The Mimosa Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

Author:Ovidia Yu [Yu, Ovidia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective - Singapore
ISBN: 9781472132017
Google: rxWqDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2020-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

One Dead Soldier

This time, on leaving, I was allowed to walk back to Chen Mansion on my own. Hideki Tagawa stayed at the Mirza house. The last I saw, he was examining the books I had re-shelved. I wished I’d thought of spelling out some kind of message with the first letters of authors’ names or different-coloured spines.

I meant to shut myself up in Ah Ma’s bedroom and go through the stone codes papers. Anyone can devise difficult, ‘unbreakable’ codes. The problem is creating codes simple enough to be understood by the intended recipients with access to a shared key. If there was one, it would have to be something both parties had access to – like the Bible, for example. Or a copy of a newspaper on a certain day. But given that the only English-language paper available was the Syonan-To, and it was unlikely that prisoners or rebels could get hold of copies, that was unlikely.

When I reached Chen Mansion, it immediately became clear that I wasn’t going to get any time to myself. Formosa Boy was waiting on the front drive looking highly upset.

‘Please. Tell your relatives to let me go inside the house. I need to stay near to your Guan Yin statue so that it can protect me from the Buddha statue!’

The Guan Yin figure stood just inside the front door. Frightened faces of people camping in the front room were staring unwelcomingly at him.

The Guan Yin figure might already have saved my family once.

When the first batch of soldiers came round to inspect the neighbourhood after the Fall of Singapore, their Japanese captain had stopped on seeing it. He and his men bowed and paid their respects to ‘Kannon’. And they had left our house without stealing, smashing or stabbing anything or anyone. Since then, other soldiers had stopped by to touch the statue for luck and protection, and I had learned that Kannon, the Japanese incarnation of Guan Yin, was the goddess of mercy and protection for them too.

‘Have some tea. Made with pepper-plant leaves but not bad. Calming and cooling.’ Ah Ma appeared and offered him a cup. I suspected it also contained some of the soothing leaves that lulled Little Ling back to sleep after nightmares.

How long had Formosa Boy been carrying on in this way? What would the other soldiers think if they saw him looking so upset? A fat tear rolled down his cheek. Worse, if they knew we had seen him crying on our property?

Formosa Boy shook his head. ‘Tea is no good. I must go inside and stay there. Or the Buddha statue will kill me too.’

‘What Buddha statue?’ I wondered if the other soldiers were playing a trick on him.

‘I cannot say. It is secret. If I say I must kill myself!’ He was really scared, ignoring Ah Ma’s tea and the soothing noises she was murmuring to him. ‘Please let me stay here! I will work for you!’

‘What happened?’ I asked Shen Shen, as she joined us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.