by Nev March
Starting with the pristine bed, I examined the chamber. No indentation of a head in the embroidered pillows; nothing secreted below it, nor between mattress and frame. The nightstand held books: Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katharine Green. A copy of Wuthering Heights, by Ellis Bell, curled at the edges. I picked it up and fanned the pages—no notes or letters.
On a dressing table were brushes, combs and perfumes. A neat little secretary by the window had wooden dockets for paper and pens, a dry inkwell.
When Adi returned, composed, I asked, “Was there correspondence? Letters and such?”
“Yes. It’s in the legal boxes. Nothing useful, but you’re welcome to them.”
I crouched by the little desk, slid out a drawer, found sheets of paper and a metal box. “Did she handle money? To pay servants or grocers?”
“Yes. There should be three, perhaps four hundred rupees.”
I shook the glossy metal box, which rattled. On the lid a lady in purple bonnet and parasol smiled at a red-uniformed soldier. The name Mackintosh’s Toffee De Luxe was embossed upon it. Opening the lid, I held it toward my client—empty except for a few coins and pins.
Adi said, “Mama or Papa likely took it … I don’t remember much from that time.”
Missing cash caused no concern. Unsure what to make of it, I noted down the absence.
“May I?” I motioned to the dresser.
Adi nodded, lips compressed. His pale face said he rarely, if ever, entered this room. The first drawer revealed a set of boxes whose contents I examined and found to be lady’s ornaments.
“All accounted for?” I asked.
He nodded.
The next drawer had small clothes, kerchiefs and the like. I moved them with a pencil, searching for letters or notes. None. The bottom drawer held beaded toys, sewing things and a few stuffed objects such as one might keep from childhood. Mourning the girl who had kept her toys, I closed the drawer quietly.
Seeking evidence of the lady’s state of mind, I stepped past an ornate, floor-length mirror to a pair of wooden almirahs; armoires—exquisitely carved.
“Sahib?” A small, saree-clad woman with a deeply wrinkled face stood in the doorway. I took her to be Bacha’s maid.
Adi said, “Ah. Jiji-bai, we are looking for something.”
The woman opened each almirah, revealing dresses and fabrics on shelves. The scent of powder and lavender wafted into the chamber like a physical presence, as though the lady herself had turned and greeted us.
We saw silks, brocades and all manner of lace. Bacha preferred pastels, delicate patterns and richly embroidered borders. Alas, we discovered no letters or journals such as I imagined young women might secret among their clothing.
How might I ask the maid about her mistress? She’d reveal little to me, a stranger. Catching Adi’s eye, I slanted my head toward the woman.
Taking the hint, he asked, “Ayah, did she say anything, that last day?”
As the maid launched into an animated whisper, Adi translated Gujarati vernacular in an undertone. “Bacha-bibi was a darling, a precious child, God’s own beauty,” said the woman. “She loved the gardens, Sahib. I would bring a flower with her tea. She read the papers while I did her hair. Each morning she asked after your sisters and brothers, ‘How are the children today?’”
When she ended, Adi asked, “And Maneck, did she ever speak of meeting him?”
“No, no, Sahib!” the woman cried, “Bacha-bibi was pure, and kind and good.”
I looked at Adi, and he nodded. Bacha hadn’t known young Maneck Fitter.
I sighed. Perhaps we were going about this wrong. What if the other two men, the Mohammedans, were known to Adi’s wife?
“Ayah, what of Saapir Behg? Was he a friend?”
The woman did not appear to know that name.
“Seth Akbar?”
She did not know it either. This puzzled me. These two Khoja men were tried as Maneck’s accomplices. Surely, she had heard their names? Was she lying to protect her mistress?
“What about Miss Pilloo? Did she know them?” I asked, watching her reflection in the glass.
“I don’t know, Sahib.” She looked worried. She vouched for Pilloo, but not vehemently. Strange, since Pilloo was of this family and Bacha the new bride. Why the reticence?
