A Very Pukka Murder

by Arjun Gaind

  By now, Sikander was quite tired of sitting down, so he sprang energetically to his feet, and crossed to stand behind Mrs. Bates and her husband, looming over them ominously.

  “I must admit, when I first encountered the Lieutenant, I was almost certain that he had a hand in the Major’s demise. He has all the qualities one looks for in a murderer—a choleric temperament coupled with an innate arrogance and an unrealistically high opinion of himself. He is possessive to the fault of mania, and prone to violent outbursts, considering he actually went so far as to assault me just for speaking with his wife.”

  With each subsequent word, the Lieutenant flinched, his face growing redder and redder, his clenched fists and bellicose demeanor conveying that he was on the brink of one of those very outbursts that Sikander had just mentioned. The only thing that kept him in his seat was the threat of Charan Singh, standing just a few feet away, and of course, his wife’s slim hand on one arm, restraining him as surely as any manacle.

  “It did not take much of a stretch of the imagination to find a motive that would render him culpable. First, it seemed Major Russell had repeatedly been blocking his many entreaties to be transferred to a more active posting. But that was not all. There was also the small matter of the fact that the Major had been trying desperately for some months to cuckold him, a state of affairs that had undoubtedly caused him no small amount of consternation. After all, what man would stand by and hold his peace while another pursued his wife?”

  Mr. Simpson chose that moment to clear his throat rather pointedly, as if to suggest that his patience was fraying and that the Maharaja should try and get to the point.

  “So as we see, Lieutenant Bates had ample justification to want the Major out of his way. However, there were three reasons why I found myself doubting his guilt. The first of course was his temperament. As I mentioned, he is hot-headed and reckless, and a young man such as him would never resort to poison. No, I can see him engaging the Major in single combat, sabres at dawn and the like, but frankly, I doubt he even knows what strychnine is.

  “Second, of course, there was the matter of opportunity. Unlike the Gurkha and the Munshi, he had no access to the Major’s bungalow. How then could he get to the Oloroso to add a dose of poison to it? Not to mention the fact that it would be very difficult for him to get his hands on a vintage quite so expensive on a lowly Lieutenant’s stipend.

  “But by far, the most compelling reason to consider him innocent is the fact that he is an exceedingly stupid fellow. There is no way I could credit him with devising such a devious and elaborate scheme. To come up with a plan so subtle takes both intelligence and patience, and our Lieutenant, I am sorry to say, lacks both of those qualities, which is precisely why I dismissed him as a suspect, in spite of the considerable evidence suggesting the contrary.

  “No,” the Maharaja said, turning toward the Lieutenant’s wife, “there is a better suspect seated right next to him.”

  Unlike her husband, Mrs. Bates looked exceedingly nervous, as pale as a sheet, on the brink of falling into a faint. Nonetheless, she was even more beautiful, like some elfish dryad taken flesh, so captivating that in front of her, even Helene seemed washed out, as drab as a drudge.

  “Ah, the beauteous Mrs. Bates! As I mentioned, in the course of my investigations, I managed to establish a repeating pattern of deviancy in regards to the Major’s sexual leanings, an unnatural psychology. It was clear to me that the Major enjoyed preying on women. He sought them out and strove to dominate them, for it was in this very dominance that he found sexual satisfaction. It was not dissimilar to what he did to the syce’s unfortunate sister, only in this case he could not beat the women he sought out, not without publicly ruining his reputation. As a result, he liked to slowly force himself upon them, to feel a sense of power not unlike what Sader-Masoch has called the inextricable coupling of desire with violence.

  “At first glance, Mrs. Bates struck me as a victim, the hapless target for Major Russell’s sadistic desires. And what man would not desire her? One only has to look at her to see what a comely creature she is, in the bloom of youth, unspoiled by the hardships of life, with an air of innocence that is quite irresistible.”

  He was about to waffle on, heaping more flattery upon the young memsahib, but he happened to notice that Helene’s Gallic blood was close to the boiling point, judging by the dangerous look she was giving him. With a gulp, Sikander cut himself short. While he was a brave man, even he was not foolhardy enough to arouse a Frenchwoman’s fury.

