The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

Book 2: Su Lin Series

by Ovidia Yu

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

The second novel in Ovidia Yu's delightfully charming crime series set in 1930s Singapore, featuring amateur sleuth Su Lin.

What we came to think of as the betel nut affair began in the middle of a tropical thunderstorm in December 1937 . . .

Singapore is agog with the news of King Edward VIII's abdication to marry American heiress Wallis Simpson. Chen Su Lin, now Chief Inspector Le Froy's secretarial assistant in Singapore's newly formed detective unit, still dreams of becoming a journalist and hopes to cover the story when the Hon Victor Glossop announces he is marrying an American widow of his own, Mrs Nicole Covington, in the Colony. But things go horribly wrong when Victor Glossop is found dead, his body covered in bizarre symbols and soaked in betel nut juice.

The beautiful, highly-strung Nicole claims it's her fault he's dead . . . just like the others. And when investigations into her past reveal a dead lover, as well as a husband, the case against her appears to be stacking up. Begrudgingly on Le Froy's part, Su Lin agrees to chaperon Nicole at the Farquhar Hotel, intending to get the truth out of her somehow. But as she uncovers secrets and further deaths occur, Su Lin realises she may not be able to save Nicole's life – or even her own.

Release date: June 7, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

What we came to think of as the betel nut affair began in the middle of a tropical thunderstorm in December 1936. In Singapore, chewing betel was both a blessing (more stimulating than coffee) and a curse (scarlet spit stains in public areas) but mostly taken for granted.

And Miss Chen Su Lin might be Chief Inspector Le Froy’s secretarial assistant, and cultural liaison at Singapore’s new Detective and Intelligence Unit, but I had spent most of the day mopping floors, like a servant girl or spinster aunt. The Detective Shack, as we called it, was in a modern brick building with two floors, but rain blew in under the doors and around badly fitted windows.

If the rain continued, the afternoon’s high tide would bring more flooding. Chief Inspector Le Froy was shut in his office with his papers, but the rest of the case files had been carried upstairs to the little room where I slept during the week. The zinc roof up there was leaking and they were stacked, with my clothes, on the narrow bed, everything covered with a tarpaulin.

I like the stormy rains of the monsoon season. Once when I was five years old I hid under my grandmother’s bed during a storm and flash flood. The family panicked as swirling waters swept past with fallen trees and dead animals and I was nowhere to be found. Later Ah Ma told me, ‘Thunder is the sound of Lei Gong, the Dragon God of Thunder, punishing bad people. If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be scared of. He punishes only bad people.’

Since then I’ve felt thunderstorms were on my side. And if the rain slashing down ruined the wedding rehearsal up the road at the Farquhar Hotel, I wouldn’t be sorry . . .

I gasped and spilled the slop pail when the door of the Detective Shack crashed open, letting in a sheet of rain and Sergeant Ferdinand de Souza, second in command to Le Froy. He was a huge man, as muscled as a wild boar, and he was covered with what appeared to be blood – a lot of it. Behind him, the slighter figure of Constable Kwok Kan Seng looked no better. Their rain-slicked faces were streaked and smeared, their khaki uniforms soaked in the thick red-brown liquid. I couldn’t tell where or how badly they were injured.

‘Sit!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t move more than you have to. You should have gone straight to the hospital!’ I would go for Dr Shankar or Dr Leask, after I’d examined any open wounds. I hauled the first-aid box from under my desk, knocking over the snowy Christmas tree de Souza had made from brush bristles and Lux soap flakes, and sending the matchboxes he had painstakingly painted and filled with sweets skidding over the wet floor. I cursed my dratted limp as I stumble-ran towards them. Childhood polio had left me with one leg shorter than the other but I can move when I have to.

‘We’re all right, Su Lin. Don’t fuss,’ de Souza growled. He looked furious but didn’t seem to be in pain. He picked up the matchbox crib that had landed by his feet and straightened the tiny ornament with gentle pudgy fingers.

I pushed the miserable Constable Kwok backwards onto a chair and grabbed his hands. His fingernails were a healthy pink under the dirt and his pulse was strong . . . and there was something strange about the texture of the blood on his arms.

