Dead in the Dog

‘If they hadn’t left those notes, I wouldn’t have known what the hell happened, either! I’d better not show them to you, but the gist of Douglas’s letter was that he claimed to have killed James Robertson for seducing his wife, having first shot up the bungalows to lay a smokescreen for his murder plan, by suggesting that both were the work of terrorists.’

Tom Howden had already heard the content of the notes, so it was only Alf who was still in the dark.

‘You said “claimed”,’ pointed out Morris. ‘Does that mean he didn’t do it?’

‘Douglas certainly fired all those rounds at the two bungalows a few weeks ago. He says he also intended killing Jimmy later, but decided he couldn’t go through with it. I suspect his strong religious conscience got the better of him.’

‘But you said his suicide note indicated that he had shot Robertson,’ objected the Admin Officer.

‘He was lying, for reasons that became clear later. Most of his note was an explanation of how he had hated Jimmy for years, after he discovered that he had been having it away with Rosa for so long. He put none of the blame on her, by the way. He claimed that the lascivious Jimmy made all the running.’

‘What about the attack on the bungalows? How did he manage that? I understood that the bullets didn’t come from any of the rifles up at Gunong Besar – nor were they the same as the one that killed Robertson.’

Blackwell again wiped the sweat from his face. It was time he went back home to Britain, he thought suddenly. Even after years in the Far East, he seemed to suffer even more from the climate as time went by. He jerked his attention back to Alf’s question.

‘Mackay said he had a couple of extra rifles hidden away, in addition to the weapons that he and Jimmy gave us for test firing. When he came up from Johore some years ago, he brought them with him. There was a lot of CT trouble down there then, and guns were easy to come by, especially by planters intent on defending themselves.’

Tom Howden threw in another question. ‘I wonder how he managed to arrange that mock attack on his own?’

The superintendent shrugged. ‘I assume he waited until Rosa was asleep in bed, unless she was aware of what he was up to. Then he went out, ran around firing almost at random, until James appeared, then pretended to join him in hunting for the non-existent attackers.’

Alf Morris frowned at a few of the words he had just heard.

‘Are you suggesting that Rosa might have known what her husband was up to?’

Steven tapped his tunic pocket where he had the two notes from the estate bungalow. ‘Her note doesn’t say so, but I suspect she knew. It was her note that upset everything that was in the one left by her husband. He must have written his the previous night, after he had decided to hang himself. Rosa then found it in the bedroom long before the amah came to wake her up – and then wrote her own note.’

Alf shook his head slowly in disbelief that such things could be going on in Tanah Timah.

‘So you reckon she then decided to commit suicide? And it wasn’t just because she’d lost her husband?’

Blackwell shook his head sadly. ‘No, it was guilt and remorse for murdering James Robertson. She makes no bones about it in her letter, she says that Douglas had been acting very strangely lately and when she tackled him about it, he told her that he had intended to kill Jimmy, but couldn’t go through with it.’

‘So she knew that her husband was aware that she’d been unfaithful to him with his boss?’ put in Tom.

‘Sure, she went on about her sins and that although James had pestered her for a long time, it was her fault that she gave in to him. When Douglas confessed that he couldn’t go through with it, she decided to finish the job herself. She knew all about Douglas’s hidden pair of rifles and took one when he was asleep. That night, she went down the road and flagged down Jimmy when he was coming home from The Dog. He stopped on the road and she shot him when he got out. Then she drove the car back to the club and hurried home on foot.’

‘Didn’t her husband know?’ asked Alf, incredulously.

‘Not then, she says – but later she broke down and told him what had happened. They agreed to sit tight, but she says that Douglas became more and more guilt-ridden and afraid that my investigation would eventually narrow down to Rosa. To save her, he wrote that false confession in his note, then hanged himself.’

Tom’s brow was furrowed with doubt. ‘But if she had continued to sit tight, it would be assumed that Douglas’s confession was true and the matter would have been cleared up?’

Steven shrugged. ‘But she didn’t! She says that she herself had been considering suicide for some time, which was why she had taken a bottle full of paraquat from the stock in the estate sheds. When she read Douglas’s note, taking the blame for her murderous action, she wrote her own letter, then drank the stuff, poor woman!’

The three men sat silently for a while, each thinking what mayhem had been caused by a randy planter.