Those were the facts that I know. But as you said, that is not the whole of it. I have many questions. First, why did you stage your own kidnap, was it to gain anything politically or some other reason? Second, how did this man Thaddeus Cormac come to be in the condition that he is in? I also need to know how Kerry, who I thought had been shot by her father, sits on the floor perfectly healthy and how did the two of you come together? For all I know you have not been in contact with each other since you left Kerry in the orphanage 14 years ago. And then there is the small matter of how Andrew Barnett a bankrupt businessman became Norman Sinclair, the Mayor of Cardim.”
The mayor was lost for words. He couldn’t help a wry smile.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“I found out,” Maya said simply “I figure from your reaction that I am correct.”
“Let me take back my words,” said the mayor, “You know a lot about this whole affair. Not everything, but you still know much more than I thought anyone would ever be able to. And since you already know so much, I think you deserve to know the complete truth. In any case, it has become quite cumbersome to keep the secret inside my gullet.”
The mayor settled on a chair, took out a cigar from his coat pocket, and lit it from the candle that Maya held in her hand.
“At least one of your letters found the right person,” he said smiling to Kerry who still sat huddled in a corner looking scared and weary. In the flickering candle flame, Maya observed how much she looked like her uncle.
“Let’s go back 14 years,” said the mayor after smoking his cigar for some time, “I was Andrew then, Andrew Barnett, and my sister Salome was married to the man tied on the chair, Thaddeus Cormac, who was a carpenter in Flea Market. I had started a fishing business a few years ago and buoyed by the initial success had taken huge debts from a lot of banks in the hope of expanding it. But things hadn’t gone according to the plan and I had lost a lot of money. There were many reasons for my losses, some borne out of my own folly and others resulting from sheer ill-luck. Anyway, here I was, 32 years of age, and saddled in debt so huge that I could not pay it back even if I worked as a slave for my whole life. My sister had problems of her own, Thaddeus was a rough man, a drunkard who regularly beat Salome and her small daughter Kerry. One day it became too much and she left her house and came to live with me with her daughter. She told me she would not go back to her house. I went to Thaddeus’s shop to convey this information and we had an altercation there in his shop. I beat him up as well, all that pent up frustration of losing money and being on the brink of bankruptcy took its toll. But Thaddeus was not the one to take a beating lying down, and he vowed to me there and then that he would burn me and my sister alive.
He meant his words, Miss Maya, for a few days later he crept into my apartment building, doused the door with oil, and lit it. A few neighbors saw him in the act and would later testify. The fire spread rapidly, so much so that he was badly injured himself when a flaring beam fell on him. Salome was not in the house then, she was with a friend in the neighborhood. The fire consumed the whole building as well as a couple others in the vicinity. In all, around 20 people died. Salome felt that I and Kerry were among them, but we were not in the house either, we had gotten out just minutes before Thaddeus’s arrival. If you remember, I was in a lot of debt and that had forced me to sell my shipping firm to repay the debtors. I had made that deal a day before the fire and had sold the firm to a Calcutta businessman. And as luck would have it, the reason that I and Kerry were not in our house was that I was going to the bank with the money to put it in my account. As I stood in the street below and saw the fireman fish out charred bodies of people from the collapsed apartment building, bodies so badly burnt that they couldn’t be identified by even their most loved ones, I had an idea. Since I had all the money from the company’s sale with me, I decided to stage my death and cheat my debtors. They would assume that the money, along with Andrew Barnett was ash now and would forget about it.
