‘Did he tell you why?’
The boy shook his head. ‘No, sir. He tell me only bring him to the house. It is very late and I am also scared to go to Deori village, but Master sahib tell me, so I must go. I go to village and find Deori and bring him to master’s study, then I go to call Master sahib.’
‘Did you accompany Mr Carter back to his study?’ I asked.
‘Master sahib talk to Deori in private. I wait outside door. Ten minutes later, door opens and Master sahib tell me, show Deori out.’
‘What happened after that?’ asked Surrender-not.
‘I take Deori to back door, then return and wait for guests to finish party.’
‘Did you see Dr Deakin or any of the other guests outside of the room at that time?’
Thakur thought for a moment. ‘I see the doctor.’
‘Where?’
‘In the hall, talking to Master sahib. Then both are returning to the party.’
Surrender-not and I exchanged a glance.
‘Then what happened?’
‘I wait in the hall. When guests go to bed, I help Ranjana to take glasses and plates to kitchen. After this I go up to my room.’
‘And did you hear anything during the night?’ asked Surrender-not. ‘Thunder perhaps?’
The boy sat forward, his eyes widening. ‘I definitely am hearing something. Not storm, though. I hear some person on stairs to the top floor, where my room is situated. It is strange because all other bedrooms are on floor below. Only I am in the top floor I think maybe one guest became lost looking for lavatory.’
‘What about Ranjana?’ asked Banerjee. ‘Doesn’t she also have a room in the attic?’
Thakur shook his head. ‘No, sir. Her room is next to memsahib’s quarters on first floor, along corridor from Master sahib’s room.’
‘The first floor?’ I asked.
‘That is correct, sir. She needs to tend to memsahib.’
They say that even the greatest tapestry can be unravelled from one loose thread. What goes for tapestries holds for lies too. For thirty seconds I was lost among my own thoughts. By the time I tuned back into the conversation, Surrender-not was asking about thunderstorms again.
‘It is possible,’ replied Thakur. ‘We are often having lightning here. I don’t recall last night –’
‘Forgive me,’ I said, interrupting, then turned to the houseboy. ‘The footsteps you heard on the stairs. What time was that?’
The boy’s face crumpled. ‘I do not know, sahib. I have no clock.’
‘But was it soon after you went to bed or later?’
‘Later, sahib. Much later.’
‘One last question,’ I said. ‘Apart from your room, what else is up on the top floor?’
‘Not very much. There is one empty room, one room which memsahib uses for storage, and also door to the roof.’
The sergeant had no more questions and sought to dismiss the lad. I stood there and nodded dumbly as he asked if I concurred. Now was the time to tell him about my loose thread, but something held me back. I told myself it was nothing, just a misunderstanding that I could soon clear up, and there was no point in needlessly muddying waters that were already murky.
But looking back, it’s possible that was the point at which I began my own deception. I wasn’t a spiritual man, but even I would admit that there was something other-worldly about Jatinga. From the ashram of Devraha Swami to the suicide birds and the unexplained death of Jeremiah Caine, it was like nowhere I’d been before. Charlie Preston believed there was a curse on the valley, that the place was evil. But what if the opposite were true? What if this was a place where wrongs were righted and trespasses, if not forgiven, then, at least, accounted for? I thought of the fakir and the god Indra with his lightning bolt. Maybe I held back from telling Surrender-not my concerns because, like the fakir, I’d had a premonition of the truth? Or, what was worse, maybe I’d had a premonition of my own shameful reaction to it.
FIFTY-EIGHT
‘You’re not staying?’ asked Suren as Thakur left the room. ‘The maid’s the only person we’ve left to interview.’
‘I need twenty minutes to meditate.’
‘Meditate?’
‘It’s part of the post-opium regime. I have to meditate for twenty minutes.’
‘And you need to do that now?’
‘Same time every day. That’s what the monks said.’
I headed for the door. The monks had said nothing of the kind, but at that moment, I needed a chance to think more than I needed to hear the maid’s testimony.
‘I’m sure you can handle it by yourself,’ I said. ‘Or are you scared of talking to maids now?’
‘No,’ he bridled, ‘well, not much.’
‘Then it’s settled. You question her. I’m going to find a spot quiet enough for contemplation.’
‘Sam,’ he said, as I reached the door, ‘you’re sure nothing’s wrong?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, and with that I opened the door and stepped out as, behind me, Suren pressed the button on the wall, summoning the maid.
Back in the hallway, I waited a few moments before chasing after Thakur.
‘Yes, sahib?’
‘I want to see the rooms on the top floor.’
‘Very good, sahib. Please wait.’
A few moments later, he returned holding a hurricane lamp, then beckoned me to follow him up the stairs.
There wasn’t much to see. I dispensed with his own room after a cursory glance, then tried the door to the roof. It was bolted shut and a dirty mass of cobwebs covered the frame, suggesting it hadn’t been opened in a while.
The two other rooms were all but empty.
‘I thought you said that the memsahib used one of these rooms as a workshop?’ I asked the boy.
‘Yes. This is the room, sahib,’ he said, pointing through the open door of one the empty bedrooms. ‘But this morning, she is asking me to clear all the things from here into the outhouse.’
