Diane shrugged, as she flicked her cigarette ash over the balcony rail.
‘They’re a pretty tough bunch, the Robertsons. Hunting, shooting and cussing, that’s their style. But George did sound cut up, what little I could make out over the wires.’
She was dressed in the same outfit as she was at the mortuary, a black skirt and crisp white blouse. It was obviously her version of a mourning outfit and Blackwell wondered what she would wear at the actual funeral.
‘This padre chappie was very helpful,’ she said calmly. ‘He rang around and fixed the ceremony for tomorrow afternoon, at the English church in Taiping.’
Steven nodded. ‘The coroner is issuing the release certificate in the morning, so I’ll give you a driver to take you to Ipoh to collect it and go to the Registrar.’
Diane looked surprised at this. ‘Oh God, do I have to go myself?’
‘Afraid so, you are the only eligible informant. It’s only a formality, you’ll be back before lunchtime.’
As he moved towards the steps, he turned back to the new widow.
‘We’ll all rally around at the funeral, Diane. A few of the people from BMH want to be there, as well as some other members from The Dog. You’ll need some support, with no one from his family able to be there.’
Diane murmured some thanks, but Steve felt she was not overcome with gratitude and suspected there were a couple of female faces that she would prefer not to see in Taiping.
As he drove away, his last glimpse was of her in her typical posture, leaning on the veranda rail with a glass in one hand and a Kensitas in the other.
Sunday lunch in the RAMC Mess was something of a ritual, a hangover from the days when many officers were ex-Indian Army and demanded their curry on a regular basis.
Though Meng was nominally the cook, she was assisted by Vellatum, an Indian kitchen ‘boy’, though he was actually a wizened fellow in his forties, who had been badly beaten up by the Japanese during the Occupation. On Sundays, Meng took the day off to go on the bus to visit her sister in Kuala Kangsar and Vellatum was given a free hand to prepare the weekly curry.
The general idea was for the residents to eat as much of the eye-watering mixture as they could manage, chase it with a few Tigers, then crawl satiated to their room to pull on a sarong and collapse sweating on to their beds for a few hours. Such a novel Sunday lunch was a new experience for Tom, as Tyneside had yet to see any oriental eating houses. Yet he rapidly took to the fiery concoction that Vellatum served up and happily spooned down the colourful food, alternating with mouthfuls of beer to put out the flames in his gullet.
‘I like all these little bits on the side,’ he said, after blowing through his lips that were burning from a shred of red chilli. He pointed to the tray in the centre of the table that held small dishes filled with shredded coconut, banana, mango chutney, cashew nuts and other unidentifiable substances.
‘What are these things?’
‘That’s Bombay duck,’ answered Eddie Rosen. ‘Little dried fish, actually.’
Tom shook his head in wonderment at the strange ways of the East, as he accepted some more rice, the Indian coming around the table with a tureen filled with the fluffy white grains. When the curry was finished and they were waiting for their dessert, the conversation inevitably turned to the dramatic events of the weekend.
‘The CO’s in an unusually benign mood,’ announced Alf Morris. ‘He’s said that anyone whose duties allow, should attend James Robertson’s funeral tomorrow. We should try to get there to give some support to Diane, as she’ll have no family there at all.’
There was a murmur of agreement around the table.
‘Is our dear colonel going himself?’ asked Percy Loosemore, managing as usual to inject sarcasm into his voice.
‘No, he says he’s too busy, with the ADMS coming up from Singapore next week – though I can’t see what that’s got to do with it,’ added Alf, with a rare hint of disloyalty to his senior officer. Tom had already added ‘Assistant Director of Medical Services’ to his compendium of acronyms.
‘We’d better work out a travel plan,’ suggested David Meredith. ‘No point in everyone taking a car to Taiping.’
‘Especially those who don’t have one,’ said Eddie. ‘Tom and I will need a lift from somebody.’
‘I can’t go, I’m afraid,’ said Peter Bright, stonily. ‘I’m on call and Roger Lane says he can’t stand in for me tomorrow.’ Most of his colleagues around the table assumed that this was a tactful gesture to avoid seeing off the man they suspected he had been cuckolding.
