by Arjun Gaind
“But he is a civilian,” Jardine glowered at the Magistrate, “and this is a police matter. Need I remind you that the English town is under my jurisdiction, not the Maharaja’s?”
“I think, Mr. Jardine, you will find that the Maharaja has quite a reputation for being an expert decipherer of puzzles. And I have every confidence that if any man can deduce the cause of the Resident’s unfortunate death with due haste, it is he.”
“But,” Jardine began to object, “You can’t…”
“For God’s sake, man, just do as you’re told.” The uncharacteristic forcefulness of this exclamation from someone as docile as Lowry took Jardine entirely by surprise, striking him temporarily dumb. His face darkened, turning almost purple with fury. His mouth flopped open and shut like a beached fish, so overcome with emotion that he could barely string together a coherent string of words.
For a split second, Sikander was convinced that he was going to disobey the Magistrate and stand his ground. But then, to his relief, the Superintendent seemed to subside.
“Very well, Mr. Lowry,” he mumbled, shuffling aside, “but be certain that I intend to carry on a parallel investigation of my own.”
“And I look forward to hearing your conclusions,” Sikander said, trying not to laugh at Jardine’s peevishness.
His amusement deepened even further as Jardine shot him one final glare before spinning on his heels as neatly as a clockwork soldier to stomp away with a thunderous clatter of boot-heels.
“You must forgive the Superintendent,” Lowry said wearily, scratching absently at an angry red mosquito bite on his cheek. “He gets a touch excitable in the pursuit of what he perceives to be his duty.”
“There’s no need to apologize, Mr. Lowry,” Sikander said magnanimously. “There will always be men who do not know their place, yes?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Lowry agreed, bobbing his head like a bird. “If you don’t mind my inquiring, how do you intend to proceed?”
“Well, first, I want to take a look around upstairs, and then, I have a few questions to ask you. And you, too, Munshi.” Sikander directed a smile at the hapless old man who had remained cowering in the background, as quiet as a dormouse. “Is that entirely agreeable with you?”
“Of course. I shall do everything I can to help your efforts.”
“Capital!” Sikander smiled widely and started toward the staircase that led to the upper floor and the Resident’s bedroom, followed closely by Charan Singh.
Lowry, however, hung back, wincing as if he were afraid to leave the safety of the dining room. “If it pleases Your Majesty, I will stay here. I don’t think I can bear to go up there.”
“I understand,” Sikander said sympathetically. “We shall be fine without you.”
“It’s the damnedest thing,” Lowry whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. “The door of his bedroom…it was locked from inside, you know, and they had to break it down. And the windows were firmly fastened. I just can’t understand it.” He shuddered. “Jardine is convinced that William took his own life.”
“And you, sir, I take it you disagree with that theory?”
“Absolutely,” Lowry insisted with uncharacteristic vehemence, “Will would never have done that. He was Catholic, you see, just as I am, and suicide for us is a mortal sin.”
“He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Lowry said softly, “he was. We were very close once. Like brothers, we were.”
In spite of his aversion to the man, Sikander found himself feeling more than a little sorry for the Magistrate. It must be immeasurably difficult for him, to first suffer the shock of having a dear friend die abruptly, and then have the mantle of responsibility thrust upon him without any warning. Judging by the pallor of his face, he was close to breaking point, and no wonder. From what Sikander knew of him, at least by reputation, Lowry was a weak, altogether venial, fellow, interested only in good food and gossip, and he doubted if the man possessed nearly enough backbone to shoulder the Resident’s job, even temporarily.
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Lowry. I shall do everything in my power to find out what happened to the Resident.”
“I cannot thank you enough, sir,” the Magistrate said gratefully. “And I, for my part, will endeavor to keep Jardine well out of your way.”
Chapter Five
Charan Singh vaulted up the stairs, displaying an impressive agility for a man his age. At the top, he took up a position directly opposite the mangled remnants of the Resident’s bedroom door, a sentinel to prevent intruders from disturbing the Maharaja as he carried out his investigation.
