Ellis Peters - George Felse 09 - Mourning Raga (9 page)

Dominic awakened to an insistent tapping at his door about eight o’clock, to find the room flooded with sunlight. He rolled out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown so abruptly that one gecko, until then apparently petrified in a corner of the ceiling, whisked out of sight under the rickety wiring, and another, prowling within inches of Dominic’s heel as he hit the floor, shot away in a fright, leaving behind on the boards a two-and-a-half inch tail that continued to twitch for ten minutes after its owner had departed.

‘Dominic, are you awake? It’s me, Tossa. Open the door! ’ She fell into the room in a cloud of nylon ruffles. ‘You haven’t seen anything of Anjli, have you?’ A silly question, she realised, his eyes were barely open yet. ‘She’s gone! I woke up a little while ago, and she isn’t anywhere to be seen, and her bed’s cold. I thought at first she was in the bathroom, but she isn’t. Her pyjamas are there folded on the pillow. But
she’s gone
!’

Her glance fell upon the wriggling tail at that moment, and her eyes opened wide in incredulous horror, for she had read about, but never yet encountered, the more unnerving habits of the smaller lizards. But she was too preoccupied to spare a word for the phenomenon Dominic plainly had not even noticed.

‘It’s a fine morning,’ he said reasonably, ‘she’ll have gone off for a walk. I don’t suppose she’s any farther away than the garden.’

Tossa shook her head emphatically. ‘She’s taken that outsize handbag of hers. I checked as soon as I realised… It’s got all her money in it, and her passport. Her coat’s gone from the wardrobe, and a cotton dress… and her washing things have vanished out of the bathroom. No, she’s up to something on her own. Whatever it is, she planned it herself. You know what I think? I’d have sworn even at the time she was being too quiet and reasonable. When it came to the point, she simply didn’t want to go back home.’

‘But she surely wouldn’t run off on her own, just to give us the slip? She’s got nobody here to turn to, after all, even if she does hate the thought of going back to England.’

‘She’s got a cousin,’ Tossa reminded him dubiously.

‘She didn’t show much sign of taking to him.’

‘I know. But he’s the only relative she has got left over here, as far as we know. We’d better try there first, hadn’t we?’ Her eyes remained fixed on the abandoned tail, now twitching solemnly and regularly as a metronome. Her toes curled with horror. ‘Don’t step back! ’ she warned; his bare foot was just an inch from the pale-green tip.

Dominic looked down, uttered a startled yelp, and removed himself several feet from the improbable thing in one leap. ‘Good lord, what on earth…!
I
haven’t done that, surely? I swear I never touched…

‘They say they do it when they’re scared,’ said Tossa, and wondered if she had not shed an appendage herself this morning, a taken-for-granted tail of European self-confidence and security. ‘I think they grow another. She can’t really have gone off and left us permanently, can she? Surely she’d be afraid!’

‘Go and get dressed, and we’ll see if she comes to breakfast. If not, maybe some of the hotel staff will have seen her go out.’

That was good sense, and Tossa seized on it gratefully; Anjli had a healthy appetite, and was always on time for meals. But this time the magic did not work. The two of them met at their table in the ground-floor dining-room, the garden bright and empty outside the long windows; the tea arrived, strong and dark as always, the toast, the eggs; but no Anjli.

They went in search of the room-boy. Last night’s attendant was off-duty for the day, and the shy southerner who had just tidied away the gecko’s tail, finally limp and still, had seen nothing of Miss Kumar. Nor had the sweeper in the courtyard, nor the porters at the gates. All this time Dominic had had one eye cocked for the truant’s return, fully expecting her to saunter in from a walk at any moment; but time ticked by and the possible sources of information dried up one by one, and still no Anjli. By a process of elimination they arrived at the reception clerk, who was hardly a promising prospect, since he had come on duty only at eight o’clock this morning, when Anjli’s absence had already been discovered. However, they tried.

‘Miss Kumar? No, I have not seen her this morning, I am sorry.’ The clerk was a dapper young man, friendly and willing to please. He looked from one anxious face to the other, and grasped that this was serious; and it was in pure kindness of heart that he felt impelled to add something more, even if it was of no practical help. ‘I have seen nothing of her since she came in with you yesterday evening. To be sure, I remember there was a note delivered here for her later…’

‘Note?’ said Dominic, pricking up his ears. He looked at Tossa, and she shook her head; not a word had been said about any note. ‘Did she get it?’

