by Vaseem Khan
Persis smiled. She wondered what modern astronomers would make of Beatrice’s explan—
She stopped. For a moment, time stood still.
She slipped out of bed, retrieved her notebook, and examined Healy’s last clue.
GO TO MOONSTARERS HOME
SPECTARE SUB LUNA
Moonstarers. Healy, a master of languages, had loved riddles and wordplay. One of the oldest forms of wordplay was also the simplest. She realised now why the word moonstarers had seemed so familiar.
With growing excitement, she rewrote the line, making one change.
GO TO ASTRONOMERS HOME
SPECTARE SUB LUNA
Moonstarers. Astronomers. A perfect anagram.
And there was only one place in Bombay that could be classed as a home to astronomers.
Chapter 27
She parked under a peepal tree, then walked the rest of the way, approaching the observatory complex from the coastal road. A warm breeze wound in from the Arabian Sea, through a dense barricade of mangroves, ruffling her hair and the collar of her shirt. The thought passed through her that she should have worn her uniform. Too late now. Instead, she’d chosen a one-piece sleeveless cotton romper, in a muted check pattern, together with tennis shoes.
Around her: the chirrup and whirr of insects, the croak of frogs. It was past midnight and the area was deserted, as she knew it would be.
Above, the sky swarmed with stars.
With the establishment of a new facility at Alibaug in 1906, the Colaba Observatory had relinquished many of its duties. But Persis knew, from visits with her father as a child, that the observatory continued to collaborate with its sister facility, gathering useful measurements. Last year, it had earned a brief news splash by capturing seismographic readings from an earthquake in southern China.
The main gate was locked. There was no night-time security guard.
A crumbling, whitewashed wall ran around the complex, housing a series of outbuildings and the observation tower.
She placed one hand on the wall. Warmth absorbed during the day radiated back into her palm.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, or even that she was in the right place. Back at the apartment, Healy’s directive to go to astronomers’ home had seemed to clearly point to Bombay’s only astronomical observatory. Nothing else made sense. But now, out here, in the starlit silence, doubt gnawed away at her.
Nothing for it but to forge ahead.
She found a section of the wall shielded from the road. Pitted and crumbling, it offered numerous hand and toeholds. Within moments, she had clambered up its seven-foot height and dropped to the far side. She landed awkwardly and rolled on to dry grass, stifling the urge to curse.
Rising to her feet, she winced as her ankle murmured a soft complaint, then plunged onwards, recalling what little she remembered of the place.
The Bombay Observatory – as it had originally been known – had been built by the East India Company back in 1826, primarily as a means of supporting shipping at the Bombay port. Geomagnetic and meteorological observations began shortly afterwards. At the turn of the century, stewardship of the observatory fell to the site’s first Indian director, Dr Nanabhoy Framji Moos, who’d studied science in Edinburgh, Scotland, and who also happened to be a Parsee, as her father had taken great delight in pointing out to her.
Almost immediately, Moos was faced with an existential dilemma.
In 1900, Bombay had decided to convert its fleet of horse-drawn trams to electric power. Realising that the electromagnetic noise generated by the trams would ruin the magnetic data collected by the observatory, Moos was forced to petition the government to find an alternate site. This he successfully did, and the Alibaug facility was born, some eighteen miles to the south. Bombay’s observatory continued to limp along, though it was, by now, a weary foot-soldier to Alibaug’s lead.
She walked through the grounds of the complex, heading towards the observatory proper, a whitewashed tower that stood silhouetted against the sky. She’d brought along a torch, but a bright sliver of moon and a sky sprinkled with stars provided more than enough light, washing out the handful of buildings dotted about the place with a ghostly radiance.
She stopped and looked up at the night sky.
Spectare sub luna. Look under the moon.
What could he have meant by that? She was certain that these three words held the key to whatever it was Healy had sent her here to find. Another clue? Another riddle? Or the manuscript itself? . . . Why not? The trail had to end somewhere. This was as good a place as any. A place that few visited, all but ignored by the bustling ant heap that was Bombay . . . and deserted at night – which is probably when Healy had come here.
She walked past the old magnetic observatories, now disused, and only opened up for the occasional school trip or tourist misadventure. Office buildings glimmered under the moonlight, and then she was at the base of the main observatory.
The door was firmly locked.
She cursed under her breath, then walked around it, looking for an opening.
Nothing.
Spectare sub luna. Frustration welled inside her. What was the point of telling her to look under the moon? The whole place was ‘under’ the moon.
She blew out her cheeks in annoyance, then set off on another traverse of the grounds. If Healy had somehow managed to hide something inside one of the buildings here, she would have to return tomorrow, in uniform, brandishing her police ID. In the meantime, all she could do was—
She stopped.
She had just passed by the old well, located away from the main buildings in a quiet corner of the complex. Beside the well was a moon dial. She remembered her father’s friend, a staffer at the observatory, rattling on about it with what she had felt, at the time, was undue enthusiasm.
