Copyright © 2019 A. M. Stuart
Prologue
Friday 4 March 1910
SINGAPORE
‘Shorthand and Typewriting. An Englishwoman undertakes casual work as a stenographer and typist. She guarantees rapid and careful work together with ABSOLUTE SECRECY. Address Mrs. Gordon, Tanglin Post Office 35.’
Sir Oswald Newbold picked up his pencil and circled the small advertisement on the second page of The Straits Times, folded the paper and set it down beside his place mat. He crossed one leg over the other and, picking up his tea cup, he surveyed his garden.
The early morning mist rose out of a jungle beyond the boundary of this barely tamed corner of Singapore. The very air seemed alive with the ‘boobook’ call of the native birds and the screech of Macaque monkeys. The early morning humidity surrounded him like a blanker.
The smell of the hearty English breakfast of bacon and eggs that Nyan set before him seemed curiously at odds with the tropical surroundings.
As he ate, Sir Oswald's eyes strayed once more to The Straits Times. He set down his fork and dabbed the egg yolk from his moustache.
Folding his napkin, he pushed back his chair and stood up.
‘Nyan, I have a letter to write. Be ready to take it into town for me later this morning.’
CHAPTER ONE
Singapore
Monday 7 March 1910
The day had not begun well for Harriet Gordon. A domestic upset in the kitchen had to be smoothed over before she even arrived at the school to find the unreliable typewriter there refused to work. The decision to retrieve her own little typewriter from the home of Sir Oswald Newbold, had been where it all began.
As the pony trap turned off Bukit Timah Road into the long drive that wound its way through the abandoned rubber trees and thickets of jungle up to Sir Oswald Newbold’s home, the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle.
Not a monkey, a bird or an insect could be heard in the ulu that surrounded the house and a cloying hush settled around Harriet, as thick and impenetrable as the humidity of the late morning.
The pony flattened his ears and slowed his jaunty pace, as the low silhouette of the old plantation house came into view. Aziz clucked his tongue encouragingly but Mr. Carrots came to a standstill, his ears pressed against his lowered head. The boy shifted in his seat, his gaze darting around the overgrown garden.
“Sorry, Mem. We go no further and I think we should not stay. They call this place Bukit Hantu It is a bad place.’
“Bukit Hantu? What does that mean?” Harriet asked.
Her client had told her that he had named the property Mandalay, in memory of his long connection with Burma.
Aziz shook his head. “There are evil spirits here.”
Harriet smiled at the boy “There are no such thing as evil spirits, Aziz. You stay here with Carrots and I'll just pop in and collect the typewriter.”
Aziz jumped from the trap and helped Harriet down.
She narrowly avoided a puddle, remnant of the morning rain storms. Lifting her skirts to avoid the cloying red mud, she strode the last fifty yards to the steps of the old house. On her first visit to Mandalay, it had not seemed quite so run down but now she could see the wood on the verandah supports were rotten and in need of painting, green mildew stained the stone steps and a single shutter somewhere around the side of the house flapped and banged, even though there seemed to be no wind.
And again, the silence… no sound of servants chattering, no clanging of pots from the kitchen. Nothing.
Her unease intensified as she set her foot on the lower step leading up the verandah.
Glancing back, she forced a smile and waved at Aziz. The boy stood in the shade of a massive Rain tree, holding Mr. Carrots bridle. As she watched the pony shook his head, almost sending the slender boy flying. The animal started to back away and it took all Aziz's strength to hold him. Neither boy nor animal wanted to be here and her unease began to grow.
Bukit Hantu? Harriet's knowledge of Malay was still rudimentary. She knew bukit meant hill, but hantu? She would ask Julian when she got home.
The wooden boards on the verandah creaked as she approached the door. Her client would not be expecting her until later in the day, but she needed the typewriter she had left with him. She knocked loudly on the frosted glass panel and stood back, expecting Sir Oswald's elderly Burmese servant to answer the door as he had done the previous day. The seconds ticked past without any movement from within the house.
She tried the door handle and found the door unlocked. Given the valuables she had seen in the house, she considered Sir Oswald's security a little lax.
'Hello,' she called, her voice vanishing into the dark bowels of the house. 'Sir Oswald? Are you at home?'
Damn it, she swore under her breath. She needed the typewriter.
If no one was at home perhaps she could retrieve her property and be gone, leaving a note of apology for her intrusion.
Remembering the name of Sir Oswald's servant, she called out again.
'Nyan? Sir Oswald?'
Only an echoing silence reverberated through the house to the open back door visible from where she stood.
Just collect the typewriter and go. You can leave a note...
She stepped over the threshold and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she caught her breath. The main living room bore no resemblance to the cluttered room she had admired the day before. Then every space had been filled with oriental rugs, antique furniture and Asian art. This morning nothing remained in place. Furniture had been overturned, cushions torn apart and valuable porcelain lay shattered on the rugs.