Sikander’s advance was altogether more leisurely. Rather than approaching the bedroom directly, he took several detours, first to examine an unexpectedly elegant chair that caught his interest and then to peer into the guest bedroom. This apparent indolence was of course a ruse. To someone who didn’t know him, it may have seemed that he was browsing through a shop trying to choose something expensive to purchase, not conducting a murder investigation. But his razor-sharp mind was racing, filing away every detail, however insignificant.
Finally, he came to a halt opposite his manservant. Rather than charging right into the bedroom like Cardigan at Balaclava, Sikander spared a moment to compose himself. In the blink of an eye, his entire demeanor seemed to alter. The absent-minded half-smile that had decorated his face till that moment melted away, to be replaced by a hawk-eyed frown. From one of the pockets of his tunic, he extracted a pair of slim white gloves, not unlike those which gentlemen wore to the opera, which he proceeded to slip onto his hands with fastidious exactitude. Then, watching his steps carefully, he tiptoed past the splintered remnants of the door.
Charan Singh began to follow, but before he could enter the bedroom, the Maharaja fixed him with a baleful stare.
“Wait there, will you?” he said stiffly. “I need a few minutes alone.”
Once inside the room, for one long heartbeat, Sikander stood perfectly still. He had a system he liked to follow. Ignoring the body at first, he took his time to scan his surroundings, trying to discern if anything, the most minute detail, seemed out of the ordinary. The bedroom was smaller than he had expected, perhaps twenty feet by fifteen with a wooden floor and artichoke-papered walls, furnished in the same cluttered style as the rest of the house. Sikander winced when he set eyes upon the large four-poster bed that dominated the center of the room and the lank mosquito net that hung from its wooden arms, as hazy as a shroud. At the base of the bed, a brass-buckled canvas campaign trunk sat with its heavy lid ajar, revealing three pairs of immaculately polished boots and a small mountain of balled-up woolen stockings. An ornately carved Victorian red walnut wardrobe stood opposite the trunk, tucked into one corner of the room, its front surmounted by a tall beveled mirror in which Sikander spotted a fleeting glimpse of his own reflection, his eyes as shiny as newly minted coins.
Crossing to the cupboard, he tried its door. To his surprise, it was unlocked. Inside, there seemed to be nothing remarkable, little more than a row of badly cut safari jackets of the variety the Resident had favored hanging in a tidy row above a pile of folded shirts and neatly pressed trousers.
Stifling his disappointment, Sikander turned his attention to the row of three drawers at the base of the cupboard, pulling them open one by one. The first was filled with the Resident’s personal possessions, a gold Elgin hunter and watch chain, a pipe and two tins of Wills Capstan tobacco, a neatly folded arrangement of neckties and handkerchiefs. The second drawer revealed an assorted array of bric-a-brac, a small wooden music box and a chipped bowl full of coins, an unopened jar of Calvert’s carbolic toothpaste, and a jar of what turned out to be very pungent pomade.
Finally, he pulled open the third drawer. Inside, to Sikander’s unmitigated delight, he uncovered a heavy cast iron strongbox tucked away under a heap of assorted unmentionables. The
Maharaja’s eyes widened with anticipation. Squatting over, he eased one long pin from his turban, a sliver of metal some three inches long with a razor-sharp tip, which he carefully inserted into the strongbox’s lock and began to jimmy back and forth. Amongst his many dubious achievements, Sikander had at one point spent three weeks with a screwsman in Paris, mastering the art of lock-picking, and it took only a matter of seconds before the box’s lid snapped open with a barely audible click, bringing a satisfied smile to his face.
Sikander eased the box open. Inside, to his disappointment, all he found was an Enfield Mk1 revolver, a box of cartridges, and a meager wad of banknotes, which he guessed was the Resident’s petty cash. Carefully, the Maharaja picked up the gun, snapping open its breech to check if it was loaded, but it was not. Lifting its barrel to his nose, he sniffed at it tentatively, to see if it had been fired recently, but could find no trace of the telltale stink of cordite. Muffling a curse, he replaced the gun and slotted the strongbox shut, before putting it back in the drawer.
