“They don’t want any trouble, at least the decent places don’t.”
“What about the not-decent places?” asks Ren.
“Those places you shouldn’t go to. Not even when you’re older.”
Ren would like to hear more about dance halls, but he has duties to perform. The furniture must be rearranged and the floor powdered for dancing. As he drags the furniture to the sides, there’s laughter and the clink of glasses from the dining room. Ren wonders whether there’ll be leftovers, but even as he considers this, his sharp ears catch a discordant note from the kitchen.
“Nanti, nanti! You cannot go in there!” That’s Ah Long’s voice. Then, more urgently, “Ren!”
Dropping the tin of talcum powder, Ren sprints back. Is it the dance-hall girls? If so, why are they in the kitchen? But there’s only one young woman—Nandani. She looks completely out of place as she tries to explain something to Ah Long. Furious, he’s barred the door with one arm, still clutching a wok chan, the steel spatula he uses for stir-frying.
“You cannot bother him now. Go home!”
Nandani’s eyes light up when she sees Ren. “I want to see your master.”
“Does your leg hurt?” Glancing down, Ren sees her leg is still bandaged.
“No, it’s better.”
Ren takes Nandani out through the kitchen door to the covered area outside.
“How did you get here?”
“My cousin gave me a ride on his bicycle. I need to talk to your master.”
She looks so sad and desperate that Ren is worried. Maybe she’s sick and needs medical help.
“My father is sending me away,” she says. “To my uncle in Seremban.”
Ren still doesn’t understand what this has to do with William but he sees the distress in her eyes. “I’ll tell him. Wait here.”
When Ah Long’s back is turned, Ren slips through to the dining room and quietly approaches William.
“Tuan, Nandani is here to see you.”
William doesn’t turn his head, but his face turns pale beneath his tan. “Where is she?”
“Outside. Behind the kitchen.”
William is silent for a moment. Then he pushes his chair back. “I’ll just be a moment,” he says cheerily to the gentleman on his left. To Ren, he murmurs, “Bring her round the veranda on the other side.”
As soon as William stands up, Ren feels a sharp tingle, a warning that an invisible clock has started to tick, running down the seconds and minutes that William is away from his guests. It’s rude to leave in the middle of dinner like this, and William doesn’t like loose ends and untidiness. So he hurries off to lead Nandani around the back of the house to the veranda.
She limps and stumbles on the uneven ground. “You can lean on me,” Ren says. They keep their voices low, although Ren doesn’t know why. The lights from the dining room cast warm shadows onto the grass; there’s a swell in the conversation and a burst of laughter.
“Who are they?” Nandani asks.
“Some doctors from the hospital. Are you hungry?”
She shakes her head, but Ren thinks that he’ll get her and her cousin a plate of food before they go. On the other side, William is already waiting, a dark shape on the veranda. Seeing him, Nandani hurries eagerly over.
Ren can’t hear what they’re saying at this distance, but William must be telling her something, because she nods from time to time. Then he puts an arm around her, or is it both arms? Ren is fascinated. Craning his neck, he can’t make out much in the gloom. Is Nandani crying? Ren takes a step sideways and bumps into someone. It’s Ah Long. He’s come padding around the corner in the darkness like an old, moth-eaten cat.
“Why did you tell him she was here?” he says sourly. “Best to let her go away.”
“I thought she might be ill.”
“Tch! It’s just lovesickness. But she’s the wrong kind of girl to be playing around with.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s the na?ve type who’ll swallow all his sweet talk. How long has he been gone from dinner?”
The minutes are trickling away and the empty spot that William has created by disappearing from his own dinner party is beginning to collapse on itself. Ren can feel it yawing and vibrating: the faint alarm of dinner guests who wonder why their host is absent for so long.
A figure comes up to the dining-room window. It’s Lydia; she says something over her shoulder about fresh air and disappears again. Ren has no idea whether she’s seen anything. Probably not, since it’s dark.
