‘I awoke at around half past six,’ she said quietly, ‘I dressed and made my way down to breakfast at, well, it must have been around a quarter past seven. The maid has instructions to have everything prepared by seven o’clock. Alastair, my husband, was usually in the dining room before me – he’s normally an early riser – but in the run-up to Christmas, he’d secured a week’s leave from work, so when I didn’t see him, I didn’t immediately assume there was anything wrong.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘I ate breakfast, and when I’d finished and he still hadn’t appeared, I began to worry that he might have taken ill in the night. Calcutta’s such an awful place … so many infections going about, especially at this time of year.’
It was a curious statement to make, but she was right in part – Calcutta really was a God-awful place, but winter wasn’t its worst season. You were far more likely to contract something terminal in the monsoon than you were in December. But it was a moot point. Alastair Dunlop hadn’t been killed by cholera or dysentery but most likely by a bloody great knife through the chest.
‘I went upstairs and knocked on his door,’ she said. ‘He didn’t reply, so I knocked louder and called out to him. It was only when I entered the room and found …’
She reached for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
‘He was just lying there … his face … disfigured …’
I suddenly regretted having sent Surrender-not out to examine the foot of the drainpipe. He may still have had a problem talking to women his own age, but to the surprise of both of us, we’d discovered that he had a gift for talking to older women, especially the English ones. God only knows what they saw in him, but part of me suspected it was novelty value. A little Indian chap who spoke with a public-school accent – there weren’t many of those in the police force. In his absence though, it seemed best just to plough on.
‘When was the last time you saw your husband alive, Mrs Dunlop?’ I asked, as considerately as it was possible to do of a freshly widowed woman.
‘Last night,’ she said. ‘It must have been around half past nine. We’d returned from dinner at the house of one of my husband’s colleagues. That was down in Alipore.’
‘What did your husband do?’ I asked.
‘He was a director at the School of Tropical Medicine.’
‘A doctor?’
‘He was a scientist,’ she replied tersely. ‘He’d never taken the Hippocratic oath.’
There was a knock on the door and Surrender-not entered. He smiled at Mrs Dunlop, gave me a nod.
‘Come in and take a seat, Sergeant,’ I said, gesturing him to the sofa beside her. ‘Did you hear anything untoward during the night?’ I continued. ‘Any unusual noises?’
‘Not that I can recall,’ she replied hesitantly, ‘but I’d taken a sleeping draught – I have done for several years now.’ She glanced at the photos on the sideboard and started sobbing.
I looked over meaningfully at Surrender-not.
‘May I fetch you a glass of water, Mrs Dunlop?’ he asked softly.
She looked up, the streaks of tears running down her dry cheeks. ‘Most kind of you to ask, but please don’t worry. I’m fine.’
I waited till she’d composed herself.
‘Was there anyone else beside you in the house last night?’
‘Our maid, Neri, of course, and the cook, Bhakti, but they had both retired to bed by the time Alastair and I had come home. I doubt they’d have heard anything.’
‘Have you any idea why someone might wish to harm your husband?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ Her forehead creased in confusion like a concertina, or was it alarm?
‘I’m trying to understand why someone would choose to break into your house in the middle of the night and commit murder.’ I pointed to the surroundings. ‘Unless you tell me otherwise, this doesn’t look like a burglary to me.’
‘I don’t know if anything has been stolen,’ she snapped. ‘My husband has been murdered. You’ll forgive me for not having carried out an inventory of the contents of the house.’
I decided to temper my questions.
‘How long had you been married, Mrs Dunlop?’
‘Almost twenty-five years,’ she said. ‘We met at Oxford. Alastair was doing post-doctoral research into the transmission of airborne diseases and I was studying divinity. Of course, women weren’t allowed to graduate in those days, but we were permitted to attend the lectures and sit for the examinations. We were introduced at the home of one of his professors. He took rather a shine to me.’
I scanned the photographs on the sideboard. Other than the one of the happy couple on their wedding day, there didn’t appear to be another of Alastair Dunlop.
‘Do you have a recent photograph of your husband?’ I asked. ‘It may help with our inquiries.’
‘There may be one in his study,’ she said. ‘I can take a look for you.’
‘That would be very good of you,’ I said.
‘Is there anything else?’
‘We have some questions for your domestic staff, but I may wish to talk to you further.’
A trace of something passed across her face and was gone in an instant.
I watched as she rose, stowed her rosary and walked slowly towards the door, and all the while I wondered what that look had meant.
TWENTY-TWO
The maid knew nothing. That was clear from the start. In our line of work you develop a feel for when someone’s lying to you, or at least has the wherewithal to lie to you. In this case, Neri, a peasant girl from some speck of a mud-hut village in the jungle to the south of Calcutta, just didn’t fit the bill, and when she pleaded to Surrender-not that the first she’d known of anything amiss was when her mistress came screaming down the stairs this morning, I was inclined to believe her.
She corroborated Mrs Dunlop’s account – said she’d offered to go up and call Dunlop for breakfast, but that her memsahib told her not to worry, that she’d go up herself.