  “Are you familiar with the story of Uriah the Hittite, Mr. Jardine? It is from your Christian Old Testament. Legend has it that when he was an old man, King David, the same David who defeated Goliath and became King of Israel, saw a woman named Bathsheba bathing and became besotted with her. It turned out that she was the wife of one of his officers, a man named Uriah. Now, you would think that would have elicited some loyalty from David, but he was so overcome with lust he forced himself upon Bathsheba. As a result, she became pregnant with his child, and to avoid a scandal, David decided to rid himself of Uriah. He gave Uriah a letter to take to Joab, his commander, in which he gave an order to have Uriah posted to the forefront of a battle, where he was killed, thus leaving David free to take Bathsheba as his wife.

  “In your case, Madame, you had the misfortune to be Major Russell’s Bathsheba. When I first met with you, you were only too happy to pour out your heart to me. What a tale of woe you related, poignant enough to make even the most hard-hearted of men turn to putty! I confess, I was mortified when I heard of the indignities that the Major had heaped upon you, even inspired to the brink of fury.

  “To tell the truth, Madame, like most men, I too was blinded by your tender charms, so beguiled that I found it difficult to conceive of you as a killer. You, a fragile woman, as delicate as a winter rose, how could you find it in yourself to kill a man? But then, the more I considered it, the more something kept nagging at me, an instinct that there was more to you than met the eye.”

  Mrs. Bates squirmed as Sikander’s pale gaze fixed on her. Her eyes darted around the table, searching desperately for a savior, for any avenue of escape.

  “That realization gave me pause, and I found myself contemplating an entirely different possibility. What if you were not Bathsheba at all, but Jezebel? What if you grew tired of being a victim, a plaything to be manipulated by men? What if you realized you could turn the tables, that you could use the Major’s lechery to your advantage by applying your feminine wiles?”

  He smiled triumphantly. “This suspicion was cemented when I heard from a source that you were engaged in rather a passionate clinch with the Major at the New Year’s Ball. Not an embrace where he had forced himself upon you, but a consensual rendezvous where it seems you were the one who had approached him.”

  The Lieutenant had been listening to Sikander’s diatribe with mounting dismay. With each subsequent word, he looked more and more shocked, a complex interplay of emotions crossing his features, first dismay and then consternation and lastly rage as soon as his slow-witted brain began to realize that the Maharaja was speaking the truth. A groan of pure sorrow escaped his lips, his ugly features distorted by pain, and he sprang to his feet.

  Mrs. Bates responded with a whimper. “Please, Johnny, you have to believe me. He is lying.” She gave Sikander a bitter, panicked look. “This is utter nonsense.” Desperately, she reached out to console her husband, but he brushed off her hand roughly and strode away. Charan Singh moved forward, ready to head him off, but Sikander waved the big Sikh back, indicating he should stand down and not impede the Lieutenant’s departure.

  “Of course you will deny it, Madame. I would expect nothing less from a liar as accomplished as yourself.”

  “Leave the girl alone,” Jardine interjected sullenly. “Can’t you see she doesn’t know a thing?”

  Sikander gave him a withering frown. “Your
gallantry is misplaced, Mr. Jardine. You may not realize it, but Mrs. Bates is not quite the wilting willow she likes to pretend to be. Oh no, she is a very clever woman, more than capable of murder.”

  “Preposterous!” Mrs. Bates exclaimed, with a hollow, unconvincing laugh. “You haven’t a shred of proof.”

  “On the contrary, Madame, I have sworn testimony that places you at the scene of the crime, not two nights before Major Russell was poisoned. His servant, Ghanshyam, insists he saw a cloaked woman lurking about behind the Resident’s bungalow, whom he mistook for some sort of phantasm. But that unearthly apparition, I suspect, was none other than you, wasn’t it?”

  He paused, gathering his breath and offering the young woman a triumphant smile. “Do you deny it, Madame?”

  To his surprise, she did not. He had expected at least some modicum of resistance, a deluge of crocodile tears from those dramatic eyes followed by a heartfelt denial intended to evoke sympathy in the hearts of all the men around her, as was her pattern, but instead, the young memsahib gave him a defiant look, as proud as a Valkyrie.