‘Who is hurt, then?’ I demanded. ‘How many? Where? At the wedding rehearsal?’

‘Alamak. Nobody, lah.’ Constable Kwok said. He was on the verge of tears.

‘De Souza. Show me your hands.’

I was just the office assistant but de Souza didn’t argue. He held out his enormous hands to me, turning them palm up, then down. His fingers were steady and, apart from the terrible stains on his skin and uniform, he showed no signs of injury.

The pounding in my throat eased slightly. Neither man was hurt.

When I had taken the job at the Detective Shack everyone – Uncle Chen, the ladies at the Mission Centre and my friend Parshanti’s mother – warned me of the dangers of working with men I was neither related nor married to, but these men had accepted me and we had become a team.

‘What happened?’ I demanded, then jumped as the wind snapped a window hook out of the wall and the wooden frame slammed open, letting in a fresh sheet of rain.

De Souza pulled it shut and looped his lanyard around the stub to fasten it. ‘Nothing happened. Don’t say anything. Just forget it. We must get changed before the chief sees.’

Years on the sidelines of my grandmother’s businesses had equipped me to distinguish between what was privately acknowledged and what could be made public. I made the decision. ‘Go to the back and change. Then pass your uniforms to me and I will soak them in salt water.’ That would get the blood out. Or give me a chance to find out what the substance was, if not blood. I sniffed my fingers. The smell was familiar but I couldn’t place it.

We were too late.

‘What happened?’ Chief Inspector Thomas Le Froy came out of his office and saw his men. ‘Su Lin, get Dr Shankar!’

Constable Kwok jumped to his feet, almost knocking over his chair.

‘No, sir!’ I caught and steadied it. ‘Sir, they say they aren’t hurt.’

De Souza said, ‘No, lah. No need doctor! Don’t tell anybody! Aiyoh!’ The door burst open behind him, sending him stumbling forward.

Parshanti Shankar tumbled in, along with a gust of rain pellets. She pushed the door shut and leaned against it, panting, as she struggled to close her wet umbrella. She seemed to be having trouble breathing. I reached for my first-aid box again, concerned, then saw she was laughing.

‘You should have been there, Su!’ Parshanti said to me. ‘It was such a hilarious joke! It was so funny! You can’t be angry, Ferdie.’ This was to Sergeant de Souza. ‘It was just a joke. You all take yourselves too seriously when you’re in uniform. They wanted to get some flash photographs, that’s all. They’re trying out the camera for the wedding. Come on. Be a sport. Kan Seng, you’re all right, aren’t you?’

Constable Kwok didn’t look at her.

‘He’s not hurt,’ I said. ‘That’s not his blood.’

‘Of course it isn’t!’ Parshanti started to laugh again, ‘That’s not blood at all. It’s betel juice!’

‘What happened at the wedding rehearsal?’ Le Froy asked. ‘Are you two all right?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Constable Kwok nodded but kept his head down, biting his lip.

‘De Souza. What happened?’

‘Sir. We were on duty outside the ballroom as directed. Then somebody shouted that the groom was injured so we rushed in. He was lying there with blood all over him. But it wasn’t blood. When I bent down to check his pulse he spat betel juice at me. He had a mouthful. Then all the others joined in, pouring betel juice over us.’

‘They were laughing and saying things about driving out demons and evil spirits,’ Constable Kwok said. ‘My grandma chews betel, but that’s to calm her stomach, nothing to do with evil spirits.’

Parshanti was laughing. ‘Sorry, but it was so funny! It was just a joke – a betel bomb, that’s what they call it. Fashionable people are always playing jokes in the West.’

‘Did they send you to apologize?’ Le Froy asked.

‘No. I just thought—’

‘Off-duty it would be a joke. But we were in uniform,’ de Souza said.

‘Go to your quarters and change,’ Le Froy said, ‘then get back to the rehearsal.’

The men exchanged glances, clearly unwilling.

‘We are providing official surveillance for that rehearsal and the wedding,’ Le Froy reminded them.

‘They only want us there to sabo us,’ Constable Kwok said miserably. ‘There is no risk to anybody.’

