by Ellis Peters
‘It would seem,’ said the Sikh policeman, summing up with a good deal of shrewdness, ‘that this young lady is the child not merely of one very wealthy person, but of two almost equally subject to envy. If, as you say, she has indeed been kidnapped, the motive must be gain. There is almost no other known motive for kidnapping, unless the object is matrimony. For love, of course! One understands that gain may also be involved in matrimony, but that is by the way. Then the first question that arises is: how many people, here in India, knew that Miss Kumar is worth much money as ransom? All of the members of this film company, that is certain. Most are Indians, they would know that the Kumar family are millionaires. The others, the Americans, even if they were not so well informed about the Kumars, would know that the mother is famous and rich.’
‘They’d know more than that,’ said Dominic bluntly. ‘American film actresses don’t usually marry poor Indians.’
‘That is well observed. Money, Mr Felse, is inclined always to money, there is an affinity. So we have all the film company. And who besides? Your household, Mr Kumar, I think could hardly be ignorant of the young lady’s value, after her visit to Mrs Kumar’s death-bed. News is very quick to travel among servants, and you have many servants. Then also, let us not forget, this house-boy here, Kishan Singh, is not an idiot, and Miss Kumar had expressly revealed her identity to him…’
‘After I had already done so,’ said Dominic stoutly. Whatever happened, he could not imagine circumstances in which he would suspect Kishan Singh.
‘Very naturally. The fact remains, he was, by your account, the first after the film company to know of Miss Kumar’s value. But when we have said that, let us not be misled, we have not closed the number of our suspects. Film stars are news. For all we know there may have been paragraphs in the papers about Miss Kumar’s arrival in India. It would need only one observant person on the same flight. And once here, interested eyes may have observed your visit to Mrs Kumar’s villa. Also here.’
‘That lets nearly everybody in,’ admitted Dominic glumly.
‘Nevertheless, those with close personal knowledge – priority knowledge, one could say – must take precedence. Leave it to us, we shall investigate every person concerned. There remains the possibility that Miss Kumar is at liberty, and for her own reasons in hiding. This we can surely confide to you, Mr Kumar. Miss Kumar, I understand, is not familiar with Hindi. But a personal advertisement in the English-language press would be, I suggest, a good idea? She may very well read the papers! She will be unable to resist looking to see what they say about her! ’
Vasudev seized on it as on a lifeline in a very rough sea. Practicalities were his line. He was out of his chair in an ecstasy of enthusiasm, looking at his watch.
‘I shall see to it at once. There is the evening press… if you will pardon me, it would not be too late… But my guests… is it possible to arrange transport wherever they may wish…? Or perhaps I could return a little later…?’
‘It’s quite all right, thank you very much,’ said Tossa. ‘There’s a taxi rank just on the main road.’
‘Then if you will excuse me…! Please do get in touch if you should have any news, and naturally I will do the same. Your servant, Miss Barber!’
He had a small leather-bound notebook in his left hand as he galloped out of the room, and a ball-pen in his right, so anxious was he to get his come-home-all-is-forgiven advertisement framed for the evening papers. And it might be genuine, and it might not, and who could hope to tell the difference? The Sikh officer, perhaps. He stood at the window, frowning down towards the dusty frontage, until the Mercedes had started up and rushed away with aplomb in the direction of the main Delhi road. But by the sombre look on his face as he turned back into the room, he had come to no very definite conclusion about Vasudev. Nor, perhaps, about them? After all, if Anjli was a prize, who knew her worth better than they did, and who had been in a better position to manipulate her movements?
‘Now, Mr Felse, a few more questions.’ They turned out to be more than a few. Had he, had Tossa, ever previously been in contact with any of the Kumar family? What did they know of them? It was clear why Vasudev had been sidetracked out of the picture for the moment. Patiently they went over and over their very brief acquaintance with the Kumars, withholding nothing.
Had they had any undisclosed communication with Kishan Singh? They did realise that even if some other person with more sophisticated ideas conceived the plan of kidnapping Anjli and holding her to ransom, yet Kishan Singh was the obvious tool to use?