‘Is this going to be a funeral procession all the way?’ grunted the sardonic Percy. ‘Who’s taking the corpse – and how? On a gun carriage or in the back of a three-tonner?’
Alec Watson made a noise suspiciously like a giggle, but the Admin Officer glared at Percy.
‘He was a civilian, remember?’ said Alf. ‘A hearse is coming up from Ipoh in the morning. The only Western-style undertaker in Perak. We’re all to meet up with him in Taiping at three thirty.’
‘And that’s at the Anglican church, not the military cemetery!’ added Clarence Bottomley sternly. Montmorency had little sense of humour and Percy’s waspish tongue got up his long aristocratic nose.
‘Everyone in civvies, not uniform,’ commanded Alfred. ‘The colonel was insistent on that.’
Vellatum came in with a tray of glass dishes containing gula malacca, the traditional dessert served after a curry. Tom found he liked this as well, a sweet, sticky mound of sago swimming in palm sugar and coconut milk. After they had all ingested this antidote to the cook-boy’s culinary dynamite, the talk went back to tomorrow’s excursion.
‘Is it a men-only affair or are the ladies attending?’ asked Clarence.
‘As the widow is the only official mourner, the Matron suggested that it might show some feminine solidarity if a few of the QA officers went along as well,’ said Alfred Morris. ‘Maybe someone could give them a ring later and see if any want transport, as only a couple have cars.’
Tom’s thoughts immediately fell to hoping that Lynette might be going, especially if she could come in the same car and resolved to hint to Alf that he offer them space in his Hillman.
Coffee was next on the agenda before everyone crept off to their pits to sleep off the meal, but in the anteroom next door, the disgruntled anaesthetist brought up the murder once again.
‘Has the local Gestapo been around you all yet?’ Meredith asked sourly. ‘Steve Blackwell was almost rattling his handcuffs when he came to see me yesterday.’
All except Peter Bright denied being interrogated, giving Percy the chance to tactlessly claim that obviously the surgeon and his gasman were the prime suspects.
‘The superintendent told me that he would be around later today and again in the morning,’ announced Alfred, whose ‘Admin’ job made him the official contact with the outside world, which included the police. There was a groan from several of them and Eddie rattled his cup back into its saucer and stood up.
‘In that case, I’m off to my scratcher now, to get a bit of kip before the constabulary come to beat the truth out of me.’
As he stumbled across the coarse grass towards his room, he was followed by a straggle of bloated and sleepy medical officers.
It was early evening before Steven Blackwell arrived at the hospital and most of the residents were dragging themselves from under their mosquito nets to wash and dress ready for dinner. A few were sitting writing letters home or having a beer on chairs dragged out on to the concrete verandah, where they could enjoy the glorious sunset.
Alf Morris, in his usual role as organizer and go-between, asked several officers to go over one at a time to the empty anteroom to talk to the policeman.
‘He realizes it’s bit near dinner, so it won’t take long,’ he said reassuringly. Steven had brought Inspector Tan with him, who silently recorded the interviews in his notebook, to turn into statements which the witnesses could sign af
ter they were typed up back at police headquarters.
Eddie Rosen ambled over first, still in his gaudy red-and-white check sarong that he wore in bed. He had little to tell Steven, other than he was fast asleep in bed from ten thirty on Friday evening and knew nothing of the tragedy until breakfast.
‘He could be an obnoxious so-and-so, could Jimmy Robertson,’ observed Eddie ruminatively. ‘A top-class snob was James and a bit thick with it. But I’m appalled that someone has topped the poor devil. There must be a woman at the bottom of it somewhere, surely. That was his only interest in life, apart from booze. He didn’t even play golf!’
The superintendent thanked him and mentally wrote him off as a suspect. The little doctor was hardly a heart-throb and Steven knew he had left a wife and two babies back in London, making him an unlikely candidate for a crime of passion.
