Midnight at Malabar House (Inspector Wadia series)

by Khan, Vaseem

  He leaned back, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and lit one with a match. He offered her the packet, but she declined. He allowed the smoke to flare slowly from his nostrils and billow around his eyes. ‘Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. Either find a way or make one.’ He grimaced. ‘The motto of my old house at University College London.’

  Persis reined in her irritation. ‘Did you ever get a look at the documents?’

  ‘No. As I said, he kept them from me. Frankly, I thought he could have used my help, but he was paranoid about anyone discovering too much of what he was doing.’

  ‘The ashes in the grate. Could those have been the documents?’

  Lal shrugged. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Did you tell the Deputy Home Minister that the documents had been destroyed?’

  He blinked. ‘He asked me what was the likelihood. I said that it was possible.’

  ‘In the list of recent appointments you provided me with, Sir James was out of the city on a number of occasions. In most of those instances, you did not mention where he travelled.’

  ‘If I did not it was because such trips were in pursuit of his investigations. Again, he insisted on keeping those details to himself, even to the extent of purchasing his own tickets.’

  Her thoughts flashed instantly to the ticket stub she had found in Herriot’s jacket. Could that pertain to such a trip?

  ‘On the evening of his death, Sir James was seen in his study with a man named Vishal Mistry. Do you know who he is?’

  Lal frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘I thought you were his aide?’

  ‘I have no record of a scheduled meeting with a Vishal Mistry.’

  Was he telling the truth? What reason had he to lie?

  ‘Very well. That same evening you and Sir James were observed arguing. Can you tell me what the argument was about?’

  His brow corrugated. ‘Arguing? Who told you this?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, does it?’

  He seemed perturbed. ‘Sir James and I rarely argued. Yes, we might occasionally harbour differences of opinion, or debate certain matters vigorously, but we did not argue. I always considered my role to be more along the lines of an adviser, a confidant, not just an aide. More importantly, he was my employer. He was in charge. The final decision always rested with him.’

  ‘So you cannot shed any light on this argument?’

  His face hardened. He stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray. ‘As I said: there was no argument.’

  ‘Very well. What can you tell me about Robert Campbell?’

  ‘Campbell’s a tricky fellow. He likes to come across as a bluff Scotsman, a man who speaks his mind, but the truth is that he is not to be trusted. Sir James knew this.’

  ‘I was under the impression they were friends.’

  ‘They were. But Sir James had no illusions as to the sort of man Campbell is.’

  ‘What sort of man is that?’

  Lal appeared to engage in a subconscious calculus before answering. ‘Ruthless. That’s the only word to describe him. He’ll have you believe it’s the Scot in him, but that’s not true. I knew many Scots during my time in the army, fine men, honest and warm. They didn’t give their friendship easily, but once they did, they’d stand in front of a tank for you. No, it’s something else with Campbell. He’s one of those men who simply don’t see right or wrong. Wealth is the only philosophy he believes in. Wealth and power.

  ‘A year ago, an ugly rumour about him did the rounds. Campbell had been hired to build a bridge in a township just outside Delhi. Six months into the project, with the bridge half built, he fell out with his chief engineer, a young Indian. Apparently, the man grew a conscience and demanded a fair wage for his workers or they would down tools. Without the raw labour Campbell had little chance of completing the work on time.

  ‘That particular stretch of the Yamuna is notorious for the crocodiles that gather along its banks. One evening, so the rumour goes, Campbell had the engineer taken from his home and strung up by the feet from the half-completed bridge. The next morning, when the villagers came down to the river, they found the lower half of the man’s body swinging from the rope. The head, shoulders and arms had been devoured.’ He paused, his lips pursing into a grimace. ‘Robert Campbell is a man lacking in moral fibre, Inspector.’

  ‘You don’t like him.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  ‘The feeling is mutual,’ she said. ‘He made some rather unflattering remarks about you.’

  Lal’s eyes contracted to pinpricks. He pulled out his cigarette packet again and lit another cigarette. ‘And what exactly did he have to say?’

  ‘He implied that your time in the army might not have been as straightforward as you led me to believe. That, in fact, you were court-martiall—’

  ‘Enough!’ He slapped the surface of the desk, startling her into silence. An uncomfortable moment passed. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I did not mean to—’ He stopped. ‘My time in the army is of no relevance to Sir James’s death. I would urge you to concentrate on the facts at hand.’

  Persis decided not to pursue the matter; at least, for now. There was nothing to be gained by fuelling Lal’s angst.

  ‘I’d like to know more about Sir James’s financial situation. Who stands to benefit from his death?’

  ‘That can be easily answered. His will is due to be read tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you know what’s in it?’

  ‘No. That was another matter Sir James kept to himself.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ she began. ‘We have evidence that Sir James may have been with a woman on the night of his death.’

  Lal’s eyes blinked in incomprehension behind his spectacles.

  ‘What I mean is that he was intimate with her.’

  ‘You must be mistaken.’

  ‘There’s no mistake. The incident took place just before his murder, in his study. So you can understand why it is important that we identify the other party.’

  ‘I cannot imagine—’ Lal began, then stopped.

