But where was Mr. Bernard and why had he disappeared without taking his money?
Charles found the answer soon enough. As he pulled down the jute sack to examine the body, he found the lifeless eyes of Bernard Knowles staring blankly at him.
3
Grave Robber's Message
Rattan Singh was wide awake when he heard the yelp of Charles Melcrose. He had just settled on his bed, insouciantly rubbing tobacco in his palm, when his room rung with his master’s sudden scream.
“Rattan, hurry down here, quick!”
Rattan Singh had known Charles Melcrose for the last three years, ever since the doctor had shifted to this bungalow in Rabitsnare, and it wasn’t often that the doctor shouted in this manner. He was a calm composed man with tranquility writ large across his face, few things, if any, bothered him enough to compel him to shout.
Something was wrong today.
The old man took a pinch of the tobacco and inhaled it deeply. He hadn’t been able to grind it finely and the thicker bits got stuck in his nostrils. Sneezing uncontrollably, he hurriedly put on a coat upon his cotton vest and dhoti, picked up his walking stick, and rushed out of his room.
Rattan Singh, the caretaker of the doctor’s bungalow, lived alone in a single room to the west of the house. Though it was only a few yards from his room to the basement office from where the sound seemed to have come, it took him a couple of minutes to make it there. His right leg was troubling him again. It had swollen and if he put even a little weight upon it, a wave of pain shook his old body. Rattan Singh had been in the East India Company Army for 30 years when he had wounded his right leg in the sepoy mutiny of 1857 which had forced him to retire and take up the life of a civilian. He had been the caretaker of the house ever since, long before Dr. Charles Melcrose had become its owner.
The door to the basement was ajar, and a curtain of yellow light spilled into the dark compound. Rattan Singh stepped inside the door and massaged his leg. A narrow staircase led down to the basement, and he could see the door at the landing blocked by a body.
Was the doctor hurt?
Rattan Singh hobbled down with as much haste as he could afford. But the body blocking the door was not of the doctor at all but another man. Charles Melcrose was inside, smoking a pipe, looking rather pale.
Rattan Singh stepped over the body and into the office.
“What happened, Sir?” he asked.
Charles Melcrose took a deep drag of the pipe then pointed it towards the body.
“Didn’t you see the man?” he said harshly. It was not the doctor’s habit to talk in such a manner to Rattan Singh, or in that case anyone else.
The master really was disturbed.
“But is it not one of your new specimens, sir?” Rattan Singh ventured. Charles Melcrose received a regular supply of dead bodies for his lectures at the university. There were more dead men in this house than living and corpses had long stopped disturbing the caretaker.
“Why don’t you look yourself, Rattan. That bloody body is not a specimen, till a week ago he was the supplier of specimens.”
Rattan Singh took up a lantern hanging from the wall and bent down to examine the body. He didn’t take long to recognize the man. Mr. Bernard Knowles had, for the past one year, been the exclusive supplier of cadavers to the Doctor. He worked in the Sophia Morgue, from where he supplied the bodies of executed criminals and unclaimed dead men and women to the doctor. The man was draped in a dirty coat which was torn at places. While his trousers and muddy shoes had soiled the basement floor to a degree that Mrs. Melcrose would lose her temper. His face was pale, eyes open, staring blankly towards the ceiling and there was a deep blue mark around his neck. From his experience in the army, Rattan Singh could tell that Mr. Knowles had been strangled to death.
Rattan Singh stood up and placed the lantern back on the hook on the wall.
“I see what disturbed you, sir,” he said in conclusion of his investigation, “It seems like Mr. Knowles had a rather unfortunate encounter.”
Charles kept the pipe on his work table and moved towards the body. The tobacco seemed to have accorded him some composure.
“Let me examine him,” he said putting on his wire-rimmed spectacles.
Rattan Singh gave way to the doctor, contemplating if he should borrow some tobacco from the doctor. He was feeling slightly queasy in the company of the dead body of a man he had seen so recently. But he decided against it. His military upbringing prohibited him from making an effort to share his senior’s personal tobacco. He merely took a sniff of his palm in the hope of capturing any tobacco residue left. There seemed to be none.
