The Tembusu Tree Mystery

Book 10: Su Lin Series

by Ovidia Yu

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Mystery

Synopsis

Singapore, 1947. Su Lin and Le Froy start married life renting the top floor of a house near Cathay Cinema, where Su Lin is the manager. The Chen family tries to deal with workers striking in support of trade unions - but when two of the striking workers are found dead in the cinema when the lights go up, with no sign of how they were killed, it's revealed they were there to meet Uncle Chen.

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Praise for Ovidia Yu:

'The longest-running and sharpest exercise in decolonising fiction in Singapore's literary landscape. It is also, simply, really fun to read.' - Ong Sor Fern

'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' - The Scotsman

'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 4, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

‘The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous’

– Hideki Tojo

‘Something’s going on in front of the cinema,’ Le Froy said. ‘Some kind of demonstration.’

‘Where? Oh, no!’ I’d dozed off in the passenger seat after sitting up most of the previous night with my grandmother. That’s one of the best things about being married – a man who drives you to work on time even if he’s not happy with the job you’ve taken on. ‘Is it those people wanting to burn down the building again?’

Some people wanted the old Imperial cinema building demolished, claiming it was cursed and haunted by spirits of the unhappy dead. I could understand their resentment of this place. During the Occupation, the Japanese had commandeered the building as their town hall and renamed it Daitoa Gekijo, meaning ‘Greater East Asia Theatre’. They showed propaganda films inside, while displaying the decomposing heads of victims on stakes in the forecourt where a crowd gathered now. It had truly been a horrible, cursed and putrid space.

But this was 1947. Singapore Island was trying to move on from bad memories with the reopening and relaunch of the Imperial cinema that day . . . if the Grand Gala Opening Ceremony I’d worked so hard to organise went as planned. I was determined that it would.

‘Drop me as close to the front as you can,’ I told Le Froy. I could understand people suffering from past hurts but I wanted to focus on moving us into our future.

I was née Chen Su Lin now Mrs Thomas Le Froy, happily married to the man I’d met when I took a post as his housekeeper to avoid an arranged marriage. It’s almost enough to make you believe in fairy-tale happy endings. There were sadder endings too, of course: the venerable Chen Tai, my grandmother, was in failing health. But that was another thing I was determined not to think about. Just then I had to deal with the people who were unhappy that the cinema was being reopened rather than torn down.

Which I could understand, especially given the morning’s news from the war-crime trials: wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo had claimed we had begged Japan to free Asia from British imperialism. According to his testimony, Japan’s brutal invasion of our region, leaving five million civilians dead, had been an act of goodwill and self-defence on Japan’s part. It was almost enough to make me want to attack their Daitoa Gekijo myself.

Of course we had all complained about British imperialism in the pre-war days. But then, for Singaporeans, complaining and eating are national passions, and it’s a huge leap from complaining about Europeans and Their Guests Only restaurants to being stabbed or shot for not being properly respectful to the master race.

Still, it was time to rebuild and move on – literally. Restoration work on the Imperial, generously funded by the Khoo Cultural Foundation, had been completed last month and I had been lucky enough to be hired to oversee the reopening of the cinema.

Le Froy hadn’t liked the idea. I think he thought I was taking on too much at a time when my grandmother’s health was failing. He might have been right, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Much as I had loved watching films in the old Imperial cinema, my main reason for taking on the job was to be too busy to accept more responsibilities in the Chen family business as Ah Ma handed them out.

I owed my grandmother a lot for taking me in – but she had Uncle Chen ready and waiting to take over from her.

‘I don’t think it’s an anti-Japanese demonstration,’ Le Froy said. ‘They’re playing music. It’s some kind of show. Did you arrange anything?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ I heard the music starting up on the Imperial’s newly refurbished lobby loudspeakers. ‘It’s Tony and Ramlee.’ I was relieved to see the two young men in matching batik shirts and khaki shorts holding microphones. ‘What are they up to now? I have to go – thank you for driving me in.’

‘Try to keep your hair on today,’ Le Froy said, ‘if you can.’

I grimaced at him. That morning my hair was held in place with discreet Kirby grips because yesterday I’d lost the tortoiseshell slide that usually clipped my plaits around the crown of my head. I’d started pinning up my hair for work because I didn’t think plaits hanging down my back said ‘modern professional woman’.

Just yesterday, when I was in the Imperial’s sound room, squeezed behind the huge central console, trying to locate and tighten a loose connection that was sabotaging the projection, Anthony Khoo and Teuku Zakaria bin Teuku Nyak Puteh, better known as Tony and Ramlee – who were currently making a spectacle of themselves dancing in front of the Imperial cinema – had turned on the loudspeakers above me and burst into song.

