Midnight at Malabar House (Inspector Wadia series)

by Khan, Vaseem

  ‘Bakshi vanished days later when his own family was murdered by a Muslim mob.’ She paused. ‘The jewellery that he stole lies at the heart of Sir James’s murder. Not nationalism, not infidelity, but simple human greed.

  ‘Sir James was bankrupt. His business in the West Indies had collapsed, all but ruining him. He was in debt. And then, one day, he saw a newspaper article in Bombay accompanied by a photo of a woman wearing a dazzling necklace. A necklace of beaten gold, embedded with emeralds, and adorned by two peacocks. The sight electrified Sir James. Because he had encountered that necklace before, or at least a description of it, in the eyewitness account sent to him by Delhi of the murder of the Nawab Sikandar Ali Mumtaz. What was that necklace doing in Bombay?

  ‘He proceeded with caution. He approached the woman from the article, and discovered that the necklace had been gifted to her by her fiancé. He befriended this man. And then, when he felt he was on the right track, he travelled to Punjab to search for evidence. Here he confirmed what he had already begun to suspect: that the man he had befriended in Bombay, the owner of the peacock necklace, was none other than Surat Bakshi. Murderer and thief.

  ‘Did Sir James report his findings to the authorities?’ She grimaced. ‘No. Because for him the critical aspect of Bakshi’s crime was not that he had murdered an entire family, but that he had stolen the nawab’s ancestral treasure. He returned to Bombay, approached this man, and told him what he knew. Then he made him an offer.

  ‘He asked for the jewellery. In return for his silence.’

  ‘He blackmailed him?’ said Campbell, in astonishment.

  ‘Yes. I can only conjecture at this point, but what I believe happened is this: Sir James returned from Punjab on December 28th. A day later he made an appointment to meet the man he believed to be Surat Bakshi. Bakshi became convinced that Sir James knew enough.

  ‘Two days later he attended Sir James’s New Year’s Eve ball. He brought along a specimen of the stolen jewellery – perhaps even the same peacock necklace. He also invited another man to the ball, a local jeweller named Vishal Mistry, to confirm its value for Sir James. Mistry had a reputation for dealing in stolen jewellery. I confirmed that Bakshi had visited Mistry’s jewellery shop on a number of prior occasions; I believe he used Mistry himself as he gradually disposed of the pieces he had stolen from the nawab.

  ‘Mistry was spotted meeting with Sir James in his office early that evening. The next day he was murdered. My guess is that Bakshi did not wish to leave a trail that might lead back to him.’ She paused. ‘Somewhere along the line Sir James made a miscalculation. The price of his silence became too high. And so Bakshi decided to kill him.’

  ‘Who in the hell is this man?’ exclaimed Campbell.

  ‘Before I answer that question, let me describe another of the items stolen from the nawab’s treasury. A dagger, an ancestral blade that had been in the nawab’s family for generations. A curved blade, its ivory hilt encrusted with precious stones. Why is this significant? For two reasons. One, because Sir James was murdered with a curved blade. And two . . . It always bothered me that we couldn’t find the murder weapon when we searched his home on the night of his murder. How did the killer get the knife out of Laburnum House?’ She stopped again. ‘It wasn’t until I saw a photograph of Surat Bakshi that I understood how it had been done. You see, it was at that moment that I realised that I too had already met Bakshi. In Bombay.

  ‘The dagger was fitted into a specially designed cane, serving as its handle. Having committed the murder, Sir James’s killer simply slipped the dagger back into place and walked out of Laburnum House with it.

  ‘That was the key,’ she continued. ‘Many of you in this room had the motive and the opportunity to kill Sir James. But only one of you had the means. Isn’t that right, Surat?’ She turned to face Adi Shankar.

  The room turned with her.

  To his credit, Shankar maintained his composure; the only sign that he had heard was the twitching of his shoulders. His right hand tightened around the curved handle of his cane.

  ‘Conjecture, Inspector,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s all you have. Are you forgetting that I couldn’t possibly have killed Sir James? I was with the jazz band at the time of his death. There are literally dozens of witnesses.’

