A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  sorry!’

  ‘So you’ve changed your mind completely about this jaunt to Kuala Lumpur?’ Adam asked her as they ate lunch at the Sea View.

  She had been toying listlessly with the sweet and sour prawns on her plate and now she put down her chopsticks and said carefully: ‘If you would like to go, Adam, then I’m quite happy to go with you. But there’s no need to visit Kuala Lumpur for my sake.’

  He had been smiling, happy with the game of tennis he had played earlier before leaving Raffles, happy with life in general. Now he said, a frown puckering his brow: ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Beth? I mean, are you not wanting to travel north because you feel so unwell?’

  She shook her head and pushed her plate away. ‘No, there’s no need to worry, Adam.’

  She knew that she had to talk to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so yet. She didn’t know the words to use. She didn’t know how it was possible to break such devastating news to someone she cared about so much, someone who loved her so deeply.

  His frown deepened. ‘I really think you should see a doctor, Beth. It’s ridiculous saying that you’ll be right in a day or two. You’re hardly eating anything and you look ghastly.’

  She forced a smile. ‘That’s not a very complimentary thing to say to a lady!’

  He grinned. ‘You know what I mean. It isn’t safe to let things run their course in a climate like this.’

  He was wearing an open-necked cotton shirt and a pair of shorts, but the sweat still gleamed on his forehead and glistened on his neck. He turned round, looking for a waiter and raising his hand to indicate that he wanted another stengah.

  ‘If you don’t want to travel further north, then perhaps it’s about time we returned to Hong Kong,’ he suggested, turning back to her as a waiter indicated his stengah was on its way.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, avoiding his eyes and looking seawards to where a small group of Malay fishermen were collecting their catch from their fishing-traps. The sooner they returned to Hong Kong, the sooner she could tell Raefe about the baby. And the sooner Adam would have to be told.

  A Chinese waiter, balancing a tray of gimlets and stengahs and Tiger beer, weaved his way dexterously between the crowded tables towards them. Adam signed for his drink and then said: ‘Then, we’ll sail for home on the first available ship.’

  The fishermen were walking away across the beach with their catch. In the brilliant sunlight, the small green islands in the distance were as insubstantial as mist. She drew her eyes away from them, looking across at him, saying curiously: ‘You really do think of Hong Kong as home now, don’t you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Why not? It feels like home.’

  ‘And Four Seasons?’ she asked, wondering if she would ever return there. If it would ever be a home to her again.

  ‘I’ve never thought of Four Seasons as home,’ he said with his usual honesty. ‘I always think of it as being exclusively yours. Which it is.’

  ‘But you enjoyed living there?’ she persisted, suddenly wondering if she had always assumed his contentment and his happiness. Wondering if, perhaps, there was far more to him than she had previously suspected.

  ‘I would enjoy living anywhere with you,’ he said, his voice thickening, reaching across the table and taking her hands. ‘A palace or a shack, it would make no difference. As long as you were there, Beth. I would be happy.’

  She couldn’t have spoken, even if she had wanted to.

  He squeezed her hands and said decisively: ‘That’s it, then. We’ll call in at the shipping office on the way back to the hotel and book two berths. I wonder if much has changed while we’ve been away. I imagine Alastair is still trying to persuade Helena to marry him and that she is still refusing.’

  As they rose to leave, she felt dizzy at the thought of how much had changed. Their whole lives. And he didn’t know. Not yet. And she hadn’t the courage to tell him.

  They walked along the Sea View’s pillared terrace and beneath an incongruous dome of Grecian splendour, towards their waiting Mercedes. Adam had discovered that driving in the Singapore heat was not much fun and after their first few days there he had hired a syce, a Malay chauffeur. The syce, who had been squatting down, sheltering in the shade of the car, jumped to his feet at their approach, opening the doors for them with an efficient flourish.

  ‘Julienne’s probably notched up at least three new lovers,’ Adam said drily, wincing against the heat of the leather seat. ‘God knows how that marriage survives. I don’t.’

  Again Elizabeth said nothing. There was nothing she could possibly say. They called in at the shipping office in Robinson Road and booked a double berth in a ship leaving the following Monday. She was both longing to leave and loath to leave, her feelings as agonized and contradictory as they had been when she had left Hong Kong.

