by Unknown
Madam Xu lowered her tumbler to the table with a dramatic thud, slopping brown bo lei onto the table cloth. ‘Unless,’ she said, dramatically, ‘he had not left.’
The police officer smiled. ‘Yes. A definite and frightening possibility, which did occur to the officers, as they stood in the kitchen. After all, the body was freshly murdered. But remember the security guards. Sik had been guarding the door throughout that first hour, and Shiva and the first of my men who arrived checked the kitchen carefully. There are not that many places to hide in a small kitchen like that, and all of them were checked carefully. There was no one there.’
‘Air-conditioner vent?’ asked Sinha.
‘Checked,’ said the Superintendent. ‘It was too greasy to climb out of. Even if you had done it, you would have left lots of evidence.’
‘So the murderer must have left through the café door,’ said Joyce. ‘Must have been a waiter. He said it was a waiter.’
Madam Xu said: ‘What exactly were the dead man’s last words? And you said he made a gesture. What was his gesture?’
‘He said, “It was that stupid waiter,” and tried to wave his hand towards the washing area—but by that time, there was no one standing on that side of the kitchen. And there are no doors or windows in that part.’
‘So you questioned the waiters?’ said Madam Xu.
The Superintendent finished chewing a mouthful of orange vegetable before replying. ‘Of course. We interviewed all the waiters. But remember, several people saw him alive after all the waiters had gone. The last people to see him alive were a waitress, a junior cook and the sous chef. None of these can technically be described as a “waiter”. On the other hand, if you are dying, you may be a bit muddle-headed and may be not too accurate about your words, agree or not? Maybe he meant the waitress or some other staff member.’
‘Birth date? Of the dead man?’ This was Wong.
‘Ahhhh . . .’ Tan leafed through his papers. ‘Twentieth of September, 1957. Born in . . . ah, Sacramento.’ He used his chopsticks to fill his mouth with rice and spoke out of the side of his teeth. ‘Anyway, you know what police procedure is. We were pretty thorough. All the lunch-time staff were interviewed, and they all said Peter Leuttenberg was alive and well when they last saw him. Naturally, suspicion fell most heavily on the last person to leave the kitchen. It was a young man named Wu Kang, who was a junior assistant chef, birth date 4, 9, 1976, Singapore. Ms Chen—the witness I mentioned right at the beginning of my story—she remembers seeing one young kitchen assistant re-entering the kitchen while she was clearing the last table, you remember I said before? That was Wu. He says he was only there for a few seconds. His story seems to stand up—and to help us time the event.
‘You will also remember that Chen says she popped into the kitchen for a moment a few minutes after seeing Wu enter, and she saw Leuttenberg alive and Wu gone. Wu’s story was the same as that of the other staff. He said he left the kitchen, popped back in a few minutes later to pick up his hat, and left almost immediately. He said he had said goodbye to Leuttenberg, who was preparing a tiramisu for himself. He said he recalls seeing Ms Chen tidying table forty-three as he left. It all tallies, time-wise.’
Sinha asked: ‘Tiramisu? At three in the afternoon?’
‘Mr Leuttenberg was in the habit of eating tiramisu every afternoon at about this time. No one begrudges the senior chef his little quirks. And there’s something else that was strange.’
‘Yes,’ said Wong. ‘The murder weapon.’
‘How did you know?’
‘You have not mentioned it yet, so I knew.’
‘Well, you are right, Wong, the murder weapon is a factor here.’
‘What was it?’ asked Joyce. ‘A saucepan, I suppose? Or a leg of lamb, like in the story?’
‘No, Miss,’ said the Superintendent, with a laugh. ‘I have read Roald Dahl too. There was no leg of lamb to be used as a murder weapon and then consumed by the investigating officers. They do not eat on duty. Nor drink. This is a rule. This is Singapore. We do things properly here. The murder weapon was a problem. We weren’t able to find it. It was something big and heavy, like a saucepan—the dent in Leuttenberg’s head was evidence of that. But where was it? We examined everything in that kitchen. We looked at every moveable object, trying to find hairs or tissue or fresh blood that matched Leuttenberg’s. It was difficult, because kitchen utensils are always covered with fingerprints and almost always have microscopic bits of blood on them. Anyway, it was a tough job that took several of our best people many, many hours. We found nothing. Not a sausage.’
