by A. M. Stuart
The scream stuck in Harriet’s throat.
TWO
Runnels of sweat trickled down the back of Inspector Robert Curran’s neck, softening the stiff, starched collar of his uniform. He took off his helmet and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, before turning his attention to the old colonial plantation house. Time and the elements had not been kind to the once-proud structure that bore a crudely painted sign above the steps leading up to the veranda. MANDALAY. A name that conjured up the romance and mystique of Burma, not this neglected building.
Dark-green moss stretched over the weathered timber like the grasping fingers of the jungle eager to reclaim the building back into the forest. Several windows were missing shutters and on others they swung crookedly on rusty hinges. Even from where he stood he could see the verandah floor had warped from the constant humidity.
A pony trap, guarded by a young Malay boy, stood in the shade of a rain tree some distance from the house. Avoiding a large puddle in the rutted driveway, a remnant of the morning rainstorms, Curran approached the boy. The lad bobbed his head, his hand stroking the nose of the skewbald pony, whose ears twitched unhappily as a large drop of moisture landed squarely on the white patch between his eyes.
In his fluent Malay, Curran asked the boy his name.
“Aziz, tuan,” the boy replied. His gaze darted to the verandah. “I told the mem this was a bad place. Bukit Hantu is a place of bad spirits. Can I take the mem and go home?”
“Not just yet.” Curran gave the boy a reassuring smile. “I need to speak to the mem. You just wait here.”
He turned toward the house, pacing the distance in easy strides. What had the boy called the place? Bukit Hantu? The haunted hill.
He made a mental note to ask one of the Malay constables how the place had acquired that name. The name on his notes just read Newbold—Mandalay.
He approached the steps leading up to the verandah. Beyond the wide expanse of warped and broken boards, the front door stood open, but the bulk of his sergeant, Gursharan Singh, loomed out of the gloom, obscuring any view into the house.
“Who found the body?” he asked Singh.
“She did, sir.” His sergeant indicated a European woman who sat bolt upright in a rattan armchair on the verandah, her hands clutching a leather handbag. A fall of pink bougainvillea that climbed across the verandah and threatened to engulf the house had hidden her from sight.
The woman looked up at him from beneath a sensible pith helmet swathed in a net, and he had an impression of a youngish woman, with brown hair, coiled, as was the fashion, at the nape of her neck. She wore a plain white, high-necked blouse fastened with a brooch at her throat and a skirt of an indeterminate dark color. A thoroughly respectable woman who seemed at odds with the decayed house.
Beneath a complexion far too unfashionably browned to have ever graced his aunt’s drawing room, she looked gray and drawn. Although he was yet to view the corpse, Curran knew it would be no sight for the fainthearted. It surprised him the woman had not succumbed to the vapors. Instead she sat waiting for him, pale but perfectly composed.
“What’s her name?”
“Gordon. Mrs. Harriet Gordon,” Singh said. He leaned toward his superior officer. Curran topped six feet, but Singh had several inches on him.
“You should know, sir. There’s not just one body. We found a servant dead in the kitchen.”
Curran’s lips tightened and he issued curt orders to Singh before crossing the verandah to address Mrs. Gordon.
“Inspector Curran, Detective Branch,” he said, holding out his hand. “You are Mrs. Gordon?”
The woman rose to her feet to shake his hand.
“Mrs. Gordon.”
“What brought you out here today, Mrs. Gordon?”
She raised her chin, her shoulders straightening. “I did some secretarial work for Sir Oswald yesterday and I came to retrieve my typewriter.” Beneath the tight white collar of her blouse, her throat worked as she swallowed, and with a trembling hand she pushed a damp tendril of brown hair back behind her ear. “You don’t suppose I could have it back? I need it for work at the school.”
“Perhaps later. Are you all right?”
Mrs. Gordon’s face had taken on an unhealthy sheen and she swayed slightly. Curran wondered if shock had begun to set in. With two corpses on his hands, he did not need a fainting woman. He gestured at the chair.
“Please take a seat, Mrs. Gordon. Is there anything I can get you?”
A tremulous smile caught the corner of her lips. “A cup of tea would be nice, but failing that, a glass of water?”
“We’ll see what we can do.” Curran strode across to the verandah rail and gestured to his driver, Constable Tan.
“Tan, fetch some water for Mrs. Gordon.”
Mrs. Gordon subsided onto the chair, running a hand over her eyes. He studied her anxiously for signs of imminent vapors, but whatever momentary weakness had afflicted her had passed and she met his gaze with surprisingly cold, hard eyes.
“I would like to return home, Inspector.”
His instincts prickled at the obvious animosity in that gaze.
“How well were you acquainted with Sir Oswald?”
“Not at all. I met him for the first time on Saturday and at his request came out here yesterday afternoon to do some work for him.”
Curran leaned against the verandah rail, crossing his booted feet at the ankles. “Was he expecting you today?”
“Yes, we had agreed that I would return late this afternoon to continue my commission.”
“Which was?”
“I was typing his memoirs, Inspector.”
Curran cleared his throat. “I apologize for the questions, but can you tell me exactly what you did when you arrived at the house today?”