Anyone in this household might have a valuable bit of evidence and not know it. One must ask the right questions. A trivial detail might be the key to this mystery. Although I questioned her a bit further, I gleaned no more.
When she left, we sat across from each other, Adi on the dressing chair, and I on the window seat, absorbed in our thoughts. What had I learned? Some cash was missing and the maid seemed doubtful about Pilloo. I regarded the feminine furnishings. Bacha had dressed here, wearing a yellow saree that fateful day. Her slippers were found on the lawn, not far from her body. Her cloth purse had been left on the gallery. What else would she have had with her?
I cleared my throat and asked, “Your wife, could she see, without her spectacles?”
Adi shook his head. “Not well enough to cross a street.”
“Were they found?”
He straightened. “No.”
And there it was. A single fact pointing at … what? In Bacha’s portrait, the artist had placed her delicate eyeglasses in the front corner of the painting. Thinking aloud, I said, “If it was suicide, her eyeglasses must be nearby.”
Adi said, “They could have fallen from her, you know. Superintendent McIntyre had the university grounds searched. Didn’t find them. He checked every inch of the adjacent roof—the roof over the reading room.”
I felt excitement stirring. “If she always wore eyeglasses, and they were not on her body, nor at the site, they were taken. Someone was with the ladies at the end.”
Adi stiffened, his chiseled features intent.
I asked, “Could someone have picked up her eyeglasses, not knowing they were sought?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “The police made quite a to-do, marking off the area, and so on. Why would anyone take them?”
“To remove evidence of a struggle? If a pair of smashed eyeglasses was found on the gallery, no one could doubt it was murder.”
Next, Adi and I searched sixteen-year-old Pilloo’s room—a smaller chamber with wide windows and a gas lamp by the door.
Three large chests contained linens and lace, mosquito netting, sewing and so on—an extensive trousseau, assembled by an industrious young person about to venture into domesticity and determined to take a sizeable dowry.
One by one I summoned servants and staff. They arrived, curious about the “Captain Sahib,” as they called me. First came Jiji-bai’s son and daughter, followed by Gurung, the Nepalese gateman I’d met the first day. He’d been in a Gurkha regiment and took to me right away, snapping out a salute that made me smile.
They all said Pilloo was a quiet child. A photograph on the desk showed a plain, dark-skinned girl, hair parted in the middle. She peeked out from the frame with puzzled timidity.
Back in Adi’s chamber, I examined the gateman’s account. The ladies had left the house just after three in the afternoon. How long did it take them to reach the tower? This I resolved to test.
I sifted through another report: A Havildar, a clock tower guard, escorted the ladies up to the gallery and left them there. Why on earth would he not wait with them? Was he not retained for exactly that purpose?
Had he remained, would they have been accosted at all? Some altercation must have occurred, serious enough to dislodge and perhaps break Lady Bacha’s glasses. The guard did not know what time he’d taken them up.
But wait, Watson, what are the facts? A tower guard would surely keep close watch on the time. Was he not up and down a great big clock all day?
CHAPTER 6
THE SISTER
“Sahib, you are requested.” Adi’s gap-toothed bearer smiled at my door the following afternoon, shifting from one foot to
the other, as I sat in Adi’s room, my headquarters.
Brushing off my rumpled trousers, I followed the quick-footed lad down the balcony. It ran along one side of the square mansion, overlooking a garden. Birdcalls wafted up to us like distant music. A rear stairwell brought us down to the morning room, where Burjor, Adi’s father, shook hands and introduced a tall, angular man standing by the window.
“Captain, you know Mr. Tehmul Byram, of the Chronicle?”
“Of course, sir.” I shook hands with the editor, who’d been my employer until recently.
“Tom, please. On loan now, eh?” he said, smiling. “What progress?”
His casual air did not deceive me. Here was a man accustomed to power, an erudite man, smooth and well spoken.
“Some, sir.” I did not elaborate. If Adi wanted to share developments he had not instructed me to do so.
“Yes?”