It was a villainous plan, I agree, but I was under a lot of financial pressure and the opportunity seemed like it had been sent from the heavens. I couldn’t afford to lose it. I let myself and Kerry be killed in the fire that Thaddeus started. Initially, I thought I would at least tell Salome that her daughter was alive, but I had become too greedy. I felt that being a woman, and an emotional woman at that, she might not be able to keep the secret to herself. So I took the identity of a person called Norman Sinclair. It is rather easy, there is an institution in Flea Market which would help you at that for a reasonable fee. The real Norman Sinclair was a porter in Old Harbor and one day, he had too much ale and tumbled into the sea. So, I became Norman Sinclair, and because I had to be careful and live in hiding for at least a few years till the matter settled down I put Kerry in an orphanage. I told the orphanage people that she was sponsored by a firm called McKenzie Fisheries, the same firm that I had sold my company to, but actually, they had nothing to do with her, I was paying fully for her upkeep. That done, I shifted for a couple of years to Bombay where I started another business with the money that I had and this time it was successful. Two years later, I came back to Cardim and decided to tell Salome of my secret. She had also received the compensation money from our death and with the help of that money was settled in a village south of Cardim and had married another man, a postman in the village called Barry Mariner. She had not revealed to him that she was married once before and had a daughter, so when I told her about Kerry we decided it was better to let her stay in the orphanage. Though her husband died a few years afterward, she still let Kerry stay on in the orphanage, hesitant to disrupt her life once more. However, Salome did send anonymous letters every year to Kerry on her birthday. As for me, one thing led to another and I became the mayor. But I never knew that my success would become my bane.
I had not thought of Thaddeus in many years. For me, he was a painful memory of a previous life, one that I wished dearly to discard if I could help it. But Thaddeus, it turned out, hadn’t forgotten me. He was in jail and one day he saw my sketch in the newspapers and realized that it was the person he was supposed to have killed. Many people in this city would do a lot to get me off the mayor’s seat. Unfortunately for me, Thaddeus was able to make acquaintance with one such man and managed to get himself out of jail. Soon, he wrote me a letter making a few demands in return for keeping quiet about my past. One of the demands was giving him Salome’s address. I still regret bending to his demand. Frankly speaking, I did not think that he would kill Salome, I merely thought that he would ask for money and go away. But Thaddeus’s urge for violence had only grown more prominent during his stint in the jail, and the cruel man managed to murder Salome and escape. He then contacted me again and asked me for Kerry. This time I refused, of course. But I think he did have a whiff that Kerry was in the orphanage, perhaps Salome had told him this, and he began to loiter around the building in the hope, I am sure, of finding Kerry alone some time and harming her. But the girl was careful. It turns out that Salome had been warning her about Thaddeus for years. So, since the day she saw Thaddeus she did not step out of her room alone.
Failing to get his hands on Kerry. Thaddeus once again asked me to arrange a meeting with her. He promised that he had no plans to harm her, he just wanted to meet his daughter. I did not believe him fully, but I was forced to bend to his demands.
But this time, I decided to play a game of my own. I decided to solve both Kerry’s and my problems together.
As you would already know, the council elections are due in a week. My closest competitor, as far as the newspapers say, is Claude Labarthe, the Minister of Order. He is the same man who helped Thaddeus get out of jail and I realized that Thaddeus had a deal with the minister to help him become the mayor. Now, please don’t think that I am a desperate man clinging to the seat of mayor. I definitely would like to become the mayor again but I am all up for a democratic competition. Claude, however, is not a normal candidate. He is the worst crimin
al ever to become a part of the Cardim council, and given the history of politics in Cardim that is a tough crown to take. He has interests in the smuggling syndicates, kidnapping rackets, prostitution, everything illicit and villainous that you can think of. And he had poured all the wealth that he had acquired from his illegal side occupations in his quest to become the mayor. You can only imagine what would be the fate of this city if he became the mayor. Though I had proof of his involvement in smuggling syndicates, the evidence was flimsy at best, nothing that he could not disprove with his influence. So, I decided to do something drastic. I decided to stage my kidnap and accuse Claude of it.
I must tell you, though, that Thaddeus had been given a free hand by Claude. As I understand, the two had a deal that Thaddeus would do anything in his power to stop me from becoming the mayor. That included killing me if necessary and Claude, in return, had promised Thaddeus protection from the law. My act was as much of self-defense as it was of hurting Claude’s political aspirations.
