by Ovidia Yu
‘What’s happening?’ Nicole was suddenly in the corridor. She looked bright-eyed and eager, as though she had been waiting for this moment, and she was fully dressed, which was unusual for her since it was not yet noon. ‘Kenneth’s got himself into trouble again, has he? Are you taking him away in handcuffs? Oh, let me see! Is his little girlfriend in there too? Did you catch them together? I want to see!’
‘No! Don’t go in there, madam!’
But Nicole ignored Van Dijk and pushed past him, sliding into the room and looking round eagerly. Then she started screaming.
My grandmother would have called her a siao zha bor or crazy woman. I normally avoid the term but in this case ‘siao’ described Nicole perfectly. I wanted to scream too, but I also wanted to examine the room more thoroughly. After the first grotesque shock, I had only gone round quickly to make sure no one was hiding there.
Kenneth had said he had something to show me. There was a chance that it was still in the room, whatever it might be, unless, of course, that was what he had been killed for. I wanted to examine the thought as well as that room but both were impossible with Nicole flailing around shouting about curses and death following her around.
‘Kenneth wasn’t involved with you. This has nothing to do with you,’ I told her.
‘He would have come round! I would have got him back from her!’ Nicole gripped handfuls of Van Dijk’s shirt.
Van Dijk and I heaved the silly shrieking woman out of Kenneth’s room, Van Dijk pausing only to make sure the door was locked behind us. Then, when Nicole draped herself on him, refusing to walk, he picked her up as easily as if she was a tailor’s dummy and carried her back to her room. I swore I would never make fun of him again, not even inside my head.
When Dr Leask arrived, soon after Le Froy, Van Dijk asked him to look in on Nicole and give her a sedative even before he had declared Kenneth dead. But Dr Leask’s first dose seemed to have no effect and Nicole continued weeping and wailing.
‘You’ll need to give her something much stronger,’ Dr Covington suggested.
Dr Covington and Junior had been in Junior’s playroom on the same floor as the Bachelor Room but they had been playing trains and had not heard anything.
‘It’s not safe. I don’t know what she may have taken earlier.’ Dr Leask studied Nicole, who glared back at him blearily. ‘She’s obviously taking something.’
‘I’m not!’ Nicole said.
‘She is,’ Dr Leask said quietly. ‘Look at her eyes. Pinpoint pupils. An indication of opioid-based intoxication. Add to that her dizziness, weakness and changes in mood, and I would guess morphine.’
He was clearly yearning towards the dead body downstairs, but dead Kenneth wasn’t going anywhere and Dr Leask’s first responsibility was to keep the living alive.
‘What have you been taking, Mrs Covington? Pain tablets? A cough remedy? How much did you swallow?’
Morphine would explain a lot, I thought. But Nicole refused to answer. When he tried to take her temperature, she lunged and tried to bite him.
He gave her a stronger dose.
The suicide note, his swollen discoloured jowls and the bleeding from his nose and mouth implied that Kenneth had poisoned himself with something similar to what had killed Victor. I might have believed this of Kenneth a week ago. But I didn’t believe it of the man who thought he was in love with Parshanti and had promised to come clean about everything.
I said as much to Le Froy, but there was nothing in the room that could have been the notes Kenneth had said he would pass me, that would help me understand his position.
From the foamy, bloody vomit around him, we thought he had swallowed a quantity of soapy water on top of the poison. Had he realized he had been poisoned and tried to induce vomiting?
I wished I had my camera with me but Sergeant Pillay had arrived with the station camera and was taking photographs. I moved out of his way and noticed what looked like dried grass by the room’s lawn exit. I took a closer look. Yes, palm fronds, but crushed, not dried.
‘From a palm tree, sir?’
‘Yes, fronds of the Areca catechu, or betel nut palm, to be precise,’ Le Froy said. His eyes were gleaming. ‘Quite different from the betel leaf, which comes off a vine as you and I know, but which a foreigner might not.’
