Suddenly at Singapore

by Gavin Black

  “But, of course.”

  At the door I turned and looked at him.

  “Inspector Kang, that offer of a partnership holds indefinitely.”

  He bowed in his chair.

  “Thank you, Mr. Harris. Even a policeman can get into the sort of disgrace which might well make him willing to consider such an offer. So kind of you.”

  CHAPTER XII

  MRS. BRADDOCK and I were working things out together in the office. She was charming and cautious and never did anything without letting me in on it. I knew how badly she felt about not being in control of the telephone to my desk, so I gave in on that, as a tactical move, realising almost sadly as I did it that in a way Sylvia Flores had been right, it was something I wouldn’t have allowed with her.

  “Your home is ringing now, Mr. Harris,” Mrs. Braddock said very sweetly through the inter-com, indicating that she was getting off the line at just the right moment.

  “Ruth?”

  “Oh, hallo, Paul. You just caught me. I’m on the way out.”

  “I’m fed up. I’m sitting here with stacks of work I ought to get on with and I know I’m not going to. I suggest I leave it and you meet me at the swimming club for lunch. Then I’ll work late, and we can have dinner about nine.”

  Ruth didn’t like the swimming club, there was too much sun out there, but recently I had only to make a suggestion to have her fall in with it. I wondered about this time.

  “I was going out to Changi, Paul. They’ve got the stones for the chimney. I want to see that the colours are right.”

  The chimney and fireplace was Ruth’s idea. It was to be something unique, a great open log fire burning at one end of the living-room. It was going to mean turning the air-conditioning up to top to make the atmosphere livable, but it would certainly be something out of the ordinary, a small sensation at the house warming.

  “Couldn’t you choose your stones and meet me for lunch, too?”

  “Yes, if you won’t mind me being a little late. I was only going to have a snack.”

  “I don’t approve of these women’s snacks, you’re too thin.”

  “I stay that way at my time of life by a continual vigilance. But it’ll be lovely having lunch with you. Maybe one-thirty?”

  That hadn’t been quite my idea. It was Saturday afternoon, and I’d thought to be ready to plunge in the pool about twelve, with Ruth sitting under an umbrella watching while I showed off my crawl. But everything in marriage is a compromise.

  “Fine. See you.” I got through to Mrs. Braddock. “I’m playing hookey, as from now. You do it, too.”

  “Oh, Mr. Harris, the work I’ve got on hand will keep me until after one.”

  “It’ll keep till Monday, Mrs. Braddock. These are the tropics. You’ve got to make a deliberate point of relaxing the tensions every now and then or you go pop.”

  She laughed.

  “I’d hate to do that. Well … if you don’t mind?”

  “It’s an order. It would spoil my escape to think of you sitting here. I’m coming back later, though, I’ll probably be here until about half-past eight. But I won’t want overtime from you. Go away and play.”

  The swimming club, after all these years, still gave me a kid’s pleasure to go into. I’d been a member ever since the days when my father bought me a boy’s ticket, and always when I walked through the cool lobby and smelled the sea and saw the glitter on it I got that feeling of lift. Saturday was the business men’s morning, but there were still plenty of children about, shouting, and the tow-headed ones were the best looking, a polished teak colour, and not afraid to go up to the top platform of the diving tower and come down from it like little brown bullets. Anyone who says the tropics are a bad place for the young ought to have a look at those kids. A lot of them may just be sent there with amahs to be kept out of the way, but they love it, just as I had.

  Some of the business men weren’t so pretty to look at, banquet bellies spaced out under the groomed palms, but the unappealing nakedness of even these was in some way clothed by tan and made half respectable. There were the lean, keep fitters, too, grey but still well muscled, who would wither suddenly and go yellow when they were transported to retirement in a cold country. I could never understand why they planned to go home, and at a lot of farewell parties I wanted to say you’ll be sorry. But maybe they were scared, deciding to clear out before things blew up, thinking it better to take rheumatism and be safe.