So, when Thaddeus asked me to arrange a meeting with Kerry, I agreed to his proposition.
I called both of them to a secluded spot near the river. I was hiding in the nearby bushes with a gun in my hand. When both of them faced each other, Thaddeus was flushed with inexplicable rage which he tried to direct towards Kerry. The two had a scuffle and he hit her so hard across the face that she toppled to the ground. At that instant, I decided to intervene and shot in the air. With the help of my revolver, I subdued him and then, as planned beforehand, the two of us took him to this room which had been rented recently by Kerry. Since no one knew about it, there was no danger of us being discovered. While I was here, the plan that I had made was already in process. You see, it was me who had arranged a meeting with Claude on the evening of my kidnap so that the police would think that since he had the knowledge that I was headed to the council, it was he who had planted the obstruction on the street and kidnaped me. Actually, even the obstruction on the street was my plan. When my cab driver got out to sort the fight between the two cabmen who blocked the traffic, I jumped out of the hansom and walked away. I had also carefully planted evidence that indicated the involvement of the smugglers in my kidnap, and also of Claude’s association with the syndicate. It was my belief that sooner or later the police would find all the evidence and easily add two and two to theorize that Claude was involved in my kidnapping. However, as the newspapers remained devoid of any news of Claude’s arrest, I figured that the detectives needed more help. So, I forced Thaddeus to write a letter to Claude claiming that he had “taken care of me”, it is the same letter that you hold in your hand. I plan to send the letter by tomorrow if no news comes of Claude’s arrest. I am sure the Greycoats have already started surveying him intently by this time. They would intercept the letter and all doubts that they have about Claude’s involvement in my kidnap would be resolved. When Claude is arrested and has confessed to dealing with Thaddeus, I plan to come out of this place and pretend that I had escaped. I would go to the Greycoats and claim that the man who had kidnapped me had also escaped. As for Thaddeus, I have plans to send him to a jail in Bombay, I have some very high ranking contacts in the English Embassy and it has been their long-standing demand to extradite Thaddeus so that they could try him for burning down the apartment building which led to the deaths of 4 English citizens working in the embassy. It is my belief that he would cease to be any threat to me and Kerry outside of Cardim.
That was my story. I agree that I have done some mistakes in the past, but this drama was forced upon me because I could not risk giving the city away to a criminal like Claude. If I had allowed Thaddeus to have his way, I had no hope of returning to my position and that meant handing over the chair to Claude. I had no choice. It was also important to keep Kerry safe.
I have told you the full truth now, Miss Maya, you are only the fourth person to know this apart from me, Kerry and Rodney. And it is up to you to now judge our actions. If you decide to help me keep Cardim safe from Claude and his gang of thugs, I would be forever grateful to you and if you decide to reveal the truth of my disappearance and past mistakes and help Claude become the mayor, I would not complain.”
Maya weighed Norman Sinclair’s words. She did not think too much about the moral dilemma that the mayor had posed, such questions always bored her. Maya had learned a long time ago that she was not motivated by principles and morals in solving crimes, she had no place for that in her system. Maya was excited only by the intellectual challenges which a mystery posed and the pleasure that solving it fully gave her, so that all facts were accounted for and no loose threads remained tickling her head. She ran the mayor’s story to see if it fit all details.
It seemed true for the large part, but there were still some gaps.
“Why did you keep Kerry here,” she asked, “I mean Kerry could have headed straight back to the orphanage. By keeping her you were only inviting more scrutiny?”
“I wanted Kerry to go back that evening,” said the mayor, “but it occurred to me that her going back could have caused a potential problem for my plan. Since we were staying in a room rented by her, it would make no sense why Thaddeus would choose this place to keep me. So, to give weight to our story we decided to keep Kerry here as well. Thaddeus, when he kidnapped me from my hansom near the Broad Road, put me in his carriage and decided to take me to his own hiding place. But in the way, I jumped from the carriage and ran to this house to seek help. Kerry opened the door but at the same time, Thaddeus appeared behind me. He took Kerry hostage and decided to keep us both in this house. That was to be our simple story.”