‘A single star,’ I said, ‘straight up in the sky.’ I wasn’t sure of the tune, but I’ve always been able to remember words pretty accurately. ‘Watching me as I’m watching you . . .’

‘What’s that?’ Le Froy asked.

‘That’s what those boys were singing yesterday when they came in and gave me such a shock. They wrote it themselves, apparently. It’s not bad.’ Startled by a sudden blare of music, I’d jerked upwards, banging my skull and getting my hair tangled in dusty wires. By the time I’d extricated myself, I had probably loosened more connections than I’d tightened and was minus some hair as well as my slide.

Luckily the connection was linked and the loudspeakers were working. In the greater scheme of things, I didn’t mind about the hair clip, especially with today’s opening ceremony in view. But I was determined to keep those two young men in line.

‘They didn’t write the song they’re singing now,’ Le Froy said, as the music grew louder.

I heard, ‘A kiss is just a kiss . . .’

I had to admit our new system sounded pretty good, even at this distance. It had been worth the investment, despite fund manager John Wong’s protests. And Ramlee, especially, had a beautiful tenor voice.

‘That’s the song from Casablanca,’ Le Froy said. ‘What are those leaflets they’re handing out?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I’ll see you tonight,’ I promised Le Froy, as I pushed open the car door. I moved in to grab my water bottle just as he leaned over for a kiss and we bumped noses. ‘Not here,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘People will see.’

Le Froy laughed and whisper-shouted to an imaginary crowd around us, ‘It’s all right. This beautiful woman is my wife. We’re married! I’m not seducing her.’

I had to laugh too. ‘I’m not a beautiful woman!’

‘That’s the only thing you’ve ever been wrong about,’ my beloved husband said.

I leaned in again and kissed him for saying that, not caring who might see, then headed for the boys in the thickest part of the crowd. I wasn’t much taller at twenty-six than I’d been at sixteen and walked with a limp, thanks to childhood polio. But I had to defend the dignity of the new Imperial cinema.

‘Tony! Ramlee! What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Hey, Suzie Q’s here!’

The problem was, the rest of the world wasn’t cooperating with the dignity bit.

‘Hey, Chief Inspector!’ Tony saw Le Froy’s car through the crowd. Le Froy hadn’t been chief inspector since before the war, but that was still how many knew him. ‘Let’s have a cheer for the chief inspector! Come and join us!’

‘No fear,’ Le Froy called. ‘My dancing years are long over.’

‘You should try it, sir. After all, no one can say you have two left feet!’

Was that a jibe at Le Froy’s amputated foot? Ramlee elbowed Tony to shut him up, but I saw Le Froy laughing as he waved and drove off.

Tony Khoo was a good-natured, handsome young man who showed none of the privations of war – not surprisingly, since he and his mother had spent the Occupation years in Australia.

‘Stop it before John Wong sees you,’ I scolded. Any other day I wouldn’t have worried about what the boys did outside the cinema, but not today. ‘What are you two up to? The opening ceremony is going to start soon.’

‘Everything’s ready,’ Ramlee said, gesturing at the podium and carpeting in the foyer. ‘We were just testing the microphones and such, as you asked.’

Yes, but when I’d asked them to help test the microphones and loudspeakers I’d expected something more along the lines of ‘Testing, testing, one, two, three . . .’

‘And we’re handing out your flyers for the upcoming shows,’ Tony said. ‘It’s good publicity for the cinema. The system sounds good, doesn’t it?’

People were indeed studying the flyers with interest and I felt more kindly towards the boys. I’d had the flyers printed but should have thought of handing them out. ‘Very good,’ I agreed. ‘But that’s enough. The opening ceremony will start in half an hour.’

‘Everything’s ready, and we mostly stayed away from the VIP area but it looks really grand. But it’s really hot in there.’

Indeed, it looked quite nice from there, with red carpeting going all the way up the grand front steps, with a gold ribbon across them, and even curtains. I could have done without the drapery, but that had been John Wong’s decision. Another thing I wasn’t thinking about.

According to the schedule we’d agreed on, at eleven o’clock John Wong would take the podium to thank the Khoo Cultural Foundation for sponsoring the cinema renovations and refurbishment. Then Robert and Elsie Khoo, the founders and Tony’s parents – which explained the peremptorily punctilious John Wong tolerating his presence – would ceremonially cut the golden ribbon. Then they and all the invited guests would process up the staircase to the air-conditioned hall to watch the first film, helping themselves on the way to food from the buffet set up outside the hall.

Again, that had not been my idea but John Wong was convinced that in-cinema dining would be the next big thing. He was also currently at war with the Imperial Café, which had signed a separate contract with the building’s management and didn’t come under his jurisdiction.

And all I’d wanted was a simple ceremony that would photograph well.

‘Let’s just go inside and get ready,’ I said. ‘Thanks for testing the microphones and loudspeakers, boys.’

