Midnight at Malabar House (Inspector Wadia series)

by Khan, Vaseem

  ‘Welcome!’ Acharya snorted in disgust. ‘Subversives and ingrates. If it had been up to me, I would have rounded up the lot of them and dumped them over the border. Let them live in their stinking new country. Leave India to the real patriots.’

  ‘You mean Hindus?’

  ‘I mean those who did not turn against the motherland.’ He punctuated this by thumping his fist against his knee. ‘In my opinion, Nehru’s first order of business should have been to confiscate every wealthy Muslim’s property. Snap off their tails and watch them run to Pakistan.’

  ‘Then it’s a good thing Pandit Nehru has more sense than you.’

  The band boomed into life behind them.

  ‘The foxtrot!’ said Elizabeth, with obvious delight. She rose to her feet, held out a hand towards Blackfinch. ‘Perhaps you’d care to take the floor?’

  Blackfinch, who had been rubbing at a wine spot on his shirt, coloured. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I don’t dance, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Just follow my lead. There’s nothing to it.’ She grabbed his hand, hauled him to his feet and led him on to the dance floor, still protesting.

  Persis watched them, a splinter of glass working its way under her ribs.

  ‘They make a good-looking couple,’ commented Acharya sourly.

  ‘Don’t they just?’ said Meenakshi, raising a wine glass to her lips.

  Persis said nothing. What did she care if he made a fool of himself?

  She looked on as Blackfinch blinked in the confusion of lights and music, then slowly began to move, an ungainly, arrhythmic shuffling that reminded her of a man caught in the throes of a fit. Elizabeth yelped as he trod on her foot. He stepped backwards, apologising profusely, and bumped heavily into an Indian couple in full flow. The pair spun out of control, careened into another couple, the four of them sprawling to the floor in an untidy tangle of limbs.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ growled Campbell. ‘The man’s got more left feet than a centipede.’

  ‘Dancing is not everyone’s forte.’ Meenakshi Rai smiled. ‘I’m sure Mr Blackfinch has other talents.’

  Persis watched the hapless Englishman as he bent to help the fallen, then turned to Campbell.

  ‘As you are here, perhaps I can ask you a question? I have been told that you and Sir James may have fallen out recently.’

  Campbell reddened. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘That’s not important. Is it true?’

  ‘Absolute rubbish. James and I had our disagreements, but we’ve never fallen out. We were friends for twenty years.’

  ‘Why did he fail to show up for your meeting that morning?’

  ‘As I’ve already told you, the man was busy. There’s no more to it than that.’

  She stared at him, his obvious discomfort. ‘I also understand that you fought with your daughter at the party that evening.’

  Another scowl. ‘You’ve been listening to too much gossip, Inspector.’

  ‘So you didn’t fight with Elizabeth?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  He glared at her until she returned her attention to Shankar. ‘Are you from Bombay? Originally?’

  He smiled. ‘No. I moved to the city a couple of years ago, once the dust of Partition had settled. My ancestral home is in the north. Delhi state.’

  ‘Do you have family there?’

  ‘Not any more. My parents passed when I was younger. I was an only child.’ Another smile.

  ‘How did you come to . . . this?’ She indicated the club.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, how could you afford to buy this club?’

  He grinned, revealing perfect white teeth. ‘Ancestral wealth. My family had large landholdings. I sensed what was on the horizon – Nehru’s plans for the zamindars, I mean – and decided to sell up and move to the city of dreams. I invested in various enterprises, including this club. A wise decision, don’t you think?’

  Blackfinch returned and collapsed into his seat. His cheeks were red and she suspected it was not from the exertion. Elizabeth Campbell was still on the dance floor, hoofing it up with another partner. The dashing young Indian whirled her around in a tango, the band beat pounding around the room to the accompaniment of stomping feet and catcalls. Persis noted that Robert Campbell’s mouth had set into a hard line; he stared at the pair with what could only be described as cold fury.

