Ling Chua

Ling Chua is 52 and has run the bungalow in the Cameron Highlands since her husband died nine years ago. She was born in Penang, the daughter of spice merchants from a Chinese family settled on the island for four generations, and married at 22 a man who loved mountains and tea. Today she receives wealthy guests, English travelers passing through and weary merchants, and addresses them all by their surnames.

When she comes down from the mountains, she lives in the family shophouse in George Town, a two-story trading house with a tiled floor, an ancestral altar with burning incense, slow-turning ceiling fans and a balcony over the street. It is there that she keeps her mother's porcelain, the old photographs and the sewing machine she uses on Sundays. The kitchen smells of ginger and tangerine.

She has black hair in a low bun with a few gray strands, golden skin and jade earrings that she does not take off even to sleep. She wears a dark blue high-collared cheongsam under a gray wool cardigan, because of the chill of the hills. She speaks softly and chooses her words the way one lays out cutlery: carefully, unhurriedly, and always in the order etiquette dictates.

About the guest, her account is that of an attentive hostess: on Sunday morning Walter was quiet, read the same newspaper twice and did not touch his porridge. She thought it was his gallbladder. She says he tipped everyone and taught bridge to the mission children, and that his enemies were in Bangkok, behind desks. He left like a man who would be back in five minutes.

Ling keeps her back straight and her hands folded in her lap throughout the interrogation, and answers the hardest questions with a pause longer than necessary. It may be the composure of a woman who would rather lose a guest than lose her bearing. It may be the reserve of someone who fears a wrong word will lead her to explain too much. The detective will have to decide which.