The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery

Book 7: Su Lin Series

by Ovidia Yu

Genres: 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 next title in the Mystery Tree series, exploring Singapore after the Japanese retreat and in the aftermath of WWII.

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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 8, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

‘Hello! Small Boss Chen! Hello! Small Boss Chen!’ It was a man’s voice coming from the front porch of the house. ‘Sorry to disturb, Small Boss Chen! Hello!’

The front doors of Chen Mansion were closed and locked because it was 4 February 1946, the Third Day of the Chinese New Year.

This was the first Chinese New Year since the Japanese Occupation had ended and the first two days had been hectic with visitors allowed for the first time in two years. Food was still in short supply but everyone scraped together what they could.

To add to the confusion, Uncle Chen’s wife, Shen Shen, had insisted all our servants be sent home to spend the entire fifteen days of Chinese New Year with their families. Shen Shen had grown up in a rural area with little public transport, like most of the servants, and I thought it very good of her to think of them.

Of course Ah Ma had argued: ‘This is how it’s always been, what! And on the first two days we’re going to have so many visitors. How will we manage with no servants?’

In the end Ah Ma agreed. I suspect she was glad Shen Shen was standing up to her more. People who say only nice things to your face might be aiming daggers at your back.

Of course, with no servants around, we the family had had to serve our visitors ourselves. Those who came to pay their respects might have felt uncomfortable being offered tea by Small Boss Chen, but Uncle Chen got into it, pressing them to eat more, drink more, to stay for a game of mahjong or join him for a smoke on the porch. He was the life and soul of the party, and I saw the man he’d been before his Japanese detention returning. If Shen Shen had anticipated this, she was brighter than any of us gave her credit for.

And then we’d all come down with sickness. I suspected we’d been poisoned by something made from a carefully hoarded can of imported luncheon meat or sausages.

Even if it hadn’t been the Third Day we were in no shape to receive visitors.

In Singapore, you don’t have to be Chinese to know that Third Day visits are pantang, as my grandmother would say. It’s a Malay word that sums up Chinese fears of triggering bad luck better than any Chinese word can. The Third Day is reserved for visiting ancestral graves, meaning any spirits you encounter feel justified in tagging along with you wherever you go – and settling there.

In the pre-war days my grandmother, Chen Tai, had been so concerned about pantang that any servants returning from family funerals had had to go through an elaborate washing ritual before they were allowed into the house. She’d only relaxed during the Occupation when Japanese soldiers proved more deadly than jealous spirits.

The Year of the Fire Dog couldn’t have started worse for us.

I’d spent most of last night throwing up and I’d heard Shen Shen doing the same. We were the lucky ones. I was more exhausted than sick now. Thanks to my sensitive stomach, I doubted there was anything left inside me to do me harm.

Uncle Chen and Ah Ma were the worst hit. They were so weak and groggy they could barely sip warm water. It was almost as though they had been drugged. I was more worried about my grandmother than I dared admit, even to myself. I’d never seen her so weak. She’d been ‘old’ as long as I could remember, but now suddenly she was frail. In the irregular pauses between her shallow breaths, I wondered what would happen if she didn’t take another.

Even before this latest and worst attack, we’d been having regular bouts of bad digestion. Ah Ma had made the servants scrub out all the cooking pots and utensils with lye, and I’d checked and rechecked our well and water supply. But the eels in the well and the guppies in the dragon pots were alive, so I knew the water wasn’t to blame.

My system was always quick to reject what didn’t agree with it. I’d found the only thing I could keep down was bananas and I’d been pretty much living off them. Luckily, with all of our banana trees, there was always a bunch hanging up behind the kitchen.

Uncle Chen had never regained his old gusto after being released by the Japanese. Now he was fading even faster than Ah Ma. It was a good thing Shen Shen had stepped up to manage the family business.

‘Hello! Small Boss Chen! Hello, please!’

