The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

by Ovidia Yu

  ‘The investigation is over,’ Dr Covington said. ‘But I thought you’d like to know how things are. No secrets between friends, right? Which brings me to one more thing. You may have heard Nicole mention one Eric Schumer.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Le Froy remained silent but his eyes were keen and watchful.

  ‘Nicole can’t remember anything about the night the poor fellow died. That’s why it’s better for her to stay out of America for a bit. I don’t want my grandson growing up with his mother in jail. You see that, don’t you? No hard feelings?’

  ‘No hard feelings,’ I said, meaning it.

  Dr Covington nodded to me as he left. ‘Good spunk. You’ll go far.’

  I felt warm inside, as though I had passed a test I hadn’t known I was taking. I took a deep breath and felt myself relax a little. I looked at Sergeant de Souza, who smiled and nodded. No hard feelings. He understood.

  The previous evening, I had gone from disliking and suspecting Nicole to connecting with her as a woman to feeling almost sorry for her. Now I wondered if she was a drunken killer who didn’t even remember the men she had murdered.

  ‘And please thank your grandmother for her invitation but I don’t think Nicole should take up the offer to visit her house. She doesn’t do well around strangers and unfamiliar environments.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea, sir. My grandmother doesn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Nicole has a very vivid imagination and a very strong personality. Goodbye, Chief Inspector. I assume you have no objections to our leaving Singapore Island now?’

  Parshanti

  By the end of that day I had gone beyond sleepy. I felt like a mechanical doll with dry eyes when I went that evening to the Shankars’ pharmacy to look for Parshanti. I was sure she had heard by now that there was no case so Kenneth Mulliner and his friends would likely be leaving Singapore soon.

  I didn’t know whether I needed to comfort her for the upcoming loss of Kenneth or if I wanted her to listen to me grumble against a murder case being dropped. I did know I missed my best friend and needed to spend some time with her even more than I needed sleep. And I needed to sleep desperately. Because of that, it took me a moment to process what Mrs Shankar was saying: ‘Parshanti went to look for you at the Detective Shack. Didn’t you see her?’

  ‘I must have just missed her, Mrs Shankar.’

  Parshanti’s parents looked worried.

  ‘She left over an hour ago,’ Mrs Shankar said.

  ‘Oh, did she?’ My sleepy sluggish brain took a moment to process this.

  ‘Oh dear, I forgot!’ I lied, as the pieces fell into place. ‘We were going to meet at the Mission Centre to sort the donation books. I’d better hurry – I’m an hour late!’

  I left in a rush, turning down Mrs Shankar’s suggestion of tea and Dr Shankar’s offer to rummage through his cupboards for educational pamphlets. I started towards the Mission Centre, in case the Shankars happened to look out of the pharmacy windows, then crossed the road and doubled back along the lanes in the direction of the hotel. I was sure that was where Parshanti had gone. And that her parents wouldn’t approve.

  ‘Su! I’m so glad you’re finally here.’ It was Parshanti who opened the door and dragged me into Nicole’s suite. She looked scared.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ But even as I spoke I saw Nicole lolling on the sofa. Was she sick – or under the influence of some kind of drug? ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was all right this morning. I stayed for a while but I had to go home to help my mother. And when I got back she was just sitting slumped like this.’

  ‘Did she eat anything? Drink anything?’

  ‘No. Just her vitamins. Junior came in to say they were going to look at the ships on the seafront and to remember to take her pills. Oh, and he was with Kenneth.’ Parshanti was a little flustered.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And Kenneth said he wouldn’t invite us to come too because Nicole couldn’t stand the sun for long but he would see me when they got back.’

  Had Kenneth given Nicole something to make sure she didn’t go out?

  ‘Look. The case is over. Mrs Covington isn’t our responsibility. We should leave. Your parents are wondering where you are.’

  ‘Since the case is over, there’s no reason for us to leave. Oh, Su, Nicole isn’t feeling well and doesn’t want to be left alone. Couldn’t you sit with her for just a little while until Kenneth gets back? If the police aren’t arresting her for anything, that means she’s innocent, right?’

