by Nev March
“Bao-di. This house is heaven.”
I smiled at that silliness, then remembered I’d meant to ask about her anklets.
“Who gave you the payals?”
“Diana Memsahib and Maji Memsahib. They are so kind!” So her name for Mrs. Framji was Mother-Lady. When I sent the Framji ladies a grateful look, Diana seemed surprised.
Overcome, Chutki got up and left without a word.
Returning to my task, I said to Adi, “Sir, about the Havildar—the clock tower guard. I’d like to try him again tomorrow. Would you interpret for me?”
He agreed. Arrangements made, I took my leave. The Framjis needed time to absorb what I’d said. After all these months, perhaps it brought back those awful days, the questions. I wished I had more answers for them.
Seeing me to the door, Diana said, “Jim?”
Our quarrel ached under my skin, a wound, scabbed over but painful still. Keeping carefully neutral, I turned. “Miss?”
“Won’t you forgive me? I didn’t know it would hurt you like that.”
Coming up behind her, Adi broke in, “Diana? What’s happened?”
While Diana looked away, perplexed, I said, “A misunderstanding. Nothing of import.”
Adi frowned, looking from me to Diana’s pallor. He said, “No more secrets. What is it?”
“Miss Diana was concerned for Chutki’s welfare.” I glanced at Diana. “She was safe in my care. Miss, I do not know what she suffered before that.”
Diana said, “Seems she’s settled in.”
As I left, Adi said, “Diana, that’s not the whole story, is it? Let’s have it.”
* * *
The next day, sitting in the Framjis’ new Gharry carriage next to Adi, her chin at a resolute angle, Diana repeated, “So it’s agreed? You’ll stay out of sight until we call you?”
Still reluctant to let them enter the clock tower without me, I nodded.
Trees rustled. A minivet tweeted to his mate, “Sweet, si-sweet!” In the tower vestibule the Havildar napped, mouth slack, on his three-legged stool.
We needed to know what the Havildar had seen, the day Lady Bacha and Miss Pilloo died. Since my presence terrified him the last time I was at the tower, the siblings proposed to interview him without me. The gallery offered a private space. I could listen, unobserved, from inside the tower door.
Adi clenched his hands, looking acutely uncomfortable.
“Will you be all right?” Diana asked, eyeing his strained face.
“Yes, of course. Don’t mind me.” His lips in a determined cast, he stepped from the carriage, scanned his surroundings, then handed Diana down. As they approached the tower vestibule, the Havildar scrambled upright.
Holding back for five minutes as agreed, I watched as they followed him into the tower’s narrow mouth. Three sets of footsteps clinked upon metal stairs, ascending to where the Framji ladies had spent their last moments.
High above, the tower clock marked time slowly, as dispassionate as when the ladies had stood there. What terror did they face? Had they fought for their lives? As I started upward, the very stones seemed to cry out a warning. Damn foolishness, I knew, but I was wound tight with dread. Stepping quietly, it was a long climb to the gallery.
The wooden door was ajar, bright sunlight glittering through the gap. The Framjis were questioning the guard. Pressed against the wall, I strained to hear.
In Hindustani, Diana asked, “You unlocked this door for the Framji girls. You’re sure?”
Farther from the door, a faint voice replied, “Yes, Memsahib.”
“So was there anyone here before them?”
“No, Memsahib. Cannot be. Door locked.”
“Did you pass anyone on the way down?”
I admired her methodical approach. When the fellow did not reply, she repeated her question.
The Havildar protested, “Why ask this now? It was long ago, no? How can I remember?”
Diana prompted him again, but he’d got his wind up, and wouldn’t budge.
She said in English, “Adi, he knows something.”
“Now, Captain,” called Adi, so I stepped into the sunlight.
Seeing me, the Havildar let out a shriek and dropped to his knees, cowering. “No, Sahib! I swear, I said nothing,” he blubbered.
Why did he fear me? I’d met him only once before and he had cringed away just so.
“Why are you afraid?” I asked in Hindustani.
