The advocates devil, p.6
The Advocate's Devil, page 6
As we ushered Kechik down the front steps, June said to me, “I will take her back if you want. I have nothing on this afternoon and she has offered to show me her orchids.”
“Would you really? I’d be ever so grateful. I’ve a pile of work at the office.”
“No trouble at all.” June and Kechik got into the rickshaw, which was pulled by a bronzed coolie with a wide straw hat. They clattered over the gravel and out onto the road which led downhill back towards town.
After a quick goodbye hug, I set off to catch the trolley bus back to the office.
The sun was past its zenith, but the air was as hot as if it had come straight out of a baker’s oven. Fortunately, the road ran downhill from our house, but even so it was uncomfortable work.
I glanced to my left as I toiled sweatily downwards. In those days the domain around Government House was open to all and sundry. The cool tree-lined paths beckoned me. Deciding that Cuthbert and Mr d’Almeida wouldn’t mind if I took an extra half-hour to get back, I left the road and strolled through the impressive wrought-iron gates.
The path meandered past the sepoys guarding the drive that led up to the porch of Government House. That was where His Excellency the Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner to the Malay States (referred to universally as “H.E.”) held court. I turned right onto the avenue of stately rain trees and after a brisk walk in the delicious shade reached the main road, where the trolley buses clattered their way along the middle of the street.
I got to the bus stop just in time to see my bus pull out. With a running jump I hurled myself onto the footboard of the departing bus, elbowed my way into the centre through a scrum of sweaty humanity, and hung onto the strap while the bus rattled back into town. By the time I got back to the office I felt like a freshly-baked bread roll.
I didn’t get home until late that night. The fireflies were already twinkling among the mangosteen trees when I finally tottered through the garden gate. I let myself in, trying not to wake anyone; we retired early as a general rule, as there were no night-time distractions to stay up for. Besides, electricity wasn’t free and it cost a pretty penny to light up the whole mansion.
Thinking only of a shower and my bed, I dragged myself up the stairs. To my surprise, I bumped into June at the top of the stairs, clad in her pyjamas.
“Every word was true you know,” she said, without preliminaries. That was just like June. No consideration for the weary. No “Hello cousin, would you like a drink” or anything of the sort. Bang, straight to the point.
“What? What was true?” I asked tiredly.
“Everything that Mrs Khoo told us. I went to her place — she has the nicest orchids, you know — it is just as she says. Small, but very nice, you know. But the upstairs is much bigger. And there are a lot more things upstairs.”
“And how would you know?” I rejoined irritatedly. “You’ve never been. It’s all hearsay.”
“Ha! You just hear what I say. I saw with my own eyes. Piles and piles of things.”
“Really?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. “You can’t have been upstairs. Not with the other Mrs Khoo there. She would have grilled your liver for supper.”
“We went when she was out. Mrs Khoo has a key.”
I was lost for a moment. “Mrs Khoo has a key? Downstairs Mrs Khoo or upstairs Mrs Khoo?”
“Your Mrs Khoo of course, gobblock. She has a key to the upstairs. She let me in and showed me around upstairs Mrs Khoo’s flat. I saw old Khoo’s vase, the one he gave to your Mrs Khoo.”
My head was beginning to spin a little by now. Too many Khoos in the plot. “Wait, wait, you’ve lost me. Call them Besar and Kechik like we do. Start again.”
She folded her arms and started again, speaking slowly as if instructing a retarded child.
“Okay, your Mrs Khoo — Kechik — has got a key to the other Mrs Khoo — Besar’s — flat. Got that? Good. She — Kechik — let me in to have a look at the flat. It is really true what she said. There is a lot more things in the upstairs flat. Kechik has hardly anything. Well, not hardly, but not as much. And there is the vase. It is an antique. Very valuable. Only one of its kind in the world. She — Besar — keeps it in an almeirah right in the hall. She does not even display it. She is a real dog in the kennel.”
“You mean manger,” I corrected.
