The Inspector de Silva Mysteries

by Harriet Steel

  Still shaken, he left the bottle of pills where it was and continued cautiously. The road he was on led not only to the theatre but also to the Residence. If Clutterbuck had been coming the other way, he must have been to one of them. If it was the Residence, why did the servant Nadar had spoken to say that his master was not at home? If it was the theatre, what had Clutterbuck been up to?

  At the theatre, he parked the Morris at the back. The only other vehicle was a rusty bicycle that he presumed belonged to the caretaker. As he walked over to the stage door, he noticed it stood ajar. He pushed it a little further open and it emitted a creak of protest. Pausing on the threshold, he waited to see if the caretaker would notice he had a visitor, but only the hum of insects disturbed the silence.

  He went in and, with his eyes not fully adjusted to the dim light after the brightness outside, bumped into a stack of wooden boxes that had been left there. Cursing under his breath, he rubbed his shins.

  The caretaker was once again in his booth filling in a puzzle, but he stopped and looked up.

  ‘This is a crime scene,’ de Silva said testily, his shins still smarting. ‘You need to keep the door closed or anyone might wander in.’

  ‘I am sorry, sahib.’ The man didn’t look particularly apologetic. ‘The fans do not work. If the doors and windows are shut, it is too hot to breathe. Everything here is old and run-down. Now there will be bad karma too.’ A disgruntled expression settled on his face.

  De Silva didn’t comment. Unfortunately, it was highly probable that Danforth’s murder would taint the theatre, at least until the memory of it faded, and, given the fact that life in Nuala was normally a placid affair, that would take a long time. It was no wonder the caretaker was discontented. Doubtless his job was badly paid. If the theatre fell into disuse, he would also lose the chance to boost his income by offering little extra services to companies who came to perform. Still, none of that was his problem and it was time he got down to business.

  ‘Has anyone else been here today?’ he asked.

  The caretaker shook his head.

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  The man adopted an injured expression. ‘I am always here, sahib.’ A crafty look came into his eyes. ‘Even though the wages are not enough to feed a dog.’

  De Silva didn’t rise to the bait. He’d heard of too many colleagues compromising themselves by going down that avenue. ‘You should speak to your employer about that. For now, just remember the law requires you to answer my questions truthfully.’

  The man glowered and muttered his assent.

  Glancing around his booth, de Silva noticed a key rack attached to the wall. From it hung various keys. Some were so rusty that he doubted they had been used for years. Through a door, he glimpsed a room little bigger than a cubby hole that contained a low, unmade bed. On the floor beside it were a Calor gas ring, a chipped white enamel kettle and a tin plate and mug. A washing bowl with a dirty towel draped over one side completed the furnishings.

  ‘Do you live here all the time?’ he asked.

  The caretaker nodded. ‘The owner is afraid that thieves will break in if no one is here to guard it. Usually, I am on my own, but most afternoons old Prathiv comes to talk and chew betel. He is lonely, but the owner says he is too old to work here now.’

  De Silva wondered if Prathiv would be a less satisfactory employee than this man who did not appear to be doing very much. From what he had seen so far, he preferred his puzzles to cleaning and maintenance work.

  The door creaked again, and the sound of a thud came from the lobby, followed by a muffled howl. The boxes. A few seconds later, Nadar limped into view.

  ‘Alright, Constable?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Nadar said valiantly.

  The caretaker stiffened perceptibly at the sight of the young man. De Silva made a mental note to ask Nadar when they were alone what that was all about.

  They left the caretaker to his puzzles and went their different ways in the theatre to make another search. ‘It was late when I carried out my first one,’ said de Silva. ‘I want to be sure I didn’t miss anything.’

  After two hours, de Silva wearied and went to find Nadar. On the way, he remembered the question he’d wanted to ask his constable.

  Nadar hesitated. ‘Before I was a family man, sir,’ he said at last, ‘I sometimes went to one of the bars in town. People came to drink arrack but some also to gamble.’ He stared at his feet.