I rolled over and pulled my pillow over my head. I was sleeping on a mattress in my grandmother’s room. In the old days this had been so Ah Ma could keep an eye on me, but I’d moved back in so I could keep an eye on her.

Just when I thought our rude visitor had taken the hint and gone away I heard him again: ‘Hello! Small Boss Chen!’ It didn’t sound as if he was giving up any time soon.

Something must be really wrong. Uncle Chen and his friends were a superstitious lot and it would take something major to make one of them violate the Third Day visiting taboo.

I had a sudden flashback to my childhood when men were always hanging around outside the house hoping for work. Uncle Chen shouted at them if he saw them, but he had the servants take them water and food. They would never have dared shout for him like this … unless it was something really serious.

I heard Ah Ma turn over and struggle to sit up.

‘Don’t get up. Why doesn’t Shen Shen do something? It’s her husband they’re looking for and her fault there are no servants around.’

‘Shen Shen said she would visit the cemetery,’ Ah Ma said. ‘I told her she could take the car.’ Since Uncle Chen had started fading, Shen Shen had learned to drive Ah Ma’s old Armstrong Siddeley tourer to collect rents for her.

‘By herself?’

Shen Shen must have felt as lousy as I did, but she was a lot more superstitious. Even if I didn’t believe in the old superstitions – thanks to my years at the Mission Centre school, I wasn’t sure what I believed in – I was impressed by the power they had to motivate people. The Third Day clearing of the ancestral graveyard was supposed to be a family ceremony so Shen Shen going on her own probably defeated the purpose. But if it kept Ah Ma happy I was content. Ah Ma was in no shape to go out either.

Well, if Shen Shen was out …

‘Don’t get up,’ I said again. ‘I’ll go and see who’s at the door.’ I rolled over and sat up. ‘I told Parshanti I would see her mother today anyway.’

I didn’t feel much like going, and if Shen Shen had taken the car to the cemetery, I would have to catch the trolley bus into town – but I’d told Mrs Shankar I’d see her for her to take my measurements.

‘Tell whoever it is to come back tomorrow,’ Ah Ma said, watching me. ‘Bad luck. Don’t let them in, no matter what they say. Make sure you lock the door after talking to them. Give them some water, but don’t use the good cups.’

‘What if it’s something very important that Uncle Chen needs to hear about?’

‘What can be so important? If you let them in, you let bad luck into the house.’

‘Yes, Ah Ma.’

I crawled off my mattress, straightened my cotton housedress and headed up the corridor towards the dim front room of the house – all the shutters were closed.

Squinting against the brightness outside, I recognized the figure on the porch by its size, shape and baldness. ‘Uncle Botak?’

Botak Beng looked like a gangster, with his tanned brown skin, his blue, black and red tattoos. He was as large as Uncle Chen but built like a sailor, with bulging arms, shoulders and thighs. And he had a huge shiny brown dome of a head. I knew he had had no hair since his late teens when he’d been nicknamed ‘Botak’, meaning bald.

Botak had always managed Uncle Chen’s sea transportation needs, which some called smuggling. Botak knew the currents and tides and could predict the weather almost by instinct because he’d worked on the sea for so many years. Like a bird or a fish, he could process information from the wind and the waves and come up with the safest routes. He knew all the best landing spots on the Malayan and Indonesian coastlines. I’d also heard he had ‘wives’ in all the major port villages in Malacca, Taiping, Surabaya and even Darwin, Australia. All his operations centres were run by his wives and children.

Botak and Uncle Chen had worked together before and during the Japanese Occupation, until Botak started expanding his business after the war. Then Uncle Chen had decided he didn’t want his goods carried in the same craft Botak Beng used to transport drugs and women: the risk of attracting official attention was too high.

‘You’re throwing away good money!’ Botak had protested. ‘I can’t afford to send out boats half loaded and, these days, people will pay anything for American cigarettes and Indian ganja!’

