by Ellis Peters
Reason no longer had any part in what they did. There was only one way they could retreat from him and remain out of reach, and there was no power left in either of them to reckon for how long. Every moment free of his grasp counted. They bargained only for that, seconds of freedom; beyond there was nothing certain. As he lurched towards the foot of the staircase they scrambled to their feet and ran from him, frantically, frenziedly, up the steps with all the breath and all the muscular force they had, utterly reckless of things which in any other circumstances would have halted them with horror. There was just room for two people to pass on those steps. The walls at the sides scarcely reached their knees. The gradient, though of this they had no idea, was approximately one in two. Below, there was nothing but hot white concrete waiting to receive them. They looked up, and nowhere else. Nothing else was possible. There was not a single person moving, up or down, on all those white steps, except themselves. There was no one warily circling the stone drum on the summit. There was no one left in the world but themselves, and the man who had begun, with hideous leisureliness, to follow them up the gnomon.
There was no railing, there on top. Thousands of unsuspecting children climbed these stairs every year, how many played too confidingly around the stone drum on the top? It was nearly as tall as a man, taller than these two girls. Parents might lose sight of their daring offspring, it needed only a little scuffle – children have no idea of danger. How thoughtful of them, how thoughtful, to provide this way out! One of them or both, what did it matter? If the vital one went, the other would be too terrified to cause any further trouble. She was, after all, his elder brother’s posthumous daughter. And she had no money, no allies, no power… not like the other one. No, let Amrita keep her if it worked out that way. Why not? Neither of them would ever dare to point a finger at him. As for him, that other, how easy to give orders and sit back and stay immune! Let him do what he liked, he had no weapons that would not turn against himself. Next time let him do his own dirty work, and find his way out of his own traps. This was the last time Govind Das meant to carry another man’s burden!
And no one following up here. No one. Perfect!
He might have to carry Shantila down the steps. No matter, she would not be any trouble, once the other was gone. That one, with her fine clothes, and her confidence, and her way of looking that was not Indian, not Western, but something between, something unique, a manner all her own, native and strange – everywhere native, everywhere strange. He wondered about that parentage of hers. He had never seen her sire. That had been a weakness, for surely she was her father’s daughter.
They were slowing now, blown and aching from the long, steep climb. Take it easily now, there must be no violent action to be seen on the skyline here, nothing but gentleness, nothing but family affection suddenly ruptured by tragedy. He could not look down now, he was too high. Fifty feet can seem so much more, without a handrail, with only two feet of level ground between you and space.
Slowly, step by step, there was no haste, since there was no way out.
On the last few stairs they were reeling and fumbling with exhaustion, and the man was only a few steps behind. Anjli groped her way ahead, one hand reaching back for Shantila’s hand, but often missing it, sweat running down into her eyebrows and lashes, stinging her lips, sickening her. Only to put that stone cone between herself and her enemy, even if there was nothing to hold by, and no way of evading him in the end. Her cleanness, her personality, depended on eluding his touch. There were no other ambitions left to her.
She saw as in a dream the marvellous panorama of Jai Singh’s vision from this altitude, and the quiet stretch of Parliament Street outside the wall, beyond the silvery palms. She saw the ripe, rosy fruit at her feet, hemmed with flowers, and the mysterious castle towers behind, spinning on their white central columns, dovecotes for stars. Then, only just behind her, she heard Shantila stumble and fall, clinging to the edge of the step, sobbing with frustration. She turned, reaching to help her up; and past the little heaving body her enemy stepped triumphantly, a hand already reaching out for her.
Shantila saw in the corner of her eye the deliberate foot climbing past her, saw it poised to touch the step above, saw the confident, greedy hand extended. With all the strength she had left she clenched both her hands in the string of her necklace, and tugged the cord apart. A sharp stab of pain seared her throat, beads of blood sprang along the wound and spilled among the Scottish beads. The pebbles from the Cairngorms spurted and danced across the white steps, bouncing, twirling, hard and round and adamant, merry as marbles in a game and double as dangerous. She heard them ring tiny, hard, gay notes of music, cannoning off one another, diverting one another, filling the whole width of the staircase with the irresponsible gaiety of murder. She actually saw Govind Das set his foot squarely upon no less than three of them. But it was the easy leaning forward, the disarrangement of his weight, which actually disposed of him.