“Kennel, manger, whatever. Anyway, she took the vase out of spite. She knows that old man Khoo gave it to Kechik. She does not even want to show it off. She hides it away in that dusty old almeirah. It rightly belongs to Kechik.”
“Hold on a sec. How did Kechik get a key to Besar’s flat?”
“She has had it for years and years. She said that she had it made when old man Khoo was alive. She used to creep up and spy on them when Khoo was upstairs with the other Mrs Khoo.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward.
“Don’t look so like that, okay. I would have done the same — not that I will marry a man who already has a wife, but you know what I mean. Anyway, she once... she once...”
Here June dissolved into a fit of giggles. After choking for a minute, she continued. “She once went upstairs and put icing sugar into Besar’s bedak sejok, her face powder. Besar had ants crawling all over her face in the night and did not know why.” She collapsed into a chair, with tears streaming.
I put on my stern face. “You really shouldn’t go around with Mrs Khoo trespassing on other people’s property.”
June collected herself. “Hey, don’t you use that big brother tone with me. I am older than you, okay.”
She had me there, though actually the age difference was only a matter of months. She grabbed my arm. “Come, I have got something to show you.”
She pulled me into her room, which she normally shared with May. May was away spending the night with friends; Mak was scandalously lax with the girls, so the neighbours used to say. They would never get married, or at best would end up with the dregs of society. The old Nonyas clicked their tongues, but the girls had fun regardless.
On the washstand next to her bed stood an object draped with an old curtain. With the air of a conjurer, June stepped up to the object and whipped away the cover. It was a vase. A Chinese vase. A large, expensive-looking Chinese vase.
I BLINKED in the dim light of the single bulb. “You’ve got a vase,” I said, somewhat redundantly.
June nodded.
“Where did you get that vase?” I queried, with an uncomfortable sensation of impending doom.
“From Mrs Khoo — I mean Besar’s — flat. We took it with us when we left. Mrs Khoo asked me to keep it for her.”
“Kechik asked you to keep it for her,” I repeated slowly, trying to grasp the enormity of the crime.
June nodded again.
The tiredness had left me entirely. “You’ve got to put it back, right away and no arguments,” I said sternly.
June started to remonstrate, but I didn’t give her the chance. “You really have no idea, absolutely no idea, of the seriousness of what you’ve done. You entered Mrs Khoo Besar’s flat without her permission and filched a valuable vase. At the very least it’s criminal trespass. It could be housebreaking. And theft. Kechik was just today bound over to keep the peace. She could be locked up for years. And you’d be there to keep her company as an accomplice. Didn’t they teach you anything in Sunday School about honesty and all that?”
“But it is hers,” said June defiantly, though with a little edge of trepidation.
“Of course it isn’t hers. Not till the judge says so. Does she have a receipt? A deed of gift? Any proof beyond her word that her old man gave it to her?”
June shook her head.
“So how are we going to convince a Magistrate that she was taking her own property? No, you have to put it back. At once. Tonight.”
“I cannot,” said June.
“Why in heaven’s name not?” I expostulated.
“Because young ladies should not go wandering around town at night. Besides, Mrs Khoo Besar is back in her flat. Anyway I have already changed into my pyjamas.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation.
“I’ll come with you, okay. Change into something quick. We’ve got to get the thing back into the flat before Besar notices that it’s missing. If she makes a police report and they quiz Kechik, she’ll tell them that you have it and then we’ve all had it. Mr d’Almeida will turf me out so fast my feet won’t touch the ground as I whizz through the door.”
June had sobered somewhat by now. I wrapped the vase back up in the curtain. She was standing around irresolutely.
“Go on, get changed!” I hissed.
“Can’t,” she said shortly, “you are in my room.”
I let out a low growl of pure frustration and left with the vase. Ten minutes later we were sneaking out the kitchen door into the night.