But Uncle Chen, backed or possibly directed by Ah Ma, had maintained that Chen money would stay away from the sex and drugs trades. It didn’t make sense to many of Uncle Chen’s partners, since the newly re-established British authorities seemed to be closing their eyes to what was going on. They mocked him for not daring to pick up money that was falling out of the sky, and many had gone into business for themselves. But they had remained friends – Botak was among the men who’d come to Chen Mansion to pay their Chinese New Year respects on First Day.

‘Miss Chen?’ Botak Beng peered at me in the dim interior of the house and gave me the nod – almost bow – of acknowledgement due to my late father’s daughter. ‘Miss Chen, sorry to disturb your house, ah. I must talk to Small Boss Chen at once. Very urgent, very important.’

I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me as I nodded to acknowledge him in return. ‘What is so important that you need to visit him today?’

I suspected I knew what the visit was about. The British had just announced an official ban on opium smoking. Choosing to announce it during Chinese New Year was a smart – amounting almost to genius – move on the part of the British officials: it was the only time of year all Chinese businesses were more focused on family than finances.

Botak didn’t look like an opium smoker, so it was probably his income he was concerned about. Still, I hadn’t thought anyone in the Chinese underworld worried about what our British overlords decreed.

‘I must talk to Small Boss Chen.’

‘Business should wait until after the Third Day at least,’ I said, virtuously superstitious.

‘This is not that kind of business,’ Botak said. He was fidgeting with something in his pocket. I wondered if it was chewing tobacco or a betel wad. He didn’t seem aware that his fingers kept going back to it. ‘This is man-to-man business. Very important.’

I hadn’t intended to let him in – Uncle Chen was in no condition to see him – but even if I had, his saying it was ‘manto-man business’ would have scuppered it. Yes, I was being petty. But when you seldom get to indulge in pettiness you make the most of your chances. I stared at him. You’d think an old boatman like Botak would have pushed me aside but he just stood and looked miserable.

‘I didn’t come straight from my mother’s grave. I went to the temple first. All clean already.’ Botak Beng waved his arms, turning his palms up and down as though to show he wasn’t carrying evil spirits.

That’s when I smelt him.

We think of sweat as water and salt, but what comes out of a body depends on what’s inside it. Milk-fed babies smell different from toddlers who have started to eat mashed bananas and mangoes. From the smell coming out of him, I could tell that Botak was sick. I didn’t know what was causing it but his body was decaying inside.

‘Just say what you need,’ I said. ‘My uncle can’t talk to you now, but if you tell me what’s the matter we will try to help you. Never mind pantang. You are family to my uncle. What’s wrong? Do you need money?’

‘No, no,’ Botak said. ‘I don’t need money. Paiseh, lah.’

Pantang is anything strictly forbidden by custom or superstition. Asking for money was paiseh: embarrassing or shameful, but not pantang.

He’d turned away from me in his frustration and— ‘Oh! I forgot. I brought mud crabs.’

I saw the metal fish basket containing a hemp sack he’d dumped at the top of the porch steps. The rough fabric was damp and moving.

‘Small ones, but fresh. I just caught them near my place.’

I softened towards him. Uncle Chen was very fond of crabs – and so was I. This might be just the thing to tempt my uncle’s feeble appetite. Though it wasn’t the season for roe, wild crabs would have tender, sweet flesh. There were crabs in the mangroves near our house too, but I’d not thought to go hunting for them. Was this just an awkwardly delivered gift? Mud crabs wouldn’t keep well.

‘You want to wait and talk to Shen Shen? She’s out now but she’ll be home soon.’

All of Uncle Chen’s business contacts had been liaising with Shen Shen since Uncle Chen and Ah Ma had been sick. Shen Shen had taken over the routine responsibilities of dealing with tenants. Most other businesses were quiet now as everyone waited to see how the restored British administration would take shape.

‘No.’ Botak swatted away the idea of talking to Shen Shen. ‘No, no. I cannot. No.’ For a moment he looked as if he was going to be sick – or cry.

