Tom shrugged, reluctant to give too many opinions about things he was not really qualified to pronounce upon.
‘He’s certainly died from having his neck squeezed by that noose. There’s that crate that presumably he stood on to tie the rope around that beam. Then he must have stepped off it!’
‘But his feet are still on the ground,’ objected the planter.
Tom had read many of the forensic textbooks, partly from a morbid interest and he had an answer to that.
‘No problem, the weight of the body leaning into the noose is enough. I’ve seen pictures of people who have hanged themselves from a door knob.’
‘Could anyone else have croaked him and made it look like a suicide?’ demanded the irrepressible Aussie.
Tom was getting out of his depth. ‘I’ve no idea, Les. But I’ve also read that murder by hanging is very rare, unless the victim is drunk, drugged or physically restrained.’
The police officer turned to the servant from next door. ‘Now, what’s the situation about Mrs Mackay? Where is she?’
‘Upstairs in her bedroom,’ cut in Arnold, once again. ‘I just had a quick look from the doorway. I didn’t go in, she was on the floor, obviously dead.’
They began hurrying up the steps to the verandah, Steven Blackwell still questioning the Tamil servant.
‘How did you learn about it, Siva?’
‘After Mister Mackay was found, they sent to next door for me, as their houseboy is very young chap. I told the amah to go wake his wife. She does not get up very early these days. I thought it better that a woman broke the news first. Then the girl came screaming down to tell me what she had found.’
They marched through the open doors from the verandah into the lounge and Nadin led the way into the back corridor, from which the bedrooms opened. At the second door, he stood back to allow the others to look inside. The bare room with its wooden walls and slowly rotating fan had two single beds each with high mosquito nets. The single sheet on the further bed was undisturbed and it had not been slept in, but the one nearer the door was crumpled and the net was thrown up on one side.
‘Where is she?’ demanded Steven Blackwell, always hesitant to barge into what might turn out to be a crime scene. Back in Manchester, he had dealt with several cases where a husband had hanged himself after killing his wife.
‘Between the beds, lying on the floor,’ supplied Les Arnold, more subdued now in the presence of a dead woman.
‘Tom, have a quick look first, will you,’ directed Blackwell. ‘I don’t want us all trampling over everything until we know what’s what.’
The pathologist trod delicately over to the foot of the nearest bed and peered into the space between them. Rosa Mackay was lying sprawled on the planked wooden floor, face up, arms and legs splayed out. She wore thin cotton pyjamas, the jacket stained with vomit, which was also smeared over the floor, as if she had been thrashing about. Her face was contorted and a pinkish froth was issuing from one corner of her mouth.
Tom went nearer and crouched alongside the body. As with her husband a few moments earlier, he touched the skin and tested the rigidity of both an arm and her jaw.
‘Still a bit of warmth there,’ he reported. ‘And she’s just starting to get stiff. I reckon she died quite a bit later than her husband, probably not more than a few hours ago.’
‘But died of what, Tom?’ asked the policeman, in a sepulchral voice.
‘I suppose poisoning is the most likely cause, given the circumstances. But I don’t know what poison!’
Les Arnold surprised them by giving them the answer.
‘Reckon I know what it was. Can’t you smell it?’
He gave some exaggerated sniffs as his eyes roamed around the room.
Tom bent nearer the body and followed his example.
‘Smells like paraffin — and the vomit’s a bit greenish.’
‘There you are, then! Got to be paraquat, ain’t it?’
Steven Blackwell cut back into the dialogue. ‘Paraquat? That’s that herbicide, isn’t it?’
The Australian nodded. ‘Yep, used by the gallon around the estates these days. A couple of years ago, one of my tappers, a young girl, topped herself with it after some broken love affair. That’s how I remember the smell, she sicked up this stinking stuff as well. The chemical is dissolved in kerosene for spraying.’
Blackwell was looking around the room and walked over to a chest of drawers on which was what appeared to be an empty Coca-Cola bottle. Without touching it, he looked closely at it and then cautiously sniffed the open top.
‘This smells strongly of paraffin. There’s still some oily green liquid in the bottom.’
His eyes strayed to the top of the piece of furniture and he gave an exclamation. ‘Hah! Is this a suicide note she’s left?
Picking up a single sheet of airmail paper by a corner, he quickly scanned the message. It was a suicide note, but not Rosa’s. Tom suppressed his natural curiosity, but Arnold had no such inhibitions.
‘What’s it say, Steve?’
The superintendent had humoured the planter so far, but now began to put on the brakes. ‘Look, Les. This is police investigation — might even turn out to be another murder. I have to play it by the book from now on, but I can tell you that this appears to be a suicide note written by Douglas Mackay. I can’t say more, I’m afraid.’
Rather surprisingly, Arnold accepted the mild rebuff.
‘Sure thing, Steve. I’ll leave you and the doc to it. I suppose you’ll want some sort of statement from me?’
Blackwell nodded. ‘I’ll send Inspector Tan up to Batu Merah to see you. Thanks for all your help.’
Just before he left the room, the rangy Australian took a last look at the body lying pathetically between the beds.
‘Poor Rosa, she was a nice woman,’ he said with rare compassion. ‘Reckon she couldn’t carry on when she heard that she’d lost Douglas. It’s a tough old world, mate!’
When he had vanished, Steven turned to Howden.
‘He doesn’t know the half of it, Tom! Mackay confesses in this letter to killing Jimmy Robertson — and shooting up the bungalows a few weeks back!’
The pathologist, still crouching alongside Rosa’s corpse, looked up in astonishment at the police officer. ‘That’s extraordinary, Steve! But as you said to Les — should you be telling me this?’
Blackwell turned up his palms in almost Gallic gesture.
‘You’re part of the team now, Tom, whether you like it or not. You’re our expert medical witness, though hopefully this will end at a coroner’s inquest, not the High Court.’
His ‘expert’ felt rather proud at being so valued, but a little overwhelmed at all that had happened to him professionally in the last week or two.
‘What are we going to do with the bodies?’ he asked. ‘Our colonel will go spare if we try to dump a couple more civilians in the BMH mortuary!’
Blackwell’s own grapevine had told him that moves were afoot to deal with the commandant of the hospital, but this was no time to stir up more aggravation there.
‘I’ll check with Alf Morris, but if there’s any hassle, I’ll get our police van to take them down to Ipoh General Hospital.’
Tom nodded and looked down again at the body of Rosa Mackay.
‘There’s nothing more I can do here. There needs to be either a post-mortem or at least an analysis of the vomit and blood for paraquat, just to confirm things. I’d better have a quick look at her back, just to make sure she hasn’t been shot or stabbed — it would be damned embarrassing to miss them!’
He pulled on one shoulder and the small body of the Eurasian lady lifted easily on its side so that he could see the back. There were no injuries there, but something else was immediately obvious.
‘Look at this! Another note, by the looks of it.’
He picked up a pale blue sheet of flimsy Basildon Bond notepaper, similar to the one that Blackwell held in his hand.
‘You’d better have this, Steven. It’s none of my business.’