‘It’s an assignment.’

Governor McPherson, who was new to the post, had come in person to the Detective Shack last week to request the unit provide security for the Glossop-Covington festivities. Could he have been in on the practical joke?

‘Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll come back with you.’ Le Froy said.

‘No need, sir,’ Constable Kwok said. ‘If they bomb just us, it’s a joke. But if it’s you—’

‘Whether me or you, it’s the khaki,’ Le Froy said, referring to the khaki shirt and shorts of the police uniform. ‘I’ll come back with you when you’re ready. The khaki keeps people safe, whether they appreciate it or not. We will observe from outside the hotel.’

They saluted him, then went to change, looking more like battle-scarred nursery-school teachers than victims. Le Froy nodded coldly to Parshanti and closed his office door.

‘It was just a joke,’ Parshanti said defensively. ‘It was funny. You should have been there!’

I had wanted to be part of the surveillance team, but Le Froy had refused. Had he expected this? Or something worse of Governor McPherson?



Gregory McPherson, Singapore’s new governor, had been in office for almost three months when he had turned up at the Detective Shack.

He was not tall for an ang moh, standing just over five feet eight. His short grey hair and military posture suggested army connections, and his dark brown tan indicated previous postings in India or Africa. A slight pot belly suggested a love of good food. He was said to be a down-to-earth man who didn’t stand on ceremony. I believed that – he’d arrived without an escort other than the driver he’d left outside.

But the governor’s request was unexpected: ‘I want you and your men to make sure the Glossop-Covington wedding on Christmas Eve goes smoothly. The bride-to-be has received threats. Not surprising, given all the mutterings against married American women going after our titled boys. And you and your men should be at the rehearsal too, to get an idea of the situation.’

‘Surely this comes under police jurisdiction rather than the Detective Unit,’ Le Froy said.

The British Empire was still reeling from the king’s abdication and the Detective Unit had been created to defuse unrest before it escalated. If you believed the wireless reports, lawless anarchy was just around the corner.

‘If the former king and Mrs Simpson came to Singapore, the Detective Unit would be responsible for their safety. Here you have an upper-class Englishman with an American wife-to-be. Consider it an exercise.’

My time in Government House had taught me not to trust people just because they were British and in authority. Still, I liked our new governor. I had caught glimpses of his wife in town, flanked by their two young sons. The boys seemed respectful and respectable, which is always a good sign. I learned from helping at the Mission Centre that difficult children often have difficult parents.

‘I’ve heard about you, Le Froy, and I respect you,’ Governor McPherson said, ‘but this is a personal request from the groom, Victor Glossop. I gather from Victor that you and his father, Sir Roderick Glossop, are old friends.’

‘You’re an old friend of Sir Roderick’s yourself, Governor?’

‘Never met the fellow,’ Governor McPherson said genially. ‘Advantage of being out of England so much. I’d rather deal with natives in the colonies than those back home. Young Glossop only came to us because my wife is some distant relation of his mother. And, of course, she took to Mrs Covington’s child. You know how women are.’

‘Child?’

‘The bride’s little boy is here with her.’

Le Froy raised one eyebrow. A sign he was balancing his thoughts. ‘A long voyage out for a child. Where is his father?’

‘Dead.’

‘So there’s no “Mr Simpson” in the picture?’

‘Nothing of the sort. But the lady has received threatening letters. It’s the damned press, linking them to the abdication and upsetting royalists.’

‘The press?’

‘It’s in the Weekend World,’ I said helpfully. Parshanti had been going on about it. According to Pip’s Squeaks, a column in the paper, Victor Glossop had proposed to Mrs Nicole Covington on board the RMS Queen Victoria on the evening of King Edward’s abdication. Victor had gone down on one knee in the dance hall and declared that, like the king, he was in love with his ‘American missus’, whereupon the band had launched into ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ to cheers and applause and calls of ‘Kiss the bride!’

‘So romantic!’ Parshanti had gushed.

I would have preferred a more private proposal myself so I could say, ‘Let me think about it’, then check on the man and his family. And, yes, I know my attitude is one more reason why no one is ever likely to go down on his knee for me.