I wavered. What if Botak wanted to tell Uncle Chen he was sick and dying … or of some threat to them both?

‘Tell me.’ I tried to sound gentle and persuasive. ‘I promise I won’t tell anybody except him.’ I doubted he could write so it was no use suggesting he leave a note.

‘I must talk to your uncle. Is he angry with me? Is that why he won’t see me?’

‘No. He cannot see anybody.’ Within the fifteen days of the New Year, I couldn’t say that Uncle Chen was sick, too sick to see him, or my words would condemn him to a year of ill health.

Botak checked behind him before he answered. Not just the broad gravel driveway but what could be seen of the road beyond. I wondered who he was worried about.

‘Please, lah, Lin-Lin,’ he said.

The baby name shook me. Uncle Chen had called me ‘Lin-Lin’ in the old days, before he and Shen Shen had moved out of Chen Mansion to the little shophouse in town. It was only much later that I learned they’d moved out because Shen Shen’s family believed my bad-luck presence was preventing them from having children.

‘Just ask your uncle if he will see me five minutes. For old times’ sake. For your father Big Boss Chen’s sake. Big Boss Chen was always good to me. Please, lah, Lin-Lin.’

His blunt, brown features were a mix of stubbornness and desperation. I knew Uncle Chen considered Botak Beng ‘own people’, meaning family. He might actually feel better for seeing Botak. If Botak could be persuaded to stay to eat the crabs he’d brought, Uncle Chen might agree to sit at the table with us. He had been taking his thin rice porridge in the dim stuffiness of his bedroom, with Shen Shen rationing the amount of soy sauce and fermented bean curd he was allowed so he wouldn’t vomit again.

‘Let me go and see—’

Hope flashed in his face. ‘Ask him,’ he pleaded.

Just then another voice – a woman’s – shouted from the driveway: ‘Cooee!’

Botak jumped. For an instant he seemed terrified but once he saw who it was he just looked fed up.

A fair, plump Chinese woman in a tight blue and white spotted Western-style frock was charging towards us. She was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place her.

‘Seng Beng!’ she called. ‘Beng, I told you to wait for me! Why didn’t you wait?’

Botak Beng shook his head.

She turned to me. ‘Su Lin, right? Sorry, ah, I told this silly man not to come and bother your uncle today. Bad luck. But he wouldn’t listen! Men, ah!’ She trilled a loud girlish giggle and I recognised her.

It was Fancy Ang. She was the boss aunty who managed prostitutes in a comfort house. I wouldn’t judge her for that because she was likely why those girls had survived the war and the Japanese. Still, I was very glad Ah Ma had chosen translation and hairdressing to keep me alive.

Fancy had been pointed out to us as children, either as a danger (‘Pray for her but stay away from her!’ said the Mission Centre ladies) or with giggles at her clothes and makeup (Mission Centre school classmates).

Fancy Ang was one of the most notorious brothel owners, notorious because she catered to ‘high-class’ clientele and claimed to provide only ‘high-class’ girls. Once, a few years before the war, she’d approached my beautiful friend Parshanti, promising she could make good dress money just from going to social dances with British military officers. ‘Good money now and even better money later if you’re clever and get a rich officer interested in you!’

I wondered who’d been more put out: Parshanti, because she’d been propositioned, or all the other girls in our school, because they hadn’t.

More recently, Ah Ma had decided she wasn’t going to rent to Fancy any longer for her ‘Happy Pleasure’ houses. Uncle Chen had objected because Fancy always paid on time and had been renting those properties since long before the war. Besides, he pointed out, Fancy’s regular clientele included influential British administrators and planters. But, as always, Ah Ma had prevailed. Her argument was that if the new British regime decided on a morality clean-up, as had happened regularly, that was precisely where they would start. I didn’t know where Fancy and her girls had ended up, but she’d clearly survived.