  My legs were still a little stiff, and the scars on them very noticeable, but the doctor told me swimming was the prescription and it was one I was ready to take. The slabs of paving by the pool were hot under my feet and the water below me a clear, aquamarine blue. I dived in.

  The water was about seventy-five, ten degrees cooler than the air. It gave you a slight, invigorating shock, and then offered comfort. I surfaced and struck out to do two lengths and back without stopping, slowed down a little at one end by a kid’s water polo game that ought to have been broken up by this time. We had rules about this, the swarming children should have been swept out of the place by eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning.

  Someone bumped into me.

  “Hey,” I said, and turned over on my back.

  It was Kate, in a bright blue bathing cap. We paired up and did our lengths together. She had a pretty, easy slide through the water, with a minimum of disturbance. And when we were resting at the deep end, holding on, I told her how nice she was to watch.

  “I swam for my college. It’s just about perfect here. I come whenever I can.”

  “That should be often, you’ve no organisation to watch you.”

  “It is. Every day some weeks.”

  “Funny we’ve never met here.”

  She looked up at the white building with its tables for lunch already set on the lower terrace and the upper veranda.

  “It’s never seemed the kind of place where we should meet, Paul.”

  This was true enough and I didn’t say anything. Kate pulled herself out of the water and walked along to the diving tower. Her bathing suit was blue, too. She climbed up to the third platform and did a most beautiful swallow in, with no hint of last minute sag in the sleek arch of her body. There was just that nice thick plop as she hit the water, with practically no spray at all. Then she went and did it again, just to show the first hadn’t been any fluke. She came back along to where I waited and leaned over.

  “Are you a diver?”

  “I hold my nose and jump.”

  “I don’t believe it. But I don’t suppose your legs are up to showing me yet.”

  “I never could show you. Let’s do another two lengths.”

  After that we floated, watching the Chinese amahs waddling out from shade to collect their charges at feeding time. Their thin voices floating out:

  “Johnee. Come now. You come out watah. Dinnah. You come.”

  Kate was interested.

  “Don’t their mothers ever come here with them?”

  “I should think at the moment dear old Mum is having her second gin at the Tanglin.”

  “It’s quite the life, isn’t it?”

  “Well, we think so.”

  Though she was thin Kate knew all about how to breathe with the upper part of her lungs and so keep floating as comfortably as though she was on a Li-lo.

  “Maybe it’s not surprising you won’t leave it,” she said.

  “There’s no choice in my case, you know that.”

  “Yes, I know that. Paul! We seem to have rather gathered round again, don’t we?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that we both meant a clean break after our talk. And it hasn’t happened.”

  “No. I like it better this way.”

  “Damn you, do you know why I came back for more?”

  “No.”

  “It was the way you took it, when I said my little piece leading to a clean break.”

  “I thought I took it rather well.”

  “Oh
, you did. So very well indeed. You just got up and went out. I think I was entitled to a little more than that.”

  “A scene, you mean?”

  “A little heat, perhaps.”

  “I’d already been blasted once that afternoon. You can only spend so much emotion on any one day and then you dry up. That’s the way I was feeling when I left you. Empty, rather.”

  “It left me empty, too. Empty of a certain satisfaction. I’d been building up what I had to say to you, I’d got it all organised. And then for so long you just didn’t come to hear it. Do you know, I think you’re the most maddening man I’ve ever had anything to do with.”

  “You can always label it British phlegm.”

  “Paul, you did love me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a helluva place to be talking like this. Floating on the water like a couple of retired porpoises!”

  I rolled over on my stomach, and looking at her began to laugh. She laughed, too.

  “Men are naturally polygamous. It would save such a lot of bother to us gals if we’d just come to accept that.”

  “Kate, come and have a drink with me. Ruth’s having lunch here, but she’ll be late.”

  “You mean there’s just time to squeeze me in?”

