Midnight at Malabar House (Inspector Wadia series)

by Khan, Vaseem

  Persis’s eyes shifted to the canvas hanging behind Merchant. ‘Where is Mr Pettigrew?’ she asked.

  ‘Our colleague has temporarily returned to England to attend to certain personal affairs,’ supplied Palonjee smoothly. ‘We expect his return imminently.’

  The lie flapped about the room, then vanished through an open window. Persis wondered if the others had sensed it. If she had to guess, Anthony Pettigrew had discovered that post-independence India was a beast not to his liking. In all probability, he had emulated many of his countrymen and fled the new republic, leaving his partners to continue the fiction of his presence.

  ‘As you are all by now aware,’ continued Merchant, scowling at the interruption, ‘we were retained by the late Sir James for a variety of legal matters including the administering of his will.’ He reached towards the manila folder at his elbow. With great ceremony, he unwrapped the string that encased it, then opened it to reveal a sheaf of stamped papers.

  ‘The will of Sir James was prepared on December 15th, 1948,’ he began. ‘Its provisions relate to all assets, property and chattel that had accrued to him as on the date of his death. Such assets include the property at No. 38 Palmerston Square in London, England; the cash sums present within three bank accounts held in London; a variety of shareholdings and indentured bonds; a rubber plantation located on the Caribbean island of Trinidad; and its associated commercial enterprise, the West Indian Rubber Corporation, incorporated at Companies House, London.’ He paused. ‘Allow me to continue in the testator’s own words: “I, James Edward Herriot, citizen of the British Empire, being of sound mind and body, declare this to be my last will and testament. I hereby revoke all prior wills and codicils. By this, my will, I bequeath the residue of my estate in its entirety to the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Such estate shall include my property in London, England, the sum of my cash balances and investments, and the sum of my commercial enterprises in Port of Spain, Trinidad.”’

  Merchant paused to pluck a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe the sweat from his jowls.

  ‘The value of the estate has now been ascertained. I am afraid the news is not good.’ He glanced at Edmond de Vries. ‘The fact is that recent financial difficulties mean that Sir James Herriot’s estate has been decimated. To put it bluntly, Sir James was all but bankrupt.’

  A stunned silence greeted the lawyer’s summation.

  Lal was the first to speak. ‘There has to be some mistake.’

  ‘I assure you, there is no mistake.’ Merchant endeavoured to look apologetic and sanguine at the same time, but failed to do either. He ran a fat finger around his collar.

  ‘How did you determine Sir James’s financial situation?’ persisted Lal.

  Persis couldn’t help but note that the revelation of Herriot’s penury had stunned the mild-mannered aide. Perhaps he was considering the viability of his own position. If there were no estate left to manage, how long could Lal carry on at Laburnum House?

  ‘We spoke to his bookkeeper and contacted his bankers in London,’ Merchant replied. ‘And we telegrammed Mr de Vries in Port of Spain. He explained the situation to us.’

  ‘What situation?’

  All eyes turned to de Vries. He was sweating profusely; a rash of red crawled up his neck.

  ‘Before I answer that question, I’d like to know: how did he die?’ He looked at Persis. ‘The gory details. The lawyers were very brief in their telegram and one can only glean so much from the dailies.’

  She was taken aback by his tone. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she began, but he halted her in her tracks by bursting into a mirthless laugh.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m not.’

  ‘I take it you were not on good terms with—’ She stopped. Finally, she had it. It was the eyes. They took her back to the portrait she had seen in the murdered man’s office, of a younger Sir James Herriot.

  ‘He was your father, wasn’t he?’

  His face changed. ‘Well done, Inspector. It usually takes a few days for people to make the connection. Though we must be careful of bandying around the word father. I was his bastard, you see, and he went to great pains to ensure I was kept hidden away. Wouldn’t want to put a dent in the old man’s golden aura.’

  ‘You disliked him.’

