by A. M. Stuart
“A motor vehicle.”
“Ya, tuan. A red motor vehicle.”
Curran’s blood ran cold. There were not many motor vehicles in Singapore and only one person he knew drove a red vehicle.
“Did you see the driver?”
“A big Inggeris.” The young man put his hand to his face, mimicking driving goggles, and made a gesture in imitation of a large moustache.
A red motor vehicle? A large Englishman with a moustache?
Curran’s mouth went dry. Foster? Surely not. If someone had punched him in the stomach, he could not have felt more winded.
“Are you all right, sir?” Singh asked.
“Augustus Foster,” Curran said aloud, and turned back to the constable. “Did you see which direction the motor vehicle went?”
The constable waved in the direction of Beach Road. “That way.” He frowned. “Have I done wrong, tuan?”
Curran shook his head and clapped the boy on the shoulder. “No. You did nothing wrong. You didn’t know. None of us did.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Harriet wiped the perspiration that dripped off her nose, rolled her sleeves up over her elbows and undid another button on her blouse. Nothing made a difference. The heat in the little room had risen to a suffocating level, draining her of what little energy she had. Will slumped against the wall, his arms around his knees. All pretense at practicing French grammar long since abandoned.
It took an effort to rise to her feet and Harriet paced the little room several times, pausing only to pour a ration of the precious water. She gave some to Will before swallowing the remaining mouthful herself. Hot and stagnant, it still had the power to refresh.
Will stiffened. “I can hear someone,” he said.
Harriet held her breath. The boy had heard right. Heavy determined footsteps approached on the flagstones of the covered breezeway that led to the house.
She pushed Will behind her and stood with her back to the farthest wall as the key rattled in the lock. Her head spun and for a dizzying moment she thought she might be sick or faint . . . or both. She swallowed back the bitter bile and struggled to control her breathing as the door flung open, letting in some fresh air.
For some absurd reason, she was almost pleased to see the young Dutchman Paar rather than the grim Burmese man.
But Paar’s brashness of the previous night seemed to have deserted him and the hand holding the revolver shook. He jerked the weapon, signaling for them to leave the room.
When Harriet didn’t move quickly enough, he leveled the revolver at her. “Out, now.”
“I do not respond to being spoken to in that tone, young man,” Harriet said.
Paar’s mouth dropped open. “Please . . . Mrs. Gordon.”
“Much better. Come, William.”
With her head held high, she swept past Paar out onto the covered walkway that separated kitchen and servants’ quarters from the main house. In daylight she could see the house was one of the fine holiday villas that lined the east coast of the island. In other circumstances it would be considered idyllic, set in an isolated grove of palm trees that fringed the white sands of the beach. A pleasant place for rest and recreation, with no nearby neighbors.
Now it might be the last place on earth she would ever see.
They entered the house and she found herself back in the elegantly furnished living room. It didn’t look as if John Lawson had been moved. He remained tied to the same dining chair, with his arms fastened behind him, his feet tied to the legs of the chair and a gag wound tightly around his face. His chin rested on his chest and only the very slightest rise and fall of breath indicated he still lived. In a corner the Burmese man crouched on his haunches, running his thumb along the edge of his knife. He looked up at Harriet and his cold, dead eyes knocked the confidence from her.
“Papa!”
At the sound of Will’s voice, Lawson raised his head. Harriet put a restraining hand on the boy’s shoulder to prevent him running forward. Above the gag, Lawson’s red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. Harriet drew the boy in to her, and Will buried his face in her skirts, his shoulders heaving with dry sobs.
A movement by the wide-flung French windows diverted her attention. A short, rather dumpy man wearing a floppy double felt hat that shadowed his face, entered the room from the terrace. He stood, feet apart, the fingers of one hand playing with the short goatee beard on his chin as he surveyed the prisoners.
“De gevangenen,” Paar said.
