The Mushroom Tree Mystery

Book 6: Su Lin Series

by Ovidia Yu

Genres: Historical Mysteries; International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

'One of Singapore's finest living authors' South China Morning Post

'Simply glorious. Every nook and cranny of 1930s Singapore is brought richly to life' CATRIONA MCPHERSON

'Charming' RHYS BOWEN

'One of the most likeable heroines in modern literature' SCOTSMAN
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The Allies have defeated Germany in Europe, but Japan refuses to surrender the East.

In Singapore, amid rumours the Japanese occupiers are preparing to wipe out the population of the island rather than surrender, a young aide is found murdered beneath the termite mushroom tree in Hideki Tagawa's garden and his plans for a massive poison gas bomb are missing. To prevent any more destruction it falls to Su Lin to track down the real killer with the help of Hideki Tagawa's old nemesis, the charismatic shinto priest Yoshio Yoshimo.

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Praise for Ovidia Yu:

'Chen Su Lin is a true gem. Her slyly witty voice and her admirable, sometimes heartbreaking, practicality make her the most beguiling narrator heroine I've met in a long while' Catriona McPherson

'Charming and fascinating with great authentic feel. Ovidia Yu's teenage Chinese sleuth gives us an insight into a very different culture and time. This book is exactly why I love historical novels' Rhys Bowen

'A wonderful detective novel . . . a book that introduces one of the most likeable heroines in modern literature and should be on everyone's Must Read list' Scotsman

'Unassuming, brilliantly observant' SCMP

'Ovidia Yu's writing helped me peel back the layers to understand Singapore. The story and Chen Su Lin's initiative and tenacity, set against a backdrop of wartime Singapore, intrigued both the historian and the mystery lover in me' Kara Owens CMG CVO, British High Commissioner to Singapore

Release date: June 21, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

I remember it was some hours before dawn, that Monday morning, when I heard the planes approaching. I was out by the mushroom trees and had already been there for at least an hour.

I found it hard to sleep because of the August heat, and because we were close to the Swan Lake, the humidity was so thick that you couldn’t tell if the damp soaking your sheets was coming out of you or the air.

It was hot outside too, but I’ve always preferred to be outdoors than inside a building, especially now I was living in Moss House, on the grounds of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, since renamed the Shōnan Botanic Gardens by the Japanese. Moss House was where the Kew Gardens-trained British administrator and his family had lived. Now they, with all the other botanists and researchers, were either locked up as PoWs or doing hard labour on the Siam–Burma Railway.

Because of the blackout and curfew, I was safer out there at night than I was during the day. Also, the mushrooms seemed to grow better by night, and it was less traumatic to lift the tarpaulin to look at them when it was dark.

I extinguished my coconut-oil lamp. I’d improvised it from an old cough-tincture bottle, coconut oil, and lamp wicks made from strips of old dishcloth twisted, sewn together and pulled through the hole I’d made in the lid. I’d ducked under the tarp covering the mushroom trees and pulled it over me when I heard the planes coming, straining to pick up the whistle before the impact. They say it’s good to hear the bombs explode, because if you’re alive to hear it, it hasn’t got you. They passed over without incident. I waited a while more, then crawled out. Born in 1920, the year of the metal monkey, I was twenty-four years old. I didn’t know if I would live to turn twenty-five.

Here in Syonan-To – Japanese Occupied Singapore – there were daily air raids from British and American bombers. Radios were still banned, with harsh penalties, so it was impossible to know what was happening in the rest of the world. The official Japanese version was that the war was over for Singapore: we were now part of the great Japanese Empire. But the bombers told a different story.

These days, the sky black with smoke in the middle of the day and thick with the smell of wood and attap houses burning, it must have sunk in with even the most victory-focused Japanese that their success in the East wasn’t absolute.

Of course, the Allied bombs destroyed local homes as well as Japanese fortifications but that didn’t turn the locals against them. In fact, most welcomed the raids. The incendiary bombs were part of the healing process, like the pain of cutting infection from a rusty nail out of your foot. And the daily bombings were a sign that, whatever the Japanese said, we hadn’t been forgotten. It was a small price to pay.