  ‘I despised him,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And he despised me. It’s lucky I was on the other side of the world otherwise I might have been your prime suspect.’

  ‘What was the reason for the animosity?’

  ‘I am the living evidence of my father’s predatory habits. Only on this occasion my mother refused to go along with his plans for me, namely, a backstreet doctor, followed by a gentle shove into the night, a fistful of cash tucked into her hatband. She died when I was nine. Tuberculosis. When she understood that she hadn’t much time left she visited Herriot. Threatened to create a scandal if he didn’t take me in. They reached a compromise. Herriot would pay for my education, but I would not take his name, nor reveal to anyone that I was his son. He hated me, of course. The feeling was mutual.’ He glared at the wall behind her. ‘He was, quite simply, a vile man. Utterly self-centred, focused only on his own advancement, his own gratification. He packed me off to boarding school, then Cambridge. When I came back he banished me to the West Indies to run his holdings there. At least in name. He gelded me first. In actuality, the place is run by his man, a Jew by the name of Abrams; or was until he stuck a revolver in his mouth and blew his brains out.’

  His watery eyes held her gaze. Was he attempting to shock her? She had no time for a contest of wills. He had been hurt, she did not doubt that. She could not imagine what it would have been like to grow up with a father who did not care.

  ‘Why did Abrams kill himself?’

  His long fingers played with a water glass. ‘What does a man have to do to get a proper drink around here?’

  She recognised the tracery of crapulence around his eyes, the filigree of broken veins.

  ‘Do you know what really irks me?’ he continued. ‘How he managed to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Sir James Herriot. Master statesman. Our man in the Orient.’ He leaned closer, his ruddy face twisted in anger. ‘He ruined my life and my mother’s. He was a monster and I’m glad he’s dead.’

  ‘Why did Abrams kill himself?’ she repeated.

  ‘Because he couldn’t live with it.’

  ‘Live with what?’

  ‘The collapse of the plantation. Insect infestation. There was nothing anyone could do. Or there would have been had Abrams not been asleep at the wheel. By the time he cottoned on to what was happening, it was too late. And so he took the honourable way out.’ He mimicked a gun with his fingers, the act of blowing his brains out.

  ‘Your father knew this?’

  ‘Yes. I telegrammed him when it happened. Three months ago.’

  ‘Why didn’t you return to India at that time?’

  He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Return to India? I was never here in the first place. My father didn’t want me anywhere near him. Besides, I had my own commitments.’ She continued to stare at him. ‘If you must know I have a woman out there. She’s just given birth to my child. That’s the reason I hung on there. I wanted to come to India with my baby and my black mistress. Introduce my father to his bastard grandchild. Sir James Herriot, peer of the realm, grandfather to a mulatto.’ His eyes danced with a maniacal light. And then it all went out of him. ‘But he outwitted me again. He went and died on me.’

  Chapter 12

  The office was quiet. The only one at his desk was Sub-Inspector Haq, painstakingly writing up a progress report on his investigation into an arson attack that had burned down a local jute warehouse. The warehouse had belonged to a politico, a fiery character. The man had jumped up and down in his jackboots demanding the entire city be turned upside down until the perpetrator was apprehended. The case had gradually worked its way around to Malabar House. Haq, for his sins, had been given the investigation and had m
ade slow but steady progress, weathering the eardrum-bursting fury of the politico and a revolving cast of henchmen whose only function appeared to be to turn up at Malabar House at all hours of the day to berate and threaten him.

  She fell into her chair, set down her cap, and closed her eyes. The case was becoming more convoluted by the second.

  She sat upright, picked up a pen, and pulled out her notebook.

  A killer with a curved blade. A midnight tryst. A falling out with a friend. A mysterious jeweller, now missing. A recent bankruptcy. A government commission to investigate the worst of crimes.

  How did these seemingly unconnected blocks fit together?

  Inspector Hemant Oberoi walked in, did a double-take as he spotted her.

  ‘So, how goes your investigation?’