A sensible woman would have turned on her heel.
She glanced at the study door. It stood ajar and drawn by an invisible force, she approached it, her breath held tightly in her throat. Something under her foot crunched and she started, taking a step back. The splintered remains of two port glasses lay scattered across the floor, along with a small silver tray and a broken decanter. Her nose twitched as she caught the scent of the port and something else, sweet and sickly, at odds with the pervading odor of damp and dust.
She skirted the broken port glasses and put her hand out to push the door open, but drew it back as if she had been bitten at the sight of dark smears on the chipped white paint.
With a single extended finger, she pushed the study door. It opened on protesting hinges and she peered around it, her gaze seeking the familiar solidity of the sturdy black case of the Corona typewriter. It sat where she had left it, on the round table in the center of the room but as her peripheral vision widened she let out her breath in a gasp.
Every book had been swept from the shelves, papers scattered across the floor interspersed with copious amounts of broken china and in the middle of the carnage, between the table and the big desk, Sir Oswald Newbold lay spreadeagled.
Years of assisting her husband's medical practice and his work in the worst slums of India had enured her to death in its many forms but nothing could have prepared her for the sight of the bloodstained corpse lying on the expensive oriental carpet. He stared up at the ceiling with sightless eyes, his face fixed in a grimace of horror, echoed only by the hideous grin of the devilish imp carved on the handle of the antique knife, the dha Sir Oswald had called it when he had shown it to her the previous day, that had been thrust into his neck.
The scream stuck in Harriet's throat.
CHAPTER 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, remnant of the morning rain storms, 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 said ‘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 arm chair 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 grey, and drawn. Although he was yet to view the corpse, Curran knew it would be no sight for the faint hearted. 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. I am the sister of the headmaster of St. Thomas School.”
“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 she pushed a damp tendril of brown hair back behind her ear with a trembling hand. “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 on to 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. “He was not expecting you today?”
“No. We had agreed that I would return on Wednesday 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 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. “It is 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 him. “I assure you, apart from the telephone, 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?”
She took a deep shuddering breath. “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 clattered on to the verandah carrying a pitcher of water and a glass. 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 back to the school with a message? My brother will be worried.”
“Your brother?”
“The Reverend Julian Edwards. He is headmaster of St. Thomas.”
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 overlay 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 on to a large, airy living room furnished for a man with opulent tastes that belied the run-down appearance 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, that may once have been crammed on to the surfaces of the dark, teak furniture were now scatted 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 on to each other 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. He 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, greying 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 Grieves 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 the crime scene?” 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, probably about eighteen inches high, lay on the ground beside Sir Oswald’s outstretched hand. 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. A quick glance behind the desk revealed a small safe, the door wide open and more papers, folders and envelopes, spewing out of it.
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 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 these 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 singlehandedly 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 he’d arrived and Curran took a discreet step backwards, ostensibly not to interfere with Mackenzie.
“What’s Harriet Gordon doing up here?” Mackenzie crouched down beside Sir Oswald and opened the black bag he carried. Curran tried not to look at the array of shiny, anonymous instruments that glinted at him from its depths.
He gestured at the bloodied corpse. “She found him.”
Mac looked up. “Harriet?”
“You know her?”
“Very well. I went through medical school with her late husband, James. Her brother’s the headmaster of St. Tom’s in River Valley Road. Luckily for you she’s a sensible woman. If it had been my wife that had stumbled on this...” Mackenzie gestured at the corpse. “But you haven’t told me why she was here.”
“She tells me she was doing some work for Newbold. Typing.” Curran cast a glance at the typewriter. “Do you know anything about her work with Newbold?”
“She and her brother came for supper on Saturday night and she mentioned that she had placed an advertisement in the Straits Times and had obtained her first client. I’m not sure she gets any money for the hours of work she does at the school.” Mackenzie wiped the instruments he had been using, snapped the bag shut and rose to his feet. “We need to get him out of here and down to the morgue. He’s going off pretty damn fast.”
“Time of death?”
Mackenzie tilted his head. “I’d say before midnight. That’s as good as you’ll get, Curran. Have you looked at that knife in his neck? Nasty looking chap.”
The red eyes of the demon sparkled malevolently and it grinned at Curran, its fang like teeth protruding from its jaw. He could almost believe the hideous creature capable of committing the crime itself. Bukit Hantu indeed... there were evil spirits here and this was one of them.
Like most houses in Singapore, the kitchen, laundry and servants’ accommodation were detached from the rear of the house and connected only by a covered walkway. Leaving Mac with Sir Oswald, Curran traced the running, bloodied footsteps to the back door. A Malay constable squatting in the shade outside the kitchen jumped to his feet as Singh and Curran approached.
The smell of deat
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