by Ovidia Yu
‘Did he?’ I hadn’t realized that. ‘Is he? But, madam, I thought you said he looked in on Mr Meganck.’
‘He stayed in the doorway, a good five feet from the bed, with his handkerchief to his face for fear of infection. He said I ought to keep the boys away from their tutor to prevent infection spreading. As for the medicine, he said it was his own patented recipe. Gregory is always reminding me not to criticize differences, and I’m sure pharmaceutical standards differ from country to country, but in a British colony like this, British standards should apply.’
‘He makes crayons,’ Greg McPherson put in.
‘Oh, yes. He offered to teach our cook to make wax colouring sticks for the boys like he made for his grandson. He melts beeswax and palm wax with powdered chalks and sets it in bullet moulds. That’s quite all right with me, since they’re not going to swallow them.’
This was interesting and I filed it away to think about another time. Right then I was more interested in finding out why Mrs McPherson, who seemed a smart and practical woman, was standing there telling pointless stories. I guessed she had come to tell Le Froy something but didn’t know how to bring it up. Still, even Le Froy couldn’t tell the governor’s wife to hurry up and get to the point.
‘Something about Dr Covington makes you uncomfortable,’ Le Froy said quietly. ‘What is it?’
‘Oh, no!’ Mrs McPherson said automatically. Then she laughed. ‘I mean, oh, yes. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It is such a silly thing. But I suppose that’s really why I came. During that visit, Dr Covington passed me a note asking if I was related to Manasseh Meyer.’
Manasseh Meyer was a rich local merchant and a generous philanthropist.
‘I believe he was telling me he knows my mother’s family is Jewish,’ Mrs McPherson continued, ‘and his writing it down suggests he thinks it is something to be hidden. From the children, for instance.’
‘Mother let us see the note,’ her son said.
One thing about a tiny island like Singapore is that every man, woman and monkey in it originated somewhere else. Whether your distant ancestors sailed from China, India, the Malay archipelago or the United Kingdom, your decision to stay is the only thing that makes you Singaporean. Your presence counts more than your origins.
At least, that was how it was supposed to be. Beneath an upper crust of white colonial administrators, the rest of us were muddled together like a savoury stew under mashed potatoes.
‘Dr Covington thinks Mrs Covington may have killed a Jewish man,’ I said, talking fast to get it out before I took fright. ‘His name was Eric Schumer. It was probably an accident but she doesn’t remember. Maybe Dr Covington wondered if you were related to him too.’
‘I wonder if I am.’
I thought Le Froy might tell me off for mentioning Mr Schumer, but all he said, mildly, was, ‘Some say Raffles, the founder of this island, must have been of Jewish stock, his family name evolving from “Raphael”. Blackmail only works if you fear it.’
‘Oh, there was no mention of blackmail,’ Mrs McPherson said. ‘I felt Dr Covington was trying to show me what a good fellow he was. How good he was at keeping secrets.’
‘Yet it made you uneasy.’
Again, she seemed to take a moment to consider his words – or him – before answering. ‘Only because, for a man in my husband’s position, the appearance of transparency can be as important as actual transparency. Keeping our private lives private can be too easily interpreted as hiding secrets. I’m sure you feel the same way, Chief Inspector. And because I was surprised to find information about my family in the hands of an American tourist.
‘Dr Covington also warned me about government administrators out here. He may not have realized he was insulting my husband to my face. He wanted to warn us not to trust you, Chief Inspector. He claims you have been wasting official time and resources trying to get information from America about him and his relations.’
Le Froy nodded, acknowledging this. So that was what he had been querying with the new wire machine in his office. Even with modern technology you had to have a human on the other side willing to answer your questions. Some officious administrator must have alerted Dr Covington.
‘Anyway, I mentioned to a friend in Washington that I would appreciate information on Dr Covington and his late son. They are our guests on the island, even if not your suspects.’
‘Information, madam?’
‘Love affairs, business transactions, bank accounts, friends and foes . . . Call me a nosy parker!’ Mrs McPherson laughed merrily and got up to leave.
