The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  She wondered if she saw a slight ripple in his heavy jowls. His eyes didn’t move. “No, I am not,” he said. “He had committed the ritual murder of a neighborhood child, and the crime was discovered. These circumstances enraged the crowd. After Nagarajan was arrested they set fire to the ashram, and three of his followers died in the blaze. I understand that he hanged himself in remorse. The guard found him when he came by on his rounds the night the ashram burned.”

  “The guard,” Vijay said. “Is that guard here? Can we talk with him?”

  “He no longer works here.”

  Vijay drew himself up. “We would like to have his name and whereabouts.” His tone implied that he was giving an order.

  The chief’s underlip pushed out farther, but he seemed to be most interested in sending them on their way. “He is called Baburao. He lives outside of town, on the Mahabaleshwar Road. Anyone will show you.” He pulled some papers forward and bent over them. He did not raise his head as they left.

  Back in the car, as the driver slowly made his way toward southern Halapur and the Mahabaleshwar Road, Marina said, “Did it strike you as odd that he remembered the guard’s name immediately, and knew where he lived? Surely he would’ve forgotten, after all this time, and have had to look it up?”

  Vijay shrugged. “Possibly. It is equally possible that it was such an important episode in his life that he never forgot.”

  Houses and shops began to thin out, and they stopped at a galvanized metal stand advertising Campa Cola and Kwality Ice Cream while the driver asked directions. “Another thing,” Marina said. “Why is anybody in town going to be able to tell us how to find the house of some ex-prison guard? Do you think the police chief was just trying to get rid of us, hoping we’d spend the whole day searching?”

  “That we shall see.”

  In fact, the driver returned to tell Vijay he had gotten specific directions to Baburao’s house. They crossed a river, low and sluggish in its banks. Women with their saris tucked around them stood in it calf-deep, pounding their washing on flat stones. Laundry was spread to dry on bordering bushes. Beyond them, a man washed his bullock, splashing water over the animal’s neck and flanks.

  Half a mile past the river they turned onto a rougher road. They wound along, bouncing from side to side, toward a line of trees. When they reached the trees, Marina saw among them the house of Baburao.

  It was two stories high, built of stone of a mellow golden color. Wooden balconies ringed the top floor, matching the wide wooden veranda on the bottom. Crows strutted through the stone-bordered garden. To one side of the house a bright red tractor was up on blocks. A dusty black car stood at the front steps.

  Vijay’s laugh was short and sardonic. “Now we see why everyone knows where Baburao lives. He must be one of the richest men in Halapur. The house looks new, too. He built himself the perfect British officer’s cottage.”

  When they got out of the car, Marina heard the thin, far-off sound of wailing. The front door of the house, she noticed, was standing open. “Something’s wrong,” she said. The two of them hurried toward the house, crossed the veranda and entered a wide hall. A young woman rushed from a side door. When she saw them, she shrieked and started to run the other way, but Vijay spoke to her rapidly and she stopped. Her face, Marina saw, was streaming with tears. She answered him with a few strangled syllables, then disappeared into the back of the house.

  Vijay looked shaken. “Baburao is dead,” he said. “His body was just found. The men have gone to bring it from the fields.”

  31

  A low babble of voices came from outside, and Marina and Vijay returned to the front garden. Straggling around the side of the house was a group of six or seven men, several of them supporting a limp figure on their shoulders. Marina could see long red scratches on one of the exposed calves of the dhoti-clad body. The head lolled, and she saw that one side of it was covered with blood, which had trickled across the face. One of the men was trying, without much effect, to brush away the cloud of flies that hovered around the wound. Beside the group and a little apart from it walked a man with a fringe of gray hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He wore dark trousers and an open shirt and carried a black doctor’s bag.

