.

  Something suddenly popped into my head. I had been thinking about Su Li and remembering her in the Big House – and I suddenly knew exactly where we had to go. I beckoned to Daisy, and we crept up the stairs. I could tell that Daisy did not enjoy being the follower. She kept up a soft, annoyed murmur: ‘Hazel, where are we going? Hazel, really, say something!’

  But I did not.

  I led Daisy all the way to the second floor above the kitchens, where the maids and mui tsai live in small, hot little wooden rooms. ‘Ohh!’ said Daisy behind me. ‘Clever Hazel!’

  It took me a moment to find Su Li’s room. It was not her old one. But then I pushed open the door to the room next to my mother’s maid Assai’s and saw Su Li’s little enamel bird ornament on the bedside table. ‘This one!’ I whispered to Daisy, and motioned her inside.

  Su Li’s bed was neatly made, and her bedside table was bare apart from the bird. Her little wardrobe, when I opened it, contained her maid’s jackets hanging up like so many pale ghosts. I shuddered. There was a box at the bottom of the wardrobe, a rather cheap cardboard one, brightly painted in red. I remembered sitting on Su Li’s bed, my legs swinging, watching her carefully tuck her treasures into it. The most important ones had always been at the very bottom.

  I sifted carefully through the box, past dried flowers and pretty bits of paper and ripped-out pages from my mother’s old magazines. There, beneath them, were two small, worn photographs. One was of a handsome young man with a twinkle in his eye. I had only seen him once before, but I remembered his face.

  ‘Look!’ I whispered to Daisy. ‘Ah Kwan said so: Su Li’s boyfriend Wu Shing was the lift operator. Oh, Daisy, she did know him. And he killed her. This is horrible! Do you think he did it because she ended things with him?’

  ‘A broken heart should not be a reason to kill another person,’ said Daisy decisively. ‘If that was his motive, then he was truly wicked.’

  I agreed, shuddering. We’ve had suspects in previous cases who were jilted lovers, and I have always thought how terribly wrong it is to decide that someone deserves to die, simply because they have stopped loving you.

  ‘So – what if this really is just about Su Li?’ asked Daisy, wrinkling up her forehead. ‘Oh, what an odd case!’

  I turned to the other photograph. It was of a boy a few years younger than us, turning towards the camera with a half-smile on his thin face. He looked bold and mocking.

  ‘So, we know who Wu Shing is, but who’s that?’ asked Daisy curiously.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I said. I was feeling strangely sad. Su Li’s life had more to it than I had ever known. She’d had a boyfriend, and she had not told me. I suddenly wondered about her family. I had never met them. I really hadn’t known her at all.

  But then my fingers felt something else beneath the pictures – a soft bit of cloth tied around something scratchy. I teased it out and saw that it was a little orange silk ribbon tied in a bow around a wisp of dark hair, and under that was a folded letter.

  ‘Oh!’ said Daisy. ‘A love token?’

 
; ‘No,’ I whispered, suddenly short of breath as I unfolded it. ‘It’s not that at all. Daisy – this is my baby hair. And this letter – it’s from me. It’s one of the ones I sent to the Big House when I first arrived at Deepdean. She – she took it and kept it.’

  I felt my hands shaking. I had been teaching myself over the last few weeks a new truth: that Su Li had not really cared about me. That she had rushed to replace me with Teddy, and had only pretended to be kind to me on the day of her death. But, if that was so, why had she kept my hair in the place reserved for her treasures? Why had she kept my letter? I had thought that she had replaced me with Teddy. But what if I had got it all wrong? She had not asked to be given care of Teddy, after all. We kept on hearing people say that it was my father’s decision. Ah Kwan had said that Su Li was proud – but why should I believe her? Why had I not seen that the other maids and mui tsai might be as jealous as I was, for different reasons? I remembered the way Su Li had ignored me. What if she had been forcing herself to?

  My face burned and I shoved the hair in its ribbon into the pocket of my trousers.