The man gave a curt acknowledgment and swept the hat from “his” head, allowing a long, fair plait to fall across “his” shoulder.
“Good morning, Mrs. Gordon.”
Harriet gasped, taking an involuntary step backward, only to be brought up short by Paar’s hand in her back, propelling her forward into the middle of the room. She stumbled, straightened and raised her chin to face the woman she knew as Mrs. Van Gelder.
THIRTY-FIVE
Curran returned to South Bridge Road and left Singh to see to Mrs. Cornilissen’s incarceration in a different part of the building from her husband’s.
He found Carruthers sitting on the bench outside his glass-partitioned office. The man jumped to his feet at the sight of Curran.
“I thought you’d gone back to the Explorers?” Curran said.
Carruthers ignored the question. “Do you have the women?”
“Mrs. Cornilissen is enjoying our hospitality but the Van Gelder woman got away”—he paused—“and it looks like Augustus Foster is involved.”
Carruthers sat down with an audible thump. “Foster? Good God,” he said.
Curran ushered him into the office and related the morning’s doings at the Hotel Van Wijk, glad that Carruthers’s reaction had been the same as his. Utter incredulity.
“But if Foster is involved, why would he risk being seen collecting the woman in such a distinctive vehicle?”
Curran had the answer. The conspirators knew that the need to maintain the deception had passed. If he did not move fast, they would be off the island and lost in the souks and alleys of some other colony or backwater, and Harriet, Lawson and the boy could be . . . He didn’t want to dwell on their fate.
He found his voice and said bitterly, “I think I will find that he is gone too.”
“But I don’t understand. What’s Foster got to do with it?”
Curran shook his head. “Damned if I know. I am going up to his house now.”
Curran ignored the man’s request to accompany him. He knew where Foster lived. He had attended a Singapore Cricket Club function at the comfortable bungalow on Mt. Elizabeth.
As his men conducted a cursory search of the deserted house, Curran stood in the bedroom and swore. Like Viktoria Van Gelder’s bedchamber, there was evidence of a hurried departure but little else.
A shelf of books caught his attention and he walked over to it, running his eyes over the titles. One stood out. Explorations of Burma by C. Kent. Kent—the name sounded familiar. It had come up at some point in his investigations. The name of the army officer who had accompanied Newbold on his Burmese exploration. It couldn’t be coincidence that two men named Kent had been involved in such an exploration.
On a whim, he pulled the slender volume from the shelves and flicked it open to a fuzzy image of the author and for a heartbeat his breath stopped. A younger, slimmer version of the man he knew as Augustus Foster, wearing a military uniform with the rank of major, stared back at him. He would need to telegram Rangoon as soon as he got back to the office.
In the meantime, a full search would have to wait. He was rapidly running out of time. Foster and Viktoria Van Gelder had shown their hands and were now on the run. Their fugitive status meant only that Harriet, Lawson and his son were now in very real danger. The conspirators had nothing to lose and everything to gain from hanging on to their hostage
s.
Would they be prepared to leave the island without the sapphire?
THIRTY-SIX
The Van Gelder woman stood with her hands on her hips, her gaze raking Harriet from the top of her head to her toes. Any resemblance between the soft fluffy woman Harriet had first met at the Van Wijk and this hard-eyed female was purely coincidental. Harriet felt any hope begin to fade in the shadow of that cold gaze.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Gordon. I trust you have enjoyed your stay at our humble establishment?”
Harriet straightened. “I must say, Mrs. Van Gelder, I found the bed somewhat hard, the food lacking and the staff extremely rude.”
Something that might have been a smile twitched the woman’s false beard and moustache. She fingered the facial hair and jerked her head at Paar. “Fetch me a bowl of water and a cloth.”
As the door closed behind Paar, the woman inclined her head to Harriet, her hands rubbing together in an obsequious parody of her husband. “On behalf of the manager, please accept our apologies,” Mrs. Van Gelder said, “but I am afraid you may find the discomfort of which you complain will seem like a pleasant dream.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are a meddling fool, Mrs. Gordon. You and that idiot.” She jerked her head at Lawson. “If you had not interfered, you would even now be safe at home with your loved ones.”