The Havildar raised his head and squinted. “Hai! Cap-tan Sahib! It is you.”
Interesting. He knew me, but only after I spoke. The blighter was acutely nearsighted!
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
Reassured by my manner, he said, “I saw you last time. People at the library told me your name.” He clasped his hands together in contrition.
“Why did you cry out just now?”
“Because he looks like you, Sahib!” he cried, then clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Who?”
He wrung his hands, weeping. “He held me over the wall, Sahib. If I tell anyone, he will come back and drop me. What can a poor person do?”
“Who is he?”
“Sahib, he will kill me.”
“He’s tall, like me?”
The Havildar nodded.
“Seth Akbar?”
“Hei Bhagvan!” the guard prayed, covering his face. Yes.
“Was he here, when the Framji women died?”
He moaned, “He was here. But I can say nothing, Sahib!”
That made two witnesses now, neither willing to identify Akbar to the police. Maneck feared Akbar had the means to irreparably damage the Framjis. The Havildar was terrified of Akbar. It wasn’t enough for me to prove my case with Superintendent McIntyre. Even if he believed me, we’d need material proof. If only I could find Mrs. Enty!
Returning through the gallery door, I noticed the small passage leading upward to the carillon in the bell-room. On a chance, I entered it. Stone walls angled sharply. The octagonal turret was narrower, so my shoulder brushed the wall. It was dark—I wished I’d left the gallery door open for some light!
Sweating, I trudged twenty steps up, then my outstretched fingers touched a sheet of cold metal. I found the latch and tried it, to no avail. God, it was tight here.
The cleverly engineered carillon played each quarter hour. If Akbar had the key, was this where he’d lain awaiting his prey, the women arriving on the gallery? Had he also secreted himself here afterwards, until it was safe to leave?
Leaving Adi and Diana to ride home in the carriage, I went to the constabulary to apprise Superintendent McIntyre of my progress.
Pieces of this devious business were falling into place, but the gaps in my theory did not please McIntyre. Lips tight, he said, “Spit it out, man!”
I asked instead, “Can you get me into Ranjpoot?”
“What the devil for?” he growled, fierce eyebrows peaked.
“I’ve connected Akbar and Behg with the ladies’ deaths, but since neither the Havildar nor Maneck will give evidence against them, I’ve no proof! Thought I’d poke around Ranjpoot and learn what Akbar’s about.”
“Just how d’you connect him to the murders?”
After repeating my conversations with Maneck and the Havildar, I placed my paper with the single white bead upon the table. “This one’s from the gallery.”
McIntyre grunted, shook his head. “We found a dozen of those on the gallery floor. Doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Apte, the librarian, saw a man arguing with Miss Bacha a few days before her death. Fellow wore a green embroidered jacket.”
“Circumstantial. Could be anyone, any jacket.”
“But if I found a garment with beads missing, would that help?”
McIntyre’s eyebrows shot up. “Plan to search his wardrobe?”
“Something like that. And I think he’s abducted Enty’s wife. She may be in Ranjpoot.”
He reared back. “Enty’s wi
fe? Francis Enty, the clerk?”
I nodded. “He told me she was in Poona with her sister. But take a look at this.” I pulled out Enty’s crumpled note.
McIntyre smoothed out the creases and read. “She’s not in Poona,” he said, grim. “Enty wrote to the Governor’s office. Did you know? Complained about you.”
“Seems he’s being pressured.”
“Hmph,” he grunted, taking out his pipe. “So three witnesses, perhaps. Maneck, the Havildar, and Enty, the clerk. All right. I’ll get you an invitation.”
But I had another problem—I could not go as myself, nor as Rashid Khan the Pathan.
“Could you invite Father Thomas Watson, a missionary, instead?”
Eyebrows knotted, he asked, “Who the devil is that?”
“Doesn’t exist. But I’ll travel under his name. Safer, don’t you think?”
“Ha!” McIntyre barked a laugh, then sobered. “Have a care, lad. Ranjpoot is not a British protectorate, so we have little say there. The British Resident cannot compel anyone, you understand? When we want something, we have to wait until the Rani needs something from us.”