I remember quite distinctly that it was a beautiful night. There’s something about embarking upon a housebreaking expedition that etches things vividly on one’s memory. The day had been cloudless and the night was crystal clear. Orion glimmered starkly against the black vault of the sky, the three stars of his belt pointing clearly the way to our destination. I would have enjoyed the walk immensely, had it not been for the looming prospect of being disbarred before I had even been called to the Bar.
Silently we made our way through the silent streets. Though it was not yet nine, the place was empty. The pulse of the city was to be found in the teeming warrens of Chinatown, not out here in the suburbs. We passed hardly a soul.
Stealing past the silent gardens, we eventually reached the Khoo residence. It was a modest double-storeyed terrace house, one room broad and with no front garden. The entrance to the bottom flat opened directly onto the five-foot way while a flight of stairs to the side, barred by a collapsible iron gate, led upstairs to the other flat. On either side were similar terraces.
Old man Khoo himself had lived elsewhere, in a grand mansion with a large garden out on Grove Road. There he threw lavish parties for his business and gambling cronies. Khoo’s mah-jong parties were legendary. We discovered when settling the estate that the mansion was rented, along with the car. The only real property he owned was this little pokey terrace house. Things must have been going pretty poorly for some time before the Great Depression gave the coup de grace to his fortune.
The doors and windows of both flats were shuttered, and no light showed through the chinks. I paused.
“I suppose we’d better get the key,” I said to June doubtfully.
She nodded but made no move.
“Well, go on,” I urged.
“Me? You knock on the door and get the key,” she responded. “I’m not going to make a noise at this time of the night and wake all the neighbours.”
Taking a deep breath, I rapped tentatively on the wooden front door of Kechik’s flat. The sound reverberated through the still night like the roll of drums. A dog barked at the sudden noise. I was about to try again when June put her hand on mine.
“No use. I just remembered. Mrs Khoo said that she sleeps with cotton wool in her ears, because upstairs Mrs Khoo always makes a terrible noise at bedtime. She drags the furniture around or stamps on the floorboards or something.”
I bit my lower lip. “That’s done it then. I can’t hammer on the door loudly enough to wake her. What shall we do?”
“We could go home,” suggested June tentatively.
I shook my head vigorously. “No we can’t, and you know it. Tomorrow morning Besar is going to miss this vase and then all hell will break loose. Let’s try the back.”
I crept furtively round the block with June trailing behind me. She carried the vase, wrapped in its curtain. It was shaped somewhat like an urn, with handles on the side sticking out like ears. Wrapped up, it resembled a decapitated head. We must have had the look of a pair of grave robbers after a successful night out.
A narrow alley separated the block of terraces from their neighbours behind. Rats scampered in the open drains that lined the alley, making little scurrying sounds that were greatly magnified to my keyed-up senses. At the back of each terrace house was a narrow-walled garden, blocked off from the alley by a high brick wall with a small wooden door. These houses had only one bathroom and a toilet out back, and access to these facilities for the top flats was provided by a spiral stone staircase.
I indicated the staircase to June. “Let’s see if we can get in that way,” I whispered.
“I will stay here if you do not mind,” said June. “I am not dressed properly to go around climbing.”
Those were the days before girls had won the privilege of looking like boys, so June wore her ordinary going-out clothes. Only Gek Neo habitually wore the sarong kebaya; my other cousins usually dressed in Western style, which was generally quite unsuited to the climate but was considered the height of chic. I cast my eye up and down June. She wore a frock and flat-heeled shoes; not ideal for shinning up drainpipes and such, but acceptable for a run-of-the-mill burglary.
“You’ll do,” I whispered. “You have to come with me to show me where to put the dratted thing.”
She was about to protest but I held up my hand to pre-empt any remonstration.
Fervently praying that I had counted the right number of houses, I pushed gently on the door that I guessed led into the Khoos’ back garden. It opened squeakily and we crept in. Along one side wall was the toilet and bathroom. Along the other side was ranged a collection of carefully tended pots, abloom with orchids. The scent of jasmine caught my nostrils.
