Miss Timmins' School for Girls (28 page)

I got the message. I was to keep my interaction with the school short and simple. No lunch in the dining room. But now that I had a foot in the door, I could squeeze myself in. I would hang around the staff room before and after classes, I could even pump the schoolgirls. And I would not have to stay in that horrible room smelling of disinfectant and dirty socks.

“I will find some rooms outside,” I said, feeling a surge of freedom gathering in my breast.

Now that I had been firmly placed coming down from table-land that night, “looking absolutely mad,” I was going to be pointed at. And then talked about. And then, if I was not careful, I would be in jail, snap, for the murder of Moira Prince.

I knew what I must do. Walking past the music room, I had once heard Miss McCall, the music teacher—soon to be the teacher of
Macbeth
—say to some struggling piano player, “Bite the note before it bites you.” I would have to bite hard.

“Of course, we will adjust your pay accordingly,” said Miss Wilson, closing the meeting. “That would only be fair.”

Twenty-eight

Sister Richards

T
he first time in my life that I got drunk was with Sister Richards. I had at least three large glasses of rum and Campa Cola with her one evening, soon after my return to Timmins.

I had left the school and was an independent part-time teacher living in Aeolia, a windy villa perched on the cusp of the valley, on the way to Sydney Point. I was paying 200 rupees a month for three rooms temporarily vacated by Shabir and Raisa, who had moved to Poona and rented a house in the Rajneesh Ashram so their child could be born there.

Sister was happy to see me when I walked down to the hospital at sunset. She called it her “medicine hour,” with a sly wink. She drank usually in her dim room, but today we pulled out two chairs and sat at the edge of the veranda near the dispensary so we could quickly hide the drinks if a hurt child was to suddenly appear. We were facing a patch of red roses and a bush of shoe-flowers in full bloom. There was a chicken-pox girl in the hospital, poor Malini Hathiramani, whose parents “did not even bother to check that she was red and feverish, just put her on the train,” Sister grumbled, going to get two glasses. “And now it is bound to spread.”

“So now you're wearing saris,” she said, pouring herself a generous amount of triple-X rum. “But my, you've grown thin. Yes, very thin. Have a drink. Calm yourself down.”

“I'll have the same as you, just a smaller peg, please,” I said. I was planning to get information out of her. She just had to be dying for a good gossip.

“Where could Raswani have gone?” I asked. “Poor thing, she has just been sidestepped with all this mother-daughter drama.”

Sister nodded her head in vigorous assent. “Yes,” she said lustily, “suddenly one day, just gone.”

“And even her room clean. That's odd too. She didn't just walk out, she took her things.”

“Or someone packed her things to make it look like she took them. If you ask
me
, I smell a rat. Maybe she was knocked off too, you know, just like our poor Moira. She knew too much, living where she did, cheek by jowl with
that
one.” She said it like she might say the evil one.

The drink smelt like cough mixture and tasted worse. I saw no point in savoring it. Sister watched me take great gulps with approval.

Then she launched into the story. “You know, I heard them talking once. Mother and daughter, though I did not see the conversation in that light that day. And neither did she, then, poor child.”

Sister took a long draught, put her glass down to rest, and did not take another sip until she finished the entire episode. She did once or twice pop a channa or two into her mouth, pausing her tale as she ground it down with her tiny set of false teeth.

“It happened that Moira had a bad patch of dysentery after she came back from England. So she was here”—Sister pointed to the infectious disease room that was on the other side of the dispensary—“for two weeks.

“Moira was very gloomy those days, stayed in her room and then in the evenings dressed up and went out and didn't come back till very late. Slept all day. Nelson came by a couple of evenings to see her, but she wasn't there.

“ ‘How is her stomach condition?' Nelson asked me. ‘She does have loose motions,' I said, ‘and sometimes still runs a temperature.' ‘Then she should not be going out, Sister,' she said, as though I could have any control over
that
one. Anyway, once she found her in. I was in the dispensary, rolling cotton swabs and such. I heard the conversation, didn't know what to make of it then, but now it comes back quite clearly, and I keep thinking, that Nelson of yours is evil, I tell you. Scaring the poor girl like that, why would she do it, unless she had a motive?

