A Spoonful of Murder

by Robin Stevens

  Daisy bent down over the blankets and twitched them aside. And, just like that, the pieces of the case flew up into the air and came back down in a different pattern.

  7

  There was a body lying under the blankets. It was wearing a plain jacket and trousers, and a red uniform with gold trim and a small, smart cap was folded and shoved next to it. I knew, although I had only seen him once in person and once in a picture, that this was Wu Shing.

  He was crumpled in a heap, just like Su Li had been, and he looked so undignified that I had a moment of feeling sorry for him, until I noticed his hands. They were scratched and cut, and I remembered the scratches on Su Li’s hands. It seemed certain that her murderer had been Wu Shing.

  I could not see what had killed him, for he had no marks on his front – until Daisy nudged the body with her foot, and it rolled over. Then we saw the dark mark on his back, and the blood streaming down his jacket. Wu Shing had been shot, and the wound told us it had happened while he was facing away from his attacker. This was a horrid place, where horrid things clearly happened, but all the same, the coincidence was too great. Someone had murdered him, and it seemed logical to assume that it was the person he had been boasting about, his rich benefactor. Someone had paid him to kill Su Li and take Teddy, and if Teddy wasn’t here, it seemed likely that he was with that person now.

  The thing that still shocks me, after all our cases, is how easy murder is when you get down to it. People are so unbearably breakable. It’s nice to be able to believe, as I used to, in good people and bad. But now I have seen for myself over and over again how small the step is, how you only have to put out one hand at the wrong moment, how all your plans and all your good intentions can vanish in a breath.

  Although, I reminded myself, this person’s intentions had not been good at all, even before they killed Wu Shing. They had planned Teddy’s kidnap – and Su Li’s murder.

  ‘Cover him up, Daisy,’ I said, hand over my mouth.

  I had a sudden odd feeling, as though I was hovering high over my own right shoulder, looking down on myself, watching Daisy and Ah Lan look at Wu Shing. The smells in the room – of blood and a strange, soft sweetness that reminded me ridiculously of garden parties – had got into my nose and made me dizzy.

  ‘Sai Yat was right. We really do have a talent for finding dead bodies,’ said Daisy cheerfully to Ah Lan. ‘Here, help me examine him. He may have a useful clue on him.’

  ‘He’s been dead for more than a day,’ said Ah Lan. ‘See, he’s going … floppy. That happens about a day after someone dies here.’

  ‘Ugh!’ I said, horrified.

  ‘But he didn’t die as soon as he got back from the bank,’ said Daisy. ‘We know that because he had time to change out of his uniform. So he came back here, changed and then died … some time later?’

  ‘Look!’ said Ah Lan suddenly. ‘Here!’ He held something up that he had taken out of Wu Shing’s hand. It was a torn bit of paper – a piece of a Hong Kong banknote. ‘Someone’s gone through his pockets too. Some of the stitches have been torn out.’

  ‘I think I see what happened!’ Daisy exclaimed. ‘Wu Shing killed Su Li, took Teddy and gave him to his employer. That person went off and made the ransom call. A few hours later, they came back to meet Wu Shing here because … Oh, because they’d heard he’d been talking about being paid, and wanted to shut him up. Perhaps they pretended to offer him more money? Anyway, they waited until his back was turned, then shot him, took the money back, shoved him under the blankets and left. Does that make sense?’

  ‘It does,’ I said, nodding. ‘It’s – it’s awful, Daisy. He was a terrible person, if he was willing to kill someone he used to love, but still, no one deserves this.’

  Daisy wasn’t listening to me. She was pulling back another corner of the blanket, exclaiming in excitement. ‘Look here! Another clue! More paper, is it? I can’t read it!’

  I shone my torch at her. She was holding thin strips of paper covered in Chinese characters and numbers.

  ‘Hey, I know what those are!’ said Ah Lan. ‘Betting cards. And those races – they’re from Happy Valley racecourse. So Wu Shing was a gambler! Maybe that’s another reason why he took this job, to pay for his habit. I can have Sai Yat’s men look into this.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding. ‘And we need to know exactly what Wu Shing did on Monday afternoon. When did he come back here?’