Close up, I saw the once-buxom Fancy Ang had sagged into the soft obesity of malnutrition. Her round face had the look of white silk stockings stretched taut over rocky ground and was several shades lighter than her neck. And she smelt both dangerously chemical and aggressively floral.

‘Gong xi fa cai!’ Fancy Ang said. ‘I hear your Indian friend is getting married to the ang moh doctor. She got baby coming, right?’

‘What? No!’

‘Whether you want a baby or not, there’s no need to get married. Tell her to come and find me at forty-one Desker Road. And you – no job, no husband. You’re good with numbers, right? You should come and work for me. I will pay you more than your uncle. And I will teach you more about accounts than your uncle knows! Eh, Botak?’ She dug an elbow into him.

I glanced at Botak. He was clearly more than uncomfortable now, furious and miserable. I might have risked letting him in to see Uncle Chen, but not Fancy Ang.

‘I’m sorry …’ I started, but Fancy had picked up the damp, squirming sack and looked inside.

‘Hiyah! How can you leave them like that?’ She thrust it at me. ‘Quick, quick! Go and soak them in water!’

I took the sack automatically. It was heavy.

Botak had also brought a white cloth bag of what I suspected were smuggled foodstuffs, but when he held it in my direction Fancy pulled it away from him. He didn’t stop her, just turned and checked the driveway again.

‘Don’t just stand there, girl!’ Fancy ordered me. ‘Go! Go now!’

‘Wait,’ Botak said.

‘Take your time.’ Fancy’s push made me stumble. ‘We two can talk about the old days, right?’

Even before I was inside the house Fancy’s hands were on Botak’s upper arms, preventing him from turning away, and she was whispering urgently to him. It didn’t sound like words of love, more as if she was trying to talk him into leaving before I bothered Uncle Chen. Well, she didn’t have anything to worry about. I wasn’t going to disturb my uncle, and not only because he wasn’t well. We were already having more than our share of bad luck. Superstition or not, I wasn’t going to invite more into our house.

I heard, ‘Yes! She said she wants to talk to you! Now!’

So it was trouble with some woman, I thought. I was glad I hadn’t given in. Whichever female was giving Botak trouble, it could have nothing to do with Uncle Chen.

I took my time carrying the squirming sack through the house and down to the back kitchen.

‘Ah Ma, you should be resting. What are you doing up?’

I found Ah Ma in the kitchen, as I should have expected, when I heaved in the sack of crabs. She was still in her sleeping clothes, which she wouldn’t have been if the servant girls and the black and white amah jies were in the house, fussing over the stove, with bowls and opened packets on the table.

‘No, lah. You’re the one who should be resting. I got some pork belly. I quick-quick make some chap chye for you to bring to your friend’s house when you go. Who was outside? Are they still there? What did they want?’

On any other day, unexpected visitors wouldn’t have been a problem. Like most houses in Singapore, our doors and windows stood open all day to let fresh air in and stuffiness out. This meant animal, insect and human visitors often wandered in and made themselves welcome.

‘Tell me what you want to do and I’ll do it for you,’ I said, without answering her questions. ‘You sit down and rest.’

I was small, but my grandmother was smaller. I’d been taller than her since I was twelve years old. Most of the time, her manner generated a larger-than-life personality so you didn’t notice how tiny she was.

Now, thanks to this bout of illness, her age and fragility were plain to see. She seemed to have shrunk even smaller, and there was a tremor in the hands moving over the counter.

‘Rest for what? If you rest all day you’re sure to get sick! Who was outside making so much noise? Did you send them away?’

Ah Ma hated to talk about her health as much as she hated anyone else asking how she was. Some people are afraid to show signs of weakness in front of others in case they’re taken advantage of. I suspect it was herself my grandmother was afraid of showing weakness to. As long as she didn’t let herself admit how bad things were, she could go on being blind and strong. It comes from a long tradition of women ignoring agonising sores under the beautiful shoes on their tiny bound feet.

‘It’s Uncle Botak. He brought mud crabs for you and Uncle Chen. . .