‘The boxes you’ve been carrying to the barn? Did they come from this room?’
‘That is correct, sahib. Memsahib wanted room cleaned. I think with Master sahib death, she no more will be working with these car things.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, taking the lamp from him. ‘That will be all.’
He gave a curt bow and I closed the door behind him, then looked around. The room seemed to have the same dimensions as Carter’s bedroom below, though, as befitting of an attic room, the ceiling was much lower and the walls sloped inwards. Unlike Carter’s room, however, this one was almost bare, lacking a bed or carpet or many of the usual sticks of furniture commonly found in a bedroom.
Instead, against the far wall, beneath a window, sat a workbench similar in form and dimension to the one I’d seen in the outbuilding, but whereas that had been strewn with mechanical components, this one was clear, and, I found as I ran a finger along it, clean, as though someone had recently taken a cloth to it.
Against another wall sat an almirah and a chest of drawers. I walked over and, by the light of the hurricane lamp, opened the doors of the wardrobe and peered inside to find it empty. I moved on to the chest of drawers, pulling out each drawer in turn and once more finding nothing at all.
I stood up and scanned the room, looking for signs of anything untoward, but there was nothing here save a cadaverous emptiness. Whatever might have been in here was long gone, and the place had been scrubbed as clean as an operating theatre. Someone had come up to the second floor during the night. Thakur had heard them. Maybe Emily Carter had too, but she’d dismissed it as thunder.
In that moment, I felt a strange mix of emotions: a hollow disappointment at having found nothing, but also, I realised, a twinge of relief. I turned towards the door and decided it was time to stop looking.
I walked across the centre of the room. If I’d been five inches to either side, that might have been the end of it. Instead I strode down the middle and caught my shoe on the edge of one
of the boards that made up the bare floor, tripped and fell to the ground. The hurricane lamp fell too, its glass bowl shattering and its flame extinguished. I pulled myself onto my knees and, blind in the darkness, sat there until my eyes adjusted to the gloom. Around me lay strewn the myriad glass shards of the lamp’s globe. I reached over and righted the broken object. The wick was still in place and, extracting my matchbook, I tore off a match and struck it. Reaching in between the jagged edges, I relit the lamp, placed it on the floor, then stood up and, with my foot, studied the uneven floorboard which had almost caused me to break my neck. I gave it a tap with the toe of my shoe. The board wobbled ever so slightly, and suddenly I realised the thing was loose.
I knelt down, and with the aid of one of the larger shards of glass, managed to prise the board up from the floor. Placing it to one side, I brought close the hurricane lamp and peered down into the void, hoping to find something hidden. Instead there was nothing, just an empty space and a large metal bolt, held in place by an iron nut.
I pulled out the lamp and placed it beside me on a bed of broken glass. My mind raced. Something felt wrong. I knew I’d been lied to. I just didn’t know why. I tried piecing together fragments until a picture formed in my head: a man, alone in a locked room, dead in his bed. But the pieces didn’t fit. I was missing something, I felt it in my gut. And behind that feeling lay fear, a cold, amorphous dread at the back of my mind that I already knew what had happened.
FIFTY-NINE
Through the door of the library I saw Surendranath silhouetted against the candlelight. I wondered what, if anything, I should tell him and decided that for now, at least, it was best to keep my thoughts to myself. He noticed me watching, then came to meet me.
‘How was your meditation?’
‘What?’
‘Your meditation.’
‘Not particularly enlightening.’
He examined me and a look of concern came over his soft features.
‘What happened to your hand?’
I looked down and for the first time realised that I was bleeding. A steady trickle of crimson ran from the palm of my left hand, down the length of my index finger.
‘I had a slight accident with a hurricane lamp.’
I felt in my pocket for a handkerchief, all the time avoiding his gaze.
‘Did you get anything from the maid?’ I asked.
‘Nothing useful. Just what we already knew: that Carter left the room for twenty minutes and when he came back he was accompanied by Dr Deakin; that the party ended around one-ish and the guests retired for the night. Carter went to his own room and the maid saw no obvious signs of distress.’
‘So we’re no clearer on your theory? You should get down to the telegraph office,’ I said. ‘Send the message to Turner reiterating that we need the post-mortem to look for signs of poisoning or overdose.’
‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Shall we go now?’
‘You go on,’ I said. ‘I want to have a word with your suspects. Make sure they all understand the consequences of leaving before you say they can. I’ll see you back at the club in an hour. Dinner’s on me.’
I walked with him to the front door then made my way back along the hall to the library and watched until his white-clad form disappeared down the hill. The sound of voices could be heard from the larger drawing room and I assumed that Mrs Carter’s guests had congregated there, forced to spend another night at Highfield on the orders of a little Indian sergeant in a dhoti. Not that I thought any of them were guilty. Far from it, though it would have made things easier if they were. That at least would mean I wouldn’t need to lie to Suren, because by now I feared that was exactly what I would need to do.
Once more I summoned Thakur.
‘Where’s your memsahib?’ I asked.
‘Memsahib is with guests in large drawing room.’