  ‘I’m tired, Adam,’ she said truthfully, as they stepped out of the air-conditioned coolness of the office and into the blistering heat of the street. ‘I don’t know what you have planned for this afternoon, but I’d like to rest for an hour or two.‘

  He looked down into her wan face, distressed at the deep circles he saw beneath her eyes. ‘You should have said so sooner,’ he said, concerned, his hand beneath her arm as they walked towards the car. ‘I’ll tuck you up and then go for a swim at the club.’ Their syce drew out into the main stream of traffic, refusing to be intimidated by aggressive rickshaw-drivers who regarded crowding a foreign car off the street as a duty. ‘And if you’re feeling no better by the time I return,’ he continued sternly, ‘then I’m calling for a doctor, no matter what you say.’

  She had rested and drunk some milk of magnesia, and by the time he had returned she had been able to say, with an element of truth, that she felt much better and that there was no need for him to carry out his threat.

  On the following Monday, they sailed out of the great harbour, and northwards towards Hong Kong. If Adam thought her unduly quiet, it was only because he believed her to be still suffering from the enervating virus he himself had suffered from for a while. He had enjoyed their trip to Singapore far more than he had anticipated, but he wasn’t sorry to be leaving. He wanted to be in at the inception of the proposed Hong Kong Volunteer Force. He wanted to have a good old chin-wag with Leigh Stafford about the apparent invincibility of Singapore. He wanted to sit on his veranda, a sundowner in his hand, and look out across his garden and the lush tropical greenery of the Peak down to the glittering harbour and the distant cloud-capped hills of Kowloon.

  ‘We’re home,’ he said with satisfaction, as their ship nosed its way up the Lei Yue Mun Channel between a scattering of small, stony, uninhabited islands.

  Elizabeth stood beside him, her hands on the deck-rail, her knuckles white. She no longer knew where home was, or who it was with. It was late afternoon, and the Peak was half-hidden in cloud, scudding shadows of high cirrus smoking down the ravines and ridges, the scent of hibiscus and frangipani drifting fragrantly across the water.

  She had not told Raefe that she was on her way back to him. Unless he had tried to contact her at Raffles, he would think her still in Singapore. He would not be waiting for her when they docked, and she did not want him to be. When they did meet, she wanted to be the one who was in control of the situation. Whatever decision was taken about the future, it would be her decision. Not Adam’s. Not Raefe’s. Hers.

  There was the usual pile of mail. Business letters for Adam. Cards and invitations. Half a dozen envelopes bearing Princess Luisa Isabel’s embossed coat of arms. Chan and the other houseboys carried the luggage upstairs, and while Mei Lin supervised the unpacking Adam retreated to a comfortable chair, a gin and tonic in his hand as he settled down to read the backlog of letters.

  Elizabeth pushed her pile neatly to one side. There was no way she could cope with party invitations and frivolous gossip at the moment. She didn’t even want to open Luisa’s always cheery letters. Restlessly she went upstairs, saying to Mei Lin as she deftly s
orted the unpacked clothes into piles for the laundry, piles to be pressed, piles to be put neatly away: ‘Have there been any messages for me, Mei Lin?’

  ‘All the messages are on the telephone-pad, Missy Harland,’ Mei Lin said, her gold cheeks rosy with pleasure at having her mistress back in residence again.

  ‘But have there been any other messages?’ Elizabeth persisted. ‘Any personal messages?’ She had already flicked an eye over the names written with meticulous care by Mei Lin on the telephone-pad. Raefe’s had not been there.

  ‘I very careful,’ Mei Lin said, a trifle defensively. ‘I put every name down, Missy Harland. I leave none out.’

  So he hadn’t rung. But, then, he had had no reason to. She had told him that she would get in touch with him when she returned. From downstairs she could hear Adam calling her name and she hurried out to the head of the stairs.

  ‘There’s a letter here from Stafford,’ he called up to her. ‘Sounds as if I should see him straight away. I’ll be back in an hour.’

  A second later the door slammed behind him. She walked slowly down the wide open staircase, her heart beginning to hammer in her chest. She was on her own and she had to take advantage of the fact. She had to ring Raefe now, before Adam returned.

