The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

by Ovidia Yu

  ‘He wants to stay with me,’ Nicole said, putting her arms around Junior. She might let her father-in-law bully her but she stood up for her son.

  Dr Covington started to say something as he reached out to pull her arms off her son. He didn’t finish because that was when I hit him on the back of his head with the heavy wooden stick.

  It deflected but did not stop him. Clapping a hand to his head he turned on me. I saw rage in his eyes, the blood rage of an injured wild boar. Then he was on me, a large, sweaty hand clamped around my neck. Close up, he reeked of alcohol and mouldy leather. But after one gasp I couldn’t breathe. The vicious hand cutting off my breath squeezed tighter, pushing me backwards till I felt the wall behind me. Through the grey-red mist rising in my eyes, I saw he was grinning, laughing even. The man was enjoying it.

  ‘You little fool. I’m glad you came. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this. You think you’re as good as a white man? Think again. Women are fools and sluts, only good for one thing. And you’re not even good enough for that!’

  I bucked and kicked at him. The grip on my throat loosened for a moment and I managed to gasp a breath of air.

  ‘Run!’ I croaked in Nicole’s direction. ‘Nicole! Run!’

  ‘This is crazy,’ Nicole said dreamily.

  The vicious grip on my throat tightened.

  ‘She’s not going anywhere. She’s next, you know, but she won’t be as much fun. She’s going to kill herself. Like her pretty boy Kenneth did.’

  The thick lips spread in a terrible smile and he shook me by the throat almost gently, giving me another gasp of air. He might be in a hurry but he enjoyed torturing me too much to finish me off fast. I felt bile rise from my stomach and wondered if my next gasp would drown me.

  ‘And your precious Le Froy is going down. I won’t lay a finger on him, don’t worry. He’ll go down for this. For killing you. Anyone can see he wasn’t keeping you around for your looks. The man was ravishing you. This time he got carried away and, the next thing you know, another local slut dead. I wish I could wait around to watch the show. But don’t worry. I’ll be sure to keep up with events from Australia!’

  ‘Nicole!’ I choked, with a last precious mouthful of air.

  Dr Covington laughed and was still laughing when Nicole hit him with the makkhana phirni.

  Once the hold on my throat had loosened, I collapsed to my knees, gasping and wheezing. Dr Covington was still standing. He had turned to face Nicole, who was holding the cooking utensil with both hands. He grabbed her right wrist and twisted it, yanking her whole arm sideways. I imagined him snapping her thin bones and kicked out, tangling my legs in his and finally bringing him down.

  I grabbed the heavy wooden implement from Nicole and hit him in the face. It was the first time I had hit a man when he was down, but I really didn’t want him getting up again. When he tried to rise I hit him once more. This time he stayed down.

  Nicole was giggling hysterically. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘I thought he was going to kill you.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ Junior whispered.

  ‘No.’ I wasn’t sure but I wasn’t taking any chances. ‘We’re going to tie him up and then we’re going to call the police.’

  ‘We’ll miss the boat,’ Junior protested.

  ‘I don’t like boats,’ Nicole said. ‘You can use my sashes. Or stockings. Old Taylor made me buy those monstrously tough ones that wouldn’t tear. There are some in the drawer that have never been worn.’ She smiled sweetly at us.

  We used both. Then when I was sure he was alive and not going anywhere, we locked the door behind us and made our way down to the reception area. I noticed Nicole held her little boy’s hand tightly.

  It felt like hours before anyone came. Then suddenly the room was full of police officers in their khaki shorts, and Sergeant de Souza was bending over me, saying, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Where’s Le Froy?’

  ‘On the way. The inquiry has been temporarily suspended.’

  ‘He was going to kill me!’ Nicole said. ‘He killed Kenneth. And Eric Schumer. My Eric!’

  ‘Take it easy. What happened here?’ de Souza looked warily at Nicole.

  ‘She’s not crazy.’ I turned to her. ‘Men aren’t dying from some curse because they fall in love with you. Dr Covington’s been killing them. He tried to kill you too. The poison was in your lipstick. The one that Junior took. He saved your life.’

  Conclusion

  Findings of the Commission of Inquiry into Le Froy’s conduct: In these difficult times, we are all doing what we can and every good man is needed. There was no apology for all they had put him and the department through, but at least they called him a good man. There was no further mention of suspending or shutting down the Detective and Intelligence Unit.

  You might have guessed that the article I had ‘read’ to Dr Covington was a fake. I had made it up, based on what I had put together from Kenneth’s notes and Mrs McPherson’s information. Making up a story was easier than I had expected. Quite fun, even. It was the first time it occurred to me that, if a career in journalism didn’t work out, I might try my hand at writing fiction.