“You do have a keen eye for detail,” quipped Maya, “And what about Kerry’s letters,” she asked again, “how did they find their way to Rodney’s house? He said you gave him the letters to explore?”
“He said the truth,” spoke Kerry for the first time in the night, “In the morning of the day of my disappearance, when I found that Thaddeus was no longer loitering outside the orphanage, I quickly went out to Rodney’s house and gave the letters to him. I was hopeful that if he could find the author of the letters, we might be able to know more about the man threatening me. But I received the mayor’s note that same afternoon and when I met him and found out about my past, there was no need for Rodney to find the author.”
“And why did he try and break into the orphanage today?”
“That again was down to me,” said Kerry avoiding Norman’s glare, “I had no clothes so I wanted some. I also wanted him to inform Tracy that I was well and that there was no need to worry. But it seems it never came to that.”
Maya nodded, giving her words one last consideration. There were no more loose ends left, all the jigsaw pieces fit perfectly. The mystery was solved.
Maya dropped to the floor. She felt a sudden lightness in her head. And she also felt tired and hungry. She wanted to sleep.
“So,” asked the mayor, “what decision did you make?”
“What decision is to be made?” shrugged Maya, “I wanted to find Kerry and I have done that. I don’t need to know anything else.”
With that, she picked herself up from the floor and marched out of the house.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Epilogue
As Benjamin Dolgoff clambered down the iron steps in the gutter, for the second time in a month, he found, to his horror, his host already waiting for him.
Benjamin was late by approximately 2 minutes and 20 seconds and it was enough to make his master rather upset. The Investor did not appreciate a lack of punctuality. And Benjamin could understand why. During his last annual meeting with the most important members of his clandestine organization, which included apart from Benjamin 10 other members (no one knew the identity of the other 10), he had explained the importance of his own time quoting a complex calculation which put the value of each minute of his life as at least 6000 Cowries. By being late 2 and half minutes, Benjamin had cost him 15,000 Cowries.
It was no wonder th
en, that as he took his place on the iron chair in the well-lit half of the gutter-room, Benjamin’s forehead was laden with nervous sweat drops.
“You are late,” said the voice from the dark portion of the room, “Why?”
“F…Forgive me, Sir,” said Benjamin, now positively quivering with fear, “It took me a little extra time to gather some information which I thought would be indispensable for this discussion. This is regarding the great setback that our organization has faced with the arrest of Claude Labarthe, our trusted partner in the council, and the re-election of Norman Sinclair as the mayor. I figured you would need all the details that we can get regarding this whole affair, so I was scrounging together any information that I could.”
Benjamin opened his bag and once more took out the small key and opened the bag that he tied under his shirt on his belly. He took out a file and placed it on the ground.
“This file has all the details, sir,” said Benjamin sliding it towards the Investor, “It turns out that the mayor had been collecting evidence regarding Claude’s involvement with the smuggling syndicates. He had kept the files in his office. These files that were discovered by a Peacock called Ernst Wilhelm and made the Greycoats suspicious of his involvement. As for the mayor, he had been kidnapped by Thaddeus, the man that we had helped escape the prison. It seems that though he had told Claude that he would take care of the mayor, the exact way hadn’t been decided. Claude was under the impression that Thaddeus would use his leverage on the mayor to force him to take his name back from the election, but Thaddeus had other plans, he kidnapped the mayor. Claude was not aware of this excessive measure but did not care, after all, if Norman Sinclair was not able to take part in the elections, he would not become a mayor and that is what Claude wanted. Thaddeus kept the mayor in a small house in Ulysses. The house belonged to a girl called Kerry who was also taken hostage by him and kept along with the mayor. A day after the arrest of Claude, Norman Sinclair and the girl Kerry managed to escape when Thaddeus was away or sleeping (it is not very clear). I also hear that a lady helped them escape, but details are still awaited.”
The Mayor's Abduction Page 13