He felt much the same about the next interviewee, Alec Watson. The Scot looked more like a schoolboy and Blackwell had difficulty in believing that he must now be at least twenty-five to have qualified and done his house-surgeon time in Edinburgh. Like Eddie, he claimed to have been tucked up in bed at the material time and Steven had no reason to doubt him. Though he was an inveterate gatherer of gossip, Alec was a canny-enough Scot not to offer Blackwell either his opinions or his scraps of tittle-tattle about James and various ladies, so the interview was short and sweet.
The next man was Lieutenant Clarence Bottomley, who was rather pompous and formal with the policemen. Far from being in a sarong like Eddie, he was gorgeously arrayed in full mess kit, as he announced that he had been invited over to a Mess Night at the West Berkshires. A starched white monkey jacket sat stiffly above his dark blue ‘Number One’ trousers with their cherry-red strip down the outside of the legs. A matching cummerbund around his waist contrasted with a gleaming white shirt, which displayed small gold studs and a carefully tied black bow.
‘This goes against the grain a little, superintendent,’ he complained, as he sat erect on the edge of the chair opposite the policeman. ‘We’re officers on active service, y’know. Shouldn’t be chivvied around by civilians like this.’
Steven, who was almost old enough to be his father, sighed but held his tongue. ‘Just routine, doctor. As for being a civilian, I think you may find that your own military police may be taking an interest in this matter before long.’
This brought Montmorency up short and he had no answer to offer. Steven went through the same questions, asking where Bottomley had been when James Robertson was shot. This time he got a different answer to being in bed, as the others had claimed.
‘I was out with a couple of chaps in Ipoh, as it happens. Fellows I knew at school, actually.’
It seemed that a subaltern from the Rifle Brigade and another from 22 SAS had joined up with Clarence to visit a new nightclub in Ipoh. The superintendent ruminated on this as Inspector Tan painstaking wrote down all the details that Steven drew from the reluctant lieutenant. Quite a number of these rather seedy joints had appeared in the towns of North Malaya, depending heavily on the military for their clientele. The usual venue was a large house, with a dimly-lit bar, a minute dance floor and a record player. The patrons were a mixed bag, as although most of the men were officers, there was also a number of Chinese and Indian businessmen. Malays were uncommon, mainly because they eschewed alcohol. The usual shortage of European women was made up for by ladies from the same two races and although the clubs were far from being houses of ill repute, certainly many a liaison was contracted before the evening was out.
Steven had no interest in pursuing Bottomley’s activities in Ipoh, but wanted to know what time he arrived back at Tanah Timah.
‘Must have been about two, I suppose,’ said Montmorency airily. ‘I dropped my chaps off at their messes in Sungei Siput and then drove home.’
He made no mention of any activity around the Casualty Department at BMH, but Steven supposed that most of the panic must have died down by two in the morning.
‘You drove back alone?’
The tall, thin officer looked indignant at this mild enquiry.
‘Of course! Look, what is this? Am I under some sort of suspicion or something? Can’t you take the word of an officer?’
Steven felt that Montmorency had almost said ‘officer and gentleman’ and hastened to smooth his ruffled feathers.
‘Just routine, Clarence! We have to know where everyone was at the material time, you see. And to get corroboration where possible.’
‘Well I was in my jolly old Riley at the material time, miles from here,’ he snapped crossly. Then he stood up, deciding that the police had had enough of his time.
‘And I have to be at the Garrison Mess in five minutes. Dashed rude to turn up late, the Brigadier will be there tonight.’
With that, he nodded curtly to them and stalked out.
‘Cocky young devil,’ muttered Steven, but Tan kept a discreet silence.
The senior policeman looked at a list on a sheet of paper and ticked off a few names. ‘No point in bothering Dr Howden or Major Morris – we know well enough where they were on Friday night.’ He dabbed his face with a handkerchief, wondering if another nine years in this country would finally acclimatize him to the heat. ‘Right, let’s call it a day, Inspector.’
‘What about the lady nurses and the colonel, sir?’ the Indian reminded him softly.
‘Tomorrow morning, Tan. They’re not going anywhere.’
