Looking after the Wife

If you've spent your life on a colonial police force as I have, then one obviously sees many gruesome sights during the course of their career. But when I was requested to give an after-dinner speech at a Masonic lodge gathering and relate one of my blood-curdling tales for them, this is the one that sprang to mind.

Of course, I might have related the break-in at the Kota Tinga Plantation, where two Malay felons cut off Sarah Donnington's fingers one by one until her husband succumbed to their demands and opened the office safe for them.
In the relentless hunt to secure their arrests, three police officers were wounded in a pitched gun battle in Malacca, which ended with both the criminals shot dead by our marksmen.

The goriest tale I could have told them would be Mr. Porter's suicide in Kuala Lumpur. After being caught with his proverbial ‘pants down’ in an ‘in flagrante delicto’ situation with his Malay office secretary and fired from his job, to avoid riding out any ensuing scandal he’d decided to end it all in the bathroom with the aid of an open razor.
Being a considerate family man for all of his previous life, he undressed and hung his clothes neatly. Then he stood naked in the bath, to avoid undue mess, and dragged the steel blade across the entire breadth og his throat: severing both jugular and carotid.
The actual surprise and shock of unexpected pain, coupled with the sight of such a copious flow of blood, had obviously terrified him.

He had thrashed about and screamed - a gurgling scream I believe, as his life's fluid pumped from his body. His poor wife and two daughters rushed upstairs and were shocked witnesses to the horrible end of their breadwinner's mortal days. By the time the ambulance and ourselves reached the scene, he was dead, with blood covering the bathroom walls, ceiling and floor.

Major Prichard was knocked off his Vincent motor-cycle by a drunken car driver, on the Batu Pahat Road, and then crushed under an eight-wheeled lorry travelling in the opposite direction. It dragged his cadaver quite a distance before it was eventually stopped. I was present when the coroner's young Chinese assistant performed the unenviable task of collecting together pieces of dismembered corpse from around the drive shafts, wheel wells, and upper chassis.

Yes, plenty of chilling tales to choose from, and certain to send the required shivers up the spines of my fellow Masons at the dinner party.

Though the story I did related was indeed a sad tale. If a crime were committed, then it was through the madness that can come when love is taken away after so many devoted years. But chilling they wanted, to satisfy their curious senses of the morbid: and chilling they got: the Sarrandon Case.

At that time I was attached to the C.I.D. at Singapore H.Q. as a detective sergeant. The station duty officer summoned me to the front desk to hear a certain Mrs. Wainwright repeat her intriguing tale. She and her husband, a retired rubber exporter, lived out at Changi Point. Their neighbours, the Sarrandons, had bought the house next door two years previously, when they too had retired from their labours, of managing a rubber plantation at Alor Star, in Malaya.

Apparently Mrs. Wainwright and Mrs. Sarrandon had grown quite friendly during the time they had lived next to each other: due their mutual interest of gardening. They would chat across the boundary fence several times a week, and on odd occasions took afternoon tea together; sitting on the lawn of one or the other's shady garden.

'I haven't seen her for two weeks now,' she related to me. 'Winifred would be out in her flower beds every morning without fail. I think her husband has done away with her, I really do.'

My eyebrows raised slightly at her concluding statement, and I asked her to step into the C.I.D. office where she could give me a full explanation for the basis of her supposition. As she seated herself in front of my desk, I readied pen and paper to record her testimony in case it warranted later consultation with my superiors.

'Well Mrs. Wainwright,' I said bluntly,' perhaps you can give me some sound reason why you suspect Mrs. Sarrandon's husband of murdering her?'

She seemed as though about to pour her suspicions forth, then closed her mouth, paused, thought a moment then began in earnest.

'Because I asked him yesterday afternoon if Winifred had gone up to KL to visit friends. He told me she was still confined to bed with a touch of malaria. Whenever Winifred comes down with her recurring malaria, she's always up and around the following day. Never in bed for two weeks.'

'Mrs. Wainwright,' I began patiently, 'I think we are getting a little ahead of ourselves here. Was Mrs. Sarrandon suffering from a bout of malaria the last time you saw her - two weeks ago?'