  As the men rounded the side of the house the wailing, which had gone on continuously, grew louder, and a woman with her gray hair undone burst from the front door, shrieking and crying. Several other women followed, including the one Vijay had stopped in the hall. When the gray-haired woman saw the body she gave a long, loud cry and fell to her knees, sobbing. The women and the doctor gathered around her while the men, after a brief hesitation, carried the body up the steps and into the house. The doctor and the women succeeded in raising the gray-haired woman to her feet and half-dragged her after them. The sound of her cries was once again muffled in the interior of the house.

  Nobody had taken notice of Marina and Vijay, standing to one side on the graveled path. When they were alone Marina asked, “Did she tell you what happened to him?”

  “Only what I have said, that he is dead. We must find out more, I think?”

  “We can’t just go in and—”

  “No, no, we must wait a little.”

  Vijay went to talk with the driver, who had parked the car under the trees a little distance away. Marina stood uncertainly in the garden. She had seen many grief-stricken people, but the woman’s unrestrained outpouring left her abashed, almost ashamed of her next thought, which was that now Baburao wouldn’t be able to help them. She studied the house. In terms of the way most people in India lived, it was a mansion. Ten years ago, Baburao had been a prison guard. He had risen rapidly.

  Vijay returned, and he and Marina walked aimlessly through the garden. At last, someone emerged from the house. The doctor crossed the veranda and descended the steps to the black car. He noticed them and stopped, sunlight glinting on his glasses.

  Vijay approached him and spoke in Marathi. The doctor answered, and when Vijay spoke again he responded, “Yes, I speak English. I studied medicine at Johns Hopkins in the United States.” He took out a handkerchief and patted his high forehead. “You are friends of Baburao?”

  “We didn’t know him, but we wanted to talk with him,” Marina said.

  “A terrible accident. I can do nothing for him now.”

  “What happened?” asked Vijay.

  “At some time during the night, Baburao left his house and walked out across his fields. In the dark, he must have stumbled and fallen into a steep gully that borders one of them. He hit his head against the rocks at the bottom. The farmer who works the field discovered the body this morning.”

  “Why would he go to the fields in the middle of the night?” Marina asked.

  “No one can say. It was not for his bodily needs. He was most proud that he had put modern plumbing conveniences in his new house. Walking about at night was not his custom, his wife says. She retired before he did, and no one missed him until this morning. Even then, they thought he must be nearby. As he was.” He looked at his watch. “Excuse me. I must go.”

  The doctor got in his car. Vijay bent to the window and said, “We know that Baburao was formerly a guard at the prison. How did he become so wealthy?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Some years ago, he got money. He said it was from his relatives working in Iran, in the oil fields. With the money he bought land. He was a shrewd man. A thrifty man.” The doctor started his car, made a gesture of farewell, and drove off, leaving Vijay and Marina in a cloud of swirling dust.

  Marina heard a movement behind her on the veranda, and turned to see the young woman Vijay had questioned earlier. Her eyes were red, but she looked more composed, and Marina saw that she was beautiful, with huge dark eyes, full lips, and a waist-length braid hanging down her back. She spoke to Vijay in a low, strained voice. They exchanged several remarks before Vijay said to Marina, “I have told her we came to see Baburao on business. She is his daughter-in-law. She is apologizing that she cannot ask
us to come in and take food.”

  Marina was amazed. “Apologizing, when they just found the man’s body? Everything must be—”

  “Yes, she apologizes, because it is our rule that guests, even unexpected ones, must be treated as if they are gods. She cannot offer us food because the dead body of Baburao has brought pollution into the house.”

  “Pollution?”

  “Death is just one of many things that are considered to be polluting. The people in this house must undergo ritual cleansing before they can eat again.”

  The woman was looking curiously at Marina. She spoke to Vijay, and Vijay said, “She would like to know where you are from.”

  “Tell her I’m from California. San Francisco.”

  Vijay had several exchanges with the woman and then said, “She wants to know if California is a big place.”

  “Tell her it’s very big.”

  Vijay spoke, and the woman replied. Toward the end of her speech her voice broke and she dabbed at her eyes with the end of her sari.