Her lips tightened and she looked down at her hands, her fingers teasing a leather tassel on her handbag. “The front door was ajar. I knocked and called out but nobody answered. I called out again and concluded that no one was at home.”
Curran gave her a skeptical glance. “So, you turned your hand to a little breaking and entering, Mrs. Gordon?”
Her head came up, her eyes blazing. “I . . . I didn’t see it that way. I intended merely to retrieve my typewriter, leaving a note for Sir Oswald.”
“Go on.”
“You will see for yourself, the living room has been pulled apart. At the door to the study I trod on some broken glass and that was when I saw the marks on the closed door.” She swallowed. “Is it blood?”
Curran shook his head. “I haven’t been inside yet.”
Her shoulders lifted and she blew out a breath. “I thought . . . no . . . I knew something was terribly wrong. I pushed the door open and went in.”
Curran wondered how many other women of his acquaintance would have had the courage to open that door.
“And what did you see?” he prompted.
“My typewriter was where I had left it, but like the living room there was a terrible mess, and of course, Sir Oswald . . .” She trailed off and took a shuddering breath before looking up at Curran. “I assure you I have touched nothing in the room, Inspector.”
Curran gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “It makes a refreshing change to meet someone who understands about crime scenes.”
Something flickered behind her eyes. Amusement? Irony? “My father is a crown prosecutor in London, Inspector. I understand about the importance of evidence.”
“He taught you well, Mrs. Gordon. What did you do after finding the body?”
“I hoped there might be a telephone but I couldn’t see one, so I sent Aziz to the nearest police post.”
“Leaving you alone?” Curran glanced at the house.
Her chin came up. “Sir Oswald had been dead some time. I did not believe the murderer would still be
in the house, and the dead couldn’t hurt me.”
An unusual woman, Curran thought.
Straightening, he caught the eye of Sergeant Singh standing sentinel by the front door. “I will have further questions for you. Do you mind waiting here? Ah, Tan, well done.”
Constable Tan, carrying a pitcher of water and a glass, clattered onto the verandah. He poured Mrs. Gordon a glass and handed it to her. She drank without drawing breath and set the glass down on the floor at her feet.
With an audible sigh, she said, “If it is absolutely necessary to detain me, at least let me send my boy home with a message? My brother will be worried.”
“Your brother?”
“The Reverend Julian Edwards. He is headmaster of St. Thomas Church of England Preparatory School.”
Curran nodded. “I am acquainted with Reverend Edwards. Tell him that I will arrange for you to be returned home in the motor vehicle. Thank you, Mrs. Gordon.”
She stood up and, passing him, descended the steps and walked briskly over to the boy holding the pony cart. Curran turned his attention to his sergeant.
“Let’s get this over with.”
Ten years in the army and the police force had hardened Curran to the sight of death, but his stomach still heaved as he stepped across the threshold. The unmistakable odor of death, sweet, cloying and sickly, overlaid the familiar Singapore murk of heat and mildew. Newbold had not been dead long but in this climate decomposition set in fast.
Nothing in this wretched climate lasted long.
The front door opened onto a large, airy living room furnished for a man with opulent tastes that belied the run-down exterior of the bungalow. Colorful oriental rugs covered the floor but the antique vases, plates and statues, including two fine statues of Buddha in the Siamese style, which may once have been crammed onto the surfaces of the dark, teak furniture, were now scattered across the floor, the fragile china in pieces. There had either been a fight or the intruders had been looking for something.
He let out a long low whistle. “Are all the rooms like this?”
Singh nodded. “All of them, sir.”
In the typical flowing design of houses of this vintage, the rooms opened onto one another with no corridor. All the doors stood open through to a back door at the rear of the house.
Singh gestured at a doorway to the right. “The first body is through there, sir. Careful of the broken glass on the floor.”
This had been the glass the Gordon woman had mentioned. The shattered remains of what looked to have once been two port glasses lay strewn across the floor by the study door, along with a small silver tray and a broken decanter. Curran touched his finger to a pool of dark liquid, half-dried around the edges, and sniffed. The sweet smell of the spilled port mingled with the other odors.
“Port. Two glasses . . . Sir Oswald had a visitor. Someone he knew? Someone to whom the servant was bringing port.” He speculated aloud and pointed at a dark stain on the floor closer to the door. “What’s that?”
Singh bent over. “A boot print.”
Curran straightened and, skirting the dropped silverware, bent over to inspect the other mark. “A man’s boot, I think, and if I’m not mistaken, the owner of the boot did not step in the port.”
“Blood?” Singh’s magnificent, graying eyebrows quirked.
Curran nodded. He turned to the door, noting the dark smears on the chipped white paint.
“There’s blood in the doorway and on the door handle,” Singh observed. “Mrs. Gordon says she found the door ajar and did not touch the handle.”
Curran nodded. “Good. Hopefully Greaves can find a fingerprint. Let’s see where these footprints lead.”
The gloom of the old house made it difficult to pick out the bloody footprints but once he knew what he was looking for, they were easy enough to spot. Curran paced out the footprints from the study door, through the next room that appeared to be a dining room and another unfurnished room, to the back door.
