by Ted Riccardi
“It was clear to me at that point that the soldier, during that afternoon, had gone somewhere and had most probably met his murderer. The question was where? And here, Watson, one does not have to meditate on the problem very long. Here is a tough, mercenary soldier, arrived in Bombay after a long series of campaigns and a sea journey of several weeks. Where would he go at the first opportunity?”
It does not take a strong imagination to suggest, as an answer to Holmes’s question, that the soldier’s first destination would be the nearest brothel or opium den, where he could find solace in the pleasures with which a city like Bombay is perhaps endowed like no other. He enters, begins with a round of intoxicants, and then retires with one of the women who ply their wares in such establishments. He has no cash on him, but presents her with a set of cheap earrings from abroad. No client has ever done anything like this. Touched by his kindness, she tells him of her desire to leave her trade, and pursue a normal life. She has saved some money, she says. He suggests that they leave together. She leaves to pack her meagre belongings, and he departs before she returns, stealing her money box. She is able to follow him to Lachman’s house, where she murders him in his sleep. In his final agony, he pulls one of the earrings from her ear. It disappears into a crease in his uniform. The cash box falls to the floor. Lachman and his wife, awakened by the noise, rush to the room. She barely has time to escape, and must leave the box behind. The rest presents no difficulty.
“I must admit, Watson, that in retrospect this story had its difficulties. And yet, I had nothing else but to follow the rather bizarre tale that I had invented. I left the comfort of the Gymkhana and proceeded to the brothel district of the city. I began in the section that was not far from Lachman’s house. I started with the main street. I stopped in several establishments and asked whether someone fitting Vikram Singh’s description had been there. My questions were greeted with laughter. Everyone looked like that, was the reply. No one recognised him from my words.”
It was only when he reached the smaller gullies that Holmes saw what was to bring him to the solution of the crime: in front of one of the brothels were two men digging, for what purpose he did not know. As he approached, he realised that they had produced a large pile of red clay, undoubtedly the same as those small pieces that he had found in the soldier’s room. He perhaps had found the establishment that he was looking for. He ascended the narrow staircase and came into a room of garish velvet. A woman sat at a small desk. He told her that he wanted to see her women. She obliged him by parading before him several of the poor inmates of her establishment. Dressed in flamboyant saris, the women cavorted in front of him, laughing, teasing, their faces the colour of flour paste, their eyes filled with pain and resentment. Holmes looked at each closely, hoping to see a wounded ear, but he saw nothing. He waved them all away.
“What is wrong? You have refused my best,” said the woman at the desk.
To Holmes she was quite a horror in her own right, a fat, rather loathsome creature with orange hair, skin powdered to a thick whiteness, dressed in a red velvet gown, a large necklace of fake Bombay pearls around her neck.
“‘I want the one with the wounded ear,” he said in answer to her query.
She frowned, hesitating for a moment. “She is not here today. It is her day of rest.”
“I will pay well,” he said.
“Very well. I will fetch her. Wait here.”
Holmes waited for several minutes. The room was suffocatingly hot, and the smell of incense and cheap perfume made him want to retch. The madam returned, accompanied by a youngish woman, who was not dressed in her professional attire but in a simple sari. She wore no powder on her face. Her right ear bore a bandage, however, and the other a silver earring like the fragment he had found. Luck had brought him to the end of his search very quickly.
Holmes extended his hand and gave her the fragment of the earring that he had found. She looked at it with great surprise and then fear. She motioned for him to follow, and they went to her room. The madam chuckled as Holmes passed her.
“Let me speak frankly to you, my dear woman,” Holmes said in Hindustanee. “I have reason to believe that you murdered one Vikram Singh in cold blood last night. Why you committed such a deed is not of any consequence to me at this moment, for a young friend of mine has been unjustly accused of what you have done. I must clear his name. And so I must ask you to accompany me to police headquarters.”