  “She says that Baburao had promised to take the family to the States for a visit when her son was a little older,” Vijay said.

  The woman and Vijay conversed a short while longer. Crying openly, the woman gasped out a few words at a time, as Vijay nodded and murmured comments. At last, breaking down completely, she took refuge in the doorway.

  “She was telling me about the last time she saw her father-in-law,” Vijay said. “About midday yesterday a boy rode out from town on his bicycle with a message for Baburao. Baburao read the message and closed himself in his office all the afternoon. After dinner, he shut himself in his office again. Last night, before going to bed, she took him a cup of tea. He looked worn out. He said to her, ‘Gita, you have been a fine wife to my son and have given me a good, strong grandson.’ She was moved, and knelt to touch his feet and receive his blessing. It was the last time she saw him alive.”

  Gita, no longer crying, had moved toward them once more, listening to Vijay’s recitation with an interested expression. “Does she know what happened to the message? Or what it said?” Marina asked.

  Vijay’s expression didn’t change as Gita answered his question, but Marina saw his body stiffen. When the woman finished speaking, his tone was casual. “Please do not show surprise or alarm when I tell you this. She says the message was open on Baburao’s desk last night. She cannot read, but she says that on the top of the paper there was a picture of a smiling elephant. The paper is no longer in his office, and it was not found on his body.”

  32

  To keep herself from reacting, Marina dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Elephanta Trading and Tours, Raki, Nagarajan. When she looked back at Vijay, she thought his face seemed pinched. “Does she know the boy who brought the message?” she asked.

  After questioning Gita further Vijay said that she did not know the boy’s name, but that he occasionally delivered messages to Baburao. He could often be found waiting for assignments near the peepul tree in the square in the center of Halapur.

  They went through polite formulas of thanks and condolence. As they walked to the car Marina said, “It’s Nagarajan again. You can’t deny it.”

  “I don’t deny it.”

  “He killed Baburao, or had him killed.”

  “It is likely.”

  “We have to find the boy with the bicycle.”

  As the car bounced away from the house Marina thought about Baburao. A thrifty man, a shrewd man, the doctor had said. He got money— from relatives in the Iranian oil fields, or from Nagarajan as a bribe for his release? And because Baburao was shrewd and thrifty, he got rich. He built a house, inside which his dead body lay. Baburao was less than nothing now. Less even than a guard at the Halapur jail.

  They turned toward Halapur, passing two men on the shoulder of the road who were smoking cigarettes and desultorily tinkering with a black motorcycle. They must have gotten it fixed, Marina thought a few minutes later when she heard a high-pitched whine and looked back to see them riding it, one crouched behind the other. They wore goggles, and the wind whipped their hair. Marina thought of the boy who must ride his bicycle all this way in the heat, five miles or more, to deliver messages to Baburao. At least between jobs he was able to sit under the peepul tree.

  When they reached the square, however, there was no boy with a bicycle resting there, and Vijay’s inquiries of the men chewing betel brought only vague answers about where he was and when he might return.

  Marina tried to suppress her disappointment. “There’s one more thing I need to do here. Maybe when I’ve done it he’ll be back.”

  “What do you wish to do?”

  It had been growing in her mind since their arrival in Halapur. “I want to see Agit More’s family.”

  Vijay’s face darkened. “The family of the boy who was killed? Why must you do that?”

  “I just want— you know, I just want to see if they need anything.”

  They wandered out of the shade of the spreading tree. “It is not good,” Vijay said. “Agit More is nothing to do with you.”

  Across the square, shrieking children played a game with sticks. A donkey lumbered by carrying a load of clay water jars covered with netting. Two men lounged near a motorcycle. “It is something to do with me,” she said.

  “What is that?”

  “The investigators said Agit More’s murder was some sort of ritual killing. It didn’t seem to have been done out of— of anger or anything. It was like a sacrifice—” Marina swallowed and persisted. “Nagarajan needed to bind his followers to him closely, make them totally loyal. I believe compelling Catherine and the others to participate in this horrible crime, killing Agit More, was a way to tie them to him forever. After that, they could never leave him, never renounce him. Because they would be guilty, too.”