Paar returned carrying the requested bowl of water, which he set on the table, and Mrs. Van Gelder crossed to it. With a grimace, she pulled the beard from her chin and the moustache from her upper lip, dabbing with the dampened cloth at the glue that had held the facial hair in place.
“That’s better.” She stood, drying her hands on the cloth. “It never ceases to amaze me that people see only what they want to see. I walked straight past that foolish police constable but he had been told to look for a woman, not a man. By the time they realize I am gone, it will be too late. Your friend, the handsome police inspector, will be less than pleased.”
“Mrs. Van Gelder—” Harriet began, but the woman held up her hand.
“Viktoria,” she said. “Thank the Lord I no longer need to pretend an affection to that foolish man, Van Gelder. My name is Viktoria Klop.”
Viktoria’s gaze moved to Lawson. “What a mess you have made of things,” she said, addressing Lawson, her tone chiding rather than angry. “He is very angry and you know what he is capable of doing when aroused.”
Harriet pulled Will in tighter as Viktoria glanced at the door into the hallway and raised her voice. “Mijn geliefde, the woman and boy are here.”
The door opened and a large man with a military bearing entered. Harriet recognized him from the church congregation and the cricket club and felt her knees go weak, tears of relief welling up behind her eyelids.
“Colonel Foster! Thank heavens you’re here. Are the police with you? These people . . .”
She trailed off as Foster walked over to Viktoria Van Gelder, putting an arm around her shoulder.
“Ah, sadly, I fear you may be mistaken, Mrs. Gordon,” he said. “I am, alas, not your rescue party, but your host.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
It had long gone past midday and the hubbub of Clarke Quay had died down in the hottest part of the day. Even so, there were plenty of interested eyes peering around doors or through shuttered windows as Curran and a handcuffed Nils Cornilissen alighted from the motor vehicle.
“Why are we back here?” Cornilissen demanded.
The short sojourn in the cell had given Cornilissen time to compose himself and he emerged from the vehicle with the serenity of a man who had just walked out of his hotel suite rather than a prison cell. He may have appeared calm but he did not look quite so dapper. He had abandoned his frock coat, and his shirt and waistcoat were grimy and sweat soaked.
Curran did not reply.
With a curt nod, Curran led Cornilissen down the quay and past the police guard he had left on the door, into the dark interior of the nameless godown.
He indicated the rickety stairs leading up to the loft and the rooms above.
“Up there.”
“Why . . . ?” Cornilissen began, only to be given a gentle shove in the back by Curran, causing him to stumble on a broken stair tread.
At the top of the stairs the men crossed the open loft to the door at the far end that stood open, revealing a sweating Constable Greaves working on fingerprinting the room. The constable looked up but did not stop his work.
Curran shoved Cornilissen inside. The man recoiled.
“What is that?” he demanded, holding a manacled arm against his face.
“That is the smell of blood . . . a lot of blood. Hans Visscher’s blood. His throat was cut from ear to ear. What do you know about his death?”
Cornilissen’s face drained of color. “Nothing,” he said between tight lips. “I had nothing to do with the boy. She told me he had left the country.”
“She?”
“Viktoria. Viktoria Van Gelder.”
V for Viktoria, Curran thought again.
“What is your relationship with Viktoria Van Gelder?” he demanded.
Cornilissen licked his lips. “I am married to her daughter.”
That confirmed Van Gelder’s story.
Curran just let the man talk.
“She is . . . was . . . I knew Viktoria back in Amsterdam when she ran a number of successful and exclusive establishments for gentlemen, you understand?”
“Brothels?” Curran knew he could not allow his surprise to show on his face. He tried to imagine the plump, fair-haired matron he had met as a brothel keeper. Of all scenarios, that had not been one he would have expected.
