by Ellis Peters
‘But why?’ insisted Felder. ‘I still don’t see the purpose of it.’
‘Oh, a very specific purpose. His job was to insist on seeing Anjli alive before more money was paid. For, you see, until then we had no means whatever of being sure that she had not been killed. Yes, yes, Mr Felder, you were horrified at that suggestion, I know, nevertheless it is common form in these cases. But when my good friend Malenkar played his scene, insisted on seeing with his own eyes – and incidentally with ours, too! – that she still lived, and when there was no demur, then we had a certain degree of security. A fairly substantial degree, in fact. Enough to make plans. For Satyavan, apparently a servant, and therefore virtually invisible, was free to observe and to act. On his behalf no one ever made any bargains. These are my reasons for acting as I did. Was it well done?’
‘Yes!’ said Dominic and Tossa together fervently. ‘Very well done!’
‘And that is why I could not let Mr Kabir come upstairs and join us here last night. I cannot say whether he actually knows Satyavan by sight, though I thought it a possibility. But I did know that he is very well acquainted with Malenkar, and would most probably have given the show away on the spot.’
‘To which one of us?’ Dominic asked very gently.
The Swami’s mild eyes sharpened upon him almost alarmingly, if there had not been in the brief, brilliant glance a suggestion of distinct approval.
‘Ah, I did not then know of the activities of Govind Das. I was still acting on the assumption that the director of the affair might be any one of you. It seems now that the whole thing was planned and carried out by this one man.’
‘A bad business,’ said Felder soberly.
‘As you say, a bad business. It turned out so for him.’
‘Small part actors don’t make much money. Probably here they don’t get too many parts, either. Or anywhere, for that matter, these days. I suppose seeing temptation trailed in front of his nose like that was too much for him – the daughter of a milllionaire and a film star, and only two students new to India taking care of her. It must have looked easy! Well, thank goodness it’s over! The poor wretch who planned and did it is dead. He’s paid. That’s the end of it.’
A long, communicated sigh went round the room, and subsided into a deep and thoughtful silence.
‘Except,’ said Anjli suddenly, erect and sombre by her father’s side, ‘if he did it all alone, why did Shantik say they’d told him not to hurt me? That’s what she said. Tomorrow you can ask her.’
A curious flutter of uneasiness stirred the air.
‘And if he did it all alone,’ Dominic said slowly, ‘then he must be a genius, to be able to come up with that scheme about lunch at Sawyers’ and a taxi to the sweet shop opposite, the very minute he was faced with having to arrange a way of letting us see Anjli. Now if he’d already been primed by somebody who knew what was going to happen…’
‘And what,’ wondered Tossa, ‘if he did do it all alone, what has he done with the money from the first payment we made at the Birla temple? Because you know what the police said – they haven’t found a trace of it at his house or in his sister-in-law’s quarters at the office.’
‘And if it wasn’t he who took the money from the briefcase,’ supplemented the Swami, warming to the theme, ‘then who was it? And where is it now? It would be so much more satisfactory, would it not, to recover it? Even film stars who do make a great deal of money should not be made the victims of extortion.’
‘They certainly shouldn’t,’ agreed Felder warmly. ‘I’ve still got to justify that to Dorrie, but at least she still has a daughter, thank God. It does seem a pity, but it hardly looks as if we’ll ever see that money again.’
‘Oh, do not lose heart,’ the Swami encouraged him benignly. ‘Perhaps, after all, there is still hope that the police may discover it somewhere.’
‘Well, if they do, presumably there may be some hope of deducing how it got there. Until then I’m afraid we haven’t much chance.’
And indeed it seemed that it was over, and that there was no longer anything to hold them all here together; yet no one made any move to go. It was almost as if they were waiting for something to happen which would release them and let them fly apart again into their proper orbits, Dominic and Tossa, tired, relieved and infinitely grateful, back to England, the Swami to the minute office from which he pulled so many valiant and unexpected strings in the life of unprivileged India, Krishan Malenkar and his Kamala to their well-guarded private life, Anjli wherever her new father led her, deeper and deeper into the complex soul of this sub-continent, Ashok back to the cosmic solitude where the great artists create their own companions, like self-generating gods; and Felder…
Someone rapped at the door, briskly, quietly and with absolute authority.
