Midnight at Malabar House (Inspector Wadia series)

by Khan, Vaseem

  ‘Never saw the need for it. If it hadn’t been for her mother insisting on it . . .’

  An uncomfortable silence passed.

  ‘You were at his home last night. For the party. Both of you.’

  ‘Aye. We were.’

  ‘But you left early. I mean, I didn’t get a chance to speak to you.’

  ‘I wasn’t about to wait around all night to be interviewed like some common hoodlum.’

  ‘I noticed that Mrs Campbell was not on the list of attendees.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Elizabeth squeezed her father’s shoulder. Campbell subsided, staring down angrily into his glass.

  ‘My mother has been unwell for rather a long time, Inspector,’ explained the girl. ‘Consumption. She returned to Scotland almost two years ago, for treatment at a private clinic. And for the air.’ This last part was said with a trace of sardonic amusement, and Persis once again found herself wondering at the stiffness between them, a sense of needle that communicated itself via the tone of voice they used with each other, their body language.

  ‘Do you usually accompany your father to parties?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘There’s plenty of eligible young bachelors at these things. Father is ever so keen to see me married off. To the right sort, of course.’

  ‘For God’s sakes, girl,’ muttered Campbell, loud enough to turn heads. The compress balanced on his leg slipped and fell to the floor.

  Persis leaned forward, picked it up and held it out to the dour Scot. He snatched it from her and slapped it back on his knee.

  ‘You had a meeting with Sir James that morning. What was it about?’

  ‘Ach. It was just a business meeting. Routine.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘We didn’t. We were supposed to meet here at ten. James didn’t show.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Campbell scowled. ‘James was his own man. A cancelled meeting was hardly the end of the world. I was due to see him at the ball that evening anyhow.’

  Persis paused, then: ‘What sort of man was he?’

  Campbell twitched in his seat. ‘He was smart. Knew how to get what he wanted.’

  ‘Everyone tells me that he was well liked, that he had no enemies.’

  Campbell snorted. ‘You’re no’ so naïve as to believe a man as powerful as James hadn’t any enemies, Inspector.’

  ‘Is there anyone specific you can think of?’

  ‘I’m no’ the man to be asking.’

  ‘Then who should I be asking?’

  ‘That aide of his. Lal. He’s the man James trusted with his secrets.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Lal.’

  Campbell grimaced. ‘What did you make of him?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean. He seemed competent.’

  ‘Don’t be fooled, Inspector. There’s more than meets the eye there. Did he tell you about his war years?’

  ‘He mentioned that he’d fought in Burma.’

  Something gleamed in Campbell’s eyes. ‘Did he by any chance mention that he was court-martialled while he was out there? That if it hadn’t been for James, he’d probably still be in a military stockade?’

  Persis was silent, unsure of how to reply.

  ‘The trouble with men like Lal, Inspector, is that they bury their true natures deep inside. It wasn’t Gandhi who got rid of the British. It was the Lals of this world. The placid ones who, when history came calling, took up the sword and chopped each other to pieces in the streets. That was what the mandarins back home couldn’t stomach. Rivers of blood and them being blamed for it.’

  The Scot lumbered to his feet. A powerful smell of sweat wafted from him. Standing before her, she was conscious of the raw strength he projected, the muscles cording his forearms, his thick-fingered hands, the girth of his thighs. And the anger. His rage was a palpable thing.

  ‘I have another appointment. I must be away,’ he announced.

  Persis stood. ‘Thank you for your time.’

  Campbell began to walk off stiffly, then stopped and turned. ‘Whatever happened to James, the one thing I can tell you is this: he deserved better from this country.’ He waved at the club. ‘India is a sovereign power now, and James helped to make that a reality. But the truth is, we’ve put this place in the hands of men who haven’t a clue what they’re doing.’

  ‘And the British did?’ The words came out reflexively; she was barely conscious of the annoyance that lay behind them.