  For a moment, Sikander found himself thinking her quite magnificent. In another time, another place, he could even imagine pursuing her, and he saw at last what it was that drew men to her, like moths to a flame.

  “He was an evil man,” she hissed. “He deserved to die.”

  Every single neck at the table swiveled to watch her, disbelieving that such a slender chit of a girl could contain so much anger, but Mrs. Bates remained gloriously unrepentant, not at all discomposed to be the cynosure of so many accusing eyes.

  “Don’t you understand what kind of a man he was? He was a monster, with no honor, with no heart!” Her voice cracked. “I did not kill him. No, I went to the bungalow to try and reason with him, to try and beg him to leave me and my husband alone. You see, he had threatened me several times, told me that if I did not give in to his advances, he would have Johnny transferred to the frontier. I did not believe he would do it, but a few days ago, he showed me the transfer papers, signed and stamped. That is why I went to him, to offer my virtue to him if he would only destroy the orders, but when I got there, I found I could not do it. I lost my nerve.”

  She collapsed back into her seat, as if the strain of making this declaration had been too much for her. Utterly exhausted, a broken doll, she stared up at Sikander, her eyes brimming with moisture, looking so hapless that to his surprise, he felt a glimmer of pity for her.

  “Calm down, Madame,” Sikander said. “I know that you are not guilty. Just like your husband, I have been unable to establish a link between you and the poisoned wine. In addition, I do not believe that you have it in you to be a murderess. You are a temptress and a manipulator par excellence, but I believe that you lack the cold-bloodedness to take a man’s life. Sadly, I cannot punish you for wanting the Major dead, but then, I imagine it is punishment enough being married to your witless excuse of a husband.

  “So, it was not the Lieutenant, nor his comely wife. Who then is left for us to accuse?”

  With that question, Sikander returned to his seat. He waited until the next course had been laid out—a roast saddle of mutton à la Bretonne, stuffed with truffles. It was accompanied surprisingly by a very dry Hungarian Tokay that he was delighted to see. Taking a large swallow, he turned his attention toward Lowry, who was trying to keep a low profile, slumped over, seemingly half asleep.

  “The answer to that question must come from another gentleman who almost had me well and truly fooled. Isn’t that so, Mr. Lowry?”

  The Magistrate, who had been very careful to remain silent so far, hoping perhaps that he would be forgotten, straightened up at the mention of his name, offering Sikander a stolid grimace.

  “I had nothing to do with any of this,” he said weakly.

  “Yes, Mr. Lowry, you have said so many times, so often that you almost had me convinced.” Sikander gave the man a glare so frigid the Magistrate shivered. “At first, I was tempted to believe you. Frankly, if there was one man I would find difficult to imagine as a murderer, it would be you. I mean, just look at you. You are about as spineless as an invertebrate. And then there was the fact that unlike the Captain, you were so very eager to be cooperative. In fact, it was you who pointed me at Mr. Fletcher, and told me of his argument with Major Russell, not to mention his confrontation with Lieutenant Bates. But I was wrong about you, wasn’t I?”

  He turned to the rest of his guests. “He may seem to be as wobbly as a jellyfish, but I warn you, do not be misled by the cover of this book. Our Mr. Lowry is not nearly as ineffectual as he likes to act. He is an experienced dissembler, a pretender par excellence. Trust me, if there is any man in Rajpore who knows how to keep a secret, it is he.”

  Sikander hesitated, debating whether to reveal what he knew about Lowry’s deviant sexual preferences. Inexplicably, something held him back. It was true that being a sodomite was not uncommon amongst the British upper classes. Why, at school, he had heard horror stories about Eton boys rogering each other as eagerly as rabbits, but still, in the rarefied atmosphere of Colonial India, being exposed as a homosexual was as bad as being branded with the mark of Cain. And while he really did not care one way or another about what people did in the privacy of their bedrooms, he was sensitive enough to understand that he held not just the man’s career in his hands, but also his reputation. One word and Lowry would be ruined, not just in India, but most likely in England as well, because news this salacious had a way of traveling faster than even light.