I followed him to the door, took a breath, knocked and entered. The guests were assembled on sofas set around a fire burning in the grate. All except Alan Dewar, who was seated on a stool behind a rather magnificent grand piano. Their expressions ran the gamut from expectant to aggrieved, but pointedly omitted anything remotely friendly. In their midst sat Emily Carter, a vision in black, with a handkerchief clasped tightly between her fingers and the consoling arm of Celia Dewar on her shoulder.
She greeted me with a tearful smile but said nothing, and it was Alan Dewar, preceding his remarks with a few portentous bass notes of Beethoven, who spoke first.
‘There you are, Wyndham. We thought maybe that coolie of yours had sent you off on an errand somewhere.’
I ignored the provocation and instead turned to Emily Carter.
‘May I speak to you for a few minutes? In private.’
She dabbed at her cheek with the handkerchief.
‘We were about to sit down to dinner, Captain. You could join us?’
From their expressions her guests seemed to welcome my company as much as they would a case of malaria. Not that I blamed them. Breaking bread with a copper who’d spent most of the day interrogating them wasn’t exactly conducive to stimulating dinner conversation. Maybe that’s why I found the offer tempting. Nevertheless, I declined.
‘I really would appreciate five minutes of your time,’ I said.
With sullen acceptance, Emily Carter made her apologies and followed me out of the room, her guests reacting as though she were St Perpetua being led off to martyrdom and I was the bull that gored her to death.
I led her into the library where Surendranath and I had spent so much of the day. The fire had died in the grate and she shivered, rubbing her arms against the chill.
‘Have a seat,’ I said, turning my back to her and walking towards the French windows.
‘What is it you wanted to ask me?’
For a moment I stared out of the windows. A fine mist had descended, obscuring the valley below to such an extent that it was hard to identify much more than the outlines of a few houses and trees.
I turned to face her.
‘Is there something … anything … you’ve not told me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Anything to do with your husband’s death.’
She hesitated, and once more dabbed with the handkerchief at the corners of her eyes, the very model of the grieving widow. And, it struck me, maybe she was? She wouldn’t be the first woman who’d cried at the death of her tormentor.
‘You didn’t perhaps drop a hint to the doctor, or one of the other men, about what your husband was doing to you? Something that might make them take matters into their own hands?’
Emily paused. Her face reddened, and when she answered, she sounded indignant.
‘Are you asking me if I persuaded one of them to murder my husband?’
‘I –’
‘How could you even think such a thing? You think I’m that weak and feeble that I’d throw myself on the mercy of the likes of Dr Deakin or Pastor Philips, or your friend Preston? Or do you think I manipulated them? Used my feminine charms?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I only –’
‘And for the record, Captain: no, I did not ask any of them to murder Ronald. My husband died in his bed,’ she said firmly. ‘Neither I nor anyone else had anything to do with it. Now if there’s nothing else, I really should get back to my guests.’
I watched as she left the room and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway beyond. I walked over to the sofa and all but dropped onto it and held my head in my hands.
Was I going mad? Without a shred of proof, I’d accused a grieving widow of instigating the murder of her husband. And why? Because of a gut feeling? I hadn’t had an ounce of opium in two weeks but it still felt as though I’d fallen through the ground into another reality. The whole thing was ridiculous, and yet I couldn’t shake the suspicion that something was out of place.
All I had, though, were the marks on Carter’s corpse, the same ones found on the body of
his first wife, some footsteps heard by Thakur on the second floor in the middle of the night and a sense that things were still being hidden from me.
SIXTY
There was a world of difference in the atmosphere at the Jatinga Club that night. For a start there were no birds falling to their deaths, though that, it seemed, had caused the members of the club rather less consternation than the sight of a dhoti-clad native eating supper within the wooden walls of their hallowed institution.
After my ill-advised overtures to Emily Carter, I’d left Highfield with the onset of a headache and wandered back to the club to meet Surendranath. He was tucked behind a table in an unobtrusive corner close to the kitchens, yet to the other diners he couldn’t have been more conspicuous had he stripped down to a loincloth, painted himself in the colours of the nationalist tricolour and sung ‘Vande Mataram’, the song of free India, at the top of his voice.
Not for the first time, I was forced to contemplate the nature of my compatriots. We liked to think of ourselves as a noble race, the architects of the greatest empire the world had ever known, but our behaviour was still rooted in the narrow-minded mentality of that wet little island whence we came. The truth was we wasted an inordinate amount of time and energy on our petty hierarchies and hypocrisies. We were moved to outrage at the thought that a man with a different shade of skin might have the temerity to eat in the same room as us, all the while blithely dismissing the fact that this was his country and we were the foreigners in it.
I walked between a sea of eyes and took the seat opposite. Surendranath sat with a lime juice and a ragged menu, poring over the latter with the same solemnity with which he’d reviewed his case notes earlier.
‘What looks good?’ I asked him, as a black-coated waiter, the only other native in the room, scampered over and placed a napkin on my lap.
‘Nothing, as far as I can tell.’ He tossed the menu onto the table. ‘God, I miss Calcutta. I don’t mind eating English food, but this doesn’t even sound like good English food.’
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