  ‘You’re not a fan of the tango?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not the dance I’m no’ a fan of,’ he mumbled. He knocked back his drink, rose to his feet, then waded on to the dance floor, barging other couples out of the way before rudely cutting in on his daughter. A protest ensued. Persis could not make out what the pair were arguing about, but at one point it looked as if Campbell was ready to tear his daughter’s dance partner limb from limb.

  Finally, Elizabeth Campbell stormed off, vanishing into the crowd, Campbell in hot pursuit.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Persis.

  ‘Oh, I think when it comes to his daughter Mr Campbell is still a little old-fashioned,’ said Shankar, amusement playing over his lips.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Robert Campbell does not appreciate the fact that his daughter has a penchant for stepping out with the natives.’

  ‘She does?’ said Blackfinch.

  Persis glanced at him. Did he sound crestfallen?

  Adi Shankar stood up. ‘My apologies, Inspector, but I’m afraid that I must end our discussion. Pressing business matters.’

  She rose to her feet. ‘Thank you for seeing me. I may have further questions.’

  Shankar gave a short bow. ‘I am at your service. I wish to see Sir James’s murderer caught. Moreover, if we are to set the right tone in this new republic of ours we cannot allow such transgressions to stand. The rule of law must prevail or what are we?’

  They watched him walk away with the politician Acharya, heads bent in discussion.

  Persis sat down and turned her attention to Meenakshi Rai. ‘When did you two meet?’

  ‘A few months before the launch of the Gulmohar,’ she replied. ‘He was playing polo for the Amateur Riders’ Club at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse ground. I thought he was the most dashing man I’d ever laid eyes on.’

  ‘Love at first sight.’

  ‘You don’t believe in it?’

  Persis forbore from replying. ‘Did you know Sir James?’

  ‘Not really. He came to the club. Met us there. He and Adi got on well. They were of a similar temperament. And, frankly, Adi has an affinity for the British. He’s a lot like my father in that respect.’

  ‘Your father?’

  She smiled wanly. ‘My father was a career soldier. He fought for and with the British. He supported Indian independence, but he could never bring himself to hate them. He always said that in every barrel there are bad apples and good ones. He liked to believe that he had spent most of his time in the company of the good ones.’

  Persis had heard such sentiments before. It spoke directly to the mixed feelings that some – particularly those who had prospered during the British era – harboured for their former overlords.

  She recalled a recent spat between her father and Dr Aziz. ‘What’s so great about your new republic?’ Aziz had said. ‘Just today the postal service put up its rates; train schedules have gone to the dogs; the names of roads and cities are being changed wholesale, and now we are told that we must adopt the metric system. Are we Germans, I ask you?’

  ‘Rome has fallen, old friend,’ her father had responded. ‘It is best to make peace with that fact.’

  ‘Pah! Whatever their evils at least the British inflicted certainty upon us. What has replaced that? The Congress is infected with feeble-minded sycophants; the country is racked by communal disharmony; and our economy is headed into the crapper. And on the subject of crappers, even our European-style toilets are being replaced with the inferior Indian variety where one is forced to squat for the privilege of defecating i
nto one’s own pyjama. How’s that for a perverted sense of nationalism?’

  ‘My father passed away three years ago,’ continued Meenakshi. ‘I suppose, when I met Adi, it felt like a connection to him.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Sir James?’

  Meenakshi shrugged. ‘Only that he believed in the vision of a modern, fairer India. I know many who begrudge the poor of this country their due. But men like Sir James and Adi believe they have as much right to the future as the rest of us.’

  ‘Did you notice anything on the night of his death? Anything untoward?’

  She shook her head. Her earrings tinkled. ‘He seemed fine. A little drunk perhaps. Adi and I were with the jazz band. Adi recently learned to play the saxophone. He charged up on stage and just sat down. The poor bandleader wasn’t given any choice.’ She smiled. ‘He was playing with them right up until you called the party to a halt. We didn’t really notice at what point Sir James slipped away but I don’t remember seeing him after the midnight fireworks.’