  ‘I’ll come to the matter of your alibi in a moment. But my theory is more than conjecture.’ She reached into her pocket and held up the newspaper cutting she had taken from the Amritsar Journal.

  ‘This is a photograph of Surat Bakshi. A good enough likeness, don’t you think?’

  ‘That proves nothing,’ countered Shankar, but he was visibly shaken. ‘Many people come to Bombay and adopt a new identity. It is no crime.’

  Persis reached into her pocket again and took out two more cuttings. One showed the peacock necklace around the throat of the nawab’s sister, Sakina Baig. ‘This is the nawab’s murdered sister, wearing the peacock necklace some time before her death in 1947.’ She held up another cutting – the cutting she had found in Sir James’s desk at the beginning of the investigation. ‘This was taken from an article in the Times of India dated two months ago, at the opening of the Gulmohar Club. It shows Meenakshi Rai, Adi Shankar’s fiancée, wearing the same necklace.’ She locked eyes with Shankar. ‘How did a dead woman’s necklace, a necklace stolen by her murderer, end up around your fiancée’s throat?’

  ‘No court would convict me on the basis of some old newspaper cuttings.’

  ‘It isn’t these that will convict you. It’s the cane.’

  ‘You’d be amazed at the sort of things modern forensic science can detect,’ said Archie Blackfinch. ‘Microscopic traces of blood are particularly difficult to get rid of. I have no doubt that once I examine your cane we’ll be able to tie you to the murder.’

  There was a stunned silence. Shankar’s face was set in stone and then he seemed to arrive at a decision.

  ‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ he spat. ‘We will happily slaughter thousands to defend our gods, but murder a man for profit and it becomes a national crisis of conscience. Yes, I killed the nawab and his family. He deserved such a death. He and his ilk made a fortune from the suffering of men like my father. He was a traitor. I took his treasure – why not? I had a right to it.’ He grimaced. ‘None of this would have happened if I hadn’t given Meenakshi the necklace to wear on the night of the Gulmohar’s opening. It was a moment of weakness.

  ‘That was what started it all. You were right, Inspector. He saw the necklace in that article. And once he began to suspect that it was the same piece he had read about in his files, he decided to investigate. He befriended me. And then he went to Jalanpur and found his answers. He found Surat Bakshi. He found me.’

  ‘What really happened?’

  ‘He came to my home on the 29th. He showed me the picture he had of me as Surat Bakshi. He told me about his files, his investigation. And then he told me the price for his silence. Half of the stolen jewellery, and a 50 per cent stake in the club. You see, that part was true. I knew then that I would have to kill him. He thought that he was being reasonable, asking for only half, but a man like that would never stop, not until he had taken everything I had.

  ‘He told me to come to his ball and to bring the peacock necklace with me. I was to give him my answer that very evening. Of course, there was only one answer he expected to hear. I agreed, if only to give myself time to think.

  ‘On the evening of the ball, I handed him the necklace. I had arranged for Vishal Mistry to visit at the same time, to confirm its value for him. And yes, afterwards, I couldn’t leave Mistry alive. He was a loose end.’

  ‘So you killed Sir James?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. He insisted that I stay for the party. That I pretend to be his friend so that afterwards when he announced that he had taken a stake in my club it would seem a natural progression of our friendship.’

  ‘There’s just one problem with your scenario,’ said Persis. ‘Your alibi. As
you rightly pointed out, you couldn’t have killed Sir James.’

  ‘I tell you it was me. I killed him with the dagger in my cane. I confess.’

  ‘No. You couldn’t have done it. But there was another at the ball who could have. Someone you had confided in. Someone whose life stood to be destroyed by Sir James’s blackmail.’ She turned to Meenakshi Rai. ‘You killed Sir James,’ she said softly. ‘To protect the man you loved.’

  They all turned to stare at her, standing frozen in her black sari. Her cheeks trembled.

  ‘Meenakshi, don’t say a word.’ Shankar looked at her desperately.

  ‘It was lies,’ she whispered. ‘All lies.’

  ‘Meenakshi!’