‘He’s the last tool I should use,’ said Dominic with conviction, ‘for anything dirty.’
‘An innocent face may be a gift from God even to the unworthy. But we were not – or did I not make that too clear? – speaking necessarily of you. Kishan Singh may even have conceived the plan himself after witnessing — you did say he witnessed it? – the scene between the young lady and the old man. How easy to send her the symbol and ask her to come here! About that I am sure you are right. She may, as it were, have originated the whole plot herself in that impulsive act.’
And had they anything to add to their account? Any forgotten detail? Dominic, by this time, had remembered that he had not mentioned hearing, or thinking he heard, Ashok’s morning raga whistled the previous night in the courtyard of Keen’s Hotel, at the very time when the note was being delivered to Anjli; but he had seen enough of the way the land lay to keep that item to himself now. The issue was confused enough already, why introduce into it what he might well have imagined, and what would certainly smell like a red herring to this suspicious person interrogating him?
‘Very well, let us leave it at that for the moment. You will be available, please, at Keen’s Hotel, you will not move from Delhi at present.’
‘We are not going anywhere,’ said Dominic steadily, ‘until Anjli is found. And I hope you are not thinking of detaining Kishan Singh, because he, too, will be available whenever you need him. He won’t leave here unless the Kumar family tell him to, and a word from you will take care of that.’
‘You are very concerned for the house-boy, Mr Felse. It is generous on your part – and interesting.’
‘I am concerned because he is young, alone here – his mistress, as you must know, is recently dead, and his family in the hills – and quite certainly totally innocent. You have only to look at him. He has never in his life entertained a malicious thought, much less deliberately hurt anyone. Arjun Baba was as sacred to him as the sparrows that fly in and out of the house. The boy was responsible for him to Mrs Kumar, whom he revered absolutely…’
‘And who, as you have pointed out, is dead. One person’s death may bring about a total disintegration for her dependents…’
They were raising their voices, both of them, and that made Tossa aware, quite suddenly, in what low tones they had been conversing for several minutes past. She pricked up her ears, and leaned upon a wall of noise that was not there, and fell through it into full consciousness. The din from the yard, that flat, clattering chaos of voices one gets used to in India, aggravated here by excitement to a sustained pandemonium, had almost completely ceased. When, she had no idea. Simply, it was gone. She reared her head, straining after it, and recaptured only a gentle, single murmur, unbelievably placid and reassuring.
‘Listen!’ she said peremptorily; and in sheer surprise they fell silent, too. ‘It’s gone quiet. What’s happened?’
The wonderful hush fell on them and charmed them into stillness. And stillness and silence, in Delhi, represent a new and more menacing crisis. The Sikh officer wheeled and strode to the window, with Dominic and Tossa pressing discreetly on his heels. They stared down into the yard together, forgetting all disagreements; for in their own way they were all the forces of law, and law had not sufficed to bring about silence and stillness in the confines of N 305, Rabindar Nagar, in the teeth of suspicion and disorder.
Drawn up in front of the gate stood an extraordinary car. Onl
y a Rolls-Royce, perhaps, could have driven up so quietly as to be unnoticed. It was certainly an extremely antique Rolls-Royce, not at all well-maintained as far as its noble chassis was concerned, though apparently mechanically in first-class condition. Orissan children swarmed about it with absorption and delight, and were fended off good-humouredly, when necessary, by a long, slender, crop-haired driver in khaki shorts and bush jacket, who lounged at ease on the running-board. The women at the gate had stopped yelling, and stood decorously in a staged group, expressive of grief and modesty and respect, all facing inwards towards where Arjun Baba’s little wasted corpse lay uncomplainingly exposed. Beside the body stood a personage as remarkable, in his unassuming way, as his car, and for all his venerable appearance no more than half as old again. Put the man down as rising sixty, the car as around forty, and you wouldn’t be far out. Neither showed its age except in non-essentials. It was perhaps incipient baldness which had induced the man to shave his subtle and exquisitely-shaped crown, and climatic, seasonal rust which had suggested the removal of the world-famous radiator cap, and the substitution of a small brass knob from a bedstead; but both were spry, agile, in full working order, and would take some catching when in the mood.
