“Some of what you smell comes from the drying sheds in the clearing behind those trees. Some of it comes from the bullock pens. And of course a lot of it is human. It helps keep the mosquitoes at a bearable level.”
Pine’s impression was one of unremitting squalor and he said so.
“Yes, it is bad. But it was much worse before Mrs. Colter. She did much while she was here. Once Mr. Van der Neer told me Mr. Colter returned some supplies — extra food and medicine, I think — that Mrs. Colter had ordered. He said Mr. Colter was trying to hold down expenses to show a good profit margin.”
Sembawa led the way upriver to a slight rise where the jungle had been cleared. There in a small fenced enclosure was a log cross. They stood a few moments in silence at Colter’s grave site.
They were walking back downriver toward the plantation manager’s cottage where they were to stay when Sembawa spoke again.
“Mrs. Colter gave me a rather large sum of money to be spent on screening, food, and medicine for the kampong before she returned to Holland. Over the past three years she has sent smaller sums, always with instructions not to reveal the source.”
Before they mounted the steps to the manager’s cottage Pine touched Sembawa’s arm.
“We are agreed that I am an investor?”
“An investor.” The response was soft, reflective in tone.
The manager, Keeling, was only as cordial as he had to be. He was short, thickset, and his hair was cropped close. He used little English. His Dutch was laden with low German derivatives. Pine was increasingly grateful for Sembawa’s presence since Keeling’s conversation was limited to an occasional grunt or belch between vast draughts of beer during supper. A bachelor, who arose before sunrise and lived only for the plantation work, he retired early after pointing out two cots on the screened porch.
Alex Pine sat on his cot and watched the most spectacular sunset he had ever seen.
During the following day it was not difficult to maintain the subterfuge of being a potential investor in Benskoten Rubber Company. Keeling ignored him. Pine was fascinated by his tour of the plantation, during which Sembawa pointed out a large stand of trees ruined by bark cancer — brown bast — from cutting too much and too deeply into the latex channel.
“That was done while Mr. Colter was in charge,” Sembawa said. “He was trying to increase production.”
They watched gangs of Chinese laborers clearing brush and trees for new plantings of hevea. Much of the planting was done among old growth with little more than token clearing by machete.
In the afternoon Pine asked to see the spot where Colter died.
“It was in one of the small cottages just north of the kampong. The native foremen live in them with their families.”
Kiri led the way. “Here,” he said, “this one. It’s empty. Usually one or two are unused. Since Mr. Colter died here, none of the foremen will use it.” He opened the door on the screened porch for Pine.
“Everything is quite the same as it was three years ago?”
“Exactly. Nothing has changed. You might think someone would have taken the gin bottle from the table, but people are afraid to come into the building.”
“Birds have nested here.” Pine pointed to the droppings on the floor and at the shreds of rusted screen around the porch. “Where was Colter’s body found?”
“Here.” Sembawa placed a hand on the back of a bamboo armchair, frightening a small rodent, which scurried from beneath the half-rotten and moldy cushion.
Pine nodded, then strolled slowly around the room, brushing away cobwebs, seeing as much with the tips of his sensitive fingers as with his eyes. He sniffed at the empty gin bottle without touching it, knowing as he did that the move was futile. His hands slid down the legs of the small round table. He looked at the underside of it, then gave the chair the same careful scrutiny. Always he was touching, touching. He seemed to have forgotten his companion.
On the third circuit of the perimeter of the room his fingers touched something just above head height at the juncture of the screen-door frame and the wall. He stopped. He blew away a dusty shred of cobweb. A shaft of the late-afternoon sun shone on his hand as the long sinewy fingers worked at the small protrusion. And then he held out his hand to Sembawa. In his palm lay a small object with a sharp point. “That lump on the end is a pith air stop. It’s a dart. Poisoned, I would guess,” he said.
He walked to the opposite side of the porch where he looked down to the ground, then turned and sighted along his outstretched arm.
Kiri Sembawa was impassive. The smile Pine expected to see on his face did not materialize.
“I did not think you would find anything. I looked several times, but I missed seeing it.” Sembawa walked over to the door and stood looking past the kampong, out over the river. He looked shriveled and shrunken, now less than shoulder height to the tall Englishman.
“You don’t seem pleased that I did.”
“I hoped you would not.” He turned. “Now I tell you something I prayed I would not have to tell you. I hoped you would go back to your man in London and say there is nothing, that his brother died like it was said — of a heart that failed from too much work, too much drink, too much heat, too much fever.” Sembawa paused, reluctant to continue.
“He died from being too much the kind of person he was,” Pine said. “That includes the things you said and a couple of others. It should surprise no one that a Batak he had beaten crept up to the cottage one dark night and popped him with a poisoned dart. There’s no lamp here but maybe the one on the table inside was lighted. That means the light would be dim here, accounting for him missing the first time on such short range.”
“I don’t think that happened.”
“Kiri, there’s no need to make trouble for any of your people here. Colter s dead. I know of no one who wished him back. Going out without an apparent mark on him from some kind of substance that stopped his heart seems better than he deserved.”
“I don’t think a Batak killed him, or a Sumatran, or a Javanese or Chinese. I think Mrs. Colter killed him.”
“Granted she had reason. I was half trying to find a way to determine if she slipped something into his drink. I think now there’s no need to pursue that line of thought.” Pine took his notebook from his pocket and inserted the dart between the leaves.
“Are you returning directly to London from here, to report to your Jason Colter?”
“No. I’m going to Holland first to see Mrs. Colter.”
“Then I must say what I must say and perhaps it will change your mind. But first I must apologize even as you did on the boat. I did not tell you everything. I saw Mrs. Colter just once, in a room in the same hotel where you are staying. Mr. Van der Neer sent me there to pick up the money I told you she gave me for supplies for the plantation. When she asked me into her suite I could see she had all her belongings in a corner of the room, ready to be taken to the ship for her return to Holland.” He seemed to lose his continuity of thought. After a while he said, “She was a lovely lady.”
“That’s all?” Pine said.
“Among her bags and boxes of things in the corner was a long tube. It was a blowgun.”
A lovely lady. Alex Pine agreed. In Mrs. Jason Colter’s living room he had seen a photograph of Kevin and Marie Colter. Marie’s was the bright-eyed, cream-skinned, blonde beauty of the Nordic. He remembered the firm stance of her figure, the hint of the kind of strength that will do what must be done, that endures.