“They talked of her trip to England. Moira was telling Nelson about the house that her parents had left her. She was quite excited about it, describing how you could see the sea from the bedroom in the attic. She said she was planning on moving there. Dorset, she said, or maybe Dover. Something with a
D
anyway, some small town on the coast. I didn't ask her about it, because of course I couldn't let them know I had heard that conversation, could I?”

Sister and I were quite cozy now, and getting closer.

“Nelson was quite discouraging, you know, saying what would you do there, and you won't know anyone there, and that sort of thing. Moira said she would teach. ‘There'll always be a school there, and at least I look white, though I felt Indian when I was there,' she said, perky as you please. Sounded happy. I thought it would be a good thing. If you ask me, she should have done it. Gone and started a new life. But that Nelsonofyours (she said it as one word, as though it were her surname or something) was not about to let that one out of her clutches, oh, no. ‘You can't teach in England,' she said. ‘You have not gotten your teachers' training. They are quite strict about that there.' So saintly, pah. Makes my blood boil. But that Moira was not to be stopped. ‘I never really wanted to teach—I just said that because I thought it would keep you happy. Actually, I plan to have another career altogether,' she said, as proud as a peacock. ‘I'm going to be an actress.' ”

I remembered her as Freny in Merch's room, bent over with laughter before she delivered her line.

“You know, she was much happier recently. Since she met you. But when she was ill and staying here, I would kind of know she was in a mood and leave her alone. Mind you, she did come in and have a few drinks with me. She would saunter up and say, ‘Isn't it triple-X day, Sister Richards?' And I would say, ‘But drinking is not good for your condition, child.' And she would say, ‘Oh, but it is, Sister. I promise you, it is very good for my condition.'

“But those days she was much more ready to fly off the handle, and when Nelson said, ‘Do you think that is wise? There is no security in that, and you will be all alone,' Moira let her have it. ‘For your information, Miss Shirley Nelson the know-it-all, I do have relatives in England. And I met them all. A cousin, his wife, and a nephew. I met them and I slept in their home and I ate meals with them and took the child to the park. Anyway, why should you care? You'll be happy to see me go, I bet. Then your precious school will be clean again.'

“ ‘Relatives, what relatives? You have no relatives, I know that,' she said, in a sharp voice. That is the only time I have ever heard that voice out of Nelson. She was shaken up, I tell you. Shaken up, voice rough and hard, not her usual saintly voice. And you know what Moira said?

“ ‘I thought my parents told you every time I sneezed, for God's sake. They didn't show you the Christmas cards? I can't believe it. You didn't know she had a sister, did you? You didn't know that they lived their saintly lives on a pile of dirt, did you? I used to imagine they were some sort of spy couple in hiding, the way they carried on in England not wanting to be seen. Sometimes I thought it was because of me. They were hiding me because I was such a bad girl. All the holy holies would see how rotten their child was. And then they would not seem so good. That's what I thought.'

“And then Moira dropped her voice, and they were talking for a long time. You know, I am getting deaf these days. The other day I didn't hear what's-her-name, Alpana Modi. She was standing outside the dispensary calling for quite some time, ‘Sister, I have cramps.' So after all these murmurs, I had to tie a bandage on some scrape, and I lost their thread of conversation. And then when I went back to—you know, got back to rolling my swabs—Nelson said, ‘But I am your family. Your dear parents, they were all the family we had, you and I. And now I am your family. I will look after you.' And there was all this sniffling and blowing of noses, so I decided to go into my room so she would not have to pass by me when she left. At that time, I thought they must be crying about the death of her parents. But now I think Prince must have told her she had just found out about her adoption.

“Mind you,” said Sister, holding a small round channa ready to pop into her mouth, “she didn't know it was her own mother she was talking to.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “She found out she was adopted when her parents died. And she found out about these relatives. The letter came much later.” I saw the Prince as Mandrake the Magician, a cape of secrets swirling around her. I talked and talked about my life, and Pin listened with a crooked smile on her face as I chatted. I wanted to know about her; I wish I'd had more time with her. My eyes began to burn, and I felt a welling of tears arise in my throat. Stop, I told myself sternly. This was not the time to distract Sister. It was a time to collect all the scraps of information like a bird building a nest.

“Coming to think of it, that could have been the actual night when Nelson decided to knock her off,” said Sister, whose eyelids were beginning to droop.