‘You were looking for a sausage?’ asked Wong. ‘You think it was a sausage?’
‘Not a sausage,’ said Joyce. ‘It’s just an expression. It means, well, like if you have some place that is completely bare, and there is absolutely like, nothing at all there, you go: Not a sausage.’
‘Why?’
There was silence. Joyce usually felt compelled to be the chief apologist of the English language, but this one foxed her.
The Superintendent, too, was stumped. He absently stirred the food on his plate with his chopsticks. ‘Never really thought about it. Helluva strange. It’s just what you say.’ He looked vaguely annoyed, then continued: ‘Anyway, the murder weapon must have been removed from the kitchen, or it had been scrubbed clean and returned to its normal place.’
‘You searched the hotel?’ asked Wong.
‘We did all the things we could think of. Wu, the young assistant, had been seen by several witnesses walking towards the main kitchen. He was carrying nothing, although he could theoretically have had some small item hidden within his clothing. But nothing big enough to have done the damage that was done to Leuttenberg’s head, you see? Chen was in the coffee shop throughout lunch, right up to the time when we interviewed her. There was no murder weapon visible in the café. Pascal von Berger, the sous chef who found the body, arrived in the café carrying nothing, and had nothing in his hands until the time we interviewed him.’
Joyce put her elbows on the table. ‘Perhaps it could have been something small but heavy like a lead pipe, which he could have hidden in his clothes? You know, like “Colonel Mustard in the study with a lead pipe.” You know the game?’
‘I do,’ said the Superintendent. ‘But I have never enjoyed it. My father was a colonel. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that anyone with the title Colonel could be a murderer.’
Joyce was excited. ‘I know, Wu or von Berger could have hidden the lead pipe in their chef’s hats!’
‘A cute idea, Miss, if we can label any possible technique by a killer as cute. But I repeat. No, it couldn’t have been a small lead pipe. Leuttenberg was hit with an object so heavy that it crushed part of his skull, and then his head hit the floor with such a crash, such an impact, that his skull was crushed on the other side as well. It was almost as if a large microwave oven had been dropped on his head from a height. You see, is it?’
‘Right. Well, that must have been what it was,’ said the young woman.
‘No. We checked all the microwaves and things like that in that kitchen. You would be able to tell if one had been dropped on someone’s head all right. There were two portable ovens, and they were not broken or anything. They had not been moved recently.’
Madam Xu, who was shuffling some fortune-telling cards, asked: ‘Did you believe young Mr Wu? He says he left the chief cook alive?’
‘I think I do. I can find no motive for him to murder his boss—especially since he was the last person to see him in that kitchen before the body was found. It would have been pretty stupid, not that that has stopped other murderers from committing other such crimes.’
Madam Xu looked into her cup. ‘My calculations and my cards and my tea leaves and my brain tell me the same thing: Mr Pascal. If you believe Mr Wu is telling the truth, it seems to me that the case would look quite bad for Mr Pascal.’
‘Pascal von Berger, the sous chef. Yes.
The man who found the dead body. The flirtatious one. “Afternoon sweetie.” Exactly what it seemed to us when we discussed the case in the station. Von Berger must have gone in, bashed the man, and then run out, pretending that he had found him dead.’
‘Surely you have a precise time of death?’ asked Sinha. ‘Does your forensic pathologist not give you some aid on this count?’
The Superintendent grimaced to find his tea had gone cold, and waved at the waiter to bring a fresh pot. ‘She did, she did. It is an impressive science, but it cannot tell the time of death to the minute. There are so many complicating factors, such as the condition of the man and the warmth of the room. A kitchen, you know, is very hot. Kitchens are traditionally not air-conditioned. She reckons he had died maybe twenty minutes or half an hour before she saw him, you see.’
‘Which means?’