  ‘We were all young once, Nadar,’ de Silva said cheerfully. ‘Go on. I’m hoping that your misspent youth will be the key to an important discovery.’

  Nadar grinned. ‘This man was one of them. A very boastful fellow. He often talked about the easy job he had, but he would not say what it was.’

  Unsurprising, thought de Silva. He wouldn’t want word to get around and cause him to lose it.

  ‘I noticed his reaction. Clearly, he recognised you.’

  ‘But he may not be sure from where, sir. I usually stayed in the background. And I never gambled,’ he added quickly.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  De Silva weighed up this new piece of information. ‘When you have time, Nadar, I’d like you to see what you can find out about this man’s current habits. If he’s lying about always being at his post, he could be careless about locking up when he leaves the theatre. Someone from outside the company could have engineered a way of getting in unnoticed and hidden somewhere. It might not necessarily be anyone who knew Danforth. It’s a very long shot, but a new theatre company occupying the place could tempt someone looking for easy pickings. We shouldn’t yet discount the possibility that the murder was carried out in the course of a robbery. I’d like to go back to the dressing room and test how stout that door is. See if it’s at all credible that Danforth was attacked by someone from outside – either an enemy or a burglar – and no one heard the noise.’

  On the threshold of the dressing room, they both studied the door. De Silva ran his hand over the wood approvingly. ‘It’s a sturdy piece of wood and well made.’ He glanced at the window on the wall opposite the dressing table then went over and looked out. ‘It’s not far to the ground, although it is visible from the road. But it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone climbed in this way.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Mr Danforth see them in the mirror as they approached him?’

  ‘If he was conscious, one would think so, Constable.’

  He stepped away from the entrance. ‘Go inside and close the door, wait a minute or two then make some noise. I’ll go to Mrs Danforth’s dressing room and see if I can hear you.’

  Nadar looked bemused. ‘How shall I do that, sir?’

  ‘Goodness, I don’t know, lad. Use your imagination. Act as you would if someone was attacking you.’

  Sitting in Kathleen Danforth’s dressing room, de Silva listened intently. At first, all he heard was silence, then a string of bloodcurdling yells reached his ears. Chuckling, he followed the sounds back to Alexander Danforth’s dressing room. When he opened the door, catching Nadar in full flow, he nodded. ‘Very good, Constable, I’m sure you have a great future ahead of you if you decide to take to the stage.’

  Nadar beamed. ‘Thank you, sir. It was easier than I expected.’

  ‘Well, whatever the lab comes up with, I think we can safely say that either the deceased knew his killer and trusted him, or he was drugged. No one would present their back to an interloper and, after your excellent performance, we can be sure that a struggle would have been audible.’

  ‘If there was anyone in the other room to hear it, sir.’

  De Silva frowned. ‘Do you mean it might have been Mrs Danforth who killed her husband?’

  An uneasy expression came over Nadar’s face. ‘I’m sorry, sir. It was foolish of me to suggest such a thing.’

  ‘No, not at all, and you’re not the first.’

  Nadar brightened.

  ‘I’m open to considering anyone as a suspect. There’s a m
aid too; her name’s Olive Reilly. I’d like to know where she was that night. I shall have to insist on cooperation from Mr Clutterbuck now. It’s high time we were given the chance to question the ladies.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Nadar looked impressed and de Silva felt a glow of pride at his own decisiveness.

  Chapter 8

  ‘But there are still many possibilities,’ he said with a sigh. ‘And I must admit, they have me flummoxed.’

  He swallowed a mouthful of his after-dinner coffee.

  Jane gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘It’s early days yet, dear. Don’t be despondent, that’s not like you.’

  ‘I would be less so if Archie was more helpful.’

  ‘It is strange he’s not. Gallantry is all very well, but surely he understands that if you’re to do your job, you need to question everyone.’

  ‘One would think so.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I told young Nadar that I was going to be firm but saying that is one thing and doing it another. I know from experience that dealing with Archie when he’s in one of his stubborn moods is like trying to teach a bull elephant to dance.’

