Trouble in Nuala
An Inspector de Silva mystery
Harriet Steel
Kindle Edition published 2016
Copyright © Harriet Steel
The author or authors assert their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author or authors of this work. All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Coming Soon
Other Books by Harriet Steel
Author’s Note
Last year I had the great good fortune to visit Sri Lanka, the former Ceylon. I fell in love with the country straight away, awed by its tremendous natural beauty and the charm and friendliness of its people who seem to have recovered extraordinarily well from the tragedies of their recent past. I had been planning to write a new detective series for some time and when I came home, I decided to set it in Ceylon in the 1930s, a time when British Colonial rule created interesting contrasts, and sometimes conflicts, with traditional culture. Thus, Inspector Shanti de Silva and his friends were born.
As always, I am eternally grateful to my husband, Roger, for his encouragement and support. Heartfelt thanks are due to my daughter, Ellie, as well. Her professional advice has done so much to improve this novel. My thanks also go to Alan Jenkins for his expert advice on cricket. Any mistakes are my own.
If any characters resemble persons living or dead, this is purely coincidental. The town of Nuala is also fictitious.
Introduction
When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife, Jane, to his new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala, he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve.
Set on the exotic island of Ceylon in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and relaxing mystery spiced with humour and a colourful cast of characters.
Interview with the Author
Q. There are so many murder mysteries around, what makes Trouble in Nuala stand out?
A. To a great extent its setting in Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka, in the days when the island was still a British colony. Then, as now, the island was a fascinating place not just for its wonderful scenery and wildlife but also its mix of peoples who seem to have recovered extraordinarily well from the tragedies of their recent past.
The majority are Sinhalese, who see themselves as the original owners of the island. They are followed by the Tamils who migrated over the centuries from Southern India. Add the legacy of the early Portuguese and Dutch settlers and you have a very rich culture. Although the story sits firmly in the mystery genre, at the time when it’s set, colonialism also raised issues that my characters have to deal with and that provides an extra layer of interest.
Q. What’s your connection to the country?
A. I’ve been lucky enough to visit and I fell in love with it straight away. My books are often inspired by my travels and as I’d been planning to write a new detective series for some time, it presented the perfect setting.
Q. The mystery genre is usually very plot driven. When you wrote Trouble in Nuala did the characters or the plot come first?
A. Shanti de Silva was inspired by various people I met on my travels around Sri Lanka and he took shape in my mind early on. He’s pragmatic but principled with a mischievous sense of humour; at times impetuous and occasionally a rebel. As my plots develop though, I usually find that characters deepen and that was certainly the case here as Shanti de Silva and the other characters revealed themselves.
Q. So what next?
A. A second Inspector de Silva mystery is already well advanced and you can read a sample at the end of Trouble in Nuala. After that, there are plenty more adventures for de Silva queueing up to be written.
Chapter 1
Ceylon
February 1934
Inspector Shanti de Silva exhaled a deep sigh of relief as the train left the sweltering lowlands of Colombo and commenced the long climb to Kandy. From his seat in the polished teak and leather opulence of the First-Class carriage, he watched the forest become denser with every mile, plantations of banana, king coconut and rubber trees jostling for space in the rich, red earth.
From time to time, the trees retreated to make way for the startling lime-green splash of a paddy field where egrets stood like white question marks, hungry for water snails and frogs. Elsewhere he saw dusty villages slumbering in the heat of the afternoon. Their elders squatted outside the huts, huddled in little oases of shade cast by overhanging roofs thatched with palm leaves. Village children, their energy less sapped by the heat, jumped up and ran alongside the tracks, waving and shouting until they tired of the race to keep up.
The train stopped at Kandy, obliging de Silva to pay a few rupees for a rickshaw man to take him on to the nearby station at Peradeniya where he had to wait an hour for the hill train. Even in the waiting room, there was no escape from the heat. It seemed to have coalesced into a damp, solid block that pressed down on the air, squeezing out every trace of freshness. He pushed a finger between the limp collar of his starched shirt and his perspiring neck and ran it round, then fanned himself with his hat.
A summons to attend as a witness in a trial at the High Court in Colombo had been the cause of this uncongenial journey. He consoled himself with the thought that his evidence had made a considerable contribution to the conviction of a gang of thieves who would no longer be at liberty to ply their nefarious trade in the city’s bazaars and public places. It had been a nuisance though that the trial had run into an extra day. He had hoped to be home for the weekend but it hadn’t been practical to make the slow journey after Friday’s hearing, only to return on Sunday in time for court the following day.
