Suddenly at Singapore (3 page)

“You’ll ring me when you can, Paul?”

“Of course.”

When a sleepy-eyed Chinese opened the door she just went through it, not looking back. I went to the car Jeff had given me and drove through nearly empty streets to his apartment building, which had the lobby of its kind of place all over the world, the nobody-ever-dies-here feeling, with lighting that stays on all night and plants that are whipped out at the first sign of anæmia and replaced by others fresh from a high vitamin diet. The lift was silent and then I got out into a passage where a Chinese policeman sat on a chair taken from Jeff’s sitting-room.

“I’m the brother,” I said in Cantonese. “I want to get in.”

“The body isn’t here,” he told me. “It’s in the mortuary.”

“I didn’t think the body would be here. I still want to get in.”

“You can’t.”

“There’s a phone just inside the door. We’ll use it.”

In the end I got into that little hall. It was neat and neutral, an hour or two with the cleaners and the flat would be ready for the next tenant. There was quite a lot of shouting at both ends of the wire, but finally I got my way, with the policeman on duty breathing down my neck. I wasn’t to touch anything, not even a door handle.

I wouldn’t have believed Jeff’s sitting-room could look the way it did. He had a filing cabinet prettied up by a Chinese carpenter, but still looking utilitarian behind the grand piano that nobody played. The cabinet had both doors open and every drawer pulled out. There were papers strewn in front of it. All the drawers in the room had been pulled out and the contents just dumped on the floor.

“Was it like this, or did the police do it?” I asked.

My policeman showed anger.

“It was like this!”

Then I saw a stain on the teak flooring, a big stain, just under the piano. There was a broken decanter there, too, with slivers of glass all about. Jeff served his drinks from the end of the piano, the boy putting the tray there. He must have been pouring a drink when the shot came. He could have been pouring for himself alone or for a visitor he knew. The killer could have been let into the flat by Jeff or could have been waiting here, hidden, someone who knew his habits, the pattern of the way he did things. Jeff expected that tray to be on the piano when he came home and the chances were that he’d gone to it pretty quickly.

I didn’t touch anything. I knew that before long I was going to have to go to a place and see the Jeff they had taken away. I didn’t want to do that. I had to get home to Ruth, and if I hung around here a sergeant or someone might come down from headquarters to check up on what I was doing. I told the policeman where I was going and went out.

I had bought for Ruth a big house beyond the Botanic Gardens, got it fairly cheap because it was outsize for the contemporary pattern and spent a lot on it. There were about four acres of grounds that were like a miniature Botanic in themselves. From the gate the trees were so thick you couldn’t see the house until you rounded a bend in the drive. When I did that I saw what looked like all the lower floor glowing with light. There was also a police car under the old-fashioned projecting portico. It was half-past two in the morning.

Ruth was in the living-room, a vast place we used less than the oldfashioned verandas beyond it. She was wearing a housecoat of pale green Chinese silk and in it she still looked a child with red hair, though she was thirty-two. She came running to me, and I held her, and her arms fumbled around my back, meeting there, holding on. She hadn’t been crying but she began to cry now, miserably, as though woken from a dream of horrors. Over her head I saw the policeman, a stranger to me, sitting quietly in a chair waiting.

“It’s all right, honey, it’s all right.”

“It’s not,” Ruth said. “It’ll never be.”

I tried to soothe her. Suddenly she looked up.

“Will you stop it?”

She broke away from me and went to a table. She had tiny hands and small fingers, groping now over the lid of a cigarette box. She picked one up and lit it.

The policeman rose then. He was a smooth young man in a white sharkskin suit which looked as though he’d put it on only a few hours before. He was thin and cool, Chinese acclimatised by a generation or two, with a polite manner, a good man for the transition period. He could talk to a distraught woman for quite some time and keep any hint of hysteria at bay.

“This is Inspector Kang,” Ruth said, with her back to me.

“How do you do, Inspector.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Harris, that I had to come at this hour.”

“It’s all right. Sit down again.”