  ‘Whatever our faults, Inspector, we transformed this country. We’re leaving it for the better.’

  ‘The British looted our country for three hundred years. Millions died, millions more have been beggared. The nation has been divided, in more ways than you probably realise. You call that leaving us for the better?’

  ‘What of economic advancement?’ growled Campbell, a scarlet blush racing from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. ‘We built industries for you; ports, roads, railways. We lifted you from the dirt and gave you a place in the world.’

  Her own face grew hot. It wasn’t the first time she had heard such sentiments. There were many like Campbell, nursing their resentment openly. She realised that others had paused their conversations to listen. She wondered why none of them rose up to challenge him, why they allowed him to remain a member of the club when he so openly espoused such views.

  But then, institutions such as the Bombay Gymkhana had begun as bastions of British insularity. Once upon a time, Indians would not even have been allowed inside the premises. Nor dogs. As for Indians with dogs . . . The worst of it was that a man like Campbell did not even understand what it was that was so wrong with his way of looking at the world. He was so steeped in the mythology of colonialism, the belief that the British were not only superior but knew what was best for others, that he could conceive of nothing else.

  A stray thought flashed a fin at the back of her mind. Had the Scotsman’s views caused friction with James Herriot, an open advocate of Indian independence?

  She found words in her mouth. ‘“You do well, my son, to cry like a woman, for what you could not defend as a man.” ’

  Campbell’s brow corrugated into a frown. ‘What? What was that?’

  ‘They were the words that Boabdil’s mother said to him as they left Granada, driven out after seven centuries of Muslim rule.’

  Understanding came slowly to the Scot. He rolled on the balls of his feet, his face turning the colour of beetroot. Then he turned and stormed from the room.

  ‘Well done,’ murmured a voice by her ear.

  She turned to find Elizabeth Campbell smiling beside her.

  ‘It takes a lot to rattle my father. I should know.’

  With that she followed him out, leaving behind a cloud of gossip and laughter that rose quickly to engulf the young policewoman.

  Chapter 7

  It was late in the afternoon by the time she arrived back at the station, her shirt sticking to her back. She discovered Constable Ray half asleep at his desk. ‘Sorry, madam.’ He grinned queasily. ‘I didn’t get much rest last night.’

  She knew that Ray, the station’s stick havaldar – a nomenclature from the Raj era, referring to the constable at any of the city’s ninety-three police stations who first attended to complainants – had just had a child; his fifth. She wondered what it must be like in their home. Somewhere between a zoo and a lunatic asylum. She had often wondered at the mores of a society that compelled women to act as little more than birthing machines, pumping out one child after another, often into homes that could barely support them. Her father labelled it ignorance, not unkindly. Persis wasn’t so sure. It seemed as if something in the very fabric of life on the subcontinent was stoking this blind urge to procreate. Lust couldn’t explain it; nor economic necessity. She thought of it as a contagion, a virulent madness that infected so many of her countrymen.

  She sat at her desk, set down her cap, sent the
office peon, Gopal, scurrying off to fetch a glass of fresh lime, then settled down to write up her notes.

  The day had gone as well as she could have hoped. She had learned much, not least of which was that Sir James Herriot had lived a life more complex than apparent at first glance. He had been tasked to investigate a matter of national importance, and in that task lay a possible motive for his killing. Added to this was his relationship with Robert Campbell, ostensibly a friend, but she had sensed something unspoken there worth investigating further.

  And last there was Campbell’s own insinuation that Madan Lal was not a man to be trusted.

  The investigation was barely a day old and already the onion skin was unravelling, revealing layer upon layer.

  One by one her fellow officers drifted in and reported back.

  Lal had provided her with a list of all those who had attended the ball. She now added to this her own notes from the interviews she had conducted, and the new information supplied by her colleagues. For the most part this information was bland and led her to mentally dismiss the interviewees in question from her thoughts as either credible suspects or sources of relevant information.