But I was excited too. This was my big chance. My dream was to be a journalist with stories in international papers like the Saturday Evening Post and the Weekend World. So far, my pieces had been dismissed as well written but ‘not of interest’ to their readers.

Well, Victor Glossop was clearly of interest to their readers. He came from an old English family and was known for wild parties, daring pranks and being seen with the Mitford sisters at Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. Nicole Covington was a young, rich and beautiful American widow, which meant that, though Mrs Simpson was neither young nor beautiful, Nicole could be lumped with her for being American. Hence the threats.

If I could attend their wedding party at the Farquhar Hotel, I could write it up for the international papers. I might even be able to get photographs of the ceremony . . . ‘I can help,’ I offered. ‘You can’t send a man to watch Mrs Covington and her little boy.’ I was being forward. But I often served as female chaperone when the police had to interview women without their relatives present.

‘And you would be . . .?’ Governor McPherson looked pleased.

‘Chen Su Lin. I am the cultural liaison. I do translations.’ I also managed the office logistics and accounts better than any of the men could, though they never admitted it.

‘No, Su Lin.’ Just like that, Le Froy had crushed my dream as he would a cockroach.

‘But, sir, I have to! I mean, you need a woman there in case— I just want to help, sir!’

‘You have work to do.’ Le Froy had said. ‘De Souza and Pillay will go.’

I had been furious enough to serve Le Froy lukewarm coffee on the morning of the rehearsal. Now I wondered if he had suspected something. Had the Glossops really been worried for their son’s safety or had Victor Glossop and his friends come up with that idea for other reasons?

Le Froy hadn’t answered when the governor asked if he was a friend of Sir Roderick. Did that mean they had not been friends?

I wondered even more about Victor Glossop. There was definitely a story there.



Two days later it was still raining. The storm was over but plump drops were falling, their steady drumming on the roof almost musical.

I had pulled my desk and typewriter away from the wall where the paint was showing damp patches. It was worse across the road where brown water pooled in the construction site of the new police headquarters. It should have been completed at least a year ago but it looked like there would be more delays.

Parshanti had come to visit me at the station. This suited me since it was another slow morning. Even criminals have a break during the monsoon season. Petty crime takes second place when the canals are full of fat fish, drowsy jungle fowl are easily caught, and durians and mangoes are ripening on the trees.

‘If you had been there, you would have seen it was just a joke!’ Parshanti was sulky because I wouldn’t walk to the hotel with her ‘just to look’ at the Christmas decorations. Parshanti Shankar was my best friend but there were times when I wanted to smack her. I yawned instead. It was the kind of weather that sends children out in search of tadpoles and puts grown-ups to sleep.

‘I’m so bored,’ Parshanti said.

She tossed aside the latest Weekend World she had brought over from her father’s shop. I picked it up and put it safely in a drawer. I had already read the latest Pip’s Squeaks, but I wanted to go over it again.

‘Pip’ mocked moral hypocrisy, saying the domination of King Edward by Mrs Simpson perfectly reflected current relations between England and America. The column had so much high-society insider gossip from both sides of the Atlantic that I had once wondered if the playboy prince might not himself be the author. But not after I’d read Pip’s claim that Mrs Simpson’s control over Edward came from sexual practices she had learned in a Chinese brothel. Surely no man could write such things about the woman he loved. Even in jest.

‘Couldn’t you get your handsome boss to hire me too? He could start a women’s department. I’m sure I could do what you do.’ Parshanti poised her fingers over the typewriter on my desk. ‘I could learn to do this. And I could use forty-five dollars a month. Dash it, I could use the seventy cents a day I’d get working in a factory! What are you supposed to be doing now?’

‘I was going upstairs to check if the rainwater buckets need emptying. Do you want to do that?’

‘I’d have to get a suit made if I come to work here. My mother has a Simplicity pattern for a slim-cut skirt that would suit me perfectly. Won’t you ask the chief inspector for me? Please? We’d be colleagues. I could have a desk next to yours and it would be like being back in school.’