  I wasn’t going to sit with Nicole while Parshanti went off with Kenneth. If that sneaky man had drugged Nicole he might drug her too.

  ‘Not proved guilty doesn’t mean innocent. And it doesn’t mean she’s not dangerous. And I know very well that Nicole isn’t the reason you’re here.’

  ‘You’re not my keeper, Chen Su Lin!’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have lied to your parents that you were coming to see me at the Detective Shack when you weren’t.’

  ‘Don’t be so high and mighty! I know what you’re trying to do. Just because you don’t want to get married you don’t want me to either! You’re the same as my parents. They want me to spend my whole life looking after them. And after they’re gone I’ll be alone. But do they ever think of that?’

  ‘Whether you get married or not you end up alone.’ Nicole’s voice surprised us. We had forgotten about her. ‘All I wanted was somebody to look after me and I’m alone. I’ll be alone for ever.’

  We turned to see Nicole trying to sit up. She was bleary-eyed and her beautifully applied mascara was running down the side of her face.

  ‘Victor was no catch, just so you know. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through with the wedding. Not after what he did to me that night. So maybe this all worked out for the best.’

  ‘What happened that night?’ I tried to make my voice sound casual. ‘What did he do?’

  Nicole looked around. If Dr Covington had been there he would have said something. But he wasn’t, so she went on: ‘Victor told me he was going to be out all night, at his wild bachelor party. I actually believed him! I knew he had taken a small room downstairs. I thought we could use it to store presents and things for the wedding. I heard the flowers I’d ordered had arrived – a week early! They would all be dead before the wedding. I was furious and I rushed down to see for myself. He was out so I got the key from the desk. And I found him inside the room and inside his fat whore slut.’ She stopped.

  There was a wheezing gasp from the doorway and we turned to see Kenneth, clutching at his mouth and then his stomach helplessly. For an awful moment, I thought he was having a seizure. Then, as Nicole glared at him, he started hiccuping, then burst out laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to be sick.

  Kenneth Mulliner didn’t hold up very well under stress.

  I wished I’d had a tape recorder to record Nicole’s words. I could understand Kenneth’s hysteria. It took an effort for me not to laugh. Parshanti was staring with her mouth open.

  ‘You found your fiancé with another woman?’ I asked, to clarify things for the record. No one who had heard Nicole could have doubted what she meant. But without a tape recorder, I wanted to make sure Parshanti and Kenneth remembered what she’d said. There might be no case but I didn’t care. You can’t just walk away from solving a murder when the solution slinks up to you like a sly cat and piddles on your skirts.

  ‘That no-good ponce wasn’t my fiancé any more once I saw what he was doing on top of that fat cow!’

  Nicole didn’t seem to realize that what she was saying gave her the biggest motive for murdering Victor Glossop.

  ‘So you killed him?’

  I heard Kenneth’s genuine shock through his hiccups. I have seen men and women in shock. The hardest punches, like ‘Your son drowned’ or ‘Your wife and baby died in the fire’ lead to shocked disbelief and deafening silence. It is as though the
human body needs time to push through the horror. Kenneth was not frozen in disbelief. In fact he was laughing again, shaking his head. There was a hysterical note in his voice.

  ‘Victor was such a chump. One week! He couldn’t keep it in his pants for one blasted week!’

  ‘You should talk!’ Nicole flashed at him. ‘You set it up for him, didn’t you? I know about everything you two got up to in Oxford and London.’

  ‘No, no, no. Nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t have dared after seeing you tackle him hammer and tongs on the subject. When he smiled at that German lady on the way out here, I thought you were going to chuck the poor chap overboard!’

  ‘I should have!’ Nicole screamed. ‘I should have kicked you both overboard!’ She seemed ready to let loose another fit of temper. She grabbed the electric lamp on the end table and raised it. But the cord got tangled in the table’s legs and she didn’t manage to hit Kenneth with it.

  ‘Did you kill him, Mrs Covington?’ I had to ask for myself, if not for the record.

  Now I saw shock. Nicole stopped mid-protest, her mouth staying open a moment before she snapped it shut. She lowered the lamp slowly. ‘How can you ask me such a thing?’