  She ignored him. ‘He told me that he had killed a man in self-defence during the Partition riots. That no one would believe him, and so he had run to Bombay and changed his name. He told me that Sir James had found out and was trying to blackmail him; that he had found an old photograph of him, that he had compiled a file of evidence, and that he wanted Adi’s ancestral treasure, including the necklace that he had given me for our engagement. He told me that this man would not stop until he had ruined our lives.

  ‘When Adi went up on stage with the band he handed me his cane. He told me again what I needed to do. We’d talked about it beforehand. He’d talked about it. I had balked, at first, but in the end Adi convinced me this was the only way.

  ‘I found Sir James and whispered in his ear. I told him that I wanted him. I told him that I would meet him alone in his study. I had seen the way he looked at me. I knew he would not resist.

  ‘He was waiting for me. Before I knew it, he was all over me. I pushed him back. I told him that I wanted to wear my necklace one last time. Adi had told me that he had given it to him that evening. Sir James was amused, but did as I asked. He took down a painting behind his desk and opened a safe. As he did so I saw a stack of files inside. He took out the necklace and placed it around my throat. It sickened me to feel his touch but I couldn’t back out. I had to see it through.

  ‘When we had finished he barely gave me a second glance. Just sat there, smoking, eyes closed. His trousers were on the floor. He was naked, vulnerable.

  ‘I picked up the cane, unscrewed the dagger.

  ‘He opened his eyes, saw me, and smiled. That terrible grin of his. He believed that he was in control, that he held the power.

  ‘I stabbed him in the throat. He died quickly.

  ‘I searched the safe. Inside, I found the photograph of Surat Bakshi, and the files of Sir James’s investigations. I had no time to check which file was the one he had compiled on Adi and I couldn’t take them all with me without being noticed. So I burned them and the photograph in the fireplace. It only took a few minutes but I was beginning to panic. I shut the safe, not bothering to lock it. I hung the painting in front of it, then fled the room and rejoined the party.’

  Persis ran through the sequence of events in her mind.

  Four months ago, Sir James Herriot had been tasked to investigate crimes committed during Partition and given files pertaining to these crimes. While reading these documents he had come across the account of the murder of the Nawab Sikandar Ali Mumtaz. In that account, he had read of the nawab’s priceless treasure being looted, including the peacock necklace.

  Soon afterwards, he had discovered that his holdings in the West Indies had collapsed, pushing him into crippling debt. He was on the verge of bankruptcy.

  And then, a lifeline. He saw an article in a Bombay newspaper, a picture of a woman wearing a necklace – the peacock necklace. That was the real reason he had kept the article. He traced the necklace back to Adi Shankar, owner of the Gulmohar Club. He visited the club, befriended Shankar. His suspicions were aroused – his next act had been to travel north, to Punjab, where the witness account had originated, to confirm those suspicions.

  Here, he followed the trail to the village of Jalanpur. He visited Jalanpur on December 25th. Word spread throughout the village that an Englishman was asking questions about the death of the nawab.

  Later that night, he was visited at the Golden Temple Hotel by Mangal, the author of the eyewitness account. Mangal told him everything, all the details that he had left out of the report, including the name of the nawab’s killer.

  Surat Bakshi.

  Herriot had scribbled Bakshi’s name on a notepad from the hotel.

  The next day he tore off the chit, and took it with him back to Jalanpur, intent on finding out more about Bakshi. He went through the land record books and wrote down details of the Bakshi family plot. He then visited the plot and searched the abandoned Bakshi home. She suspected that he had been searching for the treasure that Bakshi had looted; perhaps he thought the man hadn’t had time to take it all with him when he fled the village after the death of his own family.

  He found no treasure, but instead discovered something just as valuable.

  A picture of Surat Bakshi.

  Herriot returned to Bombay and used that picture to blackmail Adi Shankar, the man Bakshi had become. He invited Shankar/Bakshi to his ball to seal the deal, believing that he had the man at his mercy.

  But what he hadn’t counted on was Adi Shankar using Meenakshi Rai, his fiancée, a woman from a military family. Persis did not doubt that her father had taught her to handle weapons such as the dagger with which she had killed Sir James in his study.