  ‘I have sent a message to the wash-amah to tell her that you are back and that she is needed,’ Mei Lin panted as she carried the laundry through into the kitchen. ‘She will be here in an hour.’

  ‘Thank you, Mei Lin.’

  She stood looking at the telephone on the hall table for a long moment and then walked quickly into the drawing-room where she would have more privacy. She wouldn’t tell him about the baby over the telephone. She would only tell him that she was back. And that she had missed him every single second she had been away from him.

  His houseboy answered the telephone.

  ‘Could I speak to Mr Elliot, please?’

  ‘Velly solly,’ his houseboy said in broad pidgin. ‘Mr Elliot not in. Can I take message?’

  Her disappointment was so intense that she physically slumped against the wall. ‘Tell him Mrs Harland rang,’ she said, feeling ridiculously as if she were going to cry. ‘Tell him that I am home again. That I am in Hong Kong.’

  ‘Yes, missy. Velly good, missy.’

  She was filled with the sudden humiliating thought that he had probably taken hundreds of such messages in the past. From Mrs Mark Hurley, from Alute. From women whose names she didn’t know and had no desire to know. The feeling of humiliation was fleeting. He had never before taken one from a woman with whom Raefe was in love, of that she was sure. She walked across to the large window that looked out over the Peak and the bay and, despite all her misery at the hurt she was about to inflict on Adam, happiness bubbled up inside her. Raefe would ring her back within minutes, within hours. They would be together soon. ‘Oh, but I love you,’ she breathed, hugging her arms around her waist as she looked down towards Victoria. ‘Raefe Elliot, I love you!’

  Raefe took the message from one of his Chinese informers. This time the titbit was not about Yamishita, the Japanese barber at the Hong Kong Hotel, or any of the other known Japanese spies masquerading as photographers and waiters.

  ‘Your friend, Mr Nicholson, is in great trouble,’ the familiar sing-song voice said urgently. ‘Mr Kaibong Sheng knows of his involvement with his daughter. The Tong are on the streets looking for him.’

  Raefe blanched. The Tongs were the hired killers of the Chinese underworld, and if Sheng had discovered that his daughter had been deflowered, then there was nothing more certain than that he would have hired the Tongs to exact his revenge.

  ‘Do you know where Tom Nicholson is now?’ he demanded urgently. ‘Do you know where Lamoon Sheng is?’

  ‘No,’ the sing-song voice expressed neither regret nor curiosity. ‘I only know that Sheng was told an hour ago that the Englishman has soiled his daughter’s honour. And that the Tongs have been given their orders.’

  Raefe blasphemed, looking at his watch. It was four-twenty and it was Thursday. The day that Lamoon ostensibly attended nursing lessons at the hospital. By four-thirty, Tom would have taken her back to the hospital so that she could slip in through a side-door and emerge seconds later through the main door where the chauffeured Rolls would be waiting for her. Only today the chauffeur would not be the only person waiting outside the hospital. The Tongs would be there as well.

  Raefe slammed open his desk drawer, taking out a revolver and a shoulder-holster, strapping it on as he strode from the room, grabbing his jacket from the hall coat-stand, running out of the house and towards his car. Tom would be unarmed and unprepared, and the Tongs were not likely to have had instructions merely to give him a beating. For the sin Tom had committed, Raefe doubted if old man Sheng would be satisfied with anything less than his death.

  He vaulted into his Chrysler, gunning the engine into life, the tyres squealing as he shot out of the parking-bay and into the main stream of late-afternoon traffic. Thank God he had been at the apartment when he had received the message, and not at the Peak. If he had been, there would have been no chance at all of him reaching Tom in time. He swerved past a Buick, pressing the heel of his hand on the horn, making no concessions for rickshaws or cyclists or even pedestrians.

  What car did Tom drive? Was it a Mercedes or an Opel? A Packard. It was a Packard. He sped across a busy intersection, aware of a squealing of brakes in his wake. It was four twenty-nine. Tom was probably there now. He was never late in delivering Lamoon back to the hospital – doing nothing, as he thought, to arouse her father’s suspicions. He screamed around a traffic island, sending rickshaw-boys scurrying for their lives. Tom had been a naïve fool even to imagine the affair could continue without someone, somewhere, seeing them and informing on them.