  “That’s it.”

  We swam towards the steps and Kate went up them first, dripping down on me. Half the tables were already occupied and at one directly in front of us, under an umbrella carefully tilted against the sun, sat Ruth. She looked elaborately dressed in surroundings which didn’t put the emphasis on that. She was smiling.

  “Hallo, Kate.”

  “Why … Ruth. Have you been here long? Why didn’t you give us a shout?”

  “I’m not the type who leans over things to coo-ee. Why don’t you join us for lunch?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t, I …”

  “She was just going to have a drink with me, Ruth, before you came. We’ll all have it here.”

  “Let’s,” Ruth said.

  Kate didn’t stay for lunch. When she had gone Ruth looked at me and said:

  “She dives beautifully.”

  All that time, all that long time watching two retired porpoises.

  “What are you eating, Ruth?”

  “Aren’t you going to dress first?”

  “If you like.”

  “I would like it if you don’t mind. Your legs aren’t pretty at the moment.”

  I changed and went to the bar for a quick whisky, then went back to lunch with my wife, cursing myself for a fool who tended to drift with the current instead of swimming against it. It wasn’t a lunch either of us enjoyed. After it I put Ruth in her Daimler and as she drove off behind those sealed windows she lifted her hand to me, rather like Royalty to loyal villagers.

  You can work pretty well when you have the stimulus of something to cover over with it. I got a lot of work done that afternoon, and in the early evening. I was mixing myself an earned drink when the phone went. I didn’t hurry to it.

  “Paul! Paul! Thank heaven … you’re there. I … remembered. Oh!”

  “Kate! What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a … I can’t. I can’t!”

  “You can’t what?”

  “There’s a man here. Out … out here. My bungalow. I just got back. I … He’s …”

  “Kate, get hold of yourself! Tell me what’s the matter!”

  “He’s dead. Lying there. Shot dead. I know him.”

  “You … what?”

  “I know him. I saw him first in that hotel. In K.L. With you. You laughed about it. Chinese. Following me. I’ve seen him since. I’ve seen him. Oh, Paul, what’ll I do? He’s right here. Right at my door. I … I …”

  “Kate, listen to me. Have you phoned the police?”

  “No, no. I just phoned you. I just got to the phone. Do you want me to phone the police? I can’t think … I can’t think.”

  “Don’t do a thing. I’ll get right down there. It won’t take me ten minutes.”

  It took me seven in the Bristol. There was a side way into the grounds without going into the hotel and I took that. Some of the bungalows were lit, I heard voices in one. The garden, lit by lanterns at intervals, was still shadowy. Kate’s lights seemed a long way off, in a corner by themselves.

  The man wasn’t quite at her door, but his feet were nearly touching the path, his head towards some bushes. I couldn’t see him, I had to strike a match.

  He was lying on his stomach, head to one side, and the back of it had been blown away. But there was no mark I could see on his face. It was the Goldfish.

  Then I saw something else, a gun lying close to his hand. Only he hadn’t been the one to use it. I struck another match and bent over, staring at that gun, though I didn’t touch it. I didn’t have to touch it to know. It was a big Luger, fitted with a silencer. The gun was mine.

  I dropped the match. Somebody laughed, far away in the hotel. I straightened. The feeling that took me then was the thing I’d felt when I heard of Jeff’s death, a sickness that drained away heart and spirit and left me weak. It was an effort to walk up to Kate’s door, which was a little bit ajar, and push it open.

  She was sitting with her hands pressed into her face.

  “Kate. You haven’t phoned the police?”

  She jumped up.

  “What does it mean, Paul? Why? Why outside my …?”

  “Don’t ask me questions! Please! Did you phone the police?”

  “No. Paul! You’re trembling!”

  “It’ll pass. Listen to me now. I’m going away.”

  “No, you mustn’t. You can’t leave me!”

  “I’ve got to. I’ve no choice. You’ve got to do this on your own.”