  In some cases, she made notes for herself to follow up.

  There were two testimonies that stood out.

  Sub-Inspector Haq, flopping into a seat beside her, had peered down at his notebook, deciphering his own barely legible handwriting with some difficulty. ‘An American woman named Jennifer Macey says that she saw Sir James and his aide, Madan Lal, arguing. They’d stepped into an alcove and she could hear raised voices. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Lal shot past her a minute later like a dog with its tail on fire.’

  Persis felt troubled by the revelation.

  Lal had neglected to mention any such argument. Perhaps it was a minor matter and he had considered it immaterial to the investigation. Her own perception of Lal had been positive. She had found him helpful and genuine in his desire to find Herriot’s killer. Then again, there was Robert Campbell’s claim that Lal was a man with a hidden past. And Tilak had indicated that Herriot’s Partition documents were missing, possibly destroyed. Her thoughts went to the burned paper she had found in the Englishman’s study. Could those ashes be all that remained of the documents? How would Tilak know of this if not from Lal?

  She called Lal but was informed by the housekeeper, Mrs Gupta, that he was out. Gupta told her that Lal would be available in his office the following afternoon.

  The second point of detail came via Sub-Inspector George Fernandes. Perched on the edge of his own desk, saddlebags of sweat staining his khaki dress shirt, he had relayed his day’s efforts. Persis was impressed. Fernandes had been meticulous and detailed. She imagined that being grilled by the man, with his intense expression and bristling moustache, would be an unsettling experience.

  ‘Claude Derrida, a French Jew, architect by profession. Claims that he walked in on Sir James in his study talking to a man named Vishal Mistry. He knows that was his name because he saw it on a card on the desk. Says they were looking at something on the desk that Sir James quickly covered up with a handkerchief. He didn’t get a good look, but he thinks it was “shiny”.’

  ‘What was Derrida doing there?’

  ‘He’d arrived early for the party. He wanted to ask Sir James’s advice on a personal matter. He’s travelling to England in the spring and wanted to know the name of Sir James’s tailor there.’ Fernandes shook his head. ‘I told him to save his money. The best tailors are right here in Bombay. Walk in a beggar, walk out a prince. And all at a fraction of the cost.’

  She considered the incident. In and of itself, it seemed inconsequential. But Derrida had seen something. What had Herriot been trying to hide from him? If it had been something valuable, then where was it now? Could it have been whatever the murderer had taken from the safe? She added these questions to her growing list.

  ‘Who is Vishal Mistry?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He wasn’t on the list of names you gave me.’

  Persis frowned and went back through her master list. She realised that Mistry wasn’t on the official guest list or the list of staff that Lal had given her. Curious. Clearly, Mistry had been at the house the previous evening.

  She stopped by the SP’s office before heading home.

  She waited patiently as Seth finished haranguing someone on the telephone. Having set the receiver down, he sighed wearily, removed a bottle from his desk and poured himself a drink.

  ‘Have you started drinking yet?’ he enquired.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give it a few days.’ He knocked back the whisky, grimaced, then said, ‘That was Aalam Channa from the Indian Chronicle. He wants to interview you. I told him there wasn’t a chance in hell. Congratulations, Persis. You wanted fame. Now you have it. Be careful what you wish for.’

  It was getting on for dusk when she parked the jeep in the narrow alley behind the bookshop. She got out and walked back around to the front, where she stopped for a moment and looked over the façade.