  ‘Daisy,’ I said, my voice trembling. ‘I think we’ve been wrong about Su Li. She hadn’t become cruel, or proud, or any of those things while I was away. She was just the same as ever. She was forced to become Teddy’s maid, and so all the other maids became envious of her, and when I came home she had to ignore me. I got it wrong, Daisy. I … didn’t pay attention to what was really going on. She tried to tell me, but I ignored her. And now she’s dead, and I can’t say sorry!’

  ‘Oh, Hazel!’ For once Daisy was lost for words. I scrubbed at my eyes with my handkerchief, and she patted my arm. ‘But – well – that’s useful to us, isn’t it? It’s becoming clear that Su Li wasn’t part of this plot. She was the victim. We know why Wu Shing would want to kill her, and now we understand why she hesitated before getting into the lift with him.’

  I swallowed. ‘But …’ I said, ‘we didn’t understand. We should have helped, Daisy. I should have helped!’

  The thought was so horrid that I suddenly could not bear it. I wanted to go somewhere that felt safe and good, after everything I had just heard. And there was only one place that would do.

  2

  The kitchens are attached to the back of the Big House by a thin, quiet passageway on the ground floor, like the pinch of an egg timer. As we hurried along, I could see the bamboo grove through a window to our left, and the red pavilion, and the garden where flowers are grown for cutting. Then we emerged into the wild heat of the kitchens themselves.

  I thought back to the kitchens at Fallingford, cold and empty, with only Mrs Doherty’s small, bustling form and Hetty’s red hair to give them life, and I couldn’t imagine a greater contrast. Our Big House kitchens were full, of white-coated cooks and waiters and pot-boys, of steam and smells and the gleam of knives as they rose and fell, dicing vegetables and paring meat off bones.

  There was a plate of cakes near the entrance – left there for the children, just as they had been before I had gone away to England. I smiled when I saw that this, at least, had not changed.

  I picked up one. It was fat and golden on my palm, egg-shaped and flaking gently. I took a bite of it and my mouth was bursting with sweet-tasting lotus paste, a fleck of salty preserved egg inside.

  ‘Hazel,’ said Daisy, peering inside her cake, ‘I think something’s gone off in mine. It’s … black.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just the thousand-year egg,’ I told her. ‘It’s supposed to be that way.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s … terribly strong. Hmm.’

  She gave her cake to me, and I ate it. Then she took a step back and stood slightly behind me, staring at the bustle in the kitchens with a most un-Daisy-like hesitation.

  ‘Miss Wong! Hello!’ shouted Ng the cook, rushing up to us. His face, as always, was gleaming with sweat, and he never stopped moving. He was tall and thin and his face was shaped just like an upturned triangle. In his chef’s cap and whites, his pigtail tucked away, he looked quite hairless, for his eyebrows were so fine and thin that they could barely be seen. He spoke in a quick rattle of words that were as energetic as he was.

  ‘Miss Wong! What are you doing here? Does your father know? Should you be here after what happened earlier? Poor Master Teddy – and poor Su Li, even if she was full of herself. She didn’t deserve to die. So your tall English friend didn’t like the cake, did she? Hah!’

  Daisy was looking quite alarmed. I have been seeing this expression on her face more and more, every time I speak Cantonese. It gives me a funny feeling, as though I have got bigger – or Daisy has been diminished.

  ‘I miss your cakes, Ng,’ I said. I felt wobbly with sadness. ‘I missed you while I was gone.’

  ‘What a bad time to be home,’ said Ng. ‘You came for your grandfather, which is sad enough, and now this, eh? Poor little Teddy, and poor Su Li,’ he said again.

  ‘Everyone’s been horrid about Su Li!’ I said in a rush. ‘But she’s dead!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Hazel,’ said Ng. ‘I know. This is a sad and strange crime.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘That pin is supposed to be Triad, eh?’ said Ng. ‘But it isn’t. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do, that’s all. Sai Yat’s gang has nothing to do with this.’

  I squeezed my hands into fists. What was Ng saying?