When he turns around, William has gone in, and Nandani stumbles back to Ren. To steady herself, she puts her hand on his shoulder. It’s cold and Ren suddenly has a bad feeling, as though it isn’t really Nandani, but some other chill and bony creature following him in from the dark.
* * *
William slides back into his seat just as dessert comes out. Sago gula Malacca, pearls of tapioca drizzled with coconut milk and dark brown coconut-sugar syrup, and kuih bingka ubi, that fragrant golden cake made from grated tapioca root. Ah Long has really outdone himself, but William has no appetite. He forces it down anyway, nodding as he pretends to listen to the conversation.
When dessert is over, the guests drift back to the front room, now rearranged for dancing. William overhears Mrs. Banks saying nervously to her husband, “Perhaps we should go home early.”
He wishes they would all go home right now. It’s rattled him, Nandani showing up at this dinner party. She’s become a dangerously unpredictable factor, but mostly he’s angry with himself. Stupid, stupid, he thinks, as the familiar feeling of self-loathing washes over him. William should have realized early on that Nandani’s willingness was actually a na?ve infatuation. Bad. Very bad. If a few stolen embraces are enough to give her delusions, then it’s best that their connection end.
Of course, he hasn’t said anything like that to her, only kind words and noble expressions of regret. He hopes that will satisfy her, though if she goes to her employer—the plantation manager who’s Lydia’s father—and makes a fuss, it will be damaging. How ironic, considering that he was far guiltier of being involved with Ambika. William decides then and there that he must limit himself to paid women. That’s better than being accused of seducing young virgins. He’s a fool, despite all his resolutions. And yet he can’t help himself.
The tall, stooped figure of Rawlings, the pathologist, drifts over and William hesitates. He’s not afraid of Rawlings anymore, not since the magistrate ruled Ambika’s death an unfortunate accident, but he’s still wary around him.
Tonight, Rawlings looks more like a stork than ever. “Too bad about the tiger hunt, eh?”
William nods. “I’m sure they’ll try again.”
Rawlings rubs his jaw. His hands are large and white, and William tries not to imagine them slicing through skin with dissecting scissors. It’s silly, since he himself is a surgeon. But I only cut open the living. Not like Rawlings, whose patients are all dead.
“You know I wasn’t happy with the inquest.”
William keeps his face neutral.
Rawlings says, “There’s always cases like this, when something’s fishy but nobody believes you. Had one when I was stationed in Burma: they said it was witchcraft, people dying one after the other, but that was rubbish. It turned out to be arsenic poisoning from a private well.”
“And your point is?”
“This case,” says Rawlings, scraping at the floor absently with his shoe. “That woman, Ambika. It gives me the same feeling.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting that someone’s keeping a pet tiger!” William laughs uncomfortably.
“Not the tiger. The vomit. Remember how I said when we found the head, there were traces of vomit in the mouth?”
Unbidden, the image of Ambika’s broken body flashes in William’s mind, the way he found it half lying under a bush. A headless torso with grey, rubbery skin.
“If she ingested something poisonous, that would account for the kill being untouched. Animals have surprisingly good instinct: if it went for the stomach and intestines first, as most of the big cats do, it might have decided there was something in the body it didn’t like. But Farrell didn’t believe me, of course. Probably we’ll never prove it unless a proper investigation is done—who were her associates, whether there’d been any lovers or scandals. All this local talk about witchcraft and tigers is just a smokescreen.”
This is becoming a terrible evening for William. He swallows, reminding himself that he hasn’t committed a crime. Though given the force of public opinion, being associated with both Ambika and Nandani would be enough to sink him in this small social circle. People will follow him with their eyes, drop their voices when he enters a room. William has already had a taste of this back home.
Steady, he tells himself. It’s only Rawlings grumbling. His luck will save him. “So have you ever come across any true cases of witchcraft?” he says, hoping to distract him.
“No. Though I’ve seen some amazing runs of luck.”
“What sort?”