The cook, a jolly woman with grey hair and several rolls of fat around her midriff, between her short Indian blouse and the sari tucked in at her waist, had also been helpful – in her own way at least, venturing great detail on her nightly routine and morning in the kitchen, all of which added the sum total of nothing to our inquiry.
That meant our only real source of information would be Mrs Dunlop. Her story of having taken a sleeping draught that had knocked her out seemed a tad too convenient. At the very least, there were other questions I wanted to ask her about her husband. There was no doubt in my mind that the three murders were linked. Two victims in twenty-four hours with identical wounds might conceivably be called a coincidence, but three in the space of as many days? That was too much.
Then there were the wounds themselves. The missing eyes; the stab marks to the chest – they had to be significant. Were they ritualistic? Bengal had once been home to the thuggees, supposedly a cult of Kali-worshipping robbers and murderers. Could these murders be the act of a religious fanatic?
The boys of the fingerprint department had arrived and were making themselves busy in the parlour and the bedroom, so after giving the rest of the house the once-over, along with Surrender-not, I decided to hold court in Dunlop’s study.
People leave their imprint on certain places. The parlour, with its chintz and embroidery, had clearly been Mrs Dunlop’s territory, but the study was the domain of the dead man.
It was a light, well-sized room, dominated by a solid-looking desk and a bookcase with fewer books that I might have expected of a scientist. Arranged on the walls, in the way a more athletic sort might display sporting trophies, were a plethora of certificates, diplomas and group photographs that Dunlop probably considered necessary to prove his self-worth.
On the desktop sat a few papers weighed down by a hefty greenmarble desk lighter, the sight of which made me want to try it out. Sitting down in the leather chair behind the desk, I fished out a Capstan
from my pack and pressed down on the heavy brass button atop the lighter, releasing the flame. Taking a puff, I pulled the sheaf of papers from under the makeshift paperweight and scanned them. The first was an invoice from a tailor in the Hogg Market dated 15 December and requesting a payment on account. The second, according to the letterhead, was typed correspondence from some department of the Royal Engineer Corps based in Porton, Wiltshire.
There was a knock at the door and Mrs Dunlop walked in, with Mondol two steps behind her. Her face was ashen, as though the life had been washed out of her, and suggested that the reality of her husband’s murder was beginning to sink in. I laid the papers down on the desk, placed my cigarette on the edge of a cut-glass ashtray and stood up.
Mondol handed Surrender-not a blue pill bottle which, from where I stood, looked half empty. Surrender-not gave him a nod and muttered something before the constable turned and left.
‘Mrs Dunlop,’ I said, gesturing to the chair. ‘Take a seat, please. I have a few more questions.’
Anthea Dunlop sat down and placed her hands in her lap. I scanned her face. Her eyes were puffed, but she’d reapplied whatever creams and powders she used to conceal her wrinkles and mask the channels that the tears had forged down her face.
‘How long have you been in Calcutta?’ I asked.
She thought for a moment. ‘It must be four years now,’ she said. ‘Alastair came out during the war and I joined him six months later.’
‘And what brought you to India in the first place?’
She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
‘The war,’ she said quietly. ‘Alastair was called up in 1915 – not as an enlisted man of course, he was far too old for that – but as a biologist, he had certain skills and expertise that the military required. He was posted to Calcutta towards the middle of 1917. He said they were researching a more effective response to malaria.’
‘So you came out in early ’18?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Why the delay?’
‘I wasn’t given any choice,’ she said in a tone that suggested she hadn’t really cared either way. ‘It was wartime. The army could hardly cater for the wives of officers and men accompanying their husbands all over the place. Besides, I had family in England.’
‘Your children?’
‘My daughter,’ she said. ‘We’d hoped to go home after the war, but Alastair was offered a position at the School of Tropical Medicine here to continue his research. The irony is we were finally preparing to go home, back to England next month.’
‘He’d completed his research here?’
‘It wasn’t that,’ she said. ‘The government requested his return.’
‘The government?’
‘The army at any rate. Alastair said they’d received funding for certain research. They wanted to employ him again.’
‘Funding for research into malaria?’ I asked.
‘That’s what he told me.’
There was something odd about that. Why would the military fund research into malaria? And why do it in England rather than here? After all, if there was one thing Calcutta wasn’t short of, it was malarial mosquitoes.
‘You’re sure?’ I asked.
A shadow passed over her face.
‘I can only tell you what my husband told me.’
She didn’t sound wholly convincing. Still, it was eminently plausible that Dunlop had told her he was going back to England to continue research into malaria when in fact the military had other plans for him.
Whatever the case, I wasn’t about to get clarity on the matter from Anthea Dunlop. Instead, I changed tack.
‘Why did you go to fetch your husband this morning instead of sending the maid?’ I asked.
The question caught her unawares.
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I think Neri was busy at the time.’
I looked over to Surrender-not who stood close to the door. He shook his head.
‘She says she offered to fetch your husband, but you told her not to and went yourself.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Mrs Dunlop. ‘I don’t recall, exactly.’