He did. His politeness was contained and composed. There was no hint of the deference in it that there would have been once, in my father’s time. Only he wouldn’t have been an inspector then. Almost certainly the inspector’s grandfather had come as an indentured coolie from South China, but you wouldn’t think it from the grandson’s manner. He had learned his English well, and used it casually, as though its perfection was a minor achievement.

Now looking at him, I realised he wasn’t so young, probably in his late thirties like me, only bearing it better, an ivory face unlined, jet hair that was thick and oiled smooth. I wondered what he had been doing while the Japanese romped about his country.

“This will have been a great shock to you, Mr. Harris.”

“Yes.”

“I understand you’ve been to the flat.”

“How did you know?”

“It was phoned to me here. Also, your wife said you would be going. While you were there did you … ah … gain any impression that might be of use to us?”

“I saw a mess, Inspector.”

“Yes. A search obviously.”

“I’d rather you didn’t talk about it in front of my wife.”

Ruth turned.

“Why shouldn’t he talk about it? What do you think we’ve been doing for the last hour? The inspector came to see if I could help. I must have been the last person to talk to Jeff.”

I stood quite still looking at her.

“We had drinks at the club,” she said. “Just before he went home.”

“Did he tell you anything about his plans for the evening?”

“No. Why should he? I expect it was one of his nights for his latest cutie.”

“Ruth, for heaven’s sake!”

“A Miss Feng,” the inspector said, looking at me. “She was indeed expecting him. She is now prostrate.”

“Ruth, will you please leave us?”

“No. Why should I be sent away?”

I went over to a cabinet and poured myself a whisky. The inspector declined. I didn’t ask Ruth, I just mixed it and took it to her. She looked up at me and there was a kind of appeal in her eyes, suddenly. I went and sat down on a settee and she came and took the other end of it. She put her feet up, tucking them under her, holding the glass with both hands. She looked the child allowed up late, and clinging to the opportunity.

Inspector Kang was smoking one of his own cigarettes. He had inserted it into a short black holder. Like so many Chinese he had beautiful hands. He looked incapable of violence of any kind.

“There are two kinds of killings,” he said, “which present particular difficulties to the police. The one appears to have no motive, the other a great many possible motives.”

“My dead brother is giving you a great richness of motives?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It would be foolish to deny that my brother and I have enemies, Inspector.”

“Both private … and what shall we say … public?”

“All private.”

Inspector Kang smiled then. It made him look younger.

“Not the general view, Mr. Harris.”

“It’s a statement. I won’t alter it.”

“If we are going to co-operate in finding a murderer the utmost frankness is necessary.”

I looked at him. There was no use underestimating the inspector because of his quietness. If you underestimate a Chinese for that you can end up with your throat cut.

“I’ve made my statement, Inspector Kang. Now I’d like to hear yours.”

He drew on that cigarette.

“I didn’t expect to find you quite so composed, Mr. Harris. You seem to have recovered from shock.”

“I think so.”

“Your wife was afraid that you would be … broken.”

“I didn’t say that, Inspector.” Ruth was angry.

“Implied, perhaps, madam. I was going to take my leave when you came, Mr. Harris. I expected nothing useful from you to-night.”

“If you’ve changed your mind on that do stay.”

Inspector Kang’s eyes were very cold. I think mine were, too, they were meant to be. It wasn’t just that latent hostility between a policeman and the ordinary citizen, but something that went much deeper at once, that moved into zones of feeling which knocked out reason in both of us. I didn’t like the world into which Kang was fitting so nicely thank you. And he thought my world should be liquidated, that it was only a matter of time until it was.

“Mr. Harris, what would you say to my suggestion that to-morrow a great many people will be saying not only that your brother’s death was no surprise, but also that it was something in the nature of a political assassination?”

I smiled at him.

“I’d say that you police were already looking for a good excuse not to have solved another murder.”

Kang got up. His face was quite set.

“That is all you have to say?”

“It’s my answer to your question. I’m still willing to assist you in any way you wish.”