Dr. Melcrose had folded the sleeves of his shirt in preparation to strip the body and make a thorough examination when the sound of steps across the basement disturbed him. Cecilia Melcrose, the doctor’s wife, had made an appearance at the other door to the basement opposite to where the body lay.
“What’s the sudden commotion about?” asked Mrs. Melcrose walking towards her husband. She seemed to have seen the body and was staring at it, “I heard you shout.”
“Oh, nothing dear,” said Charles Melcrose, trying to cover the dead body from her wife’s eyes, “we just happened to receive an unexpected cadaver.”
But Mrs. Melcrose didn’t seem impressed. She walked past her husband to inspect the body.
“That is not a cadaver, Charles,” she said, her soft voice growing shrill, “I am quite sure I’ve seen that man before.”
“No dear, you are certainly mistaken,” said Charles taking his wife aside, “That is the latest specimen that we have received. Is that not so Rattan?”
“Ye…Yess Madam, that is true,” stuttered Rattan Singh but did not manage to convince his mistress.
“Do not mislead me, Charles,” she said trying to untie herself from her husband’s grasp and turning to cast a glance more at the dead body. Her face had lost all color and her hands were trembling slightly, “Oh my God, that man was in the house last month. I am sure of it. This morbid profession of yours Charles…”
Mrs. Melcrose suddenly lost her balance and fell back upon her husband, “Tell me the truth, Charles. Who is he?” she whispered so softly that Rattan Singh had trouble hearing it. She seemed to be on the verge of collapse. The sudden change in her condition startled her husband. Mrs. Melcrose was a frail woman susceptible to diseases and illnesses and survived on a daily dose of tinctures and potions prepared specially by her husband. A little exertion was enough to make her unwell.
“Don’t strain yourself, dear,” Charles Melcrose picked his diminutive wife in his arms and started towards the living room, “Let me take you to your room, I’ll tell you everything.”
Rattan Singh’s gaze followed his master take Mrs. Melcrose up the stairs and disappear past the door. The feeling of being alone with a dead body unsettled the old man and he shifted to a safe distance from the corpse, observing the basement office of the Doctor. Charles Melcrose spent most of his time in the house huddled inside this dark place with his dead bodies, organs, and shiny brass equipment.
The basement office was a long and damp space with a high ceiling from where dangled numerous oil lamps. The walls of the place, painted white, were riddled with small niches, some of which also held candles and lamps. Rattan Singh observed the office curiously. Charles Melcrose was very particular about his place of work. No one was allowed inside without his permission. When he went to the university, the place was locked shut, not even Mrs. Melcrose had access to it, while when he was inside, he disliked if anyone disturbed him. He cleaned the place himself every other week with the help of a servant boy on whom he kept a keen eye.
Huddled along the wall, close to the door from the living room, was a long wooden table which was laden with piles of books, loose papers, and other stationery. A few yards behind that was another table, this time of brass, where the doctor dissected his bodies. To the right of the dissection table were three long stone basins filled wi
th brine, where cadavers were stored before dissection.
There was also a huge wooden rack in the room that extended the entire length of the eastern wall and was laden with jars and glass containers filled with offensive anatomical specimens. Severed hands, ears, legs, as well as heart and brain and eyeballs, floated ominously in their glass cage of brine. There was also something that looked unmistakably like an ill-formed child.
Rattan Singh could look no more. His master was in a very tasteless profession and there was a valid reason why he did not let men inside. It was good that Mrs. Melcrose had not seen the row of jars or she would have fainted. Rattan Singh turned and moved towards the door, ready to exit the foreboding place but it was still blocked by the corpse. The old man felt trapped. He limped slowly towards the body intending to step over to the other side to wait for Mr. Melcrose upon the flight of stairs, but his interest was taken in by the body once more. Mr. Bernard Knowles’ right hand was clutched in a tight fist and something glinted from within the grasp of the fingers. He went over to the body to examine the fist. The fingers, unusually, were not stiff and with little trouble, he pulled the object out. It was a piece of paper, five inches in length, and two in height. Rattan Singh took it under the glow of the lamp to give it a study.