She reached into her pocket and drew out her rosary. She gripped the beads tightly, her fingers turning white with the effort.
‘Is there something you’re not telling us, Mrs Dunlop?’ I asked.
The question was met with silence.
Before I could ask anything more, there came the noise of a commotion downstairs. Loud voices were making their presence felt.
I turned to Surrender-not. ‘Find out what’s going on.’
He headed for the door and opened it to the sound of boots coming up the stairs and a moment later, Allenby, Dawson’s blond henchman from the previous night, and two rather large Sikh sepoys filled the doorway.
Grabbing him by the arm, one of them pushed Surrender-not face first up against a wall.
‘Let go of him,’ I shouted, rising from my seat.
Allenby looked at me as though I was something unpleasant that he’d had the misfortune to step in. Surrender-not’s arm was now twisted at an unnatural angle behind his back. As for his face, it was pushed into one of the framed photos that lined the wall.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again quite so soon, Wyndham,’ he said.
‘Unhand my officer or I’ll release him myself.’
Allenby turned to his man. ‘Let him go.’
The Sikh released his grip and Surrender-not let out a breath, before turning and nursing his injured arm.
‘What do you want, Allenby?’ I asked.
‘This investigation has been placed under the aegis of Section H,’ he replied. ‘It’s no longer a police matter. You and your officers are to leave immediately.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘Do you really need to ask?’ he sneered. ‘Look, Wyndham, I’ve got my orders.’
‘As do I,’ I said. ‘I was about to arrest this woman.’ It was a lie, but made in the furtherance of a good cause.
Allenby glanced at Mrs Dunlop. ‘You’re arresting no one, Wyndham.’
I took a moment to assess the situation. Three of them to two of us. God knew where Mondol was, but I doubted he’d be much good in a fight. Not that we were going to fight Allenby and his goons. That was unthinkable. They were British military officers after all, not to mention that the two Sikhs were built like bulls. I caught sight of Surrender-not and for a moment it seemed he was preparing to go another round with the sepoy that had manhandled him. He could be impetuous, but I didn’t think he was suicidal.
Allenby turned to his men. ‘See these gentlemen out.’
Before they could advance, Surrender-not gave a yell and rushed at the one who’d almost dislocated his arm. It was quite a sight – like a one-man charge of the Light Brigade – and with similar results. He barrelled into the man, I guess hoping to knock him off his feet, but managed merely to bounce off him. The Sikh stared at him, as though unable to quite believe what the little Bengali had just done, and to be fair, I was having trouble believing it myself. For his part, Surrender-not looked like he’d just run head first into a wall. The Sikh regained his wits first and lashed out with a fist the size of a ham hock, sending Surrender-not flying. He landed hard against the wall, before crashing to the floor alongside several of the framed photographs and certificates. The Sikh followed up with a boot to the ribs. Surrender-not doubled over in pain. I stepped between them before the Sikh could do any more damage.
Allenby too barked an order, calling off his attack dog.
‘Get out of here, Wyndham,’ he said, ‘before I have you both arrested.’
Surrender-not was having trouble finding his feet. He scrabbled around slowly among the shards of glass from the shattered frames, as though gathering bits of himself that might have broken and fallen off. I turned and helped him to his feet, and, as he kept one hand held to his ribs, guided him gently towards the door and do
wn the stairs. Out on the street and still holding his side, he walked gingerly towards the car. The driver ran round and opened the door. Surrender-not winced as he climbed in.
‘Well, that was interesting,’ I said as I got in beside him. ‘You do know he could have killed you.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sure he was beginning to tire, sir.’
‘Marks for effort though. How are the ribs?’
Surrender-not looked down at his chest, then broke out into a broad smile.
‘Fine,’ he said, unbuttoning his jacket.
As he did so, something glinted in the light. From beneath it, he slowly drew out a crumpled photograph a little smaller than a sheet of paper.
I looked at him. ‘What’s that?’
‘One of the photographs from Dunlop’s wall. I noticed something when that goonda had me pinned against it. We really ought to thank him …’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What did you notice?’
He passed me the print. ‘See for yourself.’
I took it and examined it closely. It was another of those group shots, of military men lined up outside a building which looked vaguely familiar. Some standing, the important ones sitting on chairs and a group of natives waiting in the wings. I recognised the building. It was the military hospital at Barrackpore. I stared at the faces, and then I suddenly saw what Surrender-not had. In the centre of the photograph, on a couple of wicker chairs, sat Dunlop and the director of the hospital, Colonel McGuire. Behind them stood a group, including two British officers with white doctor’s coats draped over their uniforms. But what really struck me was one of the natives standing on the extreme right of the photograph. A shiver ran down my spine as I saw the face of Ruth Fernandes staring out at me.
TWENTY-THREE
‘Bloody hell …’ I said.
‘Now you see why I had to get that photo without Allenby and his men realising,’ said Surrender-not. He dabbed at his burst lip with a handkerchief.
‘I’m beginning to appreciate that,’ I said. ‘Still, I’d have felt bad if that Sikh had killed you.’
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