EIGHT
The funeral cortège went at a steady forty miles an hour northwards through the flat land between Ipoh and Taiping, green hills and mountains rearing up on the right. The pre-war hearse led the way, as this was a ‘White Area’ with no curfew nor restrictions on travel. In many parts, such as the long winding road up to the Cameron Highlands hill station, only convoys shepherded by armoured cars were allowed.
Behind the vintage Daimler came a motley collection of about a dozen vehicles, ranging from Alf’s old Hillman to Clarence Bottomley’s sleek Riley. There were several other cars belonging to other planters and to garrison and hospital staff, including an Armstrong-Siddeley Typhoon belonging to the matron and Alec Watson’s creaking Morgan. Steven Blackwell’s police Land Rover brought up the rear. He had no car of his own and was quite comfortable with using an official vehicle and driver for every purpose, as he considered that he was never really off duty.
‘Cracking on a bit for a funeral, aren’t we?’ said Percy Loosemore, in the front passenger seat alongside Alfred Morris. ‘Seems as if they’re trying to get shot of poor old Jimmy as quickly as they can.’
‘Got to keep up with the hearse,’ said Alf. ‘It’s a fair old trot from Ipoh up here.’
Tom Howden’s plotting had been successful and he sat in the back alongside Lynette. Few of the women had clothes really suitable for a funeral, but most had managed to find something relatively sombre in a place usually renowned for its summer dresses. Lynette wore a black skirt and grey silk blouse and Tom thought she looked lovely. He was rapidly falling for her and something told him that the feeling was mutual, so he was feeling very contented, in spite of the solemn occasion.
Taiping was a pleasant town at the foot of Maxwell Hill, a three-thousand-foot jungle-covered ridge with a hill station at the top, where there was a Rest House with a real log fire. A long dead-straight Main Street lined with shophouses led to the Lake Gardens, a landscaped park made from a reclaimed tin mine, where lay the New Club, a larger version of The Dog in Tanah Timah.
‘Could call in there for a snifter on the way back, as we’re not having a proper wake,’ suggested the irreverent Percy. No one bothered to answer him as the procession carried on through the town and down a long avenue of stately trees.
‘This goes to Kamunting, where the other BMH is,’ explained Alfred. ‘Like our place, there’s a big garrison almost next door, the 28th Independent Commonwealth Infantry Brigade.’
The cortège slowed down long before these were reached and turned off Assam
Kumbang Road into the Christian Cemetery, a quiet park-like field, edged by trees.
‘Is this a War Graves place?’ asked Lynette in a hushed voice as they stopped behind the other vehicles on a parking area inside the gates.
Alf Morris shook his head as he opened the door for her. ‘It’s been here since the last century, since Europeans came out to run the tin and rubber industries. But now unfortunately a large part is kept for the military and their dependants, since the Jap invasion and now the Emergency.’
All the travellers disgorged from the cars and quietly made their way forward towards the front of the cavalcade, where the only hired car was the one belonging to the undertaker, another aged but stately Daimler. From this stepped the garrison padre, who ushered out Diane Robertson, today attired in a grey shantung silk dress and jacket that was the nearest she could muster as a mourning outfit. Also in the Daimler was her manager Douglas Mackay and his wife Rosa, both women trying to look as if the other was invisible. Together with half a dozen sisters from the hospital clustered behind their matron, a couple of planters’ wives made up a respectable contingent of ladies to support the new widow.
From his position as the rearguard of the convoy, Steven Blackwell looked at the small crowd ahead with concerned interest. In cases of murder, it was traditional for the investigators to attend the funeral of the victim, though he had never yet heard of any advantage coming from it.
The coffin was lifted from the Daimler by four of James’s fellow planters, including Les Arnold, and placed on a rather rickety trolley belonging to the cemetery. A large bunch of tropical flowers, which Steven assumed had been ordered by Diane, lay on top. A few of the onlookers stepped forward to add their own sprays of colourful blooms, including Doris Hawkins who contributed one from the Sisters’ Mess.
With the mourners following, the chaplain set off behind the coffin as it was trundled down a path between rows of old graves, some moss covered and dating back scores of years. John Smale wore a surplice over a light cassock with a purple stole around his neck, as he walked ahead of Diane and the Mackays.
Dead in the Dog Page 17