‘Our pathologist saw him about thirteen minutes after the first call to police. That ties up with the other evidence, because it means he died sometime between when the other kitchen staff left the kitchen and when the waitress Chen Soo saw him dead. This we knew. So the pathologist did not add too much to our basic store of knowledge there.’
Wong was looking at the floor plans. ‘Excuse me, Superintendent Tan, I find the design of the kitchen very relevant to this case.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ said Tan. ‘Being a feng shui man.’
The geomancer pointed to a plan of the kitchen. ‘This is interesting. The kitchen is east of the centre of the building. This is where it should be. It is extremely well-designed in feng shui terms. It is perfect, even. Kitchens are rather troublesome from a feng shui point of view. They are full of significant elements: water taps, water pipes, windows, metal objects, knives. And of course, the stove fire. All important things. East is best, in my opinion, because it supports water. Now the door of the kitchen is here. In the south part of the room. The fridges and freezers are far away. In the northwest of the room, over here. The ovens are on the opposite side, the northeast part. The man was found here. Near the fridges.’
‘You have got your thing upside down. North goes on top,’ said Joyce.
‘No! South goes on top,’ snapped Wong. ‘Always. They teach you nothing in school these days. Nothing.’
Tan said: ‘Yes, the corpse was there, on the floor. When von Berger first went in, he couldn’t see the body because it was on the floor, and all these things—these work tables and benches and what-nots—were in the way.’
Wong pencilled compass points—with south on top—onto the floor plan. ‘Water ch’i does not mix well with the ch’i of the northeast, which is the energy of the soil. It is a combination which creates instability. Thus it is not surprising that he died there.’
Madam Xu clucked impatiently. ‘It is nice that the murderer chose the right part of the kitchen to do his murdering in, but does this tell us who the murderer is, C F?’
‘No. Not at all.’
Sinha laughed. ‘The implication is that the murderer was you, C F, because only you would know the precise spot to do the dastardly deed in. Ha!’
‘It was not me,’ said Wong. ‘I was in my office at that time.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ said Tan.
‘Let us find more profitable avenues of investigation,’ said Sinha. The Indian placed his fingertips together and balanced his chin on them. ‘Superintendent. When did all this happen, may I ask? The day before yesterday, was it?’
‘Correct.’
‘Two days ago. You have a narrow circle of suspects. Surely given enough interrogation—even using your gentle, law-abiding methods, which do not include hitting them with lathis, as would be done in India—one or other will soon break down and reveal all?’
The police officer looked disappointed. ‘That’s what we thought. We have talked to the last three people to see the victim and drawn blanks. We talked to Wu, we talked to von Berger, we talked to Chen, until we were blue in the face. They all stick rigidly to their stories and insist they are innocent. We haven’t been able to find enough of a hole to slide a cigarette paper in, even. The male waiters who left earlier also have cast-iron stories. We are stuck. I need you to move us forwards, can or not?’
This was a plea. It called for some serious mystical thinking. For two minutes, no one spoke. Madam Xu looked carefully at her cards and scribbled calculations, and Sinha flicked through an almanac of astrological charts for the year. Wong continued scratching out lo shu diagrams for the main players in the mystery.
Madam Xu broke the silence. ‘It is a tricky problem.’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Sinha. ‘You have a body in a kitchen, but no murder weapon, no murderer and no exit or hiding place. It doesn’t hang together very well at all.’
The Superintendent sighed. ‘It is a curious one. We thought that you guys, with your, ah, unusual methods of investigation, might be able to reveal facts that are not uncovered by normal police procedure.’
‘Well, now, I have a question for you,’ said the old Indian astrologer. ‘How did von Berger know it was a murder? He shouted out “murder”, but at that time, all he saw was a body. It could have been an accident. Leuttenberg may have just fallen over or something, for all he knew at that time.’
The Superintendent lifted his bowl of rice and vigorously shovelled rice into his mouth. ‘What do the rest of you think about that?’ he asked with his mouth full.
Madam Xu said: ‘That seems to be an interesting little unresolved oddity in this case. Tell us that bit again.’