The man was not even tall; he didn’t have to stoop to lay an arm about Kishan Singh’s shoulders, and Kishan Singh was squat and square. Nevertheless, the impression of lofty height was there, dominating everyone within sight. It may have been the erect and aloof carriage, it may have been the slight withdrawal of the naked, golden, ascetic head on its slender neck, the poised effect of a stylised bronze which withdrew him into the field of art. It certainly was not innocent, but equally certainly it was not posed. He knew what he was, and employed it fully for his own inscrutable ends; and what mattered was what dictated the ends. He had a gentle bronze face, thin of feature and disarming of expression, live dark eyes moving modestly within the sculptured head, fleshless bones as serene as weathered mountains, and a benevolent smile like the antique stone smile of Angkor, at once calming and shattering. He wore a robe of saffron cloth that fell in chiselled folds to his ankles, and over it a knitted shawl draping his shoulders. His feet looked like bronze skeleton feet in the worn leather sandals. He had his arm round Kishan Singh’s shoulders; the aura of his protection encompassed the boy in an almost visible glory. The two policemen hovering in the fringes of his influence looked now like attendant figures in a religious picture.
What was most humbling of all, the dominant figure sensed the presence of the watchers at the window above, within a minute of their gathering there, and with a gesture of his hand most courteously invited them to descend and rejoin the tableau.
Which, for want of a more appropriate response, they forthwith did.
VII
« ^ »
You must forgive us,’ said the newcomer, ‘for so inopportune an arrival. We had no idea that we should be intruding upon a problem and a tragedy. My name is Premanathanand. I am one of the members of the Native Indian Agricultural Missions, and I came here today to visit the home of my old friend Satyavan Kumar. I have been away on field studies among our settlements until recently, and for some time have had no opportunity of seeing him, and it is a friendship I value. But these ladies tell me – and the house-boy here – a good boy, I knew him in Mrs Kumar’s household in Kangra – that Mr Kumar is not here at present. Also that there is a matter of the young girl, his daughter, who has vanished from the care of her guardians.’ That, of course, must have come from Kishan Singh, who had been the only one of these people close enough to overhear what had passed between Dominic and the police officer before they went into the house, and who would tell everything without reserve to a man he trusted. In which case, Dominic thought, he would also have told him that Satyavan had been gone more than a year, and no one, not even his own mother, had known where he was, and no one knew now. That made this already interesting person even more interesting, since he had glided so gently over Satyavan’s absence, as though he had merely gone away for the weekend.
And it was, now that he came to study it at close quarters and somewhat below the level of his own, an extraordinarily ambiguous face, at once candid and withdrawn, giving and reserving, just as his smile both comforted and disquieted. Every detail you looked at was as ordinary as the dusty soil of Delhi; the saffron robe, if you observed it closely, was worn, a little faded, and frayed at the hem, the brown knitted shawl round his shoulders had a stitch worn through here and there; his hands were sinewy and broad-jointed and used to hard work; the spectacles on his thin, straight nose were steel-rimmed and had battered wire ear-pieces, and one lens was thicker than the other, so that they tended to sit askew, and the eye seen through the thick lens was startlingly magnified. Yet the sum of the parts was so much more than the whole that accurate observation was disarmed. His voice, mild, clear and low, held the same ambivalence as his appearance; its serenity had a calming effect, but it left disturbing echoes behind in the mind, like the still, small voice of conscience.
‘It is not for me,’ he said courteously, smiling at the police officer, ‘to ask questions in what must seem no affair of mine. Though as a friend of the child’s father, I cannot but be concerned for her safety.’
And, perhaps it was not for him to ask, but he had made it clear that he would like to be told, and the Sikh officer told him. The large-lidded, intelligent brown eyes proceeded from one face to another, acknowledging the characters in the drama, smiling benignly upon Tossa and Dominic, brooding impassively over the small dead body now covered with a white sheet from the sun and the stares.