“Stop disturbing graves or else your secrets will no longer be yours.”
There was a shuffle of feet on the stairs and Charles Melcrose made his appearance. He seemed to have washed his face and had regained his usual composure.
“Shall we finish the examination of the body,” he said to Rattan Singh moving swiftly towards the corpse but the old man stopped him and handed him the slip of paper.
“I found this in his grasp, sir.”
Charles Melcrose underwent a visible change upon reading the slip of paper.
“Another note?” he mumbled. His face, which had regained color and calmness, catapulted back to distress.
“Get rid of the body,” said the doctor gravely to Rattan Singh, “Quick. Bury him in the same place we bury medical waste and don’t let anyone know about this. I’ll see what needs to be done in the morning.”
With this the doctor turned and stormed out of the basement, leaving Rattan Singh in the fearful company of a dead body, in a place which smelled like a grave.
4
The Aspiring Detective
A gust of wind blew through the open window of Messrs. Grington and Basse and ruffled the pages of a voluminous book perching in front of Maya. Her reverie broken, she gleamed with guilt upon the book – Civil Laws of Cardim Explained by Justice EM Crawford. The young woman had been trying to read the book for the past one hour but hadn’t managed to turn a single page. Her glance then wandered to the tall pile of account files lying behind the law book and Maya’s guilt increased several-fold. The files were one of the reasons that she was working late into the evening. Maya was a junior clerk in the firm, and she was still in the office because she hadn’t finished her day’s work. Mr. Grington, her boss and the owner of the firm, had come to her desk in the morning with a bundle of 11 account files which he had asked her to validate and place upon his desk before leaving office. The task wasn’t a lot for a day, but the truth was that Maya hadn’t even started. The files hadn’t been touched the whole day.
Maya had a valid reason for her lack of effort. She was too occupied with other stuff. Her mind was clogged with a grave question and there was no room for account books there. She suspected that Mr. Grington was having an affair outside of his marriage and that someone was blackmailing him over it.
The knowledge of the affair and the blackmail wasn’t in itself all that important to Maya, she wasn’t the type to promenade all over the office gossiping about her boss’s frolics (in any case her colleagues preferred not to socialize with her), but it was just the fact that she did not know who was blackmailing Mr. Grington which was the issue. Maya had trouble living with unanswered questions in her head.
It gave her an inexplicable itch. A painful prickle in her brain which was hard to ignore. And right now this was very problematic. Maya had a lot of work to do. The tall tower of files peering maleficently at her was just a portion of it. In fact, she had little intention of completing this work today at all. Maya’s real work was keeping ahead of her self-made schedule of becoming a competent detective. This entailed, according to The Handbook of the Aspiring Detective by Henry Camleman, learning four essential qualities - the power of observation, a knack of sound logical deduction, inexorable perseverance, and a sizeable bank of knowledge. While Maya was reasonably comfortable in the first three, it required a great deal of effort to build the latter. To develop a bank of knowledge of the proportion that the book demanded, Maya was supposed to learn everything, from Law to human anatomy, firearm ballistics, poisons and antidotes, and even Cardim’s map down to the details of the most inconspicuous streets and roads. It was a tough ask and she had not made it easy by planning to finish it all in three months. At the successful completion of the three months, she planned to approach the author of the Handbook and the chief of Bombay Detective Agency – Henry Camleman to take her on as a detective in his firm. She was in the second month of her schedule now, currently reading The Civil Laws of Cardim and had plans to memorize it completely by the end of the week, while the last 6 chapters of Criminal Psychology by Hober, which she was supposed to finish by the last week, were still pending. Right now, though, it seemed impossible for her to take her mind off the mystery of Mr. Grington’s affair and focus on anything else.