  ‘Very true, Watson,’ said Daisy. ‘And now I think we should go home before we’re discovered.’

  I took a deep breath in – which was a mistake: I coughed and shuddered at my coughing – and gritted my teeth. We had ruled out both Sai Yat and (because of his death) Wu Shing. We suspected that Teddy was now being held by someone else, the person who was trying to frame me. Who was it? Mr Svensson? Mrs Fu? Mr Wa Fan?

  We were getting closer. But I knew that the case was more dangerous than ever. As part of our bargain, I had to confess the truth about the jade pin to my father.

  8

  Our cart wheeled out again into Hong Kong night-time streets that were cooler and quite dark, the laughter and shouts of earlier faded and all the lights flickered out.

  We ran up passages and along streets, and Daisy, next to me, kept up an urgent monologue in my ear.

  ‘We found another body, Hazel! How exciting! And – golly. We’re working with criminals!’

  ‘She does know that I can hear her?’ Ah Lan said to me in Cantonese, shoving the cart up a set of steps in ten heavy jolts.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, panting along beside him. ‘Daisy,’ I said in English. ‘Don’t be silly. You know we have to trust Sai Yat. He promised in the hall, and that place is holy to him.’

  ‘That reminds me!’ said Daisy. ‘Why are you the famous one here, Hazel? That’s hardly fair. I’m the President of the Detective Society, and I am the one who invented it. It ought to be me who’s talked about.’

  ‘It’s my father’s servants doing the talking,’ I reminded her. ‘They’d hardly be talking about you.’

  ‘Well, they should!’ cried Daisy, furious. ‘It’s – it’s – oh, Hazel, everything is upside down in Hong Kong! I don’t entirely like it.’

  ‘Nearly home,’ said Ah Lan at last, in English. ‘Just up the hill. Be very quiet – you’ll need to get back into the cart in a moment.’

  We were in the jungle again, rolling through the heavy leaves on the path. The cart pushed aside branches, sending wafts of green, juicy scent into the air. Under the canopy it was still dark, but I could begin to make out the ghostly edges of the trees. In this grey half-world, anything could be a person waiting to jump out at us. And what if our absence had been discovered? What if there was already a search underway? My breath caught.

  Daisy and I climbed back into the cart and I saw the gate ahead of us. The same guard was still in his hut, his turbaned head nodding, his hand barely on his knife. When he saw Ah Lan wheeling the cart towards him, he blinked and stood upright.

  ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘Work to do,’ said Ah Lan, nodding vaguely. I was impressed – he seemed quite calm and ordinary. Only his right hand, clutching the handle of the cart so tightly its knuckles were white, gave him away.

  But the guard didn’t look at Ah Lan’s knuckles. He simply nodded him through, and went back to staring blankly out into the jungle.

  Ah Lan pushed the cart more and more slowly as we moved further into the garden. At last it rattled to a stop next to the fish pond, its Monkey King statue coming into focus as the light around us grew.

  ‘Get out here,’ said Ah Lan. ‘You can go the rest of the way on your own. If anyone sees you, lie. Say that you went out for a walk before breakfast.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  Ah Lan shrugged, and wiped his hair back off his sweating forehead. He was tired and dirty, and he looked at me as though I was both of those things too.

  ‘I’m gl
ad you’re on the case,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I had to lie to get you to the meeting. You really are fearless.’

  ‘Daisy’s fearless,’ I said automatically. ‘Not me.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Ah Lan, raising an eyebrow. ‘If you say so. When I have information, I’ll put on my hat and stand by the fish pond. If you want to update me, sit by the pond and I’ll come by. All right?’

  I nodded. I turned away, towards the white wedding-cake shape of our Big House. Its windows were empty and closed. It was still asleep. We had succeeded.

  Except that on the first floor a curtain in my mother’s room twitched, once, and fell still. It was so quick, I might have imagined it. But I didn’t think I had.

  9

  We crept back into the house. The side door was still slightly open, just as we had left it. The funny thing about security in the Big House is that there really isn’t any, not in an English way. The wide front doors are kept folded back at night to let the breeze through, because there are dogs and servants ready to attack any intruder before they ever reach them.

