Nury Vittachi - The Feng Shui Detective

‘I do,’ said the Superintendent. ‘But I have never enjoyed it. My father was a colonel. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that anyone with the title Colonel could be a murderer.’

Joyce was excited. ‘I know, Wu or von Berger could have hidden the lead pipe in their chef’s hats!’

‘A cute idea, Miss, if we can label any possible technique by a killer as cute. But I repeat. No, it couldn’t have been a small lead pipe. Leuttenberg was hit with an object so heavy that it crushed part of his skull, and then his head hit the floor with such a crash, such an impact, that his skull was crushed on the other side as well. It was almost as if a large microwave oven had been dropped on his head from a height. You see, is it?’

‘Right. Well, that must have been what it was,’ said the young woman.

‘No. We checked all the microwaves and things like that in that kitchen. You would be able to tell if one had been dropped on someone’s head all right. There were two portable ovens, and they were not broken or anything. They had not been moved recently.’

Madam Xu, who was shuffling some fortune-telling cards, asked: ‘Did you believe young Mr Wu? He says he left the chief cook alive?’

‘I think I do. I can find no motive for him to murder his boss-especially since he was the last person to see him in that kitchen before the body was found. It would have been pretty stupid, not that that has stopped other murderers from committing other such crimes.’

Madam Xu looked into her cup. ‘My calculations and my cards and my tea leaves and my brain tell me the same thing: Mr Pascal. If you believe Mr Wu is telling the truth, it seems to me that the case would look quite bad for Mr Pascal.’

‘Pascal von Berger, the sous chef. Yes. The man who found the dead body. The flirtatious one. “Afternoon sweetie.” Exactly what it seemed to us when we discussed the case in the station. Von Berger must have gone in, bashed the man, and then run out, pretending that he had found him dead.’

‘Surely you have a precise time of death?’ asked Sinha. ‘Does your forensic pathologist not give you some aid on this count?’

The Superintendent grimaced to find his tea had gone cold, and waved at the waiter to bring a fresh pot. ‘She did, she did. It is an impressive science, but it cannot tell the time of death to the minute. There are so many complicating factors, such as the condition of the man and the warmth of the room. A kitchen, you know, is very hot. Kitchens are traditionally not air-conditioned. She reckons he had died maybe twenty minutes or half an hour before she saw him, you see.’

‘Which means?’

‘Our pathologist saw him about thirteen minutes after the first call to police. That ties up with the other evidence, because it means he died sometime between when the other kitchen staff left the kitchen and when the waitress Chen Soo saw him dead. This we knew. So the pathologist did not add too much to our basic store of knowledge there.’

Wong was looking at the floor plans. ‘Excuse me, Superintendent Tan, I find the design of the kitchen very relevant to this case.’

‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ said Tan. ‘Being a feng shui man.’

The geomancer pointed to a plan of the kitchen. ‘This is interesting. The kitchen is east of the centre of the building. This is where it should be. It is extremely well-designed in feng shui terms. It is perfect, even. Kitchens are rather troublesome from a feng shui point of view. They are full of significant elements: water taps, water pipes, windows, metal objects, knives. And of course, the stove fire. All important things. East is best, in my opinion, because it supports water. Now the door of the kitchen is here. In the south part of the room. The fridges and freezers are far away. In the northwest of the room, over here. The ovens are on the opposite side, the northeast part. The man was found here. Near the fridges.’

‘You have got your thing upside down. North goes on top,’ said Joyce.

‘No! South goes on top,’ snapped Wong. ‘Always. They teach you nothing in school these days. Nothing.’

Tan said: ‘Yes, the corpse was there, on the floor. When von Berger first went in, he couldn’t see the body because it was on the floor, and all these things-these work tables and benches and what-nots-were in the way.’

Wong pencilled compass points-with south on top-onto the floor plan. ‘Water ch’i does not mix well with the ch’i of the northeast, which is the energy of the soil. It is a combination which creates instability. Thus it is not surprising that he died there.’

Madam Xu clucked impatiently. ‘It is nice that the murderer chose the right part of the kitchen to do his murdering in, but does this tell us who the murderer is, C F?’

‘No. Not at all.’

Sinha laughed. ‘The implication is that the murderer was you, C F, because only you would know the precise spot to do the dastardly deed in. Ha!’

‘It was not me,’ said Wong. ‘I was in my office at that time.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ said Tan.

‘Let us find more profitable avenues of investigation,’ said Sinha. The Indian placed his fingertips together and balanced his chin on them. ‘Superintendent. When did all this happen, may I ask? The day before yesterday, was it?’

‘Correct.’

‘Two days ago. You have a narrow circle of suspects. Surely given enough interrogation-even using your gentle, law-abiding methods, which do not include hitting them with lathis, as would be done in India-one or other will soon break down and reveal all?’

The police officer looked disappointed. ‘That’s what we thought. We have talked to the last three people to see the victim and drawn blanks. We talked to Wu, we talked to von Berger, we talked to Chen, until we were blue in the face. They all stick rigidly to their stories and insist they are innocent. We haven’t been able to find enough of a hole to slide a cigarette paper in, even. The male waiters who left earlier also have cast-iron stories. We are stuck. I need you to move us forwards, can or not?’

This was a plea. It called for some serious mystical thinking. For two minutes, no one spoke. Madam Xu looked carefully at her cards and scribbled calculations, and Sinha flicked through an almanac of astrological charts for the year. Wong continued scratching out lo shu diagrams for the main players in the mystery.

Madam Xu broke the silence. ‘It is a tricky problem.’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Sinha. ‘You have a body in a kitchen, but no murder weapon, no murderer and no exit or hiding place. It doesn’t hang together very well at all.’

The Superintendent sighed. ‘It is a curious one. We thought that you guys, with your, ah, unusual methods of investigation, might be able to reveal facts that are not uncovered by normal police procedure.’

‘Well, now, I have a question for you,’ said the old Indian astrologer. ‘How did von Berger know it was a murder? He shouted out “murder”, but at that time, all he saw was a body. It could have been an accident. Leuttenberg may have just fallen over or something, for all he knew at that time.’

The Superintendent lifted his bowl of rice and vigorously shovelled rice into his mouth. ‘What do the rest of you think about that?’ he asked with his mouth full.

Madam Xu said: ‘That seems to be an interesting little unresolved oddity in this case. Tell us that bit again.’

‘Of course,’ said Tan. ‘Chen, the waitress, insists she heard von Berger-who else could it have been?-in the kitchen, shouting “murder”. But von Berger says he just gasped with horror but has no recollection of saying that word.’

Sinha said: ‘I have it. Perhaps it was Leuttenberg-perhaps it was the chef’s last word before von Berger threw the microwave or whatever at him and then picked it up and washed the blood and tissue fibres off it before running out to get Chen to call the security guards?’