  He finished his coffee. ‘Anyway, the caretaker says his predecessor comes to the theatre most afternoons, so I’ll go back tomorrow.’

  **

  The following afternoon, he paused at the entrance to the theatre lobby, hearing the rattle of a dice shaker. The caretaker and his retired counterpart were so bent on their game that they didn’t notice him at first. He watched the older man make his throw then, grinning widely to display a mouth sparsely furnished with betel-stained teeth, punch the air with a bony fist. Muttering, the caretaker pushed a few coins from the small pile at his elbow across the table.

  De Silva cleared his throat and both men looked up. The caretaker rearranged his face in an ingratiating smile. ‘This is Prathiv who I told you about, sahib.’

  The old man, still grinning, climbed stiffly to his feet.

  ‘Your friend tells me that you know the theatre better than anyone.’

  Prathiv nodded. ‘Fifty years I worked here, from when I was a young man.’

  ‘Excellent, you’re just the person I need.’

  ‘What do you want to know, sahib?’

  ‘Is there a way of getting from the dressing rooms down that corridor – he pointed to the one on the right – and the ones on the opposite side without passing by here?’

  Prathiv thought for a while. ‘Perhaps up in the rafters above the stage,’ he said at last. ‘There is a way across. There are ropes and pulleys there for when scenery needs to be pulled up or down. The British call it the flies.’

  ‘How do you get there?’

  ‘Above those dressing rooms.’ He pointed to the right-hand corridor.

  De Silva wondered why he hadn’t noticed anything in his search. ‘Can you show me?’

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  ‘No one has used it since I have worked here,’ cut in the caretaker. ‘The roof leaks when the monsoon comes. The beams must be rotten by now.’

  ‘I will show the sahib all the same.’ Old Prathiv scowled at his friend. ‘It will interest him.’

  De Silva nodded. ‘If it helps my investigation, I’ll be grateful.’

  ‘It will, sahib. I am sure of that.’

  The caretaker shrugged.

  Following the old man up increasingly narrow flights of stairs, de Silva wasn’t surprised he hadn’t gone through this door earlier. Its handle was so hard to turn that he recalled thinking it was locked. Silently, he ticked himself off for not being more persistent. However, when they finally reached the place, he decided that the lapse was immaterial. He should have taken the caretaker’s word for it. No one would have used this route to reach Danforth’s room. There was a strong smell of damp and, although winching tackle and the remains of a tattered backdrop still dangled from the beams, much of the wood was like honeycomb. Clearly, the theatre’s recent refurbishment had been cosmetic only. There was also a blank wall at the far side. Without a very long ladder, descending to the stage would be extremely perilous.

  He was about to say something sharp to the old man about dragging him up there for nothing, but the words died as he looked down. His head swam; cautiously, he backed away and waited for the wobble in his knees to subside.

  ‘Nothing that helps me there,’ he said, hoping his discomfiture hadn’t been obvious. ‘Are there any other possibilities? I mean real ones,’ he added sternly.

  ‘There are passages to the cellar from both sides of the theatre.’

  ‘It would have been better to have showed me those first.’

  Prathiv looked disgruntled. No doubt he had hoped for a tip after all those stairs. On the slow descent to the ground floor, he hobbled along painfully, making a great performance of sighing and leaning on his stick. De Silva didn’t feel too sorry for him.

  The caretaker grinned when he saw them, probably guessing from Prathiv’s sour expression that there had been no reward for his climb. A small vengeance for the defeat in the game of dice.

  ‘They also have not been used for a long time,’ he said dismissively when de Silva asked about the newly revealed passages. ‘The ceilings are collapsed in many places. The sahib will have seen that there are doors with no handles on both the dressing room corridors. That is because the cellar passages they lead to are dangerous and no longer used.’

  There was more muttering from Prathiv.

  De Silva remembered noticing the doors and making a mental note to find out about them, but it didn’t sound as if they were relevant anyway.