We climbed the spiral staircase noiselessly. It led to another collapsible iron gate, but the door behind it was open. After the heat of the day, Besar must have left the door open to let in the cool night air, just shutting the gate. I pulled at it gingerly. It slipped aside with a metallic rasp. We squeezed through the gap and found ourselves in the kitchen.
Picking our way carefully across, I was terrified lest we dislodge a pot or pan or kwali. The kitchen wasn’t very big, and when Besar was in it I could imagine that not much room for manoeuvre was left over. However, we got through without mishap. The floor was stone-flagged here, and we tiptoed across without a sound.
A dark passageway led from the kitchen to the living room, past what I took to be the bedrooms. The entire flat was in darkness. The first step I took caused an audible clop on the polished wooden floor of the passageway. “Shoes off,” I whispered urgently to June. Leaving our shoes in the kitchen, we tiptoed down the passageway.
There were two doors leading off the passageway. The first was shut, but the second was ajar. I peeped in cautiously. On a bed under a mosquito net lay a recumbent dark form, shaped rather like a deflated barrage balloon. Soft rhythmical snores emanated from it.
“She’s asleep,” I whispered, putting my finger to my lips. We slid silently past the door, gliding on the polished wood.
The living room was quite large, crammed full of furniture and bric-a-brac, the flotsam of a lifetime of indiscriminate collecting. The furniture was rosewood in the Chinese style, carved with blossoms and phoenixes and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A marble-topped table stood in the centre of the room on a Persian carpet. On various side tables lay an assortment of clocks, vases, urns, boxes and objects of indeterminate utility. A grandfather clock stood by the main door. On the walls hung family pictures, dozens of them, in wooden frames. The rows of unsmiling faces glared glassily at us. Against the wall next to the passageway was the altar, bare now except for two large brass candlesticks. A large framed photo of a Chinese man in coat and tie occupied the centre, surrounded by spirit tablets carved with incomprehensible characters.
“Where’s the almeirah?” I asked June softly.
She indicated a large cupboard by the door. I moved over to it silently as an owl and opened the door. The musty smell of stale air assailed my nose. Evidently Kechik was right about Besar not caring about the vase. I took the wrapped vase from June and placed it carefully in the almeirah. We both let out our breath, which we had been unconsciously holding.
I suppose that after our successful escapade we were both careless. Whatever it was, disaster overtook us with unlooked-for suddenness. As we made our way back down the passage, June’s silk-clad foot lost traction, precipitating her on her rump with a thump. The sound was like the crack of doom, magnified in the silence. She stifled a cry while I froze completely, visions of the Day of Judgement flashing through my brain. I wondered whether breaking into a house to replace things carried the same penalty as breaking in to take things out.
For what seemed an eternity we kept our position as if turned to stone. No reaction. Cautiously, I peered into Besar’s room. The blimp was still on the bed, a dark bulk under the mosquito net. She was evidently a very sound sleeper; either that, or Kechik wasn’t the only one who slept with cotton wool in her ears to block out the sound of her neighbour’s nightly rituals. I helped June back onto her feet and we made our way back to the kitchen.
We fled down the stairs and out into the alley without a word. June was rubbing her bottom.
“My backside will be black and blue because of you,” she said to me reprovingly.
“Good,” I responded unsympathetically, “Consider it divine retribution. Saved me the trouble of spanking you myself.”
We made our way home in silence. I threw myself onto my bed without bothering to shower and tried to get some sleep. I must say that I didn’t have a restful night. For some reason, my mind kept trying to remember what the proper term was for being struck off the Roll. I suppose if they had taken away my wig, the proper term would have been “dis-tressed”, but somehow it didn’t sound right. I fell into a fitful slumber, dreaming of the Bar Committee pursuing me with barber’s shears. When I finally awoke it was way past sunrise.
THE FOLLOWING DAY was a Saturday and the house was full when I got down to breakfast.
Everyone was in on Saturday. Mak had already eaten, as was her custom; she got up at 5:30 every morning. The girls were scattered around the house. Gek Neo was helping Mak with the household chores.