I understood. If I were taken prisoner in Ranjpoot, there would be no rescue.
CHAPTER 46
REVISITING POONA
Shortly thereafter, wearing plain-glass spectacles and the missionary’s black cassock purchased at the thieves’ market, I boarded a train for Ranjpoot. The spectacles gave me a curiously scholarly appearance. With these and a new goatee, I resembled old Father Thomas, who’d raised me at the Mission in Poona. I suppose I’d planned to impersonate him from the moment I’d seen the cassock in Chor bazaar.
As I waited for the locomotive, I scanned Diana’s notes from the dance, tracing her neat, strong handwriting, hoping to devise a plan. I would be a guest of the Resident, representative of the British Raj, courtesy of a well-placed telephone call by Superintendent McIntyre. My invitation extended for a week. I knew Akbar and Behg had blackmailed the Framji ladies, and suspected they’d abducted Mrs. Enty. Now I needed proof, but that posed a problem: Akbar was a bloody prince, and I had just seven days to find evidence of his crimes.
My train would stop tonight at Poona. I remembered a white stone church standing over a grassy slope. Did Father Thomas still run the orphanage? If so, he’d be very old. Would he know anything of my mother? She’d left me with a curious name: James clearly indicated my father was English. But my last name was that of a respectable Brahmin family. Why give me her name? Was it so one day I could find her?
The train arrived, the metallic grind of its brakes like knives being sharpened.
Amid the bustle I boarded with my trunk, thrust it under the seat and dropped into a second-class chair, spare and wood-planked, without cushion or embellishment. The train filled, teeming with hawkers selling newspapers and coconuts, mangoes and chikki—peanuts and sesame seeds candied together with jaggery. Awaiting the station master’s whistle, I ran a finger under the cleric’s collar, tight around my throat. Despite the hot dust blasting through open windows, my billowy cassock was comfortable, but my goatee itched interminably.
Father Thomas’s kind blue eyes came to mind. Perhaps he would lend me a Bible. A cleric should have one, I thought, spirits rising at the prospect of seeing him again. But fifteen years had passed. The old priest could be dead.
* * *
I rode a tonga from Poona Station to Coolwar, passing an enormous construction on my right. “What’s that?” I asked the tonga-wala. My Hindustani had a clipped accent that sounded like Father Thomas.
“The new Aga Khan Palace, Sahib. Marble comes to Bombay on great ships! Three thousand people work here.”
The Aga Khan was leader of the Khoja sect of Mohammedans. Mostly trading families, they controlled vast holdings in both Bombay and Sind provinces. Known for being secretive and insular, they had their own religious courts and laws. According to police records, Saapir Behg was a Khoja, as well as Akbar and the royal family of Ranjpoot.
The old Mission was smaller than I remembered, a low building appended to a small church, now roped with creepers of sweet-smelling clematis. A crooked lapacho tree spilled pink blooms over the path. Dogs loitered in the yard as I paid the tonga-wala and descended. The bell at the gate rang in the distance, bringing memories of following other ragged boys into a schoolroom, sitting cross-legged and listening to stories when we were supposed to be punished.
A soft voice broke into my reminiscences. “Father? We didn’t know you were coming.”
The nun at the gate was no older than Chutki. Being called “Father” sent a guilty twinge down my spine. Curious. I’d had no qualms about my other guises. I’d have to get accustomed to this and other expectations of a priest, because it was Father Thomas Watson who was expected at the Resident’s House in Ranjpoot.
“Please forgive this intrusion,” I said. “Is Father Thomas at worship?”
Shaking her head, she opened a door set inside the gate. “He cannot leave his room anymore, Father, but he likes company. Are you an old friend?”
“I am,” I said, and gave her my name.
So Father Thomas was alive! The rush of my joy took me by surprise as I stooped through the opening and followed her. She led me through a white-limed corridor, austere except for blocks of yellow sunlight upon the tiled floor. Pausing at a wooden door, the little nun asked, “Father, will you stay the night? I’ll ask Mother Superior if a bed can be spared.”