The beads rolled, seeking a way downwards, safe enough in any fall. They spilled him forward on his face; his feet went out from under him, and the hand reaching confidently for Anjli’s arm missed by inches, and groped helplessly upon the air, baulked of any resting place. He tried to swing his weight and recover his balance, and the only effect was to turn him towards the abyss from which he had climbed, and fling him face-forwards into it. He hurtled past Shantila on the downward road, and she saw his face intent, puzzled, hopeful, still wrestling for balance and incontinent after life, a young man’s face incredulous of disaster, certain of salvation. But afraid, afraid, inhumanly afraid! Shantila was fortunate, for she had no terms in which to describe what she had seen, and no one was ever going to demand of her that she should find words for it. It is possible to forget what you have never formulated.
As for Anjli, she never saw it. All she saw was the beads rolling, the foot betrayed, the balance lost, and all this in a moment of time. She stood frozen, unable to withdraw from the hand which nevertheless failed utterly to touch her. From stair to stair, derisively, the Cairngorm pebbles rolled inviolable, skittishly evading every attempt Govind Das made to recover his equilibrium. From stair to stair they bounced happily, like water seeking their own level, oblivious of the plunging, lurching feet that fought in vain for a firm foothold. And after a moment he outran his destroyers, lunging, falling, leaping endlessly downwards, first running, then rolling, then bouncing like a thrown ball, then tossed like a rag-doll, arms and legs flying, bones cracking, an inarticulate thing coursed interminably down the hundred feet of one-in-two slope towards the concrete ground which was the home level, the final goal.
Far down the long white slide the fore-shortened figure of a man had begun to climb after them. They saw him only now, and cried out together in alarm and despair, for how could he possibly evade the grotesque projectile that was hurtling down upon him? He had come too far up the steps to be able to retreat and leap out of the way. He threw himself down, flattened along the stairs with braced feet under the one bordering wall, an arm flung over the rim to anchor him. Nothing could now have arrested the flight of Govind Das. His flailing body struck the tensed bow of Girish’s shoulders, and rebounded on to the crest of the opposite wall, sliding helplessly down it for several feet before the uncontrolled weight dragged it over the edge, to fall with a dull half-liquid sound on the bone-white concrete below.
Girish took his head out of his arms, and levered himself up from the steps. There was no more sound from below, and no more movement.
‘Be careful!’ called Anjli’s anxious voice from above him. “The beads… on the stairs…’
Then he saw them, one by one gently trickling down towards their own level, unbruised, adamant, the coloured pebbles from the mountains at the other end of the world. He met and passed them on his way upwards, and gathered the ones that came most easily to hand, so that no one else should mount here and accidentally follow Govind Das to his death. But many eluded him, for all the real passion of his sen
ses and his heart was fixed on the children. Slowly they crept down to meet him, Anjli in front, one hand stretched back to clasp the hand of her friend. She felt her way from step to step with the methodical movements of exhaustion, when you cannot afford a first mistake because it may well be your last. Her face was pale and clear, almost empty as yet because fear had so recently quitted it and left it virgin. Her eyes, immense, so bruised with experience that they might have been darkened with kohl in the native way, clung unwaveringly to his face.
They were above the midway mark when they met. Anjli took her hand gently from Shantila’s hand, so that she could join her palms on her breast in the proper reverence.
‘Namaste!’