She stood there, silent, motionless, for what seemed to him to be an eternity. Then she spoke softly: “You are right. I did kill Vikram Singh. But why I did it is important for you to know, and for the police to know. Before I go with you then, I wish you to listen.”
Holmes sat on a chair in the corner of the room. She turned and said: “I have lived and worked in this room for eleven years. I was brought here when I was thirteen.”
As she spoke, Holmes soon realised that the story he had imagined was hardly the truth, even though it had led him to the murderer.
“I was born in a village to the south of here,” she said. “We were a poor family of farmers, and much of the time there was nothing to eat. My mother had five children and died after I was born. My father raised us as well as he could. One day he said that I was to become a devadasi, a temple dancer, and that this was to be a great honour. I was to become a wife of our god, Shiva. I was very proud, for I had no idea what the word devadasi meant, but marriage to the god was to me the greatest happiness. In a few days, I was dressed in fine clothes and taken to the temple, where the priests uttered prayers in Sanscrit and anointed me into the temple. I remained there for several days. Then my father fetched me and told me that I would go to the city. My uncle, his cousin-brother, would take me there. I would do the work of a devadasi. I would have much to eat, and I would earn much money. My life would be good.
“My father’s cousin-brother came one day and took me with him. I cried as we left, but my father did not hear me. Nor my brothers. They all turned away. My uncle and I travelled to Bombay by rail. As soon as we arrived he brought me here and sold me to the woman you met below. I soon was taught my present trade and became a woman of the night. I have been here ever since. This is how I learned what it means to be a devadasi.
“During all of this time, I have never seen my family. My father came several times, but only to collect the larger part of my earnings. My uncle was a soldier and he left for battle—never, I thought, to return.
“Two days ago, a man came. I did not know him, but he asked for me. There are so many who have come and know me that I did not think it strange that he asked for me by name. He was drunk and wanted opium. At first he was kind: he gave me a pair of earrings, which I put on. He told me how beautiful I was. He caressed my face tenderly. Suddenly his mood changed, and he grabbed me and forced me into his embrace. I submitted and when he had finished he threw some money in my face. He laughed. Then he told me: he was my father’s cousin-brother, the very uncle who had brought me here. He had come for my wages. In disbelief, I told him that I had nothing. But he searched the room and found the money that I had hidden over the years, the money that was to make me free. He took it and left. I followed him but when we reached his room, he threatened me with death and pushed me away. I returned here in despair, determined to obtain vengeance. As soon as night fell, I returned to his lodging. He had left the window open and I could see that he was fast asleep. The liquor and opium had put him in a stupor. I climbed into the room. He must have heard something for he mumbled in his sleep. Frightened that he would awaken, I rushed at him and slit his throat with all my strength. He awakened long enough to see my face before he died. Blood shot from his neck onto the bed. He tried to grab me, and I pushed him back. But his hand had reached my ear and pulled the earring from it. I almost cried out in pain. I tried to grab my money box, but it fell to the floor. I heard people coming and I ran to the window without it. Once outside, I no longer cared about the money. The death of this man broug
ht me the greatest happiness I had known since I had been forced to leave my village. Now that you know my story, I have no fear in going with you.”
Holmes rose once again from his seat and began to pace to and fro. “How wrong I was, Watson, in the basic details of the story. I had merely established a possible thread between pieces of evidence, its only virtue being that it led me to the true version.”
As soon as she had finished her story, Holmes decided on a course of action. He asked that the woman remain there in her room until he returned. She agreed. He then went directly to police headquarters, and again to Pushkar Samsher, the chief inspector, in whose hands Lachman’s case had fallen. He told him that it was most urgent that he listen to the version of the events that had just transpired. The chief inspector listened attentively to all that Holmes had to say.
“Mr. Holmes,” said Shamsher, “it seems to me that you have cast sufficient doubt on the evidence adduced to convict young Lachman, and therefore I shall release him. As to the young woman, whom you have described to me, I believe that in her case justice has already been done. There are,” he said with a smile, “cases from which we police should remove ourselves.”