  “You think your sister knew about, even aided in, this sacrifice of Agit More. Is that it?” Vijay’s voice was soft.

  Marina nodded. One suffocating afternoon a dog had trotted down Palika Road with the dirt-encrusted head of Agit More in its mouth. The serpent is dangerous. Its bite can kill.

  “How could I know what they’d do?” Marina burst out. “I was away a lot. They never told me anything. I couldn’t have stopped them, could I?” She grasped Vijay’s arm. “Could I?”

  Chills racked her body, and she was only peripherally aware of Vijay leading her away from the crowded square into a narrow alley. “No, no you could not,” he whispered.

  Afraid she would fall, she held on to him. When she could talk, she said, “I hate Catherine. I hate her.”

  “You hate the crime, Marina.” She felt his hands on her shoulders, his breath on her hair.

  Marina always told herself she had never seen Agit More, knowing that she had seen him many times. He was surely one of the group of children who laughed and played in the street, their bony bodies looking as if they would snap at the lightest blow. Surely Agit had been one of the group who stared at her when she came and went, saw her in the street, followed her to the gate. Occasionally one of the braver ones dared to call “Hello!” If she responded, there was a chorus, “Hello!” “Hello!” “Hello!” “Hello!” as all of them said it.

  She had certainly said hello to Agit sometime.

  When the worst of the shaking passed, Vijay released her. He said, “We must not shock the people of Halapur. To embrace in public is not done in India. Would you like tea?”

  Hunched over a steaming cup in a nearly empty tea shop, Marina said, “Suppose Nagarajan murdered Baburao. Why would he do it now?”

  “Perhaps he wanted to keep Baburao from talking with us.”

  She considered. “That would mean he knows where we are, what we’re doing.”

  “If your own theory is correct, and Raki is in communication with him, then of course he knows about us. Raki caught you breaking into his office. He knows your name. He has seen me with you. If Nagarajan hasn’t guessed by now that we are searching
for him, he is not very intelligent.”

  Nagarajan unaware of them was one thing. Nagarajan poised to strike was another. “Should we go to the police, tell them our suspicions about what happened to Baburao?”

  “No.” Vijay held up two fingers and ticked off his points. “First, we have only our suspicions, and the police chief is not well-disposed toward us. Second, how do we know that the police are not involved? Baburao could hardly have gotten Nagarajan out of prison and cremated another body by himself. If it becomes known that Nagarajan is alive, it will be a terrible embarrassment for the Halapur police. We will say nothing to them.

  “But”— he put his hand flat on the table— “I will tell you what we will do. We will speak to the family of Agit More, if you insist. We will talk with the boy on the bicycle. Then we must return to Bombay, for me to put this matter into the hands of Mr. Curtis. If this disappoints you, forgive me, but I cannot allow you to be endangered. I simply cannot.”

  Marina looked at Vijay, across the table. Behind his glasses, his dark eyes shone with determination. His jaw was set. This was her cue to cut him loose, ditch him, go her own way. She had to know, didn’t she? She would go after Nagarajan, and she would find out the truth about Catherine. And another thing— if she refused to go back to Bombay, flat out, Vijay might change his mind. He might. If he was that fearful for her safety, he might come with her, even against his better judgment. Even if she eluded him he might follow her, try to find her.

  Vijay didn’t move. Marina looked away. He might come with her, or follow her, and he might be hurt. Or killed. Nagarajan was dangerous, and he knew they were after him. Marina realized that she could not knowingly put Vijay in harm’s way. Vijay wouldn’t continue, and she wouldn’t go on without him. They would return to Bombay. They would tell Mr. Curtis everything. He might be willing, given the information they had uncovered, to start some sort of investigation. She said, “Fine. We’ll tell him.”

  “Good. Good.” Vijay looked happier. He pushed his chair back. “Shall we make a move?”