  She knew that it was in urgent need of repair. The succession of ornamental Doric columns that fronted the glass windows were crumbling, the sandstone pitted and worn by decades of monsoon bombardment and midnight drunks urinating on the bases of the pillars. The windows were plastered with posters for books – all but crowded out by propaganda for her father’s various political affiliations, including an announcement for an upcoming Congress Party rally. Above the shopfront, an ornamental frieze displayed both the shop’s name and aggressive scenes from Zoroastrian mythology: fabled birds, white horses and the prophet Zoroaster perched atop a mountain, bathed in holy fire. At either edge of the frieze, perched on out-jutting plinths, were two stone vultures, peering down at passers-by with seemingly malevolent intent. These overtly Parsee emblems had bothered her increasingly as she moved towards adulthood – religion had never played a significant part in her life, but she understood how it held sway over so many of her countrymen; during the Partition years, she had seen first-hand the havoc misguided faith could cause.

  It was strange, she had often thought, how emancipated India in so many ways mirrored the society of its erstwhile rulers.

  She remembered, as a naïve twenty-year-old, listening to Gandhi’s thrilling ‘Quit India’ speech, back in 1942. An under-pressure Churchill, seeking India’s continued support in the war, had sent Sir Stafford Cripps to discuss a change to India’s political status. But Churchill had proved duplicitous and his overtures were rejected by Gandhi and Jinnah. In a meeting of the Congress Party in Bombay, Gandhi’s words became a rallying cry for the nation: Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give to you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is ‘Do or Die.’ We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.

  Persis had thrown herself into the fight. She had attended rallies and spoken out in college debates. When Gandhi had been imprisoned, she had marched with thousands of others demanding his release.

  But now, those days seemed a distant memory. The spirit of national unity had fractured and the old divisions had arisen anew. Caste prejudice, religious strife, economic inequality. The rich fought tooth-and-nail to hold on to what they had; the poor lashed out in mindless fury, victims of their own ignorance.

  Gandhi would have wept, she thought.

  The front door, as ever, was unlocked. Her father had always reasoned that if anyone was minded enough to steal books, either they were in dire need of them but could not afford them – in which case they were welcome to them – or, if they happened to be confused thieves, then it was better to have well-read thieves roaming the city than illiterate ones.

  The lights had been dimmed, pitching the shop into semi-gloom.

  There was no one by the counter. Opening and closing times at the Wadia Book Emporium were haphazard, dictated by her father’s moods. The sh
op had the confidence born of a solid reputation. Word of mouth had spread the gospel: Sam Wadia was a man who knew books. He read them, he understood them; he pressed them on to his customers, or snatched them out of their startled hands as they browsed the store.

  This one is not for you. Try this one.

  The funny thing was, he was invariably right.

  Such was the shop’s fame that celebrities made a point of frequenting the place. Even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had dropped in during his frequent visits to the city before Delhi tightened its grip on him. Persis remembered his white Ambassador turning up late one night, Nehru’s tall, gaunt figure ambling inside as his security guard fretted beside him. Her father had introduced her. Nehru had smiled, shaken her seventeen-year-old hand, asked her what she had been reading. Shyly, she had shown him the battered copy of Doctor Zhivago that had been her constant companion for the past week. Her father claimed that the book had been banned in its native Russia.

  Nehru had bought a dozen copies on the spot.

  She navigated her way to the rear of the shop where she discovered Sam stretched out on the sofa behind Historical & Archaeology, his fistulous legs propped on cushions, head lolling back, a line of drool snaking from the corner of his mouth. His chest lifted in an erratic pumping motion as he gently snored. The wheelchair lay temporarily abandoned. She knew that he was adept at manoeuvring himself in and out of the contraption, but was prone to occasionally spilling himself on to the floor in a tangle of limbs and curses.

  A pang of guilt twinged at her insides.

  Had she really needed to be so harsh with him? The truth was that she knew too little about the facts of her mother’s death to condemn anyone, let alone her own father. Sam had kept the truth bottled inside him, her entreaties over the years falling on deaf ears. Her instincts told her that the bare-boned explanation of her mother’s demise at an independence rally was not all that had transpired that day. But each time she probed, Sam’s eyes would cloud over, his mouth would set itself into a grim line; he would slam the doors of his mind shut and retreat into himself, not emerging for hours, sometimes days.