The inspector shook Holmes’s hand and asked that he deliver the money box to the young woman. This he did. He learned before he left India that she had fled Bombay for good. Lachman and his wife were happily reunited, and Holmes heard from time to time that their lives were happy and uneventful since the events recounted here.
My friend sat back in his chair and looked for a time in my direction but without seeing me.
“And so, my dear doctor, “he said, “there were a series of interpretations of the evidence: Inspector Shamsher’s, Lachman’s, and mine. And finally, there was the real version. Or so we might think . . .”
THE SINGULAR TRAGEDY
AT TRINCOMALEE
RARELY DOES THE HEAT IN LONDON BECOME SO strong that one longs for the cold dreary winters that regularly afflict it. Thus it was, however, in the closing days of June, 1897. It was the year of the sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty’s coronation and the very week of celebration throughout Britain. The festivities had brought hordes of celebrants from the countryside into the city, and the loud din of the revelers in the street below our open windows had stolen away the easy comfort to which Holmes and I had grown accustomed.
“Impossible, Watson,” said he, with uncharacteristic exasperation in his voice as he wiped his brow with his handkerchief. He had been lying on the couch attempting unsuccessfully to read the morning papers. “We should leave London to the rabble and retire to some tranquil place in the country.”
“A most welcome thought, Holmes, but a trip to the country would be unpleasant in itself. The trains are off schedule, and the cars are filled with the crowds that one wishes to avoid. And where is there to go? Where is there a tranquil corner on this sceptered isle? The celebrations are everywhere.”
“You are quite right, Watson. Let us not sit here moaning in discomfort, however. It is only eleven and already the heat is unbearable. There is a quiet refuge close by—the Diogenes Club. My brother Mycroft will admit us, and we shall spend the day peacefully in its quiet rooms. If I am not mistaken, the Indian coolers recently installed there will reduce the temperature by at least twenty degrees. Come, Mycroft and a gin and lemon await us.”
I applauded the notion, for I had spent many restful hours in Mycroft’s club during Holmes’s absence from London.
“Excellent,” I said. “Let us be off.”
As we left, Holmes turned and said, “You know, Watson, the heat and its attendant humid quality remind me of my days in Ceylon. Serendipitously enough, there is a tale, one which you have not yet heard, which relates to this week’s festivities. Mycroft put the whole affair into motion, and it will be good for you to hear his part in it directly. If the heat has not sapped the last of his energies, he may be willing to relate how he came to be involved in the case.”
“Splendid,” said I. It was often in this incidental way that Holmes introduced his adventures abroad, and I suddenly forgot the heat in anticipation of what was to come.
The crowds were thick on Baker Street, and Holmes suggested that we leave our quarters by the back entrance. Once outside, his encyclopaedic knowledge of London’s streets and alleys took us first through a series of narrow cobblestone mews of which I was previously unaware. We then found ourselves on Baring Street, from where we walked to Eaton Square. Here Holmes unexpectedly stopped in front of one of the more elegant houses, pulled a ring of keys from his pocket, and opened the door.
“The pied-à-terre of a most appreciative client,” he announced, “one who has kindly granted me free access. It is one of a number of safe houses I have throughout the city. This is one is among the best. If memory serves, the Duke of Wellington resided here for some days after his return from Egypt.”
As we entered, I saw three men huddled around a small table in the sitting room to the left. They looked up as we passed, and Holmes nodded perfunctorily in response. Without pausing to converse, we walked through, quickly descending to the ground floor, where we exited into a small well-tended garden. A gardener’s ladder enabled us to scale the back wall and, jumping gently to the ground on the other side, we found ourselves again in one of London’s many alleys. I followed, a little breathless now, behind Holmes’s rapid strides. He stopped in front of a large black door and rang the bell.
“This is the back entrance to the club,” he said smiling, “one that I often find convenient, particularly if I have to disappear quickly.”