He held out his arms, and she walked almost shyly into them, and he kissed her forehead. They came down the steps together all linked in a chain of three, Girish in front for a barrier against any fear they might still feel of lesser things, now that the great fear was gone, Anjli’s right hand in his and her left hand in Shantila’s. They came slowly, because none of them was in haste now, and none of them was free of the great, clouding lassitude of achievement that hung upon this denouement. They must have heard the voices below, they must have seen the curious gathering at last, too late to be helpful, in time to be in the way. From nowhere someone had conjured two police officers. Through the gates an ambulance was driving. It had failed to find a victim upon the scene of the road accident in Parliament Street, but it would not go back empty-handed from here.
And there were other faces, faces Anjli knew well and some she did not know, but clearly all united in this moment, gathering there at the foot of the steps to welcome her back among them. Dominic, and Tossa, and Mr Felder, all radiant with relief, and an elderly, ascetic gentleman with a saffron robe and a shaven skull and lop-sided spectacles, gently beaming in the background, and an immaculate person in exclusive tailoring, who by his contented smile was clearly also a member of the alliance. She had never realised she had so many friends here. Find one, and you have the key to many more.
Anjli stepped upon solid ground, and her knees trembled under her. The ambulance men were just picking up and screening from sight all that was left of Govind Das.
XII
« ^
There were nine of them present in Dominic’s hotel sitting-room over coffee that night. The promise made to Ashok had been no vain one, after all; he came straight from a recording session, his head still full of music, to find Anjli, in her own western clothes and with her normal poise rather enhanced than impaired, seated dutifully between Dominic and Tossa, and apparently totally engrossed in pouring coffee for their guests. The Swami Premanathanand sat cross-legged and serene at one end of the cushioned settee, with his driver Girish balancing him at the other end, a silent man with a faint smile and a grazed face, one profile beautiful in a falcon’s fashion, the other marred. Felder lay relaxed in a reclining chair, after days of tension. And the last-comers, or so it appeared, surprised everyone, except the Swami, who was not subject to surprise. For Satyavan Kumar did not come alone, but brought with him Kamala, fresh from the expensive salon of Roy and James with her glossy pyramid of black hair heady as a bush of jasmine, and her superb body swathed in a new sari of a miraculous muted shade between lilac and rose and peach. She kissed Anjli, with so serene an implication of divine right that Anjli took no offence, fluttered her fingers at Ashok, and said: ‘Darling!’ The simplest chair in the room became a throne when she sat in it. ‘I should be apologising,’ she said, smiling at Dominic, ‘I wasn’t specifically invited. But I wanted to celebrate, too. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘I am afraid,’ said the Swami, looking modestly down his nose, ‘that some of us here are not as well informed about the nature of this – celebration – as the rest Perhaps first I should explain exactly what has been happening during the last few days.’ And he did so, with such admirable brevity that he was done before anyone had breath to comment or question. ‘The only apology, perhaps, is due to you, Mr Kabir. You must forgive your young friend here, it was at my suggestion that he refrained from telling you the truth yesterday. We have not met before, but by sight and by reputation, of course, I know you well, and I assure you it was not from any doubts about you that I excluded you from our counsels. I had a respectable reason, which perhaps will appear later. The invitation to you to join us here tonight was a promise, which you see we have managed to fulfil. I hope it may be taken also as an apology in advance.’
‘No one owes me any,’ said Ashok. He looked at Anjli, and his sensitive, mobile face pondered in silence the changes in her. ‘If this thing had happened, all of us who knew of Anjli’s background were suspect. How could I be exempt? You say that Dominic heard and recognised my music… Kamala’s lullaby. Where else should you look, then, but among those of us who knew that music? And we were not so many.’
‘Not so many,’ agreed the Swami. ‘And most of them like Mr Felder here, were in Sarnath at the time of the kidnapping, as you were in Trivandrum, though we did not then know that.’
‘I was in Delhi,’ Kamala said helpfully. ‘Yashodhara doesn’t appear in the Deer Park scenes. None of the women do. And Subhash Ghose was here, too, and…’
‘And Govind Das,’ concluded Felder ruefully.