‘It would seem,’ he said at length, ‘that someone who knew of Miss Kumar’s gift and request to Arjun Baba conceived the idea of making use of that incident to lure her here, so that she might be abducted. It was necessary to the scheme that Arjun Baba should be removed both to get possession of the token, and also so that someone else could take his place, and wait here for the girl. It seems, therefore – do you not agree? – that though we have here two crimes, we have but one criminal.’
‘That is my conclusion also, Swami,’ said the Sikh respectfully.
‘It would therefore be well, would it not, to concentrate on solving the crime which affords the best possibility, first, of salvaging something from the harm intended, and, second, of affording a sporting chance of arresting the criminal.’ His varied and surprising vocabulary he used with the lingual dexterity of a publicist, but with the absent serenity of one conversing with himself. ‘Arjun Baba here is dead and cannot be saved. But the girl is alive and must be kept alive to be worth money, and therefore she can be saved if we are circumspect. And upon the second count – he who killed Arjun Baba has now no interest but to remove himself from here and hide himself utterly. But he who has taken the child must make overtures, in order to gain by his act, which was his whole object in taking her. Therefore he must make the first approach, and in making it may reveal himself.’
‘Exactly, Swami. And therefore it is clear that we must concentrate on the kidnapping of the girl, and we shall thereby also find our murderer.’
‘You are excellently lucid, Inspector,’ said the Swami with admiration and relief. ‘You make everything clear to me. You would conclude also, if I follow you correctly, that since the father is not here and knows nothing of this crime, there are now two possibilities: either the criminal knows where to find him, and will approach him directly; or he does not know, and will therefore approach the equally plutocratic mother. Or, of course, her representatives.’ His benign but unequal gaze dwelt upon Tossa and Dominic, and returned guilelessly to the Sikh Inspector of Police. ‘I am glad that so serious a case has fallen into the hands of such an intelligent officer. If there should be any way in which I can help, call upon me. You know where our Delhi office is situated?’
‘I know, Swami. Everyone knows.’
‘Good! Whatever I can do for Satyavan and his daughter I will do. And this boy may be left in charge
of this house? It would be well, and I will vouch for him, that he will be here whenever you wish to question him…’
‘I had no thought of removing him from his trust, Swami.’ And that might be true, or might be a gesture of compliance towards this respected and remarkable man; but Kishan Singh would welcome it, whatever its motive.
‘Then I shall leave you to your labours. Ah, yes, there is one thing more. Arjun Baba has neither wife nor sons. When you release his body for the funeral rites, I beg you will give it into my charge.’
‘Swami, it shall be done as you wish.’
The Swami’s mild brown eyes lingered thoughtfully upon Tossa and Dominic. ‘I am sorry,’ he said civilly, ‘that you have suffered such a troubled introduction to this country of ours. If you are now returning to Delhi, may I offer you transport? There is plenty of room, if you do not mind sharing the back of the car with some grain samples we are carrying. And I should like, if you have time, to offer you coffee at the mission.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dominic, stunned into compliance like everyone else in sight, ‘we should be very grateful.’
The policemen, the women at the gate, even the Orissan bandit babes, fell into a sort of hypnotised guard of honour as the Swami Premanathanand walked mildly out of the compound of N 305, Rabindar Nagar, with the two English strangers at his heels. The long, languid driver rolled himself up nimbly from the running-board and opened the rear door for the guests, but no one was looking either at him or at them, all eyes were on the Swami. He had, perhaps, the gift of attracting attention when he chose, and diverting it when he chose. At the moment it suited him to be seen; perhaps in order that other things should pass unseen. He took his seat beside the impassive driver. The small grain sacks in the back were piled on the floor, and hardly embarrassed even the feet of the passengers. The Rolls, especially in its ancient forms, is made for living in. With pomp and circumstance they drove away, almost noiselessly, from the scene – they all thought of it now first and foremost as that – of Arjun Baba’s death.