By this time, we were both maniacally chewing channa in a conspiratorial manner. The dinner bell had rung, the lights had been switched on, and moths and other varied insects were hovering above the naked light bulb in the veranda. The ayah came in with two dinner trays, one for the poor pocked girl, and the other for Sister, who ignored it completely.

We took our chairs into the dispensary to avoid the mosquitoes and poured ourselves another drink. “I am ready to take the bet that Nelson did away with Raswani too,” said Sister.

“But then where is her body?” I asked. In the early days, I was convinced that Raswani was a centerpiece in this matter. If we knew what happened to her, we would know what happened to Pin.

No one had seen them go out of the school together. Everyone knew that Nelson had not left her room for three days after Pin's murder. If Nelson had entered Raswani's room through their connecting door and hit her with a bludgeon or choked her in her bed, her body should not be too far.

That is why the flower beds were being dug up.

Three sakarams, with one overseer in long pants from Poona, had tramped around the school for days during the holidays and dug up the long-jump pitch and the slope down from the bakery. The school's two malis had been put to work digging up the neglected vegetable patch outside the kitchen, and Mrs. Cummings, the kitchen mistress, was distraught. But no evidence had been unearthed to date, no smells of rotting flesh assailed us as we walked past tall piles of raw red earth around the random ditches. Searches had also been made at the bottom of the cliff, behind Sydney Point, and down the valley from Parsi Point, just in case she had been taken for a walk and pushed off.

“I did her shopping for her when she lived here,” said Sister. “She was so stingy, used one tube of toothpaste and two cakes of soap for the whole term. And in her room only a few saris, one umbrella, and one raincoat.”

“Any photographs or pictures in her room?”

“She had a framed Jesus picture: ‘Suffer the children to come unto me.' Nothing else. Lived like a nun.”

Raswani had disappeared into thin air, and though she had been missing for more than a month, not a single relative or friend had appeared to inquire as to her whereabouts. Miss Wilson had inserted a notice nationally in the
Times of India
more than once.

Miss Usha Raswani, teacher of Hindi at Timmins School, Panchgani, has been missing since September 5, 1974. Any information regarding her current whereabouts, or her past, would be very much appreciated. Please address all letters to Miss M. Wilson, Miss Timmins' School for Girls, Panchgani, Satara District, Maharashtra.

There was no accompanying photograph, because no photograph of her could be found
.

Shankar had told me that both Nelson and Raswani were there before him when he came to Timmins as a young mali and roamed the lower gardens with a huge metal watering can. Shankar says it must have been before 1955 because he remembers that Bhagi was born, but then he says his father was still alive then, and he is sure that his father died more than thirty years ago. So the date of his arrival has not been confirmed. It is confirmed that he wore khaki short pants.

Nelson was learning Marathi, Shankar told me, and he would help her and have conversations with her. “She trusts me to run the school,” he said proudly. “I look after her. Protect her from all these banyas. They would fleece the school.”

Everyone in the bazaar knew that Shankar took his cut, but everyone also knew that the white women would be overcharged anyway, and so in the end, the school came off better because at least he got work out of the contractors.

Maybe Nelson and Raswani came to the school together. It was possible they knew each other from Nasik. But then Pin should have known her too, and I knew that this was not so. Pin had told me of her first encounter with Raswani, in the school staff room, how she had turned her head away and refused to take Pin's proffered hand.

“Where do you think she came from? Does anyone know? No one even seems to have known her first name,” I said to Sister. Although Merch and company did drugs on a constant basis, there was rarely any alcohol around, and I found that I was warm and expansive without knowing that I was drunk. “And who would have thought her name was Usha? I have an aunt called Usha. Such a soft, sweet little name.”

“Twisted place, this is. Pah,” said Sister, screwing her lips. “I keep to myself, as you see. I go up to the dining room for breakfast, then go up for prayers. That's all. After that, this is my kingdom. With these kinds of women, I tell you, the less you talk to them the better. If you ask me, I personally prefer blood and guts to this mess. But I did hear that Raswani was from the north. I think from Allahabad. Don't ask me who told me that, but I think they all know she is from Allahabad.”

Sister and I had passed the realm of careful conversations.

“I think Raswani might be the killer,” I said. “She's mad anyway, and you know she hated Pin. I mean Miss Prince.” I stumbled over her name. It was impossible to refer to her as Moira, for it was not a name that fitted her at all. “She could have pushed her off the cliff and then run away. Perhaps back to Allahabad.”