  ‘Anything else either of you can tell me?’ he asked. ‘Are there any other ways to get into the cellar?’

  The caretaker nodded. ‘There is a door you can use, sahib, but only one. He scanned the rack of keys and selected a large one hanging from a rusty iron ring. ‘This one fits it. If you wish, I will show you.’

  De Silva frowned. How many other corridors and doors were there in this rabbit warren and why did he have to prise information from these people like oysters from a shell?

  Outside, they followed a wall overgrown with creepers and scrub until they reached a place where the vegetation had been cleared a little to leave space around a door. The caretaker put the key in the lock and turned it with some difficulty. It looked as if it wasn’t often used. The door opened to reveal a bare yard surrounded by high walls. De Silva noted it was on the same side of the building as the men’s and Miss Watson’s dressing rooms. There was a narrow window high up in one wall, but it looked impossible to reach. The door on the far side of the yard wasn’t locked.

  ‘What’s the cellar used for?’ de Silva asked as they went inside and the caretaker switched on a dim light.

  ‘Scenery and costumes used to be stored here, but now it is too damp.’

  There seemed to be a lot about this theatre that had been allowed to deteriorate, thought de Silva. A great pity Danforth’s venture had ended so tragically. It might have been the spur that reversed the decline.

  He went over to an odd, square contraption. It had a sinister air to it, as if it were a cage to imprison some terrified wretch in a dark dungeon, or a medieval instrument of torture. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, eyeing it warily.

  ‘The stage trap, sahib,’ said the caretaker.

  De Silva studied the assemblage of wood and metal with all its chains and weights. So, this was what the mechanics from Gopallawa Motors had needed to fix so that the ghost of Hamlet’s father could make its spectral entrance from the nether regions. He looked more closely and noticed that there were a couple of bent struts and other signs of recent damage. Perhaps it was fortunate that the machine had only needed to be used once. The repairs didn’t look as if they were holding too well.

  The caretaker grunted. ‘Bad work,’ he said sourly. Obviously, he was no fan of Gopallawa’s mechanics. Perhaps the feeling was mutual.

  ‘Did you bring the mechanics who mended this down here by the same route we came b
y just now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  ‘How many people are needed to operate the machine?’

  ‘It is best with two, but one man can do it alone if necessary.’

  ‘Who worked it on the evening of the performance?’

  ‘I did, sahib, with Sahib Raikes.’

  ‘Has anyone else been down to look at it?’

  ‘The one with the thin face who does not speak.’

  Ah, Sheridan again, but then he had played the ghost of Hamlet’s father, so it would be natural to want to familiarise himself with the contraption in advance. He cast around for anything else worth asking. ‘Would it be possible for anyone to operate it and go up on stage by themselves?’

  Prathiv cackled and said something to the caretaker in rapid Tamil. De Silva didn’t catch all the words, but he understood enough to know that the remark would have been highly unsuitable if ladies had been present.

  The caretaker stifled a laugh. ‘It would not be safe at all, sahib, but maybe possible.’

  Perhaps he could rule out the murderer making use of that route unless he or she had help, quite apart from the problem of getting down to the cellar in the first place.

  The dank air didn’t invite him to linger, but he wanted to be thorough. ‘Before we go, you’d better show me this end of the passages we were talking about earlier,’ he said.

  It didn’t take many minutes to establish that, even if the doors on the dressing room corridors were brought back into use, neither of the passages would have been passable without moving several tons of fallen masonry and, to hide one’s tracks, they would have to be replaced afterwards. As he brushed the dust from his hair, de Silva wondered what had possessed him to come on this expedition. It would have been excellent experience for Nadar.

  ‘Anything else to show me?’ he asked Prathiv and the caretaker. The men looked at each other and shook their heads.

  They retraced their steps to the caretaker’s room. De Silva’s mood improved with the fresher air and he relented and gave both men a tip for their efforts. He noticed that old Prathiv eyed the caretaker’s tip sharply. No doubt it wouldn’t be long before he suggested another game of dice.