‘Come in! ’ called Dominic.
Inspector Kulbir Singh came in with aplomb. His black beard was tucked snugly into its retaining net, his moustache was immaculately waxed at the ends, which turned up in military fashion to touch his bold cheek-bones. In his hands – gloved hands – he held a large, fat bank envelope, linen-grained, biscuit-coloured. Every eye in the room fastened on it, and for an instant everyone held his breath.
‘Ladies… Swami… gentlemen, forgive this intrusion. There is a small matter of identification with which you can help me, if you will.’ He came forward with assurance, and laid the envelope upon the coffee table, drawing out delicately wad after wad of notes. ‘No, no, please do not touch. There is the question of finger prints. I would ask you only to look at this packet… you, Mr Felder, Mr Felse and Miss Barber. The total amount, you may take my word, is two hundred thousand rupees, as you see in notes of various values. It is contained in an envelope of the State Bank of India, issued at the branch here in Parliament Street. Their stamp bears last Saturday’s date. I must ask you if you can identify this package.’
They stood staring all three, alike stricken into silence. Dominic was the first to clear his throat. ‘It looks very like the money Mr Felder drew from the bank, in my presence, on Saturday morning. The amount is right.’
‘Miss Barber?’
‘I wasn’t at the bank. I saw the package the next day, when Mr Felder left it at the desk, downstairs. This one looks the same. I feel sure it is. There was a linen thread half an inch too long, projecting out of that left corner of the flap, just like that one. My prints should be on the envelope, if it’s the same one. I collected it from the desk, and Dominic put it into the briefcase.’
‘Thank you, that is very helpful. Mr Felder? Does it appear the same to you?’
‘I can’t be sure. One bank envelope is very like another. It could be the same.’
‘Even to the amount inside it, Mr Felder?’
‘I’ve said, it could be the same.’
‘In that case your prints should also be on the envelope, I take it, since you handled it.’
‘Yes, certainly I did. I kept it safe until I delivered it to this hotel on Sunday morning.’
‘But you would not expect your prints also to be on the notes?’
‘Of course not, why should they be? I took the package from the bank teller intact, and as you know, it was paid over to Miss Kumar’s kidnapper at the Birla temple on Sunday afternoon.’ He raised his head, and stared Inspector Singh stonily in the eyes. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘In a locked suitcase in a room in the Villa Lakshmi at Hauz Khas, Mr Felder – the bedroom occupied by you.’
Felder drew back from him a long pace; all the deep, easy-going lines of his face had sagged into grey pallor.
‘You know what this is, don’t you? A plant to leave me holding the baby. Yes, I drew the money, yes, I handled the parcel, that you know already from all of us, what have I got to deny? We paid that money over at the temple, as we were told to do. There was a parcel of sliced-up newsprint left in its place, and that we’ve told you, too, it isn’t any secret. But if you think I made that exchange, think again.
Kumar here was watching me all that afternoon. He knows I never went near the place where the briefcase was.’ He swung on Satyavan, who sat unmoved, his arm round his daughter, his grazed cheek seamed with darkening scars beneath the levelled black eye. ‘Tell him! You were watching me as I was watching the briefcase. You came and started talking to me, and that cost us – how many minutes? Three? Enough for the exchange to be made. I wasn’t watching during those few minutes, and neither were you.’
‘That is true, Inspector,’ said Satyavan. ‘I spoke to him. For perhaps as long as three minutes he was not watching the case, and neither was I.’
‘But I was,’ said the Swami’s voice, with infinite gentleness and absolute certainly.
Everyone turned, almost cautiously, as though he might vanish if they were too abrupt. He sat relaxed and tranquil, his face fixed in a slight and rueful smile, and all the reflected light in the room had gathered in a highlight on his golden shoulder, like a lantern set in the protruding bone.
‘Yes, I, too, was present. Satyavan and I had been following your movements and those of these young people ever since the murder and the abduction of the child. Satyavan came and spoke to you because he believed you had noticed him, and suspected his interest in you. But as it appeared, his approach was welcome and useful to you. Yes! But all that time I was sitting in meditation on the terrace of the temple. No one finds it strange that such as I should sit and meditate, even for long periods, even upon something so mundane as a briefcase and two pairs of shoes. No, it is perfectly true, you did not go near them in all that time. That I confirm. But neither did anyone else!’
The silence waited and grew, allowing them time to grasp that and understand what it meant.
‘From the moment when this boy placed it there to the moment when he took it up again, no one touched it. Therefore it was, when placed, exactly as it was when removed, filled only with newsprint. The ransom – the first ransom – had been collected in advance. By you! Miss Lester would have repaid it to the company without a qualm, would she not, since it was employed in her daughter’s interest?’
Felder opened his dry lips, and tried to speak, but made no sound.
‘Even film directors, Mr Felder, do not always make enough money for their needs, and cannot resist temptation when it walks across their path. It is a question rather of the moderation and control of one’s needs. Of the conquest of desire. But your desires were clearly immoderate. Therefore, when you could not resist retaining Anjli in the hope of further easy gain, we placed before you the bait of a second and greater ransom, to discover whether she was still safe, and to ensure that you would keep her so.’
‘What do you take me for?’ Felder had found his voice now, it burst out full and strong with genuine indignation. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of her head. I always meant to give her back safe and sound. What do you think I am? I may have needed money, I may have taken short cuts, but Dorrie’s girl wasn’t expendable.’
‘No,’ agreed the Swami, with deep sadness. ‘No, the half-American child, your friend’s child, was not expendable to you. You gave your accomplice his orders to keep her safe, not to hurt her… of course, you are a humane man, you did not kidnap or kill – not in the first person, only by proxy. When you hired him, did you ask him how he meant to carry out his coup? Did you tell him, no violence to anyone? No, you shut your ears and left it to him. He was paid, was he not? A wisp of Indian dust, an old, decrepit creature, a beggar, hardly a man at all to you – Arjun Baba was expendable!’
‘Let us, however, be realistic,’ observed the Swami, breaking the long silence which had descended on the room after Ernest Felder had been taken away. ‘He cannot be charged with the murder of Arjun Baba. Quite certainly he did not commit that crime himself, and with Govind Das dead it will be almost impossible to prove that it arose as a direct result of the conspiracy Felder inspired. Indeed, I doubt if they will ever be able to charge him with the abduction, unless he is foolish enough to repeat the virtual confession we have just heard. Govind Das cannot convict him, and I doubt if Mrs Das ever so much as heard his name mentioned. Probably the only charge they can hope to bring home is of the misappropriation of that company money.’
‘There is also something to be said, ’Satyavan said softly, ‘even for Felder.’ Anjli’s eyes were drooping into sleep, and her head was heavy on his shoulder. ‘My wife was indebted to him for all her early chances in films. He is not the only one of whom she has made use when it suited her, and forgotten for years in between, but perhaps he was the most complaisant. If she wanted to send Anjli here to me, it would be quite natural to her to look round and see who might be useful to her in the matter. Ernest is filming in Delhi? How convenient! Of course, get him to meet the party and do whatever is necessary. He always had complied, why should he let her down now? She is now much more successful, much more wealthy than he, but she still asks, and he still complies. She put the opportunity into his hands, perhaps even the temptation into his mind. It may well have seemed to him that she owed him far more than he meant to extort from her. And am I not partially guilty? I do not believe he decided to act until I failed to come to the aid of both my mother and my child, and left her an easy prey. It’s too deep for me. Maybe justice will have to find its own way to every one of us in its own time. I have no doubt it will arrive in the end.’
‘It has caught up already,’ said Ashok gently, ‘with you.’ And he caught the drowsy eye Anjli had just re-opened, and made a faun’s face at her. ‘Have you forgotten? When Yashodhara bore a child, the Lord Buddha cried: “It must be named Rahula. For a fetter is fastened upon me this day!”’
‘I shall call you Rahula,’ said Satyavan, tightening his arm about his daughter, ‘when you most tyrannise over me.’
Anjli smoothed her cheek against his shoulder like a kitten, and smiled. ‘Rahula was a boy. Girls are different. The Lord Buddha should have had a girl.’ She looked up at him, suddenly grave and momentarily wide-awake. ‘What will happen to Shantila’s mother? She was good to me. As good as she dared be.’
‘Be easy, my Rahula! No charge will ever be made against Mrs Das with my support. If she had not had a daughter, I should now have been searching in vain for mine.’
‘And Shantila?’
‘Shantila is your sister, and therefore my child. We must find a safe job for the mother, and she shall be always with you, if you want her.’
‘Yes, please, I do want her. We ought to buy her another necklace,’ she said indistinctly, ‘in place of the one she broke.’
‘That is very true,’ he said, drawing her more securely into his arm, for she was half asleep. ‘Remind me!’ He looked up over her head at Dominic and Tossa, and said in a glowing whisper: ‘It is late, I shall take her away with me. But tomorrow, wait for us, we shall come to fetch you to Rabindar Nagar.’
They protested dutifully that their job was done now, that they must make their preparations for going home.
‘Not yet, not until you must. You will be her guests, she will be happy harrying Kishan Singh to make everything ready for you. Do you not see that my mother Purnima left a true Indian matriarch to be her heiress? I have resigned my life to this creature.’ By then she was fast asleep in his arms. ‘Ashok, I must warn you, for I see that she may well demand that I propose a match with you – she will have no dowry, she has been urging me to give away everything I have.’
It was past midnight, and they had hardly marked the hours slipping by. When they went out by the balcony to the garden stairs, the stars were lacquered in thick coruscations over the velvet Delhi sky, and there was the shimmer and purity of frost in the air. One by one, a procession massed reverently about Anjli asleep on her father’s shoulder, they went down the white steps, and issued with shadows for sails upon the white, paved ocean of the patio.
‘At this same hour, I think,’ said Satyavan, whispering over his daughter’s head, ‘I got up in Rabindar Nagar, and found, like the Lord Buddha himself, t
hat the gods had filled the universe with the thought that it was time to go forth.’
‘Where?’ asked Dominic, hypnotised.
‘That is of secondary importance. What matters is to leave what has always been, and look for what has never been yet. I had had riches and marriage and a child, and I had nothing. Nothing is not enough for any man. The only answer is to abandon that nothing, and go in search of something. A different kind of treasure, perhaps. A different kind of salvation. Perhaps not salvation at all, only the loss of oneself.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘My cousin – you hardly know him – he is a good fellow, he will enjoy living in my mother’s house and managing my mother’s companies. He will make money, but not want to keep it. As for me, in the past year I have become half a soil scientist and half a stock-breeder. What this Rahula of mine will become I cannot yet guess. I told you, she is encouraging me to put everything I have into the missions. Nobody knows yet what she has to put into them. I am afraid it may be more than I can command. We have a whole sub-continent to grow into, she and I. Tomorrow,’ he said, with deep content, ‘you will come and join us.’
‘No – you’ve only just discovered each other —’
‘We have a lifetime,’ said Satyavan, breathing in the night, ‘and you have return tickets valid for weeks yet. When does your new term begin?’
‘Come,’ said the Swami, waiting by the door of the Rolls, ‘would you like me to drive you?’
Just now the stars must be nesting in the niches of the magic towers at the Jantar Mantar, like doves coming home to their cotes.
‘Good night!’ whispered Malenkar, holding the door of their car for his wife.
