“You will remember, Watson, that in one of my recent relations to you I described the awful events of Trincomalee.”
“Yes, indeed, I do.”
“It was shortly thereafter that I left Ceylon and began the long trip to Bombay, where I fully intended to begin my journey back to England. I decided to travel up the west coast of India this time, and so my first stop was the pleasant Indian city of Trivandrum. Here I met a most interesting individual, an Italian nobleman by the name of Lorenzo Spinelli. We found each other compatible, and Spinelli suggested that we travel together since we had similar destinations. Spinelli, I learned quickly, had a profound knowledge of Indian philosophy and, even though I did not share his passion, I found our conversation to be a most welcome distraction, particularly on the rather desolate portions of our trip that often held nothing of interest. He had no travelling companions except for three servants: Lachman, a young man who served as cook and chief guide, and two porters, who were obliged to carry Spinelli’s large collection of books and papers.
“The tale that follows, Watson, concerns Lachman, who was, I could see from the first, devoted to the Italian. When Spinelli finally left, he was quite distraught. In age only about twenty, he had become totally dependent on his master. The boy was of a very low caste, Jogee by name, and had born in a small village in the poorest part of central India, in the area known as Bustar, a place considered by some to be among the most backward of the Subcontinent. The boy had run from the village and made his way to Nagpur. Spinelli found him wandering the streets, starving, and took him on as his personal servant. To Spinelli’s great fortune, the boy turned out to be honest, intelligent, and diligent in his duties. I found him of great help in our travels myself.”
Holmes continued by telling me that Spinelli tried to find his servant Lachman further employment with the Italian legation in Bombay, but to no avail. He therefore gave him a sum of cash that he estimated would last until the boy found further work. Lachman used the money to send for his wife and to construct a small house on the edge of what is called the Chor Bazaar, the great flea market of Bombay. He had no other income and Spinelli, still concerned about his survival, left more money—this time the princely sum of about five hundred Indian rupees—with Holmes, who promised Spinelli that before his final departure from Bombay he would visit Lachman and deliver the gift.
It was more than three weeks after Spinelli’s departure, however, before Holmes found a moment to begin the search for Lachman. He had been called in to a minor affair that had baffled the Bombay police, and it was only after it had been resolved that he began to look for the boy. Spinelli had drawn him a small map and with it Holmes found his way to the Chor Bazaar, or Thieves’ Bazaar, and therein Lachman’s modest abode.
When he arrived, he found only Lachman’s wife, whom he had met only once previously. As soon as she saw him, however, she burst into tears and began to tell in her broken Hindustanee what had happened to poor Lachman.
On the previous evening, she said, she and Lachman had gone to visit some close friends. Their friends had entertained them well, so that when they returned they sat in their small garden, passing the time until bedtime. Lachman had been out of sorts because of a quarrel that afternoon, and she tried to change his mood by idle chatter, but without success. She pointed to a spider climbing up the leg of a nearby chair.
“What do you call these little beasties in your village?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. Angrily picking up a nearby shoe, he aimed it at the insect.
“Don’t kill him, don’t!” she shouted. But Lachman did not hear her entreaty and despatched the helpless spider.
“May he rest in peace,” he said mockingly.
Furious with her husband, she was about to go inside when they thought they heard a noise.
“Shhh, listen,” said Lachman. “There is someone in there with him.” Lachman became even angrier, but she calmed him and they retired for the night.
Because they were again short of money, the couple had rented out one of their rooms to a guest, a retired soldier returning from abroad, and it was he that they had just heard talking in a low voice to someone unknown. And it was with this soldier that Lachman had had a near violent altercation on the street, for the soldier had made unwanted advances towards his wife. There had been many witnesses to the argument. So heated had their quarrel become that Lachman had threatened to kill the soldier and had to be restrained by his neighbours.
It was later during the night, after they had retired, that they were awakened by a loud thud coming from the soldier’s room. Lachman put on his shirt and, lighting a candle, he and his wife went into the corridor. They heard strange gasping from the soldier’s room. Frightened, they opened the door to find the soldier lying in a pool of blood, his neck badly cut by a sharp knife. A cash box, filled with rupees, lay open on the floor. It was the box hitting the floor that had awakened them. Interrupted by the noise, the murderer had fled quickly. The open window attested to his escape. Lachman tried to help the dying man by holding his head up and offering him water, but to no avail. He expired almost immediately.
Lachman told his wife to inform the police, and that he would notify the head man of their block. His wife did as he requested, and Lachman, now bloodstained, stared at his dead enemy for a moment and then began walking towards the head man’s house.
It was a dark night, and he walked slowly at first, thinking over the events of the day. This scoundrel, who had tried to touch his wife, was now dead, and Lachman could not help but feel a certain satisfaction. But the sight of the dying man had changed much of his anger to pity, and, as he walked in the night, he lost all bitterness towards him. Suddenly, Lachman’s mind seized on a thought, and he was thrown into a panic: what if he were to be accused of the murder? Had he not threatened to kill the man in front of a large crowd of witnesses? He began to run towards the head man’s house, but when he reached there, instead of entering, he kept on going. In a fit of fear, he ran into the night, forgetting everything, his wife, his very life.