  “But … why?”

  “I’ve got … something else to do. Kate, listen. As soon as I’ve gone phone the police. Tell them what you told me. That you came here and found him. Then you rang them.”

  “You mean … nothing about you?”

  “I need a little time, that’s all. Just a little time. Don’t worry. You’re not doing anything wrong. I’ll clear you later. I promise that.”

  “Paul, what are you going to do? Tell me! You look … dreadful.”

  “I need a little time, that’s all. While the police come here. You can tell them what you like, that this man was following you, but you don’t know who he is.”

  “But I do know, Paul. I’ve suddenly realised. I saw him. At your party …”

  “Shut up! Will you shut up? Do as I say. Phone the police.”

  She called out as I left the bungalow. I didn’t turn again. Maybe she wouldn’t do what I asked, it couldn’t be helped, I had to get home. I had to get back to that house that sat with its own trees away from everything. There was a kind of hell waiting in that house, I knew.

  I can’t remember driving, just getting out of the car under the portico and going up steps, walking along a wide hall and then up stairs. Ruth’s door was the third. I opened it.

  She was lying on the bed, curled up, wearing slacks and a dark shirt. She looked small and slight lying there. On the floor was some kind of raincoat and a cap, as though she’d dropped them.

  I closed the door and took a few steps towards her.

  “Ruth! Why did you kill the Goldfish? And Jeff? Why did you try to kill me?”

  She never moved. I heard a voice, harsh, as though from a distance. It didn’t sound like mine.

  “My Luger. Did you use it to take a shot at me? And then put it back in that secret drawer? Only you knew where it was. None of the servants did. You knew!”

  Her hand lifted and then her fingers closed over a piece of the bedcover.

  “Poor Goldfish,” she said.

  “Why did you leave my gun there? So the police would think I’d done it?”

  “I dropped it. I had to drop it. I couldn’t …”

  “You couldn’t what?”

  “I just dropped it. Goldfish. He was turning,
he saw me.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “I had to,” her voice was almost a whisper. “He kept saying I was sick. I needed a doctor, he said. He thought I was mad. But I’m not. I knew he wouldn’t help me much longer. That he’d tell someone … you. I made him go this last time.”

  “To kill him?”

  “Yes.” Her hand plucked at that bedspread.

  “Ruth! When did all this start?”

  “I think in Charleston. Long ago. Long, long ago.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  “No, no, you never did.”

  She sat up then, holding herself on one arm, looking at me. Her face was dead white.

  “Paul, I want you to understand now, though.”

  “You mean … about Jeff?”

  “Yes, Jeff.” Her voice firmed up. “Yes, Jeff. Trash, that’s what he thought me.”

  “Ruth!”

  “It’s no use telling you, is it? Your brother. You couldn’t see anything else.”

  She swung out her legs and sat on the bed now, her feet on the floor, looking at me.

  “That time in the club, when you were up in K.L., Jeff took me by the arm, out on to the terrace. He’d been wanting a little talk with me, he said. And this was as good a time as any other. Get the thing over. You know how Jeff liked to get things over and tidied up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She swayed a little.

  “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, Paul. Jeff said the time had come to finish things … between you and me. He said you never would, not on your own. He expected me to understand that, and of course I did. You’re kind, Paul. You’ve always been kind.”

  “And no more?”

  “Sometimes. Not for long. Listen to me. I guess there isn’t a lot of time. You’ve got to know now. Jeff had a paper drawn up, he said. About what I was to get, if I left you. It was to be a lot. I was going to be sensible, he knew. What he didn’t know was he was leaving me nothing. Nothing at all. I hadn’t made much, but he was taking that, with a piece of paper. I was to go back home, with my money. I was to be poor Ruth who never can keep anything going for long. Lucky she’s got all that money. I don’t suppose you can understand, Paul, what it’s like to be afraid of being left with nothing. You could make something new to-morrow … but I couldn’t.”