  The hospital loomed up on his right-hand side, and he saw the unmistakable powder-blue of the Sheng Rolls-Royce parked outside the front entrance. He took the next corner on two wheels. The Tongs would be waiting for Tom at the side-entrance. They would wait until Lamoon had entered the hospital before they pounced. Their orders would be not to involve her in the violence. And if Lamoon had still not walked out of the front entrance.…

  It was four-thirty. The side-street was crowded with office workers leaving as early as they could for home. There were black-clad Chinese on bicycles and half a dozen Chinese stall-holders and a pedlar selling jade, all a mere yard or two away from the side-entrance door. He was just about to breathe a sigh of relief, believing he had got there before Tom, when he saw the Packard parked at the other side of the street and Tom’s tall broad-shouldered figure walking through the crowds towards the entrance, Lamoon’s diminutive figure at his side.

  He was still fifty yards away from them, and the street was jammed with traffic. He slewed the Chrysler to a halt, slamming his hand hard upon the horn as he did so. The crowd of office workers turned their heads, staring at him as if he had lost his senses, but Tom was too deep in conversation with Lamoon to take any notice of a maniac let loose on a car horn. Raefe jumped from the car, shouting his name, forcing his way at a run through the office workers and shoppers and tourists who crowded the pavement.

  ‘Tom! Tom!’ he yelled. The Chinese cyclists were no longer with their bicycles. They were all moving in behind Tom as he approached the side-entrance of the hospital. One of the stall-holders, too, was no longer intent on selling his wares to passing pedestrians.

  Tom and Lamoon were at the side-entrance. A Chinese was standing over the open bonnet of Tom’s Packard, busily disabling it to ensure there would be no escape in that direction.

  ‘Tom!’ Raefe yelled at the top of his lungs. This time Tom heard him. His head swung round, his eyes widening as he saw Raefe hurtling towards him. Lamoon was still in the doorway, a bewildered expression on her face. The crowds who a second earlier had thronged the street had now, sensing danger, hurriedly scattered, leaving the side-entrance of the hospital an open space apart from Tom, and the C
hinese, and Raefe.

  ‘It’s the Tongs!’ Raefe shouted to Tom as the jade-pedlar, judging that there was no longer time to wait for Lamoon to disappear before launching his attack, hurled his tray at Raefe and then dived towards Tom.

  The tray caught Raefe full on the chest, and he fell to his knees, scrambling to his feet again, gasping for breath, seeing through a blood-red haze the gleam of a blade and then Tom’s fist as it shot out, sending the jade-pedlar sprawling.

  Desperately he tried to reach Tom, but there were hands around his throat, pulling him chokingly backwards, fingers gouging at his eyes. He kicked backwards, knocking his assailants off balance, snatching his gun from his holster.

  Tom was on the ground, barely visible as he thrashed beneath a welter of kicks and punches, and then the stallholder grabbed hold of the jade-pedlar’s knife and as Tom was held, staked to the ground, he sprang forward, the knife lunging down towards Tom’s heart.

  The blow from the gun’s butt knocked him senseless, just as the blade pierced Tom’s flesh. Raefe was aware of Lamoon screaming, of a police siren wailing, of feet running. Tom gasped, dazedly imprisoned beneath the weight of his attacker, blood oozing from the shallow wound in his chest. Raefe tried to tell him to lie still, but when he spoke the words were fuzzily incoherent and to his surprise and indignation his legs buckled beneath him and he dropped forward on to the pavement. He pressed his hand to his side to ease his breathing, and when he withdrew it his fingers were dark and sticky with blood. Tom wasn’t the only one who had been stabbed.

  The whine of the police siren came nearer and nearer; Lamoon was running towards them, her eyes wide with terror, and then Raefe saw the Sheng chauffeur sprint around from the front of the building. He tried to warn her, to tell her to run towards the approaching police car, but his desperate warning was barely audible. He was going to faint. ‘Christ!’ he whispered disgustedly, slumping forward into a deepening pool of blood as the chauffeur seized Lamoon and dragged her, kicking and screaming, away.