'Oh yes!' she exclaimed. 'Winifred was getting chills while we were gardening on the Tuesday morning, and said she was taking herself off to bed for the rest of the day. But she's always up and around, her usual happy self, the next morning.'

I referred to my desk calendar and asked, 'That would be Tuesday the seventh, I take it?' I marked the fact down on my pad as she confirmed I was correct.

'Does she often have recurring attacks of malaria?' I further inquired.

'Every few weeks,' she replied. 'Picked the beastly thing up in Malaya when they had the plantation at Alor Star. But she has an iron constitution, and it never keeps her down for long. Even Doctor Bentley only came out once.'

'When did the doctor come to see her?' I probed, extracting the story in slow form: thread by fragmented thread.

'That would be on the Wednesday morning. I noticed his car pull into their driveway just before lunch. He only stayed a few minutes.'

'And you haven't seen the doctor at the house since?'

'No, I'm certain he's not been back,' she replied. 'Honestly, you mustn't think I spy on my neighbours. But I am in the gardens most of the day, and read on the terrace in the evenings; so their house is in full view, you see.'

'No, Mrs. Wainwright,' I comforted, 'I don't think you're spying on your neighbours. Is Doctor Bentley a local doctor?'

'Yes, he has a surgery in Changi Village. Frank Bentley has been a friend of ours for many years. He and my husband Tom play golf together regularly. In their younger days, they used to play cricket for the International Club team on the padang every Sunday afternoon. He's ex-Indian army.'

I noted only the relevant fact that the doctor was located in Changi Village, and by the time I looked up from my notes she had completed her verbal wandering.
'And you suspect Mr. Sarrandon has committed some mischief to his wife as he informed you she is still confined to bed with malaria, and the good doctor hasn't been re-summoned to attend her?'

'Well, it's more than that really,' she began. 'My amah and Winifred's amah are good friends, you see. Last week, Hunny, my amah, told me that Harry Sarrandon had paid Yan, their Amah, a month's salary in lieu of notice, and let her go. He told her she wasn't needed any more as he would be looking after the house and Winifred from then on.'

She paused to look at me from across the desk, and I gestured politely that she should continue.

'He's been doing the laundry himself since their amah left: hanging it out to dry in the garden. But there aren't any of Winifred's things, nor any bed sheets either. If Winifred is still confined to bed with malaria, then her fevers would soak her clothing and bedding. She would need to be changed, and the bedding too, every couple of hours.'

I looked at her directly, and pursed my lips. That, I thought inwardly, is a very astute piece of observation and deduction, Mrs. Wainwright.

'Is your husband friendly with Mr. Sarrandon?' I asked. 'Do they play golf together also?'

'Gracious no,' she answered, seeming quite perplexed that I would ask such a question. 'Harry Sarrandon is a very quiet and shy man. Virtually a recluse really. He and my Tom rarely see each other to speak. What he was like when he managed the plantation at Alor Star I really am at a loss to imagine. Not the outgoing type of man one normally finds as a plantation manager. Winifred once told me over afternoon tea that her Harry's sole purpose in life since he retired was to look after her creature comforts.'

'He doesn't sound too much like a chap who would murder his wife, does he? Did they ever have violent arguments that you happened to overhear?'

'I don't think I ever heard a cross word between them, to be perfectly honest. He was always very attentive when he brought tea out to the lawn for her in the afternoon. They used to sit and play backgammon on their patio in the evenings - always very harmonious and serene really.'

'And you have nothing further to add, to strengthen your view that he's murdered her? No rolled-up carpets or steamer trunks being spirited away from the house in the dead of night? No freshly dug flower beds to arouse suspicions?' I concluded.
A slight smile came over her face at my lessening of the morbid atmosphere hanging over our conversation.

'No,' she replied, 'nothing quite so blatant and obvious as what you suggest. But deep within my heart I do feel that all is not well in that house. Something has happened to Winifred, of that I'm certain. You will make some enquiries about her well-being, won't you?'

'Mrs. Wainwright, I can assure you that this department will follow up on our conversation. I'll be in touch with you once some light is shed on the matter.'