  ‘On the other hand, there are plenty of people who would want to punish your father,’ said Ng. ‘He’s been trying so hard to be a good businessman lately that he’s been forgetting to be a dutiful son, eh? Won’t be a Tung Wah member, even though your grandfather was always on the council. Mr Wa Fan sent a formal invitation a few weeks ago, and your father refused to reply to it.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got ears and eyes everywhere,’ said Ng, shrugging and wriggling his thin eyebrows. ‘And in his business dealings too – he ruffles feathers. Mr Svensson came to ask Mr Wong to back some new scheme of his a few days ago. I served them tea and wife cakes, but everything came back untouched. It’s hard to eat while you’re arguing, eh? Mr Svensson needs that money. He looks rich, but I’ve heard that he’s spent a fortune on that new house of his. Your father knows that, and that’s why he won’t bite. Same when some of your grandfather’s other charity cases came asking. Times have changed, eh? And not always for the better.’

  I was excited. Ng had said some things that could be very useful to our investigation.

  ‘That’s very interesting!’ I said. ‘But have you told the detective what you think about the Triads?’

  ‘I don’t talk to detectives, Miss Hazel,’ said Ng. ‘If he comes round, I will be too busy to see him.’

  I wanted to thank him – but I knew how suspicious that would look. So I simply bowed, turned and pushed Daisy out of the kitchen again.

  3

  As we emerged behind the big screen into the main hall, I heard Detective Leung call out in Cantonese. ‘You!’ he said.

  I thought he was speaking to us, and flinched, then –

  ‘You are Miss Wong’s maid, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ping’s voice, sounding very flustered. I could imagine her pressing her hands to her cheeks in panic. ‘My name is Ping.’

  ‘Wait!’ I hissed to Daisy, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back. ‘It’s Ping! Leung’s found her!’

  ‘I need to ask you some questions,’ said Detective Leung. ‘You were with Miss Wong and her friend this morning, weren’t you? You never left them?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ whispered Ping. ‘And no, sir. I stayed with them until after – after we came home again, this afternoon.’

  ‘And you saw the body?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ping, with a sob in her voice. ‘Poor Su Li! Poor Teddy!’

  ‘Did anything about the scene seem odd to you?’ asked Detective Leung.

  ‘It was a dead body, sir,’ said Ping. ‘It was awful! And the pi
n in the body – the sign of a Triad gang!’

  ‘Yes, I have heard,’ said Detective Leung. Was I imagining it, or was there a sharp tone to his voice? ‘And Miss Wong – how is she taking this?’

  I breathed in and clutched Daisy’s arm. ‘What’s up?’ she hissed at me. I shook my head.

  ‘Miss Hazel was so upset that she locked herself in her room, sir. She is broken-hearted.’ But I heard the uncertainty in her voice, and knew that Detective Leung heard it too.

  ‘You are not with her now,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I – I do not know,’ said Ping.

  ‘Do you often lose track of her? Does she go out on her own?’ asked Detective Leung. ‘Have you ever seen Miss Wong speak to any … suspicious characters?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Ping quickly. ‘Of course not! But—’

  She stopped speaking. Suddenly I found that it was quite hard to breathe. I knew that she was thinking about the woman; the one who had bumped into me. I felt, rather than saw, Daisy looking at me, and could picture the concerned, frustrated expression that would be on her face. Daisy knew that something was terribly wrong, but, although she might guess, she couldn’t understand exactly what it was.

  ‘But what?’ prompted Detective Leung.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ said Ping, so quietly I could barely hear her. ‘I have nothing more to say.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Ping. That will be all for now.’

  4

  I couldn’t bear to look, but after a moment Daisy peeped round the side of the screen. ‘He’s gone outside!’ she whispered to me. ‘Ping’s there alone. It’s safe. What happened?’

  ‘He asked Ping how I was behaving,’ I whispered back. ‘He asked if I ever went out on my own. Daisy, I think he suspects me! Come on, we have to talk to her.’