The moon dial – a circular stone slab on a raised column, with a fin-like ‘style’ rising from its centre – operated on the same principle as a sundial, only it used the light of the moon to cast a shadow that, notionally, would indicate the time. The problem with moon dials, and the reason they hadn’t caught on, was that they were only ever accurate on the night of a full moon. After the full moon, a moon dial ‘lost’ time – running forty-eight minutes slower every night. This was because the sunlit part of the moon’s face became smaller after the full moon, so that, by the new moon, it faced entirely away from the earth, resulting in no moonlight at all.
She approached the moon dial.
Standing beside it, she could make out the markings around its circumference: Roman numerals for the hours, and an engraving of Father Time, complete with hourglass and scythe. And above that, running around the style, were the words ‘Sub Luna’. A bolt of electricity shot through her.
This had to be it.
She took out her torch and examined the dial and style closely.
Nothing. No new information. No clues. No riddles.
She stood and considered the problem, her mind ticking over in the silence.
Spectare sub luna. Look under the moon.
She dropped to her haunches and shone the torch under the dial.
Nothing.
She next ran the torch beam down the stone column holding up the dial, and then around its base— There! It would have been easy to miss. A patch of turned earth.
She set down the torch and began to dig, using her hands as shovels. The soil was loose, and within a few minutes, she’d dug almost a foot into the earth. Her fingers scraped over metal. With growing excitement, she scrabbled away the dirt, worked her fingers around the edge of the object, and pulled it loose.
Standing up, she brushed dirt from it, and set it down on the dial.
What she had before her was a heavy metal box, copper in colour, five inches on a side, and three inches deep. The box was artfully engraved, with what looked like Oriental designs. There appeared to be a discernible upper and lower half, marked by a line that went around the object, jagging up in
to an odd upside-down isosceles trapezoid shape on either side. There was no keyhole. She tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge.
She resisted the urge to smash the thing against the stone moon dial. She was certain the effort would be futile. The object was so solid, she doubted explosives would make a dent.
Tamping down on her frustration, she headed to the compound wall, scaling it quickly, and dropping back out on to the road.
Back in the jeep, she set the box down on the passenger seat, looked at it a moment, then started the engine.
As she was turning the corner of the narrow road, she heard the sound of an engine behind her. The roar intensified, and then, without warning, she was flung forward as a vehicle rammed into the jeep. Her head smacked the steering wheel. A sudden metallic warmth in her mouth.
Blood.
She braked automatically, lurching her body forward again.
Momentarily stunned, she didn’t register the man’s presence until he was at the passenger door, flinging it open, hands scrabbling for the box.
No.
She gave a short bellow, reached out, and grabbed it. They tussled with it for a moment, then both lost their grip and it fell into the passenger-side footwell.
The man – clad in black, with a balaclava pulled over his face – swung a fist at her, connecting with her jaw. She fell back, spots floating before her eyes.
He bent to the footwell, scrabbling for the box.
She shook off the pain, focusing on her assailant. She cursed herself for not bringing her revolver with her. She was unarmed, against a larger, more powerful—
Unarmed.
No. Not entirely.
She scrabbled in the glovebox over his head, retrieved the switchblade she kept there, snapped it open, and stabbed downwards.
The man bellowed as the knife sank into his shoulder. He let go of the box and jerked backwards, out of the jeep.
She twisted back around, grabbed the wheel, and slammed the accelerator.
In the mirror, she saw her attacker stagger towards his car, then lean against the vehicle, clutching his shoulder.
Minutes later, she was back out on to the safety of the main road.
Chapter 28
‘I suppose I’ll be the one paying to repair the dent in the back of your jeep.’
It was the next morning and she was sitting in Roshan Seth’s office, watching the SP stand over his desk and pour out two whiskies. He pushed one across towards her. She considered refusing, then picked it up and took a large swallow. The alcohol burned her mouth where she’d bit into the inside of her cheek when her head had struck the steering wheel.
‘Why didn’t you call me last night?’ Seth continued, gazing at her with a mixture of concern and irritation.
‘What would have been the point? I was already home.’
‘You’re being followed. By a man who doesn’t think twice about assaulting you to get what he wants. That’s the point.’ He rattled the ice cubes in his glass. ‘Any idea who?’
She’d spent the best part of the night thinking about it, with little success. The darkness, his disguise, the speed with which he’d attacked. There was nothing she could point to, no name she could settle on with any degree of certainty.
‘I suppose the real question is why?’ Seth continued. ‘Beyond the obvious, I mean.’ He waved at the metal box, sat on the desk between them. Its secrets remained intact, having resisted every attempt to open it.
She recalled something Archie Blackfinch had said, that he thought someone had searched John Healy’s home before they’d arrived there. The only logical conclusion: someone else was on the trail of the manuscript.
Healy’s shadowy collaborators.
If she’d needed evidence of their existence, she now had it.
She explained her theory.
Seth sat down, his expression morose. ‘As if the situation wasn’t bad enough already. I’ve been fending off the press since the story broke yesterday; now I’ve got to worry about your safety too.’
She bristled. ‘You don’t have to worry about me.’
‘Don’t be so touchy. I’d say the same thing if you weren’t a woman . . . So what next?’
‘I think there’s another clue in here.’ She indicated the box.