Maya ran through the facts once again.
Mr. Grington had asked her, two months ago, to book him a return train ticket to Bombay. Usually, his private secretary took care of his travel tickets and bills but since she was on a leave and Maya was the one with the least work, she had been roped in for the task. Gregory Grington had told her then that he was visiting Bombay for business purposes. It had taken little time for Maya to deduce that he was lying.
He had asked her to book a ticket for Thursday afternoon. The train would reach Bombay by evening the next day – Friday and the return was on Monday morning. She had never heard of business deals being concluded on Saturdays and Sundays. Further, upon his return, when Maya analyzed his bills for the trip, she had found no hotel bills. Mr. Grington had stayed three days in Cardim, but he had not booked any hotel. In fact, there were just two cab bills, one from the Railway Station to St. Andrews Street in Bombay and the other From St. Andrews to the Railway station. Mr. Grington had stayed somewhere in St. Andrews Street all the three days of his stay in Bombay. Maya had pilfered Mr. Grington’s personal address book and had found an address for St. Andrews in it. 226 St. Andrews Street, Bombay. The address was labeled just as F. She had then taken the trouble to visit the Bombay land registry office and had found that the house belonged to a woman called Floria.
It was clear, Mr. Grington had gone to Bombay to stay with his mistress, a woman named Floria.
Maya would have liked if the matter had ended there. She was satisfied with her work, she knew that her boss was having an affair. She didn’t intend to use the information in any way but it was just soothing to not have the mystery bother her anymore.
But the matter had taken one turn more. Two weeks ago, while carrying his daily posts to Mr. Grington, Maya had stumbled upon a strange envelope. It did not have Grington’s address written in ink but instead, alphabets cut out from a newspaper had been pasted to spell his name and office location. Mr. Grington had also been intrigued by the strange envelope and had opened it in front of Maya. If he had known what the envelope contained, he would have thought twice about it. As soon as he tore it open, a rose petal toppled on his table along with a letter. Maya had observed a look of recognition on Mr. Grington’s face when he saw the letter which soon turned to panic and he had sent Maya away from the room.
The mystery was still fresh on her mind when another letter in a similar envelop arrived the next day. Maya had sneaked a peek inside.
This time there was no letter only a note, written once again by assorting newspaper cutouts.
“I have more of your love letters in possession. Put 1000 Cowries on a black cab No. 232 in Cathedral Square in evening.”
Then the next week another letter had arrived. This time the writer hadn’t even bothered to mention the threat. Just the amount and place. By the time the third note arrived yesterday, Maya was already on the verge of a breakdown. She desperately wanted to find out who was sending these letters to Mr. Grington, but could not breach the matter to him for the fear of losing her job. She had no way to find out who this person was. He could be anyone under the sun.
Maya punched the table hard enough for the tower of account books to topple, and tried to force the mystery from her mind. If she had any hope to become an actual detective she needed to focus on the Cardim Civil Laws.
“Article number 234, Paragraph 4,” she read aloud trying to memorize the text, “If a person willfully defrauds another man and ….”
Why was the letter written by newspaper alphabets?
That was it! She had ignored a vital clue. The alphabets. Why had the blackmailer gone to the great trouble of cutting the newspapers to pen the letters? Obviously, he wanted to conceal his handwriting. The blackmailer was someone who knew Mr. Grington intimately and the old man would be able to recognize him by his handwriting. That could prove to be a major clue. The list of possible suspects was now greatly narrowed, if only she could access the letters once more to analyze them properly, she might find the exact person. The mystery would be resolved and she would be free to follow her 3-month plan to become a detective.
But the letter was in Mr. Grington’s possession. She looked at Mr. Grington’s locked cabin. There was still a possibility that it was inside, that he had not taken it home with him. In fact, if she thought about it, that seemed like the only logical possibility, why would he take anything which proved that he was cheating upon his wife to his home. It surely was inside this cabin.
The Anatomist (Maya Mystery Book 2) Page 2