Had someone, some foreigner, wanted to make sure Kenneth had all the betel paraphernalia involved in Victor’s poisoning?
And that wasn’t the only thing wrong with the suicide scenario.
‘Let me be here when you search the room,’ I said urgently. ‘Kenneth said that he was going to tell me something. He wanted to come clean. He had to clear it with someone first but he promised Parshanti he would.’
Parshanti. I couldn’t bear to think of the effect this news would have on her. I headed for the Shankars’ pharmacy.
Parshanti
‘How is Parshanti, Uncle?’
‘Lying down. I gave her a light sedative after we heard the news.’
Dr Shankar hesitated, then invited me to the narrow side stairs that led up to their living quarters. ‘Would you like to go up? It may help her to see you.’
I was surprised Dr Shankar had not come to the Farquhar with Dr Leask. He was usually fascinated with anything that involved poisons and autopsies, with theories miles ahead of slow and steady Dr Leask.
Dr Shankar had not liked his daughter being involved with Kenneth Mulliner. How far might a protective father go to get rid of a threat to his only beloved daughter? Especially when he had access to a pharmacy full of poisons.
I told myself that I was going mad and seeing murderers at every turn. All right, given the number of people who had been murdered around me, maybe I wasn’t being fanciful. But I would stake my life that anyone Dr Shankar killed deserved it.
Parshanti wasn’t lying down. She looked terrible. Her bedclothes were rumpled, half pulled off the narrow bed, and she was pacing around the tiny room, running her hands through her hair, which was a wild tangle. She looked like a pontianak or vengeful ghost.
Mrs Shankar, standing by the door, looked at me with exhausted desperation. Previously she had worried about her daughter’s morals and reputation. Now she was just worried about her daughter.
‘Hello, Auntie.’
‘Kenneth didn’t kill himself,’ Parshanti said.
‘Good of you to come, Su Lin. Have you eaten yet?’ Mrs Shankar’s eyes remained on Parshanti as she greeted me with automatic politeness.
‘Kenneth didn’t kill himself,’ Parshanti said again.
‘They found a suicide note in his room. Didn’t they, Su Lin? Tell her.’ There was a tremor in Mrs Shankar’s voice.
‘They found something, but I don’t think it was a suicide note,’ I said. ‘And I no longer believe he killed Victor.’
‘You’re just saying that to make me shut up. Kenneth knew you didn’t trust him. I hate you! I hate you all!’
First Nicole and now Parshanti. I could see why Le Froy avoided emotional women. But Parshanti was my friend and that made a big difference.
‘Wee barra, please calm down,’
‘Oh, be quiet, Mam!’
‘If Kenneth Mulliner committed suicide he would have staged it to look as though he had been murdered,’ I said. ‘And he would have left a note with you instead of typing out a confession.’
Parshanti sat on her bed, suddenly listening. ‘But if you don’t think he killed himself that means somebody killed him. Murdered him.’
‘Oh, no! Don’t say that!’ burst out of Mrs Shankar.
‘Mam, think! If Kenneth didn’t kill himself, what else could it be? Do you think he went back to his room and was suddenly struck down by God? And he couldn’t have typed a suicide note, not on his typewriter. He gave me the ribbon out of it when he was here last night, to prove that whatever he showed Su Lin this morning was already written. Look. I have it here.’ She started digging in a drawer.
Mrs Shankar murmured something about t
ea, and I heard her going down the stairs, but I was too intent on Parshanti to answer her.
I had seen the typed suicide note in Kenneth’s typewriter with my own eyes. I wanted to rush back to check the ribbon in the machine, but first . . .
‘Shanti, I know you’re hurting and I’m so very sorry. Really. But I want you to tell me what Kenneth’s secret was. What he was going to tell me this morning. I think keeping it secret got him killed. If only he had told me or Le Froy, he might be alive now.’
‘No.’
‘I know you promised him but—’
‘I mean no, it’s nothing like that! Nothing that could have got him killed. Kenneth was one of the Pips who wrote the Pip’s Squeaks column, that’s all.’