‘Of course,’ said Tan. ‘Chen, the waitress, insists she heard von Berger—who else could it have been?—in the kitchen, shouting “murder”. But von Berger says he just gasped with horror but has no recollection of saying that word.’
Sinha said: ‘I have it. Perhaps it was Leuttenberg—perhaps it was the chef’s last word before von Berger threw the microwave or whatever at him and then picked it up and washed the blood and tissue fibres off it before running out to get Chen to call the security guards?’
‘Could have been,’ said the Superintendent. ‘But whoever said “murder”, does it matter? Does it take us any further? I think not.’
Silence returned.
Wong wrinkled his brow. ‘Which company was having a cocktail party that evening in that room?’
The question was unexpected. The Superintendent blinked. Then he looked through his notes. ‘Didn’t think to ask. Let me have a look. Er, it should be here somewhere, it must be here. I have the banqueting schedule. Hang on a minute. Here it is: Eagle Flight Life. It’s an insurance company, I think. What’s the relevance?’
‘So,’ said Wong. ‘The American’s spirit was taken away by an eagle. That seems fitting.’
‘What are you on about, Wong? You’re going all metaphysical on us, is it?’ The Superintendent sat up in his chair.
‘No, no,’ said the geomancer. ‘I only point out the symbolism. When did you last go to a corporate cocktail party in Singapore which did not have a centrepiece?’
Sinha was getting interested. ‘You mean, flowers or a logo of some sort? A statue?’
‘Or an ice sculpture.’
‘Of course.’
‘You always have an ice sculpture. Almost always,’ said the geomancer. ‘Large, heavy, hard. Perfect for a strong man to pick up, use to smash over the head of another man. When you have finished? You just stick it into the hot oven or sink. By the time someone has a look at it, it will be nothing but water.’
The Superintendent was scribbling notes. ‘I like your thinking, Wong. The ice sculpture.’
‘An ice sculpture would make sense,’ said Madam Xu. ‘You think von Berger did it, then? Hit him with an ice sculpture? Stuck it in the oven, and then cried murder?’
‘Ice sculptures are usually the job of younger assistants in the kitchen. I think if I was the Superintendent, I would ask the cooking staff about Mr Wu’s jobs. One of them may well have been to make ice sculptures. Or look af
ter them in the kitchen freezers.’
‘But if Wu did it, he wouldn’t have had much time. Ms Chen saw Leuttenberg alive—and alone—in the kitchen, and von Berger arrived a few minutes later,’ said the Superintendent.
‘But did the waitress see the chief chef in the kitchen?’ asked Wong, lifting his floor plan of the kitchen. ‘She said she saw him getting something out of the freezer. This is in the northeast. Back of the room. Far from the main door. Fridge doors always open on the left side, except for some funny ones in Japan. Hotel fridges are always big. If he was getting something from the fridge, the door would be open. She would not be able to see him from the main door, which is in the south of this room.’
‘Maybe, like, she could see his tall hat over the top of the fridge door,’ said Joyce.
‘Maybe she did see his hat. But who was wearing it? Maybe it was not the chief chef taking something out of the fridge. Maybe it was Wu Kang re-arranging the things in the freezer. So that people did not notice that the ice sculpture was missing.’
‘Could be. Maybe so.’ The Superintendent was sitting bolt upright now. ‘But how did he get out of the kitchen in the two minutes before von Berger arrived?’
Wong looked at his floor plan again. ‘I think maybe the dead man did not say anything about a stupid waiter. I think he said something about a dumb waiter. Now this is a technical term used in architecture. In kitchen architecture, especially so. It means food elevator.’
‘Food elevator.’ Madam Xu considered the unfamiliar phrase carefully.
‘There are no food elevators in this kitchen,’ said Tan.
‘No. Not now. But I think there used to be. Just here, behind the cabinets over the washing part. I think maybe they are still there. Not used. That is how he got out.’
‘How on earth could you possibly know that?’ asked Sinha.
Madam Xu was equally amazed. ‘If you can tell that with your feng shui powers, I will give up fortune-telling and start taking feng shui lessons from you.’