“Have you found something, Sahib?” Charan Singh craned his neck forward to peek over the threshold, but was careful not to disobey Sikander’s orders by actually setting foot inside the room.
“Nothing at all, old man. Just the Resident’s long johns which, while intriguing from a purely scientific point of view, really don’t help our cause.”
In the other corner of the room, a rather handsome escritoire stood bordered by a Bombay chest, both in matching rosewood. The table’s surface was cluttered, piled high with letters and envelopes and a stack of manila folders through which Sikander leafed briefly, making a note to return and examine their contents more carefully at a later time.
Next to this mess of papers lay a covered dinner plate, flanked by an empty glass and a half-consumed bottle of wine around which a few desultory flies buzzed. Curiously, Sikander lifted the napkin that covered the plate to reveal the half-eaten remnants of a mince pie daubed with congealed gravy, and a piece of moldy cake from which rather a large bite had been taken. Next, he turned to the bottle, picking it up with a squint to inspect its label. Much to his surprise, it turned out to be sherry, not wine, a very dark Manzanilla Oloroso of a decent vintage, the kind of bottle that he would have been happy to store in his own cellars, but which was rather an unexpected discovery in the house of an alleged teetotaler.
Well, he thought, perhaps the Major had not been a complete barbarian after all, not if he had chosen a sherry as fine as this. And of course, the irony of it did not escape him. As a final drink before dying went, Sikander thought, few bottles could be more worthy. Shaking his head, he put down the sherry, before turning towards the window. From one of the pockets of his impeccably tailored tunic, he withdrew a small monocular reading glass, a contrivance of his own design able to magnify anything to six times its original size, manufactured for him especially by the renowned German lens-maker Carl Zeiss. Scrutinizing the windowsills, he saw that the Magistrate had indeed been correct, and that they had been shuttered from the inside. The locks remained fastened, and from the thick sprinkling of dust that speckled the murky glass, it was easy for him to infer that they had not been opened for some time.
He unlatched one of the windows now, struggling with the clasp briefly before the louvered shutter slammed open with a loud crash. Bending forward, Sikander studied the sill outside carefully, looking for any trace of a fingerprint or for any telltale scratches or marks marring the wooden frame that would suggest that it had been pried open. As he had expected, he found nothing. Straightening up, he leaned out of the window precariously and saw that there was a steep drop to a flowerbed some fifteen feet below, noting there were no trees nearby from which an intruder could have gained access to the Resident’s bedroom, not unless he were part langur.
Sikander carefully latched the window shut. So Lowry was correct, he thought. It had indeed been firmly locked from the inside, and had not been tampered with in any discernible way. Wrinkling his brow, he crossed to the door once more. Taking a knee, he examined the crumpled wood of the jamb, noting that the latch had been snapped cleanly in two when the door had been battered down. A closer scrutiny revealed that the lock still had part of a brittle iron key jammed deep inside it, and Sikander found the other half on the floor after a minute or two of scrabbling amidst the assorted shards of debris on the floor. It too had been sheared cleanly in twain, which reconfirmed Lowry’s statement that the door had indeed been locked and bolted from within.
Puzzled, the Maharaja rose to his feet and, at last, turned his attention to the body that lay on the bed.
The Resident’s corpse had been covered hastily with a parrot-green chintz bedspread which some kind soul had draped across his face so that he would be spared the ignominy of having to suffer the stares of gawking strangers.
Solemnly, Sikander lifted one corner of the thin cotton sheet, folding it back neatly to expose the gory sight hidden beneath. Major Russell had not died well. He lay on his back. His eyes, which were as green as the shroud that had cloaked him, Sikander noted absently, were wide open, bulging from their sockets, staring up at the roof with an expression of shock so palpable that for a moment, the Maharaja couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man.