  ‘Was he having an affair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A casual encounter then? Someone he might have flirted with that evening?’

  ‘He was a gregarious man. Women were drawn to him.’

  ‘Any woman in particular?’

  Lal’s discomfort was obvious. ‘I honestly cannot say, Inspector. Sir James was his usual self. He had many dance partners that evening. The man knew how to have a good time.’

  ‘Surely, he must have let something slip. Did you not just tell me that you were his confidant?’

  His face hardened. ‘Not in such matters,’ he said sharply. ‘He preferred to keep his private life to himself.’

  ‘This assignation took place in his study with a horde of people in the house. Hardly the act of a man of discretion.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I have no idea who his partner might have been.’

  Persis left him, clearly perturbed. Her instincts told her that Lal knew more than he was willing to say. As she moved back towards the front of the house, it occurred to her that if Herriot had been engaged in an affair, then Lal was not the only one who might have noticed.

  She found the housekeeper, Lalita Gupta, in a small office at the rear of the mansion. The woman, once again dressed in a sari, was seated at a desk, writing in a small notebook. On the desk was a framed photograph of an Indian male. She straightened as Persis entered.

  Quickly, Persis explained the situation. ‘Was Sir James involved with anyone?’

  Panic contorted the woman’s fine features. ‘Please, madam, such matters are not my concern.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Persis. ‘Your employer has been murdered. You were his housekeeper. You saw the comings and goings in his home. Your observations might be critical to helping us solve his murder.’

  ‘But I saw nothing!’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  This seemed to startle her. Her fing
ers entwined themselves and she looked wretchedly at her feet.

  ‘Whatever you tell me shall remain in confidence,’ said Persis, her expression softening. ‘But I must have an answer. Rest assured, you will not be betraying Sir James.’

  ‘He had many lady friends.’ She stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Persis.

  ‘Female visitors came to the house all the time. Sir James used to say that without a woman a house was just four walls and a roof.’ A sad smile played over her lips.

  ‘Were there any women whom he was particularly fond of, regular visitors? I’m especially interested in those who were also here on the night of his death.’

  Gupta hesitated, then seemed to resign herself. ‘Yes. Eve Gatsby. Sir James became very close with her in recent weeks.’

  Persis recalled a tall, young American woman, one of those who had protested loudest at being held for interview at Laburnum House. In the end, she had escaped before Persis could speak with her.

  ‘How did you end up here?’

  ‘My husband passed in the war,’ replied Gupta. ‘Sir James gave me a roof over my head, a job.’

  ‘Your husband was a soldier?’

  ‘Yes.’ She whispered the word.

  ‘What was his name?’

  She blinked. ‘Duleep.’ Sadness trembled beneath the surface of her dusky skin.

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘A son.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He is at a boarding school in Panvel.’

  ‘Boarding school?’ It seemed unusual, a widow, a housekeeper with presumably limited means.

  Gupta seemed to sense the unasked question. ‘Sir James was generous enough to pay for his schooling.’

  ‘What happens to you now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Persis had nothing further to ask the woman. Yet there was something about her, some sense of evasiveness that made her want to know more about Sir James Herriot’s housekeeper.

  She took her leave and left the house.

  Back at Malabar House she found her stomach rumbling again and sent the peon for a plate of spiced dumplings from the Dancing Stomach, a nearby Chinese eatery. She wolfed the snack and considered her next move.

  She pulled out the enigmatic note again and sat it next to her plate. By a pool of nectar, at the shrine of the sixty-eight. Birla had said that the sixty-eight might refer to sixty-eight pilgrimage sites important to Hindus. This implied a religious interpretation to the sentence.

  Very well.

  She focused on the first part of the line. By a pool of nectar. In the lexicon of faith, nectar might be nectar of the gods. Ambrosia. A spark flamed inside her mind like a lit match.

  A pool of ambrosia . . . Ambrosia . . . And then she had it.

  Amritsar.

  The northern city’s original name Ambarsar literally meant ‘pool of ambrosia’. The city had been founded in 1577 by a Sikh guru who had decreed the building of a temple by a natural pool. That temple was now the holiest site in the Sikh religion.

  The Golden Temple.

  She looked at the jagged edge of the notepaper, at the few letters she had been able to identify.

  _ _ E G_ _ _ E _ _ E _ _ L _ _ O _ _ _

  The first three words fitted perfectly: The Golden Temple. And now she could make an informed guess at the final word. Hotel.

  The sheet had been taken from a notepad at the Golden Temple Hotel, a hotel that was most likely in Amritsar. And Sir James had been there some time before his death.

  She allowed herself a moment of quiet satisfaction before approaching Birla. ‘Let’s step outside.’

  The afternoon street was baking and sweat quickly sheened their faces as they walked along the road to the Marolto Coffee House. A fearsome stench arose from an open sewer by the side of the road; a filth-spattered hog rooted in a mound of rubbish.