When I accepted gratefully, she tapped on the door. “Father Thomas?”
A weak voice replied.
“He’s awake,” she said, and left.
My old friend lay in a monk’s cell, just six feet across, bare, save for a bed, chair and small table. Two clothes pegs studded one whitewashed wall. A crucifix adorned the other.
“Do I know you?” The old priest, propped up against a pillow, raised a feeble hand, beckoning. I recognized his sharp blue eyes, eyes that missed little, even now. Lines at the corners curved down sunken cheeks. His hair, once dark and unruly, had receded over a shiny domed forehead; what was left was cropped close.
“Yes, you do.” I took his hand and was pulled close by a surprisingly strong grip.
Peering into my face, his own creased into a hundred crinkles. “James!”
Here was the friend of my childhood, once tall and energetic, now the size of a child.
“Father Thomas.” His fingers felt as fragile as a small bird.
“I wondered … why it’s taking me … so long to die,” he breathed. “Now I know. Here you are. At last.”
My throat locked. “You remember me.”
“Sit down, my boy.” He chuckled, patted my hands that still held one of his, then looked surprised. “You were ordained? I cannot believe it.”
I moved the chair to face him, sat down and met those penetrating eyes. He deserved honesty, nothing less.
“This is temporary, a disguise. I’m on the hunt for a murderer.”
He absorbed that without surprise and wheezed, “How like you … to disarm one with the truth. And that”—he pointed to my cassock—“will help you find this man?”
“I hope so.”
“So why did you come?”
“I want to borrow a Bible. A cleric should have one, no?”
His blue eyes smiled. “That’s not why you’re here. You could buy one. From any bookstore. But here.” He dug under his pillow to hand me a worn book. “Take it … read it.”
The knot in my throat thickened. “I’ll bring it back.”
He waved that away. “There’s more to being a priest than looking the part. You could have taken orders … at seminary, if you stayed. But I knew you had a different path.”
He lay back, closing his eyes. I watched his face in repose, its serenity seeping into me.
He asked, “Do you remember the evenings you read to me? Nelson and Virgil, Shakespeare and Dickens.”
“Happiest days of my childhood.”
He chuckled. “You were punished … for fighting.”
That too I remembered. Being tripped, jabbed as I went by. I never asked why, just returned the favor. Was I the only mixed-race boy? I did not think so.
“You were taller than most. Worse, you learned quickly. The others were jealous,” said the old priest, reading my stillness.
“I didn’t know.”
“When you … left, James, I searched for you. A milkman saw you in the army camp. I came to the barracks.”
Father Thomas had come to the cantonment? “You found me there?”
He nodded, moistened his lips to speak. “I did. Saw you in a stable. Filthy, but you looked intact. Someone called you and you swung up on the horse. So easy, effortless. Tsch-tsch you told the horse and trotted off. It was … poetry. So, I left you there.”
I grimaced, thinking of my old friend walking across town to seek his runaway, only to return without speaking to me. Now I wished he had. I wished I’d said goodbye, left with his blessing rather than in the darkness before lauds.
“James, I waited for you all these years,” he whispered, “to give you something. The box under my bed, open it.”
His wooden trunk slid out easily. He directed me to a small bundle inside.
“It was left by your mother, poor girl.”
I stared at him and knew: this was why I’d come.
“Open it.”
I unwrapped yellowing linen to reveal a gold pocket watch, scratched and worn with use. On the back was inscribed the name I. Agnihotri.
“It was her father’s,” said the old priest. “He was dead. Your mother was … in a delicate way when she came to us … and with consumption. She died when you were two.”
That’s why I remembered only her touch on my face, and the scent of her, jasmine and incense. “What was her name?”
“Shanti,” said Father Thomas. Peace. A simple name.
I ran a finger over the inscription. “And my father? Did she ever say his name?” I questioned, my voice brittle.
“My boy, I never asked.”
CHAPTER 47
NEW ALLIES