  My nerves were jangling and my head felt thin, stretched out by lack of sleep.

  Up the stairs we crept, into our hallway, and I began to breathe more steadily again.

  I thought about what Ah Lan had said at the pond, that I was fearless, and a feeling flowed through me that was both shameful and strangely warming. In England I was always in Daisy’s shadow. But here I was the famous one. Sai Yat had heard of me. Not simply us, the Detective Society, but me. I knew that I could not be a detective without Daisy – we worked together, always, and that was our strength. But I felt proud, and very strange, to know that my name was known, not just as Daisy’s friend, but as myself.

  Into our bedroom we went. And there was someone already in it.

  For one horrid moment I thought it was my mother. But it was Ping. When we came in, she let out a little gasp and a shriek. ‘Miss Hazel! Miss Daisy! Where have you been?’ she cried. ‘I woke up an hour ago and felt – I can’t explain it. I knew I had to see how you were, but you were gone! And now you’re so dirty!’

  I looked down at my clothes, and saw that they were sooty, my hands filthy with dust and grime. Daisy’s face was dirty too, her headscarf disarranged and her gold hair almost brown.

  I swallowed. ‘We were … out,’ I said. ‘Ping, listen to me.’

  ‘Tell her we shall torture her if she rats on us!’ cried Daisy.

  ‘No we won’t!’ I said, nudging her. ‘Shh!’

  ‘Miss!’ said Ping. ‘It isn’t – it isn’t to do with Teddy? You haven’t … done something silly?’

  ‘No!’ I said, horrified by her worried expression. ‘I promise, truly, I didn’t have anything to do with him being taken. That’s why we had to go out. You see, Daisy and I are trying to find out where he is, to prove that the pin was just a mistake. You helped me once before. Please, help me again. Don’t tell anyone about this.’

  Ping paused. ‘All right, miss,’ she said at last. ‘Only – you aren’t doing anything dangerous, are you?’

  I thought about Wu Shing’s body, about the Triad meeting, about running through the streets of Hong Kong at night.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ said Ping. ‘That’s important.’

  She took my hand in her warm little callused one and smiled at me, and with a jump I realized that Ping and I had become – not exactly what Su Li and I had been, but still somehow – allies.

  ‘Now, come and clean yourselves up,’ she said, ‘or your parents will be furious.’

  Ping filled the wooden tub in our bathroom, and we washed until we were pink and clean and the water was an alarming brown colour. Just like that, the adventure was cleaned off us. Only our memories of it remained.

  ‘Thank you, Ping,’ I said, once we had dressed again. ‘You can go back to your room. Daisy and I need to talk.’

  10

  Ping bowed, and backed out of the room. I turned to see Daisy regarding me. ‘You are getting quite queenly, Hazel Wong,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to understand what you said to know how you said it. I’m impressed.’

  I blushed, feeling very un-queen-like. ‘I like Ping, but she can’t be here for a proper Detective Society meeting!’ I said.

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Daisy. ‘I was just about to suggest the same thing myself. Get out your casebook, and let’s sit down. Now – all right – there have been many exciting new developments in the case! First, our suspect Sai Yat has ruled himself out. Hazel, are you really sure we can trust what he said?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. He swore an oath, and so did the rest of the gang. And, when we found Wu Shing’s body, I saw that Ah Lan was as surprised as we were. Surely he’d have known if his gang had been behind it? Sai Yat was sure that the pin was a blind, and I agree with him.’

  ‘Our hypothesis that this crime is personal is looking more and more likely,’ agreed Daisy. ‘The person who’s behind it hates your father, and hates you. And we also now know for certain that, although Wu Shing was the murderer, he did not plan and carry out the crime on his own. He was talking about someone hiring him, and we know that he needed money to pay for his gambling habit. His room was dreadful! He clearly needed funds. And since he couldn’t have shot himself in the back, his death, and the piece of banknote we found in his hand, prove that he was paid off and then silenced!’

  ‘It’s so horrid!’ I said. ‘I do almost feel sorry for him, Daisy. He was tricked!’