  ‘You’ve made it clear that it’s no concern of yours.’

  His moustache twitched. ‘They put you in charge precisely because they know you will fail. They’re laughing at you. You’re the only one who doesn’t know it.’ He turned and strutted away.

  The anger stayed with her as she took out the Partition files, moved to the interview room, and resumed looking through them.

  Oberoi’s words hung in her mind. Could there be an element of truth there?

  She drove out the insidious thought and bent to her task.

  She had finished looking through the files for Bombay, and now took up the batch of testimonies from Bengal, particularly those centred in and around Calcutta, another epicentre of the bloodshed that had been unleashed during Partition. The division of Bengal into Hindu majority West Bengal and the new Muslim East Pakistan had led to a peak in sectarian violence.

  The region had had a particularly hard decade. Famine, and the disease that followed, had killed two million during the war alone.

  When the Japanese attacked Burma, half a million Indian refugees poured into neighbouring Bengal. The allied troops, pushed into retreat by the rampant Japanese, soon followed, quickly hoovering up the region’s limited resources. Anticipating a Japanese invasion via Bengal’s eastern border, the British military launched a pre-emptive, scorched-earth policy designed to deny the invaders access to food supplies. Simultaneously, they confiscated tens of thousands of local fishing boats in order to prevent them being used for transportation by the enemy. Together, these policies decimated food production and distribution in the region. Churchill’s army took no steps to relieve the situation. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s war cabinet actively denied requests for extra rations to feed the starving, requests made by his own commanders on the ground.

  The Bengali peasants suffered horribly. Persis still remembered the pictures of naked infants dead in the streets and fields, their bellies swollen with hunger. While the world praised Churchill, in India many continued to think of him as a mass murderer.

  She was looking for anything that might have caught Herriot’s eye.

  Presumably, he had pored over these same witness statements, had begun investigating some of them. She knew from Lal that Herriot had travelled extensively in the past months – some of that travel must have been to the places mentioned in these files, to speak with those involved, to attempt to unpick the truth from the lies.

  Had that effort triggered a sequence of events leading to his death?

  Time slipped away from her as she became engrossed in her work.

  She stopped for a break. A thought occurred to her.

  She found Birla in the main room. ‘I want you to track something down for me. Around January last year an Indian engineer working on a bridge project in Faridpur died under odd circumstances. Killed by crocodiles. I want you to find out what you can.’

  ‘Something like that would have made the local papers,’ mused Birla. ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘He worked for a company Sir James was associated with, run by a Scotsman named Robert Campbell.’

  ‘I’ll make some calls.’

  She entered the bookshop to find her father scribbling furiously on a writing pad at the counter. A camel stood awkwardly before him, the top of its head brushing the ceiling lamp. A trio of students hovered nearby, pretending to browse the shelves and making a valiant attempt at ignoring the hulking beast behind them.

  Persis squashed the impulse to pinch herself. She worked her way around the animal. The clothy smell of its hide entered her nostrils and it was all she could do not to sneeze.

  ‘Father,’ she said, ‘there’s a camel in the shop.’

  Her father ignored her, his pen continuing apace over the blue vellum.

  The camel snorted breathily over her shoulder. She turned and stared up at it. It had a peculiarly sad expression, as if it too could not fathom the cosmic jest that had transported it to this alien element.

  ‘Father!’

  Finally, Sam Wadia looked up. ‘It’s Screwwallah,’ he said emphatically.

  Understanding dawned.

  For the past decade, her father had maintained a bitter feud with a fellow Parsee by the name of Bastar Screwwallah, who ran a competing bookshop, the Magic Lantern, in the nearby Nepean Sea Road area. The origins of the feud had been lost to the mists of time; all that mattered now was that there was a feud. The two men vented their hostility by means of acrimonious letters and by visiting upon each other petty acts of mischief.

  A month earlier, Sam had paid a peon to paint over the windows of Screwwallah’s shopfront.

  ‘How long has it been here?’