A butler opened and, recognising Holmes immediately, took us directly to the large room in which the club’s rules of strict silence were relaxed and one was permitted to converse softly. The room contained far more people than I had noted on previous visits, but, despite the small crowd, it was still far cooler than our sweltering quarters on Baker Street. Mycroft Holmes was seated alone in his accustomed place at the end of a very large table. He greeted us with a broad smile, but without rising.
“Hello, my dear Sherlock, and dear Dr. Watson. Allow me to remain seated, for the heat is most unpleasant and unforgiving for someone of my bulk. I am about to indulge in something cool. Do join me. By the way, Sherlock, what do you make of the dark-skinned gentleman at the bar?”
Mycroft was perspiring greatly, and in weather such as this his corpulence must have been particularly trying. The great jowls hung from his face like soft pink pillows, and his enormous girth inevitably forced him to remain a fair distance from the table. But his grey eyes had their usual sparkle, and he grinned as he tested his younger brother.
“You mean the Ethiopian polo player?” Holmes asked
“Yes, indeed, formerly a patriarch of the Coptic Church,” replied Mycroft.
“Yes, and left because of his love of sport. Horses are in his blood,” said Holmes.
“Probably of the royal family in Addis,” said Mycroft.
“No, I think not, more likely a Galla tribesman. Note the thin nose, Mycroft. He has had a troubled morning . . .”
“An argument with his son . . .”
“True. The last match went badly, and he has not recovered from his defeat. He will leave shortly to make amends.”
I looked over to the bar as they spoke, noting only a rather small slender man standing there in conversation with several other people. That he was from East Africa I might have guessed from his fine features, but how Holmes and his brother arrived at the rest I could not fathom in the least.
“Too much too quickly for me to follow,” I said.
“No matter, Watson. You merely lack practise, and the courage to make the necessary deductions. And besides, this is our usual fraternal form of amusement, one with which we are well acquainted. The inferences are of no lasting consequence, however. Halloo,” said Holmes interrupting himself, “I see that the rules of the club have been further diluted. A woman in the Diogenes Club! Perhaps a first, my dear Mycro
ft.”
A woman of regal bearing, dressed in the loveliest of Indian attire, had entered and begun speaking with our Ethiopian. She was covered with jewels, the most valuable of which were the diamonds and sapphires embedded in a gold tiara which she wore with the confidence of a queen. She appeared to be of the highest breeding, and was, most probably, of royal descent.
“Just as we occasionally allow a break in the rules of silence, so in this case we have relaxed the strict misogynous rules that govern the Club. This occasional relaxation insures us against the dangers of fanaticism. The woman is a princess of Rajpootana, descended in part, so it is claimed, from French adventurers of the fifteenth century. In England, she goes by the name of Marie de Borbon. Her family, alas, has recently come on hard times. She remains a favourite of the Queen, however, and I suggested that we give her and her retinue lodging here at the Club during these crowded weeks. Her Majesty has already expressed her sincere gratitude.”
Holmes looked serious for a moment as Mycroft spoke. He took a quick look round the room as if to make sure that no person or thing unfriendly to him was to be seen.
“Most interesting, Mycroft, but I promised dear Watson a story with which you had some connection.”
Mycroft beamed and sipped his gin. “You mean—”
“The adventure that we have referred to in the past as the singular tragedy at Trincomalee.”
“And the Atkinson brothers,” added Mycroft with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Perhaps for the good doctor you might tell how it all came about, for I was in Java when I received your message.”
“By all means, Sherlock, I should be most happy to. As you are well aware, dear Watson, I am on occasion consulted by Government on a variety of important matters, particularly on those subjects that the Cabinet finds too delicate or difficult of execution. It often requires the aid of intermediaries. In this case, I was seated right here, some four years ago, when a distinguished member of the Cabinet arrived with a matter from the Prime Minister himself. If I recall, Sherlock, it was sometime in the fall of ’ninety-three, in late September to be more precise.”