As I had already suspected. But that didn’t sound like something that might get a man killed. ‘One of?’
‘He said there were several of them. But he sent in the most articles because he worked the hardest at cultivating sources and getting news. He submitted his pieces by wire. That’s why the Weekend World was the only British paper to cover the Wallis Simpson story – Kenneth got photos from his American contacts. Taylor Covington was one of the people who passed him information and photographs on Americans.’
‘So Kenneth knew Dr Covington before Nicole and Victor got together? How?’
‘Kenneth was working as a private investigator but not the crime-solving sort. He was finding information. He was sending reports on Victor to Victor’s family, and other people started asking him to get information for them. He met Taylor Covington in America when he was looking into the previous husbands of Mrs Simpson. The English government bought some of those reports, and what they didn’t want he wrote up for the newspapers or as Pip’s Squeaks columns. He passed me the reports he had made on Mrs Simpson.’
‘I thought he was watching Victor Glossop.’
‘He was. But most of the time Victor was hanging around with the same crowd and going to the same sort of parties. Kenneth had someone else keep an eye on him. Victor thought he was in the countryside tutoring Russian immigrants. He never mentioned it because he knew Kenneth needed the money.’
In his way, Victor Glossop had tried to protect his friend too.
‘But Kenneth didn’t use all his information. He never meant to use what he found on Le Froy.’
‘He did, though, didn’t he?’ Remembering the article, my anger with Kenneth returned.
‘No, he didn’t! He never did! He was hopping mad about that. He thought one of the other Pips had cut into his territory and was sending in reports from the colony. That’s what he was going to show you, so you would see from his notes that he never wrote that piece. But then he found that some of his notes were missing.’
‘Missing?’
When you watch Katharine Hepburn or Greta Garbo bravely facing a tragedy they are always beautiful, their brimming eyes bright with tears and perfectly outlined lips trembling with emotion. Parshanti’s eyes were red and swollen from crying, her lips were cracked and there was a rash on her neck. That was what real grief looked like and it wasn’t pretty.
‘I suppose you should see this too.’
‘This’ was five typewritten sheets of paper Parshanti had folded into the ‘ladies’ necessities’ pouch in her underwear drawer, along with hand scribblings in the margins and a couple of folded receipts stapled to the last, which contained notes of accounts.
‘He was writing one last piece. About the damage keeping secrets could do. He was going to publish that, and then he was going to stop writing. He really meant it.’
‘Can I keep these? Just for a while? I’ll bring them back to you.’
Parshanti hesitated, then nodded. ‘Keep them for now. I don’t want my mother to find them. And Kenneth told me what really happened the night that Radley Covington died.’
‘Nicole told me what happened.’ I folded the papers and receipts carefully into my own bag.
‘Nicole doesn’t know what happened.’
‘Then how could Kenneth?’
‘He researched it. To get a story for Pip’s Squeaks. But that’s another story he was never going to use. That’s how he was, Su. He had to turn up stories about people like them because he had to make a living. That’s what the papers paid for. But he was also interested in people, so he searched harder than anyone else. And he never published anything that would really hurt anybody. He was going to save it all up and write them into novels one day.’
‘But how . . .’
‘Radley was supposed to be away on business. Nicole met up with Eric Schumer at a speakeasy, in town. Eric was a friend of Nicole’s from before she married. Nicole hated being alone and liked going out. Radley had his girlfriends but he got jealous if Nicole so much as smiled at a doorman. Well, Nicole soon got sick of that, and being forbidden to see Eric made her want to go out with him all the more.’
I could well believe that of Nicole.
‘But, actually, Kenneth had set up the meeting to get a story for Pip’s Squeaks. Taylor Covington had told him that Nicole was communicating with Eric. Kenneth just wanted to get some photographs and a story. He didn’t realize Taylor Covington was out to make trouble between his son and his son’s wife. Radley only pretended to go away. When Nicole said she was spending a night in town with her girlfriends, Taylor Covington told Kenneth, and Kenneth arranged to take the room next to hers in the hotel and set up his listening and recording devices. It was for work.