‘Wait! Su Lin, just a minute, please! I want you to listen to this! We did it last night.’ Tony had been fiddling with the wire recorder, and as the music began he burst into song, hauling Ramlee up to join him in a soft-shoe shuffle while singing a raucous version of Lil Hardin Armstrong’s ‘Doin the Suzy Q’.

The people watching laughed and clapped when the two finished, with a flourish and a bow in my direction. I smiled and clapped too. ‘Very nice,’ I said, ‘but clear out now. John Wong and your parents will be here soon.’

‘Did you like how it sounded? It’s from the recording device,’ Tony said. ‘It plays back, but the result isn’t very good.’

His father had paid for the British imported wire recorder, a small boxy machine with knobs and spools, that had cost a lot. Tony swore it was going to change the way songs were recorded, but that wasn’t going to happen today: after playing the music for their little exhibition, the machine had stuttered, strained and jammed.

‘I warned you. It’s not meant to be a playback device,’ Ramlee said. ‘It just lets you play back to see what you’ve recorded.’

‘Can you fix it?’

‘Sure. But—’

‘That’s why we taped the other song,’ Tony interrupted, passing me a folded envelope. He had scratched out ‘Mr and Mrs Robert Khoo’ and written instead ‘For Grandmother of Mrs Su Lin Le Froy’.

‘What do you want me to do with this?’ I asked.

‘It’s the song for your grandmother to listen to,’ Tony said. ‘Remember you said she was talking about that old song she liked, with this man always seeing the same bird coming to the same tree? And how you couldn’t find anyone who knew it? We talked to a few people and they remembered different bits so we fitted the memories together. We think we’ve got something she’ll recognise. We played it for some people around her age and they said it sounded right. Even my parents.’ He seemed not to have realised they were at least a generation younger than my grandmother.

‘I didn’t mean you to do all that.’ I was touched.

It must have been more than a year ago, when I started working on the Imperial project, that I’d mentioned it to them. My grandmother had been talking about an old song that she and my late grandfather had loved and danced to in the days before they were married. All she remembered was that it had to do with a man watching for a bird that returned each evening to a palm tree in his garden.

‘Thank you very much.’ I took the envelope. ‘So kind of you.’

I’d mentioned the song after Tony had told me he wanted to write songs that would make people remember how they’d felt when they were happiest, and that one was among Ah Ma’s happiest memories. I certainly hadn’t expected the boys to track down the song, let alone rewrite and record it.

‘Tony did most of the work,’ Ramlee said. ‘He set it to music and we did the words together.’

‘Ramlee sang it in Malay because most of the people we talked to said they remembered it in Malay.’

‘It probably was a Malay song,’ I concurred. Like most local-born Chinese, my grandmother was most comfortable speaking Malay and Hokkien, though she could bargain aggressively in English and Cantonese.

‘It will sound much better on a decent tape player,’ Ramlee said. ‘We really think it’s the song she meant.’

‘I’ll play it for her,’ I promised. ‘Thank you again.’

A big part of me wanted to rush home with the tape straight away. Who cared about some overblown cinema opening when I had something that might make my grandmother happy? But she had taught me always to do my duty. And right then my duty was to do my job and see that today’s ceremony went well.

‘But for now we should clear this space for the ceremony. Your parents should already be here, Tony. Where are they?’

‘They went up to the café,’ he said. The Imperial Café, on the fourth floor of the Imperial Building, had its own entrance and had reopened without fanfare several months ago. ‘Dad thinks having a grand opening for the cinema is a waste of time and money. He said if the café can start serving without making a fuss why can’t you just start showing films again?’

Tony’s grandfather Khoo Teck Onn, the Khoo family’s patriarch, had made his fortune in tin mining, wastewater disposal and sewer construction. He had been a practical, hardworking man, famous for eating, sleeping and working alongside his employees so he could identify any problems that hindered them. As with so many pioneering families, the next generation had taken English names along with British culture. Robert, the only son, and his wife Elsie had set up the Khoo Cultural Foundation to distance themselves from sewage and septic tanks. They had been the moving force behind the restoration and rehabilitation of the Imperial cinema and I suspected that, regardless of what Tony’s father had said, his parents would expect to be recognised and lauded at the event.

‘It’s for the publicity,’ I said, quoting John Wong. ‘Publicity makes people aware of what’s happening so the films are seen by as many as possible. Anyway, after the ceremony, there’s to be a screening.’

‘Hey! Hey! Mr Tony!’ One of the cleaners, who were doubling as ushers and waiters today, dashed up to us. ‘You’re supposed to go to the VIP room to get ready for the presentation! Mr Wong said you have to go immediately. They’re all waiting for you in the room where they hung up the green cloth.’