  Persis made a mental note to check Meenakshi’s story. If Adi Shankar had indeed been playing with the band from midnight until she arrived at Laburnum House he certainly couldn’t have been in Herriot’s study at the time of the murder.

  ‘When is the wedding?’

  ‘We’re planning for the summer. Just before the monsoon hits.’ She smiled brightly. ‘You must come, Inspector. I’m sure Adi would be delighted.’

  Blackfinch offered her a lift home. For a moment, she hesitated. A puff of annoyance blew along the back of her neck. She dismissed the feeling. What right had she to be irritated with him? She had invited him to the Gulmohar, and in so doing had demonstrated weakness. If there was anyone she should be annoyed with it was herself.

  ‘What did you think?’ she asked, after a while.

  ‘An interesting man,’ replied Blackfinch, his eyes focused on the road ahead. Each time the driver approached the clattering chicken van in front his spare frame tensed. The chickens, stuffed into battery hutches too small for them, looked back at him with expressions of depressed resignation. ‘One of the new breed of young Indians. I see them everywhere.’

  She glanced suspiciously at his face. ‘It’s our country. Who else will define it except Indians?’

  ‘I only meant that the old guard superintended the independence movement, but it’s the likes of Shankar who will determine what you do with it.’

  She stared at him. ‘Something about him bothered me. I don’t think he was entirely honest about his dealings with Sir James.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Instinct.’

  ‘Ah.’

  She glanced at him. ‘Ah?’

  He indulged her with a condescending smile. ‘In my world, there is no room for instinct. Science is about facts. Empirical evidence. A good criminalist does not rely on intuition. Nine times out of ten that little feeling in the gut is incipient diarrhoea, not some mythical flash of deductive genius.’

  She bristled, then tacked in another direction. ‘Don’t you find it curious that Campbell is out partying with Shankar just days after his supposed friend and business partner is brutally murdered?’

  ‘What should he do? Sit at home and mourn him for forty days like a Mahomedan?’

  She considered telling him of Eve Gatsby’s revelation that Herriot and Campbell might have fallen out, then decided against it. She looked out of the window. A warm breeze feathered her cheek. ‘She was in her element, don’t you think?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Elizabeth Campbell.’

  The merest hesitation. ‘I suppose so. She’s a young woman, after all.’

  ‘Very beautiful too.’

  He waited a moment too long to respond. ‘In the right light, one might say she was attractive.’

  ‘It’s always the right light for women like her.’

  They said no more until she was standing outside the bookshop, glancing across the street at the tan Buick parked in front of the doorway.

  Aunt Nussie’s car.

  She cursed, then walked over to poke the dozing driver in the shoulder. He jerked awake, eyes swimming into focus. ‘Is Nussie Madam upstairs?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘With Mr Darius.’

  She cursed again, then turned back to Blackfinch, who was watching her curiously from inside the Ambassador. An idea gleamed at the back of her mind.

  She walked back across the road. ‘Would you care to join me for a late supper? My father will be awake. He would appreciate a visitor. He’s in a wheelchair and doesn’t get to meet as many people as he would like.’ This was an outright lie. Her father was a committed misanthrope. A plaque on his desk read: I once considered suicide. But then I thought it would be better to kill the rest of mankind instead.

  He blinked behind his spectacles, surprised by the suggestion. Climbing out of the car, he said, ‘Lead on, MacDuff.’

  ‘A misquotation,’ she muttered, turning away. ‘The line from Macbeth is actually “Lay on, MacDuff”, which means to attack, vigorously.’

  Aunt Nussie was annoyed. Persis could tell this by the way she smoked her cigarette as if she had a personal vendetta against it, the way she tapped her wine glass brightly with a painted fingernail. Aunt Nussie sat at one end of the dining table, her father at the other, Darius and Sam facing each other across the table’s width, a no-man’s-land populated with the remnants of supper: cold cuts, reheated dhansak, pilau, cheese and pickle.