He looked at the clock on the waiting room wall. How was it possible that only ten minutes had passed? A chai wallah passed the door and de Silva called him in and handed over a few annas in exchange for a battered tin cup of tea. The brew was more stewed than he liked but it gave some relief to his parched throat.
He thought wistfully of the cool drawing room at Sunnybank, the pleasant bungalow built in the English style where his wife would be waiting. Jane always served tea in the fine, bone china cups they had been given for a wedding present. Cook would be instructed to make finger sandwiches filled with finely sliced cucumber and hard-boiled egg; slices of his favourite butter cake would tempt his appetite. He drained the brackish tea and closed his eyes. Leaning back against the bench, he fell into a doze.
Thirty minutes later, the tinny sound of the clock striking the hour woke him. A moment passed before he remembered where he was and jumped up briskly. Out on the platform, a gaggle
of other travellers waited, a few of them Europeans who appeared to be suffering from the heat even more than he was; the rest had the dark skin of Tamils. The men wore loose, white cotton trousers and tunics and the women colourful saris. Hindus, he guessed, going up to the Sita temple.
The hill train came into sight and a short time passed while it unloaded its passengers and edged its way onto the turntable to be turned round ready to begin its last climb of the day. In spite of the number of times he had made the journey, de Silva felt a pleasant rush of anticipation as he took his seat. The trains on the line up to Nanu Oya, where he would alight for his home at Nuala, were not as modern and comfortable as those on the Colombo-Kandy line but the views were magnificent.
In fact, he reflected, the whole line was a miracle of engineering. Something the British must be given credit for. Relentless gradients, walls of rock, steep hillsides: nothing had stood in the way of those doughty Victorians who had come from their damp, misty isle to colonise his own lush, exotic one. When the coffee they had first planted in the hill country failed, they had turned their energies to cultivating tea. Now Ceylon supplied half the world.
The train lumbered higher and higher and the tea terraces came into view. Endless vistas of vivid green made up of gracefully curving, neat lines of bushes, kept low so that the supply of leaves that the women pluckers took would always be newly sprouted and tender. Here and there were small lakes, their surfaces smothered with water lilies.
By the time they reached Nanu Oya, the beauty of it all had fully restored de Silva’s good humour. He stepped out from the station and smiled at the sight that met his eyes. The last rays of the sun gleamed on the dark-blue paintwork and spotless chrome of the Morris Cowley 2-Seater Tourer: his most beloved possession, except, of course, his darling wife.
The only servant he trusted to drive the Morris held the driver’s door open for him to get in. De Silva gestured to his bags and, as he slid into the seat, inhaling the aromas of leather and wax polish, the servant strapped them on the back. Moments later, the engine roared into life. The gearstick moved into first like a hot knife into butter and the Morris glided forward. He liked to boast that she could reach a top speed of forty-five miles per hour but that opportunity only arose when the roads of Nuala were empty of rickshaws and buffalo carts for one of the town’s celebrated rallies. This afternoon, he and the servant proceeded at a stately twenty in the direction of Sunnybank.
**
‘Jane? I’m home!’
He strode into the drawing room where his wife looked up from her book with a smile and offered him her cheek to kiss. ‘So you are. How was Colombo?’
‘Hot. Noisy. The air full of dust as usual.’
She made a face, reached for the small brass bell on the table at her side and rang it briskly. ‘I’ll have some iced tea prepared, shall I?’
‘Excellent. I’ll go and wash in the meantime.’
A silent-footed servant appeared in the doorway and Jane de Silva nodded to him. ‘Take clean towels to the master’s room and tell Cook to serve tea in fifteen minutes. Iced tea for the master.’
‘Yes, lady.’ The servant disappeared as unobtrusively as he had come.
Half an hour later, fortified by iced tea and scones with thick cream and wood apple jam, de Silva recounted the events in Colombo’s High Court that had led to ten members of the Black Lotus gang being put behind bars for the next twenty years.
‘The first case you were working on when I met you,’ his wife mused when he reached the end. ‘I must admit, I was afraid for you sometimes. Some of these Hong Kong Chinese are such violent people.’
‘Certainly the criminal element are. And that is precisely why we don’t want them here.’ De Silva helped himself to another scone and slathered it with jam and cream. He took a bite and patted his stomach. ‘These are too good. I shall have to ration myself in future.’
His wife raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve said that before, dear.’
He chuckled. ‘I’ll take a turn round the garden before dinner. That will make all the difference.’
In a far corner of the garden, an outdoor servant was engaged in the perpetual task of sweeping up, his broom making a faint scratching noise through the dry leaves. De Silva felt the springiness of the lawn under his feet; he smelt the sweet aromas of frangipani and jasmine and all the many scents of his roses: musk, apricot, spice, honey, even tea. He had always had a very acute sense of smell and he picked each one out with ease. What a lucky man he was to have all this to enjoy.