  ‘It sounds like he treated you very, very badly.’ The sympathy in Parshanti’s voice brought tears to Nicole’s eyes.

  ‘Oh, yes. I had very good reason. And if I had run a sword through both of them there and then, I’m sure any decent judge would have taken my side. But I didn’t have a sword with me. And once I got out of that room I never wanted to see him again.’ Nicole’s voice was dull and dead now.

  ‘Nicole, why didn’t you tell me?’

  Kenneth wasn’t perturbed by Nicole flaring at him. Suddenly there was a new question in my mind: if Kenneth really hadn’t known about the woman in Victor’s room, who had arranged for her to be there? If Victor had been wandering the streets, looking for prostitutes, Le Froy would have heard about it by now. My thoughts went back to Harry Palin. He said he had arranged little favours for Victor: had he arranged this too?

  ‘I was embarrassed and humiliated. I heard them laughing at me as I walked out. I couldn’t tell anyone about it. Besides, I thought he’d tell you himself. I just wanted to die. I was going to call off the wedding. That was why I thought he killed himself.’

  ‘You really think he killed himself?’ I couldn’t help saying. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t care. Poison, I suppose. Victor was a huge coward.’ Nicole’s eyes met mine. ‘You can’t expect me to talk to servants about something like this.’

  Kenneth moved to Nicole’s side now. ‘Get out, you two,’ he said, without looking at Parshanti and me.

  Nicole seized his hand and burst into tears. I had felt honesty in the ugliness of her anger. But now she was sobbing with artificial prettiness, no sign of tears, and my old dislike of her resurfaced.

  The shocked hurt on Parshanti’s face made me feel so sorry for her I forgave her for all the things she had said earlier – though of course I wasn’t going to forget them.

  ‘Let’s go.’ I pulled Parshanti out of the suite. I wasn’t going to worry about these crazy people. I wanted to tell Le Froy that Nicole had intended to cancel the wedding after finding Victor with another woman. The case might be over, but these people were still on our island. Surely he would want to know.

  Mrs McPherson

  Le Froy listened to everything I told him without commenting.

  Then, ‘That report from Yap Pun Kai.’ He snapped his fingers at Sergeant de Souza. ‘The Japanese woman found dead. When exactly?’

  ‘Sir,’ Ferdinand de Souza said, ‘Miss Nakagawa Koto. She was found dead in her room two days after Victor Glossop’s death.’

  I was surprised he had the name and day ready. Le Froy was too: ‘How come you followed up on her case?’

  Singapore was full of illegal prostitutes. Given the terrible conditions they lived under, suicide was sadly not rare. Plus, those women were very often rejected by the families they had sold themselves to support.

  ‘That young HQ corporal who made the first report went back and followed up on his own time. Corporal Wong Meng.’

  ‘He doesn’t think she killed herself? Was she sick?’ In officially registered brothels, prostitutes had to be examined regularly for venereal disease. But illegally run pleasure houses seldom bothered.

  ‘Not sick, sir. He says she was remitting money to the Japanese military effort,’ de Souza said. ‘Like several of her companions. They insist she must have been poisoned by a man friend or client.’

  Unlike women from famine-struck farm communities, who worked to support their families, professional Japanese prostitutes had recently been appearing in Singapore by choice, to help finance their country’s military efforts. A woman who made this noble sacrifice would not be driven to suicide by a venereal disease.

  ‘She was found by her first client of the day. She was dressed – undressed, I mean – made up, ready and waiting. But when he went in she was dead. It appears she had been dead for some hours.’

  ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’ a woman said. We turned and saw Mrs Viola Jane McPherson, the governor’s wife, in the doorway. ‘Knock, knock,’ she added.

  When Mrs McPherson appeared officially in public there was some fanfare, with warnings sent ahead to stores to wash down their steps and tidy up. This was an unofficial visit, then. She looked at our startled faces and smiled.

  Her driver was behind her, holding the door open, and one of her boys was peering around her. I could tell the McPherson boys apart only because Greg was half a head taller than Pat. But since I could see only one, I had no idea which this was.

  ‘Of course not. Please come in, Mrs McPherson. Is anything wrong?’ Le Froy rose.

  ‘That’s her,’ the boy said, pointing at me.