Lachman’s wife said that the police found him not far away, cowering and shivering at the home of a friend who had convinced him to give himself up. His attempt to escape had convinced the police that he had indeed committed the murder. His wife’s words were discounted, for it was believed that she would do anything to protect him. And so he was arrested, charged with the crime of murder. He now sat somewhere in a Bombay cell, awaiting the next step of Indian criminal justice.
Lachman’s wife was sobbing by the end of her story, and Holmes could get nothing more from her. He went at once to the local police station to find Lachman. There the chief inspector, a most intelligent man by the name of Pushkar Shamsher, made it clear that he regarded the whole affair as unfortunate but as an open-and-shut case. The circumstantial evidence was conclusive. There was, he said, an unimpeachable witness who, as he passed their house that night, heard Lachman’s wife cry “Don’t kill him!” and an angry “May he rest in peace” from Lachman’s mouth. He had bloodstains on his shirt, his knife was not in its case, and, above all, he had a motive: Lachman had publicly threatened to kill his boarder that very day. The soldier’s cash box had not been taken. Robbery was therefore not the motive. No, said the inspector, let us not waste our time. Lachman is guilty.
“There is nothing to be done, my friend,” said Inspector Shamsher. “A most tragic case of anger leading to murder.”
“Perhaps,” said Holmes, “But I know the boy well, having travelled with him from Trivandrum. I am not convinced.”
Holmes asked that he be allowed to visit Lachman, and his request was immediately granted. Because of the grim nature of his crime, Lachman was alone in a small, vile cell deep inside Bombay’s main prison. The poor boy was overjoyed when he saw Holmes, for his first thought was that he had obtained his release. Holmes had to tell him at once that he would try to help in his case, but that he did not know if he would be success
ful.
“How is my case, Sahib? I did not kill that man. Believe me. And believe my wife. Someone else came into the house. Through the window.”
“Then why did you run?” asked Holmes
“‘I suddenly became frightened, Sahib. I could not think. I ran and ran. Then I realised I had no where to go. So I went to my friend’s house and he called the police. That is all.’”
Holmes then asked Lachman to recount everything he remembered, from the time he met the soldier until he ran from the scene of his murder. Detailed as it was, he was unable to add anything to the story that his wife had not already related. Holmes asked him to try and remember the voice that he thought he heard coming from the soldier’s room, but he could not. And the soldier died before he could say anything.
Holmes had seen enough of Lachman on his journey to believe in his innocence. He now had to find a way of proving that he had not committed the murder. This would not be easy. The circumstantial evidence was very strong. How to tear this web of circumstance and arrive at the truth?
He comforted Lachman, telling him that he would do his best to clear his name. He returned directly to Lachman’s house to examine the scene of the crime. He had of course by this time no chance of examining the murdered man where he had been killed, and the room had been ransacked by the police. Still, he went about his business, carefully looking through the dust, examining the meagre furniture, the string bed, and the various other articles in the room. The window was still open and someone could have left by it in a hurry. The murderer, hearing the approaching Lachman and his wife, could have rushed through it into the night. What looked like smudged hand and foot prints were visible on the frame and the sill. But how again to prove that they were those of someone other than Lachman?
It soon became apparent to Holmes that his methods of observation and deduction depended very heavily on another set of assumptions, assumptions that involved not only criminals and the police, but the society at large.
“What one observes and deduces in London,” he said, “is based on what Londoners ordinarily do and think. And my experience in the Orient had been so far almost exclusively with the crime of Europeans, among whom the same set of assumptions held. Here in Bombay, particularly among the lower classes, I had suddenly to think in different ways. My questions were of the same kind. Who was this soldier who was killed? From where had he come? Who killed him and for what motive? But I must say that as I gazed around the dusty room, I was totally without answers. If the questions I asked were the same as those that I might ask at home, could the answers be so different?”
Holmes rose and began to pace about the room. “I realised at once that this was a case in which the most minute examination of detail, the sifting of every word of Lachman’s and his wife’s testimonies, the scrutiny of every piece of evidence, would eventually produce another hypothesis, an explanation of the evidence that told another story. I renewed my efforts at the scene of the crime. If I looked carefully enough and went over the room skillfully enough, something would be found of value. Again I scoured the room. Finally, under the bed, I saw two small pieces of reddish clay, fairly fresh. My hopes were increased when I noticed that the same clay was stuck to the end of the bed, where someone’s feet may have deposited them, either those of the murdered man or the person who had killed him. I re-examined the window sill and noticed to my great elation small traces of the same clay. Hoping that they did not come from this part of the city, I placed them carefully in a small envelope. I examined the rest of the house and all the shoes that were there. There was no red clay anywhere, none on any of the shoes. I also found one other clue, significant for Lachman’s wife’s version of the story, but in itself not enough to change anything: in one corner of the room was a single chupple on the sole of which the body of a dead spider lay crushed.”