‘Of course, sir, I sent it up to her as soon as it came, by the room-boy.’

‘You don’t know who it was from? Who brought it?’ Certainly not the postman, at that hour.

‘No, sir, I cannot say from whom it came. It was a common peon who brought it, some shop porter, perhaps. Though I do recall that the note was not in an envelope, but just a sheet of paper folded together – a little soiled, even…’

It did not sound at all like the immaculate Vasudev. And who else was there in Delhi to be sending notes to Anjli? The film unit was away in Benares, and no one else knew her.

‘About what time was this?’

‘I cannot say precisely, sir, but a little after nine, probably.’

Anjli had announced her intention of going for her bath at about that hour. And only a few minutes later, that floating wisp of melody had drifted in at the window that overlooked the courtyard… No, he was imagining connections where there were none. Tossa was right, the ragas were there for everyone to use and enjoy. It was placing too much reliance on his unpractised ear to insist that what he had heard was not merely Raga Aheer Bhairab, but Ashok’s unique folksong variation of it, and no other.

So they were back to the necessity of beginning the hunt for Anjli somewhere; and the obvious place was Purnima’s house. Where, of course, they told each other bracingly in the taxi, Anjli would certainly be.

‘Note?’ Vasudev’s thin black moustache quivered with consternation. ‘No, indeed I assure you I sent my little cousin no note. I would not dream of addressing her except through you, when you have been placed in charge of her by her mother. I have been considering, indeed – I intended to telephone you today and ask you to call… Some proper provision must be made, of course. But I did not… This is terrible! You do not think that someone has lured her away…? But who knew of her presence here? Your friends of the film unit, you tell me, are in Benares. Otherwise who could know you – and Anjli – here in Delhi, and know where to find you?’

‘We’ve been in contact with a lot of people in the town, of course,’ admitted Tossa, ‘but only casually, the sort of tourist contact one has with shops, and restaurants, and guides… and what could be more anonymous? The only place where we’re
known
, so to speak, apart from here and the hotel, is the house in Rabindar Nagar – your cousin Satyavan’s house…’

‘Of course! ’ Dominic snapped his fingers joyfully. ‘Why didn’t I think of it! Kishan Singh! A slightly grubby little note brought by a paid messenger… It could be! Kishan Singh may have had some news of Anjli’s father. Perhaps he’s home!’

Vasudev looked first dubious, and then hopeful; and after a few seconds of thought, both excited and resolute. He came out of his western chair in a nervous leap. ‘Come, we shall take the car and I will drive you over there to Rabindar Nagar. We must see if this is the case. Indeed, one hopes! That would resolve all our problems most fortunately.’

He ran to the rear door of the palatial hall, and clapped his hands, and in a few moments they heard him issuing clipped, high-pitched orders. Presently the car rolled majestically round on to the rosy gravel, with a magnificently turbaned Sikh at the wheel. A glossy new Mercedes in the most conservative of dark greys, and its chauffeur’s pride and joy, that was clear by the condescending forbearance with which he opened the door to allow them to enter its sacred confines. But that morning he was not to be allowed to drive it; Vasudev did that himself, and did it with a ferocity and fire they had not expected from him. Their taxi driver, on the first occasion, had taken half as long again to get them to Rabindar Nagar.

At the first turning into the new suburb from the main road Vasudev braked, hesitating. ‘It is long since I was here, I have forgotten. Is it this turn?’

‘The second one. N block, it’s only a couple of hundred yards farther on. Yes, here.’

At the half-finished houses the bold, gypsyish, stately women of Orissa walked the scaffolding with shallow baskets of bricks on their heads, and made a highly-coloured frieze against the pale blue sky, their fluted skirts swaying as though to music. At sight of the opulent car the half-naked children padded barefoot across the open from their low, dark tents, running beside it with pinkish-brown palms upturned and small, husky voices grating their endless complaint against possessing nothing among so many and such solid possessions. There was no obsequious tone in this begging, it accused, demanded and mocked, expecting nothing, and ready to throw stones if nothing was given. But this time the plump lady from next door did not chase them away. She was there, she and a dozen others, clustered round the open iron gate of N 305, all shrilling and shrugging in excited Hindi, a soprano descant to a louder, angrier, more violent clamour of male voices eddying from within the compound. No one had time now for errant children; the centre of all attention was there within the wall, out of sight. And even the Orissan infants, having come to beg, sensed that there was more to be had here than new pice, and winding the excitement, wormed their way in under elbows, between legs, through the folds of saris, to see whatever was there to be seen.

