The Singapore School of Villainy by Shamini Flint Page A

to come along although Quentin was certain that he was motivated more by curiosity than by sympathy. He couldn’t imagine that there was a fragment of genuine feeling in Reggie Peters for the deceased or his family.
    Maria Thompson was wearing unrelieved black, which contrasted dramatically with the paleness of her skin. She received their condolences with a hint of disbelief, a shrug of her shoulders conveying her thoughts more accurately than her formal words of acceptance. The uniformed maid brought them tea and they sipped it in the lounge, struggling to make any sort of small talk. Quentin wondered, wiping his streaming nose with a serviette, why the Thompsons felt the need to dress their help like an extra in a period television drama. Had Maria been trying to distinguish herself from her previous role? Or had she too worn a frilly apron and served tea with quiet decorum while the previous Mrs Thompson presided over the table? He cast a sidelong glance at Annie, his closest friend in the office, to see if she had noticed the incongruity. She was staring at the widow with a wooden expression.
    Maria Thompson was willing for Stephen to organise the funeral, once the coroner released the body, as long as it was held in Singapore. However, she was adamant that “the murderer” not be present.
    â€˜She’s not the murderer, she’s the mother of his children, for God’s sake,’ said Stephen, his patience tried to breaking point. His personal friendship with Sarah Thompson was making the widow’s intransigence even harder to deal with.
    â€˜She will try to kill me too, I know it. I have asked the police to watch her,’ was the uncompromising response.
    â€˜We can hardly expect her to be grateful for our sympathy or advice. She knows how shocked everyone was at the marriage,’ pointed out Jagdesh when they had escaped the premises as soon as was decent and were standing outside, squinting in the bright sunshine on Tanglin Road.
    Annie slipped the sunglasses perched on her head onto her nose, waving away a curious butterfly with satiny black and green wings. ‘None of us were very supportive when she married Mark.’
    â€˜What did she expect?’ snapped Ai Leen. ‘That we welcome a gold-digging slut with open arms?’ Her question was aggressive in both content and tone. Her hands were on her hips, her head thrust forward angrily on a slender neck. The designer emblem on her outsized sunglasses caught the light and twinkled like a miniature star.
    â€˜I’ll bet she killed Mark,’ commented Reggie. ‘That woman would stop at nothing.’
    As usual, thought Quentin, Reggie had to have the last word. He had to admit, though, that the putty-faced, overweight banking partner had a point – pinning the murder on the widow would be the best solution for all the lawyers.
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    Corporal Fong was an interesting shade of pale green. Perhaps, thought Singh, he should have warned the young man that the first thing on the agenda after lunch was the post-mortem at the Singapore General Hospital. On the other hand, this was probably the most effective introduction to a murder investigation for a corporal who was still wet behind the ears. After all, it was his opportunity to meet the victim.
    The unfortunate victim, Mark Thompson, lay naked on a steel table. There was a Y-shaped incision across his chest running down towards his abdomen. The initial external investigation had not revealed much except for the wound at the back of his head which the pathologist, Dr Maniam, had looked at with some awe and growled that he would leave for last.
    Singh looked at the pale white body of the senior partner. He seemed almost bloodless, the flesh flaccid and fatty. There was a sprinkling of grey hair on his chest and nether regions. The pathologist, with the help of his assistant, pulled back the skin, muscle and soft tissues and cut through each side of the rib cage with