‘She would have made a good wife for the King,’ Sergeant Pillay said, after we’d watched the official motor-car drive off. That was a common enough compliment at the time.
What was surprising was that Le Froy said quietly, ‘Yes.’
Pip’s Squeaks
Chief Inspector Le Froy – Merely Incompetent or Criminally Dangerous?
Pip’s Squeaks asked (and answered) the question in the Weekend World that arrived the next morning.
Why did Thomas Le Froy leave England? The story, dear children, begins with the death of Le Froy’s wife.
Mrs Jane Elizabeth Le Froy died after being hit by a motor-car not twenty feet from her own front door. Senior Detective (as he was then) Thomas Le Froy claimed someone deliberately targeted his wife. The driver of the motor-car claimed Mrs Le Froy, who had been walking on the pavement with a shopping basket, had ‘suddenly’ jumped onto the road in front of his vehicle. Le Froy insisted she must have been pushed and talked wildly about threats he had received.
This despite the fact that in 1928, the year Mrs Le Froy died, over seven thousand road deaths and over two hundred thousand motoring injuries were recorded; the highest number ever recorded in Britain. There were calls to enforce a motoring speed limit. But as Conservative MP Colonel Mosley-Partington points out, over six thousand people commit suicide every year, deaths that are swept under the rug.
The article also quoted Colonel Mosley-Partington as saying, There are better ways than suicide to escape an unhappy marriage, which seemed to indicate an unofficial verdict that Mrs Jane Le Froy had committed suicide to get away from her husband. Or even that Le Froy might have killed her for threatening to leave him.
And that, with a second innocent death on his doorstep, Senior Detective Le Froy had been removed from his position.
There was more in the article about how the Home Office used colonial outposts like Singapore as dumping grounds for criminal and incompetent staff, but nothing about more about the first ‘innocent death’ credited to Le Froy.
Well, at least this new article disproved my half-hearted theory that the late Victor Glossop had been ‘Pip’. But what was that first ‘innocent death’ the article mentioned?
I trusted Le Froy but we had no idea what his history was before he was exported out east.
‘No need to mention this in the office,’ Sergeant de Souza said, asserting for once his number-two position in the Detective Shack. The men didn’t seem as surprised as I was. ‘Don’t leave that paper lying around when he comes in.’
‘Did you know about the chief inspector’s wife?’ I demanded.
‘No need to discuss,’ de Souza said firmly. ‘Not our business.’
So the men had known about Le Froy’s dead wife. At least I knew they didn’t gossip. If I ever turn to crime, I hope to be investigated by prim, proper British-trained men and not avidly curious women like Mrs McPherson and myself.
The bright side was that if the police force already had these details they wouldn’t be surprised. Though what Mrs McPherson had said about the appearance of transparency might apply as well to Le Froy as to her husband.
I find it impossible to take my mind off one thing unless I give it something else to fixate on. I turned back to Corporal Wong Meng’s notes on Miss Nakagawa Koto, the dead Japanese prostitute. The inventory of her belongings included a lipstick in a jewelled casing of coloured stones.
That stirred a memory to the surface.
‘Where are the Japanese woman’s things?’ I asked. ‘Still in HQ or handed over to her relatives?’
‘I don’t think she had relatives, so probably still in the dungeon,’ de Souza said. The ‘dungeon’ was a small concrete bunker outside Police HQ, formerly a fuel shed. It was so named because there were bars across the single window and the door locked from the outside. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘The lipstick they found. In a jewelled case. Mrs Covington lost a lipstick like that.’
‘Can never understand why modern women use lipstick,’ Sergeant Pillay said. ‘In the old days women chewed paan to make their lips red so men look at them and feel sexy. But, actually, paan is an aphrodisiac, so once you kiss one of those women, you have no choice but to feel sexy.’
‘I’m going over to see Corporal Wong at HQ,’ I said.