Tony shook his head. ‘My parents are involved but not me. I don’t have to do anything today.’

‘No! It’s you they want. They’re waiting for you!’ the runner insisted. ‘It’s about you giving flowers to a girl. I’m supposed to run down to Cold Storage and get them once I give you the message. Five dollars’ worth of flowers!’ He waved the precious banknote as proof.

‘Go the other way to the temple on Tank Road,’ I suggested. A plethora of stalls sold flowers outside Sri Thendayuthapani Temple. ‘Nearer and cheaper to buy flowers there.’

‘Am I supposed to give you flowers?’ Tony asked me diffidently. ‘I mean, you’re the only girl working here.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ I said. If John Wong had planned this as a surprise to thank me for the hours of unacknowledged work I had put in, I had misjudged him!

‘No. Flowers are not for her,’ the runner said. ‘They are for the girl in the office with Mr Wong now. She is going to say the Imperial cinema is open again, thanks to the Khoo family, and then Mr Tony is going to give her the flowers and say the Khoo family thanks her for being such a beautiful inspiration. I know because her mother has a very loud voice and she said it very many times. She also told Mr Wong that you are going to kiss the girl’s hand after giving her the flowers and that’s why they want you to go to the VIP room now, so that you can practise kissing her. Anyway, I’m going to get the flowers.’

‘That’s not on the programme,’ I said, watching him hurry off in the direction of Tank Road. ‘John Wong is supposed to thank the Khoo Foundation and the Khoo family for their generous support. It’s not like him to change the plans at the last minute.’ And even less like him to give up his moment in the spotlight, I thought.

‘No,’ Tony said grimly. ‘I know who’s behind all this.’

‘It’s Rosie Leong and her crazy mother again.’ Ramlee seemed to think it was a huge joke. ‘You thought Madam Leong gave up after we crawled through the storm drain to avoid her when she pretended she’d fainted and blocked the path, didn’t you? You didn’t expect her to come and ambush you here. She’s got you!’

‘Not yet!’ Tony said. ‘Look, guys, I’m off. Suzie Q, you let your grandmother listen to that song. I’m sure she’ll like it.’

‘Wait – you said you’d be on standby during the opening ceremony in case anything goes wrong with the sound.’

Though not employees, Tony and Ramlee knew more about the sound system at the Imperial than any of the part-time staff we’d hired so far. They had chosen and set up most of the equipment we’d ordered and used it to record the ‘Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest exit’ emergency announcements in four languages (English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) in exchange for being allowed to record their songs in the sound room.

‘Nothing will go wrong!’ Tony called, as he ran off, heading around the side of the building rather than towards the main road.

I was a bit miffed. ‘We had an agreement.’

‘It’s okay,’ Ramlee said. ‘Everything’s already set up. They just have to press the button. Anyway, I’ll be here. But I don’t want to leave this lying around, and I’ve got nowhere to keep it safe while I’m concentrating on microphones and wires.’

The recording device Tony had left behind was the size of a small metal suitcase and not heavy. Before the war no one would have believed you could make a recorder light enough to carry around. Things were changing.

‘I’ll take it to my office,’ I said. ‘It’ll be in the bottom drawer of my desk when you or Tony decides to come for it.’

‘Don’t be angry with Tony,’ Ramlee said quietly. ‘That woman is always trying to push her daughter at him and he doesn’t like it.’

I wasn’t surprised that Madam Leong hoped to interest Tony Khoo in her daughter. Tony was young, not bad-looking and an only son set to inherit all of the Khoo family wealth. What did surprise me was that Madam Leong had somehow persuaded John Wong to disrupt his precisely organised plan.

A little background on Madam Leong might be helpful. She was a generously sized woman in her fifties, loud and bossy, who was always telling everyone what to do. She was considered not quite respectable, yet was somehow invited to the most respectable homes and mahjong parties. She had probably been beautiful once, but time had not been kind to her – maybe because she tried so hard to camouflage its effects.

‘Tony should tell Madam Leong he’s not interested,’ I said, though I knew very well that aunties like her only heard what they wanted to. ‘Tell him I’m not angry. And I’m very grateful to both of you for recording this song for my grandmother.’

I picked up the recording device and made for my office. I would be glad when all the fuss about the grand opening was over and I could start on my real job – going through the scripts of the films we wanted to show at the Imperial and summarising them (especially the Malay and Chinese ones) in English for the British Censorship Committee’s approval. The British had set it up because the authorities were worried about pro-Communist or pro-independence rhetoric that might be hidden in the shows. I didn’t mind – how else would I get a chance to read film scripts? I was already planning on writing summaries (without giving away the endings, of course) to attract wider audiences to the Imperial.

I was looking forward to this new life as I climbed the stairs, noting that the red carpet was slippery and already showing. . .