I thanked her for her concern, and coming forward with the information, as I escorted her past the front desk. As she walked out of the headquarters building into the strong sunlight bathing Tanglin Road, I considered my options regarding Mrs. Winifred Sarrandon and the state of her welfare.

Checking out with the duty desk, I rescued my detective-constable from his filing duties, and we drove slowly through the lunch-time traffic, along the east Coast Road, through Bedok and out to Changi Village.
Doctor Frank Bentley was easily located there, and his wife ushered us into his study, where he was engaged in cataloguing stamps, hunched over a desk.

My DC and I stood in silence for a few moments. I looked slowly around the room, at the teak lined walls. His various doctorate honours were evenly bestowed on the wall behind his desk: yellowing behind their protective glassed frames.

Underfoot, a Kashmir carpet: beautifully patterned and coloured. Indian brass ornaments adorned the shelves of one wall, while the remaining two were covered by fitted bookcases. I gazed at their contents. Copies of the Lancet, the works of Kipling; from Jane Austen to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, from the world atlas to Joseph Conrad. A man's room: his domain. Rarely ventured into by the female of the species, unless to carry out some light dusting in the occupant's absence.

'My hobby, philately,' he explained, acknowledging our presence. 'Catching up on my albums before afternoon surgery starts. You're not from the Changi station, are you?'
'No sir,' I replied, offering my warrant card. 'We're attached to CID at Tanglin Road Headquarters. I'm Detective-Sergeant Fuller, and this is Detective-Constable Hong.' He waved my warrant card away, and bade us both to sit down as though he thought we made his study untidy with our vertical postures.

'So, what heinous crime summons you away from Tanglin Road that I can help you with?' he inquired.

'We're conducting enquiries into the health and whereabouts of Mrs. Winifred Sarrandon, of six, Nicoll Drive, Changi Point. I believe you are her regular doctor?' I replied.

'Winifred? Yes, I'm her doctor,' he answered. 'What do you mean: whereabouts?'
'A Mrs. Vivian Wainwright, her next door neighbour, thinks she might have disappeared, and Mr. Sarrandon is concealing her true whereabouts.'

'Bloody Vivian!' he exclaimed. 'What the hell has she gone and said something as stupid as that for? What's she been telling you, Sergeant?'

'I gather you know the Wainwrights well?' I continued, purposely ignoring his question.

'Well?' he stated loudly. 'Known them for years. I remember Tom meeting her at the Lido. She was nursing at Mount Elizabeth in those days. Remember them marrying, and I delivered Joyce, the eldest daughter. I should say I know them.'

'What about the Sarrandons, how well do you know them?'

'Harry and Winifred managed a rubber plantation in Malaya for years. Came and settled here when they retired: about two years ago now. Bought the house that Simon Cheng built on Nicoll Drive. His daughter wanted to sell it when he died. She lives out in Holland Village with her own family,' he related.

'Now,' I asked, 'Mr. Sarrandon, is he a quiet man? Not given to violent outbursts? Not a raging alcoholic in the private confines of his home? Not an opium fiend?'

'Harry?' He stated at me incredulously. 'Did Vivian tell you that?'

'No, Mrs. Wainwright said nothing of the sort. It's just my mind trying to cover all the possibilities for a change in Mr. Sarrandon's normal placid attitude towards his wife,' I explained.

'Harry Sarrandon couldn't hurt a fly if Hell fetched him. He definitely wouldn't lift a finger to Winifred. Devoted to her, he is; a doting husband. Why, every time she has an attack of malaria he only leaves her bedside to get her water and soup. Bathes her forehead continually, changes her soaked bedding. No, Harry Sarrandon would never harm his wife. And an opium fiend? Good God, you've obviously never met him, sergeant,' he concluded, shaking his head.

'I believe she had an attack of malaria around two weeks ago, and you were summoned to attend her. On the eighth of May?' I enquired, referring to my notebook.

'Yes, the eighth would be about correct,' he replied. 'Do you want me to check my diary for accuracy's sake?'

'If it's not too much trouble, please.'

He rose from his desk and left the room. I turned to face my junior, who was all ears to the enquiry.

'What do you think Peter?' I asked him.

'Perhaps the Mem's convalescing for a while,' he speculated.