‘Anyway, Covington appeared at the hotel with his son. If Nicole had really been with her girlfriends, they would probably have spent the night playing cards and laughing. But once Radley heard Eric’s voice in the next room, he was furious. They couldn’t stop him bursting in.
‘Nicole said they had only come up for her to get something from her bag but Radley wouldn’t listen. He punched Eric in the face and drove off home with Nicole.
‘That was when the accident happened. The police report said Radley had been drinking and was driving far too fast. His side of the car was smashed by an oncoming truck when he didn’t stop for a traffic light. But Taylor Covington went around trying to prove Eric Schumer had tampered with the car or been in league with the truck driver. He carried on with that until Eric was also killed in a car accident.’
‘Kenneth came up with that story and didn’t write it up?’
‘He thought he was in love with Nicole. When he heard she was going to Europe he thought she was following him. But it turned out that Nicole barely remembered him. And Victor barged in, as he always did. Victor always took whatever he wanted. And he was rich so, of course, Nicole preferred him.’
‘Kenneth told you all that?’
‘He said he only thought he was in love with her. Then . . .’
‘Then he met you,’ I said, ‘and he knew he was in love.’
Detective Shack
The next morning, Le Froy was called before a Commission of Inquiry. He had submitted the private report he had been compiling on the movement of Japanese spies in Singapore, and the Home Office had accused him of treason and of abusing his power of office.
According to what Sergeant Pillay had heard (Prakesh Pillay seemed to have a girlfriend in every government office), the commission had said there would be terrible consequences if Le Froy’s findings were made public. Britain’s position on the European Alliance was clear: no action was to be taken. According to Le Froy, the consequences of not making it public would be worse.
I was sure this had been triggered partly by the Pip’s Squeaks article. They were just looking for an excuse to get him into trouble.
There was a possibility that the whole department would be shut down or suspended.
I went to see Parshanti, but she was finally getting some sleep and I didn’t stay. The ribbon Parshanti said Kenneth had taken out of his typewriter was on my mind. Depending on how the commission judged Le Froy, I might not have a job tomorrow. I could sit around worrying about that or I could find out more about K
enneth’s typewriter ribbon.
I decided to check the machine.
When I passed Uncle Chen’s shop he was standing at the front, uncharacteristically still. ‘Hello, Uncle. Are you outside to fish for customers?’
‘You always so smart to talk. Come in and eat something.’
‘No, thank you. I’m in a hurry.’
‘You know that the old ang moh who came in with the small boys bought passage on a transport trawler for two people to Australia?’
‘Dr Covington?’
Uncle Chen nodded. ‘He booked for two people. Travelling as rice sacks on cargo boat.’ That meant they were travelling unofficially, without papers. I knew better than to ask how he had discovered this, just as I knew better than to ask how tax-free imported goods appeared in his back room. Likely he was getting a cut of whatever Dr Covington had paid.
Two people? I supposed Junior would be part of Dr Covington’s ‘rice sack’.
‘After today they may not need it. What is happening to your boss? Are they going to put him in prison?’
I didn’t want to think about that. ‘When is the boat leaving? The cargo boat to Australia?’
If the commission dismissed Le Froy, he would be the one leaving the island. But Dr Covington and Nicole clearly didn’t intend to hang around for the investigation into Kenneth’s death.
‘Supposed to be tonight.’
That didn’t give me much time. Uncle Chen read my expression. ‘But these boats always got engine trouble. Even if they got a lot of money can only fix by next week.’
I felt a sudden rush of affection for my gloomy-looking uncle. ‘That would be good.’
‘Was Kenneth Mulliner’s typewriter brought in?’
‘In the dungeon, along with the rest of his things. Is something wrong with your typewriter?’ Sergeant de Souza prided himself on keeping the office equipment running.
‘I just want to have a look at it.’