  Persis shivered. One thing freedom hadn’t changed was the city’s squalor, squalor that sat side by side with magnificence. Bombay was a study in such contrasts, stratified into distinct layers by caste, wealth and social mores. A Brahmin would no more entertain the idea of sitting down to eat with a Dalit than a Parsee would marry off his daughter to a non-Zoroastrian. The fractious unity engendered by the revolution had evaporated during the communal rioting; the post-independence turmoil had seen the old petty prejudices reassert themselves with a vengeance.

  And it wasn’t just Bombay, she thought. The city of dreams was a mirror for every corner of the new nation, every village, every town, every city. The struggle for freedom had left in its wake a desire to make something of this ancient-new nation of theirs. But for the three hundred million Indians who dwelt within the newly drawn borders, it was anyone’s guess how they would achieve that reality. If Partition had shown them anything, it was that India was a nation as liable to war with itself as with a common enemy.

  Once inside the coffee shop, she ordered an iced tea; Birla picked up a jug of water and drained it. He mopped the sweat from his brow and turned his face towards the ceiling fan.

  ‘I have a task for you.’ Persis quickly explained her discovery of the Golden Temple Hotel. ‘I want you to find the place.’

  Birla thought about it. ‘There’s probably a hotel association in Amritsar. I’ll contact them. What should I do once I find it?’

  ‘Nothing. I want to speak to them myself.’

  Birla nodded, scratched in his notepad.

  ‘Next,’ continued Persis, ‘I want to find this Vishal Mistry. Fernandes says a Claude Derrida walked in on Mistry and Sir James. Derrida described Mistry as well dressed. A suit. Wearing rings and an expensive-looking watch. He came to see Sir James about something, or was invited to do so. Given the circles within which Sir James moved, I would guess that Mistry was not some door-to-door salesman. He was a man of substance. That should make it easier to locate him.’

  ‘Where do we begin?’

  ‘I have an idea.’

  The Bombay Registry and Electoral Office was a relatively new title for an old institution. This was the office responsible for the country’s census, carried out once every decade. The last census had taken place in 1941; the next was due in a year’s time, and was particularly exigent given that the nation’s first post-independence general election was due in the summer of 1951.

  Persis and Birla made their way into the anteroom where a flunky sat beneath a whirring fan. Such was his state of immobility, Persis wondered if perhaps he had expired in his seat and no one had noticed.

  She presented her credentials. ‘I wish to locate an individual by means of the electoral roll. Can you help me?’

  The man stared at her, his dark face as mournful as a depressed toad’s. ‘I am afraid that any such request must be presented through official channels and in writing together with a copy of form IU89-b. In triplicate.’

  Persis counted to ten. It was a trick Aunt Nussie had taught her, a way of managing her temper before flying off the handle. She reached six before the rage took hold of her. She leaned forward, grabbed the man by the lapels of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.

  His lizard eyes goggled at her, but he had lost the power of speech.

  ‘My name is Persis Wadia and I have been tasked by the Deputy Home Minister to investigate the death of Sir James Herriot. If you do not help me you will be impeding me in my duty. I shall have you arrested and thrown in jail. An official complaint will reach your superiors. You will be relieved of your position. You will lose your livelihood, and your home. Your family will be forced into the streets. Your wife will leave you. Your children will take to a life of crime. Do you wish to see all this come to pass?’

  His head creaked slowly from side to side.

  She let him go and he sagged back into his seat. ‘Lead the way.’

  Fifteen minutes later they were sitting in the records room, a small, stifling space lit by light bulbs and housing bracketed steel shelves weighed down with red ledgers. A
stack of ledgers from the previous census covering surnames beginning with Mi were arrayed before them on a steel desk.

  ‘I’ll say one thing for the British,’ muttered Birla. ‘They knew how to keep records.’

  ‘Of course they did,’ said Persis. ‘They wanted to know exactly how much they could steal and from whom.’

  Birla acknowledged the truth of this with a grunt. A fly landed on the page before him and he lashed out automatically, squishing it in a burst of blood. Scowling, he wiped the mess from his hand on to his trousers.

  Persis went back to her page, running her finger down the list of entries. Each entry was in the name of the head of the household and contained subsidiary information about the other residents within the home, as well as information about each individual’s employment and household assets.

  Half an hour later they had a complete list of Vishal Mistrys living within the Bombay Presidency at the time of the last census. Eighty-nine in total.

  They began to eliminate those who could not possibly be the man they were looking for. This meant all those under the age of forty and over the age of sixty. Although Derrida had guessed Mistry’s age to be around fifty, Persis opted for a margin of latitude in her cull.

  They were left with forty-three names. Still too many.

  She considered the problem, then stepped outside. She walked back to the reception where the flunky quailed as she bore down on him. ‘I need a map of Bombay.’

  He blinked at her owlishly.

  ‘Now,’ she said.

  He leaped to his feet as if electrocuted.

  Ten minutes later she was back in the records room with the map spread over the desk, the ledgers having been moved to the floor.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Birla.

  ‘The man Derrida described was well off. There are sections of the city where I would not expect him to live.’ District by district they marked off the forty-three entries. By the time they had removed those districts that might be considered lower on the social scale, they were left with nine names.

  ‘Now let’s see who was closest to Herriot.’

  Three of the names lived within a two-mile radius of Laburnum House.