The laboratory building was on the other side of Swan Lake, at the small opening that stood at the foot of the steep slope from the primary forest area. You either walked the ten-minute scenic loop around the lake or, as I had done, crossed a precarious plank bridge laid over the marsh garden – the narrowest part of the lake, which was thick with water hyacinth, lotus pads and horsetail reeds. Swan Lake was now officially called ‘Main Lake’. We called it ‘Snakehead Lake’ because the snakeheads, eels and catfish in it were our main source of protein. There was fencing around the perimeter of the garden but, like everything else, it was in a state of disrepair.

While foraging for edibles behind the laboratory building, I’d found three huge half-rotted tree trunks covered with tarpaulin and thick with mushrooms. They bore a plastic-encased order to ‘keep the substrate covered to prevent cross-contamination by wild mushroom spores’. It was clearly an experiment and I’d decided to continue it. I didn’t have any scientific education, but I was good at experimenting, analysing results and not giving up.

The teachers at the Mission Centre school I’d attended had drummed it into us that we could succeed at anything we really wanted to, as long as we converted our ‘want’ into ‘work’. Of course, they’d been talking about getting a teacher-training certificate or secretarial post: when I’d admitted my dream of becoming a journalist I was told it was neither realistic nor respectable. But, to be fair, they’d encouraged my equally unrealistic goal of going to university.

All of that had evaporated when the Japanese came. Now my only goal was to stay alive.

I’d found soil and fertiliser, and helped myself to the bins of mulch and wood chips and added them to what was already there. As with everywhere else on our island, the hill slope was granite beneath the surface layer of loam – clay, sand and organic matter – which was precious and had to be carefully preserved. The supplies were probably intended to keep fancy exotic plants alive but I’d put them to good use growing vegetables to keep us common people alive. We were the endangered species now.

Foraging for wild mushrooms is dangerous, because you can’t tell the good from the bad until it’s too late. Trusting labels written by scientists was risky too, but though I never took risks if I could help it, you have to trust some people or you’ll spend all your time reinventing the wheel.

Mushroom-growing felt like part craft and part magic. I had to do the work but there was no way of telling whether they would spawn until they did – or didn’t. I’d already managed to grow shiitakes, and my experimental mushrooms hadn’t killed anyone. I considered that a success.

I’d kept the tarp tied over the trunks to prevent wild spores coming in. I’d also warned – almost threatened – the houseboys to stay away, despite their curiosity. They meant well but they were young and clumsy. I’d heard them joking, ‘Miss Chen has a tree spirit boyfriend!’ but they knew better than to disobey me.

I was hoping to get some wine-cap mushrooms to spawn from the last of the saketsubatake sent from Japan, and there were signs of life, but I didn’t know if they would survive to grow large enough to eat.

Whenever I could, I brought food scraps from the house to the mushroom trees, like people brought food offerings to the shrines. Maybe that was how it all started. The birds and bugs, worms and animals that ate them would leave droppings to enrich the soil. Mushrooms were virtuously vegetarian and had a deliciously umami ‘meatiness’.

I’d learned from the scientists’ notes that once the spawn was placed it must not be disturbed or the mushrooms would not grow. So I moved down the trunks of the mushroom trees according to the markings, tying down the tarp at different points.

I’d also tried to grow the maitake or ‘dancing mushroom’, Mrs Maki’s favourite variety. So far I hadn’t succeeded. They’re normally found in Japanese hardwood forests and perhaps didn’t like the soft wood or Singapore’s hot, humid climate.

From what I was seeing, the Japanese didn’t like our climate either. Mrs Maki complained almost as much about how hot she was as she did about how stupid I was.

I was using mushrooms to distract myself. I’ve always found the best way to avoid thinking about something you can’t change is to focus on something else. I didn’t want to think about what I was doing there. Mrs Maki had come to find me at my grandmother’s house when she came back to Singapore. Years ago, she had been my first Japanese teacher. Now she wanted me to set up and run a household for her since she knew I could speak Japanese as well as English, Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese. She also said it had been Hideki Tagawa’s suggestion. I think we both knew he wanted to keep an eye on me.

Hideki Tagawa had no official military post, but he was close to Prince Chichibu and had been instrumental in establishing the military dictatorship in Japan. Since the death last year of Colonel Fujiwara, Hideki Tagawa had been ‘chief adviser’ to the military administration in Syonan. His first and most complicated task had been to cover up what had driven the top administrator to his death while making sure his reputation and pension remained pristine for the sake of his wife and children in Japan.