But as I reached the door Le Froy was coming in, with a stack of papers bearing the Government House crest and an air of quiet excitement.
‘What is it, sir?’ de Souza asked.
‘In response to the governor’s enquiry, the Morgan Bank confirms Mrs Radley Covington closed her account and is no longer a client. It is the same with all the institutions she banked with.’
All Nicole’s shares had been liquidated some time back, and the money removed from her account. Not only that, the last person who had enquired into her finances (and been balked by the bank) was Kenneth Mulliner.
And there had not been very much left in the accounts when they were closed.
‘Sir, Dr Covington said he’s been taking care of Junior’s needs from his own account since they left America,’ I said. ‘I thought it was because he wanted to. But could it be because Nicole doesn’t have enough money?’
‘This doesn’t say Mrs Covington has no money,’ Sergeant Pillay said, his eyes skimming down the printout. Prakesh Pillay might be slow in some areas but he was super-fast when it came to money. ‘It just says she took all her money back from Mr Morgan’s bank. Maybe she knows something. Remember what happened less than ten years ago to Americans who trusted their banks?’
Le Froy spread Mrs McPherson’s papers on the table. Some were single sheets, others three or more pages stapled together.
‘Dr Covington’s wife made sure her money went to her son, Radley, rather than to her husband. And after Radley’s death, the fortune passed to Radley’s wife, Nicole.’
I picked up a single page and read about a minor confusion when the party had been boarding the ocean liner. According to the report, the ticket Dr Taylor Covington used had been booked under the name of Eric Schumer and the note of transfer had been lost.
‘Sir, I thought Dr Covington booked them on the voyage out after Eric’s death fearing Nicole might be suspected of killing him.’
Le Froy pushed another paper towards me. ‘This suggests Eric and Nicole were lovers and planning to run away to Europe together.’
Eric Schumer and Nicole Robert had been close friends for years and there were whispers they had been unofficially engaged before she was swept off her feet by Radley Covington. After Radley’s death, Eric and Nicole were again seen together in New York City. It was Eric who had booked and paid for their passage to London: a stateroom for Nicole and another for himself and Radley Junior.
Most of this information came from investigations previously ordered by Eric Schumer’s family. His mother blamed Nicole for his death, which remained officially unsolved.
I looked at Eric Schumer’s post-mortem report. It was not a routine hit-and-run accident. He had been hit and run over several times with his own car.
‘Eric Schumer was going to share a cabin with Junior, not with Nicole,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t that sound strange if they were lovers? And this is after her husband died. Nicole didn’t have to hide that she was seeing Eric or run away with him unless his family was making trouble. But why would they, sir?’
‘Because she’s not Jewish? Because she has a son? Because they wanted Eric to marry another woman approved by his relatives? There are always reasons.’
I would ask Nicole about that, I thought. Eric Schumer’s family would hardly have had him murdered because he was seeing her. But what if they had tried to scare her off (as her desire to leave America suggested) and something had gone terribly wrong?
‘Is there anything on Eric Schumer’s family, sir?’
‘Father is professor emeritus of physics at New York University. Mother was a classical pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall and is now a well-respected music teacher. He was one of three children. The brother, Howard, is a paediatrician, the sister, Lucy, a medical researcher. She and her husband are among the group working on a vaccine for poliomyelitis.’
Of course you can’t judge people based on their professions, but Eric’s family didn’t sound like people who would hire a killer to get rid of Nicole, especially not one who ended up killing their son by mistake. If they had wanted Nicole dead, she would be dead. I was glad I hadn’t mentioned my theory to Le Froy.
‘Did Nicole tell you who she was trying to get away from when she left America?’ Le Froy asked.
‘I assumed it was the police, sir. Dr Covington said she was afraid they would think she got drunk and ran over Eric.’
Le Froy dismissed this with a twist of his mouth. I didn’t know whether it was directed at Nicole or the American police. But he was clearly off on another train of thought.
