The Frangipani Tree Mystery Read online

  Ovidia Yu is one of Singapore’s best-known and most acclaimed writers. She has had over thirty plays produced and is the author of a number of comic mysteries published in Singapore, India, Japan and America.

  She received a Fulbright International Writing Fellowship to the University of Iowa’s International Writers Program and has been a writing fellow at the National University of Singapore.

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/OvidiaYuDoggedAuthor

  The Frangipani Tree

  Mystery

  Ovidia Yu

  CONSTABLE • LONDON

  CONSTABLE

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Constable

  Copyright © Ovidia Yu, 2017

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-47212-521-7

  Constable

  is an imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  René Onraet (1887-1952) and Sophia Blackmore (1857-1945)

  and to Richard (here and now)

  Contents

  Prologue

  This Is 1936! Women Have Rights!

  Motor-car

  The Body Under the Frangipani

  Finding Dee-Dee

  ‘Rubbish,’ Lady Palin Said

  First Night

  Le Froy’s Work

  Settling In

  Scones and Photos

  Le Froy’s Information

  Thursday Evening

  Bedtime

  Father of Her Child

  Le Froy’s Rooms

  Dinner

  Sour Dreams

  Dead Mary

  Calm After Storm

  Dee-Dee’s Playroom

  A Memorial Service

  Bills and Accountings

  Le Froy’s Questions

  Chen Tai Tea

  Dee-Dee’s Secrets

  Dr Leask’s Prescriptions

  Chain of Discovery

  That Evening

  In the Dark

  That Night

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Charity Byrne had come to Singapore to look after Dee-Dee. She was also to supervise her lessons and manners, and had taught her to play hide-and-seek, which was why Dee-Dee was hiding in the bougainvillaea bushes under the frangipani tree. Dee-Dee giggled, thinking of the clever trick she was playing on Charity. It had rained in the night and Charity’s shoes and dress would get muddy, which she hated. Dee-Dee was already covered with mud but since she didn’t do her own washing she didn’t care . . . But why wasn’t Charity coming?

  ‘Mary! Mary! No!’ The scream came from the balcony above.

  As Dee-Dee stood up to get a better look, a large form fell through the branches of the frangipani tree and crashed heavily onto the stone paving slabs in front of her.

  Charity Byrne lay sprawled, her neck twisted at an awkward angle, at Dee-Dee’s feet. Charity’s eyes and mouth were wide open in what seemed a crazed grin. Dee-Dee opened her mouth, too, and started to scream.

  There would be no lessons from Charity that day or ever again.

  This Is 1936!

  Women Have Rights!

  ‘No! No! No! No! No! You ignorant, backward man, you can’t just marry off Su Lin! Don’t you see what an utter waste that would be? Your niece has her School Certificate! This is 1936! Women have rights! Women have responsibilities!’

  Miss Vanessa Palin might not be shouting (‘A lady can always make herself heard without shouting’) at the large, bald Chinese man (my uncle Chen) facing her, but she was certainly declaiming at the full volume of a voice she was always reminding us should be ‘soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman’. It was not surprising that Uncle Chen looked uncomfortable, but he was standing his ground. Although she was not a teacher, Miss Nessa lectured regularly at the Mission School on ‘The Proper Pronunciation and Enunciation of the King’s English’ as well as ‘Table Etiquette and Hygiene for Young Ladies’. This indefatigable woman was tall, clever, and resembled Mrs Virginia Woolf, the writer. She was the unmarried sister of Sir Henry Palin, acting governor of Singapore, and some believed he owed his position and much of his success to her. I know I was not the only student at the school who took her as my role model.

  I was Miss Nessa’s star pupil because I could mimic her accent perfectly. I was one of the girls most often invited to ‘tea and conversation’ with visitors she brought to view the Ladies’ Mission. Miss Nessa and her visitors didn’t know my fluency in English came from my grandmother’s shortwave radio. Since Ah Ma had sent me to study English at the Mission, it had been my nightly duty to translate into Hokkien and Malay for her the BBC Empire Service programmes ‘for men and women so cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them’. Chen Tai (as everyone outside the family knew Ah Ma) had no great love for the British but, like Sun Tzu, she believed in knowing her enemies.

  Knowing Miss Nessa had a soft spot for me, I had asked her to help me find a job. I could not tell her that I longed to be independent like her, and see the world beyond Singapore, so I might have exaggerated my fear of being married off now my schooldays were over. In truth, Ah Ma might have kept me at home with her to recoup the investment she had made in sending me to learn English reading and writing at the Mission School. I had been considered ‘bad luck’ since my parents had died from typhoid, and childhood polio had left me with a limp. It had seemed unlikely my family would ever be able to marry me off, but since I was the only child of Ah Ma’s favourite son, she had decided to educate rather than sell me. My grandmother’s moneylending and black-market businesses had made her rich in the continuing Depression, and she could afford to keep me at home to translate for her, run errands and monitor the household accounts. But, grateful though I was to her, the school run by the Mission Centre had opened my eyes to a whole world of possibilities. I wanted more than a lifetime of toil under my grandmother or a mother-in-law. If I was to escape domestic captivity, I would need my own money, which was why I had to find a paying job. (It would also have been easier if I had been an English woman rather than a Chinese girl, but I didn’t worry about what I couldn’t change.)

