The quick clip of footsteps. I stayed where I was, thinking furiously. If William Acton really was the fifth Virtue, then he must be Li, order and ritual. He’d been with Dr. MacFarlane when his finger was amputated, and his name was also on Pei Ling’s mysterious list. And now, someone else had died.
I waited a few minutes until I was sure they’d gone. The finger in its glass vial was in my pocket, since I couldn’t leave it where Mrs. Tham might find it. I considered replacing it in the pathology storeroom, but I had a bad feeling. Somehow it had wormed its way out of there and buried itself in the dark earth outside William Acton’s bungalow, as though it had an agenda. The idea made me shudder.
Deep in thought, I stepped off the curb without looking and was honked at. Startled, I raised my eyes to find that the car was an Austin, and William Acton was driving. I felt like kicking myself—what was the point of hiding only to be run over by him five minutes later?
“Louise,” he said, leaning out of the window. “Want a lift?”
Since he’d already spotted me and it was a long, uphill walk to the hospital, I climbed in. Acton didn’t seem surprised to see me, just distracted, as though he was mulling something over.
“How is Ren—your houseboy?” I said. “Is he all right?”
“He’s still in the hospital. Are you working there today?”
He probably assumed I had a job there since I’d been cleaning up the pathology storeroom. But relief was flooding me. Glorious, heartfelt relief. Ren had survived!
“My brother’s an orderly. I was just helping out.”
“Your brother—you mean the chap who was with you the other day?”
“Yes.”
Acton shot me a swift glance. “I didn’t realize that.”
“We don’t look alike.” I wondered why I always apologized for that.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking.” He grinned. “Anyway, do you want to see Ren? I’m going back myself.”
William Acton was a much better driver than Robert was. At least, he changed gears without gut-wrenching swerves. Spared the terror of death by motorcar, I studied him surreptitiously, struck once again by his disarming manner. I suspected the reason he could be so casual was because he didn’t really see me as a person, just another interchangeable local girl.
As the car began to climb the hill, he said, “Look here, Louise—on Saturday night at the party, did you happen to see a Sinhalese girl? Her name was Nandani.”
That must be the girl they’d been discussing at the train station. The one who’d died. “Was she there to see you?”
He glanced quickly up and out of the window. Guilty. “She came by the kitchen and Ren gave her some supper.” He was hiding something. A memory stirred in me: Ren’s frightened face, white in the darkness of a corridor, and then the old Chinese cook coming out to tell him something.
“I think Ren was searching for her in the house.”
A twitch. “Did he say anything to you? About why she was there?”
I shook my head. What he was concerned about? We were passing sprawling white colonial buildings now, beautifully set in manicured green lawns. The view from a car was very different from trudging along on foot. It was like a dream, the way the scenery slid by so smoothly, and I said as much to him. It was just small talk, but he seemed struck by it, and also eager to change the subject from Nandani.
“What sort of dreams do you have, Louise?” Acton gave off the same sticky sense of loneliness as some of the customers at the May Flower, the ones who stayed too long, paying for dance after dance. But now was my chance to find out if he really was the fifth one of us.
Yi had said we’d all gone a little wrong, perhaps in the way we’d failed to live up to our Virtues. My own choices—working at a dance hall, getting mixed up with a dead man’s finger, and telling lie after lie—could hardly be called wise, despite my supposed cleverness at school. I imagined the five of us making a pattern. A set that fit together naturally like the fingers on a hand. The further we strayed, the more the balance in our worlds distorted. Less human, more monstrous. Like the claw of a beast.
And what about the unknown fifth? The worst one of all, according to Yi. Of course, Li stood for order. Ritual. Doing things in their proper way, not shortcutting for selfish desires.
“Sometimes I dream about a river,” I said slowly. “There’s a train and a small boy who’s waiting for me.”
“That’s funny, I dream about a river, too.”
“Is it always the same? Mine is—night after night, like a dream that continues; a story that unfolds.”
“A story that unfolds.” He seemed struck by this. “What a poetic way of putting it.”
“What happens in your dream?” I was treading carefully here, feeling my way. I’d done this dozens of times at the May Flower. They said they wanted to dance but they really just wanted to talk about themselves.
“In my dream, I see someone standing in the river. She’s always there. And she always says the same thing.”
I shivered, recalling Yi’s red, impassioned face, his guilty confession of luring Ren over. “Does she ask you to come to her?”
“No. She’s very angry with me.” A ghost of a smile. “And that’s why,” he added under his breath, “I write letters instead.”
“Who is she?”
But the spell had broken. Acton laughed uneasily. “I must be boring you.”
“Not at all,” I said hastily. “It’s very interesting.”
He gave me a sharp look. “You don’t talk like most local girls.”
No, I talk like a dance hostess. But of course I didn’t say so. The whole point of spinning out conversations like this was to run up a tab. Or, in this case, find out more information.
A spark was burning in Acton’s eye now, a little flame that made me nervous. “You’re a very interesting girl, Louise. Seems like fate, doesn’t it, how we keep running into each other?”
We’d arrived at the hospital now and he’d parked the car, but he made no move to get out. Abruptly, I remembered Hui’s warning: don’t get into cars with men.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, tugging at the door. The handle was different from Robert’s car, and for an instant, it stuck. I had a panicky moment when Acton leaned across me, but he was only helping to open it. Or was he? His hand brushed my knee. There were no bouncers here, no Kiong with his watchful eye, and I felt a spasm of fear. If he pinned me down, I wouldn’t be able to get away. I yanked hard on the door and almost fell out.
“Are you all right?” he said. And then it was sunny again, a bright innocuous day, and I looked ridiculous, half falling out of the car. I told myself I must have imagined that sudden predatory feeling as I stared at his hands. Clever, surgeon’s hands. They would have a viselike grip.
“William?” It was a woman’s voice. The tall, fair lady from Saturday’s party. She was standing under the eaves of the hospital as though she was waiting to be picked up, and now came over, her quick steps shod in patent leather sandals. White ones, in a style I’d never seen locally. I struggled up, red-faced and smoothing down my dress, hoping she didn’t remember me from the party, but her sharp glance told me that she did.
Acton turned a blandly affable face to her. “Hello, Lydia. Didn’t know you were in today.”
Gone was the guilty distraction he’d betrayed earlier, and I realized it was because a local girl like me didn’t matter. Lydia, however, was different. She was one of his own.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, preparing to slip off. I nodded politely at Lydia—it didn’t seem right to ignore her although she was doing her best to pretend I didn’t exist—but Acton said, “Hold up. I’ll take you into the ward.”
It was no use protesting I could find my own way. He was too quick, explaining to Lydia, “She’s here to visit Ren. My houseboy, you know.”
“Is that so?” Her expression softened. “Poor boy. How is he?”
“Not well. He’s in an adult ward. Ran out of beds in the children’s ward.”
“Oh, that’s why I didn’t see him earlier when I went around with the lending library.” She turned stiffly to me. “Are you related to him?”
I nodded. It was too difficult to explain the fierce protectiveness I felt towards Ren.
“William, we must talk,” Lydia said in an undertone.
He glanced at his watch, suddenly busy. “Now’s not really a good time. I’m due on the wards.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’d like to visit your houseboy as well.”
I trailed after them as he shot me a conspiratorial look over her shoulder. Yi had said to be careful, that the fifth one was the worst of us all. What did Acton want from me?
34
Batu Gajah
Friday, June 26th