  ‘It was here when I came down this morning,’ said Sam crisply.

  ‘Are you telling me this animal has been here the entire day?’

  ‘If Screwwallah thinks a camel will knock me off my stride he is sorely mistaken. The beast can stay here for all eternity as far as I care.’

  She stared at him. ‘You know that you’re quite mad, don’t you?’

  A leathery tongue rasped over her cheek. She stifled the urge to yell. Instead, she marched to the rear of the shop and headed upstairs.

  Half an hour later, showered and changed out of her uniform into a pair of slacks and an embroidered kurta, she sat down to supper with her father. Krishna had made lamb cutlets and served them with spiced aubergine.

  Her father ate stiffly, pretending to read the evening newspaper.

  Persis put down her spoon. ‘I apologise,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t see what you have to apologise for,’ said Sam stiffly. ‘You’re a grown woman. A famous police detective. The toast of the town. You can say and do as you please.’

  ‘Papa, I’m sorry. I should never have said what I did. About Mother.’

  His lips compressed themselves into a thin line, but he said nothing.

  ‘I just want to know what happened. Don’t I have a right to know?’

  He pulled off his spectacles and set them down by his plate. ‘Yes, you have a right to know. But you are a child. When the time is right, you shall know.’

  ‘You just said I’m a grown woman!’

  ‘To the world, perhaps. But for me, you will always be my girl.’

  She resisted the urge to bang the table in frustration. It always ended this way. Her father’s Sphinx-like silence on the matter had infuriated her over the years. But why? What could be so terrible that he felt the need to keep it clutched closely to him like some dead knight with his shield?

  ‘Nussie called,’ he said. ‘She requested that you come out with her this evening.’

  Her antennae sprang to attention. ‘Why?’

  ‘Darius has requested the pleasure of your company.’

  Persis groaned aloud. ‘I hope you told her I was unavailable.’

  ‘I did nothing of the sort. I said that you would be delighted to accompany young Darius.’

  ‘Papa! How could you? I won’t go!’

  ‘You’ll break Nussie’s heart.’

  ‘The man’s an imbecile.’

  ‘Really? How well do you actually know him?’

  ‘Weren’t you the one who said
that he was living proof that even God makes mistakes?’

  ‘Nussie tells me he has matured. Ever since he joined Benson and Pryce as a managing agent he has become quite the catch.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. From you!’

  He looked at her long and hard and then sighed. ‘Persis, Nussie is not your enemy. She wants the best for you, as do I. Look at me, my child. I am an old man, trapped in this chair. There is no telling when the fire will come for me. Don’t you think that, like any father, I wish to see you settled? A home of your own. A husband. Children.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘You know as well as I do that the Indian Police Service does not allow married women to serve. I would have to resign my post.’

  ‘Would that be so terrible?’

  ‘After everything I’ve been through? You can sit there and say this to me?’

  ‘You were always a wilful child,’ he said. ‘You refused to marry young, I agreed. You wanted to become a policewoman, I supported you. But now, now you are no longer just India’s first female IPS officer. The nation owns you. And, as many have discovered before you, the nation is fickle. Even if you solve this case, all that will happen is that you will be dragged further into the future, further away from the things that matter. Home, hearth, happiness.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m not happy?’

  He gave a tired smile. ‘Because you are alone, my child. And who better than I knows the price of loneliness?’

  A silence yawned between them. As the clock ticked on the wall behind her, Persis saw just how great a cost her father had borne for the life he had chosen. Was it because of her? Is that why he had never remarried? She felt her heart stretch and bend.

  O, how she loved him! How she loved this man who had been her whole world for as long as she could remember. His erudition; his earthiness of spirit; his extravagant moods; his full-throated guffaw. The way he inhabited his wheelchair like a turtle in its shell. Those evenings when he invited children from the nearby slums to the bookshop and read to them, shadows gathering around him as he transported them to faraway lands and mystical adventures. They loved him too; how could they not?