There was a small, flat silence. ‘We hadn’t realised,’ said Dominic then, ‘how many might be left in town. We thought the whole company had moved to Benares. Of course we thought first of the company, but filming in Sarnath seemed to put you all out of the picture. And yet I was always quite certain about Ashok’s morning raga. I knew what I’d heard. I’ll admit there were times when we didn’t know whom we could trust, or even whether we could trust anybody… even the Swami here. Even you…’ He looked up across the room at the two handsome, smiling people sitting comfortably side by side there, with an almost domestic ease and felicity. ‘Last night, Mr Kumar, after you left, Tossa and I were walking round by Claridge’s. We saw you leaving together by taxi…’
Ashok’s eyebrows had soared into his hair. ‘Kumar?’ he said half-aloud, astonished and mystified.
Kamala laughed gently. ‘Yes, I see that we made difficulties for you. After all these years we still prefer to dine together when we can. Krishan is a serious character actor, I am, let’s face it, a fashionable star. Never in our whole married life have we been able to play together in the same film. We are both contrasuggestible. The whole pressure of our work drives us apart. That is why we spend all the time left to us together.’
‘Krishan?’ Dominic said, confounded.
‘Married life?’ repeated Felder, slowly sitting upright in his chair. ‘I didn’t even know you were married…’
‘No, darling, of course you didn’t. We have a theory. The least publicised marriages are the most durable ones, and we happen to like being married to each other. And after all, you’ve known me only a little while, and only as one of a company at work.’
‘But to Kumar here…?’
‘Oh, no darling, not Kumar. How confused you are, I’m so sorry I’m not making myself clear. No, my husband is Krishan Malenkar, and if I may say so, a very good actor indeed. If you should ever be casting a film with an Indian business background, the Swami tells me he made a most appealing, as well as convincing tycoon.’
‘But if he’s not Kumar,’ persisted Felder feverishly, ‘then who is?’
Anjli looked all round the ring of astonished faces, and suddenly rose from her place, unable any longer to subdue the blaze of joy and achievement that shone out of her. She crossed the room to where Girish sat, and put a hand possessively on his shoulder, and he smiled and drew her down beside him.
‘This is my father,’ she said proudly, as if she found it incomprehensible that they could ever have been in doubt.
‘I knew him as soon as I saw him driving after us. I knew he would come for me.’
All eyes had turned upon the Swami. ‘But why?’ demanded Felder on behalf of them all. ‘Why was it
necessary to conceal the fact that her father was right here with you? I don’t understand what sense it makes.’
‘Oh, come!’ protested the Swami mildly. ‘You do yourself less than justice, Mr Felder, I’m sure. It cannot be so difficult to see a good reason for suppressing Satyavan’s identity, since circumstances made it possible. I did not then know which of you, if any, could be trusted. Satyavan, since he left home, has indeed been a law unto himself, and like everyone else, I have seldom known for long where he could be found; but at various times he has been working in several of the Mission’s projects, and from time to time I have been in touch with him. At the time of his mother’s death I had no idea where to find him, and he did not read the papers regularly, and only learned of her death too late to be present at her funeral rites. As soon as he did hear, he came. To me! We drove together to his house, it was his intention to begin at once to set his affairs in order. You,’ he said, turning his mild, bright eyes upon Dominic and Tossa, ‘know what we heard and saw when we came to Rabindar Nagar. Should I then have produced him and named him to you, whom we did not know, you, who had been in charge of the child and might be involved in her abduction? No! It was the strength of Satyavan’s position that he had not been seen in Rabindar Nagar for more than a year, that many of his neighbours were new, that he returned now straight from the field, not a Delhi businessman but weather-beaten and dressed for work, and driving the Mission car… He wished to remain in the background, unknown and free to move as he would, for it was his daughter who was at risk. From that moment, therefore, we watched you in everything you did, and equally all those who had contact with you. It seemed that any demands for ransom must come through you, and so it turned out. And after the first payment failed to produce Anjli, I judged it necessary to provide another father, a convincing father of the right type, and to have him emerge into the limelight and take charge.’