The editor had many resources at his disposal. He could be a useful ally.
“Sir, I plan to speak with Maneck Fitter. Where is he? And the two Khoja men, d’you know? Now that they’ve been acquitted, they may let slip some information.”
“Police never found Akbar. The other blighter may be around.” Byram reached a bony hand into his jacket and busied himself with gold-plated pen and notepad.
“Hello!” Adi strode in, greeted the older men and smiled. Dapper in a black legal robe, he seemed lively today, a lithe young man with an easy charm, both serious and engaging.
“Adi,” said Byram, “do you really think one chap can get to the bottom of this? I’ve had my entire staff doing little else.” He motioned an apology to me. “Excuse my candor, Captain.”
I shrugged to show I took no offense.
Adi smiled. “Beg to differ, Uncle.” Utterly dissimilar, Byram and Burjor were not brothers. By calling him Uncle, Adi was treating the older man as a family elder. “In just one week, we’ve learned something already.”
Both men looked surprised. Adi went on to describe Bacha’s empty cashbox, our search for her spectacles and what it might mean.
“Young man,” Byram said to me, “if you solve this, I’ll pay a hundred rupees for your report.”
“I think not, sir.”
Adi hastened to explain the terms of our agreement, complete privacy from the newspapers, “For the girls’ sakes.”
Byram expressed his sympathy, then chuckled at me. “Remember, Captain, you’re on loan. Six months, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” I said in short syllables. Life in the military had trained me well.
That pleased him. “Solve this, Captain, and I’ll make it a gift. Now what’s this about meeting the three accursed chaps?”
I explained my intention to interview them and compare statements.
“They’re safe, those blackguards, because of double jeopardy,” said Adi. “Difficult to reopen the case.”
Silence pooled around us. What would these men do if I found the evidence they wanted? Did Burjor have it in him to kill? Would Tom Byram delegate the job with a stroke of his pen? And Adi? I recalled his fierce intensity.
These men had known the victims, so I turned to Burjor. “Sir? Your daughter Pilloo, can you tell me about her?”
He motioned us to the settee, went to his desk and filled his pipe, which he tapped and fussed over but did not light.
Sitting, he said. “Pilloo came to us in ’82, Captain. The flu epidemic, you see. When my brother and his wife died, we fostered their daughter.”
I’d suspected that. Pilloo looked little like the rest of her family. She was an orphan, like me.
“She came from?”
“Lahore.” It was his turn to be taciturn.
“She was married?”
He brightened. “Six months after Adi and Bacha wed, Pilloo married a nice boy from Jhansi, a year older.”
“She had no objection to her intended?”
“No, indeed! The lad’s from a good trading family. Pilloo met the boy. They were well suited.”
“Yes, but … what was she like?”
I turned from Adi’s surprise to Burjor’s puzzled look as he said, “She was just … Pilloo.”
I began to form a picture of the elusive Miss Pilloo. A dark-skinned orphan in a grand house of handsome, fair people. Given in marriage to a lad far away, accumulating a trousseau, and much attached to the beautiful Lady Bacha. Yet no one seemed to know her at all.
What had she been hiding? And Burjor … his hesitation was curious. I went over our conversation again. Something was off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
CHAPTER 7
THE LIBRARY
I should have been careful not to draw attention, but at the time it seemed insignificant. After all, a hundred pressmen had waded through the university grounds—why not one more? Making ready to depart for the clock tower, I donned Adi’s student robe. The windowpane reflected a square jaw, dark mustache and serious face over an ill-fitting black smock. My shoulders felt cramped.
Bombay newspapers had described every detail of the trial, until Police Superintendent Robert McIntyre furiously hollered in open court that the press was ruining his case. Of course, public attention grew stronger after that. The trial’s inconclusive end brought two petitions to the High Court. Neither reopened the case. The public was morbidly fascinated, the Parsees still up in arms. Perhaps I should have known, even then, that it wasn’t over.
Adi eyed me. “Captain, what do you need?” he asked, a common refrain in the weeks that followed.