When I’d first met him, Hideki Tagawa had been so sure Japan was doing what was best for Asia: freeing us from Western colonial rule. And, like my former boss Chief Inspector Le Froy of the Singapore Police, Hideki Tagawa had tried to create a system that was fair to locals, as well as their Japanese lords and masters, in which justice applied to all.

Was it so wrong for me to help the Japanese run our island if I’d been willing to work with the British?

Hideki Tagawa’s mother, Mrs Maki’s mother and my mother’s mother had been three sisters who were the last true generation of the Sakanoue clan. That meant we were cousins. I’d learned this only after the Occupation had taken place.

They weren’t my only family with ‘pride’. My grandfather’s family in China had cut him off after he’d dishonoured the Chen family by marrying a Straits-born woman without bound feet. But my grandfather had thrived, building up a lending (loan shark), gambling and property empire, which my grandmother had continued to run after his death. Ah Ma wasn’t cowed by convention. She’d taken me in after the death of my parents, even though fortune-tellers had advised her that I would expose her and the family to the bad luck I was carrying. ‘Those know-it-alls also told me to sell your grandfather’s business after he died. Instead I kept it and you.’

Anyway, the bad luck of being born a girl, then having polio, no longer held true. Most of the healthy men my age were dead or in prison.

Though Hideki Tagawa was the official resident of Moss House, the main reason the household had been arranged was for Professor Nobutsuna Kutsuki, the genius scientist. He had been evacuated to Singapore after all his work records were destroyed in the laboratory explosion and fire that had blinded him. His official reason for being here was to re-document the work that had been destroyed. The explosion had also damaged Professor Kutsuki’s hands so it was difficult for him to manage his chopsticks and toothbrush. There were always ink and food stains on his clothes, and although I made sure they were washed, there was always a sour, rank smell about him. That must have been painful for a man as particular as he must once have been – everything within his reach, like his water glass, was always very precisely placed. As well as the books he could no longer read.

Professor Kutsuki’s assistant, Morio Goda, and Yoshio Yoshimoto, the officer responsible for recovering lost material, were there too. My work wasn’t difficult, but the atmosphere in the house was.

The security around Professor Kutsuki was so high I couldn’t leave the Botanic Gardens even to visit the market. I had to make do with the food that was sent in. We were given the best there was, but it still wouldn’t have been enough if I hadn’t been able to supplement it from the Botanic Gardens and the jungle beyond.

Professor Kutsuki was the brilliant scientist whose secret research project had been supposed to win the war for Japan, but I hadn’t seen him doing any work since he’d arrived. I’d been told to stay away from his room, so I had nothing to do with him, other than preparing his meals and washing his clothes, but I’d heard them alternately cajoling and yelling at him to no avail. I felt sorry for the old man.

I wondered how long they would keep this up. And whether I would continue to work there after they gave up on him. Even now I suspected the only reason we were still there was because Mrs Maki passionately admired Yoshio Yoshimoto and didn’t want to admit failure to him. I don’t know whether she thought she was in love for the first time or believed this was her last hope. Maybe she wasn’t even aware of it.

When Hideki Tagawa said she was behaving like a foolish girl, she said she was a patriot and told him he was thinking like a traitor.

Next to Yoshio Yoshimoto, Hideki Tagawa looked even more like a rat. Especially now he was increasingly secretive and preoccupied.

Yoshio Yoshimoto resembled a Japanese Humphrey Bogart. He hated the West, especially Americans, so you wouldn’t think he’d take that as a compliment when Mrs Maki told him so. But I think he did. At least, I heard him repeat it more than once to tease Mrs Maki.

Mrs Maki was no Ingrid Bergman.

Yoshio Yoshimoto also looked a bit like the hero, Oishi, of The 47 Ronin. I suspect that was why Mrs Maki had insisted on screening The 47 Ronin: Part 2 at Moss House when it was announced there would be no public screenings.

I reminded myself this was none of my business and, trying not to breathe on them, continued laying the minute spores on squares of damp cloth in rows close, but not too close, to each other. I didn’t want to overcrowd them, but at the same time I wanted to fit in as many as I could.

Unfortunately this reminded me of Hideki Tagawa saying last night at the dinner table, ‘We’re trying to keep as many as possible of them alive, but they keep dying.’