'Doubtful, the husband says she's still in bed with fever,' I informed him. 'That's what he told Mrs. Wainwright, the next door neighbour, just yesterday.'

'Then he's only just murdered her and thrown the body into the sea off the Point.' was his following, and hopefully jocular, reply.

'Far too much Agatha Christie in your head, Peter, my lad; and not enough Conan Doyle. Come Independence and you'll have to be solving these crimes on your own,' I reproached him in an amicable tone. 'No more British sleuths to guide the way to the felon's den.'

'Come Independence and we won't have any more crime,' he bantered. 'We shall terrify would-be criminal elements with threats of our Chinese Twelve Hells.'

I was about to reply with my ready sarcasm when Doctor Bentley reappeared with his open diary in his hands.

'Yes Sergeant,' he spoke, sitting behind his desk again, 'it was the eighth. Eleven-thirty in the morning. Mrs. Sarrandon had a fever of one hundred and four degrees, a very severe attack of malaria. She had taken her usual medication at the attack's onset, and her husband had been administering the correct dosage while she was in her fevered delirium. I've attended her several times for the same complaint since they moved to Changi Point. Winifred has the constitution of a water buffalo and her previous attacks never put her down for more than a day or two.'

'Mrs. Wainwright says that Mr. Sarrandon informed her yesterday that his wife is still confined to bed with fever,' I commented.

He sat upright in his chair, and rubbed his left ear lobe between his fingers: pondering my statement.

'Bloody strange,' he answered. 'When I saw her on the morning in question, there was no indication her fever would last out the day. It never had before. I told Harry to call me the following morning if she was no better: he knows the rules for the course. Rang me the next morning, I recall. Said Winifred was fine, and no need to bother myself coming out there.'

'Yet he tells Mrs. Wainwright yesterday that she's still confined to bed with fever,' I prompted.

'She may have come down with another attack, that's possible,' he replied. 'But Harry would surely have called me if there were any problems.'

'May I ask something, please?' Peter spoke from the seat to my left.

'Yes constable, please feel free,' answered Doctor Bentley, shifting his attention from my eyes.

'I have seen many people suffer from malaria here, some to die quite young. Others have recurrent attacks over a period of many years, and can live to old age. Yet I have always noticed a slow, debilitating process on the body. The person afflicted grows weaker after each attack. Is this not the case, Doctor?'

'Oh yes,' Doctor Bentley agreed. 'Even if the sufferer does have a constitution as strong as Winifred Sarrandons', then the long-term effect will be sure to have debilitating consequences. I've seen many people die in India during malarial fevers. The internal orgas give out – the liver heart especially so.”

'Do you think, in your own mind, that Mrs. Sarrandon might have died of heart failure while in her fever?' I asked.

'I doubt it very much, sergeant,' he replied. 'Winifred isn't all that old, nor is she physically debilitated.'

'Doctor Bentley,' I began. 'On the premise that Mrs. Sarrandon is still suffering from a bout of malaria, as her husband informed Mrs. Wainwright, I would like you to accompany us to their home, and examine her. I wish to ascertain if she is indeed still confined to bed with malaria, or has died of heart failure and her husband is concealing the fact: for whatever reason.'

'Well, I don't really know, sergeant,' he dithered, his natural confidence seeming to wane. 'I haven't been summoned by her husband to attend her, you see.'

'I feel it would be better, for all concerned, if you were to accompany us. After all, you are her regular doctor, and known to Mr. Sarrandon. If you consider yourself unable to do so, then I must summon a police doctor to carry out this duty. Thus, I would prefer your presence, as a friend of the family, and her last attending physician,' I stated quite bluntly for him.

'Yes, well . . . .,' he answered. 'If someone has to go with you, then I suppose it should be me.'

He informed his wife that she should postpone his afternoon surgery for an hour, and we drove together from Changi Village out to the nearby Point.

'That is the house, the next on the right,' he indicated as we drove down Nicoll Drive.
A very secluded area, overlooking the sea to our left. The dwellings were a mixture of bungalows and two-story houses, all spacious, and set in huge gardens. I noticed Mrs. Wainwright busily tending her flower beds as we alighted from the car. She waved to me from behind her delphiniums: all a beautiful pastel blue in the early afternoon sunshine. I acknowledged her wave with a slight inclination of my head.