  And though Kenneth didn’t write that either, the article covering Dr Covington’s arrest was real. I mean, it really appeared in the Weekend World as a Pip’s Squeaks column, written by ‘Pip’.

  I was the new Pip.

  Even Kenneth’s publishers didn’t know his true identity. They didn’t care, as long as they got their stories. After all, Kenneth Mulliner wasn’t even the original or only ‘Pip’ but one of many.

  I was glad Parshanti and I were friends again. I don’t think we really stopped being friends though it had felt that way at times.

  ‘Kenneth was an idiot in many ways, but at least he admitted it. And, yes, he did come out east thinking all Asians were stupid but he was open-minded enough to change his opinion. But you, Su, you’ve known me for years, for most of our lives, and you believed I was stupid enough to fall blindly in love with a murderer and blackmailer?’

  ‘He was stupid enough to confront Dr Covington about stealing his notes on Le Froy,’ I pointed out, ‘knowing that he had probably killed Victor.’

  Tears welled (again) in Parshanti’s eyes. ‘I tried to get him to go to the police. I tried to get him to tell you. But he felt bad about Victor and how his research had been used and everything was tangled up. He wanted to come clean about everything and start afresh.’

  The most dramatic element of the aftermath was how much Nicole Covington changed. You would think that finding out you’d been living with a killer and almost getting murdered yourself would shatter an already fragile woman. But Nicole pulled through amazingly well.

  Not at once, though. The next ten days, after she’d stopped taking all Dr Covington’s pills and powders, were hard. She had terrible sweats, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and the runs. She complained of aches and pains all over her body.

  ‘Your system got habituated to all the opioids Dr Covington was giving you,’ Dr Leask explained. ‘Now you have to get used to doing without them.’

  ‘It was worse before,’ Nicole said, ‘when I didn’t know what was happening. Now everything hurts, but at least I know it’s hurting.’

  After that week and a half, her health improved and she was both quieter and brighter, especially when Junior was around.

  ‘I love my Raddy more than anything on earth. I thought it was for his good that I didn’t spend too much time with him,’ Nicole said. ‘I wasn’t feeling well and that crazy old coot was a doctor, so of course I went on taking all the pills and powders he gave me. And when he said being with me too much was bad for the child, I tried to keep him away from me.’

  Junior’s health improved too. He had been having occasional asthma attacks, but without the constant presence of Dr Covington’s tobacco smoke, they stopped.

  Dr Covington must have replaced the original lip
stick with poisoned beeswax. It would have been easy for him. He knew poisons and he had made wax crayons for Junior in a bullet mould, bullets, crayons and lipsticks all being roughly the same shape. Luckily for Nicole, she had disliked the colour and never used it.

  Junior had taken the tube to play with, attracted by its decorative casing, and Victor, inspired by the erotic body painting he had seen, had taken it from Junior. Christmas passed almost unnoticed, but we were invited to see in the New Year at the Farquhar Hotel. As a grand conclusion to the evening, once the fireworks started over the harbour, Chef Kaeseven wheeled out a huge cake on a trolley with the older McPherson boy posing as an admiral in front.

  Admiral Greg hopped off in the middle of the lawn where he and Kaeseven lifted off the top of the cake. Everyone cheered when Junior and Pat McPherson jumped out waving sparklers. I thought the best part of the evening was how happy Nicole looked when Kaeseven announced the cake had been her idea and everyone raised their glasses and applauded her.

  And the best part of the coming year? The Weekend World had asked if the ‘New Pip’ would accept a commission to cover Dr Covington’s trial.

  I’m looking forward to it.

  Acknowledgements

  Ienjoyed writing this book even more than the first because it felt so good spending time with characters who had ‘survived’ their first outing.

  Big thanks for making this possible go to: the wonderfully patient agent Priya Doraswamy, editor Krystyna Green and the team at Little, Brown/Constable Crime, especially editorial assistant Ellie Russell, who worked so hard on the original typescript, desk editor Amanda Keats, Tracey Winwood, for the lovely cover, and the incredible Hazel Orme, who saved me from several disasters with her knowledge of hypodermic syringes, fifties hits and the differences between American and British English in 1930s Singapore!

  Thank you also to my writing support system: fellow writers in the Writer’s Murder Club, especially moderator Molly Lerma, and to Derek Chamberlain, for keeping up the Magic Spreadsheet that keeps me writing.

  And, most of all, thank you for picking up this book. If The Betel Nut Tree Mystery piques your interest, please visit my Facebook page and say hello. I would love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for future books!