He’d been talking about PoWs locked up in Changi Prison. More than five thousand were crammed into a facility intended to house just over five hundred. But the alternative was worse. Earlier in the war, the Japanese had got rid of PoWs and locals by tying them together, marching them into the sea and shooting them.

‘Shot or beaten to death?’ Mrs Maki had asked. ‘Prisoners of war are always dying. Please try the steamed egg, Professor. It will give you energy for your work,’

‘Malaria and dysentery mostly.’ I didn’t miss Hideki Tagawa’s quick glance at me, standing by to clear the dishes or in case anyone needed more tea or water. He knew I had friends in Changi Prison – Dr and Mrs Shankar, the parents of my best friend Parshanti, who was now somewhere in the up-country jungles with her fiancé, my old teachers from the Mission School and, of course, Chief Inspector Le Froy, who’d given me my first job and who’d taught me so much …

‘We don’t have enough food or medicine for our own soldiers. It’s hard for everyone.’ Hideki Tagawa shoved his bowl at me, ‘I have no appetite. Clear this away.’

I suspected he knew how eagerly table scraps were devoured in the kitchen.

‘Any man who surrenders instead of fighting to the death is guilty of dishonouring his country and family,’ Yoshio Yoshimoto said. ‘Why are we feeding cowards who surrendered when our own soldiers need food? I don’t understand you.’

Yoshio Yoshimoto was big on honour and duty, and had been involved in the distribution of The 47 Ronin propaganda film that no one seemed interested in now. Most found it too slow-moving and depressing.

I kind of liked it, though. Of course I’d looked as miserable as everyone else when Mrs Maki had forced the entire household to sit through it after dinner last night to justify the expense of the electricity. In brief, this is what happens in the film: the master of the forty-seven samurai is killed. The samurai kill the murderer in revenge, then themselves. It seemed more about the pointlessness of war than a celebration of Japanese imperialism.

Hideki Tagawa had said as much: ‘The military told Kenji Mizoguchi to make a ferocious morale-booster based on the forty-seven Ronin, all about us battling the Western demons. Mizoguchi had no choice but to go ahead, but he made us look like idealistic fools instead of heroes, and all those military men don’t know the difference!’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Mrs Maki had scolded him. ‘Don’t talk at all!’

I had to admit the film was kind of romantic and touching. In Part 2 (I hadn’t seen Part 1) the forty-seven Ronin, led by the handsome Oishi, give up everything, including their own lives, to avenge their master. Oishi is the last to commit seppuku and courteously excuses himself with ‘I have to go now.’ It’s a poignant moment. It made me think of Le Froy ceremonially writing notes to dismiss us formally from our jobs at the Detective Unit. He’d known enough of the Japanese military mentality to see the need to protect us, even before they started targeting all those who’d worked with the British.

I don’t think Mrs Maki realised the film was about deceiving the powerful and playing the fool to appear harmless. But maybe she was distracted by Professor Kutsuki constantly asking Morio Goda, ‘What’s happening now?’

‘They’re eating. And drinking,’

‘Eating what? Drinking what?’

‘How would I know? It’s a film!’

‘It’s a stupid film, then!’

I didn’t have to act helpless or stupid to be seen as a harmless fool, thanks to the childhood polio that had left me crippled. But without a mission like Oishi’s, I couldn’t see what good that did me.

A shout from the other side of the lake cut into my thoughts.

‘Missy! Missy Chen! Come back to the house! You are wanted!’ It was Tanis, one of the houseboys.

Thanks to the Japanese killing off anyone who was good at anything, it was impossible to get adult staff. But I’d worked with Tanis and the other houseboy before so when Mrs Maki had asked me to find servants for Moss House I’d thought of them. Between the three of us we managed to keep her and her project team happy.

‘Mrs Maki says come quick!’ He spoke in Japanese in case he was overheard. Using any other language was an offence, but by now both boys had adequate Japanese. Most locals picked up languages easily, which wasn’t surprising since we grew up on a mash-up of Chinese dialects, Malay and Tamil.

‘Now? What happened? Why is Mrs Maki awake?’

My thoughts jumped to Professor Kutsuki. Mrs Maki and Yoshio Yoshimoto had said the rebels and traitors were after him, but there had been no attempts to kill or kidnap him so far.

‘The kempeitai are here! Mrs Maki says come quick!’

The kempeitai?