  ‘Don’t be a chump. He’s a dreadful man who killed Su Li!’ cried Daisy. ‘But yes, the way he was murdered is quite foul. At close range, and from behind. It’s got a sort of mean, creeping feeling to it. As though – well, as though the murderer was an old man, or a woman, or a businessman who isn’t used to killing people. Not a gang member at all.’

  I shuddered. ‘Wu Shing’s death changes things,’ I said. ‘It shows how ruthless the person behind all this is. From what Ah Lan said we know that he’s been dead since Monday. His clothes told us that he came back to Peking Mansions and changed before he was killed. But, since the room didn’t have a telephone and I didn’t see a telephone in the hallway, he couldn’t have made the ransom call from there. And since there weren’t any baby things lying about, nappies or bottles, I don’t think Teddy was ever taken there.’

  ‘Yes. All the signs point to the fact that there is a co-conspirator, and that this person has Teddy somewhere else,’ said Daisy, nodding. ‘The place they made the call from, most likely.

  ‘We still don’t know exactly when Teddy was handed over to that person – but I think, from what we have discovered tonight, that we can make an educated guess. It either happened just after the crime, at the bank itself, or very soon after that, in the early afternoon. So – the person who has Teddy and planned this crime must have been out at that time for long enough to take Teddy and kill Wu Shing.’

  I turned back to our suspect list. I had already crossed out Sai Yat’s and Wu Shing’s names. Now I saw something else. If Wu Shing had been killed in Peking Mansions on Monday afternoon, my mother couldn’t have done it. She hadn’t left the house that day, for my father had forbidden it. I breathed out a sigh that I didn’t know I had been holding in.

  ‘It can’t be Mother!’ I said. ‘Think, Daisy!’

  Daisy wrinkled her nose, and then her brow cleared. ‘Correct,’ she said. ‘What a relief, Hazel. I admit I didn’t like the idea of your mother being a murderer.’

  I crossed out her name, pressing hard into the paper with my pencil. I felt ten times lighter.

  We had three suspects left. Mrs Fu, Mr Wa Fan and Mr Svensson.

  ‘We ought to make notes on their movements on Monday!’ I said. ‘It might help. Everything rests on who was on the eighth floor at the right time, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Daisy. ‘Yes. Mrs Fu first – we saw her beside Wu Shing’s lift at eleven fifty-five, and then again in the main bank hall at ten past twelv
e. We don’t know where she went after that. Mr Wa Fan – we only know from Wo On that he came out of the building at about twelve fifteen. And Mr Svensson – he was in the main bank hall at ten past twelve, and then we saw him leaving the building at twenty past. All of them are highly suspicious!’

  I nodded, and scribbled all that down. Then I thought again about the ransom call and I had another idea.

  ‘Remember what my father said about the ransom call?’ I asked. ‘He heard—’

  ‘Rattling!’ said Daisy. ‘Yes?’

  ‘So what rattles?’ I asked her.

  Daisy shrugged elegantly. ‘Pipes?’ she asked. ‘They rattle. Or – cars rattle when they start, but then your father would have called it a car noise. The bother is that we don’t know what he meant. But we can be alert for any suspicious rattling noises in the places our suspects frequent.’

  ‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘I know something that rattles – dishes, and chopsticks against plates! What if Mrs Fu has Teddy, and she’s keeping him in her teahouse?’

  ‘HAZEL!’ cried Daisy, sitting upright on the bed with a bounce. ‘That’s very clever! And I think I have just had another of my brilliant ideas. I know how we can tell your father, investigate Mrs Fu’s teahouse, and go back to the scene of the crime.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Daisy. ‘What was that thing you were telling me about – that food that sounds like … addition?’

  ‘Dim sum?’ I asked, stifling a giggle.

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘That’s the sort of thing that Mrs Fu’s restaurant makes, isn’t it? Now, what if you asked your father to take us there as a special treat? You can use that time to tell him about the pin. He can’t be too angry at you when there are other people about. And what if I ate something there that disagreed with me, making everyone hurry to my side? You’d have time to look about to see if there are any babies stashed away at the teahouse, and then we’d quite probably have to rush me to Dr Aurelius’s.’