  Unfortunately, Uncle Chen heard that the Mission Centre was getting me a job and decided that he, my dead father’s eldest surviving brother, should rescue me from the shame of employment. Last night he and his wife Shen-Shen had presented Ah Ma with the names of three men willing to marry me on the condition she released them from their loan obligations to her and provided them with equipment and supplies to set up a laundry or food business in a shop-house, rent-free, for five years as dowry. Two were already married, but they were all family employees and their wives would accept Uncle Chen’s crippled niece as a second wife. Uncle Chen and Shen-Shen told Ah Ma that unless she had me married off at once, my Mission School friends would match me up with some relative of Parshanti (bad because Indian) or Grace (worse because Christian). The whole family, ancestors and descendants included, would be disgraced for ever.

  ‘I must think about it,’ my grandmother told them. ‘Five years’ rent is a lot of money.’ My grandmother disliked giving away money almost as much as she disliked being told what to do.

  I wasn’t against marriage. I just didn’t want to marry a man as a business deal. I asked Uncle Chen for a job instead of a husband, but Uncle Chen was one of those old-fashioned men who saw all working women as servants or prostitutes, even though he deferred to Ah Ma in important business decisions.

  I had taught myself shorthand and typing, and thought I could earn a salary as a secretary. My dream was to train for a profession. Thanks to Miss Nessa, I knew that women in England and America trained to be teachers, nurses and even doctors, and I was sure that, given time, I could talk Ah Ma round to accepting that. First, though, I had to earn my training fees. That was why I had slipped away from home that morning to meet Miss Nessa and my potential employer.

  One of the servants must have told tales, which had resulted in Uncle Chen charging into the Mission Centre to save me from myself and Western influences.

  ‘You ignorant fool! You should be proud of Su Lin! She is very intelligent! She came top of the class!’ Miss Nessa raised her voice over Uncle Chen’s Hokkien tirade, which concerned the unclean state of Nessa Palin’s genitals and how he would never allow a skinny sterile white woman to rob the Chen family of a precious granddaughter (he meant me). He jabbed me in the back to translate while glaring at Miss Nessa.

  I had stopped translating when they started talki
ng at the same time, but that had not stopped them. Very likely they hadn’t even noticed. After all, they understood themselves and neither was listening to the other. Now Miss Nessa was watching and waiting for me to translate her words. The large black handbag she was swinging vigorously looked dangerous.

  ‘My uncle says my grandmother wants only what’s best for me,’ I told Miss Nessa, then to Uncle Chen, ‘My teacher respectfully says she wants to help me not be a burden to my family.’

  They both snorted. A noise at the open doorway sounded like a laugh. I turned and saw a tall, dark Englishman hesitating just outside. He had clearly come to keep an appointment – and it was even clearer that he was thinking of leaving without fulfilling it. Even from the street outside, the row going on inside must have been entertaining.

  ‘I think Chief Inspector Le Froy is here,’ I said warningly. I recognized him from the newspapers. Once my friend Parshanti and I had been studying at the back of her parents’ shop when he had come in to ask Mrs Shankar to help identify a button found at a crime scene. We had watched through the curtains. Unfortunately, she had not been able to help him and he had not stayed long. This was the first time I was seeing him at such close quarters and I couldn’t help staring. Thomas Le Froy was the closest thing Singapore Island had to a Rudolph Valentino, a Douglas Fairbanks or a John Barrymore, all combined in the person of one genuine hero . . .

  I must digress. Unless you are aware of the awe with which Chief Inspector Le Froy was regarded, you will find it impossible to understand how great a favour Miss Nessa was doing me. Thomas Francis Le Froy, of the Criminal Intelligence Department, was a legend in the Crown Colonies. He spoke fluent Hokkien and Malay; he had pulled rickshaws and infiltrated gambling dens disguised as a Chinese drains inspector. Most of the single ladies in town (and a good number of the married ones) were in love with him, but even top investigative gossips, like my grandmother and Shen-Shen, had no stories of female companions. In fact, I suspected Miss Nessa hoped to use me to insinuate herself into his life, much in the way that a young man gives a puppy or kitten to the object of his affections. ‘Give me all the details of his household and I will tell you how to go about your duties,’ she had told me. Despite the height, large feet and sharp features that protected her from the sin of vanity, Miss Nessa was not immune to Le Froy.

  Years of balancing home and Mission School life had taught me to seize all opportunities as soon as they arose, before they could be snatched away. Thomas Le Froy was the work opportunity Miss Nessa had engineered for me, promising, ‘You will be safer with him than with any old woman. He’s too engrossed in his work to have time for women, and where can you be safer than working for a policeman? Even your family won’t dare to touch you there. And I hear that he is in desperate need of a housekeeper.’

  ‘Chief Inspector Le Froy?’ I stepped forward as he turned to me, looking surprised. ‘I am Chen Su Lin. I believe Miss Nessa spoke to you about me?’