  Shortly afterwards, Robert Campbell had come charging into the office, to find his business partner dead. Believing that he or his daughter might be incriminated – because of the affair with Herriot that she had claimed – he had simply backed out and not said a word.

  And moments after that, Maan Singh had shown up.

  The big Sikh’s reaction to Sir James’s death had been equally curious. She couldn’t be sure that he had ever intended to harm Sir James, but, faced with the dead Englishman that night, he had seen an unexpected opportunity of regaining his family honour. Acting on instinct, he had stolen Sir James’s trousers, wiping them in the man’s blood first – so that they might serve as incriminating evidence – and reported the death to Lal, who had been left to consider the best way to ensure the investigation did not turn towards himself, given his fractured relations with Herriot. Perhaps he suspected Singh of the killing. Perhaps Singh told him he intended to confess. Either way Lal would have told him not to say a word. Not with Gupta’s future at stake – Singh’s sister and Lal’s lover.

  That was why Singh had not confessed right away. That and because he couldn’t be certain that the true murderer might not be apprehended in the days to come.

  It was also why Lal had called Malabar House. Lal had hoped that the most inexperienced and maligned unit in the service would make little headway and the whole thing might die a quiet death, Sir James’s murder blamed on a non-existent intruder.

  And then, days later, she had confronted Singh about the trousers. He had realised at that moment that she was desperate, that she had no other leads. He had confessed instantly, knowing that the full weight of the law would fall upon him, shutting down further investigation. He wanted to be known as the man who killed Sir James Herriot and she had given that to him.

  His confession had thrown Lal into a panic. That was why he had insisted on being present when she had questioned Singh. But, to Lal’s relief, Singh had remained tight-lipped, incriminating none but himself. In effect, he had solved all of Lal’s problems – as long as the investigation went no further. That was why Lal had been so adamant in shutting her down and letting Singh accept the burden of guilt.

  But why had Singh confessed to a crime he did not commit? She supposed that in his own mind, the Sikh had become a martyr. The logic was twisted, but in an oblique way she could understand what had moved him to act as he had. By killing a Britisher he had avenged the dead of Jallianwala Bagh; he had regained his family’s honour.

  She realised she still had unanswered questions. She turned back to Meenakshi. ‘What di
d you do with the necklace?’

  ‘I walked out of Laburnum House wearing it.’

  ‘We found no fingerprints in Sir James’s study that didn’t belong there.’

  ‘Gloves,’ she said simply. ‘They were part of my costume.’

  ‘Meenakshi—’ began Shankar.

  She whirled on him, her face wet. ‘You lied to me! You murdered an entire family. You murdered . . . children.’ Her voice hitched. ‘And you made a murderer of me. You – you’re a monster.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  But she turned away, and said no more.

  Shankar gave a howl of anguish.

  Blackfinch moved towards him and held out his hand. ‘Give me the cane.’

  Shankar’s eyes narrowed. And then his face transformed into a snarl. His hands moved quickly, working the top of the cane. Before anyone could react, he had grabbed Blackfinch by the wrist, whirled him around, whipped an arm around his throat, and set the dagger against it with his other hand. The Englishman cried out in alarm, flapping at Shankar’s grip, but he was held fast.

  Shankar began to back away to the door. ‘Don’t follow me. One dead Englishman is enough, don’t you think?’

  Persis did not waste her breath by telling him to stop. Her mind whirled, mapping out Shankar’s exit route. He would have to drag Blackfinch along a narrow path that looped back out to the front where, presumably, his car was parked. At that point, he would either kill him or let him go. She couldn’t see a good reason for Shankar not to let Blackfinch go. But the man was desperate and desperate men made bad decisions.

  Shankar halted at the door. ‘Meenakshi. Wait for me. I’ll find you. We will be together.’

  She stared at him with hollow eyes.

  He vanished through the door with his hostage, leaving the gathering gaping after him.

  Persis moved into gear. ‘Hold her here!’ she yelled, pointing at Meenakshi Rai, then sprinted towards the door, grabbing her revolver from its holster. She barrelled out into blinding sunlight. A second’s pause to get her bearings, and then she set off around the other side of the building, so that she could cut Shankar off before he reached his car.