‘I’ll ask him once you learn to type,’ I offered. ‘You can use the typewriter pad I drew up. And if you want to study shorthand, I’ll give you the title of the book I used. The Mission Centre has two copies.’

Parshanti made a face at me. ‘I’ve had more than enough of studying, thank you.’

Parshanti was in what I called her ‘society’ mode, with any sense she had buried under a thick layer of silliness. She thought it was fashionable to flirt. I didn’t see the point. Though I had to admit it won over men – even police officers who should know better.

Dr Shankar, Parshanti’s tall dark Indian father, and Mrs Shankar, her short plump Scottish mother, had somehow produced between them a Mata Hari. Parshanti was tall and slim, with honey-coloured skin, huge long-lashed eyes and thick curly hair usually pulled back into a thick plait but brushed loose over her shoulders for social occasions. Like wedding rehearsals, apparently.

The way men looked at Parshanti made me feel even shorter and more handicapped than I was. Sometimes, so that I could go on being best friends with her, I had to remind myself that she couldn’t type or take shorthand and envied my ‘real job’.

‘Why were you at the wedding rehearsal?’

‘I was there for Mam. She’s making the bride’s wedding gown and going-away dress and they asked her to check none of the decorations would clash.’

Mrs Shankar was a skilled seamstress popular with fashionable ang moh women. She could copy anything in the fashion magazines her husband brought in. Dr Rajan Shankar was an Edinburgh-trained doctor and surgeon, but Westerners in Singapore did not trust an Indian doctor and locals did not trust Western medicine so Dr Shankar operated a pharmacy that sold magazines and Kodak film, and developed photographs in a darkroom that was also Mrs Shankar’s sewing room. Mrs Shankar’s dresses were worn to all the top social events in Singapore, though being married to an Indian meant she was never invited to any.

‘Shanti, you hate sewing!’

‘No difference. Mam has no time to change anything but it got me in. You should have come with me! We could have told them you’re a dressmaker’s assistant’s assistant. It was full of people who don’t know them. Su, it’s going to be the event of the year, the most interesting thing that’s ever happened here! The hotel ballroom is enormous – they’ve put coloured streamers on a whole wall of fans and a row of Christmas trees in the corridor!

‘And it wasn’t even really a rehearsal,’ Parshanti looked dreamy, ‘more like a party. I didn’t see the bride but she wouldn’t be in her dress anyway. Mam’s still working on it. We tried the food for the reception and it was super top-notch! When I get married I want my reception to be at the Farquhar.’

Parshanti might have found it fun but I didn’t see the point of a party unless I could write about it.

To be honest, there wasn’t much point to most of my life right then. Until last year, staying at school long enough to get my General Cambridge Certificate had been my main goal. The ladies who ran the school at the Mission Centre talked about the GCC as if it were the Holy Grail. But when you get your grail home and find nothing changes, don’t you wonder if it’s really holy?

Parshanti and I had been among the first five girls in Singapore to take the General Cambridge exam. But what good had it done us? I knew I wanted to do more with my life than fetch coffee and transcribe wireless communications. And Parshanti only wanted to get married.

Parshanti’s parents were willing to pay the fees for her to attend a teacher-training course. They even said that if Parshanti or her brother wanted to go to university they would find the money somehow, but she wasn’t interested.

Sometimes I was so jealous of Parshanti, with her brilliant father and her loud, cheerful and occasionally foul-mouthed mother – but, to be honest, I was jealous of most people with parents.

After my parents had died, fortune-tellers advised my grandmother to send me far away or put me down a well. Otherwise the bad luck I carried as an orphan and polio victim would infect the rest of the Chen family. Instead, she enrolled me in the mission school to see if the Christian God could counteract my inherited bad luck. That was how I became the first member of my family to go to English school.

I knew how lucky I was. I knew I was only alive because Ah Ma had broken traditional rules, which made it easier for me to bend and break rules myself. Please don’t get me wrong, I like rules. Rules make life easier. The problem is, everyone follows different ones, sometimes without even being aware of it.

What I really wanted was to be a lady journalist like Henrietta Stackpole, who is by far the most interesting character in The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. That t. . .