‘Coming!’ I stood up at once, dusting damp earth off my shins. Despite the recent calm I hadn’t forgotten the killings of the early days. With luck it was just another routine questioning. Despite Hideki Tagawa’s protection, I’d worked with the British-run police so my presence at Moss House was regularly questioned. ‘Coming,’ I repeated, trying for a steadier voice. But I was tense enough to yelp and scramble away when someone burst out of the bushes above, skidding and sliding down the steep slope towards me.

‘Wait! I’ll walk back with you!’

It was Morio Goda, Professor Kutsuki’s assistant. I almost didn’t recognise him. Normally so particular about his appearance, he was sweaty and dishevelled from ploughing through the tangle of vines and branches.

‘Where did you come from?’ Looking up, I couldn’t see anything but the dangerous darkness of thorny undergrowth and thick foliage. ‘What were you doing up there?’

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Don’t keep the kempeitai waiting.’

‘So, what did you think of The 47 Ronin?’ Morio Goda said conversationally.

I was so taken aback I almost forgot to worry about the kempeitai. Professor Kutsuki’s assistant looked to be in his early twenties. He and I were the youngest in the household, apart from the houseboys. At first I’d hoped we might be friends – it was so long since I’d been around anyone under forty – but Morio Goda had been very cold and distant.

All right, not ‘cold and distant’: he’d been rude and superior, making clear he saw me as a servant. That was why I was more than surprised to find him out there, talking to me as though I was a human being.

‘What?’

‘The film. Last night.’

‘I don’t know. Where did you come from? What were you doing up there?’

‘What was I doing? What were you doing? You looked like you were hiding a body – or an escaped prisoner or something!’

Tanis, who’d just reached us, rolled his eyes and staggered, as though he was drunk, while making kissing sounds. In other words, he behaved like a brat – or the small boy he was.

I pointed at the fish traps on the other side of the makeshift plank bridge we were coming to. ‘Go and check them,’ I ordered him. Tanis ran ahead, giggling.

‘What are you hiding under there?’ Morio Goda asked, as we crossed the bridge after him. ‘Why are you messing around with those dead trees, anyway?’

‘Told you. I’m growing mushrooms,’

‘You can’t grow mushrooms here.’

‘You had some of them for dinner last week.’

‘She grows mushrooms there,’ Tanis shouted. ‘She cooked them for the house. She lets us help cook them but she won’t let us help grow them. She’s scared that we’ll steal her precious mushrooms!’

‘I told you to stay away from the mushroom trees because I’m still figuring out how to keep them alive,’ I said. ‘Mushrooms prefer to grow in the dark. I don’t want to let too much light in, but I have to keep them moist. I don’t want you messing them up.’

‘You grew all those mushrooms you served us? Do you have to fertilise them or are they feeding on the dead tree?’

‘Both. Mushrooms digest whatever they grow in, so the rotting tree trunk is a good start. But I also scatter dead leaves and kitchen scraps over them.’ Much as I loved talking about my mushroom trees, I returned to the topic that, right then, interested me most. ‘What were you doing up there? Were you spying on me?’

‘What?’ Morio Goda managed to look affronted. He was still patting down his hair and smoothing his shirt as he hurried to keep up with me.

I always walk as fast as I can when I’m around people like him, so they have no chance to call me slow. I knew I had to be careful around Morio Goda, and I remembered that now, even though he looked so uncharacteristically grubby and untidy. He was always very particular about his clothes and once accused the houseboys of stealing one of his vests. He’d demanded they be beaten till they admitted it and only stopped when Professor Kutsuki admitted he’d taken it to dry his feet after stepping in mud. ‘Why would I want to spy on you? You’re nothing!’

‘That’s true,’ I said agreeably, ‘so what were you doing?’

‘I didn’t know why you were sneaking out so I followed you to see. Just in case you were doing something like contacting the rebels. I went the long way round so you wouldn’t see me following you and I could find out what you were up to.’ He sounded uncomfortable, as if he was trying to be nice but struggling to squeeze out his words through painfully constricted vocal cords.

I’d learned more about the differences between individual Japanese since moving into Moss House. Some, like Hideki Tagawa and Mrs Maki, believed in the war because they were tired of being treated as animals by Westerners. But they seemed not to realise they were just as bad, perhaps worse (though probably unaware of it), in the way they treated ‘lower class’ Japanese. Like Morio Goda. And Morio Goda was very aw. . .