‘Oh, God, no!’ prayed Tossa silently in the back seat, tugging at the handle of the door. Little girls vanished, little girls reappeared, horribly changed. Everybody knew it happened. But not here! With all its violence and despair and hunger, somehow India had felt morally clean and safe to her, she would have walked through Old Delhi at night, alone, and never felt a qualm, something she couldn’t have said for Paddington. Yet unmistakably this had the look of a crowd round the police van, the ambulance, the sorry panoply of murder or rape.

They clambered out of the car, clumsy with haste.

‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! ’ Vasudev keened, his voice soaring with agitation. ‘Something has happened! Something is wrong here! Miss Barber, you should please stay in the car…’

But she was already ahead of them, boring into the small butterfly crowd about the gate, and thrusting her way through without ceremony. They followed her perforce, clinging to her arm, urging her to go back. Tossa hardly noticed. It was bad enough for them, but it was she who had taken on the job, so lightly so selfishly, coveting India and hardly thinking, at first, about the child who was being posted about the world like a parcel…

She extricated herself frantically from the gold-embroidered end of a lilac and white sari, and fell out into the open space of the compound, and Dominic flung his arm round her and held her upright. The door of Satyavan’s house stood wide open, and on the white paving before it Kishan Singh, his guileless eyes round and golden with fright, sobbed and protested and argued in loud Hindi, alternately buffeted and shaken between two vociferous Punjabis in khaki shorts and tunics. Another man in khaki, obviously their superior, stood straddle-legged before the trio, barking abrupt questions at the terrified boy, and swinging a short rattan cane of office in one hand. He was a handsome turbaned Sikh, his beard cradled in a fine black net, his moustache waxed fiercely erect at the ends. Whatever had happened, the Delhi police were in possession here.

Kishan Singh, turning his bullet head wildly from one persecutor to the other, caught a fleeting glimpse of the new arrivals, and uttered a shrill cry of relief and joy. Crises in India are chaotic, voluble and exceedingly noisy, and he had been adding his share to this one, but only out of panic. With someone to speak for him, he regained his sturdy mountain calm.

‘Sahib, memsahib, please, there is very bad thing happened. You tell these men, I am honest, I have done nothing wrong… Why should I call police here, if I did this thing?’

Dominic looked squarely at the Sikh officer, who was plainly the man to be reckoned with here. ‘Kishan Singh is the caretaker of this house, and has been a good servant to Shrimati Purnima Kumar and to her son. If Shrimati Purnima were still alive, I know she would speak for her boy, and I feel sure Mr Kumar here, her nephew, will tell you the same. I don’t know what has happened here, but I know that Kishan Singh is to be trusted.’ Did he really know that, after one short encounter? Yes, he did, and he wasn’t going to apologise for the brevity of the acquaintance to this man or to anyone. With some people, you know where you stand, with some you don’t. Kishan Singh belonged among the former group. There is an innocence which is absolute, and there’s no mistaking it when you do meet it.

‘I understand,’ said the Sikh officer, eyeing them narrowly, ‘that this boy is the only resident here. Is that the case?’ His English was all the better because his voice was a sombre bass-baritone.

‘Yes, I understand that is true. Apart from the old man who lives in the compound here, as a kind of pensioner of the family.’

‘Ah… yes,’ said the police officer gently. ‘That is the point. We are, unfortunately, debarred from referring to this elderly gentleman as a witness.’

‘I know he is blind. You mean there has been a crime on these premises?’

‘A very serious crime.’ He made a brief gesture with the cane in his hand, and deflected all attention into the distant corner of the compound, partially cut off from view by the jut of the house wall. Tossa wanted to close her eyes, but did not; what right had she to refrain from seeing what was there to be seen? The poor little girl, shuttlecock to this marital pair who didn’t care a toss about her, and now fallen victim to some incomprehensible perversion that was an offence against India as well as against youth and girlhood…