  As if to remind him of that fact, the man shot him a desperate look, his eyes beseeching him not to expose his secret. Sikander felt a frisson of pity run through him. It would be so easy to destroy him, and true, while he certainly was an unlikeable creature, the Maharaja could not deny that in this case perhaps, the punishment exceeded the crime.

  “The Major had a hold on you, and he used you terribly, didn’t he? He had you posted here to Rajpore only so that you could be his pawn, and you let him use you, Mr. Lowry, because you were afraid of him. You let him exploit an old friendship and your own fears, and he treated you like dirt.” The Magistrate groaned, as if Sikander had physically wounded him. “But no man, even one as weak-willed as you, can live in perpetual fear. Sooner or later, a time comes when he must break, when even a mouse bites back.”

  “I swear,” Lowry pleaded, “I did not kill him.”

  “Then why did you order the body to be disposed of?”

  “It was his wish, I explained that.”

  “Was it,” Sikander hissed, “or was it a convenient way to get rid of evidence? I confess, you surprised me by cremating the Major’s remains with such alacrity. You almost managed to shut my investigation down, because once his corpse was gone, I had no samples to rely on other than the few I collected, and without an autopsy, I had no way to corroborate any of my theories.

  “Added to that, there is the fact that you were the one who had brought the Oloroso to the Major. Of course, you explained that cleverly by deflecting attention to Captain Fletcher, saying that he was the one who asked you to deliver it on his behalf, but the fact remains that you were the last person to handle the wine. That could have made it possible for you to add the strychnine to it, not to mention that you were one of the few people who were aware of the Major’s fondness for such exotic vintages.”

  Before he could continue, abruptly, the Magistrate sprang up, showing an admirable urgency for such a plump man.

  “I must object. I take severe umbrage at such treatment.” He turned to Mr. Gibson. “Sir, you are from Simla. Stop this madness immediately, I insist.”

  Sadly, this appeal fell on deaf ears. Mr. Simpson remained as granite-faced as a statue, and refused to make a single move to assist the Magistrate. Instead, he gave the Maharaja a curt nod, as if to urge him to proceed with his analysis.

  “Where was I? Ah, yes! Certainly ther
e was a great deal of evidence pointing towards you, Mr. Lowry. Unfortunately, in the end though, I was compelled to dismiss you as a suspect as well. The reason, quite simply, was a lack of motive. Though you had ample opportunity to poison the Major, why? Why would you wish to kill a man with whom you had a cordial relationship?” He raised one eyebrow, choosing to hold his tongue about the full truth, that Lowry had loved the Major, much to the Magistrate’s unmitigated relief. “No, you had no real reason to want the Major dead, which is not something that we can say quite so readily for our next suspect, Captain Fletcher.”

  On cue, out trundled the dessert course, a mountainous Nesselrode Pudding in the shape of a leaping dolphin. It was paired with a fine Douro, but Sikander decided to skip it. He had already drunk far too much, and could feel the familiar onset of ennui looming, reminding him that he should try and get through the rest of his dissertation before he passed out in his chair.

  “Ah, the good Captain!” He frowned at Fletcher, who was sitting ramrod straight, glowering back with an expression of supreme distaste on his face, as if to suggest he had nothing but contempt to offer Sikander. “Here we have a career soldier, a man of doughty morals and staunch principles, a veritable Roberts of Kandahar. What then could possibly drive such a person to resort to something as insidious as murder? You have to only look at him, at his unyielding posture, at his choleric complexion, to realize what his weakness is. Beneath his stiff, stout exterior, he is a deeply angry, jealous man, frustrated by a lack of advancement, made bitter from being passed over time and again, from watching men younger than him, men he judged to be less worthy, being promoted to the rank he believed he deserved. Ego, pride, hubris; call it what you may, but that, I believe, is where we must begin to examine what motive he might have had to try and kill the Major.

  “At first, when I thought of him as a suspect, it did not seem to add up, I admit it. After all, wasn’t it well known that Major Russell and the Captain were good friends, yes, often spotted at the club together, enjoying a game of chess, or a rubber of bridge? What then could have caused such an irrevocable rift between them, a public spat that culminated with our Captain here issuing a most forbidding promise, that he would find a way to get even with the Major, no matter what it took?