The weeds were gaining a swift hold in the Sarrandon flower beds and splendid lawns. A sure sign their usual nemesis had not been in daily attendance for some time.
Peter rang the door bell, and moved back to one side, allowing Doctor Bentley room to make the formal introductions. The door bolts slid back, and it swung inward to reveal a slightly framed man in his late fifties. A pallor had set under his once-hardened sun tan, and the sides of his mouth spread with crow's feet as he smiled.

'Hello Doctor, come to see Winifred, have you? Come on in. Who are these two chaps? Haven't met them before, have I?' Harry Sarrandon asked in a quiet, even voice.

'Hello Harry,' Doctor Bentley replied. 'Yes, I was in the neighbourhood, and thought I'd drop in to see how Winifred is progressing. These gentlemen are from the police, Harry. They're a bit worried about Winifred too.'

'Well, why don't you all come in?' Harry Sarrandon spoke, moving to one side of the doorway to allow us access. We proceeded into the hallway, and Peter closed the door behind us. Doctor Bentley seemed to twitch his nose, then looked puzzled. I too caught the odour of morbidity that prompted his twitching.

'Go up and see her if you like, Doctor,' he pronounced, quite unperturbed by our presence. 'She's sleeping at the moment, but her fever's gone now. In fact, she's been rather cold since it broke, so I'm just getting her some more hot water bottles ready. She still won't take any soup, pretends not to hear me talking to her. But she'll be fine in a day or so. She always is when I'm looking after her.'

He shuffled off down the hallway towards the kitchen, an empty rubber hot water bottle under his arm, and the squeal of a singing kettle's whistle summoning his attentions.
Doctor Bentley began to lead the way up the parquet laid stairs, myself following.

Peter too began trailing my footsteps, until I gestured with my eyes for him to keep a watch on Mr. Sarrandon, in the kitchen.

As we reached the bedroom landing, the odour grew worse, and hit us like a blanket of invisible fog as the doctor swung open the door to Winifred Sarrandon's bedroom. We both gasped, almost gagged, and quickly covered our mouths and noses with handkerchiefs.

Doctor Bentley, fully in his professional calibre once more, dropped his examination bag onto the landing floor, and strode into the room, myself at his heels. He pulled the blankets and sheets from the brass-framed bed, revealing the pale, swollen corpse of the late Winifred Sarrandon. Her body was in the advancing stages of decomposition. The eyes wide and opaque, their once-fluid filled orbs shrivelled and black. Her lips were tautly stretched apart, revealing her teeth in a ghoulish, rictus smile. The knees were bent apart at ninety degrees, and the legs spread wide.

The bedding was stained with excretia, forced out of her body by the expanding gases in her stomach and colon. Surrounding her torso were two layers of rubber hot water bottles: whose regular replacement over the past two weeks had accelerated the process of decomposition. A swarm of hovering, black flies hung against the outside surface of the window panes - as if instinct told them a carrion feast lay there: just beyond their ravenous grasp.

The body jerked slightly, as the abdominal gases found fresh space for their expansion. I looked closely at her mouth, intrigued by the white powder I noticed inside her lips. Then my eyes glimpsed the white tablets in their bottle, stood on the bedside cabinet: adjacent to the water decanter. I picked up the bottle and studied the label. Quinine. Her husband had still been trying to give her medication, even after her life's force had slipped away.

Doctor Bentley pulled one soiled sheet back over her horrible, distended cadaver: covering the head too. We left the room, closing the door tightly, and made our way downstairs again. Harry Sarrandon stood at the bottom, three freshly-filled hot water bottles in his arms. Peter held a gentle, yet restraining hand, on his shoulder. He had noticed the handkerchiefs held over our faces as we descended the stairs.

'Is she still sleeping, Doctor?' he asked Frank Bentley. 'I'm sorry if Winifred smells a bit, but I can't give her a bath while she's so cold. She might get pneumonia, you know. But she'll be fine in a few days. She always is when I'm looking after her. That's all I do since we retired: look after the wife.'