“Long strides. He was running toward the kitchen.”
“Sir. Perhaps we see the crime scene now?”
Curran glanced at Singh but the sergeant’s face remained implacable. Singh had worked with him long enough to know he was delaying the inevitable confrontation with death itself.
Steeling himself he pushed the study door open. The stench of death was stronger inside the room and Curran had to stop himself from raising a hand to his mouth and nose. He could not show weakness in front of his men.
Like the living room, the floors were covered in oriental rugs, and heavy teak bookcases lined the walls. Framed maps and prints were jammed together on the only remaining wall space. Some of these had been pulled off the wall, their glass and frames smashed into pieces. A large, heavy European desk dominated one end of the room facing the door, with a leather chair still visible behind it. A circular table stood in the center of the room, with four chairs, now upended, around it. A neat square black case sat untouched on the table and a quick inspection revealed it to be a portable typewriter. Mrs. Gordon’s typewriter, he presumed.
Smashed vases and books with broken spines and torn pages littered the floor. Another exquisite statue of the Buddha, about eighteen inches high, lay on the ground beside Sir Oswald’s outstretched hand. A quick glance behind the desk revealed a small safe, the door wide open, and more papers, folders and envelopes spewing out of it. The desk drawers had been upended on the desk and papers fell in drifts around Sir Oswald Newbold’s body, some trailing in the pools of blood.
Someone had spent a great deal of time and energy looking for something.
Having scanned the room, Curran forced himself to turn his attention to the mortal remains of Sir Oswald Newbold.
The man lay on what had once been a fine oriental carpet laid in front of the desk, its geometric design rendered in rich reds and blues. He had been neatly dressed in linen trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The shirt had now been dyed a dark reddish brown with the victim’s own blood. Newbold stared up at the ceiling with sightless eyes, already misting with death, the handle of an antique knife protruding from his throat.
“That killed him?” Even the phlegmatic Singh’s lip curled as he contemplated the grinning devil on the knife.
Curran shrugged. “It looks like he was stabbed several times in the torso before that went in.” He picked up Newbold’s right hand. The cuts on the palm spoke of the man’s last desperate attempts to ward off his attacker. His index finger had been almost severed. “But he must have put up quite a fight.”
“Dear me. My patient looks far from well.”
At the sound of the soft Scottish burr, Curran turned to look at the man by the door.
“And good morning to you, Doctor, or is it afternoon?” Curran rose to his feet as the chief surgeon of the Singapore General Hospital and sometime police surgeon, Euan Mackenzie, advanced into the room and set his bag down on the table.
“Afternoon, I fear, Curran.”
Putting his hands on his hips the doctor surveyed the body on the floor at his feet.
Curran broke into the doctor’s reverie. “Not sure that you can tell me anything that I can’t see for myself. But before you start mucking around with him, I need to get some photographs in situ. Where is that boy with his camera? Greaves?”
“I don’t think I know this young man?” Mackenzie commented as a perspiring Constable Greaves hauled his photographic equipment into the room.
Curran affected a cursory introduction, adding, “We’re lucky to get him. He only arrived a month ago. Cuscaden listened to me and we recruited him from London. Not only is he a natural with languages but he’s been specially trained in the new fingerprinting techniques. Talented lad, aren’t you, Greaves?”
Greaves’s sweaty face appeared from beneath the black curtain of his camera. “Kind of you to say so, sir
.”
Curran and the doctor moved out of Greaves’s way and stood at the doorway, watching the young man work.
“Well, well, Sir Oswald Newbold.” Mackenzie shook his head. “Man was a crashing bore but I am not sure he deserved to die this way.”
“You knew him?”
Mackenzie shrugged. “We met socially on a few occasions and I made the mistake of attending one of his lectures at Victoria Hall.” The doctor rolled his eyes. “Three hours of my life wasted listening to the man droning on and on about his explorations in Burma.”
“Burma?”
“Oh yes, if he was to be believed, Sir Oswald here is single-handedly responsible for the opening up of the ruby and sapphire mines in northern Burma.”
“I would have thought Burma would be an interesting subject.”
Mackenzie’s moustache twitched. “I believe there is a mountain named after him somewhere in northern Burma. He’s most notable for the ruby mines he unearthed nearby. That’s how he made his fortune, but you need to ask his colleagues at the Explorers and Geographers Club if you want to know more about his exploits.”
“The Explorers and Geographers Club? I’ve not heard of them,” Curran said.
“Very exclusive. You must have a piece of geography named after you to be a member, I believe. You’ll find the club up behind the museum.”
“Finished, sir.” Mopping the sweat from his face, Greaves stood back from the corpse.
“Some general scenes of the room and the other rooms, Greaves, and you’ll be done. I want this room dusted for fingerprints first.”
He didn’t miss the dismay on the young constable’s face as he contemplated the task ahead. They hadn’t even seen the second crime scene yet.
Curran and the doctor returned for a closer inspection of Sir Oswald. The smell of decay had worsened since Curran had arrived and he took a discreet step backward, ostensibly not to interfere with Mackenzie.