His prized roses stood in glossy profusion in their beds, immaculately tended under his instruction by his Tamil gardener to produce only the finest flowers. Beyond the clipped privet hedge, a tidy vegetable garden contained straight rows of carrots, beans, peas, potatoes and eggplants. If only such ordered and productive beauty characterised all human affairs.
He touched a deep-red, velvety bloom. The rose Black Prince was one of his favourites, and not just on account of its colour and scent. For him, the name conjured up romantic visions of medieval castles where armoured knights had once jousted and ladies in embroidered gowns waited in ivory towers. An England of Gothic cathedrals where sumptuously robed clergy processed down candlelit naves to the strains of solemn music. It was the England he liked to dream of, even if Jane laughed and told him that the reality was far more complicated.
‘There are lovely places but a lot of England is ugly. We have plenty of poor housing and dingy streets, as well as factories with chimneys belching smoke.’
‘Just like Colombo then.’
‘But not so hot.’
De Silva ran his fingertips over the cool, moist petals of another rose, this one the palest of shell pinks. Well, whatever England was really like, he would never cease to thank the gods that Jane had left it and come to Colombo as governess to one of the British families.
He had been part of the Colombo force then. The moment he had set eyes on her, he’d known she was the one for him. Both in their forties, with no relations to tut over the unsuitability of a marriage between a Sinhalese Buddhist, who might also owe some of his bloodline to a Portuguese settler from the dim and distant past, and an Anglican Englishwoman, they had been free to please themselves. The offer of promotion and a job in the cooler climate of Nuala had been the perfect wedding gift.
He snapped off one of the Black Prince’s flowers and added a few from other bushes to make a posy for Jane then with a last look around the garden, already dissolving in the purple twilight, he started back for the bungalow.
Chapter 2
‘Are you going to work today, dear?’ asked Jane the following morning.
A gently baked egg smiled up at de Silva from the bottom of his crispy, bowl-shaped breakfast hopper. He broke off a piece of the pancake, dipped it into the egg yolk, and nodded. ‘I have to write up my report but I hope there won’t be any need to stay long. If anything important happened while I was away, no doubt Prasanna would have sent a message.’
He reached for the china dish beside his cup and saucer and ladled a spoonful of fiery sambal relish onto his egg. Jane raised her eyebrows. Even after five years in Ceylon, two of them as his wife, she still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of eating chillies at breakfast.
‘But sambal is delicious with egg, and the hotter the better.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘Never mind. If you prefer your milk rolls and jam, then that is what you must have.’ He polished off the last of the hopper, wiped his mouth and pushed back his chair. ‘I’ll be back as quickly as I can. I thought we might have a picnic by the lake. If you have no other plans for the afternoon, that is?’
‘Lovely. I only need to return a book to the library. I hear they’ve just got in a copy of the new Agatha Christie. I want to borrow it before Florence Clutterbuck does.’
He chuckled.
‘Have I said something amusing?’
He came round to her side of the table and kissed her
cheek. ‘Enjoy your morning. And please resist the temptation to murder the assistant government agent’s wife if she reaches the library before you.’
‘What nonsense you talk, dear.’
‘I do my best.’
**
The Morris soon left behind the quiet road on the edge of town where Sunnybank was situated and de Silva was obliged to slow to negotiate the morning chaos of Nuala’s traffic. Rickshaws darted between bullock carts laden with sacks of rice; piles of bananas and coconuts; and mounds of other fruits and vegetables. Stalls offering cooked food lined the dusty streets and passers-by stopped to purchase bowls of curry and rice or paper cornets of sticky sweetmeats.
The front of a shop that dispensed Ayurvedic remedies was bright with garlands of marigolds and gaudy pictures of smiling customers. Crammed in the display case under the counter, a multitude of bottles and jars contained medicinal herbs and spices. A few doors along the street, he glimpsed bales of jewel-coloured silk in the dark interior of a sari shop. At roadside shrines, statues of the Buddha sat in serene meditation amid jumbles of incense burners, candles and offerings of lotus flowers. In the distance, the surface of the town lake gleamed like a sheet of silver.
It was the British contribution to Nuala’s amenities that marked it as different from a typical Ceylonese town. The assistant government agent’s residence was a large and elegant white house with a classical portico. It was set off by English-style gardens with immaculate lawns. The golf club would have been equally at home under English skies. The post office boasted a clock tower that looked like the spire of an English country church and finally there was the Crown Hotel, a sprawling, mock-Tudor edifice that dominated one corner of the crossroads where it was situated.
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