Cornilissen must have sensed Curran’s shock and straightened his shoulders. “Oh yes, Inspector, Viktoria Klop was a well-known madam, and as well as the brothels, she headed a very successful gang of housebreakers, but all good things come to an end, and when she thought the authorities might catch up with her, she disappeared from Holland.”
“And turned up in the Far East?”
Cornilissen nodded. “Batavia at first but she didn’t stay there long. There was a fortune to be made in Burma as the British opened it up. She set up in Rangoon, where she met Oswald Newbold.”
“And how did you get involved?”
Cornilissen glanced at the chair with its grisly reminders of how Visscher had died. He gave a bitter laugh. “Never fall in love with a beautiful woman, Inspector.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Colonel Foster looked around the pleasant room and rubbed his hands together. “Do you like my little villa? I am very sad to be leaving it, but, as Viktoria has just pointed out, the unfortunate interference in our plans by you and Lawson”—he gestured at Lawson—“necessitate our hasty departure from this pleasant island.”
Harriet glanced at Lawson. His eyes above the gag were wide, as if Foster’s involvement also came as a surprise to him.
Viktoria Van Gelder glanced at the window. “Time to go, Charles. The boat is here.”
He shook his head. “I told you, Vik. I’m not leaving without the last shipment of rubies and that sapphire.”
“But the police will have them all by now,” she protested. “We have enough and Curran is no fool. He’ll have worked it out by now.”
“Yes, but we still have them.” Foster gestured at Harriet and the child.
Viktoria Van Gelder tossed her head. “We could kill one and leave the body to be found by the police. That way they will know we are serious.”
A muffled protest rose from John Lawson and he strained against his bonds.
Augustus Foster withdrew his arm from around the woman’s shoulders. “I don’t kill women or children,” he said.
“You are too soft.” Viktoria’s lip curled in derision.
Harriet forced her tired mind to a solution that would save at least Will.
&nb
sp; “If you want the stones, then you need to get a message to the police,” she said. “They are expecting some sort of communication from you. Killing one of us serves no purpose and you won’t have another murder to your name. Send the boy.”
Viktoria glanced at Foster and shrugged. “The child is nothing but a nuisance. If we let him go, we still have the woman.”
“And Lawson,” Harriet pointed out.
Viktoria cast the bound man a look of pure indifference. “He’s worthless. He is as guilty as the rest of us.”
“What about me?” Paar’s voice rose an octave. “You promised . . .”
“Of course you are coming with us, mijn kleine Stefan,” Viktoria said. “You have been so very useful.”
She approached the young man, laying her hand on his chest and looking up into his sweating, pimply face. Harriet shivered. The gesture left her in no doubt as to how Viktoria had coerced the young man into assisting the conspirators. Paar swallowed, his Adam’s apple convulsing.
Without warning Viktoria struck him across the face, a stinging blow that knocked him back several steps and reverberated around the room.
“It is your foolishness that has brought us here, mijn kleine Stefan.” This time the endearment was spat out. “Leaving the journal where any foolish policeman could find it.”
Clutching his face, Paar whimpered an apology. Viktoria regarded him with a curl of her lip and turned back to Foster.
“What do you want to do, Kent?”
Kent? Harriet closed her eyes.
“Who are you?” she demanded of the man.
He swept her a bow. “Major Charles Kent, late of the South Sussex Infantry Regiment.”
Before Harriet could ask any more, the man she now knew as Kent jerked his head at Will. “You, boy, come here.”
Will glanced up at Harriet and, with great reluctance, she withdrew her arm from around his shoulders. Will straightened and obeyed the command, stopping an arm’s length from Van Gelder and Kent, his feet apart and his hands behind his back. If the boy was afraid, he showed no sign of it. Viktoria Van Gelder put a finger under the boy’s chin and tilted his face up. Harriet held her breath but Will did not flinch.