Since the trial, no one else had been charged. So, I surmised, the murderer must feel pretty safe at present. That could change, once I started asking questions. Things could get sticky.
“A revolver? And I need to go to Matheran—the hill station. Mr. Byram discovered that Maneck lives there. Apparently something of a recluse.”
“Can’t say I blame him,” said Adi. “Acquitted by the law, but not the public.”
Adi’s legal mind often overrode his emotion, a curious aspect that I’d come to admire. At such times he appeared more solicitor than bereaved husband, but after reading his notes and scribbles, I knew better. I said, “We need to know what time the ladies reached the tower. How long does it take to get there?”
“Papa had taken the carriage that day. The girls would have got a victoria cab at Hanging Gardens.”
Tracing their path, I found a line of carriages as Adi had predicted, and in forty minutes reached the university, a wide expanse of green in the heart of Bombay. Bounded on all sides by thoroughfares filled with carriages and tongas, its stone buildings curved around a well-tended lawn. Proximity to the High Court lent a distinctive air. Men in black jackets and robes strode in animated conversation past clusters of students.
The clock tower dominated the landscape. As I came up the path, a mound of flowers, piled high with wilted bouquets, caught my attention. It lay at an odd angle in the lawn, about ten feet from the tower. A second pile, similarly stacked, showed behind it. So this was where Adi’s wife and sister died. I looked up and gauged the awful height.
Violent death is not always quick. It’s rarely quiet. It’s an ugly moment, the reduction of a person who speaks and thinks to a twisted, crumpled thing on the ground. And there’s blood. More blood than one imagines can be contained in a single human frame. It colors the ground long after the body is removed. Someone had covered the stains with flowers as though soft petals could somehow ease the shock of that fall.
The tower loomed, silent, unmoved. An ornate gothic structure with carved buttresses on each corner, it was attached to the library and public reading room. I stepped under the tower into its vaulted vestibule with archways on three sides. It was perceptibly cooler in the shade under its high stone ceiling.
Ahead were two separate entrances: one angling to the right, leading up to the tower. Directly ahead was the library reading room. This I entered first. Stained glass windows curved along one side, their pointed arches giving the room an
otherworldly feel. Bookshelves stood like sentries, while long tables straddled the wide floor. A third of the wooden chairs were occupied.
“I’m looking for Mr. Apte,” I said at the counter, and was directed to an elderly librarian.
He saw me and stiffened. I had that effect on people. “Army” came through, regardless of my garb. If sleuthing was to be my new vocation, I thought, anonymity might serve it better.
“I am Apte,” he said, pronouncing it “Up-teh.” A saffron scarf drooped from his neck, over knee-length kurta shirt and baggy trousers. Untidy white hair curled around his head, forming a clumsy halo.
I introduced myself, mentioned the women who died last October and asked, “Were you here that day?”
Removing his wire frames, he nodded. “Sahib, I was at this very desk when it happened.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
He rubbed his chin. “I saw … no, first I heard a sound, an awful thump.” He touched things on his table without looking at them. Yes, I thought, there’s the sound of it, a sound no one would forget, a hundred soft pounds hitting ground.
He went on, “Along with others, I hurried outside, and what a sight. The poor lady lay just outside the foyer—you saw the flowers?”
I reached for my notebook. “What time was it?”
“The clock was striking four o’clock.”
I looked toward the tower vestibule. “How long did it take to reach her?”
He gestured at the distance, a mere fifty feet. “A few seconds?”
“And then?”
He grimaced. “I saw her, lying on her side, twisted.…”
“Anyone near her?”
“No, Sahib. I was the first to arrive, I knelt, saw that she was dead. People crowded around.”
“How did you know she was dead?”
Apte winced. “There was blood, Sahib. I closed her eyes. I knew young Mrs. Framji. She liked Shakespeare, Byron, Virgil. Classics, mostly.”
He’d closed Bacha’s eyes. I asked, “Was she wearing spectacles?”