As if that was not macabre enough, his handsome face was distended into a horrifying rictus, not a grimace of agony but a ghoulish grin, almost as if he had been laughing as death took him. Sikander knew that most corpses tended to look like they were peacefully asleep because, at the time of death, the muscles of the face relaxed, subsiding toward an almost serene appearance. But here, curiously enough, the Major’s jaw was locked rigid, leaving him with an expression as unnatural as a gargoyle’s leer, suggesting that his muscles had contracted, convulsing at the moment of his demise.
He pulled the sheet back farther to reveal that the Major’s body was twisted into a most unnatural posture as well. His back was arched quite distinctly, lifted clear off the bed to leave his weight resting on his heels and his occipitalis. Even more curiously, he was already petrified as stiff as stone, his arms held out in front of him, his hands curled into claws. It doesn’t make sense, Sikander thought, How could it be rigor mortis quite so soon? The Major had not been dead long enough to justify such rigidity. His body was obviously still only in the second stage of death, although bewilderingly his face had turned an icy shade of blue. Still, putrefaction had not yet begun to cause the corpse to bloat, which would have been the case if he had died more than a few hours ago. The Maharaja hunched over to take a closer look. He knew from his studies of Lacassagne that it took roughly between six and twelve hours for gravity to cause a body’s fluids to congeal in the extremities, leaving the upper hemisphere of the victim’s body with a distinct chalk-like pallor. That was certainly not the case here. Although the Major’s lips and cheeks were definitely bluish, his neck and torso were still quite pink, which confirmed his assertion that the man could not have been dead for longer than six hours.
It was obvious that he had choked to death, he inferred, most probably on his own effusions, since the front of his blue-striped cotton nightshirt was crusted thick with dried blood and vomit. Sikander guessed that he must have begun to retch violently before losing consciousness for one last time and drowning in his own bile.
Grimacing, he pulled a perfumed handkerchief from his pocket, clasping it to his face as he turned towards the bedside table. Upon its polished surface, an assortment of objects lay, amongst which were a small glass bottle, a pair of reading spectacles, a tawdry potboiler with the florid title of The Seething Pot, and last but not least, a small ivory snuff box.
First, Sikander examined the glass bottle. He uncorked it to find that it was almost empty. Bringing it to his nostrils, he sniffed at its contents cautiously. The fumes made his eyes water, the raw odor of tincture of opium so strong that immediately he was overcome by momentary dizziness. So the Major was a habitual user of laudanum, he th
ought with a frown. He would never have guessed, for the man had completely lacked the emaciated pallor associated with an opium addiction.
Just as he was about to replace the bottle where he had found it, an unexpected sparkle from beneath the table distracted him. Leaning forward, he found that the glint had come from the glass fragments of another bottle, a cracked blue decanter of what seemed to be Philip’s Milk of Magnesia, which he guessed had been knocked over and shattered by the Resident just as the ravages of death had seized him.
Biting his lip, the Maharaja knelt down to study these scattered shards. With a curt snap of his fingers, he called for Charan Singh to bring him his bag. The Sikh entered the room with immense reluctance, placing the valise on the floor and quickly scurrying backwards, letting out a low moan when he glanced at the body on the bed. Wide-eyed, he made a hasty sign against the evil eye, no doubt trying to ward off the Major’s restless spirit, in case it still happened to be lurking in the room.
Snapping open the valise, Sikander rummaged through its contents until he found what he needed: a set of bright red silken envelopes of the sort used by Hindus during religious festivals to give each other gifts. He had ordered a thousand of them made up to utilize as evidence bags. Very carefully, Sikander bent forward to retrieve a glass fragment from the broken bottle of Milk of Magnesia. Next, he collected the bottle of laudanum and the empty snuffbox and finally, as an afterthought, from the writing desk, the remnants of the Resident’s dinner and a few drops of sherry, which he poured carefully into a glass test tube, stoppering it with a cork. Then, turning once more to the Resident’s corpse, Sikander pulled out a small clasp knife and cut off a lock of the dead gentleman’s hair. Next, he carved a narrow scrap from one of his fingernails, and finally helped himself to a scraping of the bloody efflux that caked his face and chest, all of which he bundled carefully into individual silk purses, before tucking them away in the Gladstone bag.