“Will you assist me by a full statement of all the business activities in which you and your brother have been engaged?”

“Certainly. Come down to my office to-morrow morning and you’ll learn anything you want to from my head clerk.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harris. But I have no need for any of the information your head clerk would give me. Good night. It is actually good morning.”

He bowed to Ruth. She unwound her legs and stood. We heard Kang striding over the teak boards of the hall. A servant let him out. The police car snorted away from us.

“Are you crazy?” Ruth said behind me. “What were you trying to do to that little man?”

“I’m going to try to ignore him,” I said.

She came towards me, and caught my arm. Her voice, in distress, became more Southern.

“Paul. Oh, my poor dear. You’re just about out of your mind.”

“Yes, you’re right. I have felt just about like that.”

“Come and sit down, honey, you come on. Or better, get to bed.”

“No, I don’t want to go to bed. Get me another whisky, Ruth. I’m sorry I was so long in getting here.”

“You came pretty quick for you. Travelling to me, that is.”

“It’s no night to talk about us, is it?”

“It never is.”

I watched her there at the cabinet pouring for me. She held the decanter as though it was heavy, her head bent forward a little as she watched what she did. Her slim neck was very white, she kept the sun from her magnolia skin, always. You never saw her lying at the edge of any pool. And she liked this garden because of the trees, the thick shade you could find on any path.

I thought about a love that any man can start up easily enough with a girl who looks like Ruth. It’s the making the pattern later that isn’t easy.

She came towards me carefully, carrying the decanter.

“Put your feet up, honey.”

She was claiming this moment and I let her, I put my feet up. She stood looking down at me.

“Are your eyes tired? After all that night driving? They’re bloodshot, a little.”

“Sit down, Ruth. What did you talk to Jeff about at the club?”

“Oh, nothing special. He saw me come in alone, though I was there to meet Elsie Barnes. I guess he thought he had to do something about me. Anyhow, we went out on the terrace until Elsie arrived. He bought me a drink. I can’t say we talked about anything special.”

“Why did you say that about his Chinese cuties … in front of Kang?”

“I’m sorry. I saw you didn’t like that. I just never thought. Everyone round here knows how Jeff made out. He never hung a wife around his neck like you.”

“Cut that out!”

“All right. I’d like to tell you more about what Jeff said, but honestly I can’t remember. It may even have been the weather. We never found it terribly easy to talk.”

Suddenly she was crying.

“Oh, Paul, I’m so tired and scared.”

It always hit me when she cried, as though I’d been abusing a weakness she couldn’t help.

“I’ll take you to bed.”

I picked her up, she was light to carry, a girl with small bones. She kept her head down, against the front of my shirt. Her room was cool, sealed against the tropic night and air-conditioned. There was a thin blanket on the bed, and I got her under it, draping her housecoat over a stool. She was wearing pyjamas to match the housecoat, pale green. I pulled open a drawer of the bedside cabinet and saw the collection of bottles in there.

“Which of these are you taking now?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t want anything. I’ll sleep.”

“Ruth, you need something to-night.”

She looked at me.

“Kang said he was putting guards on the house. I was to tell you.”

“What?”

“Paul, he’s afraid. He let me see that he doesn’t think it’s going to stop at Jeff. Neither do I.”

“You haven’t told me about his questions.”

“Oh, he asked a lot, about us. I told him everything. I mean how we lived. And that you were in Kuala Lumpur on business.”

“He asked what I was doing up north?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t tell him, of course. I just said I never really knew what you were doing. And that’s true enough, isn’t it?”

“I could tell you about what I’m doing if it would really interest you.”

“Thank you, Paul, but we’d better go on the way we always have. I guess I’m too stupid to be the little wife who shares everything. I’ve just enough sense not to try and take that on. Will you get me a cigarette?”

I put an ash tray handy and sat down. She smoked, propped up in bed, not looking at me, but I couldn’t leave her yet. Somehow it was always like this when we were alone together these days, both of us self-conscious, as though neither of us could get away from the sum total of what our marriage had become.