  Darius had surprised her. She hadn’t seen him in almost a year, during which time he had undergone a remarkable transformation. The sprinkle of pimples that had long blighted his forehead had vanished and the heavy moustache under his nose lent a newfound maturity to his features. His cream linen suit was impeccable, his two-tone Oxfords sparkled, and his darkly groomed hair gave him a halo of the debonair. He spoke with a sense of assurance that was at odds with the man she remembered.

  Perhaps Nussie had been right, after all. The new republic was remaking her cousin.

  Her decision to sit on Blackfinch’s side of the table had not gone down well, however, nor indeed the very fact of his presence. Fortunately, Archie Blackfinch seemed oblivious to the situation.

  Could the man truly be so blind? she wondered, looking on as he bumbled his way through the stilted dinner conversation, happily describing his work. ‘Did you know,’ he asked, forking a chicken niblet into his mouth, ‘that arterial blood is a brighter red than other blood and that bloodstains tend to fall in certain patterns based on the relative motion of the attacker and victim?’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Darius, eyes lingering on his cousin.

  Aunt Nussie poured herself another glass of sherry, gulping it down with a ferocity that even Persis found unnerving. Her aunt had pointedly refrained from mentioning the fact that Persis had effectively run out on Darius. Persis now wished she had called to cancel, but the thought of having that conversation with her aunt had decided her against it. Darius himself had acted the gentleman, going along with the charade that he had simply come along to pay his respects to Sam. He talked about his new role as a managing agent in Calcutta, over on the far side of the country. His prospects were bright, he assured her. The division was still run by an Englishman but that would surely change.

  ‘But enough of me,’ he said briskly, dabbing at his moustache with a napkin. ‘You have become quite the celebrity, Persis. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the Gazette yesterday and saw your face looking back at me from the front page. To think, the girl I used to play hide and seek with is now the belle of our nation’s police service.’

  ‘Belle?’ echoed Persis, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘An expression,’ said Darius. ‘I meant no offence. I have to admit, you have surprised us all.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, when I first heard that you were determined to become a police officer, I scoffed. I mean, it’s hardly a fitting occupation for a woman, is it
? But you followed through and now here you are. Naturally, once you have proven your point, I expect you will step down gracefully.’

  She set down her fork. ‘Proven my point?’

  ‘That our new nation is built on truly democratic principles. And what could be more democratic than allowing a woman to don the khaki?’

  ‘Allowing?’ The word came out as a strangled squeak.

  ‘There are some who claim that the country has gone to the dogs since the departure of the British,’ continued Darius, warming to his theme. ‘I disagree. You are a symbol, Persis. Behold, we are no longer a backward nation! We even allow women to police us!’

  She stared at him in astonishment. Was this how she was viewed, not just by her cousin but by millions of men around the country? But if that were true then what right did she have to call herself an officer of the law? She was a token, a puppet serving a purpose.

  She rose to her feet with ominous deliberation. ‘For a moment, I thought you had changed,’ she said. ‘But it’s only in fairy tales that frogs become princes. I am not a symbol. I am a police officer. I trained as hard as any man at the academy. I ranked top of my class. I was given this case because someone considered me competent enough to handle it.’

  Darius stood awkwardly. ‘I meant no offence,’ he repeated.

  ‘And yet offence is taken. I think it is time for you to leave.’

  ‘Persis!’ Aunt Nussie’s face was scarlet. ‘You cannot speak to him like that.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Persis. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can put him back in his box and send him back to Calcutta.’

  ‘That’s uncalled for—’ began Darius, but Persis whirled back on him.

  ‘I’ll never marry you. Not if you were the last man on earth.’

  They stared at each other, then Darius straightened. ‘I think we should leave, Mother. It’s getting rather late and I have an early train to catch.’

  He turned to Sam Wadia. ‘It has been a pleasure, Uncle. I wish you good health.’