  I had not planned to work as a cleaner or housekeeper but anything that took me away from Uncle Chen’s suitors was a step in the right direction. And, if I made myself useful, who could say how swiftly I might move up from housekeeper to assistant and even secretary?

  ‘You’re late, Chief Inspector!’ Miss Nessa snapped. Then, collecting herself, ‘Good morning.’

  ‘It is not yet eleven, Miss Palin. What is the mysterious affair you wish to discuss?’ Le Froy’s eyes returned to me. I thought I saw discomfort in them, even a touch of distaste.

  ‘No reason to rush. Some tea, I think – Su Lin, if you would—’ Miss Nessa tried to return to her carefully planned introduction, but was interrupted again when Uncle Chen grabbed my arm and walked me towards the door. Miss Nessa seized my other arm. Like the baby in the Bible story, I was being pulled apart, but without a true mother in the picture.

  ‘Chief Inspector! You must make this man leave at once!’

  ‘It is best not to interfere in domestic situations.’ Le Froy turned to the door, hoping for an excuse to escape. He looked exactly like the Mission kindergarten children trying to avoid questions when they hadn’t prepared an answer. The thought made me grin just as he glanced at me. Did that trigger a curiosity that made him stay?

  ‘Perhaps you would permit me to close the front door, Miss Palin.’ A small crowd of hawkers, coolies and rickshaw-pullers had clustered outside to watch what was going on within. Among them I recognized a couple of men who worked for Uncle Chen. If Le Froy knew these people as well as I did, he would be aware that they were already placing bets on which of us the chief inspector was going to arrest and take away. A Singaporean never missed the chance to gamble.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘That’s a good idea. You are a practical man, Chief Inspector.’ Rather than accept his offer, Miss Nessa swung the doors shut and tugged at the flat bolt, which was meant to lock them. Like so many things at the Mission Centre for which volunteers had been responsible, it didn’t quite fit and stuck, but the doors stayed closed.

  ‘Please take a seat, Chief Inspector,’ Miss Nessa said, with abrupt dignity. ‘I must apologize for the circus here this morning. This man . . .’ She looked severely at Uncle Chen, but he was suddenly fussing over me, straightening my shirt over my shoulders and patting down my hair. In other words, establishing family authority in the way that a farmer claims ownership of a pig at the market. I respected my uncle, who indulged his mother’s fondness for me, had never stinted on my food or clothes after my father’s death had left him head of the Chen family, and had not thrown me out when fortune-tellers told him his own childless marriage was due to my bad-luck presence. Uncle Chen had taken only one wife so far and, though married for more than ten years, Shen-Shen was barely in her thirties. And although Uncle Chen was trying to strong-arm me into marriage, he had tried to reassure me: ‘Don’t be scared. If your husband beats you or doesn’t give you children, you tell me and I’ll make sure he dies without children!’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Palin,’ Le Froy said. ‘You did say eleven o’clock? I can return at some other time if this is not convenient.’ He glanced at my uncle again. His eyes darted constantly around the room as though he were taking stock and assessing everything in it.

  It was said that Le Froy was a fair man, known for his willingness to work with – and against – men of any race, language or religion. Since his arrival on the island, he had promoted good local people based on the standard of their work and pursued Europeans who had broken the law. He was at the Mission Centre that morning thanks to Miss Nessa. After all Miss Vanessa Palin was the sister of Singapore’s acting governor, Sir Henry Palin, currently based in Government House on Frangipani Hill. Sir Henry represented British colonial authority in Singapore, and Nessa Palin represented Sir Henry. Chief Inspector Le Froy might be head of the Singapore Police but, like everyone else on the island, he was subject to the Crown and colonial authority.

  ‘Oh, no, Chief Inspector. Of course this is convenient. You have an appointment, after all. Some local people do not understand how to make and keep appointments.’ Miss Nessa threw a triumphant glance at my uncle. She had never doubted her victory but it was still nice to see rivals crumble as reinforcements arrived.

  Uncle Chen did not crumble. He locked strong plump fingers around my arm and started to pull me towards the exit again, muttering rude things under his breath. I didn’t know whether he had recognized the policeman but Le Froy was an ang moh – a white man – and Uncle Chen did not trust ang mohs. Again, Miss Nessa seized my other arm, effectively halting progress.

  ‘I don’t know what the man is talking about.’ Miss Nessa’s voice rose to drown Uncle Chen’s rant. ‘Can’t you get one of your men to put him out? You’re supposed to be keeping order here. Please make sure we’re not bothered by gaga natives.’

  ‘He’s threatening to come back and burn down the Mission building if you try to keep his dead brother’s orphan daughter prisoner here,’ Le Froy translated calmly.

  I noticed he had kept the more colourful parts of my uncle’s tirade to himself: he had not told Miss Nessa she had been called an immoral white ghost, a tigress, and less useful than what comes out of the hind end of a barren chicken. Nevertheless I was impressed by his fluency. I was even more impressed when he turned to my uncle and said, in flawless Hokkien, ‘It’s against the law to burn down buildings, sir.’