‘Agreed. But how do we get to it?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘If all else fails, just take it to a blacksmith. Never underestimate the value of brute force.’
‘I’d rather not take the chance of destroying whatever’s inside.’
‘Fine. Just don’t wait too long. I’ve got so many goons chasing me for progress reports, it’s as if I died and they’re all calling to collect an unpaid debt.’
Back at her desk, she asked Birla and Haq how they’d got on following Franco Belzoni around.
‘He spent the afternoon at Bombay University, lecturing.’ Birla squinted at his notes. ‘Then he had something to eat. A café near the university. Alone. After that, he went to a bar in Opera House. The Eastern Dragon. A real dump, off the tourist trail. He spent three hours in there.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘At first nothing. Just waiting. Drinking. And then he was joined by another man. They had a long discussion. It got quite heated at one point.’
‘What were they talking about?’
‘No idea. They were speaking in Italian. At least, I think it was Italian. There was a lot of hand-waving.’
Haq chimed in. ‘The other guy was angry. Looked as if he wanted to rip Belzoni’s head off.’
‘That’s an exaggeration,’ said Birla. ‘But he certainly wasn’t happy.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Dark hair. Medium build. Angry features.’
‘We followed him too,’ added Haq.
‘You left Belzoni?’
‘We split up. We used our initiative.’ He shifted his bulk on the edge of her desk. In the office, Haq seemed incapable of standing upright for more than thirty seconds at a time. She wondered how he’d managed to stay on his feet long enough to follow Belzoni around. ‘Our mysterious Italian went to the Italian consulate in Cuffe Parade. I followed him in and asked the receptionist who he was. His name is Enrico Mariconti. Senior military attaché at the embassy in Delhi.’
‘Why would Belzoni be meeting with a military attaché? And why meet the man in an out-of-the-way bar? Why not meet at the consulate?’
Questions that none of them could answer.
She thought again of last night’s attacker. His build . . . No. Everything had happened so quickly that she couldn’t be sure of details, but she had the impression her attacker was taller than Franco Belzoni. Besides, Belzoni was a renowned academic. As much as he might wish to get his hands on the Dante manuscript, it was unlikely that he’d resort to violence.
Scholars didn’t behave like that.
And then she thought of John Healy and realised that any assumptions she might have harboured had long since crumbled to dust.
Chapter 29
‘It’s a puzzle box.’ Erin Lockhart looked at the metal box, then back up at Persis. ‘John gave me one for my birthday. He used to collect them when he was younger. Or so he told me.’
They were sitting in Lockhart’s temporary office at the Asiatic Society, which also served as the home of the Bombay Natural History Society. Lockhart had turned up fifteen minutes late to their agreed meeting, not bothering to explain herself or offer an apology.
Persis wondered if the woman was playing mind games.
The ceiling fan was out. The room was unbearably warm, the walls sweating with humidity. Not that Lockhart appeared to notice. The windows remained shut and she sat there, in another sleeveless blouse, seemingly as cool as ice.
They spoke quickly of John Healy’s death. Lockhart had been out of Bombay the day before and hadn’t known until that moment.
Persis wondered how long it would be before the English scholar’s suicide found its way i
nto the newspapers. At least that was one thing that was certain now; Raj Bhoomi had sent over his toxicology report. John Healy had died due to an overdose of Tuinal. There was no evidence of foul play. Suicide was Bhoomi’s official verdict.
The news briefly punctured Lockhart’s balloon of equanimity. The Olympian self-confidence died from her eyes, and she sat there, wreathed in silence. When she spoke again, she said, ‘My father always joked that mortality is like kidney stones. If you have to have them, better to get through it quickly. At least John didn’t linger.’
She fell silent again. Persis wondered if tears would be forthcoming, but Lockhart didn’t seem the type. Besides, according to Lockhart herself, Healy was a lover not a loved one. Tears would be an extravagance.
Persis decided to push on, quickly detailing her efforts in tracking John Healy’s last clue, and recovering the strange box. She decided to leave out that she’d been attacked.
‘May I?
Lockhart picked up the box without waiting for an answer. She attempted to twist the upper half through various directions, then turned it over and tried again.
Nothing.
She pointed with her smallest finger at the trapezoid-shaped ‘tooth’ on either side of the box, made by the dividing line between the two halves. ‘The configuration of the join between the upper and lower half is preventing either half from separating from the other, or from being slid open at a diagonal angle.’
‘I gathered that,’ said Persis impatiently.
Lockhart set the box on the table, then spun it around like a top. ‘Sometimes, with these types of puzzle, there’s a metal locking pin inside that can be loosened simply by spinning the whole thing around.’
She picked up the box and tried to open it.
Nothing.
She tried spinning it in multiple directions.
Nothing.
She pushed it back across the table in frustration. ‘Why don’t you just force it open?’
‘No. Healy wanted us to solve his clues. He was a man of intellect, not brute force. I still believe he wants us to find the manuscript.’ Changing tack, she said, ‘I spoke to Franco Belzoni. He claims there was no friction between him and Healy. He implied that you’re the one who hasn’t been truthful. I’ve been led to understand that your real agenda in India is to procure the Divine Comedy manuscript.’