  ‘Don’t point, Greg.’ Ah, it was the elder son. ‘And, remember, we say, “That is she”, not “That is her”. No, nothing is wrong. Could I have a word with your assistant?’ Mrs McPherson smiled at me. She had a lovely smile. ‘We came to pay for the sweets my sons took from your uncle’s shop.’

  ‘Oh! No need lah!’ I was so taken aback I answered in Singlish.

  ‘Must lah!’ Mrs McPherson laughed. ‘How’s my accent? My boys told me what happened at the shop. They couldn’t remember its name but Greg remembered you. He was very anxious to see you again and explain. Stand up straight, Greg. And say what you wanted to say.’

  Greg stood up straight but said nothing. He must have told their mother what had happened, but he had no words now.

  ‘Dr Covington means well, but my boys know they must pay for what they take.’ At a nod from his mother, Greg stepped forward and carefully handed me two coins.

  ‘Oh, please. No!’ I said. ‘My uncle is happy to know your sons enjoyed the peanut brittle.’

  ‘It is my son’s money and my son’s idea to pay for the sweets.’ Mrs McPherson looked very proud of her son. It made me think about the different lessons people try to pass on to children about money. And about who controls that money.

  ‘Five cents is enough.’ I passed one of the coins back to the boy. ‘I’ll make sure my uncle gets this. Thank you very much, young sir.’

  This was something that went beyond money. Mrs McPherson could easily have dropped off the few cents at Uncle Chen’s shop, which looked humble. The McPherson boys must have thought they were taking sweets from poverty-stricken storekeepers. They could not know, and I saw no reason to tell them, that the Chens owned the block the shop stood on as well as several adjoining blocks. With Uncle Chen in his shop, my grandmother had eyes on the ground.

  Mrs McPherson had come to the Detective Shack with her son because, although they were the family of the new governor, she was not raising her boys to behave as white rajahs. This made me like her very much, and gave me the courage to ask her, ‘This is very good of you, Mrs McPherson. May I ask why you summoned Dr Covington to treat your sons’ tuto
r that day? Don’t you trust the local doctors?’

  Le Froy looked surprised, but Mrs McPherson did not seem so at all. ‘I didn’t. And I do! Dr Covington came to Government House for a word with my husband and decided to wait because he was engaged. When he saw I had the boys with me because poor Mr Meganck was sick he insisted on seeing him. As it happened, he had his medical bag with him.’

  ‘That was convenient,’ Le Froy said.

  Mrs McPherson shook out her skirts with the air of a woman shaking off a memory. ‘He left some medicine. When Mr Meganck was feeling better, I brought the boys with him to see Dr Leask at the hospital clinic. Dr Leask wouldn’t criticize a fellow physician, but said that for minor matters I couldn’t do better than Dr Shankar at the pharmacy if we couldn’t find him at the clinic.’

  She turned back to me. ‘Dr Covington had his grandson with him, so I persuaded him to take my boys out. It was the only way I could get him out of the house. He was so determined to have a social chat with my husband and Gregory was equally determined not to. Dr Covington might have moved in permanently!’

  ‘You are not comfortable with Dr Covington, madam?’ I shouldn’t have said such a thing to an ang moh woman, let alone to the governor’s wife, but Mrs McPherson had a strong, friendly presence that somehow reminded me of Le Froy. She was certain enough of who she was not to care about how anyone else saw her.

  ‘It’s more accurate to say I am not yet comfortable with our position and responsibilities here. Please don’t misunderstand me. I may be one of the few women I know who genuinely believes my husband is a good man who will do a good job. But Gregory is not politically minded, thank God, and is ill at ease with those willing to take advantage of the perks of power.’

  ‘So it is on that principle that your boys pay for their peanut brittle,’ Le Froy observed drily.

  ‘Laugh if you must, sir.’ Mrs McPherson chuckled. ‘Though, of course, if a routine background search reveals Dr Covington has not the funds to buy sweets for his grandson, we would be happy to pay for his sweets too. I am a doctor’s daughter, and I’m not entirely convinced by a doctor who treats a patient without examining them. Even if he is an expert in putting together medicines.’