Holmes still knew very little, only that the red clay might have come from the shoes of the murderer. He left immediately for police headquarters and spoke to Inspector Shamsher once again. Holmes told him that he wished to examine the body of the victim, his clothes, and whatever else there was. Since he had already helped the police in another case, the inspector had no objections. He himself had made his decision about the crime and had no interest in trying to find the evidence of Lachman’s innocence.
Holmes examined first the body of the soldier. He was in luck, for in a few hours he was to be taken to the cremation ground where he and a number of other unknown Bombay dead were to be burned in a mass fire. He examined first the wound and determined that a long, sharp knife had been used with force to cut the main arteries in the neck. The soldier was still fully clothed except for his feet, which showed no sign of the clay. His shoes had been removed, and Holmes was informed by the guard that they had been stolen. He found no other wounds. Underneath the clothes, however, was a well-muscled, powerful body. There were scars everywhere, indicating much hand-to-hand combat. Large scars on his shoulders and abdomen indicated more serious wounds which must have kept him idle during long periods of convalescence. His features were not pleasant ones, and there was a hardness in the expression on his face that attested to a violent death that followed on a life of violence. His hair was a steely grey, and there was a series of small scars on his left cheek. Even in death, a cruelty played about the lips. He was neither Gurkha nor Sikh, but most probably a Mahratta, one of the most militant of Indian tribes.
Holmes then searched his pockets and found two articles of interest. The first was part of a steamship ticket. The ticket noted his name, one Vikram Singh, and the port of embarkation: Aden. Evidently the soldier had been in the Levant and had recently come to Bombay by sea. The other was a document, partly in French and partly in Arabic. Badly bloodstained, it appeared to be a contract with an unknown employer in the Near East for military services. Our soldier appeared to have ended his career as no more than a mercenary.
“I was about to depart when I noticed that something had fallen from the soldier’s jacket, and this, Watson, was a bit of real luck: it was a small piece of what appeared to be a broken silver earring, rather distinctive in appearance, for it had been set with a small piece of lapis lazuli. It appeared to me not to be of Indian origin.”
Holmes then asked to see the cash box, a wooden box that contained a large number of Indian rupees. There was no clue here beyond the box and the notes themselves. What was of immediate interest was that the notes were well worn, not the new notes that a person recently arrived would receive from a bank or exchange. Some of the money was bloodstained. Holmes laboriously counted it. There were a few large notes, but much of it was in small notes. There was a total of almost 10,000 rupees, a princely sum for a soldier, far greater than any salary he could have saved. His curiosity grew. How had the soldier been paid for his duties? In what currency? Hardly in Indian currency. No, this cash box represented something other than the soldier’s wages, a different source of income. But what? Had he himself stolen it? And, if so, from whom?
“I examined the box closely, looking for clues. It was of a common Bombay type, and had a variety of uses. One often sees them in small shops placed next to where merchants sit. This one had a small lock, but the key was gone.
“There it was, Watson. I had no more. A bit of clay, a broken earring, a wooden box of Rs. 10,000, a steam ship ticket that indicated that the soldier had come from Aden, and a small piece of paper written in French and Arabic that I could not decipher because of the blood stains. I should say to you now, in hindsight, that I had enough to solve the crime right then, or, less sanguinely, I had enough to find the path to the criminal. And here, may I emphasise, the next step in all solutions: one must begin to weave a thread, something that connects, through the brain, the various pieces of the puzzle. For what one must create must resemble a picture, or series of pictures, of what had happened. One must become, Watson, an interpreter of events, and re-live what happened in the past, very much as a historian must who wishes to solve the rid
dles of the past.”
Holmes decided then to put the case out of his conscious mind for a time, and went to the Gymkhana, where he put himself through a rigorous round of calisthenics, after which he received an Indian massage by one of the master masseurs of Bombay. He then dressed and sat on the veranda, sipping a strong cup of Indian chai, rich with sugar, spices, and heavy buffalo milk.
“It was then that the story of the dead soldier and its end began to present itself in a new way. So quickly did it all appear to me that it was as if the solution came at once out of the meagre evidence itself without any deliberation on my part. In relating it to you now, I shall retell it as if I became aware of the steps individually. First was our dead soldier himself. Here was a man of military skill and experience who, I guessed, had started out some twenty years before as a recruit in the British army. After duty abroad, he either left or was dismissed from Her Majesty’s service. He then entered the world of the mercenary, fighting for the French, I imagined, in a variety of North African campaigns. His body now filled with the wounds sustained in years of combat, he decided to return home to retirement and engage in some more peaceful employment. Two days before, he had arrived in Bombay aboard some transport ship, the identity of which I could easily ascertain by a quick trip to the docks. Landing on Indian soil, he decided to seek lodging close by. A few inquiries led him by chance to the house of our Lachman. Lachman’s wife rented him the room, and our soldier proceeded to make advances towards her, just as Lachman returned home. Hearing his wife’s shouts, a loud quarrel then ensued. Lachman threatened to kill the soldier, but a crowd gathered and separated the two before they came to blows. The soldier insisted that he would stay for the night since he had already paid, and would leave in the morning. Lachman reluctantly agreed, and the soldier, leaving his belongings in the room, left and did not return until dark, just before Lachman and his wife returned from visiting the home of some close relatives.
The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes Page 28