I picked up another sheet and saw a photo print of a newspaper article that caught my attention. The brief report covered the hearing on the case of sixty-eight-year-old Reverend Thomas Elijah Watkins, who had been kicked to death outside his church after responding to the terrified screams of two girls who had just left a Sunday school class. Seven-year-old Cassandra and five-year-old Emma-May Watkins were judged too young and unreliable to testify on the death of their great-uncle and no one else had seen or heard anything. Charges against Houston Carriway, Radley Covington, Travis Devine and Gavin Parnell were dismissed.
The hearing was chaired by Dr Taylor Covington. He was quoted as saying, ‘The boys were just being boys and having fun with those girls. That old coloured man should not have interfered. He should have known his place and stayed in it. But he refused to show proper respect.’ He called on the town council to implement stricter segregation measures to keep the streets safe. If the Watkins girls had not been brazenly walking around on the street the unfortunate incident might have been avoided.
The article concluded that all four had been warned and reprimanded.
I couldn’t help thinking that maybe Radley had deserved to die.
Tomato Explosion
‘Come in!’
I wasn’t surprised to find Parshanti in Nicole’s suite when I pushed the door open. She was sitting on the sofa watching Nicole play solitaire with her bridge cards and I saw her glance behind me. For once I shared her disappointment that Kenneth Mulliner was not in the room. There were things I wanted to bring up with Nicole too, of course.
Nicole noticed Parshanti’s sudden hope and disappointment. ‘Sorry, Topsy. Kenneth seems to have better things to do today than look in on us. Did you make plans to sneak in some cosy time with him?’
‘Of course not!’ Parshanti burst out. Then, as Nicole shrilled with laughter, she looked so embarrassed that I felt sorry for her despite her silliness over handsome murder suspects.
‘And you’re finally here. Hello, Nancy Drew, Girl Sleuth! What are you detecting today?’
‘I am a secretarial assistant, not a detective,’ I said. ‘And, besides, the investigation is over.’
‘So did you come to cry over all the dreadful dirty things your precious Le Froy has been doing? Do you need Mama Nicole’s help to get out of his clutches? I can understand why she did it, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘The late lamented Mrs Le Froy, of course. You wouldn’t understand, but being married can do that to you. While I was ma
rried I often thought of jumping off a bridge or under a train. But places like that are always so full of common people. I couldn’t bear the thought of them looking at my poor dead body. But a husband can drive you to do such things.’
I had tensed at the mention of the article. I had almost forgotten it, given de Souza’s nonchalant dismissal and the news that had come from Government House. But before I could say anything Kenneth slammed the door open, without knocking, and came in.
‘Where’s Taylor? I need to talk to him.’
‘You can see he’s not here.’ Nicole leaned back, pouting prettily. ‘Come and have a drinkie and tell Nicole what you’re so angry about. My, the whole world is coming to my door today.’
Nicole flirted with men as a matter of course. It was the only calling open to an upper-class, badly educated white woman. Like a shopkeeper being nice to customers, you did what you had to do to make a living. Nicole’s profession was finding herself rich husbands, and she did that very well. She just wasn’t very good at keeping them alive.
Kenneth ignored Nicole’s invitation. He was holding a copy of the Weekend World, folded with the Le Froy piece in front, and I had the impression it was with effort that he kept his anger under control. ‘Taylor’s not in his room.’
‘Well, he’s not in mine either, honey pie. Unless you want to check under my bed. Or my skirts.’
Parshanti gave a little squeak of alarm. Kenneth left without answering. And Nicole’s mood immediately soured.
‘He hasn’t eaten or drunk anything with me for days. I think he’s actually trying to avoid me! I’d say you’ve put a spell on him, Parshanti, except he’s not looking at you either. Oh, why are men so silly?’
Nicole didn’t look any more like a murderess than she had the last time I’d seen her. I was sure Dr Covington suspected her of killing Eric Schumer as well as Victor Glossop. He must have told us because he couldn’t do anything about it, being bound to